I DO BLAME YOU

by David Radavich

 You brought us the gift

 of potential death.

 

 Not wearing a mask,

 not distancing,

 

 not deigning

 to get a vaccine.

 

 And now the whole

 family is sick—

 generations—

 

 and the threat

 has taken up residence

 in our very house.

 

 Thank you 

 for reminding us

 

 the end is not far off—

 maybe soon—

 

 disease is

 a form of politics,

 

 and we are all one

 in our shared suffering.

 

 If we didn’t believe

 in community, we do now.

 

 Let us hope healing 

 comes fast and the goat

 scapes into the woods.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His forthcoming book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

BARE FLOOR, WITH COAT HANGER

by Francesco Levato

Author’s Note: This piece dealing with Texas Senate Bill 8 is from a series I’m working on titled SCARLET, a digital visual/poetic meditation on the fractured state of psyche induced by extended social isolation under COVID-19 lockdown. The digital/visual poems are created through erasure of Jack London’s post-apocalyptic novel The Scarlet Plague collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life to reflect the state of a pandemic self in forced confinement.

Francesco Levato is a poet, a literary translator, and a new media artist. Recent books include Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; Elegy for Dead Languages; War Rug; Creaturing (as translator); and the chapbooks A Continuum of Force and jettison/collapse. He has collaborated and performed with various composers, including Philip Glass, and his cinépoetry has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a PhD in English Studies, and is currently an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos.

RELATING TO HEARTBEAT

an erasure of Texas Senate Bill 8: relating to abortion, including abortions after detection of an unborn child's heartbeat; authorizing a private civil right of action

by Rebekah Wolman

An empty room used to perform procedures at Whole Woman’s Health of Austin on Sept. 1, 2021, the day anti-abortion Senate Bill 8, the so-called Heartbeat Bill, became law.  Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune.

                                    private

life

            means

                                       activity

 

                        the human female reproductive

condition

                 is carrying

 

choice about

                                    surviving

            consistent with

                        a manner that is   

                                                at least as

private

                        as

                                    an action

            or mistake

                                                or

reliance on consent

                        not construed

    as

            rape, sexual assault, incest, or any other act

                                   

                                    against

women

            women

                                    the rights of

women

            a woman

                                    that woman

 

                                                a woman

 

the potential danger to

            the possibility of risk

                                                to the

 

child without regard to

                       

                        the                    child

 

is not

 

            known

 

whether

                                    or

 

Rebekah Wolman is a retired educator living in San Francisco and rededicating her life to poetry.

JELLO JUSTICES

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

keep silent at night, and greet the day with judicial voice,

to make bounty hunters rejoice,

to welcome them to set new laws

that follow judicial and personal flaws

thinking they can sell it

if they can gel it

but we are women voters, not quivering or breaking

not wavering or shaking because

vigilante justice will not stand, 

you can't invade our bodies like a foreign land

we don't buy your brand.

 

Lucille Gang Shulklapper lives in Florida where she writes poetry and fiction.

COMPOS[T]ING MYSELF

by Barbara Simmons 

Washington state became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction in May 2019; Colorado followed suit in May 2021; and Oregon became the third state to sanction human composting in June 2021. —Treehugger, August 24, 2021. "The powerful [California] Senate Appropriations Committee has held a bill that would legalize the composting of human remains. The bill, AB 501, was authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, and had sailed through the Assembly with a unanimous vote.... Garcia said in a statement. 'This is another sad reminder that we must legalize a more environmentally friendly option like Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) as soon as possible. AB 501 will provide an additional option for California residents that is more environmentally-friendly and gives them another choice for burial.'” —Sacramernto Bee, August 30, 2021. Photo from Recompose, "a public benefit corporation powered by people who believe in changing the current death care paradigm."

I remember times when soil smelled rich,

a kind of coffee bean rich, a kind

of patchouli rich, a rich that flared my nostrils 

scenting the air with inhale more. 

The time we worked our garden soil 

composting it, the elements of peat and perlite

caking fingernails, our prepping

beds for rows and rows of plants

yearning for elements beyond clay. We dreamt

of growing foxglove, ferns and fuchsias,

entwining them with flowers mixing other letters

into soil with pansies, daffodils, impatiens.  

But it was always soil, prepared, that led to color,

soil inhabiting our very blood and bones, 

a deep affinity for dust to dust we have within,

rich dark coffee-colored soil, aromas lifting up and

taking us to early earth when scientists say the smell

was more like rotten eggs, rich with H2S. This richness lives

within me, my body’s future with the possibility of

decomposing into one cubic yard of soil,

along with wood, alfalfa, even straw, all

assisting me along the way to my new form, 

my inert self reduced to fragrant future supplements

for growing flowers after I have gone.

