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Whispering Vibrations | Waqas Khwaja

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

what is left

on a kite string you fly me
then cut me adrift
with your own hand
to float on air
in the passage of seasons
the flight of geese

carried by the breeze
spinning and sailing
ever further and away
keeling when it sags
to sink among trees

snagged by a runner
as spoils of conquest
claimed by strange hands
by right of possession
used willfully then
harnessed and tied
to unfamiliar strings

raised once more to fly
and ripple in the wind
its dance and the surge
could still entrance
but severed in a duel
swept away by the draft
i am seized yet again as bounty
straight out of a fickle sky

so captured and surrendered
in casual repetition
riding ever degraded strings
in the hands of fortune-hunters
my colors fast declining
my garments wearing thin
patched up for tears
dispirited now and dull
flickering but damply

spent and shabby
i fall at last
to a gaggle of street boys 
who brawl and bicker
over a patched-up thing
and tear it to pieces
in rivalry and spite

the one most irate
snaps the spine in two
cracks the bow
shreds and crumples what is left
tosses it on the roadside 
kicks dust over it
looks about for other game

all broken and torn
i am but scraps
of the paper kite I was
fooled by the fable
of a momentary release

it was just sport for you
but a worn piece of thread
still locked in a knot
you tied with your hand
binding spine and bow
to equip me to fly
remains as a relic
in the wreckage that is left

furnace of galaxies

	virtual in cyberspace
			a cypher and 
		a dot
				digital breath

waves of sound
			no flesh 
		no bones 
cyphers and dots 

		meeting 
cyphers and dots 
			across riven continents
	littered oceans

		a wilderness of black ice
phyllium forests abuzz
				stir and fuss
	of cybernetic insects 

hammer and din 
		over deserts
	of white hot sand
				over wastelands of burnt rock
  
	whispered vibrations
in virtual ears 
			cuddles
in virtual arms

		qalandar condor
wings thrashing 
			storms spectral lips
	strokes and scours

			and shreds
	with ghostly talons
			tears into phantom
		belly and entrails

			plop
		plop 
			astral stones bubble
	molten in flaming lakes	

furnace of galaxies
	fizzing endlessly
			jets of heat
		seethe singing

	galactic light 
burbling
		spilling over
			babbling in concentric ripples

	scattering 
		clumsy wares
				a cosmic potter’s wheel
churning swirls of stars

				crude
	suns and moons
			comets
and planets fired

		glazed and burnished
celestial dregs
			candescent debris of eternity
		immeasurable space

			nothing
	purgatory in perpetual dissolution
		mutation
					trance

		trans 
				cyphers and 
dots meeting
			cyphers 

	and dots 
splatter in a virtual eye	
				arsenic
		on a virtual tongue

a virtual palm
			salted for prayer
	a virtual heart
pumping plasma

			through cyber thoroughfares
 	cyphers 		dots
burning slag
		flooding galactic highways

Puck’s Glen, Scotland
Photograph ©2023 jsburl

tryst

holding back I refuse
that gift of life
toward which I have traveled
all these long years
without knowing 
where I was headed
till ready to slip away
without regret or rancor
seeking even fondly
that state of not being
existing without 
awareness of existence
without self 
or sense of self

and this forbearance
launches us
into orbits 
far from each other
where we shall not 
cross paths
in dimensions of time 
we know
yearning incomplete lost
pulled into another world
into other worlds
until the collapse of time
in the collapse of space

that instant 
which allows us
to tear through curtains
of separating life screens
crash through spun glass
of gossamer fancies
hurtling towards a tryst
that is written into our lives
certain beyond doubt
and possible only then
at the very end
when hours are dust
and dust a flash of light

we dream the impossible
long for something 
that cannot be
and what is imagined
is rendered probable

all that has ever occurred
all that is happening
all that will transpire
converge and come together 
held all at once
in this moment 
that must be ours 
an instant that unites
and so reunites us
in a transitory gleam
in the glassworks of the imaginary 
that seizes the real
and preserves it forever
in the moment
of its obliteration

©2023 Waqas Khwaja
All rights reserved

Waqas Khwaja…

…has published four collections of poetry,a literary travelogue about his experiences as a fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and a couple of edited anthologies of Pakistani literature. He served as translation editor and contributor for Modern Poetry from Pakistan, a Pakistan Academy of Letters project supported by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, and is the Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English at Agnes Scott College, where he teaches courses in literature and creative writing.

