UPON VOIDING PILLS

by Lavinia Kumar

 

Pill 1: Mifepristone

 

Man, White, Catholic, Texan

Prestigious Hell-Hound Cerberus 

Fortify ice flames of men

 

Goose-step with the always righteous

Trounce smugly all equal rights

Flush Pill #1 right down the toilet

 

Rule as arrogant white pious

Crush every woman’s uterus

Crucify all women’s freedoms

 

Pill 2: Misoprostol

 

Put pistols in every pocket

Abort no eggs. Abort all sense

Fortify that jail for women

 

Kneel together, quote the Bible

Love your neighbor only sometimes

Decree pregnant females un-people

 

Sling out lofty virile lassos 

Circle around a woman’s cervix

Lynch every woman’s freedom

Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists—very short prose of near 90 amazing women writers, poets, publishers, painters, artists, abolitionists, early suffragettes, and activists.

YOU BAN BOOKS, YOU BAN DRAG, KIDS ARE STILL IN BODY BAGS!

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma

“Neighbor is not a geographical term,

it is a moral concept.”

—Rabbi Yoachim Prinz

On Tuesday, my neighbor’s white magnolia scintillates against a beach blue sky. I wear shades to trek past farm fields and pines to vote in spring’s local elections. 

 

I hope to stem the tide of “back to basics” policies, fig leaves for fears—tax dollars spent on gender neutral bathrooms, light shed on our egregious system of chattel slavery, 

 

calls to address our cancer of white supremacy. These questions that refuse to fold themselves back inside the bottle are not our enemies. The universe calls us to travel along 

 

their twisting turning highways and open to the sacred space of meaning. I pass a small corner beauty shop where a flag flaps today at half mast, like every flag across America 

 

until the three nine-year-old children and three adults slaughtered at Nashville’s Covenant School are properly buried. I have another neighbor who hides inside his garage a truck bearing

 

a bumper sticker from the local gun shop. It is bright yellow with red letters that drip as loudly as the thirteen stripes on our flag. This guy has planted that flag in his yard 

 

alongside a sunflower flag, flags of pastoral scenes bought at the local garden shop, sometimes a MAGA flag. The American psyche is the backyard of men like this, 

 

staked with false flags and strewn with dollar-store lawn trinkets that look like they were dumped there by last week-end’s severe storm. Only all this stuff—

 

fiberglass giraffes and mushrooms, bunnies and Celtic crosses—is intentionally placed. Tell me again what Jesus said about loving our neighbors, even those who cry wolf

 

when some neighbors speaking truth into bullhorns don’t look like the Bull Connor neighbors who have burdened us with day after day of our children’s humanity stunted 

 

by the ever-hardening space of schools with metal detectors and SROs in combat gear. Last week, in an adjacent town, an eighth grader shot dead a 10th grader. 

 

Also, my neighbors.

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

CALIFORNIA CYPRESS

by Blair Kilpatrick

A large tree fell on a parked car and another car with the driver in it on Haight Street between Fillmore and Webster Streets in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Credit: Craig Lee/The SF Examiner

Green bedroom curtains

barely parted

frame brown cypress

backlit by morning light

my gaze passes

through narrowed slit

like an arrow 

from within a fortress

 

I follow my eyes

in search of a perch

in welcoming crook

between branch and trunk

arms raised up like a supplicant

 

I find myself wedged

in tight angled space

high above ground

look up and down

ready to fly 

or free fall

tree fall

all fall

down

 

Two years later

we rise to cold silence

water retreating 

winds now stilled 

open curtains

reveal empty space

too much sky

where tree should be

 

Our cypress slumps

across neighboring fence

head rests on rooftop

exposed roots remain

tangle of brown

new mound of green

crows and wildflowers

mark a fresh grave

Blair Kilpatrick is a psychologist and folk musician. Her poetry has appeared in ONE ART, MockingHeart Review, littledeathlit, Amethyst Review, and it is upcoming in Syncopation and Soul-Lit. She is also the author of the music memoir Accordion Dreams (U. Press Mississippi). She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband.

UNOPTIMISTIC DAY

by Barbara Schweitzer 

Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots. The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart. AP Photo by George Walker IV: Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson raise their hands outside the state House chamber after Jones and Pearson were expelled from the legislature on Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville. —CNN, April 7, 2023

I read the political news
and then I worry.
I go upstairs to the writing
room and stare.
I kill a moth that has
flown by our tacky traps
in the hopes that it is
the last one so I might
again pull the cashmeres
(gifts over years)
out of the cedar trunk
yes cedar trunk but no
it does not protect.
Every November I see
the damage little things
can do, like worries,
wormholes in everyday:
how will we survive
inside all this hatred
what is wrong with humans
how can we believe in evolution
when lame brains govern
and all are men at the root
and they are not created
equal...  I must believe but... 
It is just that we are not winged
and we turn to dust so quickly
it takes only a finger to squash
a moth and just five pounds
of pressure on that finger 
to kill us. Guns and men 
who rule will soon too
be dust, unfortunately 
most not before us.

