REQUIEM FOR PABLO NERUDA

by Donna Katzin

Fifty years on, the true cause of death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in the wake of the country’s 1973 coup d’état, has remained in doubt across the world… On the evening of Sept. 23, 1973, the [Santa Maria] clinic reported that Mr. Neruda died of heart failure. Earlier that day, he had called his wife saying he was feeling ill after receiving some form of medication. In 2011, Manuel Araya, Mr. Neruda’s driver at the time, publicly claimed that the doctors at the clinic poisoned him by injecting an unknown substance into his stomach, saying Mr. Neruda told him this before he died… On Wednesday, The New York Times reviewed the summary of findings compiled by international forensic experts who had examined Mr. Neruda’s exhumed remains and identified bacteria that can be deadly. In a one-page summary of their report, shared with The New York Times, the scientists confirmed that the bacteria was in his body when he died, but said they could not distinguish whether it was a toxic strain of the bacteria nor whether he was injected with it or instead ate contaminated food. The findings once again leave open the question of whether Mr. Neruda was murdered. —The New York Times, February 15, 2023

“Mi deber es vivir, morir, vivir.”

My duty is to live, to die, to live.

—Pablo Neruda

At your home Isla Negra,                                              

guides showed us your collections

of sea shells, butterflies and poems,

shared that when, in your hospital bed,

you heard the comrade president had died,

you closed your eyes for the last time  

as the waves wept.

 

 

Half a century later, your comrades

in the science of life and search for truth

exhumed your body from the sleeping earth,

discovered the poison injected in your stomach

by doctors of the dictators—

a burning serpent sent

to seal your lips.

 

 

But, comrade poet, your words

carry us on wings of awe—

beyond despots, toxins,

solitude and silence—

to liberated zones of our

imagination, hope and love                                 

as tireless as an ocean of stars.

Author's note: Isla Negra, today a museum, is a seaside former home of Pablo Neruda, where for years staff had quietly shared with visitors the popular belief that the poet had died of grief when he overheard the news that General Pinochet had taken power and that his friend President Salvador Allende had died.

Donna Katzin is the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest which facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. She co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners which helps feed and empower impoverished mothers and children in Nicaragua, and she serves on the board of Community Change in the U.S.  She is also a contributor to The New Verse News and author of With These Hands, poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.

MATTEO MESSINA DENARO’S GIORGIO ARMANI SUIT HOLDS A PRESS CONFERENCE

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma

Giuseppe di Matteo was kidnapped in 1993 in an attempt to blackmail his father into not giving evidence against the Mafia, Italian prosecutors said. The 12-year-old boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and dissolved in acid. Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the mobsters who ordered little Giuseppe's kidnapping and murder, was finally caught yesterday in Palermo while he visited a private clinic for cancer treatment. —Mirror (UK), January 17, 2023

For Giuseppe di Matteo, who loved animals.

I stand before you today

single-breasted and slim cut

of jacquard silk-wool blend

with breast pocket for a pocket square

made with Italian love.

Gentle fingers

stitched together all the precision-cut

pieces of me into the kind of shape

that dreams someday it will grace

a UEFA champion at a red-carpet gala

or the jaunty gait of a screen star

collecting a prize.

 

Now imagine

our fate in the closet of U Siccu—Diabolik

—hoarder of Raybans and Rolexes,

my Armani brothers, my Versace cousins,

in bunkers during 30 years on the lam.

 

Scars are etched in every single place

he sweats acid of the same grade

used to melt bodies after torture

and strangulation. That is to say

those not simply blasted away.

 

Here on the threshold of his demise

I announce today my candidacy

to serve as outfit for the cremation.

 

After all, nobody wants to don me,

and I, uncomfortable now on any skin,

no longer abide the humiliation of covering up

a criminal body. The way he felt my buttons,

caressed my smooth weave, precludes

all pretense to future dignity.

 

But the worst was how he adjusted each sleeve,

likely how he strangled that pregnant woman,

 

with  just  one  tug. 

