Evelyn Katz
Here Have All the Cowboys Gone

Oh you get me ready in your 56 Chevy
—Paula Cole

Oh Paula the cowboys are cowering
Cowering behind rocks and Republicans.
Oh Paula the cowboys are pontificating
Pontificating from pews and pulpits.
Oh Paula the cowboys are armed
Armed with rifles and religion.

Oh Paula your John Wayne is crouching
Crouching in closets and cowboys.
Oh Paula your Marlboro man is selling
Selling vape under stirrups and Stetsons.
Oh Paula your Lonely Ranger is shooting
Shooting up coeds and classrooms.

Oh Paula it’s time for the women
The women to save us from the cowboys.
But first they must stop apologizing
Apologizing for passion and persistence
Apologizing for their wounds and their wombs.

Evelyn Katz is the author of What I See at Red Lights (Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2019).  She taught English and ESL for fifteen years and was later an assistant principal. Katz founded The Falcon Pen Literary Magazine, showcasing student poetry. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Riverrun Literary Magazine, The Voices’ Project, Coffee Shop Poems, and Tell Us A Story Blog, among other publications, as well as in the anthology Leisure…Dinner with the Muse Vol. III (Ra Rays Press, 2019, edited by Bob Heman, Peggy Fitzgerald, Jack Tricarico, and Jack Tar. Katz lives in Brooklyn. 

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Billy Clem
On the Coldest Night of the Year

The weatherman is right, for once, and outside tonight
the wind chill has reached –40. Those who cannot bear
the drumming of diurnal nightmares search for grates
or door jams. Some submit themselves to shelters,

finally. Not you. You have long, invisible tubes
to blow warmth around your blanketed body and
your room crowded not with others’ needs and
their torn clothes, parched throats, and scabs,

but with gadgets sparking mini dots green, blue,
or yellow to convenience your earned rest
into a private borealis, a show that manages your sweat
so that you can carry on a piracy of originality.

The labor of dreaming, watching, laughing, lying,
eating, fucking, wasting, fiddling continues
without your conscious wiring at work. But
your body can shift from snoring to drowsy

to awake enough for you to understand the world
you thought yours, open and ordered as an old library,
letters and words and images stacked in place,
a whole climate conducted, controlled, and exact,

just refills a container sealed and sold with some
preservatives of willing bliss and no expiration.
And spirit, if you can climb through this wreckage
cutting your hands and shins to find it, mangled, opaque,

perhaps familiar, might be possible to reclaim. You
may remember trees, their songs and breath, wind
to your ears, a music once whispering your name,
cleaning and suturing the wounds and scrapes

of a time and place uncharted in the chronicles
of ease and confidence. Enter the raw and brutal,
the silent roar, the freezing heat to which no mercury
can rise. Find yourself hypothermic, barely pulsing,

just breathing. Gather the stinking scraps that lie
at your feet and prepare to resew by hand and
candlelight, if all the bees haven’t been depleted,
the seams and hems of your old self, your Sunday best.

Billy Clem‘s work has appeared in Great River Review, Vox Populi, The New Verse News, Counterexample Poetics, Moon City Review, and Elder Mountain. He teaches Composition, Multicultural Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies outside Chicago.

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David P. Miller
The End of That

a golden shovel, from Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”

And
both you
and I may
end before we say
“Bind our shaken hearts to
this whole staring disaster.” Shroud yourself,

my
personal god.
Blanch for what
your deep devoted have
torched for your nostrils. I
strip away your shadow. I’m done.

David P. Miller is the author of Sprawled Asleep (Nixes Mate Books, 2019) and The Afterimages (Červená Barva Press, 2014). His poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, Hawaii Pacific Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, poems2go, riverbabble, Nixes Mate Review, The Lily Poetry Review, Peacock Journal, Redheaded Stepchild, Jenny, and others. Miller was a librarian at Curry College in Milton, Mass., from which he retired in 2018. He lives in Boston.

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J.P. White
The Potato Truck

Anyone in America can fall off the potato truck
And never find a way to get back on.
Anyone can fail to make a payment,
Lose a wallet, a set of keys, a phone, a memory
Of where they were and then make another wrong turn
That lands them in front of a bondsman a few dollars short.
Anyone can get bushwhacked by a digital tsunami
And not get a Green card sent to the wrong address
Anyone can get tangled with the tax man, the repo man,
The immigration man, the man shielding his eyes with a hat.
Anyone can get hacked, wiped out, turned into someone else
And spend years trying to peel back what happened one morning
While they were filling up a tank of gas or sitting inside church light.
Anyone can be attacked by a revenge porn artist and be forced to resign
From everything they ever belonged to,
And then the future becomes only a retrospective.
Anyone can be left with the attorneys who vulture more cash
Then they can ever spend in one pathetic turn of samsara.
Anyone can run out of money to float the insurance needed
To bridge a few months between plans
And then a chance bed is made on a bench with a newspaper blanket.
Anyone can get pulled over, get blinded by a question,
Then be brought to their knees for a busted taillight.
Anyone can get stranded at the wrong place at the wrong time
With a deranged person brokering their fury with a blood demonstration.
Anyone can meet up with an uncatalogued virus,
A rogue bacteria, a threatening lab result not followed up in time.
Anyone can forget to take a pill, take the wrong one, take too many.
Anyone can get misdiagnosed while being overrun by a fever
With no certainty of how to bring it down
Because the source of the infection can’t be found
And no one will become the sleuth to figure the damn thing out.
Anyone can run out of friends and family who know what to say
So they make a point of staying away
Until the person they remember is a wheezing shuffle ghost of no address.
Anyone in America, even the son of a captain of industry
Or the captain himself who knows everything about the thrill of extraction
And how to blur his tracks in an age of satellites and GPS,
Can fall off the potato truck and never find a way to get back on.

J.P. White is the author of the poetry collections The Sleeper at the Party (Defined Providence Press, 2001), The Salt Hour (The University of Illinois Press, 2001), The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator’s Garden (Holy Cow Press, 1988), and In Pursuit of Wings (Panache Books, 1978). His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds a BA from New College (1973), an MA from Colorado State University (1977), and an MFA from Vermont College (1990). He lives on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis.

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John Kaprielian
You Bastards

You bastards.
You self-righteous filth
torches held high.
You vermin who think
God and country are on your side,
heartless scum
angry that you are losing
power you never earned
but happily took advantage of,
the legacy of our shameful past
of slavery, racism, and sexism,
when lynchings were entertainment
wife-beating unquestioned
and native people
slaughtered by the thousands
like passenger pigeons.

You sick, deluded souls,
who think equality and
equal opportunity
threaten you
like a knife to your
most private parts,
who believe you deserve more
because you used to have more
simply because your skin was “white.”

You disgusting little men
and your subservient women;
you are a cancer,
an oozing, festering growth
that unchecked
soon spreads
and kills.

We will fight you
with words and deeds,
with our bodies,
and with every tool
and weapon in our arsenal.

We will beat you back
to your dank burrows and basements,
the dark places where
hopefully your last generation
will meet oblivion
and discover that
God
most definitely
was not on your side.

John Kaprielian is the author of 366 Poems: My Year in Verse” (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013) a collection of a year’s worth of writing one poem a day. His poetry is also featured in the anthology Live at the Freight House Cafe (John F. McMullen, 2018), edited by John F. McMullen. His poems have appeared in The Blue Mountain Review, The Blue Nib, The Five-Two Poetry Blog, Foliate Oak, Down in the Dirt Magazine, New Verse News, Naturewriting.com, and Minute Magazine. A natural history photo editor by day, he lives in Putnam County, NY, with his wife, teenage son, and assorted pets.

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D. Dina Friedman
Uprooted

Nested in your arms,
we sail blind through the snow-scape,
God’s beaten egg-whites.

Branch by fallen branch,
we swerve, hurl ourselves over
hills, hearing nothing

but sputter echoes,
feeling nothing but cold slush
spraying silky scarves.

No map. Not a clue
of where we might be going,
we trample, slicing

through virgin forest,
crunching dreams of sleeping moles.
Under our thick wheels

blades darken the snow.
We laugh, kiss, keep on cutting
our country’s bare throat.

D. Dina Friedman is the author of the two young adult novels. Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster, 2006) was recognized as a Notable Book for Older Readers by the Association of Jewish Libraries, and a Best Books for Young Adults nominee by the American Library Association. Playing Dad’s Song (FSG, 2006) was recognized as a Bank Street College of Education Best Book. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press 2019). Her work has appeared in Calyx, Common Ground Review, Lilith, Wordpeace, Pinyon,  Negative Capability, New Plains Review, Steam Ticket, Bloodroot, Inkwell, and Pacific Poetry, among other journals. Friedman holds an MFA from Lesley University. She lives in Hadley, Mass., and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Michael Hogan
Inventory

And did you survive the nocturnal dark
the bleak encounters with old mistakes and losses
and shattered dreams in the drawn-out night?
Or did you step out before the night ended and watch the twinkling
blue paleness of Venus rise in the west?

Did you forsake another hour in bed and head off with your dog
to keep a dawn appointment in the park
to watch the trees identify themselves among the mists
and the roses arrange their colors from shades of gray
to yellow and red and redundant rose?

Did you escape the blaze of self-righteous reaction to morning news
and resist the weave of partisan rhetoric that erodes reason?

And did you remember to relish the solitary hour in the late afternoon
when the hummingbird returns to its nest?
And did you remember to neglect yourself for love of a child
or spend an hour with an aging parent with no regret?

Did you decorate your day with smiles?

Did you try not to make sense of the senseless in a world of reflections and glimmers and pettiness
but to love it all anyway, maybe even concede the possibility of deity
even though it was far from self-evident?
Did you discover how extraordinarily intelligent you are and
how incredibly stupid?
Did you accept that most of what you lost, or did not accomplish
because of carelessness, or miscalculation or even loving too much
was not loss at all but rather another path which opened to new landscapes?

Will you at the end promise yourself that no matter what it holds
(the real end I mean with its darkness and aloneness)
will you promise
in your essential solitude, with no one left to impress, to say:
“Thank you, Life,” as it melts away
like a rainbow fading after a summer storm
and you are here no more?

Michael Hogan is the author In the Time of the Jacarandas (Egret Books, 2015) and 23 other books. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, the Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, New Letters, and others. His work is included in Perrine’s Sound and Sense and the Pushcart Prize Book of Poetry. Hogan lives in Guadalajara Mexico with the fabric artist Lucinda Mayo and their Dutch Shepard Molly Malone.

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Kendra Nuttall
There is no playground along the U.S.-Mexico border

Yesterday, Johan took his first steps;
today he wears dress shoes and a diaper to court.
He doesn’t know that American Dream—
the one with purple mountain majesties,
amber waves of grain, and white picket fences.

Pursuing happiness,
someone built a seesaw at the southern border.
Through slats in a wall over an invisible line,
under one spacious sky,
kids got to do what kids do best:
play.

Johan doesn’t know that American Dream—
the one with millionaires in McMansions
and migrants in McDonald’s, low wages
from sea to plasticized sea, spray can cheese,
mass incarceration, mass deportation, huddled masses
yearning to breathe

free.

Johan’s parents were deported to Honduras five months ago.
The judge asks Johan, “What do you want?”
He doesn’t know how to talk,
but a seesaw would be a lot of fun.

Editor’s Note: Johan is the first name of a real-life immigrant whose story attracted media attention in July 2018 when, as a 1-year-old, he was compelled to appear in a Phoenix immigration court after being separated from his father, who had left the United States to return his native Honduras having been led to believe that his son would accompany him.

Kendra Nuttall‘s work has appeared in Chiron Review, Maudlin House,  Fearsome Critters, and Eunoia Review, as well as in Utah’s Best Emerging Poets 2019: An Anthology (Z Publishing, 2019). Nuttall holds a BA in English with an emphasis on creative writing from Utah Valley University. She work as a copywriter for Jane.com, and lives in Utah with her husband and dog.

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Adelia E. Ritchie
First They’ll Come for the Journalists

First they’ll come for the journalists.
They’ll toss them in jail like murder suspects,
but those lying meddlers won’t be missed.

Writers, reporters and cartoonists—
then atheists, leftists, and network execs—
but first they’ll come for the journalists.

Science and data, officials insist,
have no bearing on climate effects.
Those lying reporters won’t be missed.

Physicians, teachers and scientists,
their threat to this government is more complex,
but first they’ll come for the journalists.

If the media’s lying, does truth exist?
They’ll get ‘em for treason or other pretext.
Those fact-checking meddlers won’t be missed.

Now handcuffed and gagged, they no longer resist
And we don’t know what happened next.
First they came for the journalists
Those lying meddlers won’t be missed.

Adelia E. Ritchie holds a BS in chemistry and physics from the University of West Florida, and an MS and PhD in physical organic chemistry from Northwestern University. She works with educators, organizers and strategists to promote a deeper understanding of the science of climate change and its impacts on the complex ecological web of life. Ritchie resides in Hansville, Wash., with her garden, her dogs, and a flock of very entertaining chickens.

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Matthew Scott Harris
Your artistic interpretations regaled these deux mopic eyes

(otherwise titled psalm to
Amelie Beth by Matthew Scott,
(not real full names)
his genuine, gluten free and non GMO
poetic non fake appreciative guise.)

Ah, thee availed me reason to craft
a poem with rhyme or reason,
when I beheld unexpected email
exemplifying Christmas season
triptych most handily drawn pictures
by southpaw sister to think
on the other hand (right),

would be synonymous
with brother committing treason…
Tempting as such crime
to oust Trump doth appeal
worst scenario…an utter
nightmare should commonweal
constituting United States of America…

blatantly, doggedly, ferociously…
crushing democracy fragile ethereal
frenziedly, maniacally, and unceremoniously
grinding into powder art of the deal
compliments those doughy
two hundred forty three pounds
with squishy feel

bearing full force upon
every square inch of each heal
commanding, forcing, and torturing
every American get down
on knees and kneal
until they simultaneously beg
for mercy with ear splitting squeal.

The ruthless “Fake” tyrant
cackles, gurgles, issues glee
as he doth reveal
his starkly totalitarian, ultimately
vindictive, wickedly surreal
punishment to every man,
woman and child for
not winning 2020 election yule
suffer where high crimes

and misdemeanors during
farcical impeachment trial miniscule
compared to reign of terror
he will violently unleash
rip pull sieve tides
substituting himself as top dog
thus, he forcefully usurps
permanent dictatorial rule…

Other than the above dystopian fear
your brother eagerly
awaits the new year
maybe joining activist group
(maximizing) plank – scare
ring up said apocalyptic near
possibility, cuz Trump equals sore loser
(methinks that an understatement)

nonetheless, what I write might
seem far fetched hear
say (grim heresy),
yet… look no further,
he doth plainly appear
as anti-semitic, bombastic, cataleptic,
demonic, egocentric,
graphic, horrific, misogynistic…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Poems by Matthew Scott Harris have appeared in Hello Poetry, High on Poems, Neopoet, CosmoFunnel, The New Verse News, Booksie, Wildsound, and other journals. He lives in Schwenksville, Penn.

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