Adam Malinowski
City

I am an indebted though not entirely disaffected subject of a once-prosperous Brownfield. Each movement predicated on an infinite square-mile grid, marked by brass and iron. Gulls circle high above freighters in the bronze river. Each one of us zooms by in aluminum exoskeletons, our own little kingdoms, ghosts meeting in the chip aisle at Wal-Mart. Everything here resembles itself. So many millions of people, we could add them all up, make perfect algorithms out of them, their dreams, ideas, and romance. On a QR code scooter, riding past blocks of husks of houses and schools turned county jails. Though I don’t complain, I’ve got Prime, Whole Foods, a gym membership. I’ve consolidated my loans and pay off my credit card in monthly installments. Dear reader, even this poem is paid for by selling my wet dreams to digital content managers, 24-month zero-interest rates, and scraps from a failing university. I am a liability and only in death will my improprieties be forgiven.

Poems by Adam Malinowski have appeared in  Poets Reading the News, Philosophical Idiot, and in Mirage #5/Period(ical) #6. They hold an MA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University, live in Detroit, and facilitate a poetry workshop at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Mich.

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Michael S. Glaser
The Earth

We play with dark forces that cannot be captured with the names we give them.
—Rainer Maria Rilke

The earth remembers in a language
we have not bothered to learn.

What is the name
she has given this place?

Who do we imagine invited us
to this dance?

Michael S. Glaser is professor emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where he received the Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is the author of seven poetry collections and the editor of three anthologies. With Kevin Young, he co-edited The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010 (BOA Editions, 2012). Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 through 2009. More at michaelsglaser.com.

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J.P. White
Little Pig Crossing

—Road sign in Hana

After the evening closing of the Da Fish taco truck,
four piebald pigs who live in the orchid roots
scuttle the one road keen on more scraps.
The darkness gathers a stronger weave
without the reach of streetlights
and the night is what it has always been,
an empty sleeve for starlight spillway.
The avocados, bananas, coconuts, guava
And papaya are roadside free.
A machete left on the stump.
A wooden bowl for donations.
The pigs go there for desert.
Even though this scene could be gold leaf
On an onyx jar,
The earth would be better off without us.

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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Alana Hayes
No Bride In White Here

i might be a girl, but
white doe? a blushing gift?
i think no.

there is no bride,
no tomorrow-wife here.

i say no to the dress
and no to the veil.

Listen to me.
I speak the truth.

I died in my own arms.
I live by my own bread.
I buried that old, sweet child
in her place.
I am my own master
now, just and fair.

Alana Hayes is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she received a BA in English Literature and another in Women and Gender Studies. Her poetry revolves around themes of Judaism, feminism, and social justice issues. Follow her on Instagram @womanasriot.

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Michael H. Levin
Shield of Achilles

(After Auden 1952)

Peering over his shoulder
the goddess of love in all her melting forms
sees no glad world of giving
molded there, no inlaid scenes of sacrifice
or service or of modest
calm obeisance to acknowledged modes
of conduct, much less law. Abrading
the bronze surface as it sets, corrosive pride
coils, pitting the golden arc
of honor, clouding clear air.
Absorbing what her spouse has made
she shudders, seeming for the moment older:
emblazoned at the center
of the metal field a bulky figure squats,
sniffing the sluggish breeze for those that doubt
or might decline to play his
cat-game, batted publicly
from paw to paw.
Degraded from foundations
out, the house of freedom trembles towards the pit,
unmoored by shouted or implicit
threats infesting it.
The bulwarks sought do not appear,
submerged in self-regarding greed
or fear. The Botticelli
gaze turns gray. Her jealous hairy
husband sneers triumphantly
then limps away.

Michael H. Levin is the author of the poetry collections Man Overboard (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Watered Colors (Poetica Publishing, 2014). His work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Adirondack Review, and Crosswinds, among other journals and anthologies. Levin works as an environmental lawyer and solar energy developer, and lives in Washington DC. See michaellevinpoetry.com.

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Cheryl Caesar
Metaphors

Two a.m. A muffled crooning
Rises through the silent house.
Through my door, a cat is singing,
Mouth engorged with white toymouse.

How is this a gift? I gave it.
And I sure don’t want it now.
She wants tuna. She’s created
Tokens in exchange for chow.

Or it’s something darker? Blackmail?
“Feed me now or else I’ll bring
Realmouse in here and release him.
Then I’ll get to hear you sing!”

Maybe that’s too harsh. She’s just
A child who craves a midnight sweet.
Maybe she has just invented
Interspecies trick-or-treat.

Truth is I have no idea
What’s inside that walnut skull.
All the meat is hidden, so I
Speculate about the hull.

Humans, felines, all God’s creatures
Croon to us through wooden doors.
If we are to live together—
Choose the kindest metaphors.

Poems by Cheryl Caesar have appeared in Writers Resist, The Mark Literary Review, Agony Opera, Cream and Crimson, Total Eclipse, Prachya, The Trinity Review, The Mojave River Review, Panoply and Winedrunk Sidewalk, among other venues. Caesar holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She lives in East Lansing and teaches writing at Michigan State University.

