WHEN I DIE I WANT TO BE A CAPITAL "S" SAINT

by Elise Kazanjian

just like Carlo Acutis, the first millennial

saint, appointed by Pope Leo XIV.

There may be a problem. He was

fifteen. I’m 90. One of the last saintly

nonagenarians was St. Anthony 

The Great, 3rd century.

 

Rev. Anthony Gerber in St. Louis

explains there are capital ‘S’ saints 

and lowercase ‘s’ saints in heaven. 

Carlo is a capital ‘S’ 

pronounced infallibly

in heaven by the Catholic Church. 

 

Until my demise I hope to

follow Carlo’s example to insure I

too not only get into heaven, but am a 

big ‘S’ saint. And it will be taxing—

he observed a no-nonsense daily

life, a hard act to follow.

 

Carlo Attended Daily Mass—

I confess I go to the Armenian Church 

mostly on high holidays

like Easter to enjoy

sumptuous delights, ie,

Khourabia, a cookie that melts

in my mouth.   

 

Carlo Converted His peers/friends—

Most of my peers/friends 

seem happy in what they believe, 

and do not believe.

I would be remiss trying to change

them, and probably would acquire

a guilt complex which I don’t need.

 

Carlo Launched a Website Cataloguing Miracles—

I have trouble just with basic computer knowledge 

let alone miracles. I break out in a sweat 

when texting, sending photos, 

or emailing big corporations 

slamming them for their slimy

practices in charging outrageous fees.

Carlo Is Known as “God’s Influencer”—

Frankly, I would prefer 

being a Social Media Influencer 

like Masoom Minawalu

who promotes women’s rights, 

and empowers people of India 

to succeed in their individual endeavors.

 

Carlo’s Body Rests In A Glass Fronted Tomb—

The faithful come to pay their respects to this

young saint. I assume I have another ten years.

At 100, my body will not be that great

to look at. I will choose another burial

practice. Meanwhile, I’ll say a prayer to Carlo,

and hope that someday I can join him as a big ‘S’ saint.

A San Francisco poet, Elise Kazanjian's work has appeared in the 2025 Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Season Lightly With Salt, Our California, Vistas & Byways, the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. She has worked at Sunset Magazine, as Foreign Editor, CCTV, Beijing, China, and as a San Francisco pawnbroker.

PANTOUM: THE TALIBAN TALI-BANS WINDOWS

by Steven Croft

No more open casements, no more moments at windows

Bring back the view of flowers and the love-burned orchards

Buildings now a punishment, knowing prisoners love windows

Talibs say: "Seeing women through windows is an obscene act"

Bring back the view of flowers and the love-burned orchards

To bodies now haram, faces now haram, our voices now haram

Taliban warn: "Seeing women as women is an obscene act"

Captive in darkness, dark-bitter roots till these walls come down

To bodies now haram, faces now haram, our voices now haram

At breast, our babies, throats filled with milk and woodsmoke

Captive in darkness, seeds for flowers, till these walls come down

No more subterranean, no more cavemouth blocked

At breast, our babies, throats filled by milk and woodsmoke

In the candlelit square of mirror, I hope myself, hopeless

No more subterranean, no more cavemouth blocked

But for the world I've stopped hoping, hope tombed long ago

In the candlelit ghosts of windows, I see myself hopeless

My pain bleeds down the panes, alone with my punishment

For the world will not see us, our hope tombed long ago

For the world will not see us, it stopped looking long ago

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, 2023). His work has appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, So It Goes, Anti-Heroin Chic, The New Verse News, and other places, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST

by Sally Zakariya

The New York TImes, October 17, 2024

Unearthed in Peru 
signs of a female sovereign
thirteen centuries ago

In the tomb painting
she’s wearing a crown
and holding court from
a power throne

We’ve had so far a very
masculine view of this
old civilization, say
archaeologists, devoted 
diggers of the past 

Could be we’ve had 
a pretty masculine view
of this new world, too

Could be the time
has come for another 
woman leader here 
in these Americas

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed the poetry anthology Joys of the Table and blogs (occasionally) at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

WINTER RUBBLE

by Susan Kay Anderson

New leaves strive

to take the place

of blossoms

even if they 

don't bear fruit

there are

so many flowers

hanging above

the cold ground down down

winter's tomb

tomorrow's rooftop.  

