CLOUDS FALL

by Hiba Heba

for the flood victims of Pakistan

A heavily flooded home in Rajo Nizamani village, near Jhirk, Sept. 10. Credit: Hassaan Gondal for TIME.

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Koyal chirps / in the dark street /

Leaves / barks / magnolias / roofied by the dark street /

The moon is blighting / the sky / in this poem / this poem is a dark street /

We played cricket / in the same desolate / streets /

I bled / between my legs / bled the size of a vat / in this dark street /

 

Tonight I dangle / my legs over the railing / thinking / mourning /

O Dark Street / how loud is your thunder / of desolateness /

even the clouds /  denounced it /  they rained / raged / bled /

In Urdu when it rains / we say / badal baras rahe hain:

the clouds are falling / falling / tearing through /

the fearful blue / of the dark street /

Every night I call Daisy / home / from my kitchen’s old window /

every night / she prances over the railing / then in my arms /

I trust these long / misleading / dark streets /

the streets hold / together / our tenderness /

When a mother wades / through the cloudy / deluge /

ululating the names / of her children / Musa / Musa / Musa /

she knows all / that has drowned / will eventually

be found / when the clouds ascend / even the tenderness /

now holding itself / against / the koyal-gloom / of the dark street /

Hiba Heba is a Pakistani poet who recently launched an online business, RepairInk, that provides editing and proofreading services. She was the first runner-up for the New Feathers Award 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Fragmented Voices, The Ofi Press and Poetry Wales, among others. Hiba has a micro-chapbook, Grief is a Firefly (Origami Poems Project, 2021), and her debut full-length poetry collection Birth of a Mural will be published by the US-based Golden Dragonfly Press in October, 2022. 

AFTER THE PRESIDENT SPOKE ON DEMOCRACY

by Indran Amirthanayagam

 

The day is coming, and nobody

is turning away. It is coming like

sun rising, like rain about to burst

 

from cloud, and no matter

where you stand on this earth

you will feel the thunder clap,

 

the roar of the volcano

blowing its top, and you will 

be amazed and chastened,

 

and you will hug love beside

you, love in dreams, love

in history. These are end 

 

times, to take stock, 

to remember, to say

thank you, to wash away

 

the fog of amnesia. Clarity.

Piercing. Truth telling, 

standing with families of 

 

the disappeared everywhere. 

These are times of forgiveness, 

of searing light despite 

 

forces of ruin, of sore 

losing, of twisting laws,

of dictatorship. These 

 

are times for the new 

civil contract, not 

guns but mind, 

 

not mockery 

but respect, not 

cult but democrat.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

by Bunkong Tuon

Lightning lit up the night sky

Thunder crashing the world.

My bedroom walls shook.

Windows felt like they were about to explode.

And my foundation crumbled.

I was again back in the jungles.

The fighting happened mostly at night.

The moon hid behind the smoke and branches.

Trees stood still. Everything was quiet but the sounds

Of rifles and rocket launchers and the screaming 

Streaming out of the mouths of children and parents.

There are no winners and losers in war.

There are only civilians who didn’t ask for any of it.

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of three poetry collections and a chapbook. His prose and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Lowell Review, Massachusetts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, carte blanche, among others. He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.

IT IS THE CLOUDS

by Lindsay Adkins

As soon as I’ve said it I think—

No, that is wrong.

We are eating dinner at the pub, outside

(because COVID)

while rain pelts the tent over our heads,

rushes down the open sides in small rivers,

and thunder stomps across the horizon.

All the things I would gather in my arms

and shove back into the barrel if I could.

My daughter is afraid of the thunder

and asks for a hug. “Demands”

might be a better word choice.

She isn’t yet two, doesn’t know

the different shades of language.

I explain to her it is just the clouds

banging into one another

like legos in her little fists.

Bang bang, she says.

Bang bang.

Everyone at the table laughs.

 

But even as I am saying the words

I think no, that isn’t quite right.

Something to do with lightning,

the sound of air cooling,

counting the seconds

from flash to boom

to find the distance between you

and the bolt.

