Sonnet to the Fifty-One Senators Who Voted Against the Women’s Health Protection Act

by Joanne Durham 
 
I don’t have a personal story 
to pull at your heartstrings.    Never
bled sterile from a coat hanger.    Never
carried a child inside my body 

minus a mouth or a windpipe, knowing 
they would die within days strangled 
on their own breath. Was young and naive
but never paid the price. In America, we elect

you for your adorable puppy and three smiling 
children, spaced apart like their perfectly 
braced teeth. Then you abort 
compassion  --   your heartstrings broken. 

Our shared story is watching five deemed
Supreme smirk us back to the Dark Ages.

A Rat is a Rat is a Rat is a Rat

by Leticia Priebe Rocha
 
on a lilly boat 400 years ago the genocide rat
fucks and fucks breeds star-spangled rat
nips at chained feet spawns white hooded rat
burns crosses runs for office elephant red rat
tears into black and brown bodies blue rat
gnaws only a tad more politely after all a rat
is a rat is a rat is a rat

Elementary School Die-In

by Lara Dolphin

a fearsome sinner with nothing to lose
she set about righting the wilderness 
one cause at a time
starting with permissive gun laws
kids were easy to organize
they had phones
social media accounts
and zero fucks left to give
the first Friday in June
the last day of school for many
and Gun Violence Awareness Day
they readied for action 
walkers arrived first, 
then drop offs
then bus riders
assembling in front of schools
teams of fourth graders
helped position students on sidewalks
while art students traced outlines
in white chalk
fifth graders draped 
bloodied bandages 
across bodies 
backpacks, and lunch boxes
the yearbook staff shot video
while drama students 
led choreographed 
death throes and wails
all creation broke out
in a FOXP2 miracle
as a choir of the living chanted
Protect kids, not guns!
then homeroom bell rang
kids arose
gathered their belongings
and headed to class
she would continue 
to protest to contend to fight
wrestling God in the kingdom on earth
until her name was no longer woman
no longer Isha, but Israel 

Seed Fall Beneath the Redwoods

by Kevin Maus

Sun without boundary meeting the enormity of the trees; a driving downpour of light. In the cradle near the cool mud heart. Situated in view of a miracle, I find myself attendant. Thank God. The treetops rain with redwood seeds; with dust rising in warm rolls of wind. Enormity taking place before the prayer of inconsequence: counting its beads. Here at the bottom, where light fills up; feeling floating in it; moved around in it, by it. Twilight calm in stupefying effusion, one that is brighter than reason. Overcoming.

Can one take it as an assurance? Yes.

Ineradicable, irreducible. Days still come: poor preachers come, proselytizing forgetting, and the self that is selves among selves among selves, making likenesses likenesses likenesses; and the certainty obscures—yet is no less Absolute; no less everlasting. Just not fully realized...until the old preachers come no more, and the world becomes a paradigm of prayer and forgetting is set free, and worship becomes a mode of mind free of all mirror element (free of all I). Where one sees forever: the seeds falling.

Cale-se*

by Leticia Priebe Rocha

In the song Cálice, infamously censored by the U.S. backed Brazilian military dictatorship, Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento express the need to launch an inhuman scream because it is the only way to be heard. 
 
This is, of course, roughly translated. Translated roughly, of course, like human beings across ocean and desert, landing where
 
searching for life becomes criminal alien
 
ravaging lives turns into removal proceedings
 
children in cages shift to minor detainees
 
concentration camps metamorphose to detention centers,
 
all blending together, blending with thousands of other translations that maintain this stolen land, blending into our daily lives, blending into your mind, ultimately begging a single question:
 
Are 11 million screams enough? 
 
*Shut up

Premonition

by Robin Dellabough

 
A river of grief has evaporated:
red birds fly low over the empty bed.
Mothers rest on pillows of moss,
hum a morning song to remember
the ancient river rhythm.
Children, now waterfree and fearless, clamber
banks exploding in drifts of liatris, blazing star.
Fathers dry pan for golden minutes,
abiding in transformation, the wreath of days.
 
The mystery isn’t how this happened.
The mystery is how we forgot.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

gust of lake wind
the diving osprey tucks
a moment early

Lines

by Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo

dark clouds again
into the sky
i fall

Lines

 by Ram Chandran

drip drip
from the edge of a mango leaf -
moonlight

Dakota Territory

by Sharon Hilberer

In a land-locked county
in southern Minnesota
seagulls flicker up
from stubble fields.
           So much whiteness.

Bonneville at Night

by Kevin Maus

Clean night silence offered like an eternal search, a wonder of white, thought as clean as bone laid bare. Calling.

