SURVIVOR’S GUILT II

by Julie Weiss

Photo by Seema Miah at Unsplash

It snowed last night, an unusual

enough flurry in our part of Spain

to make the news. Downstairs,

my children pelt each other

with snowballs, their voices

all sparkle and windchime.

The sky, though gray, has no

reason to grieve. I stack dishes

in the sink, sweep up crumbs,

grumble, because who doesn´t

grumble about housework?

If a bang knocks a flock of birds

off course, I assume it´s a car

backfiring, no need to scramble

outside in pajamas, search

the snow for blood. It´s easy

to chide your children for tracking

mud inside when a government

thug isn´t kicking down your door.

Easy to indulge in a cup of hot cocoa,

extra marshmallows please, when

your neck isn´t crushed under

a state-sponsored knee. Tomorrow,

they´ll shove another child into

an unmarked van. Another child´s

mother will vanish, or die. Here,

far from my homeland, the sidewalks

will have frozen over. We´ll glide

to school, graceful as skaters,

hoping not to break any bones

on the hard, hard ice.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, was published in February, 2025. "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was a finalist for Best of the Net, she won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for "Cumbre Vieja," and she was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in ONE ART, Stone Circle Review, Gyroscope Review, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review and MER. She lives with her wife and children in Spain.

TARGET

by Joe Amaral

Is it a person?
Oh no, did it get burned?
Looted? Robbed? Murdered?
Is it okay?

That’s a big box store.
Thick-necked. Hard to press.
Sells hoodies and jeans.
Dresses provocatively.
Damaging.
So empty inside now.
Gutted.

Seriously though, can it breathe?
Does it need water? Mama?
Call the police knee. Did it die?

Poor store, almost like a person.
Hard to fit in a bodybag.
There is video evidence.
Linoleum riot for inanimate rights!

Did it have a family? Friends?
Coworkers? A soul?
Will people miss it forever?
What is its past history?
Arrest record?
Stock market trend?

Ahem.      For profit.
Portfolio is looking up.
Tax sheltered. Bailout ready.
Owner made millions.
In a hazardous pandemic.
Workers get paid shit.
Unprotected. Wage theft.

Why are we only mourning
the humanity of lost property?
Joe Amaral,
Injustice reaction:
“Cleanup on Aisle 7”

Insurance will cover.
Nice being able to live again.
Exist. Mend.

Corporate thug.
Got what it deserved.

Joe Amaral’s first poetry collection The Street Medic won the 2018 Palooka Press Chapbook  Contest.

GRAB-ORIENTED FLEXION

by Jennifer Clark

Photo by Nathan Atkinson on Unsplash

I do as Greg says, for five minutes, three times a day.
I feel silly, sifting my fingers through a medley of dried
lentils, black-eyed peas, and rice, trying to grab and release.
Instead, my right hand wants to pull the skyscraper of weeds
rising through the weigela. My thumb and forefinger itch to pinch
the dead heads of zinnias and marigolds. I should be thinning
the obedient plants, trimming the crazy-haired boxwood.
There is so much work to do in this world.

Attempting to grab and release, my hand wants to seize and shake
the trumpet vine that my well-intentioned neighbors planted.
The orange thug invades the garden with fire and fury.
It loves to feast on fences, has been known to break windows
and pry the siding off homes. Round Up and yelling don’t work.

As the trumpet vine threatens to take over the neighborhood,
I recall one weary gardener’s opinion: it is not a plant, but a form
of domestic terrorism. Here is the best way to handle this noxious
vine that thrives in poor soil yet can attract the sweetest hummingbirds:
Do not ignore it.

Left locked and loaded to its own devices, it will only
displace desirable vegetation. Call it by its true names:
Campis radicans and cow-itch. Don’t fight it. Give it
excessive care. Water it. Nourish the soil. Love it to death.

We can not give up on this good world, even as it slips
through our fingers, we must keep trying. So, go ahead,
roll up your sleeves, plunge into this seeded and weedy
life, and grab and release. Grab and release.

Jennifer Clark, whose left hand wrote this poem, is the author of Necessary Clearings (Shabda Press). Her second poetry collection Johnny Appleseed: The Slice and Times of John Chapman is forthcoming from Shabda Press. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

COVFEFE

by Martin H. Levinson

He was always a thug with a coarse mouth, peacock swagger,
   and a proclivity to break rules like his paterfamilias who
wouldn’t rent to African Americans but sent his misbehaving boy
   to military school to learn how to play football, stick it to losers,
and escape the draft so as to not serve in Vietnam or praise
   John McCain for being captured rather than killing the enemy
in real estate deals that were too big to fail or have T***p

put into jail for hiring undocumented workers to mount his name
   on glitzy Gotham towers and gaudy gambling casinos that
went bust in New Jersey where busts are bounteous and
   pussies can be grabbed for the asking if you are a celebrity
palling around with Russians, wrestlers, and rapscallions from
   Fox and Friends who want to make America great again
like it was in the eighteen fifties when blacks were chattel and

nativist numbskulls were not considered nattering nabobs of
   negativity by their supporters but impassioned Neanderthals
capable of challenging Obama’s citizenship and backing a
   Muslim ban and a Slavic first lady who under our nation’s new
immigration rules would have been a deportation priority during
   the nineteen nineties when her husband did not report hundreds of
millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tenuous tax maneuver

later outlawed by a Congress that is now led by a Cheesehead from
   Wisconsin and a prune face from Kentucky who loves coal more than
the proles who work the mines in a state which ranks forty-seventh in
   educational attainment, is solidly Republican, and has a constituency
the POTUS respects as much as Marla Maples who learned she was
   being divorced by reading about it in the New York Post rather than
seeing it on TV where Jim Comey found out he had been fired as

Director of the FBI and students from T***p University discovered
   they had been defrauded by a corpulent con man who thought
climate change was bogus, Mexicans were bad hombres, and
a nasty woman was making life difficult on the campaign trail
   by calling the star of the Apprentice Putin’s puppet, a teller of
untruths and a fellow unfit for the highest office in the land
   of the me, the home of the knave, and the dockets red glare,

lawsuits bursting in air, gave proof through the night that
   our hate was where it has forever been—gays, the elites,
liberals, immigrants, people of color and those perceived as
   getting a good deal in a global economy that features
home runs for the rich, strikeouts for the poor and
   lies hit down the foul line that T***p always calls fair.  

Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published nine books and numerous articles and poems in various publications. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.