AMAZON

by Donna Katzin

On Friday [April 1, Christian Smalls] won the first successful unionization effort at any Amazon warehouse in the United States, one of the most significant labor victories in a generation. The company’s response to his tiny initial protest may haunt it for years to come. —The New York Times, April 2, 2022. Photo: Members of the new union celebrated in Brooklyn on Friday night. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Avarez/Associated Press

At the fulfillment center in Staten Island,      

every day a marathon, she logs 30 miles

in 12 hours on the warehouse floor,

wearing worn-out shoes she cannot afford to replace,

picking, packing boxes on dollies and hand trucks

before she clocks out.

Jeff Bezos, back from outer space,

could not finish one of her shifts.

 

Beneath fluorescent lights that never sleep,

during precious seconds between packages,

when her mind fights to focus,

she thinks of little ones

she left before breakfast,

not knowing whether she would

make it home to feed them dinner

or kiss them goodnight.

 

Computers track how fast she picks and packs

on the human conveyor belt,                               

evaluate her by algorithm,

feed back seconds per task,

pieces per minute, numbers to hit,           

speed up without notice or reason,

threaten to dismiss her                    

for missing her target rates.

 

Knees buckle, back rebels,                       

wrists and elbows numb, cramp.          

Stress takes its inner toll,   

presses veins and arteries,                                        

hangs heavy on her heart.

She reports to Amcare,                                  

is given an aspirin,                                           

sent back to the floor.                                       

 

But quietly, between shifts, 

as summer sweats and winter gnaws her weary bones,

she joins coworkers, shares indignities and injuries

by telephone and text, Twitter and Instagram,

in parking lots, food pantries and pews,

dares to tiptoe to a meeting,

whispers the word

union.

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF WAR

by Katherine West 

“A Room of Memory” by Chiharu Shiota (2009): old wooden windows, group exhibition Hundred Stories about Love, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan

Inside, there's a memory of neighbors on an evening porch, of burning then warming sun, of a half-feral cat leaving freedom for langurous hours of touch, of cold night then the warmth of a shared bed. 

Inside, there's a fire going and moody jazz in the background, an old watercolor of a Ukrainian boy and girl in traditional clothes. They are on their way to market; seen from behind and one side, their bodies are full of purpose. 

Inside, there's the sound of birds outside; sometimes just wings whooshing back and forth, sometimes a little squawk and chatter. Faraway, a songbird. 

Outside, sun is trying to warm the morning. Outside, clouds are burning off; red ants are waking up, appearing at the door of their mound like holy men dressed in the color of life. 

Outside, the first truck rumbles down the gravel road, kicking up its own cloud. Outside, the crack of target practice, to the south, a helicopter.

Outside, the first shell drops on an apartment building already abandoned by its residents who now live in the subway. The first paratrooper touches down. The first tank goes up in flames. 

Outside, the first wildflowers glow like a small sunrise amongst dry, white grass. Outside, the ravens are mating aloft. 

Inside, is poetry from Ukraine. 

You are the train that will pour

burning wine on the skin,

so that it will blaze

madly

(Natalka Bioltserkivets)

Outside, is poetry from Ukraine, a long line of refugees with bundles, like leafcutter ants carrying off the petals of roses.  

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. She is also an artist. 

WHEN ALL ROADS LEAD TO MONSTERS

In memory of Boris Romantschenko 1926-2022

by Shelly Blankman

I

When all roads lead to monsters, where do you turn?

Plucked like a stinkweed from his family farm, a young

Ukrainian is trucked like freight to Nazi camps, where he

labors for the next 12 years in four concentration camps.

Like all captives, he will be stripped of warm clothes in 

frigid weather. He will be fed a half-slice of bread and 

watered-down soup before laboring in dark and dank

tunnels and mines with only stone cots on which to rest.

In quarries, he will hoist heavy boulders up hundreds of

steps and carry down corpses of those murdered by

Nazis for their frailities. And if he falters, he dies, too.

He survives. Sick, emaciated, bearing scars of abuse

and pain, but alive. 

II

He returns to Ukraine to rebuild his life. An apartment that is 

safe and warm. Clothes, food, medical care. A wife, children

and grandchildren. Most of all, he has a voice. He travels to

speak for those who have been silenced. Conferences, events,

memorials, and schools. People must remember. This must

never happen again. But his travels have now led to a wartorn

road with a dead end. Seventy-seven years after his nightmare

at the hands of Nazis has ended, Russian troops bomb his

apartment, killing him.

