A PLAN FOR ROSH HASHANAH

by Anita Pulier

New Year’s greetings

line up in my in-box

alongside desperate pleas.

I skip past

Unicef

NOW

Planned Parenthood

J Street

The ACLU

The DNC

Bernie and Elizabeth

Earthquake and hurricane relief

and Gaza, and Gaza.

open only

holiday greetings,

an invitation to cast off sin

at the beach with kith and kin.

Yet the weeping world is insistent,

oozes through cyberspace and

drowns out the trumpeting shofar.

There I am, stranded, sandwiched

between the seasonal rituals of an ancient

holiday and others’ jarring pain.

I nod to the god

I do not believe in,

propose a deal:

keep everyone I love safe and

I will grapple with despair and failure tomorrow.

Today I will nurture joy and unfounded optimism,

eat apples and honey,

celebrate the tribe.

Anita Pulier's latest book is Leaving Brooklyn. (Kelsay Books) Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily. 

BONE LIGHT

by Alejandro Escudé

What else could you collect with a sphere

Surrounding a star? In the era of artificiality

And commerce, would it be evidence

Of love? Would it leave a heat signature?

I picture an alien sphere—not metallic

As supposed, but translucent, amorphous,

Twinkling an arthritic light, a series of low-

Frequency whistles. Are there ripe stars

Where you are? Rhyming citadels, chariots

Like half-eaten strawberries? Scientists

Take the pulse of time, they inherit questions

And the questions give birth to universes.

But I wonder about such a powerful warmth

And the results of the search. Is energy

Stored in our marrow? The man himself

Said it would be more a collection of objects.

Like a home? Like most journeys, it might

Prove false evidence of wonder. A god

Unwanted. Light reflected off the bus stop

Bench of a galaxy. As of late, life’s become

A chain of human wrist bones, so we must

Look up and dream of a star-engine that’ll

Reveal the fluttering eyelids of another tribe

Mining the fumes of a celestial volcano.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE MAN OF THE HOLE

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds

The Man of the Hole was the last of an indigenous group living in the Tanaru indigenous area in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, which borders Bolivia. The majority of his tribe are believed to have been killed as early as the 1970s by ranchers wanting to expand their land. In 1995, six of the remaining members of his tribe were killed in an attack by illegal miners, making him the sole survivor. Brazil's Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai) only became aware of his survival in 1996, and had been monitoring the area ever since for his own safety. It was during a routine patrol that Funai agent Altair José Algayer found the man's body covered in macaw feathers in a hammock outside one of his straw huts. Indigenous expert Marcelo dos Santos told local media that he thought the man had placed the feathers on himself, knowing that he was about to die. —BBC News, August 30, 2022

O! Sole man –

60ish   50ish

Thatched huts

Holed – 3ish by

10ish foot deep –

4 (or 2?) footed traps

Spiked   Did you

Hide?   Hold up?

Did you know?   O!

Macawed Carnival

Romancer –  

Web-womber –

Eons lost   You –

One with the Whole

Joanne DeSimone Reynolds has published poems in The New Verse News, Salamander, The Ekphrastic Review, Sanctuary Magazine, Ibbetson Street, Wilderness House Literary Review, Lyrical Somerville, and other journals. She has also written reviews for Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. During the first spring of the pandemic she wrote a collection of ekphrastic poems for 2020 Art Ramble in Concord, Massachusetts.

NAKED WOMAN CONFRONTS FEDERAL TROOPS

by Richard Garcia 

 I have been granted immunity from my dreams. Just let them try and testify against me. See how far they get on their own. My wife's tribe has begun their journey toward the promised trailer camp. Surely they shall be received and granted a plot of eminence. My wife has been sentenced to remain behind. We shall be protected by Sheela na gig, the naked goddess of history. Surely her maw of origin and its gnashing teeth will frighten away the storm troopers. Just a young woman really, sitting on the macadam with her arms and legs spread open in welcome, a garter snake wrapped around each wrist. But how the soldiers and their attached mob drop their banners in the clouds of teargas and run—they, who had cried out loud in the plaza, Long live death, Long live death! For creatures not accustomed to paradox, this was quite an achievement. Or would have been, if they knew what they were saying. No one knows who distributed the signs and banners. It was long ago. When these people could speak. When they could read, and listen and learn. When I began this testament I still thought it was tomorrow. But I know better now.

Richard Garcia's poetry books include The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.

PASSOVER IN PLAGUE-TIME

by Betsy Mars

after Saeed Jones’s “Boy in a Whalebone Corset”  in  Prelude to Bruise

“The acre of grass is a sleeping swarm of locusts,
and in the house beside it,
tears too are mistaken” for a dark sea,
into which we dip our egg
hoping it will ignite in fertility,
that it will part, a million times—
or whatever is needed—

dividing into heart, lung, legs,
the brain and whatever refrain
we choose to utter
on this, one of the holy days,
to mark our division, and our coming together
a tribe in the end, passed over,
we find our bitter herbs
our unleavened bread

our toilet paper and paper towels shared:
the treasures of this day,
when we marked our doors,
hid inside and hoped to God
he’d pass us by.

Betsy Mars is a poet, educator, photographer, and occasional publisher. Her Kingly Street Press published its first anthology, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife, in October 2019. Her work has recently appeared in Verse-Virtual, The Blue Nib, The Ekphrastic Review, and Silver Birch Press. The daughter of a professor and a social worker, she has had a lifelong interest in issues pertaining to social justice.

GAY PRIDE

by Scott Wiggerman

Images source: Cycle for the Cause

May we bike a wide expanse of untidy sands,
of outliers and isles of desert brush.

May we ride and ride, our eyes primed
to an iota of wild, a mite of wine

among the tumbleweeds and idle browns:
a bind of thriving cacti. Divine!

May we smile and find a vital prize,
a sign in the uncivilized silence,

a blooming lighthouse, a riot of pink fire,
our desired life, our private tribe.

May we ride inspired while our kind expires.
May we rise above the spineless of these times.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, and Bearing the Mask.  Recent poems have appeared in A Quiet Courage, Calamus Journal, Red Earth Review, Rat’s Ass Review, shuf, and Chelsea Station. He is an editor for Dos Gatos Press of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

POWWOW

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

My tribe is my life
Personal identity comfortable cozy belonging
Recognition feeling desired wanted needed
Praying respect to magical totems

Born into clan without reservation
Uncivilized savage beast trapped within
Daily battle fighting nasty demons
Peacepipe powwow serene quiet calm

Primitive tribalism addictive conformist cult
Clan network security blanket family
Whatever you call it everybody
Needs one quest for belonging

Medieval Dark Ages unholy crusades
Inquisition wars of conquest extermination
Violent wild passionate rage misplaced
Unencumbered by compassion empathy pity

Clockwork universe surviving by ticks
Secondhand surpassing minute bonfire countdown
Timelessness experienced in counterclockwise regression
Digital era speeding fast-forward pulse

Second nature spirituality beyond cowardly
Massacres raping murders looting barbarism
Slaughter justified in name of
One hypocritical faith or another

Tribal mission recruiting chosen chief
Mesmerixed followers manipulated by cooperation
Not competition rusty sketleton key
Unlocking identity battle owning yourself


No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1