Remy Dambron
ter-uh-riz-uhm

stand your ground
legal grounds
attack someone
out of fear

unless you’re brown
from out of town
or differences appear

colonial mentality
prolonging racist roots
con-gress
alt-right
systematic
abuse

discrimination
divided nation
conquer with
lethal forces
right to live trumped
by white circles
he endorses

hide behind the flag
patriotic extravaganza
executively condoned
explosive
propaganda

constitutionally
almost officially
civilian roulette
voter suppression
approaching recession
promoting people
like brett

such a surprise
militarized
statesmen and civilians
arms profits indispensable
deep into the billions

zero
accountability
due process
obstructer
how do we uphold justice
when it called
“to arm our instructors”

sick and twisted
is a mind
that fights fire
with flammables

centuries of progress
swiftly undone
leadership of irrationals

attacking the press
implicating the left
praising assault of reporters

false flags
hashtags
criminals at our borders

misinformation
madness
palpable exhaustion

another special
delivery
best to open with
caut

Remy Dambron is a Portland-based activist and environmentalist. His works have appeared in What Rough Beast, naturewriting.com, and the Veggie Wagon Journal. He has been honored by the Society of Classical Poets for speaking out against human rights violations and is currently working on his first chapbook in political verse denouncing political corruption.

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Sam Avrett
Reflection

The snow curls round the house, folding around air like smoke except white and falling like the opposite of combustion and with pockets of nothing twisted into spirals and dervishes, absences of nameable things. Against the snow, your reflection. It’s night and the light inside and outside compete against the window. I can’t see the garden anymore but it’s out there, the winter remnants outlining what was and what will be.

The news today was terrible. Headlines saying nothing, the silences appalling, and in all my searching, an absence of words about where you are. The outline of events is clear but I am left untethered.

The dairy farmer is named by his cows before they are ever milked, the hunter labelled by the prey before he sets out to hunt. Our country is said to be defined by its ideals, so maybe I was defined by you before we even met, by what I intended and the shape of my needs before I even knew them.

I close my eyes and I see you, I open my eyes and see the snow, and the absences compete, naming who I am by who I am missing.

Sam Avrett lives in a rural county in upstate New York, with dogs, husband, and a startling amount of canned and preserved food stocked away for the winter.

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David Dixon
MAKE AMERICA (the) GARDEN AGAIN

In another ending to the fable
the emperor is still buck naked

and his entire court is similarly
exposed. It is not a sight for the

faint-hearted nor a proper role
model for small children even

the one who says “but Mommy,
that’s a big shiny butt” for we

don’t even look anymore as
fake news becomes no news

and though no one will admit
to wearing no clothes or even

being garment challenged and
heaven only knows what sights

they might see in the mirror
there are those who say we

should make us all naked again
— like the good old days — like

before we exalted all we have
laid bare — before we polished

off the whole bowl of forbidden
fruit in one sitting — yes, back

to the very Garden perhaps
when one bite was too much

and agreeing on our ungodliness

we still could feel the shame

David Dixon is a physician, poet, and musician who lives and practices in the foothills of North Carolina. His poetry has appeared in Rock & Sling, The Northern Virginia Review, Connecticut River Review, FlyingSouth 2018, and elsewhere.

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Judith Skillman
Amerika’s Pain Shoppe

The chessboard’s grown large under the ether and life-sized knights in body armor—virtual, their daggers made by the master blade smith, cooled in a metal bath with bits of manganese and tungsten. Yes, says the owl with smarts, it’s all virtual, creamy king and queen gone cold with chills at opposite ends from one another on the board. I haul myself along with my left arm, on my stomach, me a woman soldier in the map of Syria with something broken—my right shoulder blade. The scapula, they call it here. The fracture like a highway between the plains on the x-ray fixed to the gaudy light box. I drag myself toward the lintel, try to cross the transom. A bit more traction…frozen-shoulder the stained glass door open. Neon colors paired with bevels to deliver prisms on hardwood where shag-sixties rug meets 19th century oak. Glean the answer to the question I wanted trade my life for. Not why suffering so much as where’s oxygen? Want to freshen up the old-fashioned way in the glare of single star shining outside the waiting room, my broken toes caught between frame and door, just short of the alley. There grass grows through asphalt, and earth’s abandoned coal yards vegetate. There horses—green—graze among hillocks of trash, white-blazed, ready to spook at the trespass of man.

