Michael H. Levin
Telling Tales

It’s narrative we live in.
Early. Late. Here only
do we ride a voice that canters forth
to listeners bound to hear.
Here finally do we slip beyond
obsessive selves toward rites
that vest our tales
with freighted memory.

Those big-browed hairy faces
by a cave-fire while the ice cracks
are the grist of us—rapt at
hand-signed stories of the hunt,
the kill, the spirit marks that signal
feasts at close.

Gaunt figures in gray treatment chairs
slumped bonelessly or hypnotized
by globules in their chemo drips
grow radiant at the chance to share
their disregarded histories.

Crass insults on a tiny screen
coiled snarls beneath the turkey-talk
at family rendezvous recede
where sheltering connections
masked as anecdotes surprise.

Through tales
each soul is recognized; endorsed
to feel; can compass buried griefs.

Perhaps rise to community.
Perhaps in some sense heal.

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. Online at michaellevinpoetry.com and twopianosplayingforlife.org.

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Rikki Santer
Abracadabra Abecedarian

Archetype of these times, the theater swathed in inky
black velvet, the gyre of dwelling in the prestidigital age,
cat & mouse of it, gallery of creased brows that lend virtuosity in
deviance with each deal, no end to
enthrall to mesmerism, just feast on the
fusillade of his growling tweets, firehose of a flame that just can’t clear its
goosenecked throat & leaves us
handcuffed like Houdini; how to expose that formula of
invisibility when illusionists try to get as much as possible from a
jackdaw of props; he thinks he is the King
Kong of cards, knowing how the trick is done but not how to do it,
levitating the taproot of daily news;
mirrors ripple in their angles of incidence,
newsfeed seance, stage doors first slightly propped
open, then gummed shut, as he
palms the next head floating; the dove from his top hat
quacking partisan facts wrinkled & rough &
ready to rise from his teetering
sarcophagus, each syllable rumbling MAGA MAGA MAGA, his
trick with a title that’s
utterly realistic but not real & could
vanish like the smoke puff of tenuous success so we
watch like an audience who yearns to believe in a good witch not a
xenophobic witch of the west & we turn the channel, the cheek & struggle to loosen the
yoke of media obsession & pray that when our sight lines finally
zigzag across stage, they’ll settle on an empty cabinet where the elephant has vanished.

Rikki Santer is the author In Pearl Broth (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) as well as six previous poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, Slab, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Slipstream, Midwest Review and The Main Street Rag, among other publications. Santer lives in Columbus, Ohio. Learn more online at rikkisanter.com.

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Chad Parenteau
Resistance Tankas, Reel 9

John Bolton Jesus Tanka

John Bolton Jesus,
once subpoenaed, will perform
his first miracle,
walk Iran’s grounds, burned to glass,
claim he stands atop water.

World War Three Jesus Tanka

World War Three Jesus,
thought to have died in eighties,
is hanging in wait,
waiting for right temperament
to ascend him with the clouds.

#ToiletTrump Jesus Tanka, #TakeTwo

#ToiletTrump Jesus
just wants to go down, at last,
but he keeps rising!
A new parable, a metaphor…
Why can’t he just stop rising?!?

Hawkish Jesus Tanka

Wish hawkish Jesus
he needs all twelve disciples
before he ascends.
Another four are drafted.
Needs just one to blog scripture.

New York Times Jesus Tanka

New York Times Jesus
asked if he’s the King of Jews.
New York Times Jesus
only replies, Wow. You’re smart.
Advantage is clearly theirs.

Return Fire Jesus Tanka

The congregation
of Return Fire Jesus
takes in his sermon
between reloads. Turn one cheek,
make other conceal carry.

Whistleblower Jesus Tanka, Take Three

Prez washes his hands
of Whistleblower Jesus
over and over,
hopes to find blood in water,
wonders when the blood will come.

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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William Heath
Urban Renewal in Detroit

GM wanted land in Detroit
for a central industrial park
to employ six-thousand workers—
Poletown was the target.
Graffiti appeared on the walls
of demolished buildings,
“Death to Arsonists, Thieves,
and GM.” Proud people
refused to leave, city services
declined, then disappeared,
crime was on the rise.
A SWAT team drove the last
protesting squatters out
of Immaculate Conception,
which was taken down in days.

