"after the End and the beginning" Wislawa Syzmborska
We need to do something about all the lost limbs.
Would somebody please volunteer to search
for all those lost legs, arms, faces?
We’re all thirsty, yes, but does anybody know
where we can find a brook, a creek that
doesn’t have our floating cousins?
Yes, yes, we need a morgue, but first
we must find a few dogs to tell us
who is beneath the stones.
We know Gertrude and Maurice and maybe
Alfonse, maybe more, all have to be found.
Bandages, surely someone has some bandages.
We want to rebuild. Does anyone have a ladder?
Let’s leave God out of this for awhile.
Let’s start in the square, and slowly remove
what was thrown down from the sky.
Who knows how to get a weather report?
Will there be good weather for tomorrow?
Yes, that’s a good idea, but we can always
talk, there’s always a lot of time for talk.
We’ve got such a mess.
Brooms. Everybody, find all the brooms.
Can anyone send a letter, we need to let
someone know this has happened.
Tomorrow we can start burning our families.
Surely someone will see the smoke.
Surely someone will come.
…taught English, Creative Writing, and World of Ideas courses for over 30 years at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater. His earlier collections of poetry include The Conquistador Dog Texts, TheCoyot. Inca Texts, (New Rivers Press), At the End of the War (Kelsay Books, 2018) and By A LakeNear A Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters (Is A Rose Press, 2020). A fifth poetry collection, Hello There, is due out soon from Word Tech Communications in Cincinnati.
I buy sunflowers today
fuzzy faces
canary yellow petals
stand them one by one
sturdy stalks
in an azure vase
7000 miles away tanks
roll across Ukrainian borders
trying to wipe them off the map
grandmothers aunts
fathers sons
throw their bodies against bully armor
hearts forged in resistance
“When the Russians come for us, they will see our faces, not our backs.” —Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Zelenskyy takes off his suit and puts on battle fatigues,
stands in the streets, talks with his troops.
And when his fellow patriots can’t see him, literally,
he makes videos—calls to soldiers from every
continent to join freedom’s fight. “We are
all here, protecting our independence, our country,
the free world. This night will be difficult, but dawn
will come.” And it arrives, morning after morning,
despite tracers slicing the pitch black, despite
gutting of homes, hospitals, schools, & markets, despite
bombarding of Kherson, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol, &
Melitopol, despite screams & slaughter of civilians.
Then Russia turns its fire on Zaporizhzhia—home to
Europe’s largest nuclear plant, six reactors. Flaming
shells like falling stars cut into darkness. A huge orange
globe lights up the sky, exploding beside a car park.
Smoke billows. Radiation knows no borders. “We will not
lay down our weapons. Our weapons are our truth.”
…(she/her) is a writer and teacher whose poetry and fiction appear or are forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals including DMQ Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic. She was raised in the Appalachian south and now lives in California. Her recent microchaps of poetry are Good Trouble, Origami Poems Project, and Hell Hath, Maverick Duck Press.
As viral fears are replaced with
the mad threat of nuclear war
my eye searches fondly upward
a queen bee looking for a nest
My heart cries to Andromeda
and nearby Alpha Centauri
with an innocent naked plea
— I am weary please let me rest
An imperial tsar
rises blazingly in the east
…lives with his wife and three children in Örebro, Sweden, working as an English teacher and textbook author. He is an active musician playing the bass trombone, the Appalachian mountain dulcimer and the Swedish bumblebee dulcimer (hummel). His works have been (will be) published by The Ekphrastic Review, The Button Eye Review, Perennial Press and Wingless Dreamer.
“An hour to evacuate? But you said we would have a day!”
Just then the vegetable garden blew up.
That’s how my father told the story of how Oma, my mother’s mother, learned she needed to flee Latvia forever. As he told the story, I could picture Oma saying her lines in her Latvian German-accented English. “What’s this? You said we would have a day to pack!”
As I look at the photos of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion…I see adults stoically walking in huge, slow lines, pulling a single bag that contains the only possessions they now own.
Papa told the story as slapstick. As a child, I’d pictured a Benny Hill clip: Serious man knocks on door. Startled housewife replies. Bomb showers dirt everywhere but leaves people unharmed. Faces emerge, blackened by smoke, with eyes wide in surprise. Two adults and five kids scramble around the house at double speed packing silverware. Papa’s voice was bemused when he told the tale. When Oma referred to the story, her tone was one of wonder and humor.
