THE MAYOR WEDS THE ALLIGATOR PRINCESS

by Luisa A. Igloria

San Pedro Huamelula, Mexico

1

Know
that I do
not take
these vows
lightly—
To wed ‘s
a serious
undertaking
fraught  with
more than
what’s fleeting:
thrashing of
limbs and tails
in the nuptial
bed, as the whole
town erupts
in a chorus
of bells and
feasting—
Diplomacy
takes skill
and  just
the right
amount of
daring:
I’ll swing
you round
the plaza
in a dance
meant to
cajole your
benevolence:
and the gifts
of a year’s
good fishing
in our nets,
tax I pay for
your watery
reprieve.

2

Dear mortal
Bridegroom,
your human
wife and child
have dressed me
in a trousseau:
lace underskirt
and a coronet
of small white
flowers; and for
good measure,
a round of duct
tape fastening
my jaws. I do
not, technically,
therefore, give
my consent
but play along,
though I obey
a different
order—In
my world,
chance is not
a thing to be
propitiated—
It prowls
the shallows,
sometimes
small as
a passing
minnow;
other times
it breaks
the surface
just because
it can, maw
opening
to the sun,
teeth brighter
than a dowry
of diadems.


Luisa A. Igloria’s most recent publication credits include Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014) and Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014).

THE HEART IN DARKNESS

by Geoffrey A. Landis

Image source: New Horizons Spacecraft Displays Pluto’s Big Heart

Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist, a science fiction writer, and a poet. As a science fiction writer, he's written over fifty short stories and one novel, which have appeared in over 20 languages.  As a poet, he has written numerous poems, and has a new collection, The Book of Whimsy, coming out at the end of July.  As a scientist, he works at NASA John Glenn Research Center on exploring Mars and developing new technology for space. 

LOW BEAMS IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

by James Croteau

Along the Mississippi Delta. Image source: My American Odyssey

Only low beams lit the road

as my parents drove Highway 61

from Memphis through Clarksdale

to Cleveland with civil rights marches

all around us. I never knew

it's not a delta at all, no mouth

until further south. It's all alluvial

plain, this place of my birth. Grandpa

disembarked in Baltimore's harbor

in 1921, moved south when

cotton was still king but

he never planted. Instead he owned

a five and dime on Main Street

in Cleveland. I was proud

to help clerk. Sometimes he'd aim

squinted eyes my way, talk the Italian

he taught me “follow that N-word."

"It's the longest stretch of straight road

east of the Great River," my dad

always said as he drove, low beams

to avoid blinding the oncoming

drivers like us. We got used to not seeing

anything beyond the white

cotton by the side of the road.

Living legacies are often at the periphery

of the privileged. Even amid

outcries at the murders in the streets

and the churches, we whites miss

the lay of the land by

low beaming our questions--

Was the officer following policy?

Was the shooter mentally ill?

Isn't the KKK really to blame?

But I've been lucky, my eyes

have been pried apart by

a few good people. I see some

beyond the well-meant

intentions in front of my face.

The fertile flatness was freely

brought by the floods of the Yazoo

and Mississippi, then it was stolen

and exploited--Indian removal, slavery,

sharecropping, Jim Crow de jure

and de facto, this history's alive and

denied. If I high beam my heart

I can see that I could have been

Darren Wilson, even Dylann Roof.

I learn how the land of my birth

really lies, only when I can feel

the white of my finger placed

everyday on the trigger of the gun

I was given on the day I was born.

James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, The New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing. He has a series of poems upcoming in April 2014 in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry.

SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY

by Max Gutmann

A group of Confederate flag supporters gathered near the Oklahoma high school where President Obama is scheduled to speak Wednesday afternoon, claiming that the flag represents heritage–not racism.“We’re not gonna stand down from our heritage. You know, this flag’s not racist. And I know a lot of people think it is, but it’s really not. It’s just a southern thing, that’s it,” Trey Johnson told KFOR. Johnson drove three hours from Texas to join the protest.   —BUZZPO July 15, 2015; Photo by Steven Romo / Twitter

When I welcome you, it's the intent
That's important. If you get all bent
Out of shape with offense,
Then you ain't got good sense;
What you heard ain't the thing that I meant.

