PICTURES OF PEACE IN OUR TIME, PROTECTION IN OUR DAY

by Michelle DeRose

A paper badge held aloft over eyes

thirteen years’ wide, the funds to find

their cure cut. Texas brothers,

three and five, their mother dead

in the state’s bid to keep the unviable

alive. Women moved to men’s prisons

to prevent concussions in girls’ sports;

the study of injuries among girls removed.

Four hundred million dollars rescinded

for failure to stop campus harassment

one week after three Gentiles circled

and humiliated, pointed and shouted

to muffle the modestly dressed Jewish man’s

assertions he’s not playing that game.

This whether we like it or not.

Newly named Professor Emerita of English at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michelle DeRose’s poetry won the Chancellor’s Prize in 2024 and the Faruq Z Bey Award in 2023 from the Poetry Society of Michigan. Her poetry has been published in dozens of venues, most recently The New Verse News, Sparks of Calliope, The Midwest Quarterly, and Dunes Review, and is forthcoming in Months to Years and One Hundred Poems for Hearing Dogs (anthology). She is participating in the 2025 Stafford Challenge—a cohort of poets who have committed to writing a poem a day for a year. The daily news supplies plenty of material for that effort.

FAMILY DEBATE OVER KIMCHI

by Helen Wilson

We sit in a Korean BBQ restaurant

snipping conversation with tongs,

searing meat with commentary

on the political affairs of the day.

 

“They took pinking shears to

the religious discrimination bill... 

divisive

unworthy

tattered then

abandoned by a wayward man-child.”

 

Tender beef cuts melt

in the mouth while

kimchi sours

like first world ethos

 

only sweeter. We agree,

“Lies leave a nasty taste.”

Bald-faced lies

poison any hope of error. While

 

errors are forgivable

contempt and chilli sauce are not,

staining white flags

indelibly without hope of redress.

 

“Pure heat, not head

nor heart.” I say of

rapid fire policy and 

unfiltered visceral campaigning.

 

“Democracy’s disintegrating,

honour’s unhanded and

self-interest trumps

public good.”

 

“Nothing’s changed,” say the young ones,

as their fingers 

skip across tiny screens

at the speed of light.

 

“Pollies have always snuffled

from the trough

of populism.” 

such is their experience.

 

Defeated,

we wield chopsticks

and pierce the offerings

that we can control.

 

Distracted by 

the crazy patchwork

of dishes and sticks

and tastes and flames as

 

tanks roll across the tundra

and the blanket of peace

under which we hide rolls back.

“So much for perestroika and glasnost.”

 

Who ever really knows?

Helen Wilson is an Australian poet and a professional communicator who has written for magazines, art shows and a pure love of the lyrical. Her passions include ekphrastic poetry, haiku, and dinner with her adult children. She dreams of a world where people will play nicely.