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in OffCourse, Plants & Poetry, Parentheses, Tuck Magazine, and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

LAST SATURDAY

by David Chorlton

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Maricopa County has the legal authority to temporarily provide water to residents in Rio Verde Foothills. The City of Scottsdale cut off Rio Verde residents from its municipal water supply last month in an effort to conserve resources. Because Rio Verde is located in an unincorporated area, Scottsdale officials have argued that the city's not responsible for providing water service. —12News, February 15, 2023. Photo: A water hauler set up hoses to fill the tank for a home that is listed for sale in Rio Verde Foothills outside of Scottsdale, Ariz. Water prices have tripled for some residents of the unincorporated neighborhood. Credit Erin Schaff, The New York Times, January 16, 2023

Broken cloud and pigeons overhead;

a hummingbird inside her nest

at the neighbor’s fence; Valentine’s Day

approaching and the wind

is circling her tongue in the mountain’s ear.

Word crackles

                          through the neighborhood

with news of police cars at Ranch Circle

and Thirty-ninth Street with tape

as yellow as front yard desert marigolds.

Maybe it was suicide

though some say dementia

but only the moon was watching

the man go into the pond.

                                                 The bookmakers

are busy preparing for tomorrow’s game

while the odds favor hotter

than usual days in Arizona come July

with a little comfort falling

as monsoon rains, even on the million dollar

homes in Rio Verde, 

                                     north of rush hour

traffic, master-planned for golf and scenery,

where life would be perfection

if only one could drink

the swimming pools and bathe

in Chardonnay. 

                            It’s late afternoon

back here on Walatowa; shadows float and soften

on the rocks; the mail van’s late;

starlings mob a suet cake and lost cars

circle the cul-de-sac in endless

search for the meaning

                                            of life with the brakes off

hurrying to find the answer

before the sky runs dry.

David Chorlton grew up in Manchester, England, in a city known for its rainy days. After some years in Vienna, Austria, he came to Phoenix and adjusted to the desert. His newest book Poetry Mountain owes much to the part of the city he lives in now, with a view of a desert mountain to soften the impact of the city.

ARKABUTLA, MISSISSIPPI WITHIN HOURS OF THE SHOOTING ON FEBRUARY 17

by Tricia Knoll

Law enforcement personnel work at the scene of a shooting, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023, in Arkabutla, Miss. Six people were fatally shot Friday in the small town in rural Mississippi near the Tennessee state line, and authorities said they had taken a suspect into custody. —CNN, February 17, 2023

Small town. 300 people.

Unincorporated. 

Six dead in a shooting

around noon. 

Not many details now.

Man with gun 

pulls into driveways.

Shoots six dead.  

Sheriff: we have arrested

the guy who did it. 

No known motive. 

 

On February 24-25

youth age 10 – 15

are invited to join

a night time guided

raccoon hunt 

over uneven 

terrain which will

observe all age-appropriate

hunting regulations. 

Must be accompanied

by an adult. 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who understands no town is too small to endure gun violence. Her own hometown experienced a mass shooting within the last six months. She recently learned it may require shooting six squirrels to make a meal.

HOW MANY MORE?

by Laura Apol

I don’t start to cry until I see Hannah’s name and a quote from her
at 10:57 p.m. on the New York Times feed—which means at least 
this one’s alive, this last-semester student with the pink hair and the
big laugh, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath for hours, for
these hours of not-knowing. I keep looking at the same images: the
streets, the sidewalks, the doorways, the windows, the diagonals of
the museum turned blue and red, blue and red with lights from
ambulances-firetrucks-police. Every intersection closed, students
fleeing, huddling, wearing clothes they wear to class each day, and
I search the images, blurred by distance and dark, for faces I know.
The sounds of helicopters overhead are transferred through the
microphone of a reporter who seems at a loss loss loss for what to
say. Time and again this happens, beads on a broken rosary, but
this time it’s here—the place I’ve called home for twenty-five years.
These students are still children, and these are the buildings we’ve
met in, sidewalks we’ve walked, sometimes in celebration, sometimes 
in protest, sometimes in snow or rain, sometimes under star-bright 
skies, but never on a night like this. A colleague writes, Part of me 
is hoping that none of the deceased students were in my classes 
these past years. A selfish hope, indeed and while I’d like to disagree, 
she’s right. Of course it’s selfish; tell me, how can we not be selfish,
praying that the ones we love are safe—though no one’s safe—
knowing that each silence, each not-answering is someone’s 
student, someone’s roommate, someone’s best friend, someone’s
child. How many more?