 

The foreign countrymen spray

into the pushing crowd

marking where the land       breaks       faces

cheeks        eyes        mouths

 

weeds needing killing.  Pulling.  Before sunset.

Rolling    razor wire  

someday we’ll be sitting

at a table remembering  how

saying why.

Susan Kay Anderson lives in southwestern Oregon’s Umpqua River Basin. Her long poem "Man’s West Once” was selected for Barrow Street Journal’s “4 X 2 Project” and is included in Mezzanine (2019). Anderson also published Virginia Brautigan Aste’s memoir Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (2021).

SEA GRAVE

by Sarwa Azeez

We peered through bullet holes

to see our future 

on the other side 

fled home—

dodging fires 

and gunshots.

We held on 

to tree limbs that 

despite being weighed low

by snow and wind

guided us back 

to safety.

We wandered astray

along the haunting 

mountain trails

Our fast-beating hearts 

chased 

by the soldiers’ ghost cries 

but our gazes raised

heavenward

beyond those sky-piercing summits.

Our roaming bodies

stumbled on a vast blue tomb—

The waves thundered

like wrathful gods 

who were lifting us 

through clouds

and mist. 

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet and translator. She is a Fulbright alumni, got her second masters in Creative Writing from Nebraska-Lincoln University. Her debut poetry pamphlet collection Remote was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her work has appeared in many publications such as Parentheses Journal, Writing for A Woman's Voice, Notre Dame Literary, Wingless Dreamer and elsewhere. 

TOURIST TRAP

by Chad Parenteau

Tomb as 
self made
as the men
 
gone deep
in depths
to witness
 
largest 
mass of 
Ozymandias.
 
So close
can graze 
imagined ear
 
where new
titans whisper
never again
 
and survey
land ripe 
for conquer,
 
tell child 
bereft of 
all irony
 
someday
this will 

be yours.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

REVIVAL

by Spatika

People protest against the Citizenship Amendment Bill—which allows Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to get citizenship and exclude Muslims from the same countries—in New Delhi on December 7, 2019. Javed Sultan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images via Vox, December 16, 2019

Are America’s Blacks and India’s Muslims politically comparable? This question has acquired a new salience with the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, underway for weeks in the US, covering several hundred cities. Comparisons have been drawn with the anti-CAA protests in India, lasting three months after mid-December, rebelling against the attempted demotion of India’s Muslims to secondary citizenship. The mainstream Black argument that Blacks have been treated as inferior Americans, with Whites as the putative owners of the nation, is not altogether distinct. —The Indian Express, July 6, 2020

After a gap of 5 months, anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests were once again back on the streets of Dibrugarh with hundreds of activists of the All Assam Students’ Union (Aasu) taking out a motorcycle rally. —The Times of India, August 4, 2020

I have loved Julius Caesar in stories
from my English friends.
I have despised Julius Caesar in words,
striking upon ages.
I live today in burning home astray, my mother
carries small paper notes in tattered folded hands,
saree sifts light through, the only windows left.
the men in uniform are
almost here, asking for signed papers.
I have none. I wish
they did not have pilots fly overhead in our screams, I wish
the skies did not rain upon our chalk graffiti, because
paint was for rich. I wish
our written word wasn’t flung behind bars
nobody to see, I wish
this had never begun.
Caesar lived through citizen’s strangled breaths.
but today I can hear him say,

“My countrymen never cried,
  for my death. Pilgrims, ragged urchins,
  rum-cupped lips did not bawl from inns,
  ivory clad nobles’ eyelids batted away at dry air,
  but even in those sleeping beneath crumbling columns,
  clothes carried not a
  single tear. there was
  no force, no sheer strength of circus led gladiator,
  no power of cavalier battalion, that brought
  forth water of the bodies that my countrymen wore.
  until
  someone spoke
  Antony, my noble aide, Antony
  the moonlight to remember when my rays
  no longer served people their warmth
  Molten silver, seeping shades of wrong
  and glory mingled in lava beds,
  thorn showers, Antony’s words,
  bitter water came streaming forth,
  chiseled edges, Antony’s words,
  cracks to a country’s soft minds,
  breaking
  stealthily through brittle floodgate woes.”