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Democracy | Michael Dickel

Posted on by The BeZine Editors
  • Settlers set homes, property on fire in Huwara
    26 Feb. 2023, Source
  • Police and Protestors
    20 Feb 2023, Jerusalem
  • Protestors
    20 Feb 2023, Jerusalem
  • Protestors
    20 Feb 2023, Jerusalem
  • “The Fish Stinks
    from the Head”

Note: If you’re viewing with a phone, we recommend landscape (sideways) for a better effect.

Turn this page

We smell the fish of state rotting from the Prime Minister.
He says he desires to throw fists against the protestors
who march for democracy; he falsely accuses them
of his own crime, this thief who fears his own guilt.

Theocrats, fascists, racists, misogynists, homophobes at his side,
pushing down the pillars that get in their way, bulldozing
the framework that holds the ceiling above our heads,
believing the columns are enemies and that their beliefs

alone can hold up the roof stones with fear and hate.
But the stones of justice will fall, and we will all struggle
to survive the unholy earthquake this evil will bring.
Yet they call us the enemies of democracy, we who cry

out to stop the bulldozers. They call us the inciters of violence,
while they remain blind to the repercussions of their rage,
the ground groaning in Huwara. We smell the smoke rising
from violent waves unleashed by the unholy desire to rule over.

Who will stop them? Who will turn this page before history
buries our book in rubble? Who will turn the page? Who…?
  • Protest, 20 Feb. 2023
    Jerusalem
  • Protestors
    13 Feb. 2023, Jerusalem
  • Protestors
    18 Feb. 2023, Jerusalem
  • Women in Red
    18 Feb. 2023, Jerusalem
  • Burned cars in Huwara (Photo: Ido Erez)
    27 Feb. 2023

Huwara photos from YNet, “Palestinians wake up to mass
damage after settler riot in Huwara,” 27 Feb. 2023 ©2023 YNet
Photos of Jerusalem protests 13 Feb, 18 Feb, and 20 Feb 2023 ©2023 Michael Dickel

The Writers Read Resistance Literature
in the Public Space
The Day of Struggle | Wednesday | 1.3 | 11:00
Jerusalem  Sigmund | Haifa 1 19 HaNasi St.
Tel Aviv  Kaplan St. 6 | Be’er Sheva  Writers Park
For 15 weeks now, Israeli’s have mounted regular protests against the government’s proposed “judicial reforms,” which many call a “judicial coup,” meaning an attempt to overthrow judicial oversight of the government. Rather than accept the tension of checks and balances, the government wants to appoint the judges by assuring they have a default majority membership on the appointments committee. They want to be able to overturn a High Court ruling (the equivalent of the Supreme Court) with a 50% plus one vote—less than 51% of the Knesset (legislature). They want to change the Basic Laws (the closest thing Israel has to a Constitution) so that the High Court cannot make rulings about government appointments or policies. 
With these and other proposals, the administration (which is not separate from the Knesset) would would be able to do as it pleases, even if it violated the Basic Laws or other laws. I took the photos that I took accompanying this poem at a few of these protests, which I have been participating in regularly.

And I read this poem as part of the protests at a “poetry protest” organized by the Democratic Cultural Forum. We were at a sidewalk café near Prime Minister Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem, 1 March, 2023. Most of the other poets read in Hebrew, their own or other's work. A few read other's poems in English. I read my English-language poem. The poster to the right gives the title of the event, “The Writers Read Resistance Literature in the Public Sphere.” The event was held simultaneously in the cities of Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Be'er Sheva. 
—MYDickel

©2023 Michael Dickel (except where otherwise noted for news photos)
All rights reserved

Michael Dickel
editor

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Spring Throat | Mykyta Ryzhykh

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***

lump in spring throat
can't hear the singing of the nightingale
vacuum of nature

***

absolute evil
when he stepped into the woods
on the rustle of leaves
color of ripe amber

***

While Judas is still killed—
Evil triumphs.

©2023 Mykyta Ryzhykh
All rights reserved

Mykyta Ryzhykh…

…is a Ukrainian poet and the winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs and Ukrainian contests Vytoky, Shoduarivska Altanka, Khortytsky dzvony; laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik, Lyceum, Twelve, named after Dragomoshchenko. Finalist of the Crimean ginger competition. Nominated for Pushcart Prize. Ryzhkykh has been published in the journals: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot Journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, TheNewVerse News, Acorn Haiku Journal, The Wise Owl, Verse-Virtual, Scud, Fevers of the Mind, LiteraryYard, Plum Tree Tavern, Iterant, Fleas on the Dog, The Tiger Moth Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Angel Rust, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, the6ress zine, Monterey Poetry Review, and PPP Ezine.

