ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER WOMAN

by Hafsa Mumtaz

Police in Pakistan have opened cases against hundreds of unidentified men after a young woman was sexually assaulted and groped by a crowd of more than 400 men in a park in Lahore as she made a TikTok video. The shocking assault was captured on several videos, which went viral and showed a mob descend on the woman as she was in Lahore’s Greater Iqbal park making a TikTok video with friends. In broad daylight, the men picked up the young woman and tossed her between them, tearing her clothes and assaulting and groping her. The woman registered a case against 300 to 400 unidentified persons with Lahore police, according to the case report seen by the Guardian. “The crowd pulled me from all sides to such an extent that my clothes were torn. I was hurled in the air. They assaulted me brutally,” the woman said in a statement to the police. She said the crowd also stole her money, earrings and a phone. —The Guardian, August 19, 2021

Another day, another woman.   

But the headlines remain the same –

But this time, it wasn’t just a man, just a gang,

But a mob of 400 men...

But this time, it wasn’t just private milieu,

But in the open outside Minar-e-Pakistan...

But this time, it wasn’t just a secret hour,

But the time of Azaan (the prayer call) ...

Another day, another woman,

Just like many previous targets,  

She was dressed decently – so stop this ‘the victim was a victim because

they were wearing such clothes’ nonsense right here.

But why would the maulvis say anything?

For all they need is a woman to blame for her brazenness

For all they need is to hold the axe of ‘Deen’ (religion) and behead the victims

For all they need is a woman to criticise and condemn

For all they need is Islam to exploit.

Another day, another woman. 

Oh, what a free land! 400 predators, 1victim, and no one to bat an eyelid!

Oh, what an Independence Day for the predators whose minds are still enslaved by their lust!

Oh, so this is the country founded in the name of Islam...

I read a random WhatsApp status, saying,

We merely celebrate the Islam (alluding to Ashura),

We don’t adopt Islam.

Similarly, we merely celebrate Independence Day

We still haven’t absorbed the essence of it.

Hafsa Mumtaz is a 22-year-old Pakistan-based emerging poet, a recent graduate of English Language and Literature, and a Muslim. Her poetry was first published in Visual Verse Anthology, and then in Rising Phoenix Review. 

RE-THINKING BASIC DANCE STEPS

by Mary K O’Melveny

Lately, I have been thinking a lot

about dancing. Not actually doing it

myself – I was never very good at it –

but how I always imagined it must feel.

Like freedom. Like a grand escape.

Gravity left behind, shaking its weary head,

as I spin, turn, shimmy, spiral away

from heavy hearts, from memory’s drumbeat.

As if one might tap tap tap far away

from troubled minds to discover a brand

new stage where a leap of faith takes flight

on one’s own command. Where the only

things waiting in the wings like wallflowers

are lengthening shadows of regret.

 

Today, I crumpled up my privileged

dance card as I stared at photographs from

Kabul’s airport. It is impossible to fathom

the despair that sends one racing on foot

down airplane runways, clinging to wings

of jumbo jets as if they were old friends.

With each trip, slip, stumble, tumble to ground,

one sees how certainty of death also

means escape, albeit with less fanfare

than was craved in yesterday’s richer light.

Even as they strained for the upward lift,

those stranded, earth-bound crowds likely

knew how fickle dance partners can be, how

we must become our own choreographers.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

PILGRIMAGE TO EMILY DICKINSON'S HOUSE ON NINETY-TWO DEGREE SUMMER DAY

by Laura Rodley

What would Emily say? The driveway to her brother Edward’s home

is gated, the property surrounded with orange crisscrossed plastic

fencing, plastic not yet invented in her time, nor the cure for her kidney

ailments. Today her condition would have been aggravated by the chlorine

and other astringent agents the town uses to clean the water pumped

to the homes. She would have drunk water from an artesian well

in her Victorian home, writing poems at two a.m., loving someone

she could not have, not from the future, but from her own time period.

Was she ever pregnant as some suggest? Was she virginal as her white

dresses? Did she actually suffer from hypertension? Was she able

to see the future? Her poems crossed realms of time and space.

Would she have cut the crisscrossed orange fence, crushed it down,

or felt more secure to be enclosed, secure in her hermitage

peopled with family, cooks, and Irish workmen, six of whom carried

her casket to her grave in West Cemetery, where she walked in the evenings.

