October 2019 | poetry
A More Perfect Union
When children by gunfire die,
When the dreamer and the warden clash,
When statues betray the artist, we say
This is not who we are.
Who are we?
I take my chisel to Plymouth Rock
But the rock gives no blood;
Our history is like that stone,
Heavier than its weight…
Stood at a dank underpass, I rattle
A tin cup, wave a sign that reads
This is not who we are—
I can grow rich here, devote my life
To the pursuit of happiness…
It is said that upon his murder, Lincoln belonged
To the ages: Why do we wait for blood?
We’ve planted great forests of headstones.
I wander their lush paths, the sanguine streams,
And amidst this grandeur, this horror,
I glimpse both what is and what could be.
What of the Future?
I’ve been hearing Save the Rainforest
Since I was small enough to sleep
In the safety of my parent’s bed
Or snuggled with stuffed animals—
Pandas, giraffes, monkeys, frogs;
Since I lived for lullabies and storytime;
Since the world was as small as a crib
And as big as my imagination;
Since a nightlight could douse fears
And a drop of Tylenol could erase pain;
Since adults could assure me
That all was well and would always be well.
Now I hear that 20% of the Amazon is lost,
That the remainder is on fire,
That a tipping point may soon be passed—
All life in peril.1
Now I have a beloved wife, toddler, dog—
Great plans for our lives.
Now my parents are older, frailer.
Now, at thirty-four, I have traveled enough of life
To know that adults have always betrayed their children,
That absent drastic change I, too, will betray my child,
And that without a future for him
There can be no real joy or pleasure in the present.
1 Fisher, Max. Aug 30, 2019. NY Times. ‘It’s Really Close’: How the Amazon Rainforest Could Self-Destruct <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/americas/amazon-rainforest-fires-climate.html>
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
October 2019 | poetry
Those aren’t locusts
cascading from the sky
but paper confetti
cut from a hand-clasp
fanning of pretty patterns.
Up there, her silhouette
cast on the cardstock
moon, her wolf ear hood
accepted for gospel
glorying in the rituals
shedding like skin
with gusto, pasting
onto pages under plastic.
It felt like love just
to see it that one time.
Luanne Castle
Luanne Castle’s Kin Types (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, was published by Aldrich Press. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her Pushcart-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, American Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, River Teeth, The Review Review, Broad Street, and other journals. An avid blogger, she can be found at luannecastle.com. She divides her time between California and Arizona, where she shares land with a herd of javelina.
July 2019 | poetry
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.” – Shakespeare
The power of fire is not that it burns
But that it distracts:
We save what burns because it burns.
What goes up in flames comes down in ash,
And ash is cremation:
We do not want to die.
There is no suffering in wood, stone, glass,
No Resurrection in their rebuilding:
Only flesh, blood, and bone feel pain.
Never has a candle saved a life,
And though the thirteen-ton bell rings clear
And the stained-glass awes,
Injustice has neither ears nor eyes:
The centuries grow heavy with war, revolution, poverty,
Buttressed only by a sanguine belief in tomorrow.
When the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris was ablaze
I did not cry. I was already sad, already felt the flames
Of great things breaking all around me.
I only wanted to ask the firefighters:
Could you have as quickly, desperately,
Brought clean water to the poor?
To ask the billionaires:
Did you sell your yachts, your cars?
How did you spare so much money so fast?
And to ask the leaders of the world,
The priests, the mourners, the press,
The Parisians, the tourists, the public:
In lighting myself on fire,
Might you be similarly moved?
And what if Notre Dame,
Old, venerable, and angry,
Had intended to burn to the ground
As you watched with awe-struck eyes?
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
July 2019 | poetry
Separated from herbs and rice,
by knife and rifle, a fish in a fracture
of Caspian and Pacific. I remember
nothing of departure or arrival,
nothing of language lost or found,
nothing but this place of both
and neither, a wound of salt surrounding
as threats trill across desert and sea,
an orchestra of terror looming,
leaving me an orphan, flagless.
My name torn in half and sutured, yet
when someone asks how to pronounce it
the accents all scatter and hide,
because there is no right answer in a war
between the one that made me
and the one that raised me,
the one that shamed me
and the one that shames me,
between the chador
and the razor blade,
yasmin and jasmine,
tea and coffee.
There is only a dash,
a gash,
and I lay there,
Floundering.
Niku Rice
Niku Rice was born in Tehran, raised in California, and now lives in the suburbs of Detroit with her husband and three children. She is a doula and childbirth educator
July 2019 | poetry
Who would have expected so many Germans?
Still they arrive,
Half a dozen a week,
With their excellent leather shoes
and superb command of English.
All beautiful,
their gold hair shining like a beacon
in the gloom of the dining room.
The old Kibbutzniks have long memories.
The young German volunteers sweep the stables,
scrub the toilets,
collect the garbage,
call the chickens,
and then wring their necks.
They never complain about the filthy work.
Perhaps they are here for such a purpose of penance.
The Israeli men love to fuck the girls.
Greta and Leni don’t mind the knowing winks
and guffaws that follow them,
like buzzing mosquitoes,
in and out of the social hall.
Some can understand Yiddish,
even try to speak it,
horrifying the old women here,
as if they heard something obscene.
I don’t know why these German boys and girls are so happy.
The kibbutz hot and dusty and dry.
The swimming pool empty and baking like a molten crater.
At night the dogs go mad,
kicking up hollering clouds
as they try to rip each other’s throats.
Yet Hans and Dieter sing folks songs by the campfire,
drinking flat Israeli beer,
smoking cheap unfiltered cigarettes
as they cough up phlegm with relish.
They understand this land,
connect with the scorched fields of burnt grass.
While I,
The Jew,
The New Yorker,
am so lost here,
craving pavement and broken glass.
Sometimes a German never leaves,
and marries an Israeli,
bringing bright blonde children into the nursery hall.
But their jobs never change:
slaughtering the cows,
cleaning the toilets,
boiling fat for the soap factory.
These old Kibbutzniks have long long memories.
Penny Jackson
Penny Jackson is an award-winning writer who lives in New York City. Her books include BECOMING THE BUTLERS (Bantam Books) and a short story collection L.A. CHILD and other stories (Untried Reads.) She has won a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction and was a McDowell Colony Fellow. Penny is also a playwright with plays produced in New York, Los Angeles, Edinburgh and Dublin. www.pennybrandtjackson.com
July 2019 | poetry
They were men, their faces half shadowed
from flickering firelight,
I was a boy on soft ground, two old hounds
between me and the rocked ring of the pit.
Leonard would holler and a glorious sound would come from his red fiddle,
but I imagined it was the forest’s song
and my eyes would close from exhaustion and the weight of dreams.
I would warm my hands on the belly of the Bluetick,
his eyes never quite shut, always watching while resting,
ready for the chase.
“David, you ain’t sleepin’, are ya?”
Hot chocolate and pipe smoke,
the smell of coonhound and
blood.
Two old Fords with round hoods stood darkly
at our backs, facing home
where morning would pass slowly
into day
where faults and cold rain
ceased.
David Magill
David Magill, born in Kansas City, Missouri, moved to Minnesota as a young boy and grew up on a hobby farm in Afton. He has been married to his wife, Patti, for 23 years. His work has recently been published in Metonym,The Esthetic Apostle, Cagibi, Swimming with Elephants, Dreamers, Wanderlust, Sky Island Journal, and Rock & Sling. He has also been nominated for a Pushcart prize in poetry for 2019.
