Holly Burdorff
What Iz Politix?

A plump red strawberry resting lightly on my lips
: iz this politix?
Me to students, saying (I am afraid of this President)
: iz that one politix? Two?
How so when my yawning womb’s up for grabz?
How so when I, when I last moved
from one greengrass to another greengrass
in this country, I gave up many rights
and human comforts:
(not enough docs for your partz in these partz)
(ok)
(also keep your mouth shut ‘n’ your knees too)
(ok).
And why iz my pussy always politix.
Never the men with the cocks.
Always seemed politix was: allocate reve-
nue incentivize (this way!) (no
this way!) et cetera blah blah,
NOT (spray the rivers with oil) (fuck the poor)
(shake DC haphazzo till it vomitz fascism).
To say NO to this iz, suddenly, politix.
None of this was politix for a really long time:
some thingz were just rights,
other thingz were just wrongs.
Lately I’m looking for our line
in the sand but the sand
iz full of head-shaped holes.
BREAKING: Facts are now a politix.
My x’s and z’s are here to make a why.
Addendum, my heart iz BREAKING.
Addendum, nothing stranger than a heart.

Holly Burdorff‘s work appears in recent or forthcoming issues of Quarterly West, Duende, and The Common. She is a VIDA volunteer and recently served as art & design editor for volume 43 of Black Warrior Review.

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Mary B. Moore
At the American Café, Fall 2016

I idolize our waitress
who witnesses it all
but asks anyway for orders
under the clouds redolent
with the unwept I meant
to speak but can’t.
The downtown bus
sighs open as she turns away,
and bearded man steps down.
Fatigued, bereted, he’s
stink and roll-eye,
and speaks in tongues,
and arms up, handles
the snakes of air.
Cameras like cyclopses
eye him, perched
on light poles.
They phone us in on film.
But she whose fan I am––
Demeter Hera Diane––
brings me wine, pink
like optimism’s lens.
Eye of the Swan,
it’s called, a poeticism
no doubt. I’d be kind
as Diane to canny man
if only stink were not his aura.
I raise my glass to him
and blink. The camera doesn’t.

Mary B. Moore is the author of Flicker (Broadkill River Press, 2016), winner of the Dogfish Head Poetry Award; the chapbook Eating the Light (Sable Books, 2016 ); and the poetry collection The Book of Snow (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1998). New  poems are forthcoming in the Georgia Review, Poem/Memoir/Story, Unsplendid, Still the Journal, and the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia (Vandalia Press, 2017). She is professor emerita of poetry and Renaissance literature at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

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Gregory Luce
Bricks

Oh to be 18 again
and with a supply of bricks
so many windows
reflecting the glare
of that sick orange
sun if I can’t pull
clouds across them
then even double glazing
won’t be enough
to mute the sweet
music of shattering
glass.

Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications, 2010), Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013), and Tile (Finishing Line, 2016). His poems have appeared in numerous journals and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press, 2008), Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing, 2011), and Unrequited (CreateSpace 2016) and Candlesticks and Daggers (CreateSpace, 2016). Retired from the National Geographic Society, he lives in Arlington, VA. and works as an instructor for Writopia Lab.

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Noah Stetzer
Overheard

It’s okay because I exaggerate
too and say things that I don’t mean, I joke
all the time and it doesn’t mean a thing

I mean most of what I say, I mean you
can take me at my word, cause honesty
you know I mean is what’s been missing all

along and joking’s just for laughs I mean
there’s no harm or nothing I mean a joke’s
a joke because it’s true but when I joke

I mean it’s just to make you laugh, we’re all
friends here of course and all in on the joke
I mean funny is funny and if you

laugh well then I guess we’re good—so see he’s
just like me and there’s nothing wrong with me.

Noah Stetzer is the author of Because I Can See Needing a Knife (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). His work has appeared in various journals including Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod, Green Mountains Review, Chelsea Street Station, and as part of the HIV Here & Now project. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Noah now lives in the Washington, DC area and can be found online at noahstetzer.com.

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Kristin Davis
Red not pink

is a hand print on skin
I’ll give you something to cry about!
I learn to be cheerful
and compliant,

a capillary that rives in my eyes
you’re overreacting
I hold my breath
instead of speaking,

a bitten lip that twitches
your ass is hot in those pants
I pick up the pace
dress differently next time,

a flush that rises on my neck
I know you’re in there!
I tense behind a door
to deny consent,

skin that swells around each little wound
does your husband know
you’re driving the good car?!
insult subordinate to a good laugh.

It is the color of negative ink
eighty cents on the dollar
being spoken over
and overlooked,

the color of heart
just what is it you do all day?
quiet care and keep
noticed when absent,

the color of blood
coming out of her wherever
of indignity, of solidarity
of the shirt I wore yesterday.

Kristin Davis marks her first poetry publication with this poem. In her former life as a journalist she has published a book and hundreds of magazine articles in financial and popular media.

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Arjun Rajendran
Painless

I fill out forms. The cabin crew walks down aisles serving
one final round of anti-depressants.

We’ve entered the airspace of a country dangerously low
on the Happiness Index.

If you’re normal, you get to take one pill.
If you’re like me, someone whose legs haven’t stopped trembling

in over a decade,

you get a hug and syrup— just so you don’t start sobbing
soon as the plane touches down.

