Deborah Hauser,
Why She Didn’t Report It
For Christine Blasey Ford, et al.

Because it was her fatherunclehusbandbrothertboyfriendcoachboss
Because it happened in her own home
Because they already knew and pretended not to
Because she was scared
Because she needed him
Because she thought no one else would ever love her
Because maybe it wouldn’t happen again
Because he was sorry
Because he was drinking
Because she was drinking
Because she was wearing –
Because she was nobody
Because she needed the job
Because she was 5 years old
Because she wasn’t a virgin
Because fraternities
Because she couldn’t afford the cost to process her own rape kit
Because there was no visible wound
Because she knows how this goes
Because she didn’t want to stand trial
Because she has learned to become invisible instead
Because she did       no one listened
Because he cut out her tongue
Because he threatened to kill her
Because he was a doctorteacherjudgepriestfineupstandingcitizen
Because he overpowered her
Because he drugged her
Because she doesn’t want to relive it
Because she doesn’t owe you an explanation
Because she wants to move on
Because she thinks she’s okay now
Because she still has those dreams
Because when she opens her mouth to scream       no sound comes out
Because shame and rage hold her together
Because I might disintegrate

Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and Carve Magazine. Her book reviews have been published at The Kenyon Review, Mom Egg Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has taught at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College. She leads a double life on Long Island where she works in the insurance industry.
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Marissa McNamara
Somewhere a Man is Thinking That They Is Who We (Hysterical Angry Hyperbolic) Are

somewhere a man is slapping
a bar        an ass        a laugh onto her face.
somewhere he drinks and does not fear
leaving the glass on the bar when he looks away
at the score        at the waitress
at her short yellow or red or black skirt at the buttons
buttoned or unbuttoned on her white shirt and
when he walks home he can be lost in thought not
listening behind        not
watching the shadows        not
thanking God for the streetlights blinking on.
He walks with his keys in his pocket        not
between his fingers like useless knives ready
for the could-be’s   the her-faults        does not
hold his phone to his ear pretend-laughing
making small sounds of uh-huh to an imaginary
caller      he does not look down   look away   look up        does not
avoid meeting others’ eyes        does not
fear an other walking toward him in a polo or a button-down
or Armani shoes with tassles or a tie or cargo pants
or Levis–any number of shirts and colors and shoes
and he nods because he can because nowhere do these men
have to think they do not think do not think do not
quicken their step do not know not to turn and quick-glance behind
them do not wish they had worn their Nikes not
heels do not wish they had worn something
with tread as strong as tires. Somewhere these men enter
a party, slap other men on the back, stand with ice in glasses
or plastic cups or flasks or cans sweating in their hands and
watch the women to see who is swaying count the times
she tips her glass and swallows        the men
know who has had enough to make her thighs
yoga-flexible   alcohol-open   like the doors the men open into the dark
or light or dusk or dawn because the doors are theirs
and the knobs twist for their hands and the hinges swing wide for them   swing
into open spaces where their entry does not mean why were you there how
much did you drink why don’t you remember if it was so important why don’t you
remember the time the date how loud the music was as you left the room and walked out why don’t you remember who drove if this was so important if this was so important if this was so important how can you not know how many people were there who drove home and somewhere
a man enters
and no one cares which bedroom sidewalk curb alley car truck floor he uses
to walk over   to lay above to enter behind to pump his presidential body into
like an automatic
riddling the body the body        she        the body
the body that she is and is not
the body of the unbuttoned animal before him
every time a man enters his places that are all his that are
all the places where he can always and forever say
his truth that is the truth always and forever and the truth is
that he can grab whatever pussy
he wants
every time men gather in their names
every time they come every time
they come they are somewhere
they belong every
time they come they
come they come
every time

Marissa McNamara‘s work has appeared in several publications, including the anthologies On Our Own and My Body My Words and the journals RATTLE, Assisi, Melancholy Hyperbole, StorySouth, Future Cycle, The Cortland Review, and Amsterdam Quarterly. She teaches English composition and creative writing at Georgia State University and in Georgia prisons. She is also a contributing poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review.

