John Kaprielian
You Bastards

You bastards.
You self-righteous filth
torches held high.
You vermin who think
God and country are on your side,
heartless scum
angry that you are losing
power you never earned
but happily took advantage of,
the legacy of our shameful past
of slavery, racism, and sexism,
when lynchings were entertainment
wife-beating unquestioned
and native people
slaughtered by the thousands
like passenger pigeons.

You sick, deluded souls,
who think equality and
equal opportunity
threaten you
like a knife to your
most private parts,
who believe you deserve more
because you used to have more
simply because your skin was “white.”

You disgusting little men
and your subservient women;
you are a cancer,
an oozing, festering growth
that unchecked
soon spreads
and kills.

We will fight you
with words and deeds,
with our bodies,
and with every tool
and weapon in our arsenal.

We will beat you back
to your dank burrows and basements,
the dark places where
hopefully your last generation
will meet oblivion
and discover that
God
most definitely
was not on your side.

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
Uprooted

Nested in your arms,
we sail blind through the snow-scape,
God’s beaten egg-whites.

Branch by fallen branch,
we swerve, hurl ourselves over
hills, hearing nothing

but sputter echoes,
feeling nothing but cold slush
spraying silky scarves.

No map. Not a clue
of where we might be going,
we trample, slicing

through virgin forest,
crunching dreams of sleeping moles.
Under our thick wheels

blades darken the snow.
We laugh, kiss, keep on cutting
our country’s bare throat.

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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Michael Hogan
Inventory

And did you survive the nocturnal dark
the bleak encounters with old mistakes and losses
and shattered dreams in the drawn-out night?
Or did you step out before the night ended and watch the twinkling
blue paleness of Venus rise in the west?

Did you forsake another hour in bed and head off with your dog
to keep a dawn appointment in the park
to watch the trees identify themselves among the mists
and the roses arrange their colors from shades of gray
to yellow and red and redundant rose?

Did you escape the blaze of self-righteous reaction to morning news
and resist the weave of partisan rhetoric that erodes reason?

And did you remember to relish the solitary hour in the late afternoon
when the hummingbird returns to its nest?
And did you remember to neglect yourself for love of a child
or spend an hour with an aging parent with no regret?

Did you decorate your day with smiles?

Did you try not to make sense of the senseless in a world of reflections and glimmers and pettiness
but to love it all anyway, maybe even concede the possibility of deity
even though it was far from self-evident?
Did you discover how extraordinarily intelligent you are and
how incredibly stupid?
Did you accept that most of what you lost, or did not accomplish
because of carelessness, or miscalculation or even loving too much
was not loss at all but rather another path which opened to new landscapes?

Will you at the end promise yourself that no matter what it holds
(the real end I mean with its darkness and aloneness)
will you promise
in your essential solitude, with no one left to impress, to say:
“Thank you, Life,” as it melts away
like a rainbow fading after a summer storm
and you are here no more?

Michael Hogan is the author In the Time of the Jacarandas (Egret Books, 2015) and 23 other books. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, the Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, New Letters, and others. His work is included in Perrine’s Sound and Sense and the Pushcart Prize Book of Poetry. Hogan lives in Guadalajara Mexico with the fabric artist Lucinda Mayo and their Dutch Shepard Molly Malone.

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Kendra Nuttall
There is no playground along the U.S.-Mexico border

Yesterday, Johan took his first steps;
today he wears dress shoes and a diaper to court.
He doesn’t know that American Dream—
the one with purple mountain majesties,
amber waves of grain, and white picket fences.

Pursuing happiness,
someone built a seesaw at the southern border.
Through slats in a wall over an invisible line,
under one spacious sky,
kids got to do what kids do best:
play.

Johan doesn’t know that American Dream—
the one with millionaires in McMansions
and migrants in McDonald’s, low wages
from sea to plasticized sea, spray can cheese,
mass incarceration, mass deportation, huddled masses
yearning to breathe

free.

Johan’s parents were deported to Honduras five months ago.
The judge asks Johan, “What do you want?”
He doesn’t know how to talk,
but a seesaw would be a lot of fun.

Editor’s Note: Johan is the first name of a real-life immigrant whose story attracted media attention in July 2018 when, as a 1-year-old, he was compelled to appear in a Phoenix immigration court after being separated from his father, who had left the United States to return his native Honduras having been led to believe that his son would accompany him.

