NO, TWILIGHT AND THE LAW

by Carol Dorf

The House voted on Thursday to pass a GOP-led bill that would ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports at federally funded schools and educational institutions. The bill is not expected to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House has issued a veto threat. But the vote shows that Republicans are working to spotlight the issue – and it comes amid a GOP-led push in states across the country to pass similar bills restricting transgender athletes’ participation in sports. The final vote was 219-203 down strict party lines. —CNN, April 20, 2023. Photo: People attend a rally as part of a Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31 in Washington, DC. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

I tell my child
No, twilight is a given
I can’t slow the day’s passage to night
In the photo of the boardwalk through the swamp 
I support my child
as they lean back to look up at the trees
in a inversion of flight
For a while we called
it the Rumplestilskin phase
toddler jumping up and down in fury
Luckily the old oak floor held solid
There are so many things
about the world I would change for you if I could
though I wouldn’t do anything about the dogs
in costumes participating in the Pride Parade
And then—You travelled to the Pride Parade
wearing wings—with friends who also found
wings to celebrate and now you are all flown
All these laws that are disrupting
your flight path—Not in my backyard
but I’ll do my best

Carol Dorf is a Zoeglossia fellow, whose poetry has been published in three chapbooks. Her poetry has also appeared in previous issues of The New Verse News as well as in About Place, Cutthroat, Wordpeace, Unlikely Stories, Slipstream, The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, and Maintenant. She is founding poetry editor of Talking Writing.

FREEDOM ON FIRE

by Emily Jo Scalzo

Let the flag fly inverted on our 

so-called Independence Day,

a message from the newly chained:

we cannot abide these treasons—

rampart rockets set to kindle

a drought-wracked nation

aflame with hate and greed,

and all the rest no longer 

free to flee conflagration

in the twilight of justice. 

Emily Jo Scalzo holds an MFA in fiction from California State University-Fresno and is currently an assistant teaching professor teaching research and creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Their work has appeared in various magazines including Midwestern Gothic, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Blue Collar Review, The New Verse News. Their first chapbook The Politics of Division (2017) was awarded honorable mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards in 2018.

MOUNDS OF BOOKS OUTSIDE OF NASHVILLE

by Zebulon Huset

My freshmen students start Fahrenheit 451 next week—

today a Tennessee pastor lights back into the old chestnut

 

of Harry Potter infecting children with witchcraft or Twilight 

spreading the cheesy demons of vampiric thoughts. Roiling 

 

on the self-righteous fury of the Neo-Nazi echo chamber

that rebounds cacophonous  insecurities and fear like

 

the crystals that create a great fortress of solitude. Riled 

up by the downfall of monuments raised by Daughters

 

of the Confederacy, by schools teaching history

that covers even half of the truth about their great

 

grandparents, by the ricocheting of rage. Opposite

of a sensory deprivation tank that saps sounds

 

and light and leaves one with just the mortal drumbeat,

overwhelming sound of blood pulsing through ear-arteries.

 

The realization that self is both loud and fragile,

that our brittle hold on life can crumble at any moment

 

and it’s not witchcraft or the past that are frothing

at the doorway of extremism, but the hand grasping

 

the bulk-purchased bottle of lighter fluid, the voice

booming from their own mouths, the fire lapping

 

their stubby little fingertips.

 

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Rattle, Texas Review, North American Review, Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, and many others. He publishes the prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked.

WHY BLUE

by Catherine Gonick

“Animated Water” by Dragonlord-Daegen at DeviantArt

of all the light sent by the sun, blue scatters the most in all directions

to be seen by everyone 

 

it fills our sky and waters, most of our planet when seen from space,

yet in the rest of nature blue is rare,  

hard to find in minerals and plants, or food, except in blueberries 

and cheese, and difficult to make, ask any chemist

 

O blue of lapis lazuli, sleep and twilight, moon and Monday, ribbon

and blood, of medieval cathedral windows, glaciers, and forget-me-nots

 

O blue warm and cool, in hues of indigo, ultramarine and aquamarine,

turquoise and teal

 

blue that lowers our pulse rate, warns of poisons, protects against

the evil eye when used in pendants, painted on doors and houses

 

there is a blue of stability and distance, of peace and sadness, 

eyes of people who survived ice

 

a blue of harmony, seen in the flag of the United Nations,

a blue of storms, in uniforms for soldiers and police

 

but for the most part blue is everywhere we’re not—and invites

us to join it

 

of all the light that reaches Earth, blue is the sun’s favorite 

Catherine Gonick's poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Sukoon, and in anthologies including in plein air and Grabbed. She works in a company that mitigates the effects of climate change.