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Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, Poets/Writers, Writing

Departure, Arrival | Julia Knobloch

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Pico-Robertson, Before Departure

A back alley glows in apricot and pink
seven trumpets praise the early sun
Crows sit on wires like purple sparks
palm trees worship the wind, their fronds clatter
like plastic blinds in a sparsely furnished bedroom
 
June gloom stretches into July
A skateboard stumbles over rotten dates
Marine layer is just another term for fog
but the beaches in the west are always open
 
The hot months I love to greet will arrive
after I have traveled to a summer in decline
My peach garden will be gone when I return
others will harvest what they plant
sit on dunes and squint their eyes
watch the sun set behind mid-century balconies
contemplate desert colors from the snow
 
Now that the silent neighborhoods light up 
again, I must leave
although I still don’t know what happened
to the silver hoops I forgot
pool-side on Shenandoah
next to a pile of cherry pits, another layer of my soul
The Beautiful Cityscape
©2023 Binod Dawadi

Arrival

In the first week, sleep comes any hour, hunger early
when the pillar of dawn climbs up the stone wall
in gray and blue, and the neighbors have sex, again
 
In the space between jet-lag and transition
exhilaration and exhaustion
water from the shower engulfs my skin
an orange glow
It seems easy to wash away age and memories 
longing to emerge
to exhale, to play a wind instrument
 
With gusto, I eat olives and labneh, warm pita
with za’atar from the Bukharian baker
I can’t write a line but walk far and beyond
in somnambulant serenity
through alleys that smell of fresh detergent
moth powder and worn ceramic tiles
 
I nod and smile and some smile back
I am not deaf but mute
I see but I don’t know how I am seen
I log my journey of discount and preparation

©2023 Julia Knobloch
All rights reserved

Julia Knobloch…

…is a poet and literary event organizer studying to be a rabbi. As part of her studies, she is living this year in Jerusalem.

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Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, poem, Poems/Poetry, Writing

from Hiraeth | Mike Stone

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A Place I Never Was
pastels ©2023 jsburl

Hiraeth

from “The Sylvan Dialogues”
Somewhere deep inside me
Is a longing for a place I never was
In a time I’ve never been
In a home I never had.
There is a feeling that belongs
To a person I never occupied.
There is a dream that is
More real than any reality.
It is a bird that flies through the
Night and can never land,
Whose home is my breast.
August 16, 2022

Blanks Blanks!

Blanks blanks
Another shouted
Smoking gun in hand
As a man crumpled
To the ground
One night long ago,
Just as another man
Shouts blanks blanks
As democracy crumples
To the ground
These days.
January 27, 2023

Echoes

Sitting next to a piano
In the dim light from another room
Reaching for an ivory key from memory
An echo from long ago
Sitting on a couch behind my aunt
As she sat on her piano bench
Both hands tentatively fingering the keys
How I loved her graceful movements
In my youth perhaps I felt that
If I could only fill the world with love
Perhaps I could feel its echo.
February 9, 2023

The Histories of the Future

I’ve often wondered what would
The histories of the future be.
Would they be as far from the mark
As the futures of our many pasts?
Would our pessimisms or optimisms
Prove as unfounded as our other
Beliefs and prejudices
That betray us? Silence and
Inaction are the unsung heroes
Who would save our lemming selves
From running off the cliffs
Unwittingly.
March 4, 2023

©2023 Mike Stone
All rights reserved

Mike Stone…

…was born in Columbus Ohio, USA, in 1947. He graduated from Ohio State University with a BA in Psychology. He served in both the US Army and the Israeli Defense Forces. Mike moved to Israel in 1978 and lives in Raanana. He has self-published ten books of poetry, four novels, a book of short stories, and a book of essays. Mike is married to Talma. They have 3 sons and 8 grandchildren.

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Eternal Memories Souls | Dessy Tsvetkova

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Eternal painted melody

Carry on
the rhythm
of bubbling air.
Sing with the ocean wind.
Step on jiggling sand
of the magic dunes.
The moments are there
to breath as twinned
with birds,
to fill the eyes with sand
and twisting tunes.
Embrace the streets
full of beats of hearts,
make a wish,
send your ivy thoughts
to the chronicles of the eternal time.
Each glossy belief
will enrich the shine of stars,
the paradigm of life
is to add your miniature
to the giant canvas of space,
if you can, with chime.

Memories 

The memories are sailing birds with us.
They make us travelling in time.
The cruise is sometimes sad ash in dust,
but often bright they really shine.
They float as feathers in the lake,
as autumn leaves they dance.
The memories are time for break.
We see ourselves in a glance.
The memories, the bridges of the moments,
I swim with you like surfer grabs the waves,
I travel back if I need some adornments.
Through you I grow and go on to behave.
My orange shining memories,
come when I need you, please!

