Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 22 20 | Melissa Eleftherion

Melissa Eleftherion
Impatient Liminal

The pauses and interludes
& mesoganglia & aerenchyma
leave breathing space
enough to weave
the phosphorus &
nitrogen

otherwise
how to float
make movable
experience

transformational imaginal
transimaginal poetics
liminal and braiding
ecologies of understanding
the interrelatedness
interrelationship
of beings
in practice
in joy
and community
if we all
shine on
we
make
radiant music

there’s so much more
than that brutal grey
retaining wall
these synaptic fields
emit memory
as imaginal proteins
the sugars
make the fabric

—Submitted on 11/21/2020

Melissa Eleftherion is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), little ditch (above/ground press, 2018), and trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Entropy, Flag+Void, Lunch TicketPith, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and other journals. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Eleftherion lives in Northern California, where she manages the Ukiah Library, teaches creative writing, and curates the LOBA Reading Series. Online at apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 21 20 | Margo Taft Stever

Margo Taft Stever
Bomb Shelter Explosion Report

Sputnik circled the earth; people imagined atomic bombs. Russians
blasted Yuri Gagarin into the cosmos—the space race the new now.
Soviets placed nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Police Report, November 11, 1967: Explosion occurred
in underground bomb shelter, 300 yards north of main
residence, thirty feet east of garage. Fuse box found near
victim’s left hand. Object partially covered with blood.

Kennedy ordered, “fallout protection for Americans
as rapidly as possible. We owe that kind of insurance to
our families,” October 6, 1961. He asked Congress
for $100 million to construct shelters.

Mr. Taft’s wife called to report the bomb shelter
blew up. Her husband, Hulbert Taft, was inside.

Soviets tested the first atomic bomb. Some Americans dug shelters
at night to keep neighbors from knowing. A cartoon turtle, Bert, urged
children to duck and cover. Bomb shelters sold like hula hoops. Newspapers
reported radiation readings next to the day’s weather report.

Officers Miller, Hiatt, Wiebold, Arthur, Brakvill, Schlie, and Gruenmaier
responded. Upon arrival, they went directly to the location. The shelter was
demolished, the roof caved in. Sod, dirt, and chunks of concrete scattered
all around. Some white smoke drifted from the southwest corner, and also,
from the entrance door. Dirt and sod were blown about one hundred feet.

Russians warned, “It would take really very few multimegaton nuclear bombs to wipe out
your small and densely populated countries and instantly kill you in your lairs.” Because
gamma rays travel in straight lines, entrance ramps were built at right angles. Blast doors
would pillow the shock wave of a nuclear blast and regained their prior shape.

Mr. Taft had parked his car, a yellow Pontiac Firebird, in front of the barn,
directly west of the shelter. Dirt from the explosion was on top of the car.
The shelter looked like the roof raised, then fell on the floor. A small area
along the north and west wall was not completely caved in.

The Snyder shelter designer spec’d sand floors so dwellers could bury
turds and piss. Shelters included battery-powered radios, lanterns,
sleeping bags, cots, chemical toilets, heating systems, fuel tanks, firearms
(to keep neighbors out). Necessary supplies included bottled drinking water,
first-aid kits, reading, writing, recreational material, cleaning supplies, and clothing.

Officer Arthur checked the blast areas, but could not find the victim. The Fire
Department responded, along with all available men from the Service
Department. All men started shoveling dirt from the roof.

On TV, people watched Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and
apocalyptic movies—On the Beach, The Last Man on Earth. Wall Street predicted
the bomb shelter building craze profits could increase to twenty billion.

The fire department tried to put out smoke from the southwest
corner. An electrical fire commenced and arced with water
until someone pulled a switch in the house.

Survival stores sold atomic bomb protection outfits. General Foods and
General Mills advertised dried shelter meals. A worried farmer in Iowa
built a fallout shelter for 200 cows. Salaried spotters searched for suspect
objects in the skies.

Carter Construction Company responded with two backhoes to remove
dirt and gravel from the caved-in roof. White smoke had an odor assumed
to be propane gas. The caretaker, Mr. Liming, located the underground tank
and turned off the gas at which time the white smoke ceased.

Some clients forced contractors to construct shelters at night.

The backhoes arrived at 5:00 p.m. and the body of my uncle, Mr. Hulbert Taft,
was located ten feet from the entrance door, four feet west of the front interior wall.
The body was face down with the head toward the south. His left foot was pinned
under a large I-beam. His clothing was partially burned, and he was
bleeding from his head. Near his left hand lay the electrical circuit
breaker with blood on it, and a small wrench was nearby.

