WOKE

by Bradley McIlwain

Burial of the dead after the massacre of Wounded Knee. U.S. soldiers putting Indians in common grave; some corpses are frozen in different positions. (Wikipedia)

Native American communities that had long wanted the removal of military honors for the soldiers involved in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre had their hopes dashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his effort to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces. “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, ‘don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings’ leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said Tuesday to hundreds of military officials at a ceremony. The defense secretary announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness and painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies. Hegseth had announced last week in a video on social media that Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor, part of a wider Trump administration move that Indigenous leaders and historians on Tuesday called part of a culture war against racial and ethnic minorities and women’s rights. —AP, October 1, 2025

Warriors whisper in the willows

Odyssey of blood and ochre 

Unheard under cannon fire:

No surrender—

Dancing ghosts raid the dawn;

Eagles still soar at Pine Ridge

Drums of the ancestors

Keep the fires of knowledge

No medals, no song, no glory;

Evergreens slope to the South—

Elders rise in the heart of the sun.

Bradley McIlwain works as a Teacher-Librarian, where he strives to provide meaningful and inclusive spaces for knowledge exchange and advocacy. He believes that poems and poets can be agents for social change. Bradley’s latest book Dear Emily was published by Roasted Poet Press last year.

SPRING (IS THE SEASON)

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

A row of flowers with tags of the victims’ names are tied to a fence at the site of a shooting at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo., on March 24. (Alyson McClaran/Reuters via The Washington Post) "Over the past three weeks, 22 people have died in three major mass shootings in the United States, according to a Washington Post database that tracks those events." —The Washington Post, April 4, 2021

Again, 

spring comes around 

and people talk of hope 

The coming of columbines 

daffodils and hyacinths

the way the greening willows

weep 

 

Squirrels, 

working in the dark

moved many bulbs 

so no one knows where 

they will sprout this year

But who is speaking 

about spring as the season 

of mass shootings 

The ammo crop that is ever ripe  

When young men emerge 

from the long, dim winter 

and find themselves 

deathly pale 

in the too brilliant sun

Who is watching out for them?

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears in Dissident Voice, Jewish Literary Journal, Bewildering Stories, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Chiron Review.