The souls

Wherever I go,
the birds are right nearby.
Whatever was done,
It's always a moment to fly.
Whoever I meet,
I leave there a smile.
Wherever was taken,
It gives back Devine.
Some people are birds,
they are blessed by the sky.
Some others are shadows
and use other's shine.
Some persons are fishes,
They float into plasma
and reach deep to arteries,
Some others are stones,
They don't make a sign.
But they can build mountains
if needed as high as the Everest,
And back to the species,
I prefer to fly...

To S.

He had a light shadow.
His figure was holding on
to a straight shovel.
When he was walking,
among the beds the weeds disappeared.
The wind was always his way.
Birds ate from his palms ...
As soon as he smiled
to someone
they stopped to look at him ...
A real miracle,
every time,
when
its direction
led to my door.

©2023 Dessy Tsvetkova
All rights reserved

Dessy Tsvetkova…

…is a Bulgarian who writes poems in Bulgarian and in English. She lived in Luxembourg and currently she lives and works in Belgium. Dessy has publications in many Bulgarian magazines and newspapers, also in Romania, Belgium, USA, India, Peru,Philippines.She has 4 books in Bulgarian, 1 in English, and she has also compiled a book as translator from Bulgarian into English, an anthology of Bulgarian top authors.She writes about nature, love and God,and her accent is the positive message at the final.Member of Flemish Party for Poetry.Editor in Homagi international Web literature magazine.

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Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Writing

Sonnet Hues Profaned | Kushal Poddar

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Sonnet to the White

One, two, three leaves sink in the sun.
The bituminous pitch turns liquid.
The path undone runs towards the school 
I hear the Miss Teacher translating
English to Northern East, to the city
seeking a leeway in the narrow shadow
beneath the parking cars and licking
its rear before stretching and curling up. 

Quite feverish, I feel time peddle heat
through the veins, hear the children
croon in the manner they are tutored.
"This is the summer of everything."
I remember you used to say in the end.
I hold onto my shivering blurred to bleach.

Hues We See Not

We did not name these colours.
They exist between the shades 
When my uncle don madness
he can scoop those in his fist
and cast on the face of this race of the names. 

"We are not blind enough to see." 
He says. Whatever it may mean. 
I have to drag him inside. Sometimes
people are so hostile!
And my skin feels the sheen and grain.
I see no granules of hues. I rub my hands
again and again.

The Profaned Coparceners

I tell my cousin brother profaning,
"Defile anything; not a gentleman,
I am a poet. I can call my mother a whore
and still give her respect.”

This spring morning sky bursts into crows.
Their flight pattern looks like spokes
from a shouting mouth. 
I shake my head and head out for
the downstairs where I live.
He has the upstairs. It is landing of the stairs
where a big window makes us silhouette.

The Constant

Two men at work talks about iron
with gust and credulity unknown
to me. Last night's rain rusts away.

The flowers of summer leave a trail 
to the stream, to the West of the city. 
The residue of the clouds pass by
the delta of the labour hard hands.

The river gurgles, "There is a tectonic
shift nearby.”
Yet we build. Iron. Hands. Sun. Sweat beads.

©2023 Kushal Poddar
All rights reserved

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our preoccupation | gary lundy

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

i will speak better

Woman Sitting Near a Window
©2023 Binod Dawadi
when i arrive there.
or somewhere
where tongues are 
untied and given 
slack in order to 
properly tune by 
well designed fork.
you search for
oddities in order
to wrestle out.
fixed equations unlike
normative equilibrium.
you give it up seriously prior to reaching its midpoint 
place intrigued by various shorter stylized as a foot or 
consisting of inexplicable line breaks.

or possibly none
at all. a fact of
simply striking
the edge of a
page. denigrate
what they can't
understand poised
in alarming
discoloration.

where in the world did such a surprising animal come 
from. what might we have said had our language not 
belonged actually to the books we'd read or 
been reading.

done now 
at the least.

emaciated

incandescence 
tongue play 
somnolence 
pre lingual in 
foreplay. a voice 
in background 
not unlike talking 
on phone. one 
sided accuracy 
impeding other 
habits of 
language 
usage. 

i would bask in your pheromone productivity 
disavowed impermeable shrink wrapped. 

holding their 
hug past any 
need of excuse 
the consensual 
incursion 
into dream 
manufacture. 