Teachers at odd moments screamed, “Drop,” and students hid under desks.
Teachers led children into basements or forced them to duck under desks.
Not allowed to go to the bathroom, many children wet their pants.

The Hamilton County Coroner was advised to move the body
to the county morgue. Dr. Victor Strauss, the family doctor, was at the scene.
Taft was pronounced dead by Strauss. His body was examined by Dr. Adriano
who found the victim to have been in perfect health prior to death. Taft
suffered a crushed chest and head injuries; apparently, he died
in the explosion as determined by lack of carbon monoxide in his lungs.

The U.S. government cautioned that flimsy shelters could burn inhabitants to a crisp
or crush them like grapefruits. Conelrad (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) broadcast
advice suggesting two weeks of food would allow for survival from a nuclear bomb.
Each adult could take 130 mg of potassium iodide a day and each child 65 mg to bolster
thyroid glands against deadly intake of radioactive iodide.

At 11:00 a.m., November 11, 1967, the reporting officer, Patrolman Miller,
interviewed three girls—Pamela Baker, age 8, her sister, Gillian Baker, age 7, and a
friend, Becky Thompson, age 8, who were at the residence at the time of the
explosion. The Tafts had recently acquired a small pony. The girls were looking at
the pony when the shelter exploded. Mrs. Baker, their mother, advised of heavy
concentrations of dirt in their hair, but they were not injured by the blast.

Life Magazine praised a couple who spent their honeymoon in a bomb shelter.
Someone lied to his neighbors, stating that his shelter was a wine cellar.

The arson investigator, Mr. Peterson thought that the mixture of gas
and oxygen at the time Mr. Taft entered the shelter had to be at its
highest ignition point. He believed Mr. Taft entered shortly
before 4:00 p.m., November 11, and smelled a strong concentration of gas.
He is thought to have gone over to the fuse box and pulled the main circuit
breaker at which time small sparks resulted and the explosion occurred.

In one of the first “Twilight Zones,” the protagonist returns from a space mission;
everything is destroyed by nuclear holocaust. One human left is alone.

In an interview, the victim’s son and daughter-in-law assured that
their father was in good health and spirit. He had only minor problems,
nothing that would lead him to an intentional explosion. He checked
the shelter every day after work. He had no known enemies.

—Submitted on 11/21/2020

Margo Taft Stever is the author of Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019), Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019), The Lunatic Ball (Kattywompus Press, 2015), The Hudson Line (Main Street Rag, 2012), Frozen Spring (Mid-List Press, 2002) and Reading the Night Sky (Riverstone Press, 1996). Her work has appeared in Verse DailyPrairie Schooner, Connecticut Review, Cincinnati ReviewPlume, and other journals. Stever is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. She lives in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 20 20 | Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham
Corona Psalm

You don’t have to feel lonely.

You don’t have to eat from cable news
like an endless buffet.

Listen, the birds are singing.

Listen, the rain is making love
to the city streets.

Watch, the leaves give birth
and the trees that hold them.

You don’t have to be alone.

Drink from the stream
within yourself.

Pull yourself away from the world
the same way you would tug a child
away from an open flame.

Drink from the stream
drink and be well.

—Submitted on 10/17/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series

Michael Cunningham is a school librarian and outdoor nature educator trained in Waldorf education and biodynamic farming.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 19 20 | Kevin McIlvoy

Kevin McIlvoy
Inaugural

I want you to know,
the dome is 307 feet high,
135 feet in diameter.

The structure contains
4000 tons of iron that flexes
during atmospheric change—

in the way of a
lily unfolding counter-
clockwise as it lifts—

in the way of a
mother reaching up
for her treed child—

in the way of a
branch holding you out
wild toward the cold—

in the way of a
swallowtail’s wings
fluttering while nectaring—

in the way of the
oaken bucket rocking on
and sinking into well water—

in the well dug near
the oak tree swelling larger
for over 600 seasons—

in the way of the
granite that is the bedrock of
of our dimmed blue world.

I want you to know,
granite is many
times thicker than the

combined thickness of
all other rock—and
has never been a

portion of human
or vegetal or
animal material.

Struck by lightning,
granite makes the sound
of cannon-echo—

of beliefs, of fears
drummed from forested banks
by wandering river-dwellers.