Judith Skillman’s new book is Premise of Light, Tebot Bach. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust and the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Zyzzyva, and other journals. Visit www.judithskillman.com

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Deborah Hauser,
Why She Didn’t Report It
For Christine Blasey Ford, et al.

Because it was her fatherunclehusbandbrothertboyfriendcoachboss
Because it happened in her own home
Because they already knew and pretended not to
Because she was scared
Because she needed him
Because she thought no one else would ever love her
Because maybe it wouldn’t happen again
Because he was sorry
Because he was drinking
Because she was drinking
Because she was wearing –
Because she was nobody
Because she needed the job
Because she was 5 years old
Because she wasn’t a virgin
Because fraternities
Because she couldn’t afford the cost to process her own rape kit
Because there was no visible wound
Because she knows how this goes
Because she didn’t want to stand trial
Because she has learned to become invisible instead
Because she did       no one listened
Because he cut out her tongue
Because he threatened to kill her
Because he was a doctorteacherjudgepriestfineupstandingcitizen
Because he overpowered her
Because he drugged her
Because she doesn’t want to relive it
Because she doesn’t owe you an explanation
Because she wants to move on
Because she thinks she’s okay now
Because she still has those dreams
Because when she opens her mouth to scream       no sound comes out
Because shame and rage hold her together
Because I might disintegrate

Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and Carve Magazine. Her book reviews have been published at The Kenyon Review, Mom Egg Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has taught at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College. She leads a double life on Long Island where she works in the insurance industry.
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Marissa McNamara
Somewhere a Man is Thinking That They Is Who We (Hysterical Angry Hyperbolic) Are

somewhere a man is slapping
a bar        an ass        a laugh onto her face.
somewhere he drinks and does not fear
leaving the glass on the bar when he looks away
at the score        at the waitress
at her short yellow or red or black skirt at the buttons
buttoned or unbuttoned on her white shirt and
when he walks home he can be lost in thought not
listening behind        not
watching the shadows        not
thanking God for the streetlights blinking on.
He walks with his keys in his pocket        not
between his fingers like useless knives ready
for the could-be’s   the her-faults        does not
hold his phone to his ear pretend-laughing
making small sounds of uh-huh to an imaginary
caller      he does not look down   look away   look up        does not
avoid meeting others’ eyes        does not
fear an other walking toward him in a polo or a button-down
or Armani shoes with tassles or a tie or cargo pants
or Levis–any number of shirts and colors and shoes
and he nods because he can because nowhere do these men
have to think they do not think do not think do not
quicken their step do not know not to turn and quick-glance behind
them do not wish they had worn their Nikes not
heels do not wish they had worn something
with tread as strong as tires. Somewhere these men enter
a party, slap other men on the back, stand with ice in glasses
or plastic cups or flasks or cans sweating in their hands and
watch the women to see who is swaying count the times
she tips her glass and swallows        the men
know who has had enough to make her thighs
yoga-flexible   alcohol-open   like the doors the men open into the dark
or light or dusk or dawn because the doors are theirs
and the knobs twist for their hands and the hinges swing wide for them   swing
into open spaces where their entry does not mean why were you there how
much did you drink why don’t you remember if it was so important why don’t you
remember the time the date how loud the music was as you left the room and walked out why don’t you remember who drove if this was so important if this was so important if this was so important how can you not know how many people were there who drove home and somewhere
a man enters
and no one cares which bedroom sidewalk curb alley car truck floor he uses
to walk over   to lay above to enter behind to pump his presidential body into
like an automatic
riddling the body the body        she        the body
the body that she is and is not
the body of the unbuttoned animal before him
every time a man enters his places that are all his that are
all the places where he can always and forever say
his truth that is the truth always and forever and the truth is
that he can grab whatever pussy
he wants
every time men gather in their names
every time they come every time
they come they are somewhere
they belong every
time they come they
come they come
every time

Marissa McNamara‘s work has appeared in several publications, including the anthologies On Our Own and My Body My Words and the journals RATTLE, Assisi, Melancholy Hyperbole, StorySouth, Future Cycle, The Cortland Review, and Amsterdam Quarterly. She teaches English composition and creative writing at Georgia State University and in Georgia prisons. She is also a contributing poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review.

