FLACCID JUSTICE FOR MONSIEUR TOUT LE MONDE

an Erasure

by Betsy Mars

Dominique Pelicot and 50 Others Guilty in Rape Trial That Shook France: A court sentenced Mr. Pelicot to 20 years after he admitted to drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, for nearly a decade, and inviting strangers to join him. The case has made her a feminist hero. —The New York Times, December 19, 2024

they appeared to represent a cross-section of men:
The court heard from their wives,
 parents, 
friends
and children, 
who mostly described them 
as kind people incapable of rape
 
after watching videos of them penetrating Ms. Pelicot 
while she lay inert, sedated and often snoring loudly 
the defendants didn’t think of those acts as rape 
 
among the terms they used were 
“involuntary rape,” 
“accidental rape” 
and disassociated rape:
“rape by body, but not mind”
every defendant fully knew

he had drugged his wife 

without her knowledge

a playful threesome

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE THAT MATTERS

by L. Lois

the chill in the air

means the glacier ravines

running down the peaks

jutting above the treeline

to the north

are vertical cuts of white

this bench sits low

comfortably leaning back

with the lake at my feet

the surface broken

by the gentle rippling

of the wind

 

a lone eagle circles

on early spring's

thermal winds

and the cherry blossoms

I passed on my way

are holding fast

in the lingering crispness

distant blue skies are lighter

overhead

coloring is calm

painted solid for peacefulness

rounded white clouds

perch as if to tell

the mountains where they should be

ducks scatter

when the Canadian geese

come in for a noisy

landing

two herons fly by

to the west 

and their rookery's young

New York and Washington on fire

Trump's on criminal trial

Netanyahu plays chess with Hamas and Iran

Putin threatens Ukraine’s future

while Congress dithers on the eve of chaos

everything here

ignores our foolishness

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.

A VAST SHROUD

by Trina Gaynon

The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, seen here smiling during a 2021 court appearance, never lost his sense of optimism and joie de vivre behind bars, says Ilia Krasilshchik, a Russian journalist who exchanged letters with him in prison. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images via CBC).

If they’re told to feed you caviar tomorrow, they’ll feed you caviar. 

If they’re told to strangle you in your cell, they’ll strangle you.

                                                                                    

Aleksei A. Navalny

Excerpt from letter to Ilia Krasilshchik

 

Exile begins when the law is broken.

Don’t let them tell you your arrest

will be followed by a bail hearing.

There will only be bank accounts seized

and a shuffling between prisons,

There will only be a pen and paper,

sometimes held up to prison windows

by your attorneys, sometimes transmitted

through an outdated digital system.

Don’t let them tell you there will be

a trial, an impartial jury, an unbiased judge.

There will only be executioners slipping 

poison into your tea, shoving a knife

into vital organs as you walk the streets,

or releasing a little nerve gas in your cell.

Don’t let them tell you death will erase you,

every sacrifice in vain. Call out the lie.

 

Trina Gaynon's poems recently appeared in Poetry East, Tomahawk Creek Review, and Clepsydra. More can be found in The Power of the Feminine I, Volume 1,  Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, other anthologies, numerous journals, and a chapbook An Alphabet of Romance from Finishing Line. She received an MFA in Creative Writing at University of San Francisco. A past volunteer for literacy programs in local libraries and WriteGirl in Los Angeles, she currently leads a group of poetry readers at the Senior Studies Institute in Portland.

MR. MURDAUGH’S RECIPE: SIFT AND STIR SLOWLY

by Earl J Wilcox

Up close, Alex’s savoir faire

Kicks in—winsome smile, hair

To die for, smart sentence syntax, 

Precise mixture of faux nasal drip

And eye moisture to churn a jury,

Capture the AI red bulb of a robotic

Camera feed for TV’s ripe audience.

Two Kleenex tissues, Perry Mason

plot to sway one juror’s heart.

 

 

Earl Wilcox writes from South Carolina, where Mr. Murdaugh is on trial. The news from the low country is riveting.

GIULIANI WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA

by Jon Wesick

with apologies to Charlie Daniels

Jack Ohman: "A peach of a guy," The Sacramento Bee, August 18, 2022

Giuliani went down to Georgia, he was lookin’ for votes to steal

He was in a bind ‘cause Trump was way behind

And he was willin’ to make a deal

 

When he came across the DA writing subpoenas and slinging ‘em hot

And Giuliani pled attorney-client with Trump

And said, “girl, let me tell you what”

 

“I guess you didn’t know I’m a lawyer too

At least until I was disbarred

Now you got a pretty good grand jury, girl

But why you gotta’ make it so hard

Makin’ me travel to Atlanta

By bus, or train, or car?”

