by Buff Whitman-Bradley
In the break between storms
I go out into the front yard
To smell the blossoms
Of the ceanothus
These are gloomy times
Rain day after day after day
But seasonal sadness
Is the least of our problems
Japan decimated and radioactive
From earthquake tsunami meltdowns
Iraq Afghanistan Libya
The objects of lethal US affections
All over the world
The stench of rotting economies
Hundreds of millions in agony
While the buzzardly few lick their chops
Yesterday in icy rain
Two thousand of us angry fools
Marched and shivered in the streets
For freedom justice and peace
This morning the scent of ceanothus
Does not offer comfort or refuge
But sharpens the sense of injustice
Magnifies the impatience with oppression
A pause for a few aromatic whiffs
A perfumed interlude for re-imagining
The fragrant possible world
Then back into the fray
Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. With his wife Cynthia he is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, Outside In, and co-editor of the forthcoming book About Face: GI Resisters Turn Against War (PM Press, 2011). He is also co-producer/director of the documentary Por Que Venimos.
_____________________________________________________
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
ACQUAINTED WITH WARS
by Earl J. Wilcox
I am one acquainted with wars,
their bravado, mock heroics,
faux patriotic feelings,
their shrill fake thrill of shells exploding
in the skies like celebrations to kill.
I am one acquainted with wars.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
_____________________________________________________
After Robert Frost, March 26, 1874-Jan. 29, 1963
I am one acquainted with wars,
their bravado, mock heroics,
faux patriotic feelings,
their shrill fake thrill of shells exploding
in the skies like celebrations to kill.
I am one acquainted with wars.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
_____________________________________________________
Friday, March 25, 2011
TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE - MARCH 25, 1911
by Phyllis Wax
Wednesday, Dec.15, 2010 (Reuters) A fire at a multi-story garment factory near the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, killed 25 people and injured more than 100 on Tuesday, police, firefighters and doctors said. More than 10,000 people, most of them women, work at the complex ....
Immigrants
locked in
to prevent pilfering
Low-paid seamstresses
waiting to be searched
at the finish of work
A careless match
and a pile of scraps
flares—
Smoke fills the workroom
Flames climb the stairs
of the twelve-story structure
On the top three floors
young women and girls
most Italian or Jewish
Fire truck ladders stretch
only to floor six From windows
on nine, a hundred feet up, they jump
to keep from being burned alive, bodies
thudding as they land
bodies piling up outside
Others burn to the bone
charred skeletons bent
over sewing machines
One hundred forty-six die
Phyllis Wax muses on the news and history from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Your Daily Poem, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Ars Medica, Out of Line, Verse Wisconsin, Seeding the Snow, A Prairie Journal, The New Verse Newsand many other journals and anthologies. She can be reached at poetwax(at)yahoo.com.
_____________________________________________________
Wednesday, Dec.15, 2010 (Reuters) A fire at a multi-story garment factory near the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, killed 25 people and injured more than 100 on Tuesday, police, firefighters and doctors said. More than 10,000 people, most of them women, work at the complex ....
Immigrants
locked in
to prevent pilfering
Low-paid seamstresses
waiting to be searched
at the finish of work
A careless match
and a pile of scraps
flares—
Smoke fills the workroom
Flames climb the stairs
of the twelve-story structure
On the top three floors
young women and girls
most Italian or Jewish
Fire truck ladders stretch
only to floor six From windows
on nine, a hundred feet up, they jump
to keep from being burned alive, bodies
thudding as they land
bodies piling up outside
Others burn to the bone
charred skeletons bent
over sewing machines
One hundred forty-six die
Phyllis Wax muses on the news and history from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Your Daily Poem, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Ars Medica, Out of Line, Verse Wisconsin, Seeding the Snow, A Prairie Journal, The New Verse Newsand many other journals and anthologies. She can be reached at poetwax(at)yahoo.com.