Ain't that sensible? Then let's agree:
As your host, I am perfectly free
To display one long digit
And call you an idjit,
'Cause those are endearments to me.


Max Gutmann has contributed to The American Drivel Review and other publications.

THE MILITARY DIET IS KILLING ME

by Sarah Frances Moran

Image source: The Military Diet

For breakfast I have a piece of toast with peanut butter.
My stomach grumbles 4 hours later.

For lunch I have crackers, cheese and an apple.
I drink one liter of water. I think, I might waste away
on this diet.

At dinner I have a portion of fish with two sides
of vegetables.
I cringe at the way the kitchen smells like someone passed gas
as the broccoli warms up.
I’m grumpy because I want a beer.
I’m grumpy because I want something more filling.

Three hours later as I lay in bed
My stomach begins making noises like an asteroid
has landed in the pit of it
and everything inside is on fire.
I think I’m dying.
I decide to eat whatever the fuck I want in the morning.

In the seconds while I dramaticize my hunger pains
6 people die.

The science of hunger is felt by 1 billion people.
I am not actually one of these people.

I’m sure one of these people lives in the same city as me.
I decide gluttony really is a sin.
More so than the popular sins in the news these days.

When I get up in the morning,
I do not eat whatever I want.

On my drive to work,
two grackles fight over left over something in the
middle of the road.
It is a fierce battle that nearly gets one of them hit by an
on-coming car.
My on-coming car.

I am hungry. My stomach turns.
I will not die fighting over food,

but I should concede to battle a hunger
larger than my small belly.

Small as a fist.

1 billion people won’t eat a fist full of food today.
Grackles fight over crumbs in the road.
6 people will die every minute because they have nothing to eat.
Our world is overflowing with tragedy…

but my largest tragedy
is I won’t get a beer today
I will not drink a beer today
I cannot drink a beer today

and I think I’m going to die.


Sarah Frances Moran is a stick-a-love-poem-in-your-back-pocket kind of poet. She thinks Chihuahuas should rule the world and prefers their company to people 90% of the time. Her work has most recently been published or is upcoming in Maudlin House, Blackheart Magazine, Red Fez and The Bitchin' Kitsch. She is Editor/Founder of Yellow Chair Review.

WATTAGE

by Alejandro Escudé






The cellphone in the mind rings.
No one there—

She cries
for the impermanence
of permanence

the way a person can climb
up on a stage

seeking wattage.
There’s no real age

for barbarism.
It haunts the elementary school

and the college;
it seeps into the corridors

of Congress.
It seeks only excess.

And is dead
to even the planned

execution
of betrayal.

The narration of a soul
is its final

dissolution.
You mustn’t give it

context.
Only the kernel

of a lasting impression
should breathe.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

DECISION

by William Aarnes 

Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary via Daily Mail; Donald Trump via DonkeyHotey

                                                . . . where shall you listen
                when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?
                                                --Charles Olson, “I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You”


Tonight, hunched
over his iPad,
your son will decide
whether to devote his life
to commerce
or killing—

                   already dreading  
some corporate career  
in throwaway crap,

already fancying
the euphoria
of wielding a bullpup.

He replays the video
of a capitalist
endorsing himself
by espousing bigoted blather.

He replays the video
of a jihadist
ambling into view
after executing sunbathers.


William Aarnes had recent work in Main Street Rag, Shark Reef, Empty Sink, and The New Verse News.

