NOT TODAY, PINKO!

by Steven Kent

"Rightwingers say 'pink-haired liberals' are killing New York pizza"

—The Guardian, 29 June 2023

A plot, a plot, a plot's afoot;

   These commies can't deny it.

They claim they want to cut down soot,

   But patriots don't buy it!

Our ovens they will never take

   And leave us in the lurch here.

Clean air's a ruse, a hoax, a fake—

  We did our own research here!

Editor’s note: Here’s what’s really happening.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and Oxford comma enthusiast Kent Burnside. His work appears in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and OEDILF, among others.

THINKING ABOUT THE NEWS, I PICK WILD RASPBERRIES

by Bonnie Naradzay

Israeli forces have concluded their largest-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in decades, killing at least 12 Palestinians and leaving widespread destruction across the city’s refugee camp. —CNN, July 5, 2023. The Israeli military says all of the at least 12 Palestinians killed in its near 48-hour operation were combatants, and that its operation aimed to break the mindset that Jenin is a “safe haven” for militants. But the Palestinian fighters parading through the streets in broad daylight, with weapons strapped to their chests, showed that they remain unbroken and defiant. The Jenin Brigade, a faction affiliated with the wider Islamic Jihad group, said eight of the dead, ranging in age from 16- to 21-years-old, came from among their ranks. Meanwhile, United Nations experts have stated that five children were among the dead. Muhammad Darwish Photo: The back wall of Hanaa al-Shalaby's daughters' room was blown out, leaving chunks of rubble on a small bed. —CNN, July 7, 2023

Walking along the road to the metro,

I have read that of 12 killed so far, 

5 were children. The IDF claimed

they were all terrorists. The clusters

of raspberries are red and I eat them.

Over 1,000 soldiers supported 

by missile-carrying drones

invaded dense neighborhoods.

IDF means Israel Defense Force;

it withdrew with its armored cars 

from the Jenin refugee camp only 

after depriving families of electricity, 

water; after smashing roads to rubble;

after blocking ambulances trying to reach

the wounded, after invading hospitals

and detonating canisters of tear gas there.

The raspberries are still safe to eat.

The news says Israel is buying 25 

more F-35 stealth fighter jets from 

the U.S. for free; the deal is financed 

through U.S. military aid: nearly 

$4 billion given outright to Israel 

every year no matter what; 

not as loans to be paid back.

I turn back to the raspberries, 

remembering that time I ate ripe

mulberries from a tree in the park. 

The UN observer on tv said Jenin, 

in the Occupied West Bank,

is in Area A, which is supposedly 

under the sole control of Palestine.  

Meanwhile Israel launched airstrikes 

attacking Gaza again. I pay my fare 

at the metro, go downtown 

to the homeless shelter, and share 

poems by Tu Fu and Langston Hughes.

Bonnie Naradzay’s recent poems are in AGNI, New Letters, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review,  Birmingham Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, and many other sites. She was awarded the New Orleans MFA’s poetry prize:  a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle (in the Dolomites) of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. For many years, she has led regular poetry sessions at shelters for the homeless and at a retirement center, all in Washington, DC. 

GASSED

by Royal Rhodes

Today, U.S. officials announced that the final munition in the nation's obsolete stockpile of chemical weapons has been safely destroyed—a disarmament milestone decades in the making. 

—U.S. Department of Defense, July 7, 2023

Gassed (1919) by John Singer Sargent —Wikiart

The staggering line of gassed soldiers, each Tommy blindfolded as if in a deadly children's game, moved slowly over a ground-cover of wounded and dead, and were linked by a sagging rope of hands on shoulders. The society painter, more famous for portraits of the wealthy and renowned, a world of watered-silk frocks and highly polished silver tea sets, covered a vast canvas with these larger-than-life figures that overshadow the startled visitors gazing at the past. In the background a spirited soccer game caught their eye.

War made forests ash

and remade farmland

to fields of headstones

Royal Rhodes lives in Gambier, Ohio, and has published poems in The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review Challenge, and Snakeskin Poetry.

KING DOM’S DREAM KINGDOM

by Radice Lebewsu

The award-winning Ukrainian novelist, essayist and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina, who was wounded last week in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant, has died from her injuries. Tributes to both Amelina’s activism and her writing poured in from across the worlds of literature and politics, after PEN Ukraine announced she had died in a hospital in Dnipro, surrounded by friends and family. Amelina, 37, won the Joseph Conrad literary prize in 2021 for works including Dom’s Dream Kingdom and had been nominated for other major awards including the European Union Prize for Literature. She largely set aside her writing after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, to focus on documenting war crimes and working with children on or near the frontline. —The Guardian, July 3, 2023

            “In death’s dream kingdom…”
                        —T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
            “Faith is…absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.”
                        —Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries
 

Ukrainian Victoria Amelina has died
from injuries along with others; it was dinnertime.
It happened in the city Kramatorsk, more death, more grime,
another dozen dead at th’ restaurant where they had dined.
She had been documenting Russian war crimes for a year,
her prose attempting dealing with the horror and the fear,
like as her fellow writer Vakulenko tried to do, 
when he was killed in Izium in 2022,
his diary found buried underneath a cherry tree,
unchopped, like those in Chekhov’s arbour… arbitrarily.