Barbara Schweitzer is the author of 33 1/3: Soap Opera Sonnets (Little Pear Press, 2008) and is now returning to poetry after a decade of writing (more or less) for theatre (which is a very different experience).

DJT’S HAIKU INDICTMENT DAY

by SusanTerris 

In court      

      
Not guilty, said Trump
Yes.  Okay, thank you oh yes
Yes. I do. Yes. Yes.
 
At Mar-a-Lago

blah ba lunaticans thTfake
criminalhateyeashittypersecution
bbwitch huntuckjail them all
 

SusanTerris is an editor, a poet, who has published books and chapbooks and has been given a Pushcart and has been in Best American Poetry.

DRILL

by Jane Edna Mohler   

  

In the confident glow
of an iPhone, we pass
a silent hour in the school’s
utility room with dead
beetles, frantic
spiders, and the librarian
browsing Pinterest.
 
My back against
a door that won’t lock,
foot braced on the railing
of stairs leading to oblivious 
motors and sweating pipes 
accustomed to the peace 
of working alone.
 
The librarian scrolls fervently. 
Which chicken recipe 
will she choose? Maybe 
Easter themed cupcakes
or a floral wreath crafted
for the family gathering 
if those gunshots we hear are real. 

From National Association of School Psychologists: “After an armed assailant drill: Emotional or physical reactions can be delayed following a highly intense simulation drill.”

Jane Edna Mohler is Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus (Pennsylvania). Recent publications include Gargoyle, River Heron Review, and One Art. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay Books. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal in Philadelphia.

PASSOVER 2023

by Eric Greene

The Israelites were told that if they painted their doorposts with lamb's blood, their first-born child would not be killed by the angel.

The Angel of Death 
is running amok
 
and no amount 
of lamb’s blood
 
smeared 
on the schoolroom doors 
will keep him away
 
Columbine, Red Lake, Virginia Tech
 
No cup of sweet wine
will dull the suffering
 
Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Santa Fe
 
No bitter herb
will burn 
like a mother's pain
 
Oxford, Robb Elementary, Michigan State
 
In bondage 
once again
 
with no exodus 
in sight
 
we wait 
for the next child 
to be taken
 
The Covenant School… 
 
 
Eric Greene is a longtime member of The Southeast Michigan Poetry Workshop Group. His poems have appeared in The New Verse News and other online publications.

NATIONAL PARK

by Jerome Berglund

Dogs roam the ghost town of Pripyat within the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine. Scientists have identified genetically distinct populations living in the area, including within the highly contaminated power plant. Credit: Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, March 3, 2023

The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests 

–Popular Mechanics, April 1, 2023

near fifty odd past,

generations of curs

in the fallout

plume rose up

into the air

but has it dissipated 

toys left behind

during hasty retreat 

from exclusion zone

through ruins 

of the power plant

feral strays mutating

irradiated populations

not eradicated

over the dog years

unmolested 

other kingdoms

time to flourish

the casualties

by necessity

continue evolving 

beneficial adaptations

can they be reabsorbed

into populations

tempering

for weathering 

this boiling world

roaming the wastes

admiring 

the many sunflowers 

Jerome Berglund, recently nominated for the Touchstone awards and Pushcart Prize, has many haiku, senryu, and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, including in the Asahi Shimbun, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku.  His first full-length collection of poetry Bathtub Poems was just released by Setu Press.

GUARDS AT THE BORDER

by Wendy Hoffman

A Mexican court issued arrest orders Thursday for six people in relation to the fire that killed 39 migrants at a detention facility this week in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, according to the federal prosecutor leading the investigation. Sara Irene Herrerías said they include three officials from the National Immigration Institute, two private security guards contracted by the agency and the detained migrant accused of starting the fire. She said five of the six had already been arrested and would face charges of homicide and causing injuries. At least 39 migrants died after apparently starting a fire inside a holding cell at the facility Monday night. More than two dozen others were injured. —AP, March 31, 2023

Keys dangled from belts

shone on nearby hooks

jangled next to coins in their pockets

Guards turned away, heads bent

as if in prayer, slithering into escape

escape for themselves, their moist

skin, escape from screaming mattresses

horrified lives who stepped upon

this land of freedom to meet souls

that judged who deserved to die

and those with burnt alive 

consciences

Wendy Hoffman has published three memoirs: The Enslaved Queen, White Witch in a Black Robe, and A Brain of My Own. The Enslaved Queen has been translated and published in Germany (Asanger-Verlag, 2021). Her book of poetry Forceps was published along with a book of essays From the Trenches written with Dr. Alison Miller. Her fourth memoir After Amnesia is published on the SmartNews and Survivorship websites. It also has been translated into German. Her poetry book Belonging is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

I WANT TO SEE IT

by Tricia Knoll

Trump fingerprinted. Putting his fat fingers

on the inky pad, rolling each one back 

and forth like criminals do. Dirty

hands. Who hands him something

to wipe the ink off? Does he bite at his

lip angry about he got here? Does he try 

to make a joke, pretend it’s an autograph

requested by some MAGA man

in a red hat? Talk about it going 

to his Library? 