On Dreams

by Leticia Priebe Rocha

From the ages of two until seven, every night
Mamãe would read me a story about streets lined
with gold. I’d scrunch my forehead in concentration
and eagerly drink up every last word. She’d promise:
“We will be in the story too, when we learn English.”
I couldn’t wait to live in the land of dreams.
 
Two years later we got on a plane, chasing the dreams.
Eight hours is a long flight but I slept through the night,
and for the first time, I dreamt in English.
When we arrived in the dream land, the streets were lined
with tar. The houses were unfenced though, a promise
of safety. Mamãe told me to concentrate
 
on school. That was the only way. So I concentrated
on being the best. Giving and giving, their dream
guest, never taking. Mamãe stopped promising
the story would be ours. At night
we’d kneel in silent prayer, candles lined
up, shadows stark in our empty home. We knew English,
 
knew it so well we even prayed in English.
It wasn’t enough. No amount of concentration
nor prayer was enough for the law. The line
was too long, long before us. I was the perfect dreamer
but my dreams turned from gold to tar. Nights
turned again and again and again, promises
 
expired from higher up. No, empty. My promise
dwindling. Twelve years. Perfect English,
perfect comprehension of what unfolds in daylight.
Human beings held prisoners in large concentrations
for desperately seeking a meticulously packaged dream.
Children ripped from kin at their borderline,
 
how long before they are carted into a more sinister line?
Babies forced to take care of other babies, promising
better days they cannot see. No use in dreams,
they were shattered when English
became a vessel for building walls in high concentrations.
The children see an entire country that sleeps at night -
 
would you lie in bed if it was your child, English
speaking? What promises would you break in a concentration
camp? What dreams of yours would die in the land of nightmares?

Strozzatirrani

by Lara Dolphin

brutish, hungry, unsuspecting 
you helicopter from your superyacht
in Marina di Carrara to my quarter  
we talk of scorched fields and bombed buildings
while I prepare the meal
twisting cords of dough beneath my palms
otto e mezzo plays in the parlor
the table is set, the meal is ready– 
a bottle of wine to chug 
as you shovel forkfuls of pasta
thickly sauced with shavings of Parmesan
followed by salad drenched in balsamic vinegar– 
vapor lock, spasm of the airway
I hope you choke 

Crows Cry Bloody Murder

by Sharon Hilberer
 
We
don’t 
know why
they mob up like this.
In winter, Minneapolis 
watches them stream in. They know things that we just don’t know.
 
One
flock—
thousands
of corvids
send out an alarm.
All night they shivered in the trees;
are they screaming to heaven that it’s TOO FREAKIN’ COLD!?
 
Flock-
mind
senses
magnetic
currents: Disturbance
everywhere. Interpret tremors,
taste atmosphere, survey far horizons for danger.
 
Close- 
by.
Upset.
They’re agitated!
Full-throated caws. Caw! Caw!! Caw!!! CAW!!!!
Urgent birds. It’s a Hitchcock thing, and we’re surrounded!
 
 
Pre-
dawn
racket:
jagged cries
shatter closed windows
with sharp shards of raucous ranting:
Rouse yourselves now, people—the planet is on fire!

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

one climate promise
after another, another ...
gathering storm

Lines

by Tiffany Mackay

blackberry flowers—
a bumble bee sways over
slanting sunlight

Warehouse

by AE Reiff

Passes for exiles in industry,
exits unguarded above and below, 
clapboards large and abandoned,
dream yards of roof covered rows,
shacks and warehouse unsecured,
posters under the stars,

vagrants and migrants, gypsies, tenants,
homeless squatters, blacksmiths, artists.
The house never finished,
catwalks, rickety, dangerous
where pieces crock together and cram,
crowds mill shoulder to shoulder to pass,
name tags missing where we encamp.

Anyone returning will know
this place in the beat that is so,
expatriates advance
slow motion from a camp
where wolves blotch purple eyes
and rumors rife as the numbers swell
to escape before the border is closed.

At Last A Valley

 by Lara Dolphin

When you cannot go on
you descend through fog 
to the mountain’s base

turn left at the blinking yellow 
then cross the bridge
toward the rebuilt barn 

along shoulderless roads
where cattle graze above
on terraced slopes

past willows and horses
solar panels, alfalfa 
and the sinkhole filled five winters back

hand-drawn signs 
point to homes
where lives lay on tables

you mean to look 
but small bills fly
to cash register nests

old games, picture frames
fishing rods, a box of jackets, a mug
fill your trunk

and the long, cold night
of your soul 
escapes toward the dawn  

Lines

by Nancy Scott McBride

first light -
spider webs sparkling
in the fallow field

Lines

by Carl Mayfield 

spring winds finished--
       too late
           for the lilac

Lines

by Carol Farnsworth

fog rises
after hail's pelting
ghostly heat

Lines

by Tiffany Mackay

midsummer—
watching the heron
watching the fish

Horseshoe Crabs Fabliau ~ a Cape Cod Ecology

by Royal Rhodes

Knobby carpets formed by Horseshoe crabs
are mounds along the shore in Monomoy.
Banks of sand are held in place by grass
where waves have scoured tesserae of glass
and in the shallows herons hunt for dabs.