The real story was that this wasn’t the first time my family had left Latvia, but it was the last time, and the most frightening. In 1942, the Russians and the Germans signed a secret non-aggression pact. As part of the pact, Germany agreed that they would withdraw from the Baltic states and cede them to Russia, which meant that all German citizens were relocated to Germany by the German government.
Although my mother’s family had lived in Latvia for 300 years, they were still considered German citizens, much like the “English” nobility in Ireland. Oma, Opa, the nanny, and four children moved to a cushy apartment in Berlin. Oma was pregnant with my mother at the time, so my mother was born in Berlin instead of Riga like her older siblings. Her parents optimistically named her Viktoria: victory. I wonder how she felt growing up with that name, in a country that was not victorious. I wonder if she felt different being born away from her mother’s homeland.
Eventually Germany abandoned the non-aggression pact and invaded Russia. The Third Reich invited Baltic Germans to go back to their homes. Many of the families were understandably wary and left most of their possessions in Germany, but my grandparents had faith in the Third Reich and moved all their things back to Riga.
Opa may have been a staunch German, but he also had his ear to the ground; through his business as an oil broker between several countries, he knew Russia might invade again. As Germany became more desperate for troops, he was drafted and so was his seventeen-year-old eldest son. Opa asked a seagoing tugboat captain to look out for the rest of his family. Oma was told she would be given a day’s notice if the Russians invaded far enough that the family needed to flee.
After the garden blew up, Oma and the nanny gathered up the five remaining children and a single full place setting of the family silver—which I imagine included such items as a salad fork, an oyster fork, a butter knife, a soup spoon. The sea captain got them all on a boat to Poland, and from there they took a train to Hamburg. In a suburb of Hamburg, Opa’s sister reluctantly welcomed seven more people to her tiny apartment above the family delicatessen.
As an adult, I reexamined that story I grew up with about the bomb in the vegetable garden.
I have a vegetable garden. I’ve enjoyed the time I spent there, pulling weeds, feeling the earth crumble in my hands, drinking in the smell of the wet tomato vines. My husband and I have a house we have lived in for almost two decades. Before my father died last year, he lived in a house he’d owned for more than forty years in the city he grew up in, a city I still think of as home. In our houses, we have accumulated decades of family objects. I have items owned and used by my father’s grandmother.
I try to imagine opening the door to have my husband’s drinking buddy tell me I need to abandon my house—the place my children, I, my parents, and their ancestors back three hundred years grew up in. Then, when I babble out some confused question, I see the garden I’ve tended with my children explode and rain down on me. My tomatoes, my land, my house, my safety, my identity, my heritage, all gone.
Oma and her children must have screamed in terror when that bomb hit. Their ears may have still been ringing as they scrambled to pack. I doubt my grandmother had fully accepted that they would need to leave, so I’m guessing the nanny had to sweep in, probably carrying toddler Vicky (my mother) on her hip, and bark orders to snap the children out of their shock. I certainly hope they packed more than those few silver forks, knives, and spoons.
I can only guess why that single set of silver was so important to Oma: To prove that they were still titled Latvians, who knew how to use all those specialized pieces of cutlery. To remind the children who they were and where they came from. To provide some sense of normality. To sell later. Silver cutlery is heavy. I wonder if each of them carried a piece or two, or if anyone lost a piece. I don’t know what happened to that place setting, if any pieces are left; I’ve never seen it.
The details of the journey from Riga to Hamburg are not included in the funny family story. Papa told me the journey “wasn’t that bad.” Of course, he wasn’t there; Vicky, the woman he later married, was two years old at the time. Papa explained that Vicky’s family was traveling behind the Russian front the whole time, nowhere near the fighting. The trains were running. Papa had always been fascinated by wars, especially World War II, and I know he read a lot about what was happening in Germany and near the Russian front. But Papa was not able to imagine being a toddler in this situation or traveling with one.
The bomb itself, and my mother’s family’s reaction to it, must have been traumatic. Then they fled home, never to return. Little Viktoria left behind her bed, most or all of her stuffed animals and blankets and toys, and all the places she’d learned to walk and talk. Her whole family was terrified. The adult women weren’t just afraid of bombs and bullets, either—they had heard stories of what Russian troops would do to German women and girls.
