Marjorie Moorhead
What Is Freedom?

Seed party!
Little birds have discovered them
in our blue coffee-pot feeder

They cling to its mesh and feast
on the black oil sunflower seeds
flit, flit

swoop, swoop
back and forth branch to feeder
to branch …

Such happiness outside my November window
with the leaves down
and cold winds blowing in

“Let It Be” comes on the radio
and I sing out
with tears in my eyes

Marie Yovanovitch’s red hair
from last night’s tv
matches the breast of a small bird

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Porter House Review, Tiny Lit Seed, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon; From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), Amanda McLeod & Mela Blust; Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT. Vol. II (The Blueline, 2018), edited by Northshire Poets Alice Wolf Gilborn, Carol Cone, David Mook, Marcia Angermann, Peter Bradley and Monica Stillman; and others. She was honored with a tuition scholarship from Indolent Books, in summer 2019, for a week at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.

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Lori Desrosiers
Of Alleys and of Men

In a book I read too young
a woman was accosted in an alley
during New Year’s Eve festivities
in Time’s Square.

It read as if it was
an adventure rather than
the most frightening thing I could
think of at fourteen years old.

For years every time I had to walk
down an alley I imagined men
waiting in doorways, like the ones
who cat-called me out walking

with whistles and hey baby
while I pulled my coat close
around my shoulders,
as if that would protect me.

Nothing happened then,
only later, when someone
I loved, far from the alleys
of any city

forced himself on me
rupturing my trust
trapping me for a long time
in the alley of my fears.

I am no longer young,
and no longer afraid,
although still cautious
of alleys, and of men.

Lori Desrosiers is the author of The Philosopher’s Daughter (Salmon Poetry, 2013) and Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak (Salmon Poetry, 2016). Keeping Planes in the Air is forthcoming (Salmon, 2020). She is also the author of two chapbooks, Inner Sky (Glass Lyre Press, 2015) and typing with e.e. cummings (Glass Lyre Press, 2019) She is the editor of Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry, and Wordpeace, an online journal dedicated to peace and social justice. She lives in Westfield, Mass., and teaches in the the Lesley University MFA program.

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J.P. White
The Elephants are Listening…

To the giant sheets of ancient ice calving into the first salt bath,
To the electric prods used on the dancing bears and cheetahs,
To the fires leaping out of embers to enter the green pastures,
To the knives seeking out the meat and scales of the pangolin,
To the psalms spoken and unspoken in the strangle wee hours,
To the thin lips of the sea alive at the door of the failing mollusk,
To the never-ending procession of gullets swarming the street,
To the lava seeking the cold quick axe of the vertigo water,
To the tongues swollen with politics and a lust for weapons,
To the river in flood throwing off boulders big as houses,
To the flags whipping against the penthouse glass of the mega rich.
At this time of earth ruin and save-your-ass-if-you-can with your phone,
The elephants are listening to one another six miles away.
They are not gossiping, not speculating, not making enemies,
But making plans to find the next waterhole outside the burn.
They will remember everything after we have found the exit.

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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Stephen Gibson
At the Nuremberg Museum

American GIs would have learned from movies and posters during basic training that each poison gas had a different smell—in the museum video, Göring won’t look at camp survivors. Each gas was compared to something familiar, so any city kid or farm boy could tell—GIs would have learned about poison gasses in basic training from movies and posters. Camp inmates who worked on Auschwitz’s platform knew about the showers, but had to keep silent with each train arrival—Göring won’t look at those inmate sonderkommando survivors. Some gasses were infamous, from World War I; others didn’t make the war, being late bloomers—GIs would have learned that in basic training from movies and posters. After Charlottesville and its “Confederate-heritage” white-supremacist marchers, the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. updated its 900+ hate groups—if Göring were alive, he’d flash that famous grin greeting such supporters. GIs learned in basic training from movies and posters

phosgene was like hay;
chloropicrin, flypaper;
mustard gas, garlic—

in the Nuremberg video, Göring won’t look at survivors.

Stephen Gibson is the author of Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (University of Arkansas Press, 2017) winner of the Miller Williams Prize. His previous collections include The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press, 2016); Rorschach Art Too (Story Line Press, 2014), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize sponsored by the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards of the West Chester University Poetry Center; Paradise (University of Arkansas Press, 2011), a finalist for the Miller Williams prize; Frescoes (Lost Horse Press, 2011); Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/IntuiT House, 2008), selected and introduced by Andrew Hudgins; and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press, 2001). His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including (but not limited to) Agni, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review The Paris Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida. 

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John Kaprielian
Pangolins

Pangolins curl into a ball
when they are threatened
we teach our children
to do the same in their
lock-down active-shooter drills
four times every school year

Pangolins curl into a ball
bony plates deter
tender predator palates
but not knives or guns
that make quick work of
their motionless prey

Our children curl into balls
behind locked doors
in closets and under desks
unmoving, silent, waiting
they don’t even have bony plates
they are all exposed underbelly

Pangolins are hunted mercilessly
heading toward extinction
Do we arm them? Teach them to run
instead of roll or do we
disarm the hunters and stop
the demand for pangolin meat?