Author’s note: This poem was written in response to the first message that appeared on the MSU Rock and before the names of the students who were killed (Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser, Alexandria Verner) had been released.

Laura Apol is a faculty member at Michigan State University, where she teaches poetry, literature and women's studies. From 2019-2021 she served as the Lansing-area poet laureate. 

SHOWING UP

by Ed Ryterband

Tyre

 

Now I cannot turn my eyes

the pile up so monstrous.

Black bodies lumps of coal

shoveled in a furnace of indifference.

 

Now a land to deconstruct

terrain of my white privilege

unexamined legacy presumed

justice, access, possibility. 

 

Now I will concede

the wind’s been at my back

for years and centuries

no bondage, redlines, stop and frisk. 

 

Now I’ll steer into the maelstrom

air thickened with our certainties

clouds of righteous indignation

amplify the howling

 

Now I do proclaim

I’ll never know the pain of my Black neighbors.

I declare I do believe them.

I will show up for them. 

Ed Ryterband is a psychologist, has been a standup comic and is now a poet and memoirist. His poems have been published in Paterson Literary Review, Two River Times, US1 Worksheets. He has three collections of poems published by Kelsay Books: Life On Cloud Eight (2019); Beyond Cloud Eight (2020); Rain Witness (2022). He’s working on a fourth collection Equanimity and a memoir about his immigrant parents Who They Were.

AFTERMATH

by Erin Murphy

"Children Under the Rubble" is a drawing by Mohammad Hayssam Kattaa.

“After natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and explosions, victims may survive in voids that are formed naturally in collapsed structures.” —Science Direct 

 

 

First, look for voids: 

bathtubs, stairwells, ribcages 

 

of infant cribs, the clumsy  

geometry of cantilevers and lean-tos  

 

from collapsed roofs, gaps  

beneath desks where small bodies 

 

just yesterday learned  

to add and subtract. 

 

Next, make your own voids: 

slide flat bags between rubble 

 

to inflate makeshift rooms  

of dusty birthday balloons.  

 

Finally, chisel dates in your  

mind: one week, one month,  

 

one year since you packed  

a lunch satchel and walked  

 

your only child to school.  

This is when the void finds you.  

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry Human Resources is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

BLAZING SLIPPERS

by George Salamon

The choreographer Marco Goecke with his dog 'Gustav' in a photograph from his Instagram account.

Marco Goecke has been suspended from his position as ballet director at Hanover’s main opera house after he smeared excrement on a critic’s face." —The New York Times, February 13, 2023

High culture's going

to the dogs, to the

dachshunds in Germany

this time, where once the

learned scholars

marched step in step with

thugs in brown shirts.

Vulgarity can still be bracing

or honest, at its most violent

expression it often swings

from rhetorical bullshit 

to the berserk Bolshoi 

acted out in Hanover.

George Salamon thinks Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles is one of the funniest movies ever made. The real violence on the Frontier was not too funny, perhaps only to those who conquered it by the gun.

HAZE

by Ron Riekki

            “a slight obscuration of the lower atmosphere, typically caused by fine suspended particles” 

—Oxford Languages 

 

“Shortly after the police report was released to KTSM, NMSU chancellor Dan Arvizu announced the men’s basketball program had been shut down for the remainder of the 2022-23 season.” 

—KTSM, February 12, 2023

 

 

My ex- went to NMSU. I visited it and, 

there, she started singing a song by 

 

Everything But the Girl, but changing 

the lyrics, so that instead it was, her 

 

voice beautifully off-key: NMSU, 

like the deserts miss the rain! So that 

 

‘And I miss you’ became the initials 

for her university, and she loved it there, 

 

she said. And I asked why and she said 

Because it was affordable. And I asked 

 

if there was anything else and she said, 

My friends were there. And I felt safe. 