Some crabs have flipped and made a tempting meal
for hungry gulls, those gluttons of the beach.
I hang an empty shell upon my wall.
A scent of brine adheres as I recall
the spot I saw a shark and rolling seal.

Red Knots have flocked to taste this bright blue blood
that doctors drain to use to test for toxins.
Each season's transformations are a race
in molting, sliding from their carapace --
many times -- emerging from the mud.

The Darkness

by David Chorlton

Mockingbirds never tire
of singing; their voices sparkle in the small
hours when silence
wears their song as jewelry.
Is anyone awake?
                               Can anybody hear
the sound tomorrow’s news
makes as it hurries down the city streets
asleep at the wheel? The twenty-four hour
convenience stores are chilled
to the bone, as cold
                                     as the hummingbirds
conserving energy in their state of torpor
until the sky cracks
                                    open and
a light shines through it to reveal
every secret that survived the night,
from the officer’s notes to
the nighthawks
                              with no language
but their wings to say
how graciously the darkness
embraced them in their flight.

Watching 17 Seconds of Bus Cam Video ~For my son, Adam Vespoli, who was shot by police on March 12, 2022.

by Susan Vespoli
        
Two tiny birds screech from a branch, 
shoot through air, divebomb like fighter
planes. They’re after a hawk that soars
part killer, part king, spreads wings, tucks

talons to chest and I ingest that cop’s face,
his piss caught on bus cam, his dark-ice eyes,
close-cropped black beard, slack lips; then
the slim shape of my son, the cop’s gun 

and I turn it off, return in my mind to the hawk,
who hustles off, chased by the mocking-
birds who zip like bullets, like courage 
squawk backtalk, defend eggs, protect nest

and I want to channel them, scream and flail,
send hawk who shot my unarmed homeless son to jail.

Author's Note: Police rousted a group of sleeping unsheltered individuals from a tunnel in Phoenix on March 11, 2022, my son among them. My son who questioned the police’s right to cite them for sleeping was thrown to the ground and charged with a felony of resisting arrest. When he was released from a night in jail, he boarded a city bus to stay warm, then ordered off the bus for sleeping by a cop who minutes later shot him. https://susanvespoli.com/

Fenced In Photography by KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

ouroboros

by Kulbir Saran 
 
crawl the tunnel  
through the belly 
chase the beacon  
when it eats 
 
at the mouth  
can scrape the tongue 
for morsels, mountains  
thin as sheets 
 
behind the teeth  
of purple sky 
a star is born  
but started burning 
 
somewhere on  
the other side 

Street Video

 by Royal Rhodes

These stories almost escaped
from order into dizzying chaos,
with linear cartoon-like panels
in the rows of tenement floors,
letting us glimpse the dramas
inside, without subtitles to read.
The lens took in the flaking paint,
acid-yellow wall-paper strips,
and a woman gazing out at us,
squinting through a bruised eye.
The action moved along from here
to there, inventing a melodrama
of gunshots and alley dumpsters
But we also had seen in the street
the image from a pin-hole camera
a homeless man had documented
from when he was living rough
a block from the stately capitol
where legislators reiterated claims
that no veterans ever slept on grates.

One AM

 by David Chorlton
 
The North Star blows smoke
from the tip of a revolver. It’s one AM
and the sky has grown restless.
The desert lies down to sleep
while the heat of the day
soaks in to rocks. Over and beyond
 
the mountain city lights illuminate
strip mall after strip mall, at one of which
a party ended just
as an owl chose the moment
to sweep darkness and a mouse
aside with its silent wings. It is
a wonderful mystery the way
 
thirst turns into life
when coyotes thread their way
along night’s stony paths. And asked
what happened, people
 
told reporters  It was like emptying
a bucket of stars into a crowd.