_____________________________________________________
Thursday, March 24, 2011
INVINCIBLE FORTITUDE
Poem by Charles Frederickson; Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote
“Fudoushin” imperturbable resolutely invincible fortitude
Characteristic kanji hiragana katakana steadfastness
Tattooed ethos overcoming great odds
Seamless tightly knit fray togetherness
“Gaman” uncomplaining perseverance starbright spheres
Stoicism gracefully enduring impossible hardships
Unbent radiance rising above horizon
Glistening teardrop pearls hand-knotted restrung
Characteristic kanji hiragana katakana steadfastness
Tattooed ethos overcoming great odds
Seamless tightly knit fray togetherness
“Gaman” uncomplaining perseverance starbright spheres
Stoicism gracefully enduring impossible hardships
Unbent radiance rising above horizon
Glistening teardrop pearls hand-knotted restrung
Collaborative up-stARTISTS Charles Frederickson and Saknarin Chinayote have created more than a thousand colorful hand-drawn, colorful e-gadfly etchings. Art gallery exhibits can be accessed in the archives of Ascent Aspirations, Listen and Be Heard, New Verse News, Poetry Cemetery and Avant-Garde Times. Published covers and graphics artwork have appeared in Dance to Death, Decanto, Eclipse, Poetry Sz and Taj Mahal Review.
_____________________________________________________
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
SIREN
by Danielle Jacobowitz
The dust of uncountable years
had settled into her skin,
turning her hair
a startling shade
of white.
We froze
as the aging sea
stretched and shook,
watched wordless
as she opened her mouth
and closed it over the land,
dragging her teeth
and raking her fingernails
down the walls
of our homes,
leaving the earth
ridden with holes
for her to leak through.
"What of our children?"
we cried
as her terrible lips
receded,
leaving only tremors
to remind us
of the one
she returned
in her unfathomable
mercy.
Danielle Jacobowitz has been writing poetry for twelve years. She has been published once in the Seacoast Entertainer in Portsmouth, NH. Four months ago, she moved to Seattle, WA for a music teaching position.
_____________________________________________________
The dust of uncountable years
had settled into her skin,
turning her hair
a startling shade
of white.
We froze
as the aging sea
stretched and shook,
watched wordless
as she opened her mouth
and closed it over the land,
dragging her teeth
and raking her fingernails
down the walls
of our homes,
leaving the earth
ridden with holes
for her to leak through.
"What of our children?"
we cried
as her terrible lips
receded,
leaving only tremors
to remind us
of the one
she returned
in her unfathomable
mercy.
Danielle Jacobowitz has been writing poetry for twelve years. She has been published once in the Seacoast Entertainer in Portsmouth, NH. Four months ago, she moved to Seattle, WA for a music teaching position.
_____________________________________________________
Monday, March 21, 2011
MT FUJI IN RED
by Alan Catlin
One of Kurosawa’s last dreams:
a panorama of chaos,
thousands fleeing
a nuclear meltdown
with nowhere to go.
The sacred, black mountain
in red:
six reactors exploding
in the distance;
a horizon built on flame.
What remains after:
a woman with two
infants, a man not her
husband, encompassed
by clouds of color coded
fallout, a wasteland
of useless possessions
on a precipice overlooking
a drowning sea.
Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Pygmy Forest Press is publishing the collected "Deep Water Horizon" poems.
_____________________________________________________
One of Kurosawa’s last dreams:
a panorama of chaos,
thousands fleeing
a nuclear meltdown
with nowhere to go.
The sacred, black mountain
in red:
six reactors exploding
in the distance;
a horizon built on flame.
What remains after:
a woman with two
infants, a man not her
husband, encompassed
by clouds of color coded
fallout, a wasteland
of useless possessions
on a precipice overlooking
a drowning sea.
Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Pygmy Forest Press is publishing the collected "Deep Water Horizon" poems.
_____________________________________________________
ON STONY SKIN
by Jed Myers
Today, the earth did not shake
these particular streets.
From my window, each time I looked,
the scene emphasized stillness—
except for some rain, wind
bending the branches, crows
out of and under cover, fast
clouds, cars and planes,
and that squat old woman in her coat,
coming out when it wasn’t pouring,
to sit on the bus stop bench and smoke
one more cigarette. The earth
appeared satisfied to hold
itself together here, to let
things ride. Today,
on this stretch of Pacific shore,
no shudder of the stony skin
we stake our lives in—no ruptured
pipes around unharnessed dragons,
no ocean surges swallowing
whole towns, nor human
tide drifting up like ghosts
out of mangled lives. Tonight?
