YAWN

by Rose Mary Boehm

This week, Key West, Fla., experienced record-high temperatures, with a heat index of 115 degrees. Even the late Jimmy Buffett would have had trouble finding enough margaritas for that. Parts of South Florida were also hit by smoke from wildfires burning hundreds of miles away in Mexico. This is also the week that Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that removes the words climate change from many state laws. —NPR, May 17, 2024

So they had another party. 

Too high, too drunk, too wasted, they didn't notice

when half their guests and a major piece of their huge

garden disappeared, pulled into the ink-dark waters

by an enormous, merciless hand.

They laughed when the swimming pool followed.

But suddenly they woke and looked at each other's distorted faces

in horror, then drifted off

with the competing currents.

There was no-one to look for their bloated bodies,

because there was no-one left to care.

And the sharks inherited the waters.

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit 2022), and Saudade (2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection Life Stuff published by Kelsay Books in 2023.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

by Lisa Seidenberg

Woman found living in Family Fare sign in Midland, Michigan for almost a year.

It had a roof and a door

space for a laptop and clothes

electric kettle, plant and more

in her improvised home

above the big box store.

warmed on chill Michigan nights

wrapped in rays of a red neon sign 

while unseeing shoppers passed below 

What thoughts crossed her mind

as she lay perched behind the sign;

Is it a crime to be homeless in America?

settlers came to this land 

with only their hands

and some tools and their wits

making up the rules of wrong

and right as survival

is the primal law

not simply a need for shelter

led her to this penthouse nest. 

living for a year like a stealthy mountaineer

scaling the crest of Family Fare. 

a temporary home.

a summit of her own.

Lisa Seidenberg is a writer and filmmaker who makes documentaries and poetry films. She enjoys reading poems on the Rattlecast and other poetry performance venues. 

THE CONVENIENT WIFE

by Elisabeth Frischauf

cartoon by Bill Bramhill

Pockets strife

Shoulders the blame

Picks up the stain

For anyone

Fanning the flame

Against husband’s fame

Deep in her bosom

Buries misdeeds

Twitter poison feed

Lucky this man

Justice of our land

Whose wife

With bravura and passion

Hangs

Our stripes and stars

Upside down

Elisabeth Frischauf is a psychiatrist, grandmother, and visual artist in many media: ceramics, collage, mobiles. Poetry is intimately bound up with her art.  Being multilingual and anchored in two cultures—the family homeland in Austria and New York City— enriches all her work. Her epic narrative memoir poem, They Clasp My Hand, short-listed for the Austria Literary Prize, was published in April 2022 by the Theodor Kramer Verlag, Vienna, Austria. This book is in process for on demand, English only, by She Writes Press.  Two more memoir verse books are in the publication pipeline.  She publishes poems in various on-line magazines. She lives with her husband, playwright Richard France by a lake in Putnam County, New York.

GRAB-'EM-BY-THE-PUSSY ℞: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

by Steven Shankman

The former guy and a detail of “Oedipus and the Sphinx” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, part of the collection at the Louvre in Paris. (Trump photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images; “Oedipus” image by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images via The Los Angeles Times) 

King Oedipus was certain he alone

Could fix it. When he heard his Thebans groan,

Then die en masse, he offered his expert

Advice. Blame Creon, blame the seer! Hurt

By the grim news, he vowed to find the cause

Of the great plague, to act at once, not pause

To look within himself. It soon was clear

He was himself the cause, his pride, his fear

Of self-examination. Sophocles

Saw Oedipus as Athens, her disease

A plague of arrogance. Our former leader

(Unlike King Oedipus), a bottom-feeder,

Has none of the ancient king’s nobility

But like King Oedipus he fails to see

He is the plague. Devoid of empathy,

Obsessed with money and celebrity,

He feeds red hats to haters. USA!

USA first! We’re winners, led the way

In COVID-19 deaths! The plague will stay

Until the voters make it go away. 

 

Steven Shankman holds the UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor of English and Classics Emeritus. His poems have appeared in a number of journals including Sewanee Review, Literary Imagination, Tikkun, Literary Matters, and Poetica Magazine. He is one of the co-editors of The World of Literature (1999), an anthology of world literature from a global perspective that contains some of his own poetic translations from Chinese, Greek, and Latin. His Penguin edition of Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad appeared in 1996. His chapbook of poems Kindred Verses was published in 2000. His book of poems Talmudic Verses (Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2023. He is the author of many scholarly books, including Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies (SUNY Press, 2010), which contains some of his own original poetry, and Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison (Northwestern UP, 2017).

ROUH (ARABIC FOR SOUL)

by Jane Edna Mohler

A premature Palestinian baby, who was saved from her mother’s womb after she was killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip, has died after days in an incubator. Sabreen al-Rouh Jouda died in a Gaza hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her, said her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh Jouda. [Photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters via Al Jazeera, April 26, 2024

You were red and blind as a just-hatched robin

when they cut you from your silent mother.

 

On the news, your curled form was cradled

by a doctor who needed you to live

 

even more than me. I hope

your nakedness didn’t shame you.

 

It made me love you.

 

They named you Sabreen al-Rouh, prescient,

as you had too much soul for the three pounds

 

your mother had time to give you.

Her name was Sabreen al-Sakani.

 

They call her a martyr.

You call her Mama.

 

At five days old you still knew the cadence

of her heartbeat. You flew to her

 

while your body rests under the mud of sorrow

that tears have made of Gaza’s dust.

 

 

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

CAN YOU LET THE CICADA BE BEAUTIFUL?

by Morrow Dowdle

When one, newly broken from its honeyed shell

tests flight’s imperative,

   whirs, strikes your skin,

will you turn to see who’s there?  Don’t look up.

