KĀKOLŪKĪYAM

by Nicholas Katsanis

An Afghan soldier pops up from his tank to signal a U.S. warplane bombing Al Qaeda fighters in the White Mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan on Dec. 10, 2001.(David Guttenfelder / Associated Press via the Los Angeles Times)

The owls and the crows are at war

Embroiled in bitter struggle for control of their dominion

Ill-defined by borders and perceived advantages

The owls are old and therefore wise

Or so they tell themselves to make-belief

Convince their childrens’ children of their superiority

Supremacy of poise and purpose, they persist

Until foibles morph into fact,

Poorly begotten truth whose tangled roots are lost—conveniently—in antiquity

The crows are young, confident, energetic

The skies’ embrace belong to them, they preach

For they are fast and nimble

Intimidating in their murder, or so they teach their children

Schooling them in the virtue of their virility, their singularity of purpose

The owls and crows are at war

Bickering over holes in trees

Despite the endless forest that surrounds them

Beak on beak and claw on claw

They decimate each other’s numbers

Each pointless victory and defeat

Treated by triumphalism and defiance in equal measure

The owls’ corpses are offered eternal absolution

The crows’ mangled bodies heavenly promise of peace and honey

Both declaring divine providence over the Final Rights

Both bereft of true wisdom

The owls and the crows were at war

Embroiled in bitter struggle for control of their dominion

Until the lightning in the forest burned

And the rain fell upon the smoldering stumps

And there was nothing left to war over

Author’s Note: Inspired by the Panchatantra collection of classic Indian fables, this adaptation examines the current/perpetual secular and religious tension in Afghanistan post-collapse.

Nicholas Katsanis is an author and poet of magical realism. You can find some of his micro fiction (50-word stories, stories in 100 words) as well upcoming pieces in Literary Stories and elsewhere (including magazines that do not have the word ‘Story’ in their titles). He lives and works in southern Florida. Follow him on Twitter @nicholaskatsan1

CHROMOSOME

by Darcie Whelan-Kortan

We heard no sound

as they jumped

from a hundred and more

flights up

Just a simple

 

toss

 

of body into air

 

And from our vantage point

below the smoldering towers

through the lens

to somber houses

across thousands of miles

as they fell

they all looked the same—

 

no clothes

no faces

no fear

 

Just a black outline

two arms and two legs

joined in the center

like the wiggling X

of a chromosome

a single, unseen, unnamed

living piece in the code

of who we are

lost forever

Darcie Whelan-Kortan has published in Motherwell and wrote the column Beyond Broken for Literary Mama. She is a featured writer on Medium. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College.

I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A QANON CONSPIRACY

by Ellen Hawley McWhirter

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy

Born and bred to foster fear and rampant insecurity

And through the years, you must admit

I’ve gotten rather good at it:

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy.

 

I weaponize the people who feel left behind, and I compel 

their loud attacks on science and on medicine and truth itself.

The stranger that my theories get,

The more that they are shared and spread

‘cause QAnon conspiracies, like COVID, are quite hard to quell.

 

The Democrats are stealing children underneath your very nose

Selling them and eating them and hardly anybody knows.

You must refuse to vaccinate;

Just drink some bleach and you’ll be great,

And watch out for the Deep dark State our hero Trump tried to expose

The national election it was stolen, it was clearly fraud:

Put Democrats and disagreers all before a firing squad!

The Bible and the Constitution

Call for bloody resolution

Get your guns and bombs, and know that Jesus surely would applaud.

 

The wearing of a mask is an affront to true civility

The bearing of a weapon anywhere is basic liberty

Mass shootings are a lie perverse,

And climate change is even worse

You must defend these truths with Christian hatred and hostility.

 

The only threat that worries me is thinking that is critical,

That shows my puppeteering, and is clear and analytical,

Exposes my hypocrisy,

and questions what’s in it for me,

and highlights common ground across our differences political.

 

Now if you think I’m bragging, it’s just not that hard to play this game

When people are unhappy and are seeking someone else to blame

A rumor and some blatant lies,            

And 1-2-3 you’re polarized,

And Jewish lasers shot from space fan all the sparks right into flame.

 

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy

Fed by anger, ignorance, and hunger for identity

I’m anti-logic, anti-truth,

I’m anti-them and all for you:

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy.

Ellen Hawley McWhirter is a professor of counseling psychology and writes poetry to preserve her sanity.

