FRIDA KAHLO AS A KEYCHAIN

by Terri Kirby Erickson

My Frida Kahlo keychain, a gift from a longtime
friend in Lubbock, is made of felt, hand-embroidered 
with the brightest threads. Her pink floral headdress 
 
is rainbow-shaped, her eyebrows like a minimalist 
painting of a bird in flight—one solid line, double-
arched, meeting in the center of her forehead. With
 
eyes forever closed, this keychain Frida is always 
smiling. She never had polio or walked with a limp. 
Her spine and pelvis were never broken, her uterus 
 
never pierced by an iron bar. In fact, she has no body, 
only a lime-green tassel where her neck should be. 
To her, Diego is just a name, not a faithless husband, 
 
no one to whom her tortured letters were addressed. 
Hanging from a set of keys, she cannot know the fate 
of brown-skinned immigrants gathered like herds 
 
of cattle, handcuffed and transported, the families who 
may not find each other again, the crying babies, their 
stolen mothers. Keychain Frida has no arms to paint 
 
their pain in vibrant colors—a small portrait of herself 
in the corner of the canvas, boldly staring, her blood-
red heart dangling between her breasts like a pendant.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of award-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Latin American Literary Review, ONE ART, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Rattle, The SUN, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many other literary journals, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

THE SUPREME COURT COURTS ITS OWN SUPREMACY

A Modern Petrarchan Sonnet 

by Kimberly Russo

The Supreme Court on Friday reduced the authority of executive agencies, sweeping aside a longstanding legal precedent that required courts to defer to the expertise of federal administrators in carrying out laws passed by Congress. —The New York Times, June 28, 2024. Above is an excerpt from Justice Kagan’s dissent.

History names you as “Final Arbiter,”
To eagle-eye each branch, limit its power
and strike down laws in violation of our
country’s pact. You are humanity’s harbinger.
“EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW” leans starboard
erasing civil rights from their ivory tower
with six of nine lying disavowers
dumb to the public’s dreams dearly harbored.

All women, surrender your uterus,
lovers and race and Affirmative Action
flee in disgrace and die in the closet.
What ill minds embrace rulings ludicrous?
Judges, pious in self-satisfaction
perished in politics’ pockets, I posit.

Kimberly Russo is an English teacher in Aurora, Colorado where she resides with her husband, Tony.  She is the mother of four children, Nicholas (Stephanie,) Audrey, Grace, and Maritza, and grandmother to Doc Wilder and Willa Cassidy. Kimberly spends her free time gardening & bird-watching. Much of her writing is dedicated to marriage/family, social issues, including the perpetuating inequality among genders/races, and the stigma associated with mental illness. Her poetry has appeared in River Poets Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, PDXX Collective, Sixfold (Summer 2016,) Sixfold (Summer 2018,) Sixfold (Winter 2022,) Cricket Media: Spider Magazine, ACM, Another Chicago Magazine, and Backwards Trajectory.

SHEEP-KILLING DOG

by Michelle DeRose

Texas AG Ken Paxton steps in to make a woman’s life hell. Photo credit: DonkeyHotey / WhoWhatWhy (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Big hats welcome but not a Texas uterus
they won’t probe, tell you how
you can wear it in public,
a watched portal to the baby chute
they need it to be. I guess
to make future bullseyes? Because
there’s also not a barrel
they will look down, keep out
of campuses. In Texas
all depends on the tunnel. 
Barrels determine themselves but canals
are hyper-policed. At the end of every story
is a woman bleeding, empty, and an Attorney
General smug and whole as he always was.

Michelle DeRose hopes she can retire from teaching at the college level before she must relive a school shooting, and she is grateful she doesn't live in Texas. She teaches creative writing and African American, Irish, and world literature at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

THE BOARD SPEAKS TO AN ASSEMBLY OF FIFTH-GRADE GIRLS

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

Sunday school at a Baptist church in Kentucky, 1946 

The Board has determined that fifth grade,
which may be too late for some, is the most
optimal time to inform girls that post-birth
females are not fully autonomous human 
beings. No adverse circumstances or plans
or dreams or medical emergencies trump 
your legal and moral responsibility to give 
birth should any male, whether by force or 
consent, plant his seed in the fertile ground 
of a uterus that becomes, immediately upon
conception, the sole property of The State. 
The Board, comprised of five men and two 
wholly compliant women, strives to remain 
sympathetic to how hard it must be for you 
to accept this news, having been so revered 
before birth and deceived into believing you 
have the same rights and post-delivery value 
as boys and men. Let us assure you today, 
that you do not. Indeed, should you become 
pregnant and experience a life-threatening 
situation, the continuation of a fetal heart-
beat is all that matters. Furthermore, there 
are many government agencies dedicated to 
ensuring that, under penalty of death or life 
in prison for all involved, no pregnancy is
unlawfully terminated. No questions? Then 
you are, as will often be the case, dismissed.

