THAT IS NOT WHO WE ARE

by Robbie Gamble

“Oh, Really” by Keith Knight via Kottke.Org

“That is not who we are.”

That is: not.

Who we are, that is.

Not who!

We are?

Are we?

We are who we are;

that we

are who we are

is that.

Not that!

Are we not?

We are.

We are that.

That!

THAT!

That is that.

Robbie Gamble’s poems have appeared in Coal Hill Review, Whale Road Review, RHINO, Poet Lore, and Rust + Moth. He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry prize. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

THIS DAY WILL NOT JUST LIVE IN INFAMY

by Michael Mark

Shutterstock

For Lolo

 

Because it is your birthday, I’m going to ignore 

the four thousand people in our country who will die today. 

 

Because it is your birthday, I’m going to erase from my mind 

the insane president and treasonous riot he instigated

                                 

and the love video he put out to his thug followers as five people died 

during the siege of the Capitol, and pretend the polls are fake 

 

that say 45% of Republicans believe the breaking 

and entering was the right thing to do, and I’m going 

 

to drive to the card store – the good one, not the grocery

or the pharmacy with their picked-over puns,

 

but the fancy one that specializes in fine crafted, highly artistic 

expressions of earnest emotions, featuring 

 

only the cutest kitten and puppy pics, and charge 

at least six dollars and ninety-nine cents for ironic yet sincere stuff like: 

 

You’re not getting older—oh wait!—I just checked 

your sun dial—yes you are! Because it is your birthday 

 

I’m not going to even wonder if we should be celebrating 

considering today’s particularly disappointing jobs report

 

and the unnerving delay on stimulus checks and vaccines. 

I’m going to interrogate every rack on every aisle to pick out 

 

your perfect card, and because I can’t stop the riots 

or bring back the dead, or deliver the checks or administer the vaccine, 

 

I will, because it is your birthday, light the candle, and watch 

you close your eyes to the whole world and make your wish. 

 

Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Arkansas International, Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Salamander, The Southern Review, The Sun, Waxwing, and The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry. He’s the author of two books of stories including Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum).

SERMON FOR THE SIRENIAN

by Jenna Le

State and federal wildlife authorities were investigating after a manatee with “Trump” on its back was spotted in Florida on Sunday. Credit: Hailey Warrington, The New York Times, January 11, 2021.

A manatee is no cartouche.

A manatee is not a blimp.

No pharoah's name or Nike swoosh

carved in her flanks shall ever crimp 

her honey-languid swimming strokes.

She is no singing telegram,

no contrail, and no ad for smokes.

The same way you would treat the lamb, 

thus you shall treat the manatee,

whose every breath's a stinky huff,

who shuffles upstream clownishly.

Love's not just for the pretty stuff, 

a fact I thought you'd understand.

Man's what he is, yet God loved man.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards. She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition and by Julie Kane as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s sonnet crown competition the following year. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and West Branch. 

DON'T MOCK HITLER'S MUSTACHE

by Jon Wesick

At Yalta,

while America wore olive drab

or Navy blue, the ad man wore a silk tie

and jacket of vicuña wool.

After Stalin left, the ad man spoke

to leaders of grounds fertilized

by a half-million dead from bullet,

bomb, and flame.

 

Words hurt!

How can we heal

by saying the Master Race

ran Death Camps? How about

the Predominant Genealogy

hosted Repose Resorts instead?

Appointing Adolf Eichmann

head of Health and Human Services

would be seen as a gesture of goodwill.

 

For effective messaging use these substitutions:

Not Antisemitism but Aryan Pride

Not National Socialism but Civic Communitarianism

Not Totalitarianism but Discipline and Order

Not Sneak Attack but Dazzling Advance

Not World War but Macrocosmic Contest

Not Holocaust but Extermination Engineering

 

With my strategy, you’ll win the War of Ideas,

I mean, the Altercation of Abstractions.

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, The New Verse News, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his stories “The Visitor” and “A Story for the Rest of Us” for Pushcart Prizes. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collections Words of Power, Dances of Freedom and A Foreigner Wherever I Go as well as several novels and short story collections. His most recent novel is The Enigma Brokers.

AFTERMATH

by Dana Yost

“No Mercy” by Mariusz Kozik

It’s turned me 

into a steel blade,

cutting people from my life

without hesitation, without doubt,

just a quick slice and they are gone.

I’m not a heartless man. Rather,

the opposite: forgiving, understanding.

But not this time, not this time.

Some things are too sacred.

The Constitution, for one.

I believe. I defended it

my entire career. If you choose

to denigrate, or violate, or ignore

it, you face the blade that my life

has taken on: it will cut you

out, send you into the outer darkness

of my life where I may never see

you again, never think of you again.