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Nancy Flynn
One June Day: Fire, Heat, & Children Locked in Cages at the Texas-Mexico Border

here
in this land of savagery & lies,
a spider’s net between a branch & the eucalyptus chair

jails a brittle,
falling leaf
where,

on my island of dawning
bells, the horns are just disappearing
freight & the gutters need to be cleaned of more

fallen, the falling
broken
but still

here
as the trees reach
out for a sky turned scorch

yet more gasping, bitter
smoke at a sunrise that blinds, ashes
our eyes to the sight

of the cruelties while the prop
planes overhead deaden the pitch,
every cry

Nancy Flynn‘s books include Every Door Recklessly Ajar and Great Hunger. Her work has recently appeared in riverbabble 32 & 33, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, and From the Finger Lakes: A Poetry Anthology and will soon be featured in Halfway Down the Stairs and The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank. She grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania coal country, spent two decades in Ithaca, New York, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. A complete list of her publications is at www.nancyflynn.com.

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Marjorie Moorhead
The Rain and the Flower

After: The Dew and the Bird by Alexander Posey (1873-1908; Muscogee Creek)

There is more song in a raindrop,
That is but one of so many,
Than there is in an orchestra’s playing
For those accustomed to luxury.

There’s more sweetness found in a field
Where, in the company of thistles and bees,
Grows a wild, delicate flower, than in all
The sugar used for fancy buns of sweet patisseries.

Yet those who’s vision narrows, to follow goldbricks’ shimmer,
And who’s road lures them to worship only treasure,
Are missing each drop’s rainbow, and the wild-growing
Flower’s simple, vibrant, perennial pleasure.

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the border of NH/VT where she tries for a daily observant walk. Her poetry can be seen in two anthologies: A Change of Climate (2017, edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson, benefitting the Environmental Justice Foundation), and Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT, Vol.II (2018, edited by Alice Wolf Gilborn, et al., The Blueline Press). She’s had many poems online at sites from Indolent Books (What Rough Beast; HIV Here & Now), Rising Phoenix Review, to Sheila-Na-Gig. Forthcoming is a chapbook from Finishing Line Press.

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Sam Avrett
America, continued

America, Allen was talking to you. Sixty two years ago, and I’m still nothing. I love my truck and venison stew but I need to cancel my credit card.

America, I have so many questions, I hope you don’t mind. Thanks for the border but what was the fate of those children? Yes those migrants but I meant my neighbors who served in the war. I can never remember the name of that song, or that book.

America what happened to the dairy farm? Did you notice there aren’t as many birds as there used to be? I like my fire chief, but I don’t think I trust the judge. Or the governor either. I’m beginning to suspect that Bernie might have been right.

America, why did I need that generator? Why do I need supplemental coinsurance? With the supersize chips, why am I still hungry?

America, did you really ever free the slaves? America, me too.

We need to be left alone to think about this. Freedom isn’t free. My neighbors the jail guards are taking up guns.

Sam Avrett lives in a rural county in upstate New York, with dogs, husband, and a startling amount of canned and preserved food stocked away for the winter.

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David James
On Certain Days

for Marc Sheehan

Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right
—Thessalonians 3:13

the world crashes
& burns
& you burn with it.
everything you’ve done ends in a pile of ashes
& the wind
scatters you home. this is how you learn
to take nothing for granted.

some days the world slaps you
in the face and has no concern
for who you are or who you know.
you stand there & take it, no shred
of honor, no handful of hope.

there are even days when the world
wants nothing more than your head
on a platter, your body skinned
& quartered, hung from rope
tied to any bare tree.

so much is out of your control,
beyond the scope
of your sorrow.
some days, your dignity
lies in a warm bucket of shit.

but then, every once in a while,
the world stops, falls to its knees
& lets you win:
every pitch thrown, you hit
out of the park;
every bird sings your name;
every star in the dark sky, lit
& shining, smiles down on you
until your heart glows.

David James is the author of My Torn Dance Card (Fly Came Near It, 2015) and She Dances Like Mussolini (March Street Press, 2009), winner of the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award for poetry, as well as a number of chapbooks. Many of his one-act plays have been produced in cities across the country. He teaches writing and literature in the English department at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

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Scott Hightower
PIGS ALL THE WAY DOWN

(Sept. 27, 2018)

Among the children of wealth
and license is a subset that reaps
social capital for heedlessly
misbehaving. Oh, how a certain

class of men do guard
and perpetuate their privileges. Even
back to the ancients there have been
records of bursts of incandescent

fury: hot messes and another
subset that exerts steely
self-control. Even Poe
liked drinking

with the Fordham Jesuits.
Boys like their games, hunting
dens, and hideouts; instinctively
know where there are safe havens;

when to close ranks; when
to try dodging a line of inquiry
by burying their “white” lies
in an avalanche of distracting

compulsive qualifications.
(Though, careful. Compulsive
qualifications can be telling.)
Years and the formality of oaths

have a way of complicating
foolery and deception:
incoherent drunkenness,
unkind aggressive belligerency…

from a blurry refusal of a slurred “No,”
to a steely-eyed refusal of a handshake.
All was vanity and vexation of spirit,
and there was no profit under the sun.

