TO JAMES BALDWIN FROM A WEARYING POET

by Patricia Brooks

Image source: Family Equality Council

You died too soon, precious James.
We need your eloquent voice
right down here, now more than ever.
Some never heard it; others seem to have
forced their brains to forget.
Most are still dazzled by
those old lures of fortune-and-fame.
Some of us – sorry – have been so intent on
exercising our vocal cords in the vain hope
of singing like yours, that I guess we just missed
some of the subtler beats
on their ominous drums.

Into that vacuum,
the manufacturing skills of The Man
have grown craftier.  Could you even have
nightmared this parade of our frivolous lives,
this legion of beautified faces
by which he is masking his face.
While The Chosen can’t seem to get over
the sound of their magnified voices, crooning to us
everything we still want to hear, showing to us,
in their glossy white pages, everyone we ever wanted
in our beds.

You saw so clearly The Man,
working maniacally in his sealed laboratory,
the gleam of destruction in those eyes
we mistook for human, concocting
ever-more-enticing concoctions --
a dash of weakness here,
a taste of envy there,
a big dollop of greed on the top.
And I must report, it is working!
The cells of the basically decent are breaking down
into confusion.  The skins of the only-observing
are showing seared edges.  Next it will be
those who stand on the rung just below them,
promised a big bite of American Pie for their
loyalty, now just going up like the rest of us
in that smoke you so keenly detected
so long ago.

Then there are those – you would weep for them –
locked in locked closets,
once fooled into doing our dirty work for us,
Now -- 80 each day! every day!
are putting their guns into their mouths,
just hoping to be shot
into a better world.

That sure fire you proclaimed
from the top of your mountain
is growing ever-hotter, is faster and faster
turning our lives to vainglorious dust.
While those once well-meaning but weak
have been oh-so-cleverly enticed to shout out
Yes!  Yes!  Bomb those bastards for bombing us!
Torture those torturers!
as lustily as any Roman spurred on his gladiator
blinded by pride, to sink his sword into a lion
just being a lion.

Your eyes would never believe,
James the Ascetic, just how high is
this mountain of goodies The Man, posing as baker,
keeps turning out on our well-polished tables
for our runaway gluttony.
Just the shine of his toys
would blind you in minutes.
And our sons and our daughters,
godhelpthem,
believe they can talk to each other
in only one hundred and forty lowercap letters.
And Jimmy, they actually imagine
they are saying something so tiny
is profound.  Those of us older
pretend that our hearts are still beating,
while the lifeblood of our bodies is leaking,
almost unnoticed, away.  Until soon
we’ll be only so many dried leaves
under his feet.

So we need you, still need you,
kind Mr. Baldwin.  That teacher
who instructed us so softly,
so mightily.  Even the best of our voices
can’t rise to the height of your mountain.
So please, sir, if you cannot come back,
could you possibly find just some castoff connector
from the home of one of the fallen, to give us
just one more transfusion
of your healing fire?

So sing to us, sing to us,
just one more time.  We promise to
study your lyrics more clearly, your words with more
reverence if you’ll only come back to us
just one more time
before it’s too late.


Patricia Brooks is the author of two commercially published novels and is now working 24/7 to finish the epic historical novel Eagle and Child, eleven years in the birthing.  A key chapter of the novel will be published in the Spring issue of the Mandala Journal, the literary publication of the Afro-American Studies program at the University of Georgia.  She has published short fiction and poetry in a variety of journals, most recently Whirlwind, Blast Furnace, The Voices Project, Narrative Northeast, and The Great American Literary Magazine, now posted on-line.