It hasn’t happened yet…
Drops turn to rivulets
across unbroken glass.
I, like the rest of us—
like most around here, bones
intact—will set the clock
and somehow sleep. Tomorrow’s
packed—things I’ve got to get to
down the hairline-fractured road.
Jed Myers is a Seattle poet and singer-songwriter. His poems appear in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and in the new Rose Alley Press anthology, Many Trails to the Summit. By day he's a psychiatrist with a therapy practice and teaches at the University of Washington.
_____________________________________________________
Today, the earth did not shake
these particular streets.
From my window, each time I looked,
the scene emphasized stillness—
except for some rain, wind
bending the branches, crows
out of and under cover, fast
clouds, cars and planes,
and that squat old woman in her coat,
coming out when it wasn’t pouring,
to sit on the bus stop bench and smoke
one more cigarette. The earth
appeared satisfied to hold
itself together here, to let
things ride. Today,
on this stretch of Pacific shore,
no shudder of the stony skin
we stake our lives in—no ruptured
pipes around unharnessed dragons,
no ocean surges swallowing
whole towns, nor human
tide drifting up like ghosts
out of mangled lives. Tonight?
It hasn’t happened yet…
Drops turn to rivulets
across unbroken glass.
I, like the rest of us—
like most around here, bones
intact—will set the clock
and somehow sleep. Tomorrow’s
packed—things I’ve got to get to
down the hairline-fractured road.
Jed Myers is a Seattle poet and singer-songwriter. His poems appear in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and in the new Rose Alley Press anthology, Many Trails to the Summit. By day he's a psychiatrist with a therapy practice and teaches at the University of Washington.
_____________________________________________________
Sunday, March 20, 2011
ENDURING OCCUPATION
by J. D. Mackenzie
With all the reminders that I’d forgotten
our anniversary, my first thought was
how insensitive of me.
This day meant so much to us both.
I’d neglected the date
made no special plans
but couldn’t forget this time of year.
The whole world remembered it, too.
I didn’t get you a card, never thought
to ask you what you wanted. It wouldn’t
surprise me if you felt that I didn’t care
because every year degrades your dignity more.
Confession: I took you against your will.
You’re a battered woman in a torn burqa
who deserved better than this, but I can’t seem
to let you go because breaking up is hard to do.
On March 20, 2003 our relationship got off to a rocky start.
The statues came down, the banner bleated
Mission Accomplished and all that that pretended.
Do you remember your ephemeral smile, through tears?
Can we agree ours is a relationship
that can’t endure another year because
both of us know that it just isn’t working?
Can this be the last anniversary
we don’t celebrate together?
J. D. Mackenzie remembers the invasion of March 20, 2003 and a few days later the then-President Bush II prancing about an aircraft carrier deck in front of the Mission Accomplished banner. If media folks and political leaders neglect to get this story right, it's up to poets...
_____________________________________________________
The invasion began in the early hours of March 20, 2003 in Iraq.
With all the reminders that I’d forgotten
our anniversary, my first thought was
how insensitive of me.
This day meant so much to us both.
I’d neglected the date
made no special plans
but couldn’t forget this time of year.
The whole world remembered it, too.
I didn’t get you a card, never thought
to ask you what you wanted. It wouldn’t
surprise me if you felt that I didn’t care
because every year degrades your dignity more.
Confession: I took you against your will.
You’re a battered woman in a torn burqa
who deserved better than this, but I can’t seem
to let you go because breaking up is hard to do.
On March 20, 2003 our relationship got off to a rocky start.
The statues came down, the banner bleated
Mission Accomplished and all that that pretended.
Do you remember your ephemeral smile, through tears?
Can we agree ours is a relationship
that can’t endure another year because
both of us know that it just isn’t working?
Can this be the last anniversary
we don’t celebrate together?
