Yezidi, Northern Iraq

April 2021 | poetry

A Yezidi woman sits across from me

her eyes are flat black

like no eyes should look

as if her spirit has been sucked

backward through her body

to fly away somewhere else

somewhere safe

before

Kocho

Sinjar.

“Is it true?”

her handler asks me

“Is it true what ISIS did to the children?”

She starts to cry

great rolling tears

streaking her face black mourning mascara.

I seek safety inside myself

in a world that offers none.

Is it true?

is it true?

It is true.

I hear her voice

asking over and over

like the crows now cawing over mass graves

as the Yezidi woman gazes

but not at me.

Susan Notar

Susan Notar has flown over Iraq in helicopters wearing body armor and makes a mean beurre blanc sauce. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including Gyroscope, Written in Arlington, Antologia de Poemas Alianza Latina, Penumbra, Joys of the Table An Anthology of Culinary Verse, Springtime in Winter: An Ekphrastic Study in Art, Poetry, and Music. She works at the U.S. State Department helping vulnerable communities in the Middle East.

Tobi Alfier

April 2021 | poetry

Bench Warrant Wednesday

You’re finally back in your hometown,

only snow greets your arrival.

Court date’s in a few hours,

just time to check into some

cheap hotel and change into clothes

that say I’m a good girl, clothes

that’ll be dumped at the charity shop

after free breakfast, local bank,

and go pay the fine tomorrow.

No time for visiting or sightseeing—

you’ll see all you want from the train

on the head-out-of-town express.

Window cracked to let a thin stream of smoke out,

you breathe in the incense of pines,

catch a quick glimpse of your old house

a little more canted, a lot less yours.

All the wildflowers buried deep until spring

do nothing to coax you back,

and you leave this town that doesn’t bear repeating

once again, the stillness of dusk broken only

by wisps of winter shadows through the trees,

a jukebox song of wild horses in your mind.

The Year of No Men

Granny’s on the front porch with me

playing gin and drinking gin.

I have a Jolt Cola to keep awake.

Mama’s coming to get me soon,

take me to the monthly family day

at the corrections house just down the road.

They call it “house” so it sounds nice,

but you can’t just leave when you want.

Daddy’s there for a while and that’s all I know.

We got a one-year lease on a nice double-wide,

Granny’s a couple rows over.

Other ladies and kids mostly fill in the rest.

Mama goes over to our real house every few weeks,

waters the plants, grabs up the bills,

cleans the messages off the garage door.

I don’t get to go ‘cause those messages—

they’re not too nice most times and mama says

I’m too young to understand.

So she brings me back a lemon pie

from the gas station mini mart

and I watch Granny get stuporfied.

Took a lotta years living

before I could sift through the truth

of our time at the trailer park,

and I made a lot of promises to myself

after that: no bail, no messages

written on any garage doors cause of me,

and gin would always be cards, jelly jars

only for juice and for baking, and “house”

would mean house, with toys in the yard.

Tobi Alfier

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” was published by Cholla Needles Press. “Symmetry: earth and sky” was published by Main Street Rag. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).