Something to think about, while legislators ponder laws

to handle soil that’s human-sourced. Right now, it’s not

Assembly Bill 501 I’m thinking of; I’m smelling soil, the

rich rich soil that flowers hunger for, the soil that’s fed

my soul, the gardening days when turning over dirt

was very much like leafing through a sacred text, 

when I’ve translated who I’ve been into the earth

from which I’ve come.

Barbara Simmons is a poet who celebrates the many worlds she inhabits using language to explore the ways we remember and envision. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. As a secondary school English teacher, she revisited texts with students who inspired her thinking about communication's diversity. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring the world's stories in her poetry. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, Writing it Real Anthologies, Capsule Stories Anthologies, and the Journal of Expressive Writing.  Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilbriums will appear in 2022.

MY BODY

by Claire Sapan

In bed each night I am grateful for the body that is mine: 

Skin that protects me, allows me to feel 

Tongue that gives me taste 

Heart that allows me to feel 

But somewhere along the way you decided my body

Was yours

You disassemble me 

Like a Barbie

Bending me in your direction 

At your discretion

Breaking off what you don’t like 

And today you took my choice 

You took autonomy away from me, 

From my body 

So tonight in bed I will mourn 

But tomorrow I will fight 

For at the end of the day, 

This body is mine

Claire Sapan is an avid writer and feminist, hoping and fighting for a better world. 

THE GREEN LIGHT

by Lynn White

US Army Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, steps on board a C-17 transport plane as the last US service member to leave Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: Us Army/Reuters via The Guardian, August 31, 2021

When she saw the green lights

her first thoughts were of Triffids.

Of course she knew they were imaginary 

but was less sure about the green lights 

which enabled their freedom,

an unintended consequence 

of the activity

of some government or other,

a terrifying aftermath.

And who knew what the aftermath 

of this green sky would be.

She could still see them

glowing above her.

So, not yet blind,

she thought.

But then, she reconsidered.

Metaphorically speaking

perhaps we were all blinded

a long time ago

when the green light was given

to the Triffids

who are already rampaging.

We just haven’t noticed yet,

such is our loss of sight.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal and So It Goes.

AN ALL-AMERICAN INCENTIVE

by Clyde Always

At last the rates of jabs are up

in states where were the leasest

which are, coincidentally,

the ones that rank obesest.

 

Miraculous. Perplexing though…

what reason for could this be?

It seems they upped the bribe a bit:

two kremes and both are krispy.

Clyde Always is an accomplished cartoonist, poet, painter, novelist and Vaudevillian entertainer. His writings and/or illustrations have been printed in the Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Light, Slackjaw, Scarfff Comics, etc. etc. You can see his storytelling act, live and in-person, any Friday evening, at the Scott Street Labyrinth in San Francisco, CA.

POEM IN AUGUST

by Julian O. Long

“August Painting” by Ivan Kolisnyk

First day of my eighty fourth

year to heaven, I got up

turned off the O2 machine, hung

its canula over the arm of the walker

beside my bed, intimate with

these acts as I am with my hand

on my thigh the last thing before

throwing off the covers,

                                       intimate too

with comorbidities (only recently

learned that word) my troubled heart

remembered from recent echoes, aftermaths

of strokes that stopped parts of my brain

and legs (maybe other things

as well—hard to tell with all

the medicines.

                        Still, one more stick

and I’m boosted, at least in a qualified

sense; I’ll continue intimacy

with covid fully vaccinated, as I

was those childhood summers with series

of asthma shots, but this birthday

I am choosing as well to quarantine

myself—better that than bronchial

spasms, since this virus kills.

Writ large does the covid pandemic shed

light on die ups such as the great

reptilian? Chances are it will run

its course and become endemic among us

like the flu. But what if it doesn’t?

And what if unlike plagues of past ages

this is the one big one? Will it

usher in new times of dearth,

strife, and loss driven by vicious

death-demanding ideologies?

Will we humans learn care for one

another in such new times, or will we

follow the worst among us and in

ourselves? Chances are we’ll do

the latter.

                        Cogito ergo sum,

unassailable formulation, works

both ways, Latin doesn’t care

it’s the perfect sum of being, balking

at prospect of its own quitclaim

consciousness cannot fail to name

itself, but no heuristic can

afford me knowledge of my death;

I am intimate with that absence.

Conversely, no perception affords

me knowledge of another’s. In these

times it’s a forced option to choose

intimacy as well

                           —with that absence.

Julian O. Long’s poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Texas, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. His chapbook High Wire Man is number twenty-two in the Trilobite Poetry series published by the University of North Texas Libraries. A collection of his poems, Reading Evening Prayer in an Empty Church, appeared from Backroom Window Press in 2018. Other online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, The Raw Art Review, and Litbreak Magazine.  Long has taught school at the University of North Texas, North Carolina State University, and Saint Louis University. He is now retired and lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.

HURRICANE WATCH, NEW ORLEANS

by Gail White

Mon., Aug. 30: Children watch reporters at a building collapse scene in New Orleans. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Someday only the divers

will visit New Orleans.