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Frances Mac
On the Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia

An adaptation of Donald Trump’s remarks made on August 21, 2017

seated the men
abroad send
our thoughts to sail
a collision
cover of night
the republic as
resolve unmatched
every generation given
the deed to immortality
a ration of purpose
transcend every line
and serve the oath
to inflict justice
to demand loyalty

love for America
requires hearts
and enemies
let us heal
with vigilance
and weary victory
the frustration over
trying to build
in our own image
following instinct
or a conceivable angle
after interests
and enduring worth
men made
in combat
the tools
of exit predictable

from shelter
to hasty withdrawal
we slip
into a vacuum
we created
we repeat
the mistake
we are agents
of chaos
an error
tense to spiral
into a troubling luxury
of making decisions
we dress the world
as it exists
in consequences
we need
the allure of glory
and the dry
haven of history

a shift
from how we begin
will ground
our power
someday perhaps
nobody will dictate
how to live
how to govern
how to long for time

but will that survive
democracy
our object
our waging battle
the why we sow
violence
the nowhere to hide
the export
of our heaviest burden
we cure country
to define our own
we are asking
others to be
a blank check
progress our unlimited cause

who are we
rounds spot the earth
a mine for the road
we shed peace
push onward

Poems by Frances Mac have appeared in Epigraph Magazine, Burnt Pine Magazine, The MacGuffin, and Santa Clara Review. She hails from the Texas Hill Country and currently lives in Washington, DC.

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Tracie Marie
Dragons in Our Wake

The news is a review of our world’s shortcomings.
When we watch, there is always a spark—
a raging, tinging red around the edges of our vision.
Like the glowing embers of flame on white papers edges—
devouring.

We see it in the streets of rioting citizens,
the blood of terrified immigrants,
in the shadow of a black boy’s hoodie,
in the strings held by tiny hands,
in the way the man’s eyes darken when the woman tells him no,
in the broken glass twinkling under the Orlando nightclub lights.

Or like the very core of our Earth—
a melting pot from inside out.

To thrive here—
we are asked to sacrifice our boiling blood,
and are prompted to look deeper,
to find a riot ready and waiting.

One torch can’t hold our internal flame—
screaming for oxygen and palpable in the heat of our gazes.

It catches the wind of revolution, spreading like a wildfire.
Licking the length of our scalps—
shooting from our fingertips—
leaking from our mouths in incendiary pools so massive,
a foot stomp could ignite the whole town.

And when the world catches—
what hell will we raise,
to lead a breed of dragons in our wake.

Tracie Marie is a recent graduate of Ball State University, in Muncie, Ind., where she earned a BA in English. In her poetry, she addresses her identity as a queer woman of color. Tracie lives in South Bend, Ind., and this is apparently one of her first poems in publication, perhaps her very first.

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J.P. White
Crossing at Nogales

I climbed into a twice-totaled bus with chickens in cages
and children squirming the aisle.
Someone had a guitar
And played with a sadness
That could have been mistaken for euphoria.
I had the luxury of youth and time
And nowhere I had to be except further South
Inside my own deprivation theory.
Everyone else had little more
Than a dismal job in Nogales
At the Alliance Ag Fertilizer Plant.
In half light, they opened a door that morning
And walked a long way to flag a bus
Across the border to somewhere better,
And now the ride back home.
I knew nothing about anything that mattered.

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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Cheryl Caesar
Manuela the tortoise found after thirty years alone in a junk room

After an article by Stephen Messenger on Treehugger, Feb. 4, 2013.

What does a tortoise think? What does she feel?
She lives long and moves slow, heavy and protected.
Thirty years may pass like a sluggish dream.
We may rail against her long incarceration,
like Ricky Jackson’s, deserving of reparations—
but wonder: as a pet, was she not always captive?
Or we may cheer her escape, like Billy Hayes
fleeing on the midnight express from his thirty-year sentence—
although it seems she never scratched the door.
Or pity her stolen life, like Jaycee Dugard’s.
But, as Dugard found out, little by little,
the life you live becomes the real one.
Around her termites flashed, emissaries of light.
They live only a year or two. They feed on the trees
whose prana we block and hide in darkened rooms.
But nature always finds her way in.
In thirty years of encephalitic lethargy, Miss R,
a patient of Oliver Sacks, thought of nothing.
“It’s dead easy, once you know how.”
Turning the corners of a cerebral quadrangle.
Silently repeating seven notes of a Verdi aria.
Drawing mental maps of maps of maps.
“My posture leads to itself,” she said. Perhaps Manuela too
curled endlessly inward, a shell in a shell. Perhaps
she too repeated for thirty years (in Tortoise):
“I am what I am what I am what I am…”

Author’s Note: For “Miss R,” cf. Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, Vintage, 1973, p. 76.

Poems by Cheryl Caesar have appeared in Writers Resist, The Mark Literary Review, Agony Opera, Cream and Crimson, Total Eclipse, Prachya, The Trinity Review, The Mojave River Review, Panoply and Winedrunk Sidewalk, among other venues. Caesar holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She lives in East Lansing and teaches writing at Michigan State University.

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