J. D. Mackenzie remembers the invasion of March 20, 2003 and a few days later the then-President Bush II prancing about an aircraft carrier deck in front of the Mission Accomplished banner. If media folks and political leaders neglect to get this story right, it's up to poets...
_____________________________________________________
Saturday, March 19, 2011
SCALE
by Shana Wolstein
Sometimes, I watch movies made for children
—for them we let life remain simple.
Today, like that, I watched a fish desire
to be a little girl and the ocean
chased after to reclaim her. The whimsy
of paved streets used as roadways for ancient
fish that slide across mountains like trains; but
this is no longer simple. I wonder
what other whimsy has fallen ill in
the wake of the real wave. What hope fell when
a thousand bodies washed ashore, when just
yesterday I heard only two or three
hundred dead. (To think that only could curb
such a thing.) In the movie, the ocean
is the mother, the father, an evil
wizard; they forgive humanity for
the promise of love. As mom and dad they
come together, we never question why
they began apart, if this disconnect
is to blame. The fish wants to be a little
girl because of love, because she loves a
little boy who promises forever.
But today there is Japan, wiped clean—
the promises we made to the ground and sky
that we had formed something there, in-between.
Is this our space for blame? At one point, we
hoped for time. Long enough to question life:
the how of living, the why. Now we hope
only that it does not get worse. We hope,
like Ponyo, for balance. To set the world
against what we wish and to find order
in this design. For the fish drank blood and
that bonded her to land: her sisters, swirls
of schooling fish, their red scales like linen
uniforms, their eyes bulge out like scared kids.
Now the ocean laps the blood of Japan
and finds itself bound there too. Energy
swells and threatens to engulf again and
we buzz in the saturated air—
not breathing, to hold a kiss like flying.
Because Ponyo ends in the air and we
end, forever falling away from it.
Shana Wolstein is currently studying toward an MFA at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Her work has appeared previously on-line at La Fovea and is forthcoming in Third Coast Magazine.
_____________________________________________________
Sometimes, I watch movies made for children
—for them we let life remain simple.
Today, like that, I watched a fish desire
to be a little girl and the ocean
chased after to reclaim her. The whimsy
of paved streets used as roadways for ancient
fish that slide across mountains like trains; but
this is no longer simple. I wonder
what other whimsy has fallen ill in
the wake of the real wave. What hope fell when
a thousand bodies washed ashore, when just
yesterday I heard only two or three
hundred dead. (To think that only could curb
such a thing.) In the movie, the ocean
is the mother, the father, an evil
wizard; they forgive humanity for
the promise of love. As mom and dad they
come together, we never question why
they began apart, if this disconnect
is to blame. The fish wants to be a little
girl because of love, because she loves a
little boy who promises forever.
But today there is Japan, wiped clean—
the promises we made to the ground and sky
that we had formed something there, in-between.
Is this our space for blame? At one point, we
hoped for time. Long enough to question life:
the how of living, the why. Now we hope
only that it does not get worse. We hope,
like Ponyo, for balance. To set the world
against what we wish and to find order
in this design. For the fish drank blood and
that bonded her to land: her sisters, swirls
of schooling fish, their red scales like linen
uniforms, their eyes bulge out like scared kids.
Now the ocean laps the blood of Japan
and finds itself bound there too. Energy
swells and threatens to engulf again and
we buzz in the saturated air—
not breathing, to hold a kiss like flying.
Because Ponyo ends in the air and we
end, forever falling away from it.
Shana Wolstein is currently studying toward an MFA at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Her work has appeared previously on-line at La Fovea and is forthcoming in Third Coast Magazine.
_____________________________________________________
Friday, March 18, 2011
KNOCK KNOCK
by Lauren Camp
I got the pinking shears out and sliced up today’s newspaper.
Little airborne triangles of newsprint fluttered to the floor.
Libya became Lib,
Lib became Bill, and I remembered my friend,
how when we were kids in 1973,
we belted out the Oreo song
(back then all TV commercials qualified as songs
in my limited musical library).
But I won’t sing it for you now.
There’s nothing to sing about.