Lines

by Roberta Beach Jacobson

Acropolis
under the shadows
dust

can’t see you can’t see me

by Kulbir Saran 

cotton crotchet draped  
atop adorned mahogany 
figurative passive shield 
where crumb and callus dwell 
 
beneath, a misfit jigsaw 
plywood plate mosaic, gaped  
and taped and glued and  
screwed haphazard 
 
from above, only seems  
a rumble every now and then  
press these splintered lips  
raw against the dampened roof  

Revelation Will Best Unfold

by M. G. Michael
 
Near the huge clock, in Piata Romana,  
The old man they see him, all of them, day and night. 
He sits with episcopal dignity as if on a throne. 
Alone. Like a word. 
One afternoon he reaches into his sack coat 
And pulls out a small evergreen. 
With outstretched hands he offers it to a little child 
She, alone, notices that from the wrist up, 
His arms are covered in thick white down. 
They both beam. The old man remembered things 
The little child delighted in her imagination. 
Revelation will best unfold between the cracks  
Like light, which pours through the tight spaces of rocks. 
The others in their multitude, all of them, day and night, 
Notice. Nothing.  

Temporal

by Carrie Albert

Crows loop above, free to steer
their own lines. The hill pulls 
evergreens downward; branches descend
in long strands of earth-mother hair.
A leaf-slippery path leads 
to a gathering of plastic tents, curtained  
with tattered blanket insulation, mini-domes 
blend into vines, roped to trees, 
root-cling might hold them. 
No one is home or everyone hibernates 
inside, rich with time, and winter poor. 
The closed doors flaps. Signs: 
garbage bagged and scattered, 
wheelchair-in-waiting, one pink slipper. 
A hula hoop hangs on limb,
empty dream catcher.

How To Write A Sentence

by Cielo Jones 

Choose a subject:
the geese at the curb,
the bucket beaters on the street islands,
the cart pushers, the corner sitters,
or the fancy car driver who just sped by.

Choose a predicate:  
cross the streets in single file,
stop traffic with bodacious beats,  
holding up placards, one-sentence life stories
  break my heart,
honks horn at the car in front,
he stops for the geese, or taken by the drummers.

For more complicated sentences, add clauses:  
people should be allowed to hunt the birds,
healthy choice since they’re in the wild,  
What wild? This is the city, for crying out loud. 
No hunting here! 
round up the nuisance, the traffic hazards, find a meadow, 
but this is their meadow we occupied
it’s of no use you know - they’ll be back here, 
they always are.
gather up the unfortunates, find a shelter, a job, a care
or put them in jail, charge them for disturbing the peace,
the fastest way to save them from freezing
find solid solutions or they’ll be back here, they usually do.
ticket the driver for disturbing the peace
charge him  for his impatience, his flamboyance.

Cross your t’s and dot your i’s.  
The geese are there in their wild.
So we leave them be, and that should be.
But the drummer,  the man on the corner,
their predicaments I can’t fathom.
I can’t meet their eyes, I hold no remedies, 
but I should not leave them be, that should not be.
and the fancy car driver?         
He’s a bystander, he’ll go another route next time.

Finally, punctuate. End the sentence but don’t kill it. 
Question mark for all the queries:
How did they get here?
What is tomorrow for their growing population?
Why did they lose their homes?
Where else can they go?
When did it all begin, when does it end?
Who, if not I, can help?

Exclamation point:
the annoyance for these city poopers,
the warnings to choose another path, 
they’ll get run over!
the anger and frustrations,
(because) I want to bring them home
shout it out over the muscle engine.

Period, to close the door.
Complacency or surrender.
No more arguments. 
Your sentence ends here. 

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

black on green
silhouette of fruit bat
hanging from banana leaf

The Sweep Photography by Carrie Albert

Lines

by Katherine E Winnick 

drenched beneath
raining rice paper
monsoon

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

neveragainneveragain
with a twist to his mouth ...
cicadas droning

Lines

by Joshua St. Claire

trash bag
in the elm
my son sees a ghost

Mimicry

by Jan MacRae

Americans think
this is the best country:
box stores and strip malls.
Garden gnomes posed peeing.
Near the aisle selling
pistols, row after row
of dog toys.
No Eurasian Jays here
in the states, birds
pinkish with brilliant blue
front of the wings.
“Skraak-shraak” is their voice,
along with mimicry,
including vultures.  I would 
like to be able to imitate 
a vulture here in America,
where the living are often faced 
with dead around us,
in the faces of that family posing
with their automatic weapons 
around the Christmas tree.
The meth freaks begging 
for change,  for change,
not the coins 
someone gives them outside 
of the farmer’s market.
Sandyhook didn’t happen,
says the conservative talk show host.
I listen like a vulture
ready to rend flesh.
I am violent too, believing 
a thousand words
are worth a picture.
I am definitely
my country’s progeny, 
my bright plumage as
necessary as camouflage
as I line up on the other side.