In place of Poletown the city
built the world’s largest
resource recovery plant,
in other words it burned
a hell of a lot of trash,
turning it into energy.
It seemed like a good idea.
The problem was pollutants
poured out of the stacks,
spreading carcinogens
across the neighborhood.
“We all live downwind,”
was the protestors’ slogan.
When the plant failed
to show a profit the city
sold it to Philip Morris,
who supposedly promised
to deal with the problem
of smoke causing cancer.

William Heath is the author of the poetry collections Night Moves in Ohio (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and The Walking Man (Icarus Press, 1994); the novels Devil Dancer (Somondoco Press, 2013), Blacksnake’s Path: The True Adventures of William Wells (Heritage Books, 2008), and The Children Bob Moses Led (Milkweed Editions, 1995), winner of the Hackney Literary Award. His history text, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), won Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America for best historical nonfiction book and best first nonfiction book. He is also the author of Conversations with Robert Stone (University Press of Mississippi, 2016), a collection of interviews. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, South Carolina Review,  and Southern Review, among other publications. The William Heath Award is given annually to the best creative writer at Mount St. Mary’s University, where Heath is a professor emeritus of English. He lives in Frederick, Md.

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Catherine Gigante-Brown
Belly Laugh

My son’s first belly laugh happened
in the most unsuspecting place.
It was in a very poor country,
which some might call a shithole
but it is rich in warm memories for me.

David was only five months old
when I stood in the buffet line
at a small hotel
in San Jose, Santo Domingo,
trying to balance my baby
on my shoulder
as I navigated breakfast.

Suddenly,
I felt sure, gentle hands
lifting my child
from my shoulder;
it wasn’t my husband
but a stranger.
The woman who worked
at the reception desk
had seen my balancing act
and came to my rescue.
Although she said, “Permisso”
it was more a statement
than a question
as she took my baby from me.
Grateful for her small act of compassion,
I ate breakfast with my husband in peace
then went to check on my child.

Even before I arrived,
I heard their laughter.
Behind the front desk,
the kind hotel receptionist
was tossing my child
high into the air,
catching him
and laughing herself.
She did this
over and over again.
The higher David flew,
the more he laughed.
My baby was giggling
uncontrollably
from deep in his belly
with someone he didn’t know.

I almost wept at my son’s pure joy
and from being able to eat a meal
uninterrupted
for the first time since David was born.

Sometimes you find
beauty and kindness
in the most unexpected places.
Sometimes they may look
broken and battered
from the outside
but are so exquisite
within.

Catherine Gigante-Brown is the author of the novels The El (2012), The Bells of Brooklyn (2017), Different Drummer (2015), and Better than Sisters (2019), all published by Volossal. Her poems have appeared in Ravishly, Art & Understanding, and Downtown Express, among other journals, as well as in the anthologies Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma (Nirala Publications, 2017), edited by David B. Austell and Kathleen D. Gallagher, and the Brownstone Poets 2018 Anthology (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018), edited by Patricia Carragon. Gigante-Brown is a current and lifelong Brooklynite. 

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Ed McManis
Death in a Red Hat

He says, after hearing about
the imminent war, turning
off Fox News.
“I wouldn’t mind
dying in Paris
or Belgium,”
continues babbling
about his tongue pleasured
numb by chocolate and
thick summer air
sweet with waffles.

“Death in a foreign
country or desert
any time of year,”
And how he’d make friends
with Allies and foreigners
digging plots
deep with hometown
longing, graves sprinkled
with the immortality
of American baubles
and trinkets and

that little flag curled
quaintly into itself like
a day old raspberry croissant,
bag-pipers cresting the hill,
Uncle Sam leading the color guard
with songs of triumph whistled
down the years into edited books

written by survivors with edged
lawns, safe sons and the misery
of what was spilled across
the centuries, packed
into someone else’s gun,
someone else’s funeral.

Ed McManis’s poems have appeared widely. With his wife, Linda, he is the publisher of McMania Publishing. He runs a small school in San Francisco for students who learn differently. Ed and Linda have two grown sons.

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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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