THAT MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH

by Ying Wu

The Taliban fired shots into the air to disperse crowds who had gathered for a rally in the capital, the latest protest since the Taliban swept to power last month. Photo: EPA via Aljazeera, September 8, 2021

Smoke burns our throats in Sacramento.

California is on fire.

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban.

I stare into the ashen sun,

and think about the ones who fled—

songs and stories ripped asunder,

flames howling at their doorsteps—

and the ones who couldn’t get out in time—

how beneath this very sun,

some tried to flee, but did not escape—

and the dreams of a generation

annihilated before our eyes—

and the dreamers in hiding,

and the women sent home.

 

I want to revel in the splendor of the Siskiyous,

but everywhere is haze, shrouding

the sugar pines and ponderosas—

Mt. Shasta erased completely—

and the sun the color of pink lemonade.

 

Near Ashland, we hike a quarter mile

across dusty, red lakebed

overgrown with cocklebur.

I want to camp beneath the shady oaks,

but the campground’s closed,

and the spigots, shut off.

I want to play guitar

in my folding paisley camp chair,

but a suicide bomb in Kabul has ripped

through the crowds at the airport gates.

I want to swim and shiver and splash

even here in this shrunken reservoir,

but the mud is too thick,

and the water, stagnant—

and the airlifts are ending,

and the bathrooms are locked,

and the treasury is bankrupt,

and the paddleboats, beached—

and thousands have fled,

but millions can’t leave.

A hot, dry wind rustles

the golden grass of August.

What awaits the women and girls

Of Afghanistan?

 

Women have their own rights,

the Andar district governor tries to reassure,

but his words burn in my ears

like the smoke in my lungs from

the massive infernos

engulfing our mountains.

It has rained at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet

for the first time in recorded history.

Wells have run dry in central Texas.

 

The UN “highlights the urgency of climate change,”

a Louisiana senator tries to reassure. 

“But we must avoid policies that rely on…increased regulation.”

How much Islam has given rights to women,

the Taliban tries to reassure,

we will give them that much.

 

That much.

They’ll give women that much.

While our leaders avoid policies

that rely on increased regulation.

They will give us that much.

While the fires are raging.

 

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art SanDiego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, and Poetry Pacific.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay.  

BROODING STILL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Eva Millwood holds Brood X cicadas on her property in South Knoxville in this photo at Hellbender Press.

Who recalls Brood X cicadas today, after Hurricane Ida,

earthquake in Southern Haiti, flight of refugees and US military

from Afghanistan? What about the deranged Sri Lankan who

knifed six people in an Auckland supermarket? They have not

expired I read, thank God. Meanwhile, Uncle Gratien went off

to the shade with thousands of others this week in the pandemic.

So how to take stock, to sift through losses: eleven drowned

in New York City basements as Ida roared past, twenty odd

their lungs filled in cars and basements, crushed by trees

in New Jersey, and then in Louisiana, millions without power,

hundreds without homes, various bodies but miracle of miracles,

the reinforced levees of New Orleans held. But then the next

question, for how much longer? And where are sump pumps

today in Home Depot? Can we make sense, God, of these

disparate violations, punishments by wind, fire and tectonic

plates? Yes, I forgot there are thousands of acres and some houses

burning in California. So back towards the future. Where are Brood X

cicadas now, and have they turned into Brood X1? Are they ready

to fly 17 years early just in case the globe cannot cope and needs

another miracle to keep its head above water, above the fire line.

Indran Amirthanayagam produced a “world" record in 2020 by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He has just published Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

GERONIMO THE ALPACA

by Martin Elster

GERONIMO the tragic alpaca was dragged from his paddock [on August 31, 0221] and executed by a team of [UK] government officials. The eight-year-old animal, whose plight touched the nation, was shoved in a horsebox and killed with a bolt gun after 25 cops and four Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] agents descended on his farm. Geronimo, who Defra claimed had TB, kicked out and appeared distressed as he was pulled away with a rope round his neck at Wickwar, Gloucestershire [UK}. His furious owner said the tragic alpaca’s “barbaric” execution was murder. The eight-year-old animal was dragged to his death by a team of “bully-boy” Defra ­officials after he tried to make a last dash for freedom. The Government claims he had TB but Helen Macdonald, 50, said he was perfectly healthy. She previously vowed to “take a bullet” for her beloved alpaca. —The Sun, August 31, 2021

I felt healthy and hardy.

TB? None, for sure!

Why the gun to my head?

Does that make you secure?