 

The DA said, “My name is Fani and I’m gonna’ win

And you can bet you’re gonna’ regret

‘Cause I’m the best there’s ever been”

 

Giuliani wiped off his hair dye and said, “I’ll start this grift”

And nothing else passed his lips except, “I take the fifth”

All the hacks at Fox News made an evil hiss

While Lindsey Graham filed appeals for judges to dismiss

 

Fani said, “You’re pretty slick, old son

But sit right there in the witness chair

And I’ll show you how it’s done”

 

Classified documents out in the sun

While Trump considers a twenty-four run

New York, Georgia, and Feds closing in

Holding our breath for justice to win

 

Giuliani hung his head ‘cause he knew he’d been beat

As he climbed down off the witness seat

And Fani cracked a smile

“Come on back to Georgia

I’ll see you at your trial”

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, The New Verse News, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. Jon is the author of the poetry collections Words of Power, Dances of Freedom and A Foreigner Wherever I Go as well as several novels and short story collections. His most recent novel is The Prague Deception.

JOHNNY DEPP WINS, AND I, LIKE SO MANY OTHERS, THINK OF THE MAN WHO ABUSED ME

by Emma Rhodes

I’m in a courtroom with him in my dreams.

Years live, tangible and growing inside of me.

Stench rotting from the inside out makes me gag, and

the judge thinks I drink and doesn’t believe a word I say.

 

As things rot, their appearance, smell, stories change. 

Leave something to fester long enough it becomes absence, 

memories warp but sickness remains. 

 

We beg you to believe our guts even when they stink.

 

There is a constant drip on the windshield of this car. The evidence is shown 

through the screen so it’s water-warped & memory-warped & 

dream-warped but he doesn’t deny a thing

 

The jury appreciates his honesty, his charm. 

 

Court takes a break. He says we need to play laser-tag—the judge said so. 

That can’t be true and yet suddenly I’m shot by light from all angles, 

put me under a spotlight and call me a liar.

 

The water continues to drip on the windshield.

 

They tell me I had the means to get out. Look at me now. Just drive away they say. Just drive away if it was so bad why didn’t you leave but facing the other wall is a boot on the wheel and I am stuck in his bed, his bathtub, pacing the one single hallway while he left in a car to see 

 

his parents (who are so proud of him, by the way. He was always a great boy.)

 

And Taylor Swift hasn’t said anything this time, none of the #MeToo baddies have spoken.

The water on the windshield breaks through and shatters. 

Glass shards in the courtroom. Everyone yells 

 

“violence!”

 

And I am left. Picking up one shard after another. He walks by, stomps on a shard so it crumbles into a million more (another inconsistency), says 

 

“thanks for keeping me around.”

 

I’ll stop writing about violence when I stop seeing it. 

I’ll stop writing about violence when the world stops trying to kill its women.  

Emma Rhodes is an emerging Queer writer currently living on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people. Her work has been published in places such as Prism International, Plenitude, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere.

FOR THE BOY ON TRIAL

by David Southward

From left, Judge Bruce Schroeder, Kyle Rittenhouse and defense attorney Mark Richards watch a video Nov. 12 during Rittenhouse’s homicide trial in Kenosha, Wis. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool/AP via The Washington Post)

I don’t wish death

or solitary confinement

or even the hell

of half a life wasted

behind bars. No:

I want him to be stricken

with disgust—at the blood

he’s spilled, at the horror

of his rash heroics. I want God

to part the clouds of his mind

and set afire

its nest of fear and folly.

I want the clearing smoke

to open his eyes

to true manhood: the facing down

of an enemy hiding

within—the answering

of a people’s need

for sobriety, not messiah.

I want him to rise

above the buzzfed grapevines,

the twitter of rumor

and rumble of propagandas

and remember history:

to become his republic’s

most disarming

spokesman. I want him

to march and preach

civility—to be Prince Hal

to a nation of Hotspurs,

to become (in the unpredictable

flowerings of time)

our next King

of change.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020). 

THEY CALLED HIM A "F-ING N—"

by Rémy Dambron

Ahmaud Arbery's aunt, Theawanza Brooks, says, "Nobody has the decision to make as far as being the judge, jury and executioner." Her nephew was shot and killed in 2020. The trial is set to begin Monday in Brunswick, Ga. —NPR, October 18, 2021. Photo: NICOLE BUCHANAN FOR NPR

Once again, it falls 

on Georgians to guide the way

to be our nation’s conscience,

filtering out the noise, the hyperbole,

the lies.