She was nourished by a garden that is no longer open to the public

due to Covid. A garden that fed her, kept her poetry

alive, already passed through the gates into other’s hands through letters.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

EIGHT FAT OLD WOMEN

by Susan McLean

      Overheard in Southern California

“I can’t believe we have to wear masks again

just to save eight fat old women,” one

hipster, walking past me, told the other, 

staring at me, no longer young nor thin.

Which crones would she gladly jettison? Her grandmother?

Her eighth-grade English teacher? Did she imagine

a merciful weeding of homeless crazies or

the clutter of ghosts at care facilities?

Of one thing I felt sure: she couldn’t picture

herself at seventy, softened by loss and sadness,

weighted with aches, regrets, lost fantasies,

and wanting nothing from life except some sweetness.

Susan McLean, a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University, has published two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and a book of translations of the Latin poems of Martial, Selected Epigrams.  She is the translations editor at Better Than Starbucks.

AFGHANISTAN

by Robert Halleck

I didn't like "These Boots Are Made For Walking."

I loved "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"

It needed to end.

I'm going into the garage

to find my old shirt

that says

Robert Halleck is a member of San Diego's Not Dead Yet Poets, a Vietnam War veteran, and a man who continues to write poetry to help him understand life.

EARTH QUAKE

by Joan Halperin

                                                                                                                    

To donate to Haiti Earthquake Relief via CNN, click here.

As she usually does when we dine,

when we laugh and carry on,

Margaret says “and we sit here in our bubble

while Haitians scurry around the rubble

attempting to extricate their dead.”

 

None of us wants Margaret at our table.

 

We pause. What can we do to help?

Donate clothing, food,  perhaps even toys.

Margaret says “Nothing like that will stop their strife,

will stop a boy from devouring garbage.

A toy teddy bear never saved a life."

 

None of us wants Margaret at our table.

None of us want to devour our ice cream scoops.

but deep in us a desire to save  our neighbors,

deep in us a knowledge that we own too much.

 

None of us wants Margaret at our table

but she finds the timber, lights the fire

 

flickering, that small spark,

almost available to touch.

 

 

Joan Halperin has been published in Passengers, Confrontation, Persimmon Tree, and others. She lives and continues to write at Orchard Cove, a continuing care residence in Canton Mass.

REBUILDING

by Indran Amirthanayagam

I did not want to write right after the crack, letting my mind fill slowly,

Caribbean and North American plates, moving side by side, whiplashing

each other for a moment, causing walls and roofs to tumble and Fortuné

to lose his bet, just one of several hundred dead already, thousands

with open wounds, tropical storm on the way. But there are some

cheerful consequences, the truce called by gangs so rescue trucks

and supplies can move south from Port Au Prince, heroism everywhere,

doctor performing surgeries on the tarmac, a man lending his propeller

plane to lift wounded to hospitals in the capital, hundreds digging

with pick axes, shovels, hands, to free family trapped under concrete,

sparing of human life at my friend's family compound, although

the famed swimming pool full of holy water has cracked and will

require repair, but faith remains in place, survivors have nowhere else

to turn but to internal (and external) resources. Aid ships are flying,

trucks rolling, but if only money I give can assuage pain, even if it buys

no pardon, if it means just that someone will get medicine, food, a blanket.

As for the political cyclone, early morning murder of the president,

and now systematic killing of investigators of the crime, these too must

be resolved. Murderers cannot be allowed to wipe away tracks, and

the memory of this latest natural beating can only be honored by building

with bricks, leaving space within foundation pillars, to allow for swaying

with the plates when they come together again the next time.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). Indran Amirthanayagam's Blue Window/ Ventana Azul, translated by Jennifer Rathbun,  is about to be published by Lavender Ink/Diálogos Books. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

An athlete, who cleared hurdles with great ease,

Got ready for the most important race

Of his career by streaming melodies

On board a bus to take him to the place

Decided on. But he relaxed too good!

Soon he was miles from where he should alight

And, if he took official guidance, would

Miss any chance of setting matters right.

And then a Good Samaritan appeared,

Re-routing him and stepping in to pay ...

In life, for certain hurdles to be cleared,

The stranger's kindness proves the only way,

As this man, with Olympic gold to own,

Now tells. He did not win his gold alone!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. 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.