III

He now lies in a roadside cemetery. A few family members clustered 

around his coffin at his funeral. A stiff, cold wind snuffed out their 

lit candles quickly. A young Orthodox priest, bundled in a parka,

led a hasty service as bombs blasted in the distance. “He was patient

and kind,” he lamented as the coffin was lowered into the damp ground.

If only the world would be the same.

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, where she and her husband have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a foster dog. Their sons, Richard and Joshua,  now live in New York and Texas (respectively). Following careers in journalism, public relations, and copy editing, Shelly now spends time writing poetry, scrapbooking and making cards. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, Praxis Magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Muddy River Review, among other publications. A couple of years ago, Richard and Joshua surprised Shelly by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.

BUCHA MASSACRE

by Cathy Hailey

Photo from the streets of Bucha tweeted by Kira Rudik, Member of Ukrainian Parliament, Leader of Political party Golos.

Dead woman 

Perfectly manicured nail

Rises from dirt.

Dead woman

Hands tied behind back

Civilian white tag.

Dead woman

Pulled by rope from road 

Avoiding mines planted within.

Cathy Hailey teaches as an adjunct in Johns Hopkins University’s online MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing in Prince William County. She is Northern Region Vice President of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a biennial reading of poets laureate held in PWC. Her writing has been published in The New Verse News, Poetry Virginia, The Journal of the Virginia Writing Project, Written in Arlington, and Stay Salty: Life in the Garden State (Vol. 2), NoVA Bards, Confetti, and others. Her chapbook I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth is forthcoming in 2023.

DEAR WILLIAM

by Geoffrey Philp

"Relationships evolve. Friendship endures."

—Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

I hope I'm not breaking any royal protocols, 

which in my father's time would've gotten us killed, 

strung up on the gallows like Daddy Sharpe, Paul Bogle, 

George William Gordon—heroes who were martyred 

at the king's pleasure for demanding the right to rule

ourselves, a stake in the wealth your empire robbed

and vowed never to return a farthing to unwashed rebels.

And now, you've come into my yard, claiming to be a friend? 

Tell me, William, what kind of friend enslaves another friend, 

pillages and loots family heirlooms of his friend's ancestors, 

brainwashing generations of descendants with a one-sided story 

without claiming responsibility for the plight of the survivor's

welfare, and after four hundred years still can't say he's sorry

with reparations? No, William. This relationship must end.

Author’s Note: My “Dear William” letter to the Duke of Cambridge. There goes my knighthood and invitation to Buckingham Palace.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children's books, and two novels. His next collection of  poems, Archipelagos (Peepal Tree Press), uses Sylvia Wynter’s readings of Cesaire and Foucault along with Amitav Ghosh's paradigm to explore the connection between colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity in the Plantationocene. Twitter: @GeoffreyPhilp Instagram: @geoffreyphilp

GOOD MORNING, STAR

by Sally Zakariya

We greet you with awe, with wonder,

Earendel, Morning Star, farthest star

we humans have yet glimpsed 

through our roving lens in space,

older by far than ancient,

brighter and larger than our own

blazing sun, which bows

in deference to your greatness.

Gleaming blue in the galaxy Sunrise Arc,

you first shone your brilliant beams 

across a young and growing universe 

billions of years ago—light that reaches 

our eyes here on earth at last.

A single star? A cluster? Perhaps 

the black hole that survives

a dying star? Astronomers may

find out when they send a new, 

more powerful eye in the sky 

to plumb your stellar secrets.

What wonders they may discover.  

You hint at cosmic possibilities—

existence beyond our fathoming,

a reality beyond our earthly grasp,

life beyond life.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her publications include Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed the poetry anthology Joys of the Table. She blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

TIME'S UP

by Judy Juanita

“Burn this city,” a photograph by Anthony Citro.

Just because Woolworth's lunch counters were integrated

And black people could buy their lunch there

Didn't mean that Woolworth's as an institution wasn't fading

Its time was up.

Just because blacks integrated the Academy Awards

Showed up and showed out in 2022 

Doesn't mean that Hollywood as an institution isn't fading. 

I said it once and I'll say it again:

We should all be so disgusted by this perversity

That we boycott the Academy Awards and Golden Globes

As the pimps and hos conventions they are. 

Of course, who am I but a black woman

Old as coffee grounds, talking still 

About the mistreatment of women? 

Besides it being a display by the rich in front of the rich 

Because they're effing rich and can floorshow v. streetfight

The "slap" is good for biz. And there still is no biz like show biz.