These are important questions
to pangolins and children.

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
Dark Country

I.
The country is so dark, our leader cannot see his shadow. When the cloud comes, he calls it snow. Then he calls it sun. Then he calls it a witch.

II.
I am taking dancing lessons from the witches. Dancing with a witch requires a suspension of belief in walls. Dancing with our leader would be easier if I could get him to lean back. I hope the witches are watching.

III.
I will not lean back. I will grow crow’s wings, or assume the ugliness of buzzards. Someone has to do the work. The sun has risen. He calls it a cloud. Tomorrow he will call it fire; the next day, ash.

IV.
I could pour water on him. He might melt. He might laugh. He might call it a tsunami. The fires are burning. The soup is on the stove.

V.
Physicists keep investigating whether dark matter is dust. Religious people think we’re made of dust. I think about that when I clean my house, which isn’t often.

VI.
What would I like to be made of? Sugar and spice? Snails and whales? My youngest child no longer identifies with the gender of their birth. They are made of cinnamon, dogs, and hot pepper.

VII.
I fear for my youngest child in this dark country. Sometimes I dream about poisonous plants. The soup is still on the stove.

VIII.
When my youngest child was little, they ate pokeberries. We made them throw up, and then everything was okay. Apparently, it takes many pokeberries to do damage, but the mature leaves can kill you quickly.

IX.
This poem no longer seems to be about our leader. That’s okay, since he doesn’t like to read. But this poem is about darkness. And tsunamis. And my youngest child, growing up in a land of hemlock, masquerading as a harmless weed.

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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Chad Parenteau
Two Timely Tankas from the Resistance, Reel 5

Thanksgiving Jesus Tanka

Thanksgiving Jesus
only rises from his grave
once his family
have gone, having talked hours
to justify killing him.

Chick-fil-A Jesus Tanka

Chick-fil-A Jesus
Keeps curtains closed on Sundays.
Gathered at his door,
Judases sweat lonely brine
asking for their silver back.

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His work has appeared in Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He serves as associate editor of Oddball Magazine. His second full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, is forthcoming.

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Chris Costello
Five People I Barely Got to Know

1.
Mom’s friend Henry. He had a low scratching growl of a voice and a face like a spent minefield. Once told me about broken bones, and guns, and court dates. He said he missed his friends in prison and the ones who never made it there. Then he drank himself to death.

2.
Dad’s buddy from high school, who was hospitalized fighting racists. His jaw shattered like a beer bottle, and the painkillers did the rest. He never came back to the park after that.

3.
That kid in my math class, who always came in wearing headphones. He spoke in song lyrics and Coleridge poems. I hear he got mixed up in something bad and moved to Vegas.

4.
The folk singer whose name the DJ never bothered to say. I heard him on a radio somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was singing about dead rabbits. His voice became static against the night.

5.
My aunt Sheila, the one who made me want to be an artist. She made collages out of paint and tissue paper that seemed to leap off the canvas. She found religion and relocated to some commune in the woods. All her paintings are in a storage locker somewhere in Ohio.

Chris Costello is a writer and editor from Central New York. His poems have appeared in Paint Bucket, Rise Up Review, Stone Canoe, Nine Mile Magazine, Consetllations, and elsewhere.

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Ashley Elizabeth
Dear Black mothers whose children die by white hand

is it hard to serve
a god
who takes your one and only son?

You are not Mary
should not be expected to be okay
with losing a piece of you

with your son as the martyr
unjustly killed
in front of you,

watching.

At least Mary knew
what was coming.

Ashley Elizabeth is the author of the microchap letters from an old mistress (Damaged Goods Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Bonnie’s Crew, yell/shout/scream, and Zoetic Press, among other journals. Elizabeth is an assistant editor at Sundress Publications; she teaches; habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet); watches dog videos.

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Jacqueline Jules
“Jew Down” As a Verb

I thought it was a verb,
not an insult, she says.

A phrase she’s heard
a hundred times or more.

She didn’t know, she says.

Should I blink or believe?

For me, those words hold history,
enough to fill a library with books
I can recite by heart.

While for her, they were a footnote
she happened to miss.

Should I pick up my phone
and shame her? Spread her mistake
like jelly on toast, soaking every corner
until she is far too sticky to touch.

Or offer my hand and a place
at my table; the words to share bread
without smearing each other.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of three chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2014), Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications, 2014), and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String (Evening Street Press, 2017), winner of the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize. Her poetry has appeared in The Broome Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Hospital Drive, and Imitation Fruit, among other journals. She is also the author of 40 books for young readers. Online at jacquelinejules.com.

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