I doubt my mother was toilet-trained at that age. In those days, diapers were cloth. I’m sure it wasn’t long before she was soiled, and they had few or no ways to keep her clean and dry. I wonder if any of them had access to bathrooms with running water. Perhaps they had enough food, or perhaps not. Perhaps any food to be had was unreasonably expensive.
I wonder what they saw on that journey, what they heard, what they smelled. I’m sure they saw other bomb craters and broken buildings. Perhaps they saw starving cats and dogs, rats feasting on garbage, bombs dropping, wounded people, dead bodies, or even more horrifying things.
Papa told me that Mama always felt afraid when she smelled coal smoke, the smoke that came from a train like the one they rode from Poland to Germany. This made me wonder if she also saw and smelled burning buildings. England’s Royal Air Force was bombing Germany mercilessly by this time.
In present-day Europe, the journey from Riga, by boat to Poland, then by train to Hamburg, would take several hours, maybe most of a day. I believe their journey took at least a week, if not several weeks. To a child of two, that stretch of time would have felt permanent, a country of its own. Perhaps the older children told her stories of what their aunt’s store in Hamburg would look like, and what goodies they would find at the delicatessen.
Or perhaps the whole family was quiet, exhausted, dirty, speechless. Most likely, the adults themselves couldn’t form words. They had lost their home, their country, their whole livelihood. They were alive and physically unharmed. They had seen things no one should have to see. They were still together. What words could possibly capture how they felt?
As I look at the photos of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion that appear on my phone, I see people dressed in coats like the one I wear in the winter, pulling wheeled suitcases like the ones I use, as they leave apartment buildings that once looked like those in my city before the bombs destroyed them. I see children trying to smile for the camera through their confusion and shock. I see adults stoically walking in huge, slow lines, pulling a single bag that contains the only possessions they now own.
I wasn’t there when my mother left her native land, never to return. But I feel in my gut what that exile did to her. None of the members of my family ever really belonged to a country again. They scattered across the planet, citizens of seven different nations. Latvia always haunted them—a place they no longer belonged, that no longer existed except in their memory.
I want the Ukrainians to be safe. I want them to have food, and clothing, and shelter, and communities that welcome them. But what I really want is for them to be able to go back home, to the land where they belong, and to be safe there. Because even if our country and other countries welcome them with open arms, we can never replace what was taken away.
…grew up reading everything she could get her hands on and listening to her father tell stories about history. When she’s not answering her 10-year-old son’s endless questions, she’s writing creative nonfiction, editing the work of others, or laughing with her husband at the antics of their two cats.
The streets are empty,
the sun is hiding behind the smoke
of dozens of explosions,
the morning next to the afternoon
cry after witnessing the chaos.
There are angels,
singing songs of love,
so loud, so powerful,
in all languages,
across the world.
These angels are poets,
through their art
they are begging for peace.
A child asked,
what is happening, sir?
The adult replied,
we are fighting
for our freedom,
heaven and ground
are the battlefields.
Child, share our story,
we die today,
as free people.
Call for peace
It is happening again,
this land is at war,
people are moving,
seeking shelter.
Elders fire guns,
women stand to fight,
families say goodbye,
I understand their causes
and I admire their decisions.
Freedom is expensive these days,
acquiring it demands
rumbling sky,
shooting guns,
and becoming a soldier.
Here I am, next to
thousands of human beings,
hoisting the white flag,
calling for peace.
…was born in Bolivia, she is a psychologist by profession. She is passionate about languages, poetry, photography and the psychology of education. Her love for letters began in 2019. Since then she has been writing her feelings in different literary spaces in Latin America, Spain and India.
Here we see two countries locking horns
like schoolboys in the schoolyard,
as always a bully twice the size is
throwing sawdust in the eyes of the other,
and us observing bystanders stood around.
The smaller boy is on his blooded knees
holding all the high moral ground
takes his nosebleeds well and won’t concede
it’s the old story of David and Goliath I fear
the bigger shouting I will win, I will domineer.
But we witnessing, see it’s a battle of attrition
who’ll fight the longer like a body combating cancer?
And in this battle, we’re all rooting for contrition,
contrition from the bigger slain by the littler
to eventually become the rightful winner.