Meanwhile the exploitation of "the nubile bodies they peed and shat upon" 

Continues practically unabated. If you think women aren't still peed and shat upon

Please tell me why female broadcasters and weathercasters show much 

Flesh/leg/cannot age while their male counterparts can look like Elmer Fudd

And stay employed until they're way past 65. 

Please tell me why Kevin Costner can walk out and preach to the minions 

With gravitas and brag about being 68 during the awards

While the "sell by" date for females in H'wood is 38 or so 

(unless they're a supertalented Brit).

Please, this slap wasn't shit. 

The real problem is that H'wood is as out-of-date 

An institution as slavery. 

But because it's so profitable for the slave-owners

It hasn't faded out completely. 

But its time is up.

Judy Juanita's poetry collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] examines race, gender, politics and spirituality, as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." Winner of the Tartt Fiction Prize at the University of West Alabama [UWA], her short story collection The High Price of Freeways will be published by Livingston Press  [UWA] in July, 2022. 

ON PINPOINTS & SUBJECT BROACHES

by Jen Schneider

Madeleine Albright: Diplomat used brooches, costume jewelry pins to “deliver a message.” —USA Today, March 23, 2022. Photo source: Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection at The National Museum Of American Diplomacy.

jacket lapels of cranberry-indigo wools,

layered of lilac, lavender, & tiny tools.

crisp cottons. starched collars.

rays & arrays of hints, habits, & hues

accompany fabrics dedicated to service dues.

 

tucked. tied. tuned.

ready to acknowledge a sharp foil

with snakes that silently coil.

 

blue birds & butterflies wings.

statues of liberty & balloons on strings.

carnivores. gold-tone monkeys.

stings of yellow resin bees.

 

crabs & red enamel ladybugs

atop sharp wit, knits

& heels crossing rugs

 

so much more than a bunch of brooches.

finely tuned adornments. full of endorsements.

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

FOR HIS LEGACY

by Richard Matta

He lines up his army men

sacrifices them, 

with the enemy he alone creates 

because he wants to play

with toy soldiers on a big stage

like a kid who wants to shoot

his BB gun, toss his cherry bombs 

even the M80s

to gain everyone’s attention. 

He knows the stakes are higher today

there’s narrative to control. 

He instills fear in those who

would question the story he weaves. 

He reminds the world

a red button, his red button

is within reach.  

Keep them guessing, 

on their heels, asking themselves

is this a crazy man who’d destroy the world?

And this is how he plays the game

Constructed ambiguity

he figures he has to play the big threat, 

they’re thinking—long game in Ukraine

—sanctions will break Russia like the USSR

He figures they’ll try psych ops—

drones dropping rubles and letters,

pleas and podcasts in Russian

the oligarchs and their yachts

hiding on the seas with the country’s wealth

They’ll fill the airwaves with western propaganda

to twist the minds of Russian military 

and those with curiosity. 

But he knows all this. It’s narrative control. 

He vows to protect his people 

from the tyranny and pathological lies 

of capitalism and democracy. And who 

in their right mind will question

a boy with a BB gun and M80s 

who plays chess and might blow up the board

for his legacy.  

Richard Matta grew up in New York and  now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop,  The New Verse News, San Pedro River Review, Gyroscope, Healing Muse, and many international haiku journals. 

THE RUSSIANS

by Suzanne Morris

Top photo: ‘Things Will Only Get Worse.’ Putin’s War Sends Russians Into Exile. —The New York Times, March 13, 2022. Bottom photo: Sasha (played by Jeffrey Rockland), son of Tonya and Zhivago in the 1965 film Doctor Zhivago.

He is the only child

in the photograph–

ten, perhaps,

no more than twelve–

surrounded by a small crowd of

students and young professionals,

wearing jeans and

heavy sweaters

seated anxiously on a long couch

or straight-backed chairs

around a table

in a sunny apartment

in Istanbul

where they’ve fled,  

fearing arrest for

protesting a war

they didn’t believe in

waged by an autocrat

they all despise.

And no one is holding

a phone.

Women with long hair,

men with short, neat beards,

eyes fixed on the speaker

outside the frame–

intent as we were

on events unfolding

across the

movie screen.

The boy stands alone in the

center of the floor; and

he’s looking, too, but with

body angled away

as if the speaker had

interrupted his play.

His eyes old and serious

for one his age, he

reminds me of

Zhivago’s young son

whose life was upended

by the Russian Revolution.

How romantic it seemed:

so long ago and far away

yet the huge

Panavision screen

made it seem we were right there

living through it all when

families were forced apart

never to be together again.

The boy is right there

in the small crowd,

the speaker instructing them

on what to do now.