It is the parent rock
I want you to know.
Granite is the parent rock.

The eroded steps home
are slick in this rain.
Take it—take my hand.

—Submitted on 11/19/2020

Kevin McIlvoy is the author of At the Gate of All Wonder (Tupelo Press, 2018), 57 Octaves Below Middle C (Four Way Books, 2017), The Complete History of New Mexico (Graywolf Press, 2005), Hyssop (TriQuarterly, 1998), Little Peg (Atheneum, 1991), The Fifth Station (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1987), and A Waltz (Lynx House, 1981). He teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and lives near Asheville, NC. 

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 18 20 | Diane Kendig

Diane Kendig
Report From the Watch

Mornings my friend posts a photo of his sunrise
from a gated community in South Carolina
while in Cleveland we crawl through autumn

agog with flowers, gourds and hazel nuts, but know
Covid’s gonna be different for us come winter.
It’s not over by a long shot—a long shot no longer

a cliché exactly, though I don’t own a gun.
John’s photos are idyllic, light brightening wildly
or mistily vague but warmer than here

where it’s colder each day. Our trees finally
shot up yellow, and my neighbor’s burning bush
went to town in a red as original as sin.

Me, I’m moving in for the long haul, which seems heavier
this week, carrying the last of this and that. “Six more months,”
says my friend in Atlanta. What do Southerners know.

I wave from inside my window, rimed for the first time
this year, breathe on the glass, rub open a circle
that steams over, write with my finger, OK 4 NOW.

—Submitted on 11/09/2020

Diane Kendig‘s latest book is Prison Terms (Main Street Rag, 2017).  With Robert E. McDonough, she co-edited the tribute anthology In the Company of Russell Atkins (Red Giant Books, 2016). Kendig’s poems have appeared in J Journal, Wordgathering, Valparaiso Review, and other journals. Curator of the Cuyahoga County Public Library weblog, Read + Write, she is on the web at dianekendig.com.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 17 20 | Kait Walser

Kait Walser
Today the Role of Your Childhood Babysitter Will Be Played by the Electoral College

Your new babysitter has certain ways of doing things
—experience, let’s say—yeah. Tried and true. Says
he’s been around the block. Not his first rodeo, kiddo.
So, when you’re hungry at 11:40 am, he lets you know
that lunchtime is at twelve noon, on the dot. A little
discipline won’t kill you and why don’t you just set
the table while you wait. Think about what you want
and your little sister can help, too. Just the napkins
now, we can’t trust her with porcelain, prongs, or
serrated edges at her age. And what would she like
by the way? Peanut butter and jelly? Yummy yum!
Now, hang on. Mommy doesn’t what? Mommy left
me in charge. We have to hear everyone out. Wait
for your turn. Now, me, I think a sandwich sounds
delish. Allergies? Well then what do you propose
we eat? Grilled cheese? I don’t know about all that.
Besides, your sister said please. I didn’t hear you
say much in the way of please or excuse me while
you were talking about those allergies. How’s this:
today, you get to choose the flavor of the jelly
in our PB and Js. Alright? Fair is fair. Now dig in, kids.

—Submitted on 11/16/2020

Kait Walser Her poetry has appeared in Snapdragon, Not Very Quiet, Germ, and Ruminate, as well as in anthologies including In Absentia: Reflections on the Pandemic (Bicycle Comics Productions, 2020). She holds an MFA from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., and was a 2015 Delaware Highlands Conservancy artist-in-residence. Walser lives and writes in New York City.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 16 20 | Parker Sera

Parker Sera
Mourner’s Kaddish for Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Read the news while scrolling on the toilet
Always remember the moment descending the stairs to ask someone if they have read the news
Google “blessings for erev rosh hashanah” like you were about to
Google “mourners kaddish”

Sit very still so that the world’s end will not find you
Sit very still and only imagine the kingdom;

Pure and golden, the bulb of honey sitting on a spoon
The honeycomb in the bowl awaiting apples and sweetly
ripped hand-crushed clouds of bread;
The world to come; our words and our following actions pregnant with it
may the world to come drip from our mouths like honey, and may we store it in the walls

The honey, harvested by a friend just this afternoon from an abandoned house
They have made a life of growing and coaxing—food from the earth, art from the hivemind
And today, they gently unstuck 25 lbs of this honey from the skeleton of the house, just before demolition—they relocated the bees
They brought the honeycomb back to our home