I’m sorry—no, strike that.

I do not apologize. I am steel,

on this, I am steel. And the blade

cuts fast.

Dana Yost was an award-winning daily newspaper journalist for 29 years. Since 2008, Yost has written six books, including last year's poetry chapbook In Your Head.

YEAR OF THE RANT

by Robert Knox

In a year in which only personal realities 
are consulted by humans, 
in which only over-sized creatures are heard 
and they merely grunt

In a year in which the hogs that grunt 
are only human, 
in which it can be seen that 
their blinkered eyes are rightly suspicious
and monitor the intrusive attentions 
of folks with cameras,
who are neither journalists nor tourists, 
but uniformed executioners bearing witness on themselves
 
In a year in which the words of the truly reproachable  
bear witness against themselves,  
in which the words of the prophets 
are everywhere and too numerous to recall
amidst the blinding lights of the next enormity,
too large for even the wiser among us to believe, 
or the most gullible
 
In which even the loudest of unsanctioned mouths 
fall silent,
for there is simply too much to say
 
and no lack of overpaid oath-breakers 
clamoring to bear witness against themselves.

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of a novel based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, titled Suosso's Lane. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as Off The Coast, The Journal of American Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Califragile, and Unlikely Stories. His poetry chapbook Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty, published in 2017, was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. The chapbook Cocktails in the Wild followed in 2018. He was recently named the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.

HAWLEY

by Robert West

One sworn to shield you soon would die,

but you, your cynic’s fist held high,

proclaimed your solidarity

with those for whom the thought they’re free

now trumps all law and love and reason.

You spurred them on, then cheered their treason.

Robert West is the author of three chapbooks of poems including Convalescent (Finishing Line Press, 2011); the co-editor of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013); and the editor of both volumes of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons (W. W. Norton, 2017).

HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON

by Suzette Bishop

Go ahead and come on down to Alamo, Texas

To admire me, the wall at the border,

Go ahead and come on down to brag

About building me to keep the country safe,

Go ahead and come on down to praise me

And yourself,

How strong we are,

How big and beautiful we are,

How much we cost taxpayers,

How no one can scale us,

How we keep out criminals,

How we cage children but keep them warm

With foil blankets.

Let me help you have a photo op

Before you leave office,

A mic, a platform,

Since you were walled out

After breaking down the doors

And smashing the windows of the Capitol.

As you know, I may be incomplete,

But I’m great,

So great that at night under the stars

This section of me coils

Into a circle,

Tighter and tighter

Around you and your golf cart,

The ocelots staring at you

As they run from one border to the next,

Walling you in,

Keeping the country safe again.

Suzette Bishop teaches at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. Her books include Horse-Minded, She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes, Hive-Mind, Cold Knife Surgery, and most recently, a chapbook, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead.  Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. Poems about living on the border, animals, and endangered species are highlighted in her most recent poems and books while her favorite way to enjoy the borderlands is by horseback. 

MY NAME IS AMERICA AND I'M GOING TO GET YOU VACCINATED

by Diane Elayne Dees

She said it without irony, then asked 
for my name and date of birth. 
She then directed me to the room
where I would wait for my turn 
to get the long-awaited needle stick
in my arm. As I sat, visions 

of pleasant young hospital staff 

members throughout the country
floated through my troubled mind:

My name is America,
and I’m going to get you infected with Covid.
My name is America,
and I’m going to turn my eyes 
when business owners 
and government leaders 
ignore rules that could save your life.
My name is America,
and I’m sick to death of quarantine.
My name is America,
and I can’t even get you a Covid test.
My name is America, 
and I’m looking out for illness
in the stock market.
My name is America,
and I’m going to wear my mask 

under my nose.

It took only a breath of a moment,
the life-saving prick of the needle;
I didn’t feel anything at all. 
In three weeks, I’ll return and do it again.
Maybe America will guide me
through the final stage of protection.
Maybe America will remember me, 
my face half-covered by a mask, 
but my eyes filled with grief and fear.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

ANIMAL FARM 2021:3. MEGAWA, THE HERO RAT

 by Tricia Knoll

HeroRAT Magawa has been awarded the PDSA (The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals) Gold Medal for life-saving bravery. Magawa is based in Cambodia and supports APOPO's efforts to rid Cambodia of the deadly legacy of landmines. Magawa is an African giant pouched rat that was born in Tanzania in November 2014. He grew up at APOPO's Training and Research center in Tanzania where he learned how to detect the smell of explosives using his nose. Under the loving guidance of his human rat trainer,s he fully completed his training in 9 months and began to prepare to leave for the field. Magawa moved to Siem Reap in Cambodia in 2016 where he met his new handler Malen and began his successful career. To date he has found 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance, making him APOPO’s most successful HeroRAT. Over the past 4 years he has helped clear over 141,000 square metres of land, allowing local communities to live, work and play without fear of losing life or limb. (APOPO is an acronym from Dutch which stands for "Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling", or in English, Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development.)

wears a gold medal around his neck. 

