Lucinda Marshall
The Breakdown Of All Things

Priests of old gods tell us
that we need a moral compass,

while methodically laying
siege to political agency.

“Stop The Bloodless Coup!”

our protest signs implore
as the unthinkable becomes normal,

reality revised and televised—
the medium has always
been the message.

Scientists and archivists race to
safeguard knowledge from extinction,

lest truth become relegated
to the margins of collective memory,

and deceits of false omnipotence
metastasize into perverted epitaphs
of democratic delusion,

as the sound of jackboots draws near.

Lucinda Marshall‘s poems have appeared in Sediments, One Sentence Poems, Stepping Stones Magazine, Columbia Journal, Transition on indolentbooks.com, Poetica Magazine, Haikuniverse, ISLE, and elsewhere. She blogs at Reclaiming Medusa. Lucinda co-facilitates the award-winning Teen Writing Club in Gaithersburg, Md. She is a member of the Maryland Writers’ Association and Women, Action, and the Media.

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Howard F. Stein
Welcome

Welcome to the land
of no hope, but dread;
of no listening, but shouting;
of no love, but hate;
of no safety, but cowering.
Welcome to the unwelcoming land,
where trust is shipwrecked
on the craggy shoals
of bitterness and revenge.

Good morning to a bloody sun;
good evening to a crimson moon;
and good night to weeping stars.
The universe no longer knows
what to make of us—
nor do we, as every stranger
fears assault from those
who feel assaulted
by every kind of stranger.

Who will extend
the first arm of reconciliation,
to bridge the trenches
we have dug
with our shovels of contempt?
The hour is late,
but dawn is always possible.

Howard F. Stein, an applied, medical, psychoanalytic, and organizational anthropologist, is professor emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, where he taught for nearly 35 years. He is now group facilitator of the American Indian Diabetes Prevention Center in Oklahoma City. He is the author of 30 books, of which 9 are poetry collections. His most recent poetry books are In the Shadow of Asclepius: Poems from American Medicine ( Dog Ear Publishing, 2011), Raisins and Almonds (Finishing Line Press, 2014), and Light and Shadow (Doodle and Peck Publishing, 2016). He is poet laureate of the High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology.

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Carla Drysdale
Inaugural Haiku

Damp Geneva seeps
into our cold feet marching
to protect women.

Stone sky tablet for
black calligraphy of trees
writing history.

The new president
says he’ll get rid of columns
when building new rooms.

The new president
says he’ll protect you from them
and then the rain falls.

The president’s mouth
puckers when he peers at us:
“I love you all now.”

Carla Drysdale is the author of the poetry collections Little Venus (Tightrope Books, 2009) and Inheritance (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Spiraling, Public Pool, Cleaver Magazine, PRISM International, The Same, LIT, Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, Global City Review, and Literary Mama, among other journals, and in the anthology Entering the Real World: VCCA Poets on Mt. San Angelo. In May, 2014 she was awarded PRISM’s annual Earle Birney poetry prize for her poem, “Inheritance.” Born in London, Ontario, she lives with her husband and two sons in Ornex, France.

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Vivian Wagner
Better Red Hat Slogans

Make Art
Make Time
Make Space
Make Peanut Butter Cookies
Make Pussy Hats
Make Way
Make
Just Make

Vivian Wagner is an associate professor of English at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Creative Nonfiction, The Atlantic, The Ilanot Review, Silk Road Review, Zone 3, Eyedrum Periodically, 3QR, and other publications. She is also the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington, 2010).

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Andrea Wyatt
Return of the Kraken

To Ana Mara Saunders

When Kraken wakes waves whip the depths,
the dark abyssal plain,
turns up the Vulcan boulders on his stretching shoulders—
past the knotted sea wrack strewn
the Kraken lumbers ‘neath the moon,
lumbers through the surf and onto shore—
smashes all the fairy lights, the barques, the boats
devours stoats and tiny babes
sends all reeling to their graves—

but here resides a brute invited in,
no Norse creation come to slake his thirst
but worse, the wild-eyed butcher boy—
spawn of Mammon’s crook and slag,
husband to a winsome hag who takes him at his word,
his empty, yawning space—
homegrown monster, mad with schemes,
apocalyptic end time dreams,
here, disordered reason in this withered season,
welcome in the Kraken.

Andrea Wyatt is the author of three poetry collections. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Copperfield Review, Gargoyle and Gravel. She works for the National Park Service in Washington, DC and is associate editor of poetry journal By&By.

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Kelley White
Is it finished?

Cars were parked along the narrow road overgrown with weeds
by the abandoned waterslide. That place of silence where ghosts may raid
dust-filled tunnels to never-swept roads. And cars were parked up
and down the hills beside the forgotten bumper boats shifting
in the wind against each other’s soft rubber bodies and the asphalt climbing
wall, its harnesses clanging like empty flagpoles. I looked down the hill
and saw a satellite dish where none had ever been
and police lights flashing. Cries of people, pushing strollers,
unloading children from cars. I was afraid. Do I need to say that?
I had forgotten when to expect the sun to go down but I was certain it would not set
in that direction, that the people were heading away from light.
The lake lay gray as old meat in its harbor. I turned away,
hoping that the line of cars pulled at odd angles from the road would end
before my own road huddled into the heavy woods. It did. But even home, now
sitting at my kitchen table, I hear a kind of rumbling. I am singing to myself
to drown it out. Songs I’ve forgotten. Singing, opening envelopes, statements
from empty bank accounts, small papers with tomorrow’s news.
If you were here you might be able to recognize my songs. This is no time
to be alone. Banks of lights whir on, lighting up my woods, my trees, my wind.
A man at a bank of microphones. No.

Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire as a pediatrician. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are waterslide (Boston Poet Publishing, 2008) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books, 2010). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

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Irene Cooper
stroke

right over left, arched sense
left over right, ripple thru toes
time to hold fast underwater

in a crack of callous
blue subway map
heads uptown in search of a heart
1000 lie(s) in a locked box

journey of 1000 miles
one step
lock step
step livelytime to dig a diamond, then loose it

rich veins clog with fat or something
stop the flow
time to pull a child through the current
time to hold to another like you

til your pulse goes unanswered

purple be the mountains majesty or
rage too big for its shoes
wearing everything but ambition

Irene Cooper lives, writes, and cooks in Oregon, is a fierce advocate for public school, arts curricula, accessible health care, any available toilet, and the popular vote, among other things. She believes that language is imperfect, and so, miraculous.

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Susan Charkes
I Am Not Who I Am

1.
The beech bark sky
What falls—feathers

I eat—feathers
The bluebird in the frame

What falls—leaves

The bluebird out of the frame
I eat—leaves

The bluebird in the frame

What falls—bark

The sky is full of blackbirds.

The bluebird out of the frame.
I eat—blackbirds.

What falls—
I eat—

2.
I stop traffic to move
a turtle out of the frame.

I am not a member
of the turtle clan.

3.
today I am a pipe

O Mao you are a framed poster now

power > out of the barrel
into the pipe

peace > out of
the passing
(of the pipe)

one end of the pipe is out of the frame
one end of the pipe is out of the frame
passing the pipe moves the frame

4.
there were more of them than I remember
at the signal, each in a hollowed-out beech tree—the fires lit

5.
pop, caught on
pop, speared by
pop, crushed between
pop, slit through
pop, hollowed out
pop, scalded with
pop, buried under
pop, suffocated in
pop, wrenched around
flourishing amongst the scattered ejecta were numerous and diverse armored

pop, batted down
pop, stamped upon
pop, flayed until
pop, pressed into
pop, substituted for

6.
dug into the bark(full of sky)
corner, a wedge(bones in flight)

Susan Charkes lives and writes in southeastern Pennsylvania. A poetry chapbook, sp., is forthcoming from The Operating System.

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Terence Degnan
the mind of a prsdnt

did yu c th wndrfl boats
cn u see th boats
are we not going to talk about thbts
Illcuncrt
the boats are in the belfry
the lam in on the lam
wht gd r nuclear wpns
if you nvr use thm

I’ve nvr mt ptn
I dnt kno ptn
why dnt you go whr Harlem fts
ptn on the Ritz

itl be a wndrfl wall
itl be a wndr
fl
wall
know wall lk no other
it’ll stretch frm mra-la-go to Hawaii
the lks are fcts
the fcts are fcts are illlgl
will catch the leaks in the act
we will lock the leakers
did yu cee th boats

itl be aye wndrfl glf crs
onc we drain th swmp
itl be aye wndrfl ingration
leest rcist prsdnt
leest rapy prsdnt
bigst win snce nxn

Icn cee Russia frm my htell
chyyyyynuh
wee wtchd fndng Dori
in th mstrs chmbr
brng me th bust ov MLK
I wnt 2 electoral cllge
nd mastrd in teevee
lt us pry for Arnld
lt us pry for th opn ning bell

are you a nice reporter
are you fake negative poll
are you I assume are good people
are you perhaps I’d be dating her
are you I tried to fuck her she was married
are you my fingers are long and beautiful
are you I could shoot somebody
are you on Fifth Avenue
are you and my voters
are you wouldn’t lose any

gnrl fln wz iz a good man
nt a ft pig
he cn see th boats
r we gna tlk abt th boats

Terence Degnan is the author of Still Something Rattles (Sock Monkey Press, 2016) and The Small Plot Beside the Ventriloquist’s Grave (Sock Monkey Press, 2012). His work has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, The Other Herald, and The OWS Poetry Anthology, as well as in the anthology, My Apocalypse (Sock Monkey Press, 2012). His two spoken word albums, BC (2008) and Calling Shotgun (2010) can be found on iTunes and Spotify.

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Laura Winberry
lila grace rose

EDITOR’S NOTE:
To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we have included it as a PDF that will open in a separate tab when you click on the title below:

“lila grace rose” by Laura Winberry

Laura Winberry‘s poems have appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos and CV2. Laura is a professional cyclocross racer. She has worked on The Stay Project and other things, including legislative projects on prisoners’ rights and voter disenfranchisement. She is a promoter of platonic male love.

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