 

Those secret service agents watching, 

what do they know of irony?

What vow have they made?

 

The bored jail officer has done this

a million times. Can that officer

categorize the look in the eye of this man? 

 

When it’s all done, is he obsessed

with the shadow of ink only he

can see? Wondering what smut 

clogs his crevices, the bacteria 

that linger. Does he ask his aide

for hand sanitizer as if to wipe

away the moment. 

 

Does anyone in the room dare

laugh?

 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. Her most recent collection is One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which shares poems about trees she has loved, planted or worries about in the time of climate change.

QUEENS MAN INDICTED

by Martha Deed

“Lox Him Up!” tweeted by @DAMendelsohnNYC.

A Queens man was indicted Thursday for allegedly making hush money payments to a porn star before he was elected President of the United States in 2016. —Queens Eagle, March 30, 2023

Purple lilac buds double in size almost overnight,

defying snow and ice, while all across the country,

poets are writing small poems each day

for National Poetry Month to prove that they can. 

They seek images that split their lines wide open even in the rain.

Two House Finches—pinkish he, strong-striped she—

24th species of the year to feast at the feeder.

A lame Canada Goose crosses the yard. Green

leaves drip from its beak. A feral black cat

circles the base of the feeder, its eyes to the ground.

The sharp-eyed poets seek something novel,

like whalers persevering through fog.

Trump's first indictment ain't it.

Martha Deed's poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, BlazeVox Journal, Mason Street Review, Unlikelystories, and many others. Her third poetry collection Haunted by Martha is forthcoming from FootHills Publishing in 2023. Two Pushcart Nominations and one Best of the Net Nomination. 

SUNDAY MASS IN OUR ARCHIPELAGO

by Karlo Sevilla

On January 24, 1571, feast of St. John the Baptist, the Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legaspi founded the city of Manila . He earlier took possession of Maynilad, the native settlement of Rajah Matanda and Rajah Sulayman on May 19, 1571 and firmly established Spanish authority in the newly conquered and untrammeled turf. The historic day happened to be the feast of Santa Potenciana and to honor her, she was made patroness of the new territory. Armed with the Spanish sword and the Cross, Legaspi, in his role as conquistador, apportioned a parcel of land for the church of the new settlement under the patronage of La Purisima Inmaculada Concepcion. —History of Manila Cathedral

Nearly 500 years after papal decrees were used to rationalize Europe's colonial conquests, the Vatican repudiated those decrees on Thursday, saying the "Doctrine of Discovery" that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people's culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith. —NPR, March 30, 2023


Another Sunday morning
inside the cathedral;
Baroque, built centuries ago.
First reader quotes a passage
about a people’s liberation
from coerced construction work:
 
And I have promised to bring you up
out of your misery . . . into a land
flowing with milk and honey.
          —Exodus 3:17.
 
Soon, the contrite and otherwise
partake in Holy Communion.
Finally, the priest bids us,
 
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
 
We sing along to the final hymn,
then file out of the hallowed cathedral:
a proud Spanish heritage
from The Empire’s clergy,
built by dint and dirt
of our ancestors’
forced labor.

Karlo Sevilla of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the poetry collections Metro Manila Mammal (Soma Publishing, 2018) and Outsourced!... (Revolt Magazine, 2021). His poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, Protean, Poets Reading The News, Line Rider Press, Radius, Unlikely Stories Mark V, I am not a silent poet, and elsewhere. 

A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Giving the middle finger is a “God-given right,” Canadian judge rules. —The Guardian, March 10, 2023

A judge has ruled that if you are Canuck,

God gave to you a fundamental right

Of self-expression: use what rhymes with duck,

Deployed with off. Although it's not polite,

Good manners maketh not the man who gets

Insulted by a neighbour with a grudge

Vindictively repeating epithets

Expressing scorn. According to the judge,

No crime's committed if you flip the bird,

Rebuffing smears. In all his decades while

In court, no feebler case was ever heard:

Good sense, he said, would see the case's file

Hurled out the window——but, in Montreal,

The courthouse has no windows, none at all!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

SENDING PRAYERS

by Lynn White

Source: Religion Dispatches

They hang like towels.
Towels hung out
to dry in the wind
line upon line of them
blowing in the wind,
prayer flags
sending thoughts
sending blessings
wind dried leftovers 
from days gone by
when laundry was line-dried
and peace and goodwill were sent
as thoughts and prayers 
on the wind
not in the ether.

But in the end
it was never enough.

In the end
it made no difference 
how.

In the end

they’re still hung out to dry.

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, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. Find Lynn at https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/