LINES WRITTEN IN A SUBWAY CAR

by W. Luther Jett

“Pity” (1795) by William Blake - Tate Britain, Public Domain

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air.
- Macbeth (1.7.21–23)

To the world:

If you can watch this
and have nothing to say
at least have pity.

If you can watch this 
and have no pity,
or have pity for one
and not for the other—

It is you I must pity.

And if you will not watch—
for you I have nothing,
nothing to say.

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of five poetry chapbooks: Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father  (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018), Everyone Disappears (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Little Wars (Kelsay Books, 2021), and Watchman, What of the Night? (CW Books, 2022). A full-length collection Flying to America is scheduled for release in the spring of 2024, from Broadstone Press. 

THRENODY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Detail of the Cover of I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Taibbi.

In America now
We can watch real murders
On TV
Then wait for officials to decide
Whether officers
Were justified
In killing the black man
As he lay handcuffed and helpless
Face down on the pavement.
In America now
We can listen to news reports
About whether there might be evidence
That the unarmed black jogger
Behaved in a way
That was threatening in some fashion
To the heavily armed
Father and son
Who jumped out of their pickup truck
And gunned him down.

In America now
We can watch videos
In which white people call the cops
On black children mowing lawns
In the wrong neighborhoods,
On black professionals
Who “seem suspicious”
Entering the lobbies
Of the condominiums where they live,
On black walkers who remind them
To leash their dogs.

In COVID America now
Black people are dying of the virus
At three times the rate
Of whites,
Black people are incarcerated
At six times the rate of whites
Black people are unemployed
At twice the rate of whites.

“I can’t breathe!” cried Eric Garner
For four hundred years.
“I can’t breathe!” cried George Floyd
For four hundred years.
“I can’t breathe!” cry black children
From broken and polluted neighborhoods,
From decaying and crumbling schools.
“I can’t breathe!” cry black parents
From hospital emergency rooms
Holding sons and daughters
In their laps
Who are dangerously ill
Because mom and dad could not afford
Early and dequate health care.
“I can’t breathe!” cry young black couples
Unable to rent or buy homes
And begin family life
In neighborhoods
Where the unspoken understanding
Is “whites only.”

“I can’t breathe!”

“I can’t breathe!”

“I can’t breathe . . .”

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California. He podcasts at: thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

HARDWARE

by Gil Hoy

I’ve no use for
a stainless steel
lightweight

Corrosive resistant
contraption

That encumbers
my wrist
and can’t

Tell me anything
useful anyway.

“There will be time,
there will be time

To prepare a face
to meet the faces
that you meet.”

No, this soul
has no time

For a chronometer

With a full
date display,

Blue dial, rhodium-
plated hands,

And an alligator
strap—

I already know
too much about

Coffee spoons
and sugar spoons

Bus stops,
Trolley stops

Business meetings
and phone calls.

Preparing
for that
special show

A meeting
with the CEO.

And I don’t
want one
in my pocket
either,

Like a mouse.

Tick tock
Tick tock

I grow old
I grow old

My pants
grow mold.

Tell me
something
good–

Surprise me,
It’s my Birthday.

What I really
want to know is:

When will
my kids
grow up;

When will
my heart
stop beating;

And when will
the last
polar bear

step off
the last piece

of melting
Arctic sea ice

and silently
disappear.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, The Potomac, The Penmen Review and elsewhere.

HELLO KITTY

by Rick Gray

Hello Kitty, he said again
emptying another mini bottle of vodka

into a brittle plastic cup of Red Bull.
Want one, sir? he asked. It gives you wings.

Hello Kitty, he went on,
Dubai getting closer, I don't know why

it was always Hello Kitty.
I don't know what you mean, I finally said.

He turned to me, his nose veined red
Flying home to Montana with toys

for all the kids on Christmas.
Those watches, his words began to slur,

the ones they set as timers
to detonate what killed my friends

they were always Hello Kitty,
sir.


Rick Gray teaches in Kabul. He has work forthcoming in Salamander and the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock.