Robert Crisp
Electorate

“Do you hunger?” the woman clothed in red,
white, and garish blue asked as she churned—
mightily churned, I should say—the cauldron,
the contents of which smelled like dead promises.

I looked at my skeletal frame, impressed once more
by my angles, which suddenly seemed quite American.
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” I said and tipped the ol’ gal
a wink, then a blink, and finally shot her a bird.

The bird squawked, dropped from the clear sky
and plopped into the cauldron, which hissed with glee.
“Too bad it wasn’t a turkey,” the woman wheezed.
“Mr. Ben Franklin would surely have loved that.”

Robert Crisp currently hides out in Savannah, GA, where he where he teaches and keeps strange hours and stranger company. He writes poetry as often as he can. Learn more at www.writingforghosts.com

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David P. Miller
The Parable of the Sower

The teacher said:
A sower went out to sow.
Some seeds fell along the path.
The birds devoured them
and straightway perished, wailing to their bird god.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground.
The rock disintegrated, rasping into a tainted air.
The people came to look where the seeds had fallen.
They found wells of darkness and putrid breath.

Other seeds fell upon thorns.
The thorns found the seeds wholesome
for their needs. They ravaged so that
neither vineyards nor wheatfields could be seen.

Other seeds fell on generous soil.
They brought forth their same kind again,
a thousandfold eruption. The sower
rejoiced in his harvest and went again to sow.

The teacher said:
He who has,
let him.

After Matthew 13:1-9

David P. Miller’s chapbook, The Afterimages, was published by Červená Barva Press. His poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, riverbabble, Nixes Mate Review, Naugatuck River Review, HedgeApple, Gravel, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, DadaBloge, and What Rough Beast, among others. His poem “Kneeling Woman and Dog,” first published in Meat for Tea, was included in the 2015 edition of Best Indie Lit New England. With a background in experimental theater before turning to poetry, David was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group of Boston for 25 years. He was a librarian at Curry College in Milton, Mass., from which he retired in June 2018.

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Sarah Stern
Haigerloch Sisters

We’d visit Selma and Berta on their Catskills farm every summer.
Mom always said, We’re going to Haigerloch.
All these years I thought she made the name up,
but it was another town in the Schwarzwald.
I have a photo of its big yellow sign.

Selma and Berta were from Haigerloch.
Berta’s long gray braids
crowned her head.
Her smile spanned farther than her teeth.

Selma was the quiet sister.
Their house sat crookedly opposite the barn.
The dining room had a heavy
German table, a picture of her husband

and son with Selma’s eyes.
Both shot July 1941 in Theresienstadt.
Berta and Selma must have
had 20 dogs, more cats.

Chicken eggs all over.
Selma milked the cows,
pulling at them efficiently
as she sat on a stool.

We’d pitch a tent on a hilltop, as far
as the station wagon could go.
Make a fire.
Fry eggs in the morning.

The cows were named stars there—
Johnny Carson was an ornery bull.
I remember so much cow shit
and the dogs, yelping, wild in the valley.

Berta fed the calves.
She let me feel their sandpaper
tongues. My whole hand
in their mouths.

Sarah Stern is the author of But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock, 2014), Another Word for Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and in 2019, We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in many publications, recently in The American Dream, The Man Who Ate His Book: The Best of Ducts.org, Epiphany, Freefall, New Verse News, Rise Up Review, Swim Everyday, Verse Daily and What Rough Beast. She is a five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Poetry Award. She is a Communications Manager at WES. You can see more of her work at www.sarahstern.me.

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Johnson Cheu
To the Street Evangelist

Punishment, curse, fate.
Born disabled, or attained,
thou shall not script me
as sin. Nature or nurture,
life is simply, justly, made.

Johnson Cheu started writing poetry in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. From there, his poetry’s appeared widely in anthologies such as Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out, Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, and journals from North American Review to most recently Crab Orchard Review, and Foliate Oak. Other stuff out in the world includes edited film books, and scholarly articles in Popular Culture Studies and Disability Studies.

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Virginia Barrett
Ode to She

she’s not starved                              but dies in need

she’s not beaten                               but is internally bruised

she’s not flogged                              but her wounds fester

she’s not silenced                            but her tongue’s cut out

she’s not choked                              but is strangled

she’s not sacrificed                         but her heart, still beating, is

she’s not raped                                           but is raped

she’s not thrown in the hole       but declines in darkness

she’s not sliced                                 but bleeds

she’s not tied to the rack              but is wrenched apart

she’s not jailed                                            but is captive

she’s not questioned                     but is grilled

she’s not detained                          but is chained

she’s not enslaved                          but is bound

she’s not submerged                     but drowns

she’s not burned                             but writhes inside

she’s not shot at the wall            but falls

she’s not crucified                         but does rise

Virginia Barrett’s books of poetry include Between Looking (forthcoming, 2019 from Finishing Line Press), Crossing Haight, and I Just Wear My Wings. Barrett is the editor of two anthologies of contemporary San Francisco poets including OCCUPY SF—poems from the movement. Her work has most recently appeared in the Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, Roar: Literature and Revolution by Feminist People, Ekphrastic Review, Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press), and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press). She received a 2017 writer’s residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, NM. Her chapbook, Stars By Any Other Name, was a semi-finalist for the Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press, 2017. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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Quintin Collins
The Mosquito Speaks of Protest

As the sun recedes, we
cluster into funnel clouds. We
pulse toward populations
to take blood. Those who swat us,
cock their spray canisters
to stilt our kin, sterilize our mothers:
We smolder their flesh. We
rise, skyward spirals
to swell twilight. We
disrupt picnics and receptions. We
needle beneath skin.
No citronella torch sentries quell
our protest. No blue lights zap. We
buzz ears with our message. We
mobilize in their neighborhoods. We
chant vibration. Our swarms churn. We
are a throbbing silhouette. We
reverberate for stripped wings,
ladybugs crushed in careless hands,
crickets crumpled beneath boots,
ant colonies scorched with lighter fluid,
butterflies choked in killing jars. We
bite for every pill bug too policed
by fear to unfurl. Let them come
with their OFF! and their bug bombs.
Let them come with their nets
and their body armor. We will meet them
at their baseball games. We will meet them
at their music festivals. We will meet them
at their rooftop bars, their barbecues,
and their July Fourth fireworks. We
gather in their suburbs, their cities, their yards,
and their country clubs. When they see
us coming, fistfuls of shadow at dusk, we
will leave welts for everyone of us
they ever crushed.

Quintin Collins has works that have appeared or are forthcoming in Threshold, Glass Mountain, Eclectica, Transition, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Solstice MFA program, Quintin is a managing editor at a digital marketing agency, where he publishes writing craft blogs. If Quintin were to have one extravagance, it would be a personal sommelier to give him wine pairings for books.

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Ronald J. Pelias
When the Struggle Stops

You throw your hands up as if there’s nothing
you can do. You accept the given order.
You refuse to discuss politics. You
doubt if there’s any truth to the lies you
hear, if you should trust the never-ending
news. You wonder if all politicians
are morally corrupt, if both parties
are the same. You don’t vote. You are afraid
of what comes next, but fall into consent,
bury yourself in dead silence, protect
what you have. When you bite your tongue, it no
longer bleeds. Here, you suffer from comfort.

Ronald J. Pelias‘ most recent books, Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing (Left Coast Press/Routledge), If the Truth Be Told (Sense Publications), and Writing Performance, Identity, and Everyday Life (Routledge), call upon the poetic as a research strategy. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Midwest Poetry Review, Coal City Review, Poetry East, and Negative Capability.

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Rose Willow
Capitalism

My knees tremble at the threat
of a consumer collapse.
I chuckle as the president fiddles
while the planet burns.

I won’t go easy.
I promise messy
when I fall.

Rose Willow lives and writes near the Salish Sea on the west coast of Canada. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines including, Ascent Aspirations, Portal, Spring, SoftCartel, The Society, and Transitions.

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Shana Ross
Numbers 13:17

Well, Moses ain’t Jesus but
Here we are at the border
Tug of war
Fought over razor sharp scripture

Go on into the hill country and see
What kind of country is this
Are the people who dwell here
Strong or weak? Few or many?
Is the country good or bad?

Every gedanken was in vain. We asked ourselves
What we would have done in different times
A failure of imagination. It seems obvious,
When you watch Star Wars, the rebels are the good guys.
It’s a trap. Honest to god, these people
Think the Empire sounds great, no speck of irony.
You cannot underestimate the power of that darkness.

I bargain for my home.
For only ten good men, there must be something worth saving.

But Moses said: see.
What are the fortifications?
Walls speak louder than words.
Walls tell you whether the country is good or bad
Walls tell you whether a people are weak or strong
Something there is that does not love —

What we have now is children in cages.
One man cannot be reproached for fleeing
Do not look back do not look

I sacrifice much in the witnessing.
I cannot turn away.

Shana Ross is a poet and playwright with a BA and MBA from Yale University. Her writing career has been dormant for 18 years for reasons both practical and best discussed in therapy. This decade, her work has been published in Anapest Journal, SHANTIH Journal, and Writers Resist.

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Alexis Quinlan
Motherland

Mother was a party girl—volunteered
for Dems, loved her U.S. history—and
I’m sort of a party girl, and yesterday
at a get-out-the-vote phone bank
I spotted her across the room for a split—
just a quick—the old ugliness dropped
away. She must’ve rotted by now, the witch,
but this year friends bring her up. How
she drew us near to argue, debate,
to rap on her principles, her America.
But any fine idea can veer off the path,
a child astray, blue-white disappointment.

She snuck into my wedding, too. I spied her
in back of the church, skulking among
my dearest at rehearsal. She wore
a green dress she liked at the end, silky sheen,
polyester, maybe we buried her in it.
Still trying to glom onto my fun.
She mostly adored my boyfriends, history
majors like her, who shared her politics, knew
her facts. Everyone’s smarter than me.
And now this husband reads the entire
Times every morning, rises early for the job.

One anniversary, during one of the years
we didn’t mention it, his daughters were
teasing him about the past, as they like to do.
They brought up his rowdy mothers-in-law—
his ex had two moms—and he said, I have
another mother-in-law I wish I’d met.
His young women didn’t like that, but I did.

Because I know just how it would be
(for a while): the three of us talking—
or five of us, why not?—
late into the night on these nights,
reviewing news, weighing data,
arguing for the same side
for our principles, our party, our great
lake of story, America.

Alexis Quinlan‘s most recent poetry chapbook, an admission, is a warning against the value of our conclusions [Exit Strata/The Operating System 2013] comprises a series of interventions on and responses to Freud’s essay, “Mourning and Melancholia.” More poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Drunken Boat, Rhino, Tinderbox, Juked, and Madison Review. She works as an adjunct English teacher at Fordham University.

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