Consequences uttered to instil a sense of fear
Today we watch in horror
the deliberate act of a Russian tank
driving over a moving civilian car
and see the ruin remains of residential tower blocks
the homes of the innocent destroyed sent fleeing
midwinter into the perilous unknown,
we see people desperately clutching babies, children
and teddy bears to their breast.
While Russia, with all its military arsenal of chess pieces
encircles its prey, threatening the world with its
shelling, closing in on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
like a cat, playing with a globe in its paw.
And to this added-horror unfolding
we are all told of crematorium death machines
how they roll on behind to dispose of their own dead
we are all told the War to "de-militarise and de-Nazify"
that it’s an effort to stop any more future violence
but what’s clearly on display is genocide
an invasion of aggressors hell-bent on destruction
on looting and murder, they claim hysteria
has taken hold of our senses and shortly
we in the West will all come to our senses—again.
We once a trusting partner, will settle down
and later calmly renegotiate a mutual endgame
that settles for King’s stalemate, an equal partnership
because if you don’t, there’ll be
consequences greater than any you’ve faced
in the history of the world.
Because why do we need a world if Russia is not in it?
So Putin once again has announced he wants
Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces placed on “high alert,”
and orders the West not to interfere,
again “Consequences” uttered to instil a sense of fear.
It’s a perilous junction even for us distant boy scouts
There are two dog owners on either side of the road
at a crossing, any minute, a landmine might explode
it is more than likely a standoff, a bad mixture
one is with a black and tan Miniature Pinscher
the other is with three snarling borzoi hounds
it’s a perilous junction even for us distant boy scouts
there look to be some cordial words spoken at first
but leashes are loosened, and threats are interspersed
there’s a greeting of canine teeth bared to kill
locked in a bloodlust that crushes all the daffodils
that spills innocent blood on the freshly falling snow
these wild dogs are now unchained and let go.
Their owners are at distant ends of the earth.
Their howling, their baying, their wailing never adjourns
there’s no end to war when war crimes are waged
and an entire world and people are enraged.
Putin has ‘gone full tonto’
Defence minister Ben Wallace says Putin has 'gone full tonto.'
So saddle up your 'wild horse's folks,'
and get out of your lunatic asylum beds
he’s mental folks now, that’s-what-I've read.
Putin has-gone-full tonto they say
there is no neutrality in this nuts psychiatric unit.
He's said to have lost it during his covid-19 isolation lockdown,
they say he’s been sharpening knives for a good while now
and even wants to microwave the world for his Sunday roast?
Putin has 'gone full tonto' they say,
saving comrades and neighbours from Neo-Nazism
all his clowns and jesters are clueless about what the hell to do
so they wave flags and fire bullets and generally join in his parade.
Announcing corridors are opening to the poor folk they're killing.
Putin has 'gone full tonto' they say,
and who can disagree when a baby boy dies of shrapnel wounds
died in his mother's arms on International Women's Day
and all he and they can say is war has its casualties
maybe they shouldn’t have got in our way.
…is an adult learning difficulties support worker with 200-plus poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies both online and in print. He resides in the UK, from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.
The nightingale soared peacefully and free
While the mighty bear sauntered patiently.
Wisdom kept the bruin from aggression
The nightingale, high above oppression.
Then one day, abandoning its reason
The bear initiated songbird season.
How embarrassing it made the effort
To pluck the sky of the singing feathered.
The ursine losing all its common sense
Should apologize and return to whence.
Then if the natural order is reset
If love and beauties preconditions met
The bear and nightingale again may gather
And share a song of futures that are better.
…is a graduate of Central Connecticut State University where he majored in history and minored in social studies. He is very interested in events and people of the past and the present. His current vocation is at a non-profit for individuals with intellectual disabilities, which I have been doing for over a decade. I enjoy writing poetry as well as the visual arts.
I took the same path in the morning—
woke up to find my cat lying in sunbeams,
got dressed, had breakfast, prepped
before my nine o’clock class,
then I heard the chainsaw,
cutting through Thursday’s route
sending ice floating in lily pads
down Poestenkill Creek.
I could see it all from my window
driving to work,
listening to bombs on the radio,
“listening to bombs on the radio,”
echoing old sounds of the twentieth century.
I put on Stand or Fall by The Fixx
and thought, “how the hell
can I continue my classes
on the Protestant Reformation?”