TOKYO OLYMPIC PRIDE

by Stephen House

Medal count at the Tokyo Summer Olympics is something we’ve watching. And this year, there has been an LGBTQ rainbow twist. We at Outsports tracked them as though they were a country: Team LGBTQ. Imagine if all of the publicly out lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and nonbinary athletes were on one team representing one country with common causes of visibility and inclusion. That’s how we covered this collective group of inspiring out athletes. The final standing: Team LGBTQ ranked 7th overall, just ahead of Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy. —Outsports, August 10, 2021. Photo: Gold medalist Ana Marcela Cunha of Brazil poses after the women's 10-kilometer marathon swimming at Odaiba Marine Park in Tokyo on Aug. 4.Clive Rose / Getty Images via NBC News.

for many LGBTQI people world-wide

it is the story of the week

maybe for some

the story of the year

of their life

 

discrimination / abuse / inequality / oppression / exclusion

hits hard

 

at least one hundred and eighty two

queer identifying athletes were at the Tokyo Olympics

publicly out

gay / lesbian / bisexual / transgender / queer / gender-nonconforming

athletes

some of them using the Olympic platform

to come out

in Tokyo

 

representing many sports

archery / basketball / beach volleyball / BMX freestyle / BMX racing / boxing / canoe / cycling / diving / equestrian / fencing / field hockey / golf / gymnastics / handball / judo / rhythmic gymnastics / rowing / rugby / sailing / softball / skateboarding / soccer / swimming / shooting / table tennis / taekwondo / tennis / track and field / trampoline / volleyball / water polo / weightlifting / wrestling / triple jump

from many countries

 

Italy / Belgium / USA / Puerto Rico / Australia / Canada / Brazil / Ireland / Philippines /  Britain / New Zealand / Denmark / Netherlands / France / South Africa / Sweden / Germany / Israel / Mexico / Poland / Argentina / Cyprus / Chile / Peru / Tonga / Finland / Trinidad / India / Venezuela

 

impartiality / kindness / equality / acceptance / inclusion

is human  

 

at least one hundred and eighty two

queer identifying athletes at the Tokyo Olympics

should make the entire world proud

Tokyo Olympics was also Tokyo Pride

 

for many LGBTQI people world-wide

Tokyo Olympic Pride

gives hope

 

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright and actor. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts and an Asia-link India residency. His chapbook real and unreal was published by ICOE Press. He’s published often and performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

LICKING OFF THE FROSTING

by Tricia Knoll

Old friends remember Tom’s birthday party

when we were young and houses were small. 

We assembled in the living room to start with wine

or beer, some sort of dip. Then his wife cried out

Pearl! and we all saw that my small gold mutt 

named after Janis Joplin stood by 

the coffee table to lick half the white frosting

off Tom’s carrot cake. No one noticed

for a long time. A decision made to accept

the other half for the celebration.  

 

This fate of glaciers—sneaky heat

licks them away, inch by inch until

it’s too late to do anything but see

what is and try to figure out 

where is the other half of the cake.  

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who believes the impact of the IPCC climate report can be felt in what we know is happening in our own lives—and have known but did not address over decades. Much of her poetry is eco-poetry which you can find at tricaknoll.com.

109 DEGREES

by Penelope Scambly Schott

I was inside at my desk.

The dog poked her nose into my hip.

I didn’t feel like walking her.

I didn’t want to go out.

We went out.

We cut across the school football field.

At the fifty-yard line the dog rolled in the grass.

We walked into the shade behind the gym.

I lay down on the lawn.

The dog lay down next to me.

Her fur was warm against my bare arm.

She licked my shoulder.

My shoulder was suddenly cool.

Even the grass remembered cool.

I am telling you this on a warming planet,

on a planet that still has people and dogs.

I want to say we went home

but it’s all home, isn’t it?

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

A LETTER TO PATRIARCHY

by Zaroya Amjad

#JusticeforNoor was trending last week on Twitter in Pakistan, after Noor Mukadam, 27, was stabbed and beheaded in an upscale district of Islamabad. The week prior, #JusticeforQuratulain had been the top hashtag after the mother of four was tortured to death by her husband in Hyderabad. And earlier this month, it was #JusticeforSaima, who was shot dead after her husband opened fire on her and her children in Peshawar. Photo: Women's rights activists place candles and flowers beside posters with the pictures of Noor Mukadam, who was recently brutally beheaded by her childhood friend. The killing of Mukadam in an upscale neighborhood of Pakistan's capital has shone a spotlight on the relentless violence against women in the country. AP Photo via The National (UAE), July 31, 2021)

