By Jacki Apple & Keith Antar Mason

I was born in America in the middle of the 20th century,
into the first generation to grow up with the Bomb and TV,
and the last generation to believe in the future.
I remember when Stalin died.
And when they executed the Rosenbergs.
I remember in exact and vivid detail the day JFK was assassinated, 
and Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.
I remember the day John Lennon was shot.
Then I stopped remembering.
Until now, that is.

By Marjorie Sadin

Blinding morning sun in my eyes,
I pass masked people like me.
Nod hello, walk in the street to social
distance. We do this for each other.
Still there are some who don’t 
believe.

Crammed inside a room with
no masks –super spreaders.
They are the ones who
don’t believe. 

By DC Diamondopolous 

A black cloud of smoke near the intersection of Florence and Normandie drifted toward Mrs. Kim’s California Dry Cleaning store in South Central Los Angeles. She turned the sign to closed and locked the door. Her husband phoned telling her to come home. The jury had acquitted the four white police officers accused of beating Rodney King. Trouble had begun. 

She’d seen the video of the policemen clubbing the man when he was down. Didn’t seem right. 

The Kims, in their 50s, socialized with and hired only other Koreans. With their two daughters, they lived the American Dream in a Korean cocoon. 

By John Krieg

Is all this “family of man” business a dream, or a pipe dream?  When you look at the deep divisions amongst Americans who represent a mere 5% of the world’s population, and then compare them against the even deeper divisions amongst the world’s remaining population, it is easy to feel that the whole situation is hopeless.  But, all there is – is hope.  Therein lies the future of the entire planet.  The complete disregard for the sanctity of human life is the biggest hurdle to guaranteeing that it will continue on into the future.  

By Catherine Hartnett

The June night’s heat, the insomniac beast
prowls. Call it instinct, rage, imperative;
you cannot change a tiger’s need to feast.
For him, there is no other way to live.

His hunger calls him to a sacred place
built for praise, contrition, forgiveness, prayer.
Sinners and saints in this house of hope, grace
in which God dwells. This holy place stands where 

By William Doreski

Monday in a purple moment,
the cloud cover not quite a shroud.
In the little park the silver light
falls on mothers chasing tots
across slabs of lawn just mown
by town employees grinning
through scruffs of weekend beard. 

The blistering hues of flowers 
around the rim of the park
fence the children from traffic
on Grove Street and the surge
of the carefully dammed river.
We watch the mothers dancing
about with their giggling kids
and discuss the lack of future.