all the while imagination takes a vacation abandoning 
us outside the geographic boundaries once so 
important and agreed upon.
Metaphorical Mind
©2023 Binod Dawadi

a driving ambition

to push the 
next sentence 
onto the next 
page. even if 
that necessitates 
an otherwise 
superfluous 
wordiness within a 
run on. 

marginal terms of division wrapped in winter apparel. 
spelling encroaches on the rapid flight of compound 
ideation. 

small packs 
able still to 
hold necessities 
of the coming 
day. 

murmurs framed by disparaging self imagination. our 
departure usurps any surprise of others.

we're almost
done with it.

it may reduce

to nearsightedness. 
our preoccupation 
with wants 
and needs 
instead of those 
too distant 
even to echo 
clearly. lost 
nights now sleeping 
on or near ocean 
broken by well 
timed fog horns. 

who might have understood the quiet isolated beach 
walks. their violet winter jacket stuffed with balls of 
what must surely be wool. 

all the buttons 
securely sewn on. 
the last thing 
we'd mean to 
do would be 
make you 
uncomfortable 
through poor taste 
in melodic 
intercession. 

salacious imposition of improbable lavender shadows 
mimic light bearing down in timed gaps on the street. 

when you said 
you'd something to 
share they couldn't 
have imagined 
the awaiting 
face slap.
The World of Cityscape
©2023 Binod Dawadi

the lights go out

and those 
before us engage 
in improvised 
dance while 
enjoying cold 
water or hot 
tea coffee. 

we shrug off the platitudinal diatribes slung out at the 
unsuspecting. merely to cover their guilt over mistakes 
made. 

whatever the 
reason no amount 
of volume or paper 
can justify 
that willingness 
to slip in blindness. 
you sleep in and 
may be late for 
work joining others 
in this well 
practiced cycle. 

evidently they don't deserve to live peacefully if their 
accent or skin tone differs from ours. don't believe it.

a cold time of year 
reflected in the 
breakdown of 
communication. 
what after all can 
they be wishing 
for if not an 
alternative physical 
presence.

Poems ©2023 gary lundy
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Vashti’s Name Corona | Alison Stone

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Vashti

I’ll obey your order –
shake my booty,
sway my naked hips 
until the drunk guests moan.
I know what a woman’s body’s for.

But not alone.
Husband, drop your robe
and join me, your lined skin
and paunch becoming handsome
as we move together in love’s light.
Take my hand and start to shimmy.
Then I’ll dance.
from Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2016)

But Not His Name

Spring was lost to lockdown. Now it’s summer,
the air thick with humidity and fear.

Returned to work, we sweat into our masks.
The scientists are taken off the air.

I AM NOT A RACIST, the racist yells
while bodies pile up like bags of gold.

Cars honk for protestors carrying signs.
The ground trembles when stone generals fall.

It’s always about who has the power.
Years ago, at Ellis Island,

my grandfather, but not his name, allowed
to enter. Boats of Jews turned back to die.

What does it mean
to be American?

Official fireworks banned, my neighbor
provides a noisy, low-budget display.

Zimmerman autographs bags of Skittles.
Fake stallions watch through moss-covered eyes.
from To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)

April, with Corona

Spring sticks to the lesson plan –
blossoms, brash light, gaudy shades of red.
So much new life multiplying,
but the virus has its own math.
Subtraction, division, bodies
in freezer cars waiting for graves.
Close to a school, I used to hear
the children’s recess cries, but now there’s only birdsong
and sounds of this sudden storm – an odd flipping
between hail and sun-streaked rain –
that drives me inside to screams
from the TV and yowls from the cat.
I want to howl my own prayer 
or recrimination, but to whom?
The men in charge are deaf
to voices pitched like mine, and the wind
that shakes my windows isn’t God.
from To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)

©2023 Alison Stone
All rights reserved

Alison Stone…

…has published seven full-length collections, Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, collaborative poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award.

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©2023 Alison Stone
All rights reserved

The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

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(Inter)National Poetry Month

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April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Poetry month is coming! Dust off your pens, pencils, or 🪶 feathers, and write ✍️ some poems!

European Robin
Pastel, ©2021 Tom Higgins

(Inter)National Poetry Month is a time to celebrate poets and their craft—in the U.S. and worldwide. It is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate your expressiveness or your pure charm, to delight and to show the importance of sharing thoughts, activities, nature, pain, joy—the descriptive words go on and on…

Poetry is a special oration that reminds us of the important role of poets and their poetry in our cultures.  