Once again, it falls

on Georgians to decipher the truth

to act not on our prejudices or partisanships, but on our collective

humanness.

Once again, it falls

on Georgians to rise,

to stand as one and affirm 

that this man was not a thief,

was not burglar, was not a prowler, was not a criminal, was not a threat,

just a jogger.

Once again, it falls 

on Georgians to convince the courts

not to fear him for his skin,

not to judge him for their rage,

but to picture them standing over his bloodied body, shotgun still smoking

with the gall to call him that horrible word.

Once again it falls,

on Georgians to uphold the law,

to make right the wrongs 

of centuries of recklessness,

of supremacy.

To make good on the little remaining scraps of a social contract we used to

cherish.

Once again it falls,

on Georgians and a jury of their peers 

to demand that justice be done 

but never done,

screaming one more time

into the void of voids

enough is enough.

Rémy is a teacher and Portland-based activist whose work focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social and environmental justice. With the help of his loving wife and chief editor, his poetry has appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Society of Classical Poets, and The New Verse News. 

THE CONDITIONAL CASE FOR CONVICTION

by Diana Cole

A patron of a laundromat near Cup Foods watching the Derek Chauvin trial on Monday. Credit: Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times, April 6, 2021

for George Floyd

 

 

Nothing can be true, so the dog barks all night

          missing the man who feeds him.

 

Into the fire go the stars. If the garbage is collected

          in the morning, the moon will go too.

 

Without evidence of insects, birds have nothing to eat.

          He’s talking so he’s fine.

 

Nothing but a man, a sizable guy who loves his Mama, 

          who lost his Mama.  

                                    

I kneel in case the sun will intervene in time.

          Inside the car, the back seat is a thick darkness. 

 

A black man could get lost if the air is handcuffed.

          Even if he pleads 20 times, he is under the influence,

 

under suspicion, under the knee, undertaken.

          All for 20 dollars, supposing that, even if, as long as… 

Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poems published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, the Tar River Review, the Cider Press Review, GBH Public Radio, Friends Journal, Verse Daily, and the Main Street Rag, and upcoming in Crab Creek Review. Her chapbook Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press. She is an editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal and a member of Ocean State Poets whose mission is to encourage the reading, writing and sharing of poetry. 

EXPOSED IN MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

by Sandra Sidman Larson

A fist sculpture is situated at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, also known as George Floyd Square, on March 25 in Minneapolis. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

As a spring storm begins to rumble outside, I wrap

my dog in his thunder shirt, yet I must remain calm

and unprotected from what bears down

on us, whether it is thunder, city coyotes howling,

the probable headlines of the Star Tribune—the paper flung

outside my door this morning, as every day, by a poor man,

his young children waiting in his idling car.

The fate of George Floyd’s murderer is soon to be

determined by twelve citizens in a courtroom barricaded

with barbed wire as have been the halls of Congress,

precautions against returning mobs, recently sicced

on the representatives of our frail democracy

by a crazed president who we supposedly ushered out

the door. But what to do about the cop who puts his knee

for nine minutes upon the neck of a Black man,

smothers him to death, stopping all our lives, turning us

to marching in the streets, while troublemakers—homegrown,

or blown into Minneapolis—set the city streets and stores afire,

inciting chaos among thousands of protesters, many of us

now realizing we need other gods or old gods to appear,

to stop us from killing each other, we who are filled with love,

hate, hope, and despair, stirred up by the fates—

so little to protect us?  All I can do is close the window

against the thunder, the smells of rain-damped debris;

note the snow almost gone from the ground, now newly bare.

Sandra Sidman Larson, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has three chapbooks to her credit: Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Over a Threshold of Roots (both Pudding House Press Publications), and Weekend Weather: Calendar Poems. Her chapbook Ode to Beautiful was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016 and her first full manuscript by Main Street Rag Publications in 2017. Her poetry has been published in many venues such as the Atlanta Review, Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters and on-line in The New Verse News and others. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies, one being what have you lost? edited by Naomi Shihab Nye.  (Who nominated her for one Pushcart Prize). With a Masters Degree in social work and community planning, Sandra’s primary career was in social service and social justice work. Her poetry career began at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. As a poet with grandchildren and great nieces and nephews she longs for a world where all children are cherished and cared for and justice reigns for all.

RELATIVE RIGHTS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Graphic by Brian Stauffer to accompany The Washington Post editorial “Mohammed bin Salman is guilty of murder. Biden should not give him a pass.”