TO JAMES TATE

by Martha Deed

Image source: Tin House

To James Tate who died ‒ The New York Times and other places say
"after a long illness" at age 71, it is certain, Mr. Tate, that you are not dead
because the poet James Tate, the man this obit purports to bury
is a man wild with words and metaphors and would not "die after a long illness,"
but expire actually only after being hit by a meteor in broad daylight
while taking a break in a green, white, and yellow striped canvas covered, oak-
framed lawn chair purchased for a dollar at the very same tag sale where the coffee blender
was offered ‒ insultingly ‒ to anyone willing to take it off the crazy seller's hands
for free and now it appears that the coffee blender should have been accepted for the rotten
gift it seemed and no money should have changed hands over the lawn chair whose faded
cover harbored screws rusted at the core that sent the poet into oblivion just as he was
contemplating the next line in his next new poem the perfect nonsense of a next line replete
with toy guns and real ammunition unearthed by a small boy with dark skin and brown eyes
whose future would include 1600 on his college boards and admirable physics scores as well
who would grow up thinking a trip to Pluto was not out of the question whose inquisitive
nature matched James Tates' who cannot be dead at the premature age, barely biblical age,
of 71. We do not believe this, because we are great admirers of James Tate and we know
he does not have much truck with death and, in fact, he welcomes conversations with dead
men whom he meets at every opportunity and whom he challenges to live past their prime
even as they peer down his fevered throat and declare a person hopeless while extracting
every dime from their wallets and this in 1976 before the rest of us understood doctors
or invented Safe Patient Projects or petitioned Congress for relief which Tate already
knew ‒ before 1976 ‒ was at best a captious notion indeed, for Tate was a wise man
who understood it is every man for himself in this ungainly world and the women are smart
but the men are the drivers and often deaf to women who advise them to avoid the potholes
and bumps in the road and the men age and look gray and grumpy and finally the women
capitulate and love them anyhow because those silly old men remind them of Black-capped
Gnatcatchers rare in Arizona but cousins of a comfort commonplace Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
in the white birches in their front yard at home in North Tonawanda by the sea.


Martha Deed is the keeper of a tumblr blog Sporkworld and has published several poetry collections.  Her most recent is Climate Change (Foothills Publishing, 2014).

UP IN ARMS ABOUT A WORD

by Elbert Tavon Briggs

Gun violence in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend left 10 dead and 53 others wounded across the city. Amari Brown [pictured above], a 7-year-old boy on Chicago’s West Side, was the youngest of the fatalities. Amari had spent the day celebrating with family and riding his scooter up and down the block where he lived with his grandmother and several other relatives in Humboldt Park. Just before midnight, a gunman opened fire outside a relative's home where Amari and other children were playing, hitting both the 7-year-old and a 26-year-old woman in the chest. —The Huffington Post, July 5, 2015

‘There have been more than 200 killings so far this year in Chicago — up about 15 percent. And there have been more than 1,000 shootings. More Americans have been murdered in Chicago in the last 15 years than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Much of the mayhem happens on the South and West sides. The black and brown sides. What they call Chiraq. In the racial mathematics of America, a black person is six times more likely to be the victim of a murder than a white person, and eight times more likely to be the murderer.’ —Vice News, June 25, 2015 

‘”Chi-raq" has been shrouded in mystery since news of the project first leaked in the spring, but a visit to director Spike Lee's film set this week revealed that much speculation about the movie — sparked largely by the title itself — has been off the mark. . . .Before a single frame was shot, the title became instantly polarizing — the term has been around for a few years now, equating gun violence in the city with that of the war zone in Iraq — and curiosity has been intense.’ —Chicago Tribune, July 9, 2015

                                                         friday to saturday

the end was not week

20 shot and wounded

one shot dead in ChiRaq

may have been another month

 even an 80 something years young person

still thirstin for life

 caught in the eye of  multi-caliber storms

while multi-colored talking heads

curse a word

curse a word

spring 2015

 a father placed his tiny son

in front of corner store mural

of the whole world

painted by teenage vato

young asphalt Picasso

pointed concrete brush towards graffiti verse

tell your story to the world

but the end was not week

urban street life painted

another view

father shielded son with hopes

january to june 2015

the end was not week

1050 shot and wounded

 in ChiRaq

absurd blaming urban warfare on a word

mother’s scream

“not my baby”

“not my baby”

                                                          concrete asphalt actions

speak louder than words

.

children, teachers, parents and grandparents

getting shot down too

can’t shield violence with silence

urban combat is more than gang related

violence has many relatives

                                               while multi-colored talking heads

curse a word

curse a word

                                                           while watching

                                                             saturday morning cartoons

before noon

taught  grandson to stop-drop and roll

so the body count bell would not toll

July 4th 2015

53 shot

10 killed

7 year-old Amari Brown’s

tiny voice

is stilled

                                                                      in ChiRaq

Author's note: This poem reflects my lifelong commitment to incorporate poetry, music, art, dance, and drama, to give voice to the voiceless. 