How to begin.

                                           

A novelist with eight published works spanning forty years, Suzanne Morris now focuses largely on writing poems. Her poetry is included in the anthology No Season for Silence—Texas Poets and Pandemic (Kallisto GAIA Press, 2020). Examples have also appeared in The Texas Poetry Assignment and The New Verse News.

ALOPECIA

by Annie Cowell

My friend’s hair fell out.

Head, brows, lashes, body; every single hair.

One day she was lustrous, the next day naked. 

No explanation and no cure. Of course 

she will not die; there are 

far worse things to endure.

But for a while she could not face her world.

The daily chores, so simple and routine

became an endless round of hows and whys,

of sympathetic nods or stifled smiles.

And she felt lost, stripped bare;

her confidence destroyed.

And so she had her brows tattooed,

glued on false eyelashes,

bought wigs in different styles.

Found ways she could disguise the 

bald and brutal fact that

she would never feel, or look the same again.

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

MAKE DINNER WITH THE TELEVISION ON

by Alice Campbell Romano

Photo of @AdamParkhomenko’s family trapped in Ukraine.

Face what you have to face. Chop onions. Let your

eyes sting for the kitchen screen where a city is rubble,

nothing stands, all the ground is chunks of bricks

and stones, a wreckage more extreme even than the

leavings of a tornado the TV showed you last hour.

What does it profit an autocrat, an absolutist,

unless that his obliteration is more terrible than a work

of nature. I am that I am, God the destroyer. Onions

sauté now with sliced red peppers in a little olive oil.

You feel so feeble. But you don’t flip the remote to

California’s Gold. You add the chicken tenders, while a

newscaster tells you what you know. Children starve.

Alice Campbell Romano is a New Yorker who spent more than a decade in Italy, adapting Italian movie scripts into English. Her work has been published in print journals and online, most recently by Willows Wept Review and Ekphrastic Review's Starry Starry Night Anthology; this week in Prometheus Dreaming and forthcoming in Beyond Words.

KOAN AT THE OSCARS

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

SOME TOXIC ELEMENTS OF THE PATRIARCHY

by Emily Rock

Jack Ohman: Law & Order, Senate GOP

…were on display in the Senate as Ketanji Brown Jackson

faced down the Judiciary Committee

on the way to (please, let it be so) the Supreme Court.

 

Ghostly white Lindsey Graham, with his trademark drawl,

claimed “It’s about ‘we’re all racist’ if we ask hard questions.  

That’s not gonna fly with us.”

 

She was gracious: “I am happy to do whatever…”

she said as Chuck Grassley mumbled gruffly, interrupting her.

“No, that’s alright,” she said.  “I’m sorry.”

The Senator from Missouri said in his tweets

that Judge Jackson’s record on child pornography offenders

went “beyond soft on crime,” her record “endangers our children.”

 

She was calm: “As a judge and a mother, nothing

could be further from the truth.”

And she explained, though Josh Hawley deserved nothing

 

from her, that she told every criminal defendant

about the many victims' statements she received,

ensuring the child's perspective was heard in her court.

 

“When I look in the eyes of a defendant who is weeping,” she said,

 “I tell them about a victim who developed agoraphobia,

who thinks everyone she meets will have seen her pictures on the internet.”

 

I imagined an unflinching Jackson looking an offender in the eyes,

not softened by his tears—the sad sad tears of a man who has been caught,

which reminded me of her future colleague, Brett Kavanaugh:

 

how he cried during his own confirmation hearing,

how his emotional outbursts would be blamed on PMS

if he were a woman instead of a self-righteous white man.

 

Ketanji Brown Jackson said “I hope that you will see

how much I love our country, and our Constitution,”

and I recalled Kavanaugh repeating “I like beer.”

 

I thought of his victims, Christine Blasey Ford

and the others whose voices were not heard,

who watched their assailant weep

 

and go red in the face, defend his honor,

defend his entitlement to a seat

on the highest court—and prevail.

 

If Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed,

she will join two men who have been credibly accused

of crimes against women,

 

she will join a supermajority of aggressors

gleefully eviscerating Roe v. Wade,

stripping voting protections,

 

all while claiming the mantle

of Originalism, their philosophy

stuck in the 1700s with the slave-owning founders.

 

And yet, Republicans have tarred her 

with the absurd accusation

that she is somehow a threat to “our children.”

 

Whose children, I would ask Josh Hawley.

Whose children are threatened by a black woman 

with a gavel and a robe?

Emily Rock is an attorney and mother of two who lives in New Haven, Connecticut.