EVERY TREE WITH NO BODY HANGING

by David Oates

Every tree with no body hanging from it
every single one,

Georgian trees, thousands of them, an earthbound cloud layer
I see from above, flying in here where I've returned for reasons, reasons,
but then a walk down among them in Piedmont Park, ruminative
(I was here decades ago, with my secret wounds, my pretending
to be straight, to be smart),

all these trees here in the midst of  moneymaking Atlanta,
and likewise out at Stone Mountain where barbeque grilles
come in pickup trucks to be with Robert E. Lee,
and trees far up in the hiking woods where no one goes,
and beside the coming and going parking places on Peachtree
with the peopled sidewalk always near,
and trees in gazebo lawn jockey suburban yards without end,

and I can't stop thinking of it, what's happened here
and what's happened so many places, Jeff Davis, Strom Thurmond, Pol Pot,
the bodies hanging, that Wyoming boy barb-wired,
everywhere really, Indians hunted down for sport
Yana Modoc Paiute Cherokee Calapooya Chinook,
and death lasering down from American planes as I write this
and I wonder what's the use, what's the use,
but then I realize

every tree I see with no body hanging from it
is some kind of victory. Every single one.

* * *

Every single tree without a body hanging
means that we're winning.

Because every tree breathes your name, so quiet you might miss it:
sunlight soaking into the cells, each photon
delivering its stellar news of awakening
to its one mild microscopic green willingness;
and the friendly air circulating
leaf by leaf along serrated edge and over tiny hair and bump and vein                                                                  
in such precision of making as cannot be stopped,
each molecule greeting the exact membrane,
breath and breathing, every moment
a million million tender to enter and leave.

Thugs and armed men have no idea.
They make wars, they hang a few or send bullets through them.
Their subtractions are puny. Their idea is puny. They thrust
and steal elections and congratulate each other.
They cannot undo the rest of us. Our idea is big.
We are always winning.

Forests of this idea grow everywhere and they keep busy
remembering it day and night: yes they do: in
cities and suburbs and freeway medians
jungles scrubs heaths chaparrals woodlots copses spinneys
a memorial world unfolding life, life, life.

The killers can only kill. We are making, making, and we cannot be stopped.

We need to remember this.
We are winning.
Every breath is the victory
and every tree -- every single one -- the promise of it.


David Oates writes about nature and urban life from Portland, Oregon. His poetry has won awards (Badonnah Award from Bitterroot Poetry, finalist for Pablo Neruda Long Poem Award from Nimrod), and appeared in many places including Poetry/LA, Yellow Silk, ISLE, Fireweed, Windfall, and California Poetry Quarterly.  His book Peace in Exile: Poems was published by Oyster River Press. He is also author of four books of nonfiction, including Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature from Oregon State University Press. He was Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana in 2012. Oates won first place for essay from Northern Colorado Writers in August of 2014, and a Pushcart nomination. Currently his poetry and prose are being featured in the German literary magazine Wortschau in English and German. He leads the Wild Writers Seminars in Portland, and teaches workshops and graduate classes in the United States and Europe. 

BRIAN WILLIAMS

by Dennis Mahagin

Brian Williams, suspended anchor of NBC Nightly News, with American troops at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, Iraq, in March 2007. Credit Photo by Jeff Riggins/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images accompanying “Was Brian Williams a Victim of False Memory?” by Tara Parker-Pope, NY Times, February 9, 2015

You got fourteen seconds
To make it
Right … INCOMING ! Heh he he he heh, just
Kidding, guy, I like a little
Lie, good
In the sky.
It’s like listening to a
Vacuum, the next
One and the next,
It’s like
Anti-Macassar,
Hezbollah, black flak
Cleaner in another room,
One down the hall
A whopper in the hopper
And knowing
Will come to an end
Soon. I want you to take five
No eight
Months, be chilling in Cancun,
Wait for my call, wait for it
This will all blow away
Like an Andover squall
One of those big bruise colored
Motherfuckers grin
Like Oz
@ the rim, ask God
Ask him
How it’s all done
With mirrors, a little white one
Now and then. You’re our
Man, you have always been
I played a little cornerback
Myself, have I told you?
NYU, then Cornell, no quarter
Back quarterback !  heh heh
How I learned my best
Dance steps, sweater vest,
Show you my
Gene Kelly
Someday, this is fading, fading
Away, already, the truth
Is a voice
In an air vent, it
Drips from the eaves, hits
Rockefeller’s
Pavement
… look fuckit, take
A year, will ya?
Search for
Your Soul, go where
it meant.


