CANDLE GLOW IN UKRAINE AND HONG KONG

by C. J. Anderson-Wu

We read books by candlelight whenever
power is out after air raids

We hold candles in the prohibited vigil 

for those nameless students killed

more than three decades ago

 

In the underground shelter we take turns
to recite stories for one another

At the park we mourn anonymously

in order to protect one another

 

We are in a war for
our dignified identity

We are in a war against

the deprivation of memories 

 

By candlelight we relay ancestors' stories
in our language

By candlelight we pass on the history

the regime is forcibly erasing

 

We are in a war 
for hard-earned sovereignty 

We are in a war 

against thought control

 

After the air raid alarm we briefly go home
and our stories are to be continued

As police approach we disperse into the night

and our struggles drag on

 

Reading, mourning, hiding and remembering
with different forms of resistance
we are in a war

Author’s Notes: 
     The publishing industry in Ukraine experienced significant growth after the outbreak of the war, as reading became one of the few activities people could engage in during power outages caused by bombardments. Additionally, the invasion led the Ukrainian public to value their own culture, history, and language more deeply.
     On June 4th each year, people in Hong Kong used to hold a candle vigil at Victoria Park for those who died during the Tiananmen Square Crackdown in 1989. However, since the implementation of the National Security Law by China in 2020, any event commemorating the slaughter of June 4th has become illegal. Several pro-democracy activists who persisted in continuing the vigil have been arrested and imprisoned without due process of law. 


C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020). Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards including the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

COLORING

by Laura Lee Washburn

This drawing is part of an exhibition in Tucson, AZ of original watercolors and other artworks by kids whose families have fled to the U.S. seeking asylum. Casa Alitas operates a refugee shelter in a former Benedictine Monastery and offers art-making classes to traumatized kids released from detention.

“It’s not what you look at that matters,

  it’s what you see.”

—Henry David Thoreau

In the blue pool with jogging women
every morning this month I’ve seen
in distant tree yellow busted balloon.

I have ridden the packed dirt
on a brown three-speed bike
almost into long black snake.

I have been to the marsh
where green leaves reflect
from brown tannin waters.
I will go there again.

I have felt unease, eaten
too much sugar, sagged
at the loneliness of bad friendships.

I’ve helped light one hundred and forty candles
after dark, listened to testimony, heard
the names of six dead migrant children:

Darlyn, Jakelin, Felipe, Juanito, Wilmer, Carlos.
I’ve read the judicial arguments on soap
and sleep, toothpaste, blankets.

When the green leaves blow,
I watch through bamboo blinds,
live action but dim impressions of bright.

I have driven in blind white
sun on the turnpike’s upward curve
and made it south enough to see again.

I have driven twenty in storm
shocking white water rains
when the pea-sized summer hail
begins to tap.
I have not turned
around at the lake in the road.
 —I have judged and been judged—

Stupid people    this local woman
hosted a vigil because of “images” she saw.
How does she know [How does she know?]
the images are really detention centers?
    people who serve the DARK!
    scum invading      disease and violence
our president taking down the evil
Stop believing or search for the truth
everything is really a lie!

Laura Lee Washburn has taught how to tell creditable sources from biased sources, has never been held in a cell, and donates her time to a Southeast Kansas organization that helps women in poverty resolve crises.

CANDLELIGHT VIGIL

by Tricia Knoll

The call came out to come with candles.
To stand up. Be counted. A vigil, a word
I learned came from awoke, Latin.
Bring your candles. Hold your fingers
around the flame if the wind blows.
We cannot let hate extinguish us.
Calling us to this city corner at this
time for what happened in that city
some moments ago. What runs
through my head, but those white men
carried torches! Torches designed
to discourage bugs. Though my tears
threaten to douse my candle,
I will keep my light shining,
to call forth our angels of good will.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who saw her city and the nation in bereavement when men trying to stop racial bigotry on a train were killed and hurt. And now Charlotteville. 

SUFFERING CHRISTA

by Devon Balwit

The artist Edwina Sandys with her sculpture “Christa,” the centerpiece of an exhibition [at New York's Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine] of more than 50 contemporary works that interpret the symbolism associated with the image of Jesus. Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times, October 4, 2016

Nowadays, it’s easy to imagine a suffering Christa—
the mothers of Aleppo, limp children at the breast,
Black mothers in America bent over sons in the road,
the mothers called to school in the wake of a shooter.

Who feels the world’s nails more keenly than the mother,
flesh pierced by the suffering of those she formed and suckled,
side oozing, rib cage unable to rise as her children lose breath?

She hangs between stars and rubble, arms outspread.
Lift her your sponge of vinegar.  Sit vigil.
You do not need to believe, only bear witness.
Better yet, shield the tender bodies of her young.


Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, OR.  Her poems have found many homes, for which she is grateful.  She welcomes contact from her readers.

CROSSING THE DIVIDE

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trimmer

Video published Nov. 18, 2015: Mohamed Abdeslam, brother of suspected Paris attackers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam lit candles and placed them on the window sill of his home during a vigil in Molenbeek, Belgium on Thursday, in solidarity with the people of France.

In the snowy wallow beside the road,
the elk do not move. Twenty or more.
The blue light of morning makes them blue.

It would be easy to drive past them
without noticing. How much do I miss
as I move through the world?

On the news, they speak of a candlelight vigil
near Brussels. In my mind, I turn the steering
wheel and begin the drive east to join the crowd.

Never mind the oceans, the wilderness
that separates us. Never mind that we
have never met. I get my candle ready.

The car, however, knows the way to work.
It moves steadily toward the north
past meadows where I notice nothing.

In the oncoming lane, almost all the cars
have their lights on, though by now
it is bright enough to see without them.

We who travel mountain roads have learned
the value of shining whatever light we have
so as not to make more dead.

Oh this light. It’s never enough.
Still this invitation to shine it
as brightly, as often as we can.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poetry has appeared in O Magazine, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and on river rocks. She was recently appointed Poet Laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope used the position to launch “Heard of Poets,” an interactive poetry map of Western Colorado poets. She directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years and now co-directs the Talking Gourds Poetry Club. Since 2005, she’s written a poem a day. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

BITTER HARVEST

by Richard Schnap

I have seen
The candles of grief
Flickering in
The night

And I have heard
The mournful cries
Echoing in
The wind

And I have known
How it feels to learn
Life doesn’t come
For free

It carries a price
That the faceless one
Will someday collect
From you


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

TOWARDS FREEDOM

by Mervyn Taylor


In the cell where Mandela languished for years,
President Obama stands, tall enough to see
from the window the rocks of Robben Island
where the gulls slip and stumble, like the
former prisoner’s lawyers, when their cases
grew weak and fell apart. Alone, the American
leans, in chinos, his forehead against the bars,
his wife and kids allowing him a moment to reflect
upon his hero, whose fancy shirt is now covered
by the shadows of birds swooping low outside
his room, doctors in the hallway conferring.
The world awaits one leader’s passing, while
the other bends under the blades of the waiting
helicopter, unlike Madiba, whose wings will
have to lift, and carry him the rest of the way.


Mervyn Taylor is a Trinidad-born poet who divides his time between Brooklyn and his native island. He has taught at The New School and in the New York City public school system, and is the author of four books of poetry, namely, An Island of His Own (1992) , The Goat (1999), Gone Away (2006), and No Back Door (2010). He can be heard on an audio collection, Road Clear, accompanied by bassist David Williams.



Source: BestMSWPrograms.com