Radice Lebewsu, an anagrammatic heteronym of Bruce Dale Wise, is a poet fond of Ukraine.

ONCE AGAIN, SMOKE

by JL Huffman

Once again, smoke from Canadian wildfires envelops many American cities —Medical Xpress, July 3, 2023

JL Huffman is a retired Trauma Surgeon/ICU doctor who has published three poetry books: Almanac: The Four Seasons (2020), Family Treasons (2021), and Voyage: Vista and Verse (2022). Her individual poems have appeared in The Pharos, The Asahi Haikuist Network, Haiku Dialogue, Poetry Pea, Cold Moon Journal, The Pan Haiku Review, Haiku in Action, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and others. Twitter: @JoanHuffmanMD

GATESVILLE TEXAS

by Tina Williams

A 37-year-old woman died Friday morning while incarcerated at the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed. The department identified the deceased woman as Elizabeth Hagerty. Staff found her unresponsive and initiated life-saving measures before she was pronounced dead at 12:48 a.m., according to a department spokesperson. The cause of death is still pending and an investigation is underway. Hagerty is one of at least three people in their 30s to die suddenly in the last week at a prison without full air conditioning. —Nexstar, June 30, 2023 

Inmates are dying in stifling Texas prisons, but state seldom acknowledges heat as a cause of death. 

—The Texas Tribune, June 29, 2023

two weeks 

after our last class

with the women in white

news comes that someone

on the unit has died 

with no cause given 

for her death 

but it may have been cancer

or a work-related incident 

or a weak heart 

with guards finding her bent 

over a commode

scrubbing her uniform but

let us consider 

why she is here

and how we reap

what we sow 

she from what perhaps 

an uncle sowed 

which was destined 

not to grow a child 

but something harder 

with teeth 

until one day 

she lifts a necklace

or moves heroin

or simply waits in the car as told

and by the time 

she figures out the pop 

someone is screaming drive

and the road leads

to the Lane Murray Women’s Unit

in Texas where the heat is 100 

and the senate 

sees scant need for AC 

in a concrete block

on the last day in June

when she dies at 37 

with no cause given 

for her life 

either

Author’s Note:  I volunteer with a non-profit organization that offers trauma-informed classes for women in several prisons in Central Texas. The class I facilitated at the Lane Murray Unit ended in March, but another of our classes there ended two weeks before the reported death of a 37-year-old woman on the Lane Murray unit. I used the article and my experience working with women in Texas prisons to tell an Everywoman story. My poem imagines the way a woman may have been found, the childhood trauma that may have led her life to spiral, the crimes that may have led to her incarceration, and the circumstances that may have contributed to her death. 

Editor's Note: Nexstar reported that 64-year-old woman died at the same facility one week earlier: "Inmates expressed concern Thursday afternoon that the deceased became ill due to heat, according to a member of Texas Prison Community Advocates and former Murray Unit inmate in communication with people on the inside."

Tina Williams lives in Austin, Texas, and has had poems published in Borderlands and The Concho River Review.

JUSTICE IN TRIPLICATE

by Lavinia Kumar

Know the constitution is not just a ye-olde parchment scroll, it
Amplifies restraint of judicial roles, not an attempt to cover them in
Gown, black or white. Know congress not court make law. We
Angrily, we must, protect all American people knowing that in this
Number are color, gender, poverty, and most of all, reality.
 
Sickening is constitutional subversion rolling back racial equality
On the backs of spoiled children and mommies
Touting “unfairness” to a receptive group of
Outed outward rightists with no interest in settled law, nor
Maintaining a semblance of right. Where is Equal Protection against
Anchors around Black necks not just for
Years, but for decades, for centuries – such
Ongoing abuse, such dehumanizing lack of recognition of
Rights, yes, equal rights.  Right…
 
Just as ostriches in sand, some justices in a white marble palace wish
Away race, inequality, lack of opportunity in a
Collective blindness that racism isn’t racism as though not
Knowing oft-scribed history, so whitewash it to
Satisfy their simpering sycophancy as though legislated law too
Onerous.  They use diamond blinders given to them unethically by
New and old millionaire pals divorced from reality.

 
Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists—very short prose of near 90 amazing women writers, poets, publishers, painters, artists, abolitionists, early suffragettes, and activists.