Jamal Khashoggi has been killed

for a third time. The first killing

happened just before a bonesaw

shaved his bones in the Saudi

consulate in Istanbul after

he had been kicked, stabbed,

dismembered. The second killing

took place during the show trial

in a Saudi high court, which led

to three acquittals, three prison

terms, five men condemned

to death. Described as foot

soldiers in the murder, not

the masterminds who got off

free, the five were pardoned

later at the behest of Khashoggi's

children. Now, Khashoggi,

father, journalist, betrothed—

remember he visited

the consulate to sign papers

regarding his new love,

impending marriage--

is killed again, this time

by friendly fire. The US

government has decided

that the special relationship,

the oil, the wars in the region,

preclude any punishment

for the crime. The Crown

Prince who ordered

the killing of the scribe

will remain free to engage

the US and any other

government he wishes. Where

do the scales break down?

Why does Jamal Khashoggi's

memory get sawed again,

and how can we live with

our failure to condemn abuse

everywhere, every time?

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

SKUNK HOUR

by Martin H. Levinson

 

His lawyers inept,

meandering, defending

the indefensible dimly

and dully, doing everything

they can but talk about the

constitutional question of

whether an out of office

president can be tried for

inciting insurrection, as the

Senators sitting in judgment

suffer their ambling, rambling

arguments made in response

to the House Managers logical,

precedent-based contentions

that a carny US Chief-of-State

can be punished for stirring up

mob violence and an invasion

of the Capitol that a video

montage has detailed in all

its nauseating horror.

Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN America; the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics, and a contributing editor to The Satirist. He has published nine books and numerous articles and poems.

KINESIS

by Andrés Castro

For Julian Assange

Under a falling red sun, 

     in the stench of decomposing

leaves and muddy 

dark earth,

     He turns over a stone. See!

     Circling white centipede—

Dancing black spider—

     Tangle of worms

 scrambling.

 

Andrés Castro, a PEN member, is listed in the Directory of Poets and Writers. His work appears in the recently released anthology We are Antifa: Expressions Against Fascism, Racism and Police Violence in The United States and Beyond and he keeps a personal blog, The Practicing Poet: Dialogue to Creativity, Poetry, and Liberation. 

UNCLOGGING A DRAIN DURING THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL

by Charles Goodrich

Protesters hold signs near the Capitol during the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on Jan. 29, 2020. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP - Getty Images via NBC News, January 29, 2020

Toilet’s plugged
and the bathroom sink drain’s sluggish.
I was in the dumps already
over national politics.

Abuse of power.
Obstruction of justice.
I’m guessing the septic tank
is overdue for pumping. And meanwhile
we still haven’t seen his taxes.

But even glum and angry
I can still do some minor plumbing.
I run the drain-snake, work the plunger,
get the commode running.

Next, with an arm’s-length of wire,
a little hook bent into the end,
I fish a wet, gray gob of hair-gunk
from the sink’s P-trap
then pour baking soda,
salt, and vinegar down the drain
and wait for the chemical reaction to begin.

Even if the Senate trial
turns out to be a sham,
I love the sound when the blockage dissolves
and the sink drain hisses and foams.

Following a long career as a professional gardener and a decade working with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, Charles Goodrich now grows poems and composes fruits and vegetables from his Knot House abode near Corvallis. He’s the author of three books of poetry, A Scripture of Crows; Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden; and Insects of South Corvallis, and a collection of essays, The Practice of Home, and has co-edited two anthologies, Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. His poems and essays have appeared in Orion, High Country News, The Sun and many other journals and anthologies.

RESISTING

by Karen Greenbaum-Maya

Yahrzeit of Inauguration Day
we don’t have a year any more
maybe not even six months
winter in SoCal         they say
rained for 41 days and nights
but it’s dry as dry rot
dry as dry gel
dry as dry cleaning striped button-downs
they say         He forgot
I say    we’ve run out of doves

and olives

a political snow job
not as important as a blow job
they say they didn’t             but they did
they say we did                    but no way we did
impartial? like my brother
cutting the cake and choosing
I am too fair
you always complain
you never stop complaining
what’s wrong with you
let’s compromise, they say
meet over the cliff
we’ll freeze halfway down
or        I’ll fire the gun 
so the bullet stops 
when the smoke comes out
What’s the problem?           they say
I said, that’s what happened

Karen Greenbaum-Maya’s third and weirdest chapbook Kafka's Cat is available at Kattywompus Press.

JIVE TURKEY NUMERO UNO

by Scott C. Kaestner

Ukrainian truth squads unveil those are indeed the President’s testicles in Mitch McConnell’s mouth marbling his gobble talk as Jive Turkey Numero Uno in the US Senate.

A fair trial?

Since when does that have anything to with American justice?

“Gobble-gobble-gobble, squawk-squawk, gobble-gobble hoax!”