Kendra Nuttall‘s work has appeared in Chiron Review, Maudlin House,  Fearsome Critters, and Eunoia Review, as well as in Utah’s Best Emerging Poets 2019: An Anthology (Z Publishing, 2019). Nuttall holds a BA in English with an emphasis on creative writing from Utah Valley University. She work as a copywriter for Jane.com, and lives in Utah with her husband and dog.

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Adelia E. Ritchie
First They’ll Come for the Journalists

First they’ll come for the journalists.
They’ll toss them in jail like murder suspects,
but those lying meddlers won’t be missed.

Writers, reporters and cartoonists—
then atheists, leftists, and network execs—
but first they’ll come for the journalists.

Science and data, officials insist,
have no bearing on climate effects.
Those lying reporters won’t be missed.

Physicians, teachers and scientists,
their threat to this government is more complex,
but first they’ll come for the journalists.

If the media’s lying, does truth exist?
They’ll get ‘em for treason or other pretext.
Those fact-checking meddlers won’t be missed.

Now handcuffed and gagged, they no longer resist
And we don’t know what happened next.
First they came for the journalists
Those lying meddlers won’t be missed.

Adelia E. Ritchie holds a BS in chemistry and physics from the University of West Florida, and an MS and PhD in physical organic chemistry from Northwestern University. She works with educators, organizers and strategists to promote a deeper understanding of the science of climate change and its impacts on the complex ecological web of life. Ritchie resides in Hansville, Wash., with her garden, her dogs, and a flock of very entertaining chickens.

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Matthew Scott Harris
Your artistic interpretations regaled these deux mopic eyes

(otherwise titled psalm to
Amelie Beth by Matthew Scott,
(not real full names)
his genuine, gluten free and non GMO
poetic non fake appreciative guise.)

Ah, thee availed me reason to craft
a poem with rhyme or reason,
when I beheld unexpected email
exemplifying Christmas season
triptych most handily drawn pictures
by southpaw sister to think
on the other hand (right),

would be synonymous
with brother committing treason…
Tempting as such crime
to oust Trump doth appeal
worst scenario…an utter
nightmare should commonweal
constituting United States of America…

blatantly, doggedly, ferociously…
crushing democracy fragile ethereal
frenziedly, maniacally, and unceremoniously
grinding into powder art of the deal
compliments those doughy
two hundred forty three pounds
with squishy feel

bearing full force upon
every square inch of each heal
commanding, forcing, and torturing
every American get down
on knees and kneal
until they simultaneously beg
for mercy with ear splitting squeal.

The ruthless “Fake” tyrant
cackles, gurgles, issues glee
as he doth reveal
his starkly totalitarian, ultimately
vindictive, wickedly surreal
punishment to every man,
woman and child for
not winning 2020 election yule
suffer where high crimes

and misdemeanors during
farcical impeachment trial miniscule
compared to reign of terror
he will violently unleash
rip pull sieve tides
substituting himself as top dog
thus, he forcefully usurps
permanent dictatorial rule…

Other than the above dystopian fear
your brother eagerly
awaits the new year
maybe joining activist group
(maximizing) plank – scare
ring up said apocalyptic near
possibility, cuz Trump equals sore loser
(methinks that an understatement)

nonetheless, what I write might
seem far fetched hear
say (grim heresy),
yet… look no further,
he doth plainly appear
as anti-semitic, bombastic, cataleptic,
demonic, egocentric,
graphic, horrific, misogynistic…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Poems by Matthew Scott Harris have appeared in Hello Poetry, High on Poems, Neopoet, CosmoFunnel, The New Verse News, Booksie, Wildsound, and other journals. He lives in Schwenksville, Penn.

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Michael H. Levin
Oresteia

(Shakespeare Theatre Company, Harman Center for the Arts, Washington, DC, 2019)

It was the knife.
It always was the knife.
Gleaming, magnetic,
passed from eager to unwilling hand
through generations drawn to grasp
its ivory haft, despite all.

Comes the proud king
(not counting that sire who served
his brother’s sons up in a stew)
fearful his great command will fail
for lack of wind through deck-paced days
who slits his daughter’s throat

so fleets may make for Troy
the queen who held that child
her life, biding slow sinuous time
to his return, that bath, the strike:
not from faithlessness but faith
in dark red recompense

the son who wandered far
yet still came slouching home
to cut her down—harried by Furies
shrieking expiate! redress!
beating his fists against scorched ground.
There seems no pause

to murderous amends
that sluice on till the last soul standing
ends itself. But then
a timid Chorus creeps downstage—
housemaids and tradesmen
not thrice-cursed by sovereignty—

uncertainly debating
how guilt ends; who (terrified) stood by:
recalibrates those awful scales
from weir-debt towards a glimmer
of communal peace. We bear
the blade these days

though wounds pulse
metaphorically: consigned to ask
what may transform those Furies now
or only blood will satisfy
or what new Chorus will appear
as we cascade through clan feuds

that acidify.