6 HAIKU ABOUT 4 JULY

by Jeffrey Bryant

The signing of the Declaration of Independence, depicted here in a lithograph published by Nathaniel Currier. Photograph: Corbis/Hulton via The Guardian.

Fifty-six wigged men

Conceived the United States

On land that they stole.

 

Fifty-six wigged men

Complained about tyranny

After whipping slaves.

 

Fifty-six wigged men

Scribbled out their grievances

Without irony.

 

Fifty-six wigged men

Used the word equal without

Having looked it up.

 

Fifty-six wigged men

Lived liberty in pursuit

Of more native land.

 

Fifty-six wigged men

Need no pyrotechnics now

Down where they reside.

Jeffrey Bryant lives in Los Angeles.  He has been published in the L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Poetic Diversity Literary Journal and in the anthologies The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha/Northwestern University Press, the 2020 Altadena Literary Review from Shabda Press, and Shadowplay from the University of Arkansas.

NEW ERA

by Brian O’Sullivan

Recreational marijuana is officially legal across the state of Maryland. This means anyone 21 and over now can purchase marijuana products as long as they show their ID. —CBS News, July 2, 2023

Photo shows a young Maryland waterman holding a traditional crab pot.

Brian O'Sullivan teaches rhetoric and English literature in southern Maryland. His poems have appeared in or been accepted by The New Verse News, Rattle, One Art, and other journals.

CALIFORNIA HATERS

by tom bauer

The Annihilation of Hate by Frank Hunter

Hate crimes soared in California in 2022, with year-over-year rises recorded in crimes targeting virtually every demographic group, according to a report released Tuesday. —Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2023

what is hate? the angry white boy, proud,
determined to bring worlds to their knees?

is it the ruminative brain, snowballed
around some speck of ugly dusty thought?

in brains is it like geysers boiling over
under shale until the surface cracks, breaks?

what is the spark? injustice felt? a pain
inside the eye, a prick of a needle?

i could have gone that way. some angry guy
infecting my brain with wrongheaded dreams.

a year or two to change the brain and off
i’d go, powered by resentment’s battery.

in gratitude it’s hard to hate. the choice
is always mine to make. it is my brain.

tom bauer lives in montreal with his sons and plays boardgames.

THE LADDER

by Kavita Ratna

The ladder

against the wall

leaves 

misshapen 

shadows,

slanted in 

impossible angles.

 

The rungs

of the real and

the surreal

end

in the middle of

a blankness.

 

Rising begins

where 

the climb ends.

Kavita Ratna is a children's rights activist, poet, and a theatre enthusiast. Sea Glass is her collection of poems published by Red River. Her poems have appeared in The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess within, A little book of serendipity, The Wise Owl, Triveni Hakai India, Haiku in Action, the Scarlet Dragonfly, the Cold Moon Journal, Five Fleas Itchy poetry, Stardust Haiku, Leaf (Journal of The Daily Haiku), and Parcham.

NORTH AMERICAN MIGRATION

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Canadian wildfire smoke created a hazy red-orange sky over Lake Michigan on June 23 at the Michigan-Huron watershed. Wildfire smoke is causing poor air quality in the Great Lakes this week. —Fox Weather

Just a whiff of Armageddon seems worse
than a year of Covid precautions. Canadian fires.
Some jet stream sending a radar plume of it 
like a purple hot dog cuddled up to the blue bun 
of Lake Michigan. Thinner but more toxic
than mountain fog, smoke blurs horizons
and pulls a gray film over every noun,
smothered in adjectives. Diluted sun thins
the smoke like cream into soup, a color
variation, same raw taste. Ash residue
floats on bird baths. Only the crows sing. 
It’s a song they learned on their migration
from Hell. Not long ago. North of Thunder Bay.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske is a Michigan native. She is a poet, visual artist, and mother of three. Her publications include dozens of print and online journals, five books of poetry, and inclusion in several anthologies. She would never live anywhere else.

PRIDE

by Marion Evalee

Carrying a jumbo rainbow flag onto the Salem Common under the rainbow arch are Ken Elie, left and Ed Hurley, right of the group Boston Pride, who turned out to support the North Shore Pride group. Joe Brown photo via The Salem News, June 25, 2023

The great Arc-en-ciel
Is colorless,

Not on the wing.
A heart needs something,

Color needs light,
A flag needs the wind—

Whoever’s eternal
Rebounding breath

Has deadened with the night,
As it often does.

I keep walking
Over what was

The parade grounds
(What will be the Commons

By the time we celebrate
Our independence)

Like an old vet,
Though it’s getting dark.

Marion Evalee, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has appeared in The Amethyst Review, Willows Wept, Survivor Lit, The Boston Compass, Neologism, and Montage. A selection of her poetry is featured in the anthology 14 International Younger Poets (Art and Letters, 2021). She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.