Elbert Tavon Briggs was born 1952 in Minneapolis, Minnesota,  raised in Omaha, Nebraska. Elbert studied at Northeastern Illinois University and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Currently creating with the Randolph Street Poets @ the Chicago Cultural Center and workshopping with Poets & Patrons. Elbert graduated from Arizona State University and served two years in AmeriCorps fighting the war on poverty in the Lower Delta.

JULY 5th

by Marjorie Maddox

All the flag-clad oohs and ahhs fizzle
just past midnight, a slight singe of burn
hovering over today: patriotic hangover
with stars and stripes banging about in brains
that never Ok’d reciting names and dates
in 4th grade History. Such a dazzling,
distracting explosion: all that reality behind
the pomp, so ceremoniously like that other
season’s parade: winter’s green/red (the frigid
red/white/blue) pa-rum-pa-pum-pummed
into “Little Drummer Boy” with only tepid recognition
of the day’s conviction. Holy Mother
of Jefferson, the fireworks’ dizzy outbursts
of Me! Me! Me! reveal our belief in nothing
but the day’s commemoration, the morning after’s
leftover hot dogs or eggnog a hodge-podge of forgotten births:
nation and God piped-in patriotically
as afterthought for the background.


Director of Creative Writing and professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has 9 books of poetry, most recently Local News from Someplace Else Wipf & Stock 2013), which focuses on living in an unsafe world, and an ebook of Perpendicular As I, winner of the 1994 Sandstone Book Award.

I CELEBRATE MYSELF

by Jim Gustafson

CALAIS, Maine — A local man was killed instantly Saturday when he set off a fireworks mortar tube on his head, despite efforts his friends made to stop him, state police said Sunday. —Bangor Daily News July 5, 2015. Editor's note: The file photograph is NOT that of the victim in Maine, but of someone else deserving at least a Darwin Award Honorable Mention.

with apologies to Walt Whitman

I will place a rocket on my head, in a few moments I’ll be dead.
To celebrate myself, I’ll place a rocket on my head. I’ll strike a
match, light its fuse and let the sizzle climb my face. The rocket
will explode my brain and l spread my wisdom around the place.
People will scream as every atom which once belonged to me
will now belong to them. They will drip from their bottles, stick
in their hair. They will be sick because I took the dare. And when
they return to work, the holiday past, the smoke of my own breath
shall whisper.


Jim Gustafson’s most recent book, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013 and is a 2013 Pushcart Prize Nominee. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa and a M. Div., from Garrett Theological Seminary. He teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida Southwestern State College.  His work has most recently appeared in Prick of the Spindle, Foliate Oak, Poetry Quarterly. He lives in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.

SREBRENICA, A 20th ANNIVERSARY

by Sandra Sidman Larson

The bodies of dozens of victims of the Srebrenica massacre are being taken back to the Bosnian town for burial. The killing of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb troops was the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two. A service to bury 136 newly-identified victims will take place on Saturday, 20 years to the day since the massacre began. Another 6,241 victims have already been identified. —BBC News, July 9, 2015

Place of silver,
place of bullets,
place of silver bullets.
Silently they tread dusty roads,
silently they climb into flatbed trucks,
silently they arrive at the wayside of their slaughter.

Place of silver,
place of bullets,
place of silver bullets.
Into the backs of young men and boy’s heads, the pop, pop
     of silver bullets.
Into shallow roadside graves they are dumped,
their corpses shoveled over.

Place of silver,
place of bullets
place of silver bullets.
Under the ground of history they are stacked,
            full of silver bullets,
another layer of bodies silently compressed
and we are left to harvest what will arise from this.