6oz of sweetness to the ritual

The world to come;
In the kitchen, modest piles of baked goods for tomorrow’s bake sale/yard sale/and reparations fundraiser

Tomorrow during our bake sale, as neighbors daven on their porches
some men have said they will come to our neighborhood, “a hotbed of antifa”
they will therefore be staging a hate rally at our local farmers market;

I will be there
but with honey dripping from my mouth.
Though I have endless rage I have no more left for tomorrow, I will be there and I hope no one dies

Light candles even though the wind will swiftly blow them out
Sing the blessings even when you only half-know them

May her memory be a blessing
And not only hers but may all their memories be a blessing
May we find comfort in their memories
May we find justice in their memories
May we know that in this time
When so many lives are ending
When trees are ending
When many hopes are ending as timelines and countdowns prescribed to us by climate scientists end and end
May we know what else is ending and may we hasten it to its end
May its memory be a blessing
May its ashes nourish the soil and awaken the seeds

Very soon, in the Synagogue without walls, we will beat our breasts with slow deliberation, in acknowledgement of our grief
in acknowledgment of what we all have done
all of us

I could say this kaddish every day;
I should

Yitgadal v’yitgadash shmei raba b’alma di-v’ra
chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon
uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba’agala
uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: amen

A better world is possible. V’im’ru: amen

“May we establish that kingdom in our lifetime and during our days,
and within the life of us all

Speedily and soon”

And the world to come, as for that world,
We must take fistfuls of honey and ashes
and we must build it

—Submitted on 11/13/2020

Parker Sera’s work has appeared in The Rising Phoenix Review, Knack Magazine, and the Aurora Review, as well as in the anthology 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy (Independently published, 2017), edited by Casey Lawrence. Parker is a queer, midwestern horse girl, poet, actor, and theatre-maker from Minneapolis. She lives in Philadelphia, where she’s working on her MFA in acting at Temple University.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 15 20 | J. Freeborn

J. Freeborn
At the Beginning

at the beginning / does disruption hold
anger responds to atrocity / rebuilds the house that was burned
is the movement / power I used to be angry but
I am a hollow house / in the Berkshires
Mohican and Mohawk hunted / Shakers settled
their graves and dancing sites still / found in the birch and oak
maple and pine a trail / thirty miles now or more
mist on the lake is not / boiling and the court
of the conqueror has no / capacity to hear
the claims / of the dead

—Submitted on 11/13/2020

Authors’s Note: The poet acknowledges their grateful utilization of the words of President Barack Obama, Professor Myisha Cherry, and Mark Vanhoenacker.

J. Freeborn is a teacher in New York. Their work has appeared in Yes Poetry, Rising Phoenix Review, oxford public philosophy, and elsewhere. They are the anthology books managing editor at The Poetry Society of New York.

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 14 20 | James Miller

James Miller
Leo, For Alice Coltrane

I sample four spears of roasted
asparagus. Crunched tips, rescued
from the boil.

Wurlitzer rides up, late for dinner.
She says: water my horses,

then wash your hands.

She says, be not afraid
of simplicity!

Dumps her sack of everything
on the carpet. The kids dive in like seals.

I pick out a few beauties, subtle
enough to slip through customs: chalcedony,
chant,

Andean air
wing-spread
for Washington.

—Submitted on 11/13/2020

James Miller’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, The Maine Review, Lunch Ticket, The Atlanta Review, Thin Air, and other journals. He won the Connecticut Poet Award in 2020 and lives near Houston. 

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Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 13 20 | Ed Madden

Ed Madden
Watch

Bert’s the first there
for the preview, peruses
table lots of housewares
and china in the quiet.
A couple of locals show up
as he’s about to leave.
They’re wearing masks,
concession to the health
concerns of the owner,
who they call out to
as they walk in, What about
that election?
Bert stops
to look through a box
of old notions. Stolen,
Bill says, as he comes out
of the office. They ask
to see a watch they saw
online. He shows them
what they want to see.
The three rehearse their
I heard’s, their someone said’s.
You know, Bill says, something’s
gonna happen. They’ve got
plans for Biden. When he’s
gone, they’ll put in that
woman. Watch, you’ll see.

They all agree.

—Submitted on 11/12/2020

Ed Madden is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Ark (Sibling Rivalry Press 2016). His poems have appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals, as well as the Forward Book of Poetry 2021 (Faber & Faber).

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