Dennis Mahagin’s poems have appeared in Evergreen Review, Absinthe Literary Review, Exquisite Corpse, Everyday Genius, elimae, The Nervous Breakdown, Corium, Stirring, Juked and Night Train. His latest poetry collection is called Longshot & Ghazal – available now from Mojave River Press.

A MAN BURNED ALIVE IS REINCARNATED AS A FIREFIGHTER

by Jay Sizemore

Ocean of Fire by Gate to Nowhere at DeviantArt

Kinship with ash,
he once wept smoking a cigarette.
Why do my tears smell like gasoline?

Nightmares in orange,
he’s sweat enough to saturate cities.
Sometimes, he dreams he is Joan of Arc.

Skin charred like paper,
blood still escapes
through the cracks, a dark syrup.

His armor gets heavy,
breath shallow in the smoke,
searching for survivors,

he loses his voice,
feels his ashen jaw come unhinged,
remembers the prayer he muttered

before first touching the flame:
Let me live again
as an ocean avenging an effigy.


Jay Sizemore brought the high-five out of retirement. He did not graduate from college, and is personal foot masseuse to his lovely wife. He knows the words to almost every Ryan Adams song. You can find his work in places online and in print. He lives in Nashville, TN, where music goes to die. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

MEMO FROM BUSHEHR

by Paul Smith

(Reuters, February 7, 2015) - Iran's foreign minister has warned the United States that failure to agree a nuclear deal would likely herald the political demise of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani, Iranian officials said, raising the stakes as the decade-old stand-off nears its end-game. 

The card game here
Was rigged, they said
But all paid to get in
And ante up for the small blind
Or the big one
It was the Jakarta Kid
Who said
‘Watch out for whoever’s not here’
When the turbaned gentleman
Dealt the only hand
It was aces and eights
The gents in smocks guffawed
The Jakarta Kid haw-hawed
The Brussels Sprouts all shouted
But it was the turbaned gent
Who just stared
At the two pairs
In front of him
Dealt by someone behind
Who wasn’t there
There were no winners
They all went to play
Another game somewhere
Save the turbaned gentleman
Who vanished in thin air


Paul Smith lives near Chicago.  He writes fiction & poetry.  He likes Hemingway, really likes Bukowski, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks and Slim Harpo.  He can play James Jamerson's bass solo for 'Home Cookin' by Junior Walker & the Allstars.

OUR LEADERS AREN'T LEARNING

by George Salamon

"With advice from  more than 200 policy experts, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to answer what has emerged as a central question of her early presidential campaign strategy: how to address the anger about income inequality without overly vilifying the wealthy."  The New York Times, February 8, 2015

In the twenty-first century we choose to be blind
To what Juvenal glimpsed in the first:
"Is it just simple madness to lose a hundred thousand,
And then refuse a shirt to a shivering slave?"
It was so in Rome then as it is in America today,
But the eyes of two-hundred policy experts are wide shut
To where the madness led then and is leading now:
"Most of mankind is now at sea! Wherever the hope
Of profit leads, a fleet will follow."
Madness, Juvenal understood, comes in different guises,
The ships following one sink as do those following another.
He knew what our leaders dismiss; but it takes no
Sherlock to know that in this case
two-hundred heads are not better than one.