My plan was to have them assess Cranach,
Law and Gospel and Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.
How can I go through with this now?
Crying parents tell their children
if you survive don't do as we did.
I thought about my two students
from Lithuania and Ukraine,
Ugne and Yaryna,
roaming this quiet N.Y, boarding school
like Stoics, consumed by Putin
and the safety of their families back home.
I decided to keep Luther’s 95 Theses
nailed to the Wittenberg church door.
Impromptu teaching has always terrified me,
but what right do I have to feel this way now,
when red-lit metal boxes
are jamming Kyiv highways
in a desperate attempt to flee the city.
What do I know about fear?
Ugne and Yaryna forced a good morning smile.
I stared at the class for a painful moment,
then nailed Putin to the whiteboard.
Oh! Their faces! Their Munch faces!
I tried to answer all their questions,
giving Ugne and Yaryna a moment to speak,
to cry, to be consoled by their classmates,
many of whom had not heard what had happened
until now.
…is a widely published poet: Defenestration, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Glass: a Poetry Journal are some of the places you will find her. She is the author of two chapbooks, Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018), and Goblin Fruit (Impspired, 2021); she is also a teacher, and woodland roamer.
blue on one end of the scale
yellow at the opposite end
a kind of magnetic needle in between
blue, a feeling of down or calm
yellow feels up, vibrant, bright
somewhere in the middle, green
in the middle, they meld and transform
yellow and blue become green
three for the price of two
this gauge is invisible, yet lives within
it is carried eternally
it is the human tachometer
a reminder that nothing stays the same
everything can change
it can go from blue to yellow to green
unaware of its change
remarkable in being seen
When the world is on fire
do you close your eyes? Ignore it?
Do you?
Fuelled by racial discrimination
this conflagration
is a spirit abomination
this IS my nation
home of my education
playground of my indoctrination
to a world of justification
looking for integration
knowing that communication
is the way forward
I say I want a revolution, a human revolution
it’s gonna have to start with me
the only solution for this revolution
Has to start with me
We’re all in the same war
but not all in the same trenches
these flames are deep, embedded
we need more than hammers and wrenches
reformation, inner reformation
takes transformation
no longer subjugation
seeing ourselves as real
co-existing
human transformation
my own revolution
lighting my way and seeing you
Yasher Koiech Nefesh Yehudi
These words, “yasher koiech, mein nefesh Yehuda”
“Have strength, my Jewish soul” is like the mantra
used to encloak myself when leaving the comfort of home.
Even with broad-minded people, there is always the risk
of awakening the sleeping dragon of the Jew-baiting anti-semite
ready to pounce. Will this feeling, ever so deeply engrained
leave the awareness I call myself?
I choose one Jewish metaphor to describe myself,
“charoseth”, the sweet, dark, spicy, nutty, tart mixture
made for the Passover Seder, one of the six Seder plates,
an homage to the slave labour in Egypt’s Pharoah time,
the reason for the Exodus.
Charoseth resembles mortar.
Mortar builds things—houses, outdoor ovens.
Because Jews number few in population,
we are noticed and well-known for high achievements.
I try to build friendships
while remembering the charoseth of
apples and dates and wine and nuts.
I think of people this way,
full of goodness, sweetness and with the
intoxicating alluring risks hidden in the dangers of nuts.
I want to be accepted—not tolerated,
therefore I must accept others
just as different to me as I am to them.
Not easy, but definitely doable.
I think of our foremother Esther whose intelligence
saved her people.
My own orphaned, biological mother Yocheved
was responsible, at age 7, for a younger brother and sister.
These women and Ruth, whose compassion became
synonymous with empathy used the mortar of their own wisdom
to build better societies.
They are the woof and weft of the weaving of these cultures.
When Vashti refused to parade naked
in front of her husband’s cadre of supporters
she was replaced by Esther and through
cunning and fortuitousness exposed calumniaty
for what it is.
At 7 years of age, at cheder (religious school),
there was an Esther contest.
I had no hope of winning.
My family was unable to purchase my costume.