Scott Hightower is the author of four books of poetry in the US and two bilingual collections published in Madrid. He lives in Manhattan and teaches
at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

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Kathleen Cook
5001

When you see the train we’re on
You will know that we are gone,
A one-way road, our way now lost,
Far from home.

One thousand lies, two thousand lies,
Lies are fodder to the folk,
Blood-raw meat to need and greed
Thrown from the huckster far above,

Gone the land of the free,
Gone the land of you and me,
This train once freedom-glory-bound
On the rails to despot shores,

Five thousand miles,
Five thousand lies,
Delivered sea to shining sea,
Lord, we can’t go home this way.

*With gratitude to the Washington Post for its tracking of lies, https://wapo.st/2yZd28x, and thanks to the folk music that has inspired many freedom movements.

Kathleen Cook is a retired teacher, a language enthusiast, and in the words of a granddaughter, a “social justice warrior.” Really, what choice do we have?

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Mary Ellen Talley
#resist

slam dunk
punch drunk
enough said
well said
put the well of fears to bed
the wall of fear has no street cred
I hope to God the majority is now incred-
ulous, we are rebellious,
code word resist-
ance, there are no proper nouns
found in the white house anymore,
the empty rhetoric
grows tiresome
then demonic
I feel the tear gas
in my orifice of hope
official
I was baptized
and feared a bit
my father’s alcohol,
the nun’s ruler,
but even young I called out
to the new black and white TV
in the blonde console,
I LIKE IKE.
I wanted Mamie’s bangs.
I never knew JFK cavorted with Marilyn
until later after hope
was optional.
At least I had voting rights
to comment on the blight.
My bloating cheeks could imitate
Tricky Dick’s left-right jowls
but still I hoped
because I knew history
would turn us right
and the three branches of govern-
momentum would wait a crisis out,
endure
because we would spurn the bastard,
avenge Kent State after tear gas
retaliation, gun shots, shun guts,
boot thumps. Bye Bye Miss American Pie,
I stand on shaky ground
I pound my fist
while more storm, deform,
impale themselves on the emperor’s
mis-constructed barriers.
Border crossing
Christ wasn’t on the cross long
before there was discord
in his ranks.
The dirty news comes out
in dribbles.
It is a mess, full-court press.
Now were trash talking on the court,
in the courtroom,
or catching saliva’s blood
from the gash
where we tried to catch the ball
but it smashed our glasses.

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have been published in Raven Chronicles, U City Review and Ekphrastic Review as well as in anthologies, All We Can Hold and Ice Cream Poems. Indolent Press has published her poems in What Rough Beast and 35 Years of Aids. Her poetry has received two Pushcart Nominations.

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Susanna Donato
Valentine’s Day
For seventeen in Parkland, Florida

1.

Is this ever going to stop, someone asks. Someone replies,
Only if we do something, and we’re not going to do anything.

Ignoring it is something.

2.

Neighbors air their closet, shrinkwrap-shrouded garments
rustling on porch beams—T-shirts, plaid flannel, denim,
the kind of clothing we call clothing but we mean
men’s clothing. Yet these neighbors are women in boots, jeans,
short practical hair, a shiny white camper, a pergola
they stained themselves this fall. Something fills me with joy
in the squareness of it all—they are they and nothing else,
universal, particular.

3.

On election night I couldn’t stop jigging at Will Call.
My daughter recited words I’ve said a hundred times to her,
shush, shush, you seem really frenetic. She embraced my shoulder
to still me. I had no words for that first hour I dared think
Hillary might win. Something ended that night, in me, at the balcony’s edge,
as Courtney Barnett tried to fiddle our fate away. Let’s just be here tonight,
she called, There’s time later for news. Something like that.
Her guitar louder than I’d expected. No folkiness, her boots
on the pedalboard, the blue-and-red Google glow of the crowd
tapping refresh, refresh, on the map that said something in all of us
was done.

Susanna Donato is a Denver-based writer whose poems have appeared in Entropy and Columbia, and essays have appeared in Proximity, Okey-Panky, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.susannadonato.com or on Twitter @susannadonato.

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