Sandra Sidman Larson, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has three chapbooks to her credit: Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Over a Threshold of Roots, (both Pudding House Press Publications) and Weekend Weather: Calendar Poems.  Recognized as a full-length manuscript finalist for the 2013 Lost Horse Press’ Idaho Prize for Poetry and the 2015 Trio House Press Trio Award, she was also a semi-finalist in the 2015 Concrete Press’ chapbook competition. Her poetry has been published in many venues such as the Atlanta Review, Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters, and The New Verse News. She has been active in the social justice movement through her long career and over the years has attempted to use poetry as a way to communicate both political and personal concerns and aspirations. Holding an MSW, Sandra managed nonprofit organizations for a career, and, as a poet, she is an active member of The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and is currently hoping to see her manuscript, Distance in My Hands, published one of these days.

THE OPEN MIKE POET WHO READS A PASSIONATE PIECE IN ARABIC PROVIDING A BRIEF PROSE SUMMARY AFTER

by Alan Catlin

'The U.S. State Department on Tuesday punched a big hole in Israel-led efforts to induce the Obama administration to regard boycotts of settlements as identical to boycott of Israel proper. In doing so, it provided the Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby with yet another painful lesson in the pitfalls of being too clever by half and biting off more than one should chew. A special statement issued by the State Department Press Office on Tuesday afternoon made clear that while the administration “strongly opposes” any boycott, divestment or sanctions against the State of Israel, it does not extend the same protection to “Israel-controlled territories.” Rather than weakening efforts to boycott Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, as Israel supporters had planned, the State Department was actually granting them unprecedented legitimacy.' —Haaretz, July 1, 2015; Photo: AL-JANIYA, (Palestinian Territories), October 30, 2014: Abbas Yusef points wistfully towards his olive trees, which are bearing their annual fruit. Yet again, the 70-year-old Palestinian farmer will be unable to make the autumn harvest. Yusef’s olive groves lie on land either side of an Israeli settlement in the northern occupied West Bank. For years, he has been denied access by the army, and the settlers have ploughed it, uprooting many of his trees. —Dawn

It’s a timeless story.
The speaker is a man.
A very angry man
with eight children and
another on the way.

He is a farmer but
is no longer able to work
the land that has been in
his family for a thousand years.

The occupiers prevent
anyone from working
the land.

He is so angry he can
barely speak.

The occupiers want to build
new settlements here,
right here, on my land.

The man is so angry because
he feels helpless.

How will we live?
he asks

How will we survive?


Author’s note: The poem is a based on a reading from this week by a young man, probably a high schooler, who read at an open mike. I’m not sure if he wrote the poem or not.  He was extremely shy and self-conscious, until he passionately read this dynamic piece  in his native language and tried to leave the stage without an explanation, but the moderator, a high school English teacher, gently prodded him to provide some kind of translation. I took some liberties with the translation, adding some details I think he was hinting at but could not provide as he didn’t have the words for them in English. 


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose, the latest of which, from March Street Press, is Alien Nation.

KILL THE FABULISTS

by Vivek Sharma

Surprisingly, despite endless lazy moralizing commentary to the contrary, Greece has very little to do with the crisis that bears its name. To see why, it is best to follow the money—and those who bank it. The roots of the crisis lie far away from Greece; they lie in the architecture of European banking. —Mark Blyth, “A Pain in the Athens,” Foreign Affairs, July 7, 2015; Photo: Greece's finance minister at the London Conference of 1953, signing a treaty agreeing to cancel 50% of Germany's debt.

After proclaiming the authoritative
accept no other versions,
no translations, no revisions.

One story kills another.
Censor, silence the creative.

Millions merely memorize
paradigms, a few theorize.

Before a brother or a mother
weaves another narrative,
exterminate the alternative.

To preserve each belief
cherished in joy and grief
by your forefathers: KILL
the fabulists. Torch their quills.


Vivek Sharma's verses in English have appeared in Atlanta Review, Bateau, Poetry, The Cortland Review, Muse India, among others and in a collection titled The Saga of a Crumpled Piece of Paper (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 2009). His Hindi articles and verses appear in Divya Himachal (Hindi newspaper, India), Himachal Mitra and Argala. Vivek is a Pushcart-nominated poet, is published as a scientist and he lives and teaches in Chicago.