“Poetry helps us appreciate the world around us and empathize with one another. Typically, we think of poetry as boring and nerdy but this month allows us to change our perspectives and look upon poetry as a rhythmic art of expressing one’s love and thoughts.”

National Today
Wild Iris, Jerusalem, Israel
Photograph ©2023 Michael Dickel

The spring winds of April are coming fast on the streams of March’s melting snow. We are looking to catch those elusive poems blowing in the wind to share with many. So…April comes quickly and blows by swiftly.

We invite you to join us and express yourself. Share a poetic expression of yourself, your life, and experiences. We want to hear from you! 🫵🏽

How to submit.

there it goes

the wind has sticky fingers
it likes to play with us
upon a hillside lingers
to grab our papers thus 

off we go, running to fetch
our work we don’t want to lose 
running fast i try to catch
my paper which chose to cruise

like a dove upon the wind
free of the earth's restraints
i should have thought and pinned-it
i’m losing it oh good saints

oh wind you won this race today
against the likes of me
for tomorrow oh do not dismay
for i’ll wear sneakers you see!

©2023 jsburl
All rights reserved

How to Submit

Review these submission guidelines. NOTE: In addition to what is written in the guidelines, for the April Inter(National) Poetry Month submissions, please put: April Poetry Blog in the subject line of your email.

While it is mentioned in the guidelines, we remind you to send the poetry in a single file, up to 3 poems for this call for poetry. Include a bio either at the end of the poetry file or in a separate file. You may include a few links to prior publications. Please include any social media links you want us to share below your bio. If you are including a headshot photo, include it as a separate, hi-resolution JPG file (please not a thumbnail size).

Posted in poetry, Writing

St. Patrick | jsburl

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

St. Patrick’s Day Poem

the sun is shining through
     the geranium leaves 
          dappling the floor with gold

the warmth heats these
     old bones as I sit in
          the healing warmth 
     crocheting a clover chain

          St. Patrick’s day is near
     but my children are
grown and flown 

          gone are the days of
bringing totes filled with
          a plethora of decorations
     for any holiday

     gone are the days of
          the house filled with friends
     baking cookies for 
               hungry stomachs
laughter ringing through the halls

I have left my small 
                    Christmas tree on the
old metal milk can
                    in the living room

I should have crocheted a 
     Valentine’s heart chain to decorate 
          it’s green boughs with 
     pink white and reds

I was remiss in 
                         the darkness of winter

          but today, sitting here 
     in the warming rays of sun
the green yarn asked 
     to be created with so
clover it is

a chain to decorate
                    just a little
not like then
                    like now

just for me…

©2023 jsburl
All rights reserved

jsburl
assistant production editor
Posted in BeZine ToC, The BeZine Table of Contents

The BeZine | 10:1 Spring 2023 | sustainABILITY

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

Volume 10     sustainABILITY     Issue 1
climate crisis and eco-economics

Introduction & Table of Contents
About the BeZine
The BeZine BLOG
Submission Guide
Posted in BeZine ToC, The BeZine Table of Contents

The BeZine | 9:4 Winter 2022 | Life of the Spirit and Activism

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

Volume 9       Life of the Spirit and Activism     Issue 4
fuel for change

Introduction & Table of Contents

Introduction

Life of the spirit
fuel for change

Remaining Awake

So much seems off course—climate crisis, Ukraine war, rising fascism, depleted energy for resisting—where do we find fuel to keep up the struggle for change? In the pages of this issue glimmer hopes, stars in dark nights, dreams—alongside outrage, compassion, and the fire that makes us all (as Youssef Alaoui says early in this issue). That star-sun-moon fire—the Holy Spirit to some, the light of Creation to others, stardust to many, Enlightenment shining forth for still others—this spirit moves us all to love, to care for our siblings and cousins, to awaken and rise up from ashes of despair and sing our songs.

The political right attacks “woke” and wields the word as a weapon against “…any left-leaning policy that it [wants] to condemn,” Professor Esau McCaulley writes when discussing the last Sunday sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Prof. McCaulley tells us that “…although King doesn’t say the word ‘woke,’ he uses the concept as it was understood by many Black folks then…” (NYTimes “The Kind of Revolution That Martin Luther King Jr. Envisioned” 13 Jan 2023).

Citing the story of Rip Van Winkle, Dr. King points out that a little noticed sign in the story is of great importance. When he goes up to the mountains to sleep, it shows King George III; when he comes down it shows George Washington. The change leaves him feeling lost and confused, not knowing the world. Rip Van Winkle slept through a revolution that changed that world. King warns that too many people are sleeping through three revolutions—technological change, weapons of mass destruction, and the social revolution of human rights.

