DEPARTMENT OF OFFENSE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the U.S. Navy was renaming the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment ship that had been named for a Navy veteran who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials. —The New York Times, June 27, 2025

Whitewash the walls of history,
erase names preserved by heart in print.
Cleanse the bows of ships 
so they sail free of reminders
or memorial suggestion.
Forget you heard it here, where someone 
stood for the voiceless inheritors,
crossed lines for the dispossessed,
or raised flags in mutinous colors of freedom.
Toss stories into fire pits, ashes to ashes, 
amnesia thick. Footprints embedded in truth
brushed aside like counterfeit ledgers going nowhere. 
 
Even with evidence destroyed or misidentified, 
these burials are not complete. Beneath layers of deception,
lies ferment in Earth’s volcanic depths, lives remembered 
for their audacious bravery walk from graves 
that were never deep enough to hold them down.

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing and the importance of shared stories.

MY OPEN LETTER TO ALL CHRISTIAN CLERGY FOR LENT

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS

                           for jill, preacher

the season of purple has returned

and you will preach

either giving up or taking on

and for forty days most who listen   will

but what will you say to those

whose lent has been years of forty days

who  so tired

have become shadows

yet those shadows are the ashes

crossed on ash wednesday foreheads . . .

instead of the proclamation

of giving up or taking on

perhaps you could speak for them—

the voiceless

those who have already taken on

perhaps you could speak up

for all the invisible

who must bear alone

their long and savage lent

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writing appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first published book of poetry is entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53, 2015) and her second, Writing the Stars (Press 53, 2024.) She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020.  Using five poems from her first book, James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” first performed at 92Y in New York City.

HALO

by Linnet Phoenix

for Romain Grosjean

I know the angels of November.

Those that hover as low cloud

over the undulating motorways

on pre-darkened autumnal evenings.

 

I have felt their wings catch me

as my car was clipped left rear

by an undertaking Ford Scorpio.

 

A terrifying loss of control

as my steering wheel grew teeth

snapped at my wrists,

spun hard and fast

lock-end left to lock-end right.

 

Time itself moved to slow motion

as the seconds screamed with me.

At 90 miles per hour

the car should have flipped and rolled,

a steel gymnast on a tarmac mat.

 

Yet we commandeered three lanes

bucked and shied like a bronco

released fresh out the crush.

 

After eight wild swings

I came to rest in hard shoulder,

the line of headlights waited

an audience stood well back.

 

My fingers were melded on

a becalmed steering wheel.

It happened twenty years ago.

 

Today, watching Bahrain footage

I saw his car flung in the barrier,

torn in half, engulfed in a fireball.

 

The red flags of safely raised

as he walked out the flames

with only burns to his hands.

 

A titanium halo hailed his saviour.

I wondered if they stole his voice

for just an hour, as they did mine.

Linnet Phoenix is a poet who currently resides in North Somerset, England. She has been writing poetry for years. Her work has previously been published in ImpSpired Magazine, Heroin Love Songs, Punk Noir Magazine, Open Skies Quarterly, and others. She has poems upcoming in Poetica Review, Dreamscape (Open Skies), and ImpSpired. She also enjoys horse-riding in rainstorms.