Poetry

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Global Outcry

By | 2023-06-15T07:12:50-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

By Amal El-Sayed   A wave of blue and yellow— A sea of sky and grain Washed all over the world. Braving snowstorms and epidemics, You marched in the name of peace. A row of strollers lying in wait In Poland, in Slovakia. Supplies, donations, support. Homes—opening Families—welcoming The whole world—enclosing Ukraine with love. So much [...]

Scheherazade

By | 2023-06-15T07:10:50-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , |

By Phyllis Wax   The tales she told night after night for a thousand and one nights— fascinating enough to keep the king entranced and to save herself from beheading. But bedtime stories from today’s Persia, women targeted like wild game— pheasants or pigeons, squirrels, rabbits— men taking aim at faces, breasts, genitals to cause maximum [...]

Batasan ng Lansangan — Street Parliament

By | 2023-06-15T07:10:27-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Arthur Altarejos Batasan ng Lansangan Naririnig ko na sila bago pa ako lumiko Hinahati ang hangin, kutsilyo’y kanta At katok ng tibok ng tambol na ginugunita Ang tunog ng sumasayaw na kawayan Dito sa puso ng imperyo Kalahating mundo ang pagitan kami’y nagtatagpo’t nakikiramay Para magbukas ng korte at ipatunay Na [...]

When Ruby Falls

By | 2023-06-15T07:09:58-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Marjorie Gowdy   “Have you been targeted by the President of the United States?” Lady Ruby Freeman in chalkboard-white suit, crimson hat, asks The Man. Swept aside like yesterday’s ashes, Our Lady. Stalwart Georgia pine, poll counter, valiant, precise. Slandered on screen by a middling mayor-madman. Chased like a fox by hungry hounds, rushed to [...]

Twin Pandemics, Twin Cities

By | 2023-06-02T14:02:05-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , |

By AJ Donley   They warn you about the dangers that you’ll be feverish that your throat will hurt that it’s contagious that you won’t be able to breathe they try to scare you away from action with the risk of symptoms that have always been there because COVID is new but racism is not I [...]

Questions/Answers (for Black U.S. citizens applying to register to vote in Selma, Alabama, in 1963—based on actual exams)

By | 2023-06-02T13:59:55-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , , |

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler   After you pay your poll tax, Boy, I’ll ask you how many jellybeans are in the big jar I keep on my Registrar’s desk? How many bubbles are in this bar of soap? How many seeds are in a watermelon, any watermelon? (An answer you should naturally know.) How many drops [...]

Bipolar

By | 2023-06-02T13:55:09-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , |

By Angel T. Dionne   “But you don’t look bipolar,” as if bipolar is screaming at cars from the sidewalk as if bipolar is hopping up on tables to proclaim that I’m the Messiah as if bipolar is no career and no relationships. “But you don’t look bipolar,” as if being happily married means I can’t [...]

The Crucible

By | 2023-06-02T13:57:37-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Christie M. Buchovecky   An old friend messaged today. Told me “Got a funny story if ya have time . . .” and sent a clip: riding by an old Colonial I recognized, despite a view obscured by rain and the barred windows he’d had to film behind. “Nothing like riding down your old street [...]

Out-of-Pockets to Pick

By | 2023-06-15T07:06:35-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , |

By David Icenogle   They tell me the copay for my medication is only a hundred and fifty dollars. The best way to measure privilege is the way people use the word “only.” They tell me I should be relieved because without insurance it would’ve been eight-hundred. Why not make it a million? They tell me [...]

Emma Thompson Full Frontal at 62

By | 2023-07-08T16:03:04-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , , |

By Angelica Whitehorne (found poem from Emma’s interviews for the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) It’s challenging to be nude at 62. The age that I am. Nothing has changed. Can’t stand in front of a mirror, always pulling something, judging it. The neural pathways of eight-year-olds going, “I hate my thighs.” I was [...]

WWJD

By | 2023-06-02T12:45:16-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , |

By Maureen Fielding   “KOREAN WOMEN STRIPPED, TORTURED BY JAPANESE. Oriental brutality at Seoul… American missionaries take no part.” So reads the 70-year-old headline of a Los Angeles Daily Times cutting, yellowing, displayed behind glass in the Museum of Korean Contemporary History. My question is this: Did the missionaries take no part in the stripping, the [...]

“Don’t give kids any gifts tied to reading”

By | 2023-03-09T15:24:53-08:00 March 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 139: 16 March 2023|Tags: , , |

By Joanne Durham  —One on a list of restrictions from the Sarasota County School District, in response to Florida HB1467, posted on Twitter   Go then, pack away Honey I Love, unfit title for eight-year-olds. Hide Can I Touch Your Hair? braided with so much empathy it must be banned. Destroy A Caribbean Dozen, the book [...]

Arby’s Pilot Casino

By | 2023-03-09T12:42:19-08:00 March 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 139: 16 March 2023|Tags: , , , |

By T. Dallas Saylor   Blessed are the poor in spirit, says Gordon McKernan, big truck lawyer, on one of his dozens of billboards lining the Louisiana stretch of I-10, mixed in with ads for boudin and cracklin’s, the Coushatta Casino, the Tiger Truck Stop which—after Our Tiger Lived Longer, than whom I’m not sure, now [...]

after a school shooting: the cleanup crew

By | 2023-03-09T12:42:41-08:00 March 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 139: 16 March 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Sister Lou Ella Hickman   the bodies are gone so today i write about the cleanup crew those who see what we do not and perhaps never will: the desks the white boards the closets o yes   and the floors how do they feel when they kneel down to pick up the spattered   scattered books [...]

When You Swim Out into the Ocean

By | 2023-03-09T12:43:04-08:00 March 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 139: 16 March 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Claudia Wair   You float on your back, your face barely above water. There’s nothing but the silence of the ocean in your ears. In the saltwater’s embrace, you drift, weightless. You stare at the clouds above, trying to empty your mind. You’re away from the beach. Not so far that the lifeguard blows her [...]