By Lew Jones

In the valley of sickness  

  Small- Pox blankets 

    Free range attrition  

       Trees again pink white 

         Where kinder play light 

          Nation call to arms 

          Yell to harm 

                Lands of holy dust 

                   Await condemnation  

By Jeanne Blum Lesinski

COVID KILLED US—WE’RE IN HELL

says the sign on the highway.

Seems Frost was right: cold as ICE,

murder twice, and throw away.

                   Humanity, decency   

facing hate, what should we say?

“It’s not too late,” Love whispers.

“True kindness can win the day.”

By Richard Wells

When we were tweens we’d play

the What-Would-You-Do-If game

specifically

what would you do

if the world were about to end.

The possibility was clearly on the horizon

and it was a given that death would come from above

By Becca Lavin

Battle scars are beautiful    BE CAUSE

You had the strength and determination         TO

Speak your mind   NOT

Just for Your Own BUT

For THOSE that were /are   AND

Will      BE

I am a WOMAN   OF

A certain AGE

I lay in the trenches          OF

PAST                WARS

Won?             SOME

By  Phillip Shabazz

The body is a code they will not honor.
Aetna sent the form to clear my shelf.
I recognize the diagnosis: 093.0.
This chronic absence is the second self.

Aetna sent the form to clear some shelf.
My fever is a tax on everything I loved.
This chronic absence is the shadow self.
I used to file the claims they now deny.

My fever is a tax on everything I loved.
The body's language: Lyme, and then the blur.
I used to file the claims they now deny.
The only medicine is the debt itself.

By Michael Roque

During a 60-second air raid siren-

Pompeii becomes the norm of society.

With an eruption,

fire flashes across the sky,

bringing shopping bags to concrete,

crawling traffic to stop

and bustling streets to be abandoned for shelters,

where huddling neighbors meet.

boom-

BOom-

BOOM!

Up above.

By Carl “Papa” Palmer

I CAN’T BREATHE - Black Lives Matter rallying slogan in 2020

Thank you was the only response from Mom,

secretary of Gardner Cigarette and Vending,

when the manager of the Tobacco Warehouse

next door delivered me in tow to her office.

He was drinking out of the “Colored” spigot.

You need to learn him not to mix with them kind,

storming out when Mom had no further comment.

By Miriam Bassuk

Vietnam war roared its death dance

from afar, just like now, after we bombed Iran.

Life does go on, and maybe,

we remain impervious,

but somewhere, the wolf howls,

and the splinter in our skin

singes. Hard to push it away.

Great pain from waging war, 

By Cheryl Caesar

In our back yard, the snow is thick and smooth

as icing on an Irish Christmas cake. Sweet

enough to burn your tongue. Safe at the window,

we feel no touch of cold. 

The evening has gone grey and mauve

as an old children’s book. Deer glide past,

cutouts in a paper theatre. Silently,

without fear; there are no guns here. 

By Phillip Shabazz

The riot had no name— the sky cracked its throat on siren-song. Asphalt learned to swallow whole. A sneaker—pink, child-sized—spins mid-air mid-cry mid-century. The streets don't burn. They are burning. They have always burned in the tense I don't teach. Glass doesn't shatter. It speaks in the language of aftermath, in the grammar of never-arrived-home. Listen: a stop sign is a grave marker if I know how to read it.

Aaron. Not theory. Chipped tooth. Tic Tacs rattling in his pocket like dice like a rosary like evidence. They said gun. They said description. They said the footage—but footage is just another word for what we choose to frame, what we crop from the shot. His hoodie too bright. His skin the wrong aperture for mercy. The corner store still hums his laugh back, that frequency the news can't tune to, won't hold, drops like a call from a country with no extradition treaty for the dead. I saw the stain before the story.

By  Craig Kirchner                  

We are born needing food, warmth, direction and love.

No one is born hating, we are trained to hate as

we learn to fear, the dynamics falling like cards

being fanned together, one and the next

and then shuffled, waiting to be cut.

We hate what we fear, fear what we hate,

starting with ourselves, and then spreading over

the rest of our domain into every nook and cranny

like butter on hot toast. We early learn to fear

the hot stove but we don’t hate it.

By Todd Matson

“My house is on fire,”

said the caller.

“All houses matter,”

said the fire station captain.

“My house is on fire,”

said the caller.

“All houses matter,”

said the captain.

By Zach Charles

10 jan 27 yo alki apt 313p

“speak plainly” said the politician

“i can speak no other way” responded the poet

  the protests have ramped up

    after the murder of Renée Good a white

                           queer woman

 Rep Chuy Garcia IL says don’t

                                  forget

Marimar Marinez & Silverio Villegas Garcia

By Cheryl Caesar

Wednesday they shot the poet in her car.

The bloody airbag hit me in the face.

I pulled in like a tortoise. I dug far

into the frozen ground, as surface air

was roiling with a noxious orange gas.

I dug so deep I had no voice to hear.

By Margaret Roncone

When cedars loosen 
their green hold on you 
 
when skylarks write 
your name in cursive
across heaven 
 
when red tulips remind 
you of the lipstick 
your mother wore 
 
when the riling sea
nudges your spirit awake 
 

By Becca Lavin  

We haven’t come this far
On legs and shoulders 
exposed
to good truths and possibilities
For self determination
To sit down now 

To sag with exhaustion at the long,
sure to continue,
niggling at our rights and responsibilities
in the face of greed for power and
whatever else? 

You did not sit down nor fail us 
You hung on ‘till your 
Very     last      drop
Was spent from you
With the courage and the grace
Of your convictions

 And ours

By Craig Kirchner

To conduct a democratic experiment required men,
men of vision and courage, there was comradery and grandeur.
We learned that any humanitarian cause does not include
slavery and we are learning now it does not include cowards.

We are a land of immigrants who were all running from ugly
but are now running ugly up the flagpole to get rid of immigrants.
The spirit that brought our forefathers here is the same spirit
that brings these victims, some of our best citizens now,
who are being attacked in the name of patriotism. 

Ugly and crass are embedded. Something disastrous is coming.
Everyone can feel it, everyone knows the fear
they are supposed to. As we prepare to celebrate the flag,
the Liberty Bell looks poised to ring in the unimaginable.

By Christopher J. Jarmick

I load words

into the barrel

of this traceable

but unlicensed

poem.

When I pull the trigger on this poem

the words will hit their target

without any innocent bystanders

being hurt.

It is superior to the gun.

By Todd Matson

The meth-fueled
lab rat is utterly
insatiable.

Can’t refrain
from self-seeking
behaviors.

Has no
frustration
tolerance.

Can’t delay
gratification,
never sleeps.

By Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and translated by Alison Anderson - Europa Editions, 2017

Reviewed by Mary Ellen Talley

The novel, The Silence of the Choir, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr immerses readers in a tale of 72 immigrant men after they survive their journey from several African countries to immigrate to Sicily. Although this book is nearly ten years old, the story rings true and is relevant for the USA now.

There are many voices in this novel. Early in the story, some residents of Altino, the town that welcomed the refugees, are growing edgy and resentful. They are afraid refugees, the “ragazzi,” (the guys), will take their jobs. Why are the ragazzi given free housing, food, education, and health care when the citizens can hardly afford their own? They are also afraid of possible refugee violence.