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Nancy Flynn
One June Day: Fire, Heat, & Children Locked in Cages at the Texas-Mexico Border

here
in this land of savagery & lies,
a spider’s net between a branch & the eucalyptus chair

jails a brittle,
falling leaf
where,

on my island of dawning
bells, the horns are just disappearing
freight & the gutters need to be cleaned of more

fallen, the falling
broken
but still

here
as the trees reach
out for a sky turned scorch

yet more gasping, bitter
smoke at a sunrise that blinds, ashes
our eyes to the sight

of the cruelties while the prop
planes overhead deaden the pitch,
every cry

Nancy Flynn‘s books include Every Door Recklessly Ajar and Great Hunger. Her work has recently appeared in riverbabble 32 & 33, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, and From the Finger Lakes: A Poetry Anthology and will soon be featured in Halfway Down the Stairs and The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank. She grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania coal country, spent two decades in Ithaca, New York, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. A complete list of her publications is at www.nancyflynn.com.

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Marjorie Moorhead
The Rain and the Flower

After: The Dew and the Bird by Alexander Posey (1873-1908; Muscogee Creek)

There is more song in a raindrop,
That is but one of so many,
Than there is in an orchestra’s playing
For those accustomed to luxury.

There’s more sweetness found in a field
Where, in the company of thistles and bees,
Grows a wild, delicate flower, than in all
The sugar used for fancy buns of sweet patisseries.

Yet those who’s vision narrows, to follow goldbricks’ shimmer,
And who’s road lures them to worship only treasure,
Are missing each drop’s rainbow, and the wild-growing
Flower’s simple, vibrant, perennial pleasure.

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the border of NH/VT where she tries for a daily observant walk. Her poetry can be seen in two anthologies: A Change of Climate (2017, edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson, benefitting the Environmental Justice Foundation), and Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT, Vol.II (2018, edited by Alice Wolf Gilborn, et al., The Blueline Press). She’s had many poems online at sites from Indolent Books (What Rough Beast; HIV Here & Now), Rising Phoenix Review, to Sheila-Na-Gig. Forthcoming is a chapbook from Finishing Line Press.

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Sam Avrett
America, continued

America, Allen was talking to you. Sixty two years ago, and I’m still nothing. I love my truck and venison stew but I need to cancel my credit card.

America, I have so many questions, I hope you don’t mind. Thanks for the border but what was the fate of those children? Yes those migrants but I meant my neighbors who served in the war. I can never remember the name of that song, or that book.

America what happened to the dairy farm? Did you notice there aren’t as many birds as there used to be? I like my fire chief, but I don’t think I trust the judge. Or the governor either. I’m beginning to suspect that Bernie might have been right.

America, why did I need that generator? Why do I need supplemental coinsurance? With the supersize chips, why am I still hungry?

America, did you really ever free the slaves? America, me too.

We need to be left alone to think about this. Freedom isn’t free. My neighbors the jail guards are taking up guns.

Sam Avrett lives in a rural county in upstate New York, with dogs, husband, and a startling amount of canned and preserved food stocked away for the winter.

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David James
On Certain Days

for Marc Sheehan

Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right
—Thessalonians 3:13

the world crashes
& burns
& you burn with it.
everything you’ve done ends in a pile of ashes
& the wind
scatters you home. this is how you learn
to take nothing for granted.

some days the world slaps you
in the face and has no concern
for who you are or who you know.
you stand there & take it, no shred
of honor, no handful of hope.

there are even days when the world
wants nothing more than your head
on a platter, your body skinned
& quartered, hung from rope
tied to any bare tree.

so much is out of your control,
beyond the scope
of your sorrow.
some days, your dignity
lies in a warm bucket of shit.

but then, every once in a while,
the world stops, falls to its knees
& lets you win:
every pitch thrown, you hit
out of the park;
every bird sings your name;
every star in the dark sky, lit
& shining, smiles down on you
until your heart glows.

David James is the author of My Torn Dance Card (Fly Came Near It, 2015) and She Dances Like Mussolini (March Street Press, 2009), winner of the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award for poetry, as well as a number of chapbooks. Many of his one-act plays have been produced in cities across the country. He teaches writing and literature in the English department at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

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