 
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of an International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA,Poet’s Market, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Third Wednesday, and many more. Other awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. 

KANSAS

by Donna Katzin

In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise

we see it coming—a blood-red wave  

that threatens to drown us

and our rights.

 

As pundits puzzle

and suited strategists opine,            

we step out from porches, campuses, back alleys,

leave our coat hangers in our closets,

 

rags and basins in our kitchens,

knock on doors of neighbors

who have yet to come out

of the house.                 

 

A horse parade prances by

with signs, “vote neigh,”

posters of a uterus

in a cowboy hat.

 

Texts like urgent birds,

words whispered, then spoken,

fly by in flocks unfettered

as our voices and our votes.

 

Our minds, our bodies                                                  

are our own—

will not be captured

any more than the wind.       

  

 

Author’s Note: On August 2, Kansas women and their supporters mobilized voters across the state to beat back a proposed amendment that would have allowed the state legislators to restrict or ban the abortion rights affirmed in the state’s constitution.  With an historic primary turn-out of half the state’s registered voters, the 59 to 41 percent victory at the polls built on decades of activism to protect women’s right to make their own decisions about their own bodies and health.  In the process, it set an important precedent for the nation following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Donna Katzin is the former and founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

PRAYING FOR YOU, GOV

by Darrell Petska

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said Sunday that he will call a special session of his state's legislature to pass a total ban on abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this term. "Nebraska is a pro-life state. I believe life begins at conception, and those are babies too," Ricketts told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" when asked if he thought the state should require a young girl who was raped to carry the pregnancy to term. —CNN, May 15, 2022

Of course rape is evil,

but evil left to proliferate in a woman

tends to strike again and again in all its

suffocating helplessness, trauma, chronic

anxiety and nightmarish violation,

with all its attendant heartache.

Political one-upmanship and pietisms

that insist on allowing rape's evil to live on

by citing "directives" of god or bandying

emotionally fraught trigger words—

manipulating evil to sell one's agenda—

are beneath a purported man of god

and the yea-saying cadres of men sharing

narrow perceptions of a woman's uterus,

including its role in shaping cognitive

and emotional well-being and the drive

for self-determination—the latter a right

not reserved for men alone.

The shelf-life of your brand of religiosity

is short. We who espouse a more merciful,

compassionate religion pray that your efforts

to be both judge and executioner will fall

to the light, lest "Nebraska Nice" succumbs

to the politics clouding your heart and soul.

Darrell Petska lives and writes in Wisconsin, but part of his heart remains in his birth state of Nebraska.

GHOULS

by Lynn White

Is it ghoulish

to think

that life 

is more

than a small collection of cells

in a uterus.

Is it ghoulish

to think

that 

the life of the mother

and the spillage

of her blood

count for less

than the small collection of cells

in her uterus

that are unable to bleed.

Is it ghoulish

to think

that infant life

needs love

as it grows

and support networks

and things that cost

society

dear

through life

if it does not supply them.

Is it ghoulish 

to ask

how 

the highest court

in the land

was taken over

by ghouls.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

WHOSE STORY? WHOSE CHOICE?

by Laurie Rosen

Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz/AMS via The Washington Post.

I am 35, 

I am 19, 

I am 12. 

Put a bounty on my head,

on my confidants and advisers

my doctor, too. 

Sue the office administrators,

the taxi driver that brought me.

Come for me with handcuffs.

Restrain my arms behind my back,

haul me off to jail.

Lock me up behind bars, 

Throw away the key.

Call me a murderer, baby killer. 

Selfish, hateful. 

I plead guilty. I don’t deny it. 

But, look me in the eyes 

and tell me I am not speaking 

your story or your lover’s,

your sister’s, your best friend’s,

maybe even your daughter’s. 

I am 35, mark my body   state controlled,  

I am 19, proclaim my uterus   conscripted,

I am 12, classify my heartbeat   irrelevant.

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poems have appeared in Sisyphus, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Oddball Magazine, Soul-Lit, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. 

RESERVE

by William Aarnes

Image source: UniteWomen.org

She lies on their bed,
still dressed.  She tells him.

that in this country,
if—a big if—

the penis and clitoris
are private parts,

 the uterus is not.
“My womb,” she explains,

patting her abdomen,
“is public domain,

one of millions of reserves
set aside to attest

to some people’s belief
that any fetus

has more sanctity
than any mother.”

She rubs her brow.
“Gives me a headache.”


William Aarnes lives and writes in South Carolina.