George Salamon taught German at several colleges, served as staff reporter for the St. Louis Business Journal and Senior Editor of Defense Systems Review. He contributes regularly to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

NEW EXCLUSIVE LISTING FOR ANTI-VAXXERS

by J. D. Mackenzie

Image by Scott Bateman

My imaginary, quasi-libertarian
real estate brokerage
has an island to sell you

It’s cheap, it’s expensive
and you’ll have it all to yourself
save for a few other
self-destructive chumps

Caveat: when the note comes due
it will cost you everything

You, and those you love

So go there now
and remain there together

Bask on the non-existent beaches
but stay out of our gene pool
for all of your dying days


J. D. Mackenzie writes poetry and short fiction when not writing budgets, grants, and faculty appraisals as a college administrator. A 2011 Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared infrequently since he often misplaces submission guidelines and forgets to check email. He lives with his family in the foothills of Oregon’s Coastal Range.

PRESUMPTION

by Catherine Wald

Image source: NY Daily News

So many are the barriers we cross –
mountains, rivers, doorways in
and doorways out – we can’t
pause at every junction
to ponder the alternatives,
consider every sharp stake
we might be impaled on; every
body of water eager to swallow
us up; every potential mechanical
malfunction in a world dominated
by machines.

What would life be like if,
every time you drove across a
train track, you had to wonder
what your kids would do without
you, how your gas tank might im-
plode on impact, who you are likely
to kill without meaning any harm?

What we presumed:  SUVs
are invulnerable, trains
are stoppable, each of us
has the right to traverse
any obstacle that blocks
our path.

Were we wrong?


Catherine Wald has frequently taken the Metro North train from New York City to Valhalla. Her books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly andWestchester Review.

EXTREMISM

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

Whose world is it anyway
Borderless planet flooded azure blue
No deity superior to all
Others praying to whichever listens

Unalterable creed makes tenets sacrosanct
Feminine sexuality emancipating driven women
Barbaric uncivil wrongs ignorance barbarism
Detrimental to everything save war

Universe of pure unadulterated hatred
Without knowing or understanding why
Dogma forced down parched throats
No violent intolerant extreme endures

Faceless weak narrow-minded trapdoor
Freedom of speech slammed shut
Censored opinions intent on recreating
World in own perverted image

Medieval mindsets dominating modern crusade
Bent distorted time-bomb warps confusing
Madness with mission malignant stupidity
Uncommon cause War Crimes Inquisition

Our real enemy is fanaticism
Duped by superstitions rumors black-and-blue lies
Imposing domination controlling underlings’ Fate
Stifling creative freedom of expression


No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 

I CANNOT SAVE

by Howard Winn

“January 2015- BC’s War on Wolves continues: As you read this, wolves in British Columbia, Canada are being shot at by hunters in helicopters. This is an ill-conceived plan to save endangered caribou in B.C.. The wolves are not responsible for the dwindling caribou numbers; habitat loss and human encroachment are. But wolves are taking the blame and paying the price. B.C. Wolves Need Your Help: Consider donating to our Indiegogo Campaign. Sign the Save B.C. Wolves petition.” --PACIFICWILD.org

I cannot save
them all
the wolves and walruses
the manatee and elephants
the white rhino and
the mountain gorilla
not to mention the cod
and the tarpon
of course we have
already lost the
passenger pigeon
so nothing to do there
but perhaps we
can save the redwoods
although they are
unlikely to personally care
as with the need to save
the Colorado River
and the Amazon rain
forest which is being
clear cut for agriculture
so we have to save
the indigenous people
who live in the woods
and the song birds that
are the tiny relics
of the extinct dinosaurs
so much to save and
I cannot finish the list
if only I were a heartless
sociopath without empathy
or a care in the universe
beyond my selfish self
like the Ayn Rand disciples
one could be oblivious
and blissful in the face
of obvious total extermination
as the earth we know
turns into Mars, Pluto, or Ceres.


Howard Winn’s poetry and fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals such as The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Dalhousie Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Journal, Blueline, and Sediments Literary Arts Journal. He is a State of New York University Professor of English.