Sniffing hay-scented air,

I was glad when I saw

my owner each day;

but condemned by your law,

a scapegoat alpaca,

I paid a big price.

As for your cold heart,

try melting its ice.

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His career in music has influenced his fondness for writing metrical verse, which has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. A full-length collection Celestial Euphony was published by Plum White Press in 2019.

IDA

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Floodwater surrounds a house on Sept. 01, 2021 in Jean Lafitte, Louisiana. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images via NPR)

In South Louisiana, every single thing we do is jazz or zydeco.

—Lauren Daigle

 

An old woman sits on her front porch in Jefferson

Parish, smoking a Kool and watching a copperhead

swim past her house. She is wearing her favorite pink

housecoat with the torn pocket, and hasn’t so much

as combed her hair in two days. Three feet above the

water line, she is safe from drowning and unwilling

to be rescued by a neighbor boy who keeps motoring

by in his daddy’s fishing boat and won’t take no for

an answer. She was making a roux when the power

went out, and left the mess right where it sat since it

was clear Ida had no intention of leaving Louisiana

without making a big fuss. BeauSoleil was playing

Zydeco Gris-Gris on the radio before the room went

silent, and that song keeps rattling around her head

while a red, high-heeled shoe lodges against a limb

rising from the torrent, its branches like the fingers

of an arthritic hand. Laughing out loud, she blows

a few puffs of smoke into the muggy air, recalling

a time when most men would have paid cash to see

Rosaline Mayeaux in red stilettos and nothing else.

She squints in the bright sunshine as that stubborn

boy steers the same old fishing boat up to her porch

for what she hopes will be his final run, and hollers

like she is deaf, “You about ready to hit the road,

Miz Mayeaux?” which says it all when it comes to

how much brain power he has going for him, since

no roads are visible after Hurricane Ida turned their

hometown of Jean Lafitte into a bowl of hot soup.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six full-length collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of the 2021 International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2019, The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and numerous others. A former resident of Rapides Parish, she has lived most of her life in her home state of North Carolina.

I DO BLAME YOU

by David Radavich

 You brought us the gift

 of potential death.

 

 Not wearing a mask,

 not distancing,

 

 not deigning

 to get a vaccine.

 

 And now the whole

 family is sick—

 generations—

 

 and the threat

 has taken up residence

 in our very house.

 

 Thank you 

 for reminding us

 

 the end is not far off—

 maybe soon—

 

 disease is

 a form of politics,

 

 and we are all one

 in our shared suffering.

 

 If we didn’t believe

 in community, we do now.

 

 Let us hope healing 

 comes fast and the goat

 scapes into the woods.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His forthcoming book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

BARE FLOOR, WITH COAT HANGER

by Francesco Levato

Author’s Note: This piece dealing with Texas Senate Bill 8 is from a series I’m working on titled SCARLET, a digital visual/poetic meditation on the fractured state of psyche induced by extended social isolation under COVID-19 lockdown. The digital/visual poems are created through erasure of Jack London’s post-apocalyptic novel The Scarlet Plague collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life to reflect the state of a pandemic self in forced confinement.

Francesco Levato is a poet, a literary translator, and a new media artist. Recent books include Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; Elegy for Dead Languages; War Rug; Creaturing (as translator); and the chapbooks A Continuum of Force and jettison/collapse. He has collaborated and performed with various composers, including Philip Glass, and his cinépoetry has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a PhD in English Studies, and is currently an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos.

RELATING TO HEARTBEAT

an erasure of Texas Senate Bill 8: relating to abortion, including abortions after detection of an unborn child's heartbeat; authorizing a private civil right of action

by Rebekah Wolman

An empty room used to perform procedures at Whole Woman’s Health of Austin on Sept. 1, 2021, the day anti-abortion Senate Bill 8, the so-called Heartbeat Bill, became law.  Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune.

                                    private

life

            means

                                       activity

 

                        the human female reproductive

condition

                 is carrying

 

choice about

                                    surviving

            consistent with

                        a manner that is   

                                                at least as

private

                        as

                                    an action

            or mistake

                                                or

reliance on consent

                        not construed

    as

            rape, sexual assault, incest, or any other act

                                   

                                    against

women

            women

                                    the rights of

women

            a woman

                                    that woman

 

                                                a woman

 

the potential danger to

            the possibility of risk

                                                to the

 

child without regard to

                       

                        the                    child

 

is not

 

            known

 

whether

                                    or

 

Rebekah Wolman is a retired educator living in San Francisco and rededicating her life to poetry.