The news is thick enough that three pages hurt my palm.
The scissor blade was dulling.
The flickers all tell knock-knock jokes this time of year,
and another part of the house sinks into a hole.
I pull you outside to see the damage.
We stand in the platter of mulch I tossed down
to cover Elizabeth’s double-headed black hollyhock seeds.
Look down, I say. You’re stepping on them.
They’ll never grow now.
Lauren Camp has published a book of poems, This Business of Wisdom (West End Press, 2010). She is an accomplished visual artist and a radio host for Santa Fe Public Radio. A recent guest editor for World Literature Today, her poems have also appeared in Leveler, dirtcakes, Upstairs at Duroc, and other journals. She lives, works and blogs in a rural farming village near Santa Fe, New Mexico.
_____________________________________________________
I got the pinking shears out and sliced up today’s newspaper.
Little airborne triangles of newsprint fluttered to the floor.
Libya became Lib,
Lib became Bill, and I remembered my friend,
how when we were kids in 1973,
we belted out the Oreo song
(back then all TV commercials qualified as songs
in my limited musical library).
But I won’t sing it for you now.
There’s nothing to sing about.
The news is thick enough that three pages hurt my palm.
The scissor blade was dulling.
The flickers all tell knock-knock jokes this time of year,
and another part of the house sinks into a hole.
I pull you outside to see the damage.
We stand in the platter of mulch I tossed down
to cover Elizabeth’s double-headed black hollyhock seeds.
Look down, I say. You’re stepping on them.
They’ll never grow now.
Lauren Camp has published a book of poems, This Business of Wisdom (West End Press, 2010). She is an accomplished visual artist and a radio host for Santa Fe Public Radio. A recent guest editor for World Literature Today, her poems have also appeared in Leveler, dirtcakes, Upstairs at Duroc, and other journals. She lives, works and blogs in a rural farming village near Santa Fe, New Mexico.
_____________________________________________________
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
HEARTLAND MEDITATION
by Elizabeth Kerlikowske
Driving east into the carnival sunrise, I can’t help think
of the Far East, houses spinning in water like tea cups
we spun at the county fair as quake and tsunami chase
the calendar. Whirlpools of birds eddy at the horizon
over Athens, not that Athens, but the one just down M-
66 where the diners at the Kopper Kettle talk about
Japan. Just mentioning it makes the Reuben sandwich
taste radioactive. Maybe those reactors will, like old
cars, heal themselves. When the core melts down,
is it like the cheese on cheesy fries? The bright midway
of disaster keeps the buttons of the drowned, sun a horrible
tv camera on disaster. I juggle three oranges in the pattern
of a biological hazard sign. There will be no rice paper
for a thousand years. On the day the island sank, people
floated for a few hours. Sayonara, citizens, swimmers.
Reactors weep plutonium tears, and for dessert, perhaps
something microwaved and too hot to touch.
Elizabeth Kerlikowske drives to teach and listens to NPR.
_____________________________________________________
Driving east into the carnival sunrise, I can’t help think
of the Far East, houses spinning in water like tea cups
we spun at the county fair as quake and tsunami chase
the calendar. Whirlpools of birds eddy at the horizon
over Athens, not that Athens, but the one just down M-
66 where the diners at the Kopper Kettle talk about
Japan. Just mentioning it makes the Reuben sandwich
taste radioactive. Maybe those reactors will, like old
cars, heal themselves. When the core melts down,
is it like the cheese on cheesy fries? The bright midway
of disaster keeps the buttons of the drowned, sun a horrible
tv camera on disaster. I juggle three oranges in the pattern
of a biological hazard sign. There will be no rice paper
for a thousand years. On the day the island sank, people
floated for a few hours. Sayonara, citizens, swimmers.
Reactors weep plutonium tears, and for dessert, perhaps
something microwaved and too hot to touch.
Elizabeth Kerlikowske drives to teach and listens to NPR.
_____________________________________________________
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
JAPAN: FIRST DAY
by Catherine McGuire
Behind, the closed door of yesterday; another world, that once felt solid.
Before you, unrecognizable, your life.