Editor’s Note: The version of The Oresteia referred to in the poem is based on the trilogy by Aeschylus, freely adapted by Ellen McLaughlin, directed by Michael Kahn.

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

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Pamela Sumners
Fault Lines

I tremble for my country, Mr. Jefferson,
when I reflect that God is just. I tremble
like the children in cold mylar blankets

that a gust of wind could blow from cages
where they sleep on cold concrete that
might just be the bedrock of our nation

I tremble, and my tremors are a terrible rage
that might shift tectonic plates on fault lines
that always were the witch at the christening

I tremble hot magma hardening to igneous

I tremble at the thoughts and prayers of
indifferent pedigree knitting a stench in the air.
And when anger hardens, it trembles no more.

Pamela Sumners is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer. Her work has appeared in Ucity Review, Mudlark Posters, Eunoia Review, Shot Glass Journal, Streetlight Magazine, and other journals, as well as in the anthology The 64 Best Poets of 2018 (Black Mountain Press, 2018), chosen by the editors of The Halcyone literary review. Sumners lives in St. Louis with her wife, son, and three rescue dogs.

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Beth Aviv
Whose Woods These Are in Chappaqua
August, 2017

Walking in Hillary’s woods on the day
Trump meets behind golden doors with Putin,
says US Intelligence is wrong.

Walking in Hillary’s woods on a day
So humid, clothing sticks, mosquitos buzz
and land on my arms and legs, neck and face.

Sunlight dapples through green leaves, and lights
uprooted trees where mushrooms and lichen
sprout, thinking of how here she found solace

after November ninth, the day the world
changed, the day I lost my ballast, and stopped
reading fiction, could read only the news,

just the facts construed, ex-ethics czars’ views
condemning collusion and hushed-up crimes.
A stagnant pool, a stream, a dirt path; lost
in woods Hillary walked last fall, alas.

Beth Aviv is the author of Bearing Witness: Teaching about the Holocaust (Heinemann, 2001). Her poems have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review and in the anthology Bittersweet Legacy: Creative Responses to the Holocaust: Art, Poetry, Stories (University Press of America, 2001), edited by Cynthia Moskowitz Brody. Her prose has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, Raw Vision, and Salon, among other journals.

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Linda Lowe
Singing Sayonara

It’s 60 out and sunny, what more can I ask for? A Sharpie to record the devastation. Marauders to stop marauding. Look at the lands, tree-free from their shenanigans. Look at some dead everything along the way. Marauders come in all sizes now. Bigger than me, smaller than me, my size, size 6 in children’s, with guns of course, that go from teeny tiny to XXL. They’ve been trained and trained, look how their efforts have materialized into a viciously spectacular gung ho all around.

It’s 60 out and sunny, remember? Leave the jacket, leave your hat, leave for heaven’s sake.
The back yard’s on fire, the water’s shut off. There’s no more river to save you, not even a stream. If you’re thirsty, try to swallow a little less often. Thirst is the new trend. Shrivel is the new look, forget beauty, think survival, hard to come by, hard to come by.

Is anyone else doing this, writing it down? Someone must, there must be more than one opinion.
Opinions may be all we have now. I dreamed about it last night, the truth. It was flaming, fierce, red, mad. It said, look out, it said, I’ll be back. Might as well face it, say you’re sorry. You’re sorry, aren’t you? Did you stand up when you could have? Did you say yes or no at the right time? These are easy questions that should not be laughed at, skipped over. Everything depends on true or false when you get right down to it. If you don’t know the difference, you might as well strap on some weights, sink into the swelling ocean, singing Sayonara.

Linda Lowe is the author of the chapbook Karmic Negotiations (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press, 2003), winner of the SPT National Poetry Competition. Her poems and stories have appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Outlook Springs, A Story in 100 Words, The New Verse News, Star 82 Review, as well as in the anthology Weatherings (FutureCycle Press, 2015), edited by David Chorlton and Robert S. King. Lowe lives in Southern California with her husband.

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