SONNETS LEANING LEFT, RIGHT

by Olga Livshin

Left-Leaning Sonnet

                           For Maria Gapotchenko

What can we do   WHAT CAN WE DO   We

can hide in a sonnet   Its milky worn 

warmth  You look hot in a sonnet 

Like a baby elephant  Pull the taffeta   

over your eyes  Turn off the news  

How to help from under a word comforter  

Stick out one hand   Poke the nearest sufferer

Hey fellow victim   Hola      Pryvit     How’s it all

hanging   Do you need anything

I know about tragedies  Can I write one about you

Or sing you into the velvet car of my ghazal  

Sell all my books and Venmo you a little sum

I would send a sun      or my hardy son   but 

don’t know  what am I doing   What have I done

Right-Leaning Sonnet

I say you can’t see borders from space  just fat land slices

and blue elixir  He chuckles When did that ever matter 

I say  You make money from different parts of the world

He talks about the history of empire

and dictators cycling like water   I say  Nature 

flits like pixies       Burning Siberian peat

brought Anchorage  soot He says  Sad Not 

your fault Enjoy your short life   I say I am  

enjoying my friendships in Lviv and Kharkiv  and 

want hamsters and parakeets to live on  He replies 

Arrive  Thirty-four years late  Better than never   

Look    The whole planet on your well-chosen plate

Sweet and staring at us both with disbelief

Docile and looking up with brilliant hope

Olga Livshin’s poetry recently appears in Poetry, The Southern Review, and AGNI. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019) and translator of Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). 

A PROSE-BENT ODE: THE HEAVY VULTURES DO APPEAR, NOW

by L. Lois

Source: Florida Wildlife Trappers

The sky is empty, no hint of cloud, the heavy, dark arc of vultures sweeping low over a world of forgetting. They move in silence, gliding like quick lies from innumerable podcast hosts, words slipping through open doors, hands out for cash, voices telling us there’s nothing left but acquiescence. A slumber here, a kind of wasting, my monsters creep like political dinosaurs too ancient to roar, just the hum of their presence, the crazy crawl of flies, the air filled with echoes of something about to be erased. 

I thought once of building something here— 

an arts sanctuary or maybe a place for fragile things, the way my

 mother cupped her hands

 around a broken bird, holding it in her palms.

 Softest down cradled,

 a thing that didn’t know it could die.

 Like a passkey made of wax,

 the promise of security so thin I felt it would slip away

 under the heat of my fingers.

 But we kept pressing forward— 

as if to stave off the tragedies of suffering, 

telling ourselves that calm and order were always enough. 

This is where reason goes to sleep, 

but we forget, in the moments between dusk and dawn. 

We, too, nod along. We’re calling out, offering our liquor to the night, keeping our doors open and lax, hoping something real will slip through and fill the vacuum hissing threats. But, still, here they come— the vultures. Vile promises sweeping low over places we thought too tender and narrow for their wings. In the last pale light, I see my monsters—they may hide, too, as I fall asleep against our best interests. The faintest memory of feathers, floating where they tromped. No noise at all, except the whimper.

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. Her poems have appeared in Alchemy Magazine, Progenitor Journal, Poetry Breakfast, 300 Days of Sun, Twisted Vine, and other literary publications.

THE PROMISE OF NOTRE DAME

by Micheline Ishay

Notre Dame over Paris towered.  
Her spire inspired and empowered,           
Sheltering the beggars across time. 
Shockingly, a fire burned its spine.            
The top fell: crackling, 
Crashing, and blazing…                               
 
Such collapses come always fast,
As other tragedies of recent past.
Plagues, floods, and worsening storms. 
The plundered planet in an altered form.
Choking air, winds swirling,                        
Sweltering, drowning…
 
Wars destroy lives even faster, 
Slaughter peace-loving dancers,
Bury children under rubble,
Entrap peace in an endless tunnel. 
The music was thrilling, 
Then shooting and shrieking…
 
Their screams drowned underground, 
Lost in Pluto’s crowded underworld. 
Vile geniuses dug a cave of hell  
While humanity failed to prevail.                                                   
Wrath unleashed the dogs of war, 
Fangs flashing, growls and gore.                             
 
In the “City of Lost Children,”
Thieves stole youthful dreams
Staving off aging by any means.
Schooling generations for revenge.
In cycles of never-ending violence
Interrupted by dreadful silence.
                                                
They say miracles cannot be ignored.                    
Notre Dame is almost restored; 
Its iconic rooster found under debris,
Remade for a world to be free.
It took less than a day to crumble, 
But years for artisans to reassemble.
 
A step at a time: 
Sweating, Swearing,

Longing, Laughing, laughing… 

Micheline Ishay is Professor of International Studies and Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and was founding Director of the International Human Rights Program. She is the author of half a dozen of books, including Internationalism and Its Betrayal (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), The Nationalism Reader (Humanities Press, 1995; Prometheus, 1999), and The Levant Express: The Arab Uprisings, Human Rights, and the Future of the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2019). Her books, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (2004, 2008) and The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches, and Documents from Ancient Times to the Present (1997, 2008, 2022) have been translated into multiple languages and published in second or third editions.