Sound familiar?

Headshot of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., microphone in foreground, out of focus people standing behind him at a distance.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

While Dr. King talks about how in 1968 the geological world had shrunk and time quickened through modern jet travel, how our word balanced on the brink of nuclear destruction, but also how a great outcry for freedom was being heard around the globe. He reminds us that our neighbors had become global, not just down the street. That we had to care for our neighbors everywhere there was oppression and injustice.

Sound familiar?

Continue reading

About the BeZine
The BeZine BLOG
Submission Guide
Posted in General Interest

In Memoriam Michael Rothenberg

Posted on by The BeZine Editors
Michael Rothenberg

On Monday, 21 November 2022, at around 11 PM EST, Michael Rothenberg left the world. Even though he had told me that he had cancer and I had recently heard that he went into hospice care, the news of his death that arrived yesterday devastated me. Michael was a close friend, a relationship first built online and then cemented in person at the 2015 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC) World Conference in Salerno, Italy. Over the years we communicated online by text and voice. He would send me poems he was working on, and I would send him my drafts. We each reviewed works-in-progress of the other—often as not arguing over lines and words in the spirit of making the work stronger. We spent time together when I had the honor of being in a 100TPC writer’s residency in Tallahassee, Florida, where he and his wife Terri Carion moved to from the Bay Area of California. We shared work, giving each other feedback during the day. And we explored the area, ate in local restaurants and visited local bars to hear local music, often with Terri Carion, his partner.

That week 17 high school students were murdered and others injured in Parkland, near Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Michael, as he seemed wired to do, responded both with outrage and with a plan to use poetry to respond. I recall sitting next to him as he began to plan work with others online and I shared ideas and contacted others to arrange 100TPC poetry readings in response, focused on the Parkland shootings but also all other gun violence and the need for socio-cultural change to stop the killings. And soon there were others organizing readings for Parkland, independent of our efforts—synchronicity at work. Of course, mass gun killings haven’t stopped. Neither has poetry or protest against it.

As I write this, there have been two mass shootings this week, the second last night—Colorado Springs, CO, and Chesapeake, VA. And it’s only Wednesday. I seem to hear Michael’s voice in my head, “What are we going to do?” He insisted that others join him to fight oppression, war, the climate crisis, social injustice in any form. And he included himself in his urgings—What are we going to do?

Michael, of blessed memory, and his partner, Terri Carion, founded 100 Thousand Poets for Change in March 2011. In 2014, Jamie Dedes, of blessed memory, our founding editor, began an online 100TPC event for those who wanted to participate but were homebound or distant from in person events. At the Salerno conference, those of us present decided to focus globally on three interrelated issues: peace, environmental sustainability, and social justice. When The BeZine went from monthly to quarterly, we chose to use these three themes in our rotating quarterly themes, adding life of the spirit and activism to make four. We see life of the spirit (broadly defined) as being integral to supporting our activism, our art, our lives, and our values. Michael, z”l, Terri, and 100TPC have influenced and supported the mission of The BeZine.

Michael also founded or co-founded Big Bridge, Poets in Need, Read a Poem to a Child and many other events and projects. In recent years he has worked as the poet behind the Ecosound Ensemble, a poetry and music performance group based in Tallahassee. He wrote many books of poetry. He painted. He collaborated with many. He grew orchids and bromeliads. He enjoyed friends. He mentored many, argued with all, and loved people.

We will miss Michael Rothenberg at The BeZine. I will miss my friend. His poetry and activist spirit will live on, though, this I believe.

—Michael Dickel, 23 November 2023

All photos from Michael Rothenberg’s FaceBook page. Copyright belongs to original copyright or photographer, or to Michael Rothenberg’s estate. Text ©2023 Michael Dickel

Posted in BeZine ToC, The BeZine Table of Contents

The BeZine | 9:3 Fall 2022 | Social Justice

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

Volume 9       Social Justice     Issue 3
listening, learning, reaching out 

Introduction & Table of Contents
About the BeZine
The BeZine BLOG
Submission Guide
Posted in General Interest

In Memoriam, Contributor Ester Karen Aida

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

In the Jewish tradition, our first words on hearing of the death of someone are usually Baruch Dayan Ha’Emet, Blessed is the True Judge. It reminds us that we may not know why, but our friend has been taken. We give up our questions to a higher power.