The church bells will ring under water.

Kelp will encircle the rusting wrought iron

like Mardi Gras beads.

The round-eyed fish will roam free

with no one to cook them with almonds.

Drinks are not on the house now, but under the sea.

Politics cause no fights. Who wins doesn’t matter.

The artists are gone. The rich and the homeless are gone.

The old jazz musicians have shut up their instrument cases

I will be one of the few to remember the days

of white-powdered beignets and coffee at Jackson Square,

and Jackson himself on a rearing horse tipping his hat.

And the bells of St. Louis Cathedral

will ring for mass under the sea.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

STORM NUMBER 9: IDA, 2021

by Rose M. Smith

Sun., Aug. 29: Hurricane Ida is seen in this image taken aboard the International Space Station. The image was shared on European Space Agency astronaut and Expedition 65 crew member Thomas Pesquet's Twitter account, as the storm churned in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of its landfall. ESA/NASA

Mother, they say you are the hurricane

bearing down on our Gulf Coast this weekend

whirling      mad      anomaly full of rain and wind

scream a long assault against any who list

attendant fury tearing down light post    tree    wall

drowning masses who fail to heed your warning

I became a cistern full of tears    wretched 

war torn      homeless      arms outstretched

when I heard them call you Ida

as though    so quiet in your living

you found in death freedom to be whirlwind

demand your choices known

Rose M. Smith lives in Central Ohio near a short stretch of woods.  Her work has appeared in Blood and Thunder, Origins Journal, Passager, The Examined Life, Snapdragon, and other journals and anthologies. She is author of Unearthing Ida (Glass Lyre Press, 2019) which won the 2018 Lyrebird Prize. She is an Editor with Pudding Magazine, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Cave Canem fellow.

ANOTHER LESSON FROM AFGHANISTAN

by George Salamon

“The United States could have left Afghanistan in the hands of a new generation, not the Taliban. But they didn’t invest enough in strengthening institutions and empowering new generations in urban areas who really wanted to rebuild the country and take over the reins. In 20 years, you could have transformed Afghanistan and that generation.” Journalist Adriana Carranca to Isabela Dias, Mother Jones, August 20, 2021. Photo: Gozargah school in Kabul in 2008. Courtesy of Adriana Carranca via Mother Jones.

As the sun sets on

yet  another place 

sought for America's

empire, one thing we

did not sell successfully

was democracy, the other

thing we couldn't buy

triumphantly was peace.

George Salamon thinks America has not yet stsarted learning from history, its own and that of other countries and peoples. George lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

REPEAT PERFORMANCE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The captain of Afghanistan’s women's wheelchair basketball team Nilofar Bayat and her husband Ramish disembark from the second Spanish evacuation airplane, carrying Afghan collaborators and their families, that landed at the Torrejon de Ardoz air base, 30 kilometers away from Madrid, on August 20, 2021. (Mariscal / POOL / AFP via Getty Images) via The Nation.

We are Americans even after 9/11, or Afghanistan, Vietnam for

its generation, which makes me think that we tempt history too

much, are poor students, never learn. So here we go again,

in helicopters and planes with just a handbag, a couple of

documents, and lives of those we can evacuate before the deadline,

and the country shutters up, and we return to insidious inside

operations because we will never learn, war being diplomacy

by other means, revenge always percolating on the stove, politicians

gnashing teeth to spit out America will be great again, under

their blinkered tutelage, investing in heavy tanks, precision bombers

and strategic plans only to realize that none of these can defeat the rebel

with a cause, who knows the land's dips and rises, who can melt into

the crowd, before springing back in the finest and most colorful robes,

to say bye bye American pie, get back by midnight to your promised land.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including Blue Window/ Ventana Azul translated by Jennifer Rathbun (Lavender Ink/Diálogos Books, 2021), The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020), and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, Indran recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

THIS IS MY DREAM IN GREEN

by Jean Varda

“Green Dream Painting” by Mykola Ampilogov

Cold bottomless water

transparent fish,

birds awaken with hesitant

flute like songs.

Walking in the evening down

graceful tree-lined streets,

soft rain falling all night,

where I breathe cool moisture

through a screened window.

This is my dream in green,

fireflies silently rising

above thick wet grass.

Not the brown sky of my home

with a faded pink pock a dot

for a sun.

Not sirens, helicopters, low flying planes

and a fire that has no end.

Deep moss green water lapping

on a muddy shore,

full rivers, lakes, ponds

bird song, ocean breeze.

Not four hundred miles of

spreading flames

fire fighters sweating in their gear

smoke so thick it looks like

night in the morning

a dark cloud rising

seen from the other end

of the continent

a desperate smoke signal for help.

 

Jean Varda is a poet living in Chico, California, not far from the Dixie fire. She has self-published six chapbooks of poetry. Been published in numerous literary magazines. Leads poetry writing workshops and has started open mics.