Don’t think you deserve only what’s lofted.

This holy spirit lies on asphalt on its back.

 

Reconsider where it comes from, this fear

of what that can’t harm us. 

        Why do we hate it?

Turn it over if you are brave enough to touch it. 

Braver still if you will lift it.  Make your fingers

delicate as chopsticks on a robin’s egg.

Don’t pitch it in the grass.  Let it cling

to your wrist,

           its legs’ gentle sharpness.  You are just

another kind of tree, flesh-barked.  It crawls

your arm, and that’s when you see its eyes of red,

such a red we could never manifest—

not the richest lips, not the sex in its engorged

glory.  And its wings,

           its wings when they unstick,

intricate as any dragonfly, yet you’ll never find them

enshrined in silver, glass, or amethyst.

Are you brave enough, now, to allow it

to approach your head?  You have no xylem, no sap

for it to taste.  Nothing

                                     to dread.  But would you kiss it?

Could you name it the most modest of angels,

if much disgraced?  An angel must have wings,

but surely, it can wear any face.

 

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.  They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. A former physician assistant, they now work as a creative writing instructor for current and former prison inmates. They live in Hillsborough, NC.

RIVER OF RHETORIC

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Cartoon by Mira Scharf, The Times of Israel

In its own words, the founding principle of the Netanyahu coalition is that “the Jewish people has an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of Eretz Yisrael” — Eretz Yisrael is a Hebrew term referring to the entire territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The Netanyahu coalition envisions a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which would grant full rights only to Jewish citizens, partial rights to a limited number of Palestinian citizens and neither citizenship nor any rights to millions of oppressed Palestinian subjects. —The Washington Post, May 13, 2024

"From the river to the sea,"

Bibi says, "It's all for me.

If you've got opposing views, 

I'll just say you hate the Jews."

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had four previous poems in The New Verse News.

DO WE HAVE A DEAL?

by Steven Kent

A billion cash, that oughta do it.

   Regulations? You'll be free.

The sky, the air, the water—screw it!

   What'd they ever do for me?

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, and Snakeskin. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

HOW I LOVE YA, STORMY

by Catherine Gonick

So he called you a toilet, you called him a turd
you could flush. You talked so fast
the court reporter couldn’t keep up.
You were made out to be rough, a body
made for rough treatment. Then you proved
a slut is a spy in the world of men,
a refugee who threads the mountain pass
through snow, barefoot. She wears 
the veil turned inside out
to expose its scarlet lining, floats
her soul upon the ceiling. She is smart
as the whip he asks her to use
on his sorry ass, his little-boy mouth.
She is his punisher, he her power.
They are connected by a belt of gold
in a tug-of-war, an umbilical cord
of blood smeared to dry on paper. 
And you weren’t meant to be funny
but couldn’t be stopped 
when he and the law were served
official notice of your humor.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and  Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate. 

I’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE

by Jerry Krajnak

David Shapiro, Who Gained Fame in Poetry and Protest, Dies at 77: A renowned member of the New York School of poets, he also found accidental notoriety when he was photographed during the 1968 uprising at Columbia University... Mr. Shapiro was just weeks from graduating when another student photographed him when the office of the university’s president, Grayson Kirk, in Low Library was occupied. Shown seated in a high-backed chair behind the administrator’s paper-strewn desk, Mr. Shapiro captured the spirit of a moment, casually smoking one of Mr. Kirk’s cigars while wearing sunglasses and a defiant smirk. —The New York Times, May 10, 2024

They locked us out of Schofield Hall,
police demanded we disperse,
warned us we disturbed the peace,
endangered safety, led us away;
 
meanwhile, eight thousand miles away,
bamboo huts were being torched,
buffaloes and chickens shot,
farmers’ daughters raped,
 
and military chiefs kept score
with their bloody body counts
repeated nightly on channel 13
before the local weather.
 
I slowly rock on a cabin porch,
a snoring dog at my feet,
listen as a mockingbird calls
from far across the pond.
 
Another responds, so near to us
that we both flinch, get up
and enter the cabin, turn on the news,
hear about Gaza, Ukraine.
 
We watch as New York tents get smashed,
see ziptied children led away.
I join them, rise with my gray hair
in solidarity.

Author’s Note: I was in college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1968. The events were not as dramatic for us as they were for Columbia students either then or now, but they are all true. Also, I thank the spirit of Sylvia Plath for help with the penultimate line.

Jerry Krajnak is a Vietnam veteran who later survived forty years in public school classrooms. A Pushcart nominee, his recent work appears in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry, One Art, Star 82 Review, Rat's Ass Review, and other journals.

SENATOR UNINFORMED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

A U.S. senator calls 

the tents set up 

at universities

camps for Hamas;

and he says

he supports Israel

and if Hamas 

surrenders

and hostages

are released

the war will end.

He adds 

that he is 

deeply 

disappointed

that the President

has paused

some shipments

of heavy weapons

to Israel. Deeply 

disappointed

Senator 

Fetterman?

That is how 

I feel as well 

about you. 

Your ignorance

resounds. This

is not  binary.

Instead 

of pledging 

allegiance to Israel

come what may,

why don’t you 

in turn bow 

to the Palestinian

right of return

to homes from which 

they have been  

expelled since 1948? 

Why don’t you cite 

the ever smaller

wedge of Palestinian 

land, about twenty 

percent of what 

was assigned

to them in 1948?

Can you manage

to turn your head

around that fact?

Twenty percent?. 

One fifth of 

a shrinking pie?

And you say,

hard disagree

deeply disappointed.

Mr. Fetterman

pitch your tent

in Gaza. Wait

for food 

to be dropped

from the sky

Run and hide

when bombs

fall down 

instead.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.