I have oversimplified it.

You should ask your uncle sometime, I say.

The one who’s a meteorologist.

Bang bang, she says, pounding

her hands together,

already sure in her understanding.

 

My husband’s sister looks at her phone

and sighs.

Another shooting, she says.

In Tulsa. Not a school, a medical building.

 

I wonder if, when I write this poem,

as I know I will,

the rain will be small coins,

or bullets.

Or just rain.

Rain is, after all, rain—

Any good meteorologist will tell you so.

Having spent all our metaphors and similes

for guns and their blooms already,

we go back to our fries and beers.

Bang, my daughter whispers. Bang.

The lightning flashes, and I begin counting:

How long until this word

means something else to her?

Lindsay Adkins is a writer from Western MA whose work has appeared in Electric Lit, Narrative, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, great weather for MEDIA, Frontier Poetry, and So to Speak Journal, among others. She is a recipient of the Amy Award from Poets & Writers, the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Poetry, and an Author Fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She has an MFA from Stony Brook Southampton. 

IJS*

by Judy Juanita

Imma be ok

Even wif lightening ‘n thunder 

setting de trees on fire

& dogs howling up a storm

but if I were a spooky sort 

(which I is deep down)

I’d say we is coming into 

de apock-a-lips

* = I’m just saying

Judy Juanita’s poetry has been published widely. Her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). She appears in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Season 5, Laney College where she teaches.

LOVE IN HURRICANE SEASON

by Earl J. Wilcox

Parts of a neighborhood are flooded in Latta, S.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

And I will watch the spindly pine
trees shrug and quiver when the thrust
of wild wind one hundred miles per hour
slash across our back orchard and beyond.

And I will speak softly, calmly to you, hold
my heart, your hand if necessary when
the thunder rolls, the bolts of blue skies slice
across our soggy zoysia grass, greening.

And I will never let you go again until
the next hurricane, whether this year
or a century from now, when you and
I and all that’s ours takes us safely home.


Earl Wilcox lives in South Carolina, where Hurricane Florence arrived with gusto and ballyhoo.

THE SHORES OF BROOKLYN

Saturday July 1, 2017, 3 p.m.

by Tsaurah Litzky

Pier 5 Brooklyn Bridge Park, photo by Etienne Frossard

Seen from my kitchen window, the line in front of Luke’s Lobster
across Water Street (lobster rolls $20 each) is longer than the B25 Bus
weaving its way through the crowd.
Families with strollers, dogs walking their owners, young lovers, old lovers,
people alone eating ice cream cones, legs, legs everywhere legs,
women of all sizes, shapes, ages showing off their knees, at least.
Shorts are in this year. T***p beware! Screw your tweets, your T***p care!
You won’t stop us from strutting our stuff on the shores of Brooklyn,
a big woman in pink short shorts, her thighs jiggling like Jell-O is
escorted by a guy who looks like a young Brando,
I want to cut in, steal her shorts, steal her date,
while behind them four young dudes joke and pass a basketball,
followed by three sweet teen angels in hijabs.
The waterfront is still a free country! Such happiness!
Suddenly! Claps of thunder! Lightening cracks across the river
the heavens open, rain comes pouring down, the crowd scatters,
to huddle under the trees in the park or push into the ShakeShack,
the happiness so quickly shattered!
I already know there are no guarantees of permanence anywhere,
especially in a country that could elect T***p for President,
yet something pulls me to the window, I open it, stick my head out,
in less time than you can say “the land of the free,”
my head is soaking wet but when I breathe in, I smell the sea.

Tsaurah Litzky is a widely published poet who also writes fiction, memoir and commentary. Her poetry collections are Baby On The Water (Long Shot Press) and Cleaning The Duck (Bowery Books). Her most recent poetry chapbooks, Full Lotus: Poems about Yoga and Jerry in the Bardo, were published by NightBallet Press.

VACATION DURING A WEEK OF KILLINGS

by Gail Martin

A truck drove into a crowd at Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France, leaving many dead and sending hundreds running for safety. —The New York Times, July 14, 2016. Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters.