Lines

by Deborah A. Bennett

night of falling leaves -
a thousand names at once
become the wind

Lines

by B. L. Bruce

inland lagoon
gull prints in wet sand
lead east

Scarcity In the Neighborhoodfor Michael

by Ellen Woods
 
 I see you as I walk from my apartment near
Temescal Alley   shops that make up 
what has become home to you for years
 
you lie on the sidewalk next to Shoe 
Palace   gazing up   wrapped in a blue sleeping bag   
your shoes   beside you   worn   untied 
 
your hands rest on your chest    fingers beat out rhythm
as if playing saxophone   lost in revery 
lined face sunburned by years outside belies your age
 
do you have family?   case manager who gives
you meds?   SSI check?   bed at a shelter?
board and care you leave to come here?
 
you crawl out of the sleep sack   stand up   stretch
lift a grey hoody to your chest   struggle to put your arms and 
head through openings   repeat with sweater 
 
you make eye contact with me as I get in my car
I hold the connection    fight the urge to look down
you sway   shadow-box   demons deride you
 
mutter about the devil   pull out a joint   
light   inhale   pace back and forth
wriggle back in your blue bag   bury your head 
 
people pass by    leave unsolicited offerings   dollar bills   
pizza   piece of cheesecake   blanket   pillow 
can’t bear your scarcity   afraid of our own
 
weeks in December you were gone     neighbors
left coats   hats    scarfs   even shoes in your spot
despairing   helpless   fearing your fate
 
you came back New Year’s Day   dressed in fitted brown
slacks    a pressed shirt   shiny brown leather shoes
clean hair cut short   sat at outdoor café    sipping a drink
 
I said hello   you nodded   looked away   tapped your fingers
you were   compliant   medicated   functioning   
within the week you return   barefoot   claim your site on the sidewalk

Chicken Sandwich

 by Fern G. Z. Carr
 
Tarragon-seasoned chicken breast
sandwiched
between grilled apple rings,
melted mozzarella and crisp arugula
on lightly toasted focaccia
secured by a long, rounded toothpick
crowned with red foil loops
in an embossed Styrofoam container –
gourmet takeout.
 
A haggard soul taps the driver's-side window
of a stopped car;
right arm amputated at the elbow,
left hand missing three fingers,
tap, tap, tapping and beg, beg, begging
for spare change
 
when dulcet words sing from the sidewalk –
"Excuse me, would you like a sandwich?”
Body twitches and spins around,
victim of the street – cruel dominatrix.
 
Startled eyes inch forward;
he snatches the feast
between his stump and remaining digits
and devours it.
 
A quavering voice behind a long-lost smile
whispers, "Thank you".
Another quavering voice whispers,
“You’re welcome.”

Lines

by B. L. Bruce

great-horned owl
heard but not seen
unanswered

Lines

by Deborah A. Bennett

i would have to tell you
in another language -
white cranes at dawn 

When the Movement Becomes Corporate

by Chris Butler

Black lives matter,
except to those who pay
Walmart's child slaves
pennies a day
to stitch the same
three letters
on flags, t-shirts, baseball caps
and pandemic masks,
because every traffic stop
that ends in murder
results in a fiery riot,
meaning another thousand units 
will be sold for a profit.

Lines

by Ram Chandran

like ballet dancers
swim the school of fish...
fishing rod in vain

needy wants

by Geoffrey Aitken

a reminder says my case manager
 
i placed want above need
 
authority requested i adjust my behaviour
 
gamely i procure
my ridiculously slim lotto chance
 
bus ride general impotence
home
to unpack my loneliness
 
i save arguments from my pension
tuck them away
 
purchase ammunition
for my handgun
 
i clean and oil it’s engraved butt
 
‘i need to be a superhero’

River and Willow

by Peter Mladinic
  
I’ve come back to the weeping willow on the river bend,
to what was here before I was born.
I’ve brought no water.
For this river is the source of all water, though its brown.
The willow across the river,
the source of all green, makes me think of its opposite:
a crushed Pepsi can
on a cement stump in a parking lot behind a theater
one early night in March,
an image that stays with me here on the riverbank,
though I’ve long forgotten images on the theater screen
that night.
I took a black and white of the willow.
By the time I saw the crushed can on the cement stump
I’d lost the tree’s image,
which encompassed woods behind it, and river,
the part where the river curved, and back above it.
 
I’ve come back from a walk along a busy road,
which reminds me of a walk along a runway, uphill,
a runway for small planes,
on the hilltop an adobe house built by a pilot
in whose plane I flew,
years after seeing the crushed can on the cement stump
close to a brick wall that night, years ago.