Being self-conscious, yet enjoying the participation,
I took a brown paper bag, drew a crown of crayon coloured jewels,
borrowed my mother’s flowery cotton skirt and elastic-necked blouse,
marched down the aisle with a devil-may-care smile,
fully expecting nothing but a good time, and
for my ingenuity, I won and won more than flowers
I won a confidence that is sewn irrevocably
in the decision-making process of my every day
Never give up, give in, go forth, be creative,
with the directive Yasher Koiech, Nefesh Yehudi
the mortar is in you, build with sweetness, goodness,
tartness, nuttiness, chutzpah and always with the
knowledge that with a Nefesh Yehudi
we are together, we are strong,
I am with you, I am strong,
I and you are strong and we are all together
Yasher Koiech!
…was privileged to record with bill bissett for the Secret Handshake Reading Series in December 2021. The Secret Handshake also published her chapbook, Bob Dylan, My Rabbi. Two copies were purchased by the Robards Library, University of Toronto. “Kaleidoscopic Wonderful” was published in January 2022 by the Taj Mahal Review. She was commissioned by the Friendly Spike Theatre Band to write the history of mad people’s theatre in Toronto with “I’m Mad, I Matter, Making a Difference,” and also edited the anthology, POEMDEMIC.
From the ruins my offspring
forceps out the burnt remains
of my poem:
"The sunflowers burst in
my mind. They must have warned,
but I tend to ignore the signs.
The shrapnel in the spring zephyr
pierces one or two stray thoughts.
Somewhere, when the explosions hush,
some music bleeds. I can hear."
If there were other staves to this,
future cannot tell now. Blue, green,
yellow and rust choke all possibilities.
My offspring's footsteps clot
when the discoveries end.
Another spring, perhaps one during
a brief period of doves cooing Zen
or perhaps time rides a pale wild horse,
my progeny returns to the tent.
The campfire glows atomic
amidst the tar of the night.
…is an author and a father, editor of ‘Words Surfacing’, with eight books to his name, the latest being ‘Postmarked Quarantine’. His works have been translated in eleven languages.
In meditation, I find my mind more restless and wandering than usual. The minutes since sitting seem long and drawn out—time has stilled but not my attention. Heaviness is pervasive and a tightness around my heart.
I’m conscious of the fan blades moving lazily overhead and a slightly warmed breeze coming through the open window. The sound of tiny birds enters the room coming forth from the bird feeder hanging just outside. A light, fluttering splash lets me know that someone is bathing in the nearby birdbath. The chimes outside the kitchen door let out an almost imperceptible tinkling as the melody finds its way to my room.
silence breaks my heart
cold as a mountain peak
sunflowers weep
Rolling tanks,
the devil, Putin,
arrives without warning.
The invaded country, a zoo.
Cities bombarded.
Ukrainian citizens
not knowing where to go.
Muddy, soft ground,
dogs barking,
endless walking,
feet hurting.
Leave homes behind,
keep walking.
Refuges, with the clothes
on their backs catching trains,
that still run, to friendly,
neighboring countries.
Their country’s flag,
a banner of blue and yellow bands.
Wide blue skies denote calm
Yellow wheat fields, joy.
Blue skies grayed by aerial attacks
Russian tanks trample wheat fields.
Bands of blue and yellow.
Past symbol of calm and joy
where sunflowers no longer bloom.
Sunflowers Don’t Bloom
Sunflowers don’t bloom today.
Tanks ravage the fields of amber grains.
The blue skies dotted with Russian missiles.
Flower shaped bullets fly into ground and air.
Buildings in rubble.
Neighborhoods destroyed.
Refugees take trains to sympathetic neighbors.
Dead sunflower stalks fall and die.
Symbols of calm and joy in the
blue and yellow banded Ukrainian flag
are no more. Only sadness.
…is a freelance writer living in Massachusetts. Her poetry has appeared in Capsule Stories, Fumble Magazine, Peeking Cat Anthology, Poets are Heroes Magazine, Mused Literary Review, Helen Magazine, Blue Heron Review, The Show-Me Doctrine, Sol Magazine, Amaze Cinquain Journal and Bonsai Magazine. She has had travel articles accepted on We Said Go Travel as well as non-fiction pieces in the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the nineteenth amendment.
Pill boxes rest on the counter,
an abacus of prescriptions.
I’ll remember this chapter passed down
from one ancestor to another,
weight of the family tree.
Hiatus comes from Latin to yawn.
I love to ignore the gaping one.
Think vespertine, flourishing in the evening:
crepuscular. I crave an innocent gloaming.