Within the bleak paranoia of fear and rage, 

My skinny fingers, blemished with 

The ink of denial and self assurance arise, 

To write a crimson letter to patriarchy on behalf of 

Every abandoned dream,

Joy and happiness sitting silently 

In the corner of my shallow ribcage 

I am a human being 

Made of flesh and bones 

Holding a universe in my eyes 

And vortexes of melancholy in the 

Empty spaces of my heart 

I walk, out on the streets and 

Instead of seeing me as an art,

 A masterpiece of God, 

You look at me like a target,

 A billboard of your desires, 

A menu of your favorite 'desi' restaurant 

The ideas I speak of will take you beyond the Moon 

Beyond the horizons of your notions

Beyond the parallel universe 

Up in the sky, far from the heavens 

But you take them as mere blabbering 

Coming out of my cherry lips

 I speak of bare truths, unraveling the lies, 

Dismantling the facade of "Equality" "Women Rights" and 

"Respect for all" you hide behind

Disguising the beatings, the rapes, assaults, 

Unfair treatment, abuse and hurt 

What you actually are,

 I show you in the mirror and you break it with the 

Sledgehammer of your hefty ego

 I open myself, weep and portray my emotions 

And you label me as weak, timid and fragile

Not worthy of the CEO post

But worthy of the low paid teaching job 

In a private school built in the sector of your insecurities

 I mention my joys and sorrows, 

Dreams and goals and you hush me up, 

Telling me my place is in the four walls of home 

Home never felt like home to me, 

Despite of the beatings and screaming of the male dominant members 

Of my household I tried to dwell in it and yet

 I couldn't 

I fill the holes of your toxic words in my soul

With self love taught by my mother

 And yet I fail to do so, for no matter how hard I try, 

How much I become good at something,

You make me feel like I'm still not enough 

You tell me my clothes are made of shame 

With vulgarity knitted on them 

But the seven-year-old raped and murdered was completely covered 

So how will you justify rape now? 

You chain me within the confines of your self-built city of good women

Not letting me go out, seek and discover myself 

Only because I was born with a pair of ovaries? 

Why shall I be told by you what to do with my body 

When you yourself do now own a body 

So exquisite and strong? 

I bear your abusive words, you catcall me on the streets 

When I'm on my way home, minding my own business, 

Thinking about every worse thing that has happened today 

And not even surprisingly,

 You're on top of the list

Zaroya Amjad is a 22-year-old Pakistani writer, blogger, and poet. She recently graduated from Air University, Islamabad and writes for various Pakistani magazines.

HOPE

by Sandra Anfang

“Hope and Justice” by David Garibaldi

is not the thing with feathers bickering at the feeder

bullying the finches into flight

 

nor the Hallmark card, faded from decades of cliché

shoved in the back of the dollar store rack

 

Hope is not the white dove flying from the open hymnal

like a pop-up book, nor the blond god on 

 

nana’s closet door smiling from his ruby throne.

It’s not the inscription on the hand-drawn

 

sign buried in roses at the site of the latest

black man’s murder by the men in blue

 

nor the Christian Covid patient emoting from

his ICU bed, hoarding oxygen and prayers

 

while millions of deniers chorus no,

we won’t go to vaccine clinics.

 

Hope is not the promised land behind

a child’s eyes when she mouths on bended knee

 

bless mommy and daddy and

all the creatures in the sea.

 

Is hope the force that pulls us from our beds

when the world seems to have given up?

 

Is it the hands that brew the coffee, steep the tea

debate existence with our feline friends

 

hands that kindle the ritual of another day

as if our time were endless here.

 

Sandra Anfang is a poet, editor, poetry teacher, and visual artist. She’s the author of Looking Glass Heart and Road Worrier (Finishing Line Press, 2016 and 2018) and Xylem Highway (Main Street Rag, 2019) and the founder of Rivertown Poets in Petaluma, CA. Since Covid overtook our lives, she alternates between binging on statistics and walking and writing to allay her fears.

HERE IN THE WEST WE SMOKE

by David Feela

California lights up first thing 

in the morning

while Utah brews 

its second cup.

Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado

congregate on the patio

like neighbors, sharing stories

about wind and lightning strikes.

The Marlboro man 

still saddled, staring west,

leans toward sunrise’s glowing tip

and inhales the day. 

David Feela writes monthly columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in 2019.