Plain gray hero rat trained to stand up

on his back feet. He smells landmines;

more than sixty pieces of unexploded mayhem

in Cambodia. He alerts and gets banana. 

 

This acknowledgement comes grudgingly

from this woman with a rat trap in her garage

who has smelled rat urine on the lid of a steamer

in her pantry, who wiped up weeks of rat shit

under an antique cherry sideboard. Who when 

danger looms flinches from dream rodents

that scurry where walls meets floors. 

 

Today you asked me to find one reason for hope. 

You rescue orchids in discarded pots and coax

them into bloom. What I offer you after insurrection

and death in the Capitol is this: I give one rat

his due. 

 

Tricia Knoll recently spent more time watching events unfold in the Capitol than she did binge watching The Queen's Gambit. She is a Vermont poet looking forward to introducing a new collection of poetry this spring called Checkered Mates.

ANIMAL FARM 2021:2. TODAY SHE LOOKS LIKE A SHROPSHIRE SHEEP

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Graphic from Walls of the Wild.

My once-white dog
leaps on black legs
across thawing mud,
 
her bearded muzzle
iced with dirt. Oh, joy,
gusto of dogfulness.

Don’t discuss politics
or the foolhardiness
of those who rule us.

In my next life, I’ll roll
in the spiral cow pies
to praise the new day.

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.

ANIMAL FARM 2021:1. BRAZEN BULL

by E. L. Blizzard

A young male bottle-fed, head-petted, indulged, insulated from common bovine. Aggressive disposition rewarded, elite pedigree admired, need for dominance nurtured.

 

Let loose, it mounts at will. Out for blood. Horning and pawing dirt, snorting, trying to gore everything in its way.

 

Humans walk on eggshells, circling periphery, scratching heads, wondering what went wrong. Much too late for dehorning and castration, but they gather keystone and bands, readying to interrupt its flight zone.

 

pasture grazing—

sickly bellows

scatter the herd

E. L. Blizzard has recent poems forthcoming or in The Other Bunny, Bones, Drifting Sands, Failed Haiku, Autumn Moon, Under the Bashō, Wales Haiku Journal, Femku and Poetry Pea. Over years of nonprofit work, she’s advocated on issues faced by immigrants and refugees, survivors of intimate partner violence in cis and LGBTQ+ relationships, and those experiencing homelessness.

CAUTION

by David Chorlton

Arizona is reporting the highest rate of new coronavirus cases in the United States, as the state’s governor continues to resist calls to install strong restrictive measures. With an average of 118.3 new cases per 100,000 people, Arizona has become what health officials call the latest “hotspot of the world” because of soaring case loads. —The Guardian, January 7, 2021

Through the cold and shaded

lantana comes a rush

and a buzz from

the hummingbirds

who flash their purple in the grey

morning. The thrasher

recently arrived with  a scimitar

beak moves back

and forth between the seed block and

the water while once

the Cooper’s Hawk has been

and gone from the back

wall the African

lovebirds brighten

the air with their hungry calls. The other

news is all

dark suits and hospital

corridors, interrupted by happiness

staged to sell

new cars in a time of travelling

nowhere. Ten

thousand new cases today

in the state. Meanwhile

at the pond the Vermilion

Flycatcher works

the perimeter, and Northern Shovelers

mix with the Buffleheads and Pied-

billed Grebes. Sharp-witted

and shy, the coyote

down to drink

melts his frozen pose and slips

through an open gate,

wearing each moment’s light

as a changing disguise.

David Chorlton has lived for many years in Phoenix, close now to the city's large desert mountain park. He will have a new book of older poems published this year by FutureCycle Press, Unmapped Worlds.

TWO SIDES TO KENOSHA

by David Southward

Officer Sheskey feared for his life;

thinking that Jacob clutched a knife,

he shot, shot, shot in self-defense,

assured of his own innocence.

No charge was brought: who would convict

a fear too sane to contradict,

when video (which carries clout)

leaves wiggle room for reasoned doubt?

Jacob also feared for his life;

seeing the gunmen, he knew his knife 

would prove no use in self-defense.

He knew no black man’s innocence

is ever presumed, that courts convict 

the captured, suavely contradict

their stories, summon legal clout

to silence them with reasoned doubt.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), and winner of the 2019 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.