One daughter posts a picture of her face, sad,
reading Hannah Arendt On Violence; my husband
watches Wimbledon, says he has no perspective
on it yet. One daughter is growing a son. Her app
says he’s the size of a coconut. Another texts
from the West: I can’t sleep -- I feel traumatized.
A client calls from home to say his anxiety’s up.
People kayak on the flat lake, ignoring the thunder.
This makes me anxious. The dog sleeps beneath
the dining room table. All I want is to read 89 Ways
to Love Summer!  Can we afford to let sleeping dogs lie?
I take my pills, prelude to a walk, and eat strawberries,
small and sweet, on Cheerios. Wheaties are more
American but my daughters can’t tolerate wheat.
How much can we tolerate? The storm is sweeping
across the lake. I need a megaphone to shout out
my grief and anger. My fear. If you hear thunder,
the warning repeats over and over on the news,
you’re close enough to be struck by lightning.

Gail Martin’s book Begin Empty-Handed won the Perugia Press Poetry prize in 2013 and was awarded the Housatonic Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her first book The Hourglass Heart (New Issues Press), was published in 2003. New work is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry and The Southern Review. Martin works as a psychotherapist in private practice in Kalamazoo, MI.

RAIN NIGHT

by David Chorlton

The streets flowed easily,
one into another, and the full moon rolled
behind the clouds. Thunder
beat against the door
to wake a sleeper who had been dreaming
disconcerting dreams
and who rose to ghost to the kitchen
through the living room, whose darkness
was tempered by reflections
coming from the raindrops as they filled
with light from the streetlamps
coming down.
                     The house was floating
on insomnia. A television
flashed on, and the evangelist who never sleeps
strode up and down a stage
wearing a suit cut from sharkskin and stars
while he turned a Bible’s pages
as if counting money. The next
channel showed a drama
in which throats were slashed
convincingly, and the story turned back
on itself until the guilty party
took her own life with a gesture
worthy of an opera. It was a fine
entertainment for the hour
                                         preceding
the early local news
that revealed the city under water
with nightlights and headlamps and searching
while saguaros took in more water
than their roots could hold
and tumbled with a splash
onto the ground. By dawn’s early light
on the freeway,
                        car roofs broke a surface
so calm it was more
beautiful than the usual
rush to be somewhere
other than here. The bickering
over climate change stalled
with the traffic;
                        replaced by this new
experience leaving everyone
impressed by nature’s power.

David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.

KNOW WHAT I MEAN

by Stefanie Pickett Buckner

Image source: Weather Whys, TAMU

Heat lightning awakens me and fragments of sky
at midnight—
a brief but rapid winking through the bedroom
window— then surrenders again to dark
night air. Thick thunder soon accompanies this
momentary light. My husband sleeps, his hand snug
in the curve of my waist, each finger pressing into my flesh
deeply at different times. He is reliving scenes from Iraq
in another “dream.” I pretend he is playing one of Mozart’s Sonatas,
perhaps in C. I close my eyes, but hear the sky groan. Tired
or not, we sense violence when it’s there.

In the morning, we sit by the bay window, drink coffee, and read
news about a movie theater massacre—a deranged man who shot
Batman fans with a grin on his face
at midnight—
where 12 people are dead and 58 injured.
We watch cell phone footage, hear the screams, listen
to victims’ stories, gasp and sigh, swallow hard, shake our heads.

Thunder still fumbles heavy and clumsy through
the house as the sun tries to rise. The lonely orchid in the corner
vase quavers at the sound, but stands erect and delicate despite it
all. It shares news too—of looking up while landing
inside a major chord—of every note, light, petal, and touch ending
in resolution—of hearing storm but believing
in sonata—

I grab my husband’s hand, pull it towards my waist,
and ask him to play Mozart again. He smiles but doesn’t
know what I mean.


Stefanie Pickett Buckner’s poetry has appeared in Byline Magazine, Time of Singing, Sacred Journey, The Penwood Review, SP Quill Quarterly Magazine, Ruah, and Lyric.