JELLO JUSTICES

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

keep silent at night, and greet the day with judicial voice,

to make bounty hunters rejoice,

to welcome them to set new laws

that follow judicial and personal flaws

thinking they can sell it

if they can gel it

but we are women voters, not quivering or breaking

not wavering or shaking because

vigilante justice will not stand, 

you can't invade our bodies like a foreign land

we don't buy your brand.

 

Lucille Gang Shulklapper lives in Florida where she writes poetry and fiction.

COMPOS[T]ING MYSELF

by Barbara Simmons 

Washington state became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction in May 2019; Colorado followed suit in May 2021; and Oregon became the third state to sanction human composting in June 2021. —Treehugger, August 24, 2021. "The powerful [California] Senate Appropriations Committee has held a bill that would legalize the composting of human remains. The bill, AB 501, was authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, and had sailed through the Assembly with a unanimous vote.... Garcia said in a statement. 'This is another sad reminder that we must legalize a more environmentally friendly option like Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) as soon as possible. AB 501 will provide an additional option for California residents that is more environmentally-friendly and gives them another choice for burial.'” —Sacramernto Bee, August 30, 2021. Photo from Recompose, "a public benefit corporation powered by people who believe in changing the current death care paradigm."

I remember times when soil smelled rich,

a kind of coffee bean rich, a kind

of patchouli rich, a rich that flared my nostrils 

scenting the air with inhale more. 

The time we worked our garden soil 

composting it, the elements of peat and perlite

caking fingernails, our prepping

beds for rows and rows of plants

yearning for elements beyond clay. We dreamt

of growing foxglove, ferns and fuchsias,

entwining them with flowers mixing other letters

into soil with pansies, daffodils, impatiens.  

But it was always soil, prepared, that led to color,

soil inhabiting our very blood and bones, 

a deep affinity for dust to dust we have within,

rich dark coffee-colored soil, aromas lifting up and

taking us to early earth when scientists say the smell

was more like rotten eggs, rich with H2S. This richness lives

within me, my body’s future with the possibility of

decomposing into one cubic yard of soil,

along with wood, alfalfa, even straw, all

assisting me along the way to my new form, 

my inert self reduced to fragrant future supplements

for growing flowers after I have gone.

Something to think about, while legislators ponder laws

to handle soil that’s human-sourced. Right now, it’s not

Assembly Bill 501 I’m thinking of; I’m smelling soil, the

rich rich soil that flowers hunger for, the soil that’s fed

my soul, the gardening days when turning over dirt

was very much like leafing through a sacred text, 

when I’ve translated who I’ve been into the earth

from which I’ve come.

Barbara Simmons is a poet who celebrates the many worlds she inhabits using language to explore the ways we remember and envision. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. As a secondary school English teacher, she revisited texts with students who inspired her thinking about communication's diversity. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring the world's stories in her poetry. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, Writing it Real Anthologies, Capsule Stories Anthologies, and the Journal of Expressive Writing.  Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilbriums will appear in 2022.

MY BODY

by Claire Sapan

In bed each night I am grateful for the body that is mine: 

Skin that protects me, allows me to feel 

Tongue that gives me taste 

Heart that allows me to feel 

But somewhere along the way you decided my body

Was yours

You disassemble me 

Like a Barbie

Bending me in your direction 

At your discretion

Breaking off what you don’t like 

And today you took my choice 

You took autonomy away from me, 

From my body 

So tonight in bed I will mourn 

But tomorrow I will fight 

For at the end of the day, 

This body is mine

Claire Sapan is an avid writer and feminist, hoping and fighting for a better world. 

THE GREEN LIGHT

by Lynn White

US Army Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, steps on board a C-17 transport plane as the last US service member to leave Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: Us Army/Reuters via The Guardian, August 31, 2021

When she saw the green lights

her first thoughts were of Triffids.

Of course she knew they were imaginary 

but was less sure about the green lights 

which enabled their freedom,

an unintended consequence 

of the activity

of some government or other,

a terrifying aftermath.

And who knew what the aftermath 

of this green sky would be.

She could still see them

glowing above her.

So, not yet blind,

she thought.

But then, she reconsidered.

Metaphorically speaking

perhaps we were all blinded

a long time ago

when the green light was given

to the Triffids

who are already rampaging.

We just haven’t noticed yet,

such is our loss of sight.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal and So It Goes.