I’m hungry and like my turkey on rye, minus the President’s testicles.


Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and someone who seeks spiritual guidance from his dog. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

DARK WOOD

by Mark Williams

So there I am in the jury box. Voir dire,
the judge calls it, which means speak the truth,
as in don’t and you’re in big trouble. “Have you had
any past acquaintance with either the prosecutor,
the defense attorney, or the defendant?” His Honor asks me.
I no sooner say, “No,” than the prosecutor says,
“May I approach the bench, your Honor?”
and His Honor wiggles his finger as in yes, and make it snappy,
so the prosecutor stands and approaches His Honor.
With their eyes on me, they exchange a few words
before the prosecutor steps to the box and asks,
“Do you have a beagle named Keeper?” Since I do
have a beagle named Keeper, and I speak the truth,
I say, “Yes.” Then he says, “Do you remember
the time you were walking on the levee,
and Keeper and another beagle picked up a deer scent,
and you and the beagle’s owner spent three hours
searching the woods for your dogs?” And now I realize
the other beagle’s owner is asking me these questions,
and my chances of being squeezed from the box are high.
Sure enough, “You’re excused,” says His Honor.

But in the upcoming case of

                       The Truth
                              v.
       The President of the United States

the majority of Senatorial jurors have demonstrated
they are no more capable of speaking the truth
than Keeper is capable of ignoring a deer scent. Not only that,
the majority of jurors are acquainted with the defendant
in the sense that Barnacle Boy, The Dirty Bubble,
and Man Ray were acquainted with each other
as members of EVIL (Every Villain is Lemons)
in Season 3 of SpongeBob SquarePants.
But with no provisions in place
to squeeze our Lemons from the box,
it is we who are lost within a dark wood,
with no hope, until November,
to get out.

Mark Williams lives Evansville, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, and The American Journal of Poetry. His fiction has appeared in Drunk Monkeys and the anthologies American Fiction and The Boom Project. In response to the current administration, his poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Tuck Magazine, and Writers Resist.

MANHUNT

by George Held

A note with a caption "Have a nice day" left on an opening in a pipe by two inmates who escaped Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. (Source: New York Governor's Office)

Why do you always secretly root for the hunted?
Is it American love for the underdog,
your persecution complex, paranoia?

You feel sorry for the hunters, embedded
in uniforms and armed to the teeth
but terrified of ambush or sniper.

Why do you hope that the canniness
of the fox will outwit the nose of bloodhounds
and elude the mechanics and strategy          

of the men encased in uniforms
as they march strung out across a cornfield
in PA or file along a dry creek bed in CA?

You hear the experts on TV call the hunted
“psychopaths” and smugly speculate on whether
they’ll be brought to earth by the hunters

or by their twisted selves. It’s best if they
die in a televised shootout, to save the state
money for a trial and stem viewer sympathy.

And as the camera pans in on the front yard
you feel the sense of doom when the hunted
strolls through the gate in that picket fence

and lives are about to change forever …


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

AFTER THE VERDICT

by David Radavich

Howard University Medical Students (Image source: Carmar Descamento-Park)

There’s no end
to the battles.

My heart
can’t take
so much fighting,

yet it goes on
spinning
and spinning

like silk
of a forgotten
tapestry.

I am not alone.
You are not alone.

The ramparts
are worth climbing.

The ramparts
are life,

the moat death,
slow and inexorable.

We must
carry our swords

as if we
were masters,

cross the
infested waters,

call out
justice
to the wind,

sing our
blood home

in unison
climbing high

into
the fortress.


David Radavich’s recent collections include America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007), Canonicals: Love’s Hours (2009), and Middle-East Mezze (2011).  His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe.  His new collection, The Countries We Live In, will come out later this year.

STAND YOUR GROUND

by Emily Pittman Newberry

Cartoon by Mike Lukovich

There is a 9 mm gun
that cracked the door open
to no tomorrow.

There is a story
of two young men
with only one voice
left standing.

There is blood
on the ground
and tears flowing
from the heavens.

There is a state
that loses justice,
raises safety
on a pedestal
and gets death
in the mail.

There is a community
that puts its frustration
at past crimes
into the holster
of a man.

There is a teenager
eating skittles,
and the news says
too much sugar
can kill you.

There is a trial
and the rule of law rules
that 9 millimeters
of assumptions
and 300 years
of black history
are not admissible
as evidence.

There is a twitterverse
where dueling assumptions
give voice
to well intended fears
and the hopes
of competing histories
have no ending.



Emily Pittman Newberry is a performance poet and writer living in Portland Oregon.