Like the tangled debris, your memories swept into fractured heaps,
show no coherent shapes; refuse to know what happened.
A neighbor stumbles by, sleepwalking; you can’t recall her name.
Someone’s shoe mud-stuck to the curb. A Suburu, vertical against a pole.
Reek of gasoline, strong enough to bring tears, suggests the danger still lurking.
So much is brined in toxins. All boundaries failed.
Last night, a cold waking nightmare; wrapped in blankets on the 2nd floor
the only nitelights were burning pyres: homes, factories, one inferno of refinery.
Spring had been pushing up in the lanes – bulbs and buds – the trill of birds had returned.
The morning silence is punctuated by groaning timbers, keen of failing metal, the wind’s rales.
There is no news; there are small meals rescued and eaten cold.
There is a search for unscathed bottled water, warm clothes.
You find an intact shovel sticking from a pile by the garage.
You start clearing mud from the first floor, out to the yard where it also doesn’t belong.
What to do is all around: mud, splintered table, fragments of porcelain bowls.
There is no water to wash, so it’s all push and shove.
A stranger walks by holding a small limp figure. You put the shovel down, follow,
walk towards downtown, needing to speak to someone. Anyone.
Passing the library, you find yourself
bursting into tears in front of one blush-pink camellia bloom.
Catherine McGuire is an Oregon poet struggling to comprehend the disaster on the other side of the Pacific. Words, her primary gift, almost fail in the face of such loss.
_____________________________________________________
Behind, the closed door of yesterday; another world, that once felt solid.
Before you, unrecognizable, your life.
Like the tangled debris, your memories swept into fractured heaps,
show no coherent shapes; refuse to know what happened.
A neighbor stumbles by, sleepwalking; you can’t recall her name.
Someone’s shoe mud-stuck to the curb. A Suburu, vertical against a pole.
Reek of gasoline, strong enough to bring tears, suggests the danger still lurking.
So much is brined in toxins. All boundaries failed.
Last night, a cold waking nightmare; wrapped in blankets on the 2nd floor
the only nitelights were burning pyres: homes, factories, one inferno of refinery.
Spring had been pushing up in the lanes – bulbs and buds – the trill of birds had returned.
The morning silence is punctuated by groaning timbers, keen of failing metal, the wind’s rales.
There is no news; there are small meals rescued and eaten cold.
There is a search for unscathed bottled water, warm clothes.
You find an intact shovel sticking from a pile by the garage.
You start clearing mud from the first floor, out to the yard where it also doesn’t belong.
What to do is all around: mud, splintered table, fragments of porcelain bowls.
There is no water to wash, so it’s all push and shove.
A stranger walks by holding a small limp figure. You put the shovel down, follow,
walk towards downtown, needing to speak to someone. Anyone.
Passing the library, you find yourself
bursting into tears in front of one blush-pink camellia bloom.
Catherine McGuire is an Oregon poet struggling to comprehend the disaster on the other side of the Pacific. Words, her primary gift, almost fail in the face of such loss.
_____________________________________________________
Monday, March 14, 2011
ILLEGAL
by Maria Lisella
They call them abd, slaves.
Darker than all the rest,
lower than the Chinese
working in Libya for years.
They are trapped.
“We are somebody
and we are from somewhere.”
They camp at the airport,
on the tarmac, the Libyans step on them,
beat them, whipping dogs.
“Tell someone, we are dying.”
Maria Lisella's Pushcart Poetry Prize-nominated work appears in Amore on Hope Street and Two Naked Feet. She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association literary readings and has been a travel writer for the past 25 years.
_____________________________________________________
They call them abd, slaves.
Darker than all the rest,
lower than the Chinese
working in Libya for years.
They are trapped.
“We are somebody
and we are from somewhere.”
They camp at the airport,
on the tarmac, the Libyans step on them,
beat them, whipping dogs.
“Tell someone, we are dying.”
Maria Lisella's Pushcart Poetry Prize-nominated work appears in Amore on Hope Street and Two Naked Feet. She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association literary readings and has been a travel writer for the past 25 years.
_____________________________________________________
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