 

And things change. Time flies. And in 

my mind, I go back in time so often. Some- 

 

times I think that’s what trauma is, this 

constant forcing of the mind back in time. 

 

When they hazed me in baseball—no, 

when Scott hazed me, when I just wanted 

 

to play baseball, came up behind me, 

pinned me to the ground, pressed into me, 

 

this future homecoming court member, 

the summer sun burning its light in my 

 

eyes, my arms Christed at my sides, 

and he’d spit, over and over, in my face, 

 

sucking it back into his mouth, no purpose 

except control, and his father was best friends 

 

with my father, the sickness of childhood, 

the dirt anxious below us, the tree branches 

 

trembling in the lack of wind, and when 

they hazed me in basketball—no, when 

 

Bud hazed me when I just wanted to play 

basketball, in a way similar to NMSU, 

 

in a way similar to Florida A&M, similar 

to Binghamton, the forced public nudity, 

 

then throwing me into a pool, and when 

I joined the military, it was like some 

 

infestation, how you don’t fear the quote- 

unquote enemy as much as you fear those 

 

around you, in your barracks, the blanket 

party done on a kid ten bunks down from 

 

mine, how they came in the night and I 

woke to the sound of fists in the darkness 

 

and it wasn’t me, but it would be, later, 

the “Crucifixions” they did at my duty 

 

stations, tying you to a fence, reminding 

me of Matthew Shepard, and they’d take 

 

rotten food they’d left in the jungle heat 

for days, pour it over your head, insects, 

 

the clock, your wrists, the vomit, and 

the repetition, so often, and so many 

 

who didn’t even fight, how they came for 

me, in the night, because I did not want to 

 

reenact hell, how they’d come up behind 

you, duct tape your mouth shut, your 

 

arms, to the chair, wheel you down 

the hall, clatter you outside, transfer 

 

you to fence, your body a map, time 

a skull, hate a latrine, and they killed 

 

one of us, during training, murdered, 

Lee, his name, Lee, Midwestern, like 

 

me, and the “violent physical hazing” 

at the University of Michigan is VCU’s 

 

death is University of Missouri’s student 

who’s blind now, can’t walk, can’t talk 

 

now, and the list of incidents, the copious 

amounts of alcohol, the unconscious-and- 

 

flown, the hit-his-head, and asphyxiation, 

the collapsed-lung, the polytrauma, and 

 

this is normative? and I see them, see 

their photos, of those killed, yearbook 

 

photos, where they glow, dressed in black, 

new glasses, smiles of hope, hair trimmed 

 

yesterdays, majors of Aviation, Engineering, 

Ecology, Middle East Studies, Social Work, 

 

and I’m teary looking at their photos, this 

sudden caesura,  the blank page,  knowing 

 

at least one university hazing death per 

year, from 1969 to now, with hundreds 

 

of deaths since 1838, with the most deaths 

at Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University 

 

of Alabama. And this isn’t a poem. It’s 

a warning. And this isn’t a poem. It’s 

 

a war. And this isn’t a poem. It’s non- 

fiction. And this isn’t a poem. It’s hell. 

 

And I go to the college to complain about 

this and someone warns me, telling me 

 

not to do it, that I’m just wasting my time, 

and I do it anyway, and I’m in his office, 

 

and I explain to him how I’ve been 

harassed on this campus, and how I know 

 

others are being too, that it’s happening 

here, now, and he listens—no, he doesn’t 

 

listen, he hears me, sort of, and says, 

Look, I’m drowning with complaints. 

 

What do you want me to do about it? 

And I tell him that I want it to stop, 

 

that we need it to stop, and he looks 

at me and says, OK.  How? And I 

 

tell him that that’s his job and he sighs 

and says, OK, thanks for stopping in 

 

and I ask him what he’s going to do 

and he starts escorting me to the door 

 

and I repeat it again and he says, 

You want me to be honest? And I say 

 

that I do. And he says, Nothing. 

And the door closes behind me. 

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.