And thousands of years later, come such
  a time of dark pits laden with the bodies of
            my robed brethren.
  a time of words printed in white against white pages
            the children born with sight never see.
  a time of petty gains made from my father’s caps
            pieces of marble tablet remain, which is mosque, which is tomb?
  a time when nobody can say.
today is here because yesterday was deaf to the pleas
of a thousand years.
are Antonys only built for dictators?
today is here, because the day I had a home, those on
the other side would walk confidently past it.
for when I still found chalk to write,
the only hands that rose was to cover people's eyes.
and now
masks are here to silence us.
a viral emergency is the cloak everyone wears around me,
I was born here and I am to leave,
can tears of rage be washed with bottles of hand sanitizer?
I didn’t need arms to fight,
I needed you, I needed her, I needed many.

Spatika is a fourth year student at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, pursuing an Integrated Master's in biology. She is an INSPIRE Fellowship recipient, interested in neurobiology and writing. She is also a contributor at Feminism in India, and Delhi Poetry Slam, and a senior editor of her institute magazine.

BELOVED

by Doug Bolling

North wind just off the sea
Heavy freighters out there now
Slowing toward a final turn
To harbor and rest against an
Unforgiving roil and smash of
Moon bent wave.

Rest I think rest.
What does it bring to we the
Toilers whether far out or
Crouching beside the door
Of a virus caught loved one.
No answer that holds, no
Roseate bloom out of the
Shadows of a dirt laden
Tomb.

We have buried two and soon
The third.
John in his artificial sleep
Barely visible through the
Frosted window, single
Portal between death
And life,
So narrow the difference.

Only a month ago I stood as
John the mariner of seas
Of thought in endless books
And beyond paused in a
New York street to embrace
A begging man in thin coat
And desperate mien.

I believe money passed
Between two sets of eyes
Locked in some version

Of eternity. I witnessed
Hugs and tears in those
Sudden moments and the
Brief silence that speaks
Of a more, more, some
Mystery perhaps outside
The rumble and screech
Of profit driven days.

Eternity or not an old man
Trapped in an unseeing
Wasteland holds his stance
Winter or spring and the best
Friend I will ever have waits
For his final breath below
Clang and clatter of a
Temporary grace.

Doug Bolling’s poems have appeared in Posit, Basalt, Blue Collar Review, Kestrel, The Missing Slate (with interview), and Writers Resist among others. He lives in the outlands of Chicago.

SECOND COMING

by James Bettendorf

Detail of poster for The Young Messiah film.

Imagine Jesus is alive again.
He has to go to school,
it’s the law.
The kids tease him
his hair so long,
Are you a boy or are you a girl? 
He hears the judgments
echo in his head
as he walks home
to build furniture
with his immigrant father
while his mother
takes in wash
so they can eat.

He is smart, hides away
in his teen years, builds
a robot of wood and spare parts
from the appliance junk yard.
He covers it with silk and denim
so it looks like a real person
When his real father says

          IT IS TIME

he substitutes the robot
so he can avoid the pain
and won’t have to roll
the stone again.

He goes on to star
in Hollywood comedies
as a transgender female.

James Bettendorf is a retired math teacher who recently completed a two-year poetry internship at the Loft in Minneapolis  after having taken many classes over the years.  He is a member of the Forward writing group at the Loft.  James has been published in Rockhurst Review, Common Ground Review, Verse Wisconsin and Light Quarterly as well as the last eight volumes of Talking Stick.

ORGASMO DE NEGOCIOS

by Ashton Jaymz

Cartoon by Jeff Darcy

White hoods give way to smiling white faces
Trim suits, white shirts, smooth in all the right places
Plantations give way to shimmering new offices
When you’re licking balls for status, you can't tell what a farce is
But it's all so shiny, neat, and clean
Your insides are all sanitized, so the dirt can't be seen
We're all fucktoys of a freshly printed bill
I'd die for a green orgasm, and let my tomb eat its fill


Ashton Jaymz is an English major currently residing in St. Louis, with a fondness for cigars and the theater.

THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWNS

by Tricia Knoll

Memorial in the memory of all who died in 2004 Tsunami at the Kanyakumari Beach, India. This monument was designed and constructed by B. Kanagaraj Cangan. Image source:  Indiancorrector at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

They all are, these monuments
to the unknowns, to each chance,
what more might have played out,
might have been said in the name of peace,
what more children born to cure disease,
walk for justice, lead the way, gaze at stars,
what poem written, what painting filled
in by bones buried under
the marble of war.

These tombs are everywhere
human hands have been.
Under the killer storms,
under the genocides,
and always at
histories shortened
under white marbles of war.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.