LETTER TO CRAZY HORSE

by Roxanne Doty

Left: A 1934 sketch of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) made by a Mormon missionary after interviewing Crazy Horse's sister, who claimed the depiction was accurate. —Wikipedia. Right: The Native American activist Leonard Peltier—convicted in 1975 for the killings of two FBI agents—was released from federal prison on Tuesday after Joe Biden commuted his sentence at the end of his presidency in January. In a statement, Peltier said that he was “finally free!” —The Guardian, February 18, 2025

Innocence is the weakest defense
Leonard Peltier says, it has a single voice,
can only deny, while Guilt has a thousand voices
all of them lies. They said
you were resisting imprisonment
when George Crook’s military guard killed
you with his bayonet. Some call this murder
but language and land prevail.
 
The old medicine man says,
You could make a lovely mountain
into a great paperweight.
Can you make the monument to you
in the Black Hills into a wild, natural mountain again?
 
Today, I see people still longing
for justice and facing defeat,
the lust for stolen lands
still raging, white settlers still rampant.
I hear the thousand voices of guilt.
 
We all need your spirit now, Crazy Horse,
you, the last great figure of resistance
who inflicted defeat on the powerful.
And we need the patience and wisdom
of Leonard Peltier, finally free.

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by William Stafford’s “Report to Crazy Horse.” Italicized quotations by Leonard Peltier are from Prison Writings, My Life is My Sun Dance.

Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel Out Stealing Water was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30. 2022. Her first poetry collection was published by Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024. She has published stories and poems in Third Wednesday, Amethyst Review, Cloudbank, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, Cagibi, Espacio Fronterizo, Ocotillo Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, The Blue Guitar, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, The New Verse News, International Times, Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion-The Dallas Review.

MEDUSA

by Akua Lezli Hope

AI-assisted images by the poet.

First lady Michelle Obama considered wearing her hair in braids while living in the White House. But then she thought of the American people. —The Washington Post, November 17, 2022

U.K. Tells Schools They Can’t Ban Afro Hairstyles. School rules about what styles are allowed that mostly affect Black and mixed-race children are likely to be illegal, a government rights commission said. —The New York Times, October 27, 2022

Almost half of Black and mixed-race women have experienced race-based hair discrimination at school, according to a new study. Of these, more than half (57 per cent) say they continue to deal with hair-related trauma today. —Independent (UK), October 7, 2022

Medusa was the serpent-goddess of the Libyan Amazons, representing "female wisdom". (Sanskrit medhas, Greek metis, Egyptian met or Maat ).  She was the Destroyer aspect of the Triple Goddess. Called Neith in Egypt, Ath-enna or Athene in North Africa.  Her inscription at Sais called her "mother of all the gods, whom she bore before childbirth existed." —Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

You think god cursed me, 
that this morphing nimbus petrifies beholders
when it is only your eyes seeing snakes 
and being struck by a beauty you cannot decipher 
 
These S&Z curved electric antennae 
are defense against the gray arts, 
channeling, channeling ancestral energies 
an armor of creation’s forcefield and being 
 
Remove your transgressive hands 
or feel the casual, stinging shrapnel
from misbelief shattering against truth

 
Author's Note: I ache for the children who have been abused for their hair styles. I had a corporate career and wore my hair in what is now called protective natural styles, along with my suit, pumps and—a tie from 1979, until I retired in the 21st century. Here it is another century and the same old stupidity.
 

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, & Best of the Net, Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations. 

LULLABY

by William Aarnes

“Lullaby,” lithograph by Henry Moore (1973) via Henry Moore Foundation collection.

for Hale 

 

Sleep, child; we hope       

you stay unharmed 

while you grow wise, 

while you grow wise.   

 

Your mother hopes 

you stay unharmed 

though forests burn    

and oceans rise.            

                                      

Your father hopes 

you stay unharmed 

though despots rule 

with goons and lies.    

 

Your parents hope 

you stay unharmed  

though wars drag on

with drone-filled skies 

 

Sleep, child; we hope 

we stay unharmed  

till you’ve grown wise, 

till you’ve grown wise. 

William Aarnes lives in New York.

THE QUEEN IS DEAD

by Debbie Peters

Destitute Dead Mother holding her sleeping Child in Winter, 1850 (Oil on Canvas), by Octave Tassaert

In a housecoat she slept

till breath came no more

        with no one beside her
        lest roaches and mice

her beauty obscured
by toilets she cleaned

        her wisdom unheard
        by those whom she served

my mother, your drudge—
Long live the Queen.

Debbie Peters lives in New York City and dedicates all her writing to her beloved Gerson Lesser. She encourages the world to open its eyes to the millions of queens who quietly die every day, everywhere.

IN MEMORY OF ALBERT WOODFOX

by Mary K O'Melveny

Albert Woodfox, who is thought to have been held in solitary confinement longer than any individual in US history, having survived 43 years in a 6ft x 9ft cell in one of America’s most brutal prisons, has died aged 75. Woodfox’s death was made public on [August 4]… Woodfox was a member of the so-called “Angola Three”—prisoners who were wrongfully convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller, in Louisiana state penitentiary. The prison was built on the site of a former slave plantation and was commonly known as Angola, after the country from which most of the plantation’s enslaved people had been transported. —The Guardian, August 4, 2022. Photo: Albert Woodfox after his release from prison in 2016. —Credit Brian Tarnowski, The New York Times, August 5, 2022

Some say we are alone throughout our life.