THIS PAST FULL MOON

by Laura Rodley

Image Source: Victoria Advocate

At night sometimes lying
on wings makes it hard to sleep
especially on a bright moon night
like last night, I must turn
my arms towards her beaming
the luminescence feeds wings’ feathers
a fuel that requires no burning
but tingles as feathers are reborn, intact,
charged with the gentle beaming,
moonlight you do not have to hide
your eyes against, consciences
are like that; you do not have
to hide from them, wearing
wings steers you in the right direction
there’s no right or wrong, just clarity
a moonbeam’s worth, all
you ever needed.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

STILL LIFE WITH FIREARMS

by Howie Good

Image source: Truth Inside of You

A three-year-old reaching for an iPod in his mother’s purse grabbed a loaded gun instead before shooting both his parents in an Albuquerque motel room on Saturday, according to news reports. --Washington Post, February 1, 2015 

Davie (FL) police are investigating how a toddler got his hands on a gun and accidentally shot his mother, Capt. Dale Engle said Monday. --Sun Sentinal, February 2, 2015

Dragons fighting
in the meadow.

What a story
it makes – their blood
yellow as dust.

There are
276 million guns
in America.

Do the math.

About 40 people
are murdered
by guns each day.

Tucked away
in a monastery
in the Northeast Kingdom,
a monk sat
in the lotus position
for 200 years,

counting
how many ways
there are
to kill a man.


Howie Good is a senior fellow of the Dale Wisely Center for Disembodied Poetics.

USE ME INSTEAD

by Jay Sizemore

Photo of Rev. Joy M. Gonnerman. “The idea originated on a closed Facebook group for Lutheran clergy, where pastors were discussing how North Miami Beach’s police department had been caught using mugshots of actual people for target practice. Let’s send in our own photos for target practice, the pastors decided. The target-practice story had come to light after National Guard Sgt. Valerie Deant saw bullet-riddled mugshots of black men at a police gun range. One photo was of Deant’s brother.” --Elahe Izadi, Washington Post, January 25, 2015

The dark silhouette of a dark silhouette
threatens you with its darkness,
asks you to draw your pistol
and find your aim,
this darkness has no name,
is not a body full of words
like “mother” or “beginning,”
is not a tributary of stars.

Before you put holes in their faces,
before you forget their most human traces,
shine a light,
see the mirror beneath the flesh,
see that every shadow is a man holding his breath,
and every target is a heart inside a chest,
and if you must practice killing
these mortal likenesses,
please, use mine instead.

Punch your fears through my brow,
fill my nostrils with blood,
the scent of burnt nitroglycerin.
Build a hallway through my skull
to carry the wheelbarrow
of everything you never learned
about everyone else in the world,
adding my smile to the stacks upon stacks
of mouths never to show their teeth again.

I am a walking bullseye,
imagine my limp carcass on the street,
imagine stepping over puddles
to keep the red off your feet,
imagine pulling a trigger
before ever speaking to me,
looking down
and seeing your own son
being covered with a sheet.


Jay Sizemore dropped out of college and sold his soul to corporate America. He still sings Ryan Adams songs in the shower. Sometimes, he writes things down. His work has appeared online and in print with magazines such as Rattle, Prick of the Spindle, DASH, Menacing Hedge, and Still: The Journal. He's never won an award. Currently, he lives in Nashville, TN, home of the death of modern music. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

LISTEN TO THE COLD: A ONCE-YOUNG EDITOR REMEMBERS

by Kate Bernadette Benedict

 “I’ve just visited Rod McKuen!”
 “Who’s he?” asked the other passenger
and the elevator took us down.

Author's note: As a young book editor, Rod McKuen was assigned to me and I helped bring out two of his books (The Power Bright and Shining and The Beautiful Strangers).  In a way, the situation pained me, for my preference, even then, was for poetry of a more literary type ... but still, this was Rod of the Lovable Persona, so I was torn between warring impulses of wanting to dismiss him and wanting him to read aloud in that husky voice, just to me.

Kate Bernadette Benedict lives and writes in Riverdale, NY.