Instead, I see flame-shaped markings.
Flammulated. Tattoos. Not just on owls,
the symbol of Athena.
I’m seeing too many flames.
I want to put bombed cinderblocks on mute,
erase complicity off my skin.
I want numbing for spirit pain.
Will my heart become cold like a beetle
pinned in a science project?
Launched into another grief,
my teeth hide behind the mask, the dire veil.
Let’s not go back to old ways of drinking.
I mean thinking.
Give up our alibis. Give up our vodka.
We must not abet.
I will try dying. I fear I’m dyslexic?
Dependable
Beside the stealth piano
with its keys like black licorice
so beautiful and tragic
I hear another State of the Union from a great height.
I can’t even look or I might get dizzy.
I’d love to edit the world,
the geography of the mind
with its tar pit that preserves the burdens of my ancestors.
A brief history (of?):
<insert war/s here>
<insert denial>
<insert plague and pestilence>
<insert denial>
<insert a great leap>
<repeat>
On schedule like a bus,
here come the grenades with hand-dug graves
in grease and sorrow.
And into the firmament of its own surprise,
the latest terror
that doesn’t even need to be warfare to be
terrifying.
The piano is padlocked to a stupor.
A [New] Context
I feel like I’m reading
the same page over and over,
checking the time
and forgetting the hour,
waving at someone
who is waving at someone else.
The drift of neurotransmitters
float through straits, synaptic gauntlets,
this everywhere listing.
Another war blooming.
There’s a moth that feeds on tears
of horses—that could be my tears
for the thought everything is broken.
And that we spend
twenty-six years sleeping,
seven trying to sleep.
But that’s an average.
Meaningless for this day
since we (I) spend how much
doing anything meaningful
to save our planet. For peace.
All this primordial stuff being
ignored, natural and preternatural,
macro- and microscopic,
the will of the Great Architect,
in regalia with tattered flags
as the virtuous minutes go.
Don’t we want to fix our world.
That’s not a question.
Our sighing shrines splinter
in war and weather.
Move all the statues to a museum, they say.
Move endangered mammals to a sanctuary.
Move women and children to a strange country.
Let them breathe trapped air.
Give everything dead or alive a new old context.
… has a recent poetry collection, “Genealogy Lesson for the Laity” (Unsolicited Press, 2020); her chapbooks include “Backpack Full of Leaves” and “It’s Raining Lullabies.” A Best of the Net nominee, her poetry has appeared in anthologies and journals including Poet Lore, New Orleans Review, Tar River, Gargoyle, Tinderbox. Cathryn served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology. She lives in Fairfax, CA.
Sting has brought back a song he wrote many years ago, but put away because he thought it was no longer relevant … how wrong we can be! The culture of protest is alive and well!
A young woman with blond hair
Tied in a ponytail
Wearing jeans and a sweater
Hums a song to herself
While she brushes off shards
Of shattered glass from what was
Once a window overlooking
The destruction across the street.
The shards fall inward onto the floor.
Tanks roll by in the street below
Clinking like a xylophone out of tune.
She notices a sniper take up position
Across the way. He checks his crosshairs.
As I sit at the kitchen table in front of a screen
On the other side of the world
Suddenly it’s very important to me
To hear the words she is humming
Even though I don’t understand them.
…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 eight books of poetry. Mike is married to Talma. They have 3 sons and 8 grandchildren.
Frozen red snowflake,
soaked in someone's blood…
Procession of people, cars and suitcases…
Chaos in the sky,
explosions on the balconies…
Which is more expensive,
a drop of blood
or a drop of gas?
War should stop
The world is mad today,
after all the suffering and pain,
we lost our peace again…
The innocent children had to pay
with their life, with abyss, so hollow
that war creates into human souls…
Poor child, may God save you
from that horror…
“No victory brings the dead back”
We sent carriers pigeons,
we built crystal bridges,
on rice paper we wrote prayers,
we entered in the temples…
Let's take another look at smidgens…
Any dispute can be resolved by force,
but better with a conversation…
Wisdom wins, wisdom may bring salvation…
May God send the Peace angels
to end this course…
The dove
Let the dove
free!
Let him take flight
round
above the frenzied brains,
above the tormented souls,
to give them peace…
It is time, please!
…is 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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