Others say loneliness is just a state of mind.

One’s search for inner peace is filled with strife

on our best days. Imagine doing it alone, confined

for forty-three years in a closet-sized prison cell

where one must confront inner demons, serious

fears, failures of will, spirit. He traveled through hell,

emerged home, freed by wisdom. Like Odysseus.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

THE OLDEST WILD BIRD, WISDOM

by Pepper Trail

An albatross named Wisdom, the world’s oldest banded bird, has returned to an annual breeding ground in the Pacific Ocean and laid an egg—at the age of at least 69. The Laysan albatross was first fitted with a leg band in 1956 by biologists studying the life cycle of the birds. It meant that she could be identified among the three million individuals that nest at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. —The Times (UK), December 5, 2020. Photo: Wisdom and her mate take turns for eight-hour shifts on the nest. Her return is considered a triumph for conservationists. Credit: WESSEX NEWS AGENCY

My father, gunner's mate, and your father, albatross

Somehow survived the Pacific War, and I imagine them

Inhabiting the same embattled sea, yours forever on the wing

Mine on endless watch, one day disbelieving the sight - 

No enemy, but that mythic bird, aloft

 

Postwar, your parents returned to bomb-cratered Midway

Where the stubble-headed sailors called them gooney birds

Where together they scratched a hollow between the runways

And from their ecstatic mating, their patient incubation

Hatched a chick, those sixty-nine years ago, you

 

Peacetime, safe again inside the continent, my father

Courted and married, and with his small bright bride

Produced me, firstborn, same year as you

My father's son, fated to be storm-tossed

Lover of birds, student of the albatross

 

As a youth, you were caught, handled, ringed

Given a number that began your history

Year by year, decade by decade, your life flew

Detached itself from the rest, soared above

Brought you to our notice, gave you a name

 

Wisdom, you have become a legend

But are not burdened, your endless voyaging

Simply your life, made up of days of wind

Content with the landscape of waves

Free upon your outstretched wings

 

Yet most years a moment comes that turns you back

Rearranging your feathers to seek the land

Where your mate waits, and the world waits

Today, with the news of your return, I bow my gray head

As you lift your wings and, once more, dance

 

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

ANYMORE

by Frederick Wilbur

We don’t tolerate ripples in window glass anymore,
the waving landscape smoothed out.
Switchbacks of moral choice are GPS’ed
as Robert Frost never conceived. Now we drive
for miles with turn signal blinking right,
then U-turn back to well-traveled interstates.

Scarecrows don’t hide in corn fields anymore,
each tassel-top chemicaled to a plastic crown—
nature is an industry, a corporation,
littered with hashtags, threat assessments,
sentimental cemeteries for passed pets.

Silence isn’t noticed much anymore,
too many ringtones, beeps, and bling,
seepage from ear buds, drones overhead—
distraction, distraction, distractions, distractions.

Wisdom isn’t countenanced anymore,
everything digitalized, Googled, auto-corrected, auto-filled.
Compassion is granted by proxy, by on-line donation.

No sincere grief anymore,
as opinions bully and greed and hate rule,
even Free Speech shows up with a gun.

But if we rant out of fear, we are not free anymore.


Frederick Wilbur has authored three books on architectural and decorative woodcarving, and a poetry collection, As Pus Floats the Splinter Out. His work has appeared in many print and on-line reviews including Shenandoah, Main Street Rag, Comstock Review, The Dalhousie Review, Rise Up Review, and Mojave River Review. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Award by Midwest Quarterly (2017). He is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine.

COSBY SHOW

by David Southward

Bill, they say your magic pill
would rob a woman of her will.
You always seemed so wise, so chill,
it’s hard to watch you go downhill.

No laugh track with its canned applause;
no time for a commercial pause;
the cameras fixed on you because
success like yours defies all laws.


David Southward teaches literature in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His poems have appeared in The Lyric, Verse-Virtual, Voices on the Wind, Unsplendid and Measure (forthcoming).

SOCRATES AND CASEY ANTHONY, A DIALOGUE

by Jan Keough

The poet's photoshopped image of Casey Anthony with Socrates and a young student in Raphael’s "School  of Athens".

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Florida sheriff's office that investigated the disappearance of Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter overlooked evidence that someone in their home did a Google search for "fool-proof" suffocation methods on the day the girl was last seen alive. . . . WKMG reports that sheriff's investigators pulled 17 vague entries only from the computer's Internet Explorer browser, not the Mozilla Firefox browser commonly used by Casey Anthony. --Huffington Post

The wily fox, as some called Socrates,
spoke with Casey Anthony the other day
at an unknown cellular location.

Casey, in hiding after the trial, and Socrates,
freed from bodily inconvenience after his trial,
converged to resolve a thorny dilemma.

“Which is best,” she texted, “to escape punishment and live to regret?
Or to face the punishing side-effects of actions
made from a selfish and immature attitude?”

Socrates, reclining on his metaphysical marble couch,
lifted the Droid close to his eyes.
Texting was not his favorite method of communication.

He preferred to gaze directly at those
who wished to be freed
from the burning disgrace of ignorance.

“Tell me,” he began,
“which Browser is best to use,
Internet Explorer or Firefox?”


Jan Keough lives in RI and the internet.  She is co-founder of The Origami Poems Project which aspires to free the poet by promoting micro-chapbooks of original poetry.