Today, I learned that a friend here in Jerusalem from the creative-activist communities, Ester Karen Aida, passed away. Her funeral will be this evening, as I write this. In 2018, I published some of her poems on my blog, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play. Karen, as I knew her, contributed to The BeZine starting in 2021, when I invited her to send her words and art to us. Her most recent contributions were in this summer’s Waging Peace issue—an important theme in her activist and creative work. Her writing and artwork added strength, beauty, and compassion to each issue in which it appeared.

Psalm 24
Ester Karen Aida ©2022

I first met Karen some years ago at a reading in an art gallery in Jerusalem, which had been organized by our mutual friend, Lonnie Monka. She was in a wheelchair, but active, engaged, and cheerful. We spoke, finding common ground in our creative work and activism. We both had trained in Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) techniques. And we became friends from that conversation.

We would see each other mostly at poetry events. We kept up in email and on Facebook. She was making progress with her ongoing health issues, from wheelchair to walker to cane. I gave her rides home from some of these events, after she moved to a neighborhood near mine. She supported peace in the region here with words and deeds, helped individuals in need, and encouraged NVC training. She also supported accompanying and traditional health practices (aka alternative) to work alongside of Western medicine.

Woman in a Field of Marigolds
Ester Karen Aida ©2022

She was a dynamic, compassionate, and strong woman. She leaves grieving family, friends, colleagues. I am still in a bit of shock at the news. Not long from now, I will get ready to attend her funeral, drive across Jerusalem, and join the mourners.

In our Jewish tradition, the family will sit Shiva for 7 days. It is customary to sit with these mourners and listen to their sorrow and their memories as they process the loss. The stories they tell preserve their memory in our hearts. May it be so for all who knew and loved Karen, that her memory be for a blessing.

Children’s Community Garden, Arnona, Jerusalem
(Pastel on brown paper grocery bag)
Ester Karen Aida @2022

Those who visit to comfort the mourners say, when we leave: Ha’makom yenahem etkhem betokh she’ar avelei Tziyonvi’Yerushalayim, In this place may G-d console you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

—Michael, Jerusalem, 11 August 14:36

See Ester Karen Aida’s work in The BeZine.

Featured image at top of the post: Pines, Pencil on Paper, Ester Karen Aida ©2021

Words ©2022 Michael Dickel
All rights reserved

Posted in BeZine ToC, The BeZine Table of Contents

The BeZine | 9:2 Summer 2022 | Waging Peace

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

Volume 9       Waging Peace: personal & global      Issue 2

Introduction & Table of Contents
About the BeZine
The BeZine BLOG
Submission Guide
Posted in interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry

just a thought & 2 more poems | Lonnie Monka

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

just a thought

a gazelle
            leading its herd
can only turn
            as sharply as it
can gallop fast
            enough not
to become trampled
                        —thoughtlessly

along sections of the coast

regardless of who paid to put them there
there are "Danger of Landslide" signs
embedded into the Mediterranean sand


signs that bystanders only take as seriously
as they wonder about the future...
the future—which only ever seems to be


projections of the past—& regardless
of all their writing these signs present
an illustration of a skull facing the horizon

surely someone needs to say the cliché:
a skull has no face—no skin—no nationality
a skull just depicts the peak of naked human history


& I would never have recognized that skull as mine
until happening upon one sign that had been uprooted
and covered by—surprise surprise—a landslide

violence & the pupil

pounding their hooves gazelle search for food
in the Negev's largest nature reserve
until in the sky erupts a distant rumble

the gazelle jerk their gaze upwards
as eyes fidget across a blue & white expanse
expressing a bellow in motion

then as a target on the central hilltop explodes
the violence of the world penetrates the pupil
& an inert luster of the orb reflects

an Israeli Air Force jet zooming ahead of its own voice
restricting firing practice damage to that one hilltop
where earth is freshly blackened with each new blow

each explosion shakes the gazelle's fear-bound bones
but never ignites that ever-expansive desire
urge upon urge to preserve & to be preserved

oh!—how I wish I were a child again
ruled by cravings to touch all objects in my gaze
unaware of the damaging effects of expressing interest

before internalizing Rabbis’ tales of my people
gathering before Mt. Sinai as newly freed slaves
unwilling to face a thundering voice of the divine

"go to the top of the mountain without us"
we plead & instruct our leaders
"pound those awful sounds into marks on stone"

©2022 Lonnie Monka
All rights reserved

Lonnie Monka…

…a Jerusalem-based poet, founded Jerusalism, a non-profit organization to promote Israeli literature in English. He is a PhD student at Hebrew University, researching the intersection of modernist art and orality through a study of David Antin’s talk-poems, and he is currently an OWL Lab Fellow.

Find In The Bezine

Jerusalism

Quote from The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot

April in The BeZine Blog