By Todd Matson

Love. It’s always only about love. They preach it. They

teach it. They are all about it. Love. Love God with all

your heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbor

as yourself. Love others as Jesus first loved us. Love.

That’s all that God requires of us. Love, love, love. Love

every man, woman and child. Love everyone alive. Unless

they’re black or brown or red or yellow. Unless they weren’t

born here. Unless they’re gay or bi or trans or queer or such.

By Shontay Luna

Someone, whom one wouldn’t normally suspect,

said online “This is not my America.” To which

all I can do is say, “Welcome.” Welcome to what

they’re receiving is just a small sample of what

people of color go through, in this america,

every single day.

By Yuan Changming

Says Confucius, the speech

Will carry no might, or something

To this effect, but I do not care

Nor will I put up any fight

If you call me chink, chinaman

Oriental, ching chong, dog-eater

Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan

By Michaelangelo Davis aka MSAJID

So soon you left

Directly after you I ran

At first, I stood midst the

Morning’s dew

It seemed to embrace me.

I felt it’s chill for I had fallen.

I knew mourning was due.

By Rick Ells

The Wind is gathering, swirling,

rising in power and purpose.

Outrage gives voice to millions,

calm in their peacefulness,

strident in their message.

The not-king reeks foolishness,

flails about trying to prove his worth.

His method is diversions and lies,

By Mary Anna Kruch

(The Capitol Building ~ Lansing, MI ~ March 23, 2020)

The sky has gone indigo and

birds have long stilled their songs;

under the darkening sky, stars wink out.

Perhaps the birds and sky

are also laying low,

trying to expunge the memory

of that angry mob that stormed

the Capitol today, guns drawn,

protesting lockdown,

believing lies spread by a leader

who says the pandemic is fake news.

By Craig Kirchner

First the gun knew,

the hammer, the firing pin,

strikes the primer cap,

detonates on impact, creates a spark,

explodes the shell of gunpowder

generating the power that

propels the bullet.

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