An officer examines my documents, checks the validity
of my suicide-prevention kit against a database.

Everyone bids for deals on euthanasia these days. The most popular
ones come with wifi, and are advertised as being painless;

though you who left me widowed should know there’s no such thing.

But I hear more than jet lag: my neighbor, punctually up
at 3 am with a noose, and her will, always unraveled

by the Dalmatian’s barks.

Arjun Rajendran‘s second collection of poems, The Cosmonaut in Hergé’s Rocket, is forthcoming from Paperwall Publications in April 2017. His poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, Berfrois, Caesura, Star*Line and The Bombay Literary Magazine, among others. Anthologies include Eclectica Magazine’s Best of Poetry (Eclectica Publishing, 2016), and 40 Under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalization Poetry.(Paperwall Media, 2016).

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Suzanne Osborne
ABCs of Politics

Accountability is this year’s prime
Buzz word, but by what hopeful
Calculus does that
Denote any serious, public
Engagement with truth-telling?
Facts are thin on the
Ground, pointed questions elicit
Harrumphs that anyone can
Interpret any old way, making a
Joke of the whole effort to
Know who did what when, or to
Link personal gain to professional
Misdeeds. Was a donor’s son given a
No-show job? Oh, no, he was seen in the
Office on June 3rd for at least 20 minutes.
Public trust, never robust, has perished.
Questionable deals are swept under the
Rug, wrongdoing denied with a
Smirk. Caught with your hand in the
Till? No prob, just say you’re checking
Up on the accountants, no need to
Verify further, my friends,
Wink, wink. The peasants don’t need
X-ray vision to see the pols partying on their
Yachts. It’s clear the chances for change are
Zero.

Suzanne Osborne‘s work has appeared most recently in Front Range Review, District Lit, and The Healing Muse. After an early career in theater, a stint in academia, and many years as a legal secretary, she now lives in Queens and write poetry.

James Dott
Advice for the President—So Far Unheeded

—A cento, gleaned from Muhammad Ali, Proverbs (paraphrased), and Buddha

Don’t count the days; make the days count.
Incline your ear to toward wisdom and apply your heart to understanding.
The mind is everything. What you think you become.

The righteous considers the cause of the poor, but the wicked gives no thought to it.
Service to others is the rent you pay for your time here on earth.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.
Do not envy the oppressor, and do not choose his ways.
You will not be punished for your anger,…

A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger
…you will be punished by your anger.
It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.

Do not let mercy and truth forsake you.
It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand.
Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

James (Jim) Dott is a the author of A Glossary of Memory, an imagined memoir in poems. His poetry has appeared in Written River, Turtle Island Quarterly, Green Linden, Southern Poetry Review, Squid, and Rain. Visit his website jamesdott.com for more on his work. Jim is a retired elementary school teacher living in Astoria, Oregon. He taught in Oregon and overseas.

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Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Strigidae

…the nights were soft / With owls
—Robert Hass

With what inner need do we forget
the hawk-beak, meat-hunger
of a reclusive rusty lover?
Why favor instead the seductive
call, the whoo and oooh of owl hymn,
the logic of silent flight and heavy
feather? Why delight in fixed hoop-eye
and swivel gaze or embrace a cartoon
torso and forget the rip and wrest,
the chipmunk swallowed whole, reduced
to pellets? How to condone a bleak essence,
the skill in every talon, slashing?

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks. For more about her work, check her website at wendytaylorcarlisle.com.

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Journey McAndrews
Ever worry when

We hang the petty thieves
and appoint the great ones to public office.
—Aesop

walking alone down a dark street/jacked up for wallet/cellphone/sneaks/by a sex-hungry consumer/obscured in shadows/getting a taste of it all

having is all there is in a world they packaged/we bought

rollbacks and mega sales/black Friday specials/wants and wishlists/.com mania/consumes consumers/even though we know/big screen fairy tales aren’t true/electronic static comes at a cost/replacements plentiful/like primetime stars/pilots become sitcoms/cookie-cutter homes/like gee-golly gosh-darn good white Christian missionary position moms and dads and their biological only/no adoptees or Franken-test tube petri-dish kids/allowed

disavowed/excluded/polluted/throw-away/giveaway/free to the first caller/t-shirt/ball-cap/swag bag society

landfills full of crap we the people bought/can’t be buried/the sea inherits it one broken G.I. Joe and strung-out Barbie/toothbrush/hypodermic needle at a time

there aren’t enough hours to check off/check out/jack off/jack out/emails/ texts/newsfeeds/to do-lists/sidetracked at every turn/slip-jacked by tweenage Kellyanne/fabricated a massacre/Sean screams at the masses/to be see-seen-scene/dad has a case of the Twitters/to twist-bend truths/mom locked away in the gilded Tower/wearing the latest fast facts fashion/news-noose/today’s this just in/tomorrow’s cloak and chokehold/Goodwill cast of/like a good neighbor/state and Big Pharma is there

money is fleeced off the sick/needy/Epi-penned into the poor-house/the best nation in the world/In Living Color/is “a donation” of we the people/our blood/semen/piss/talent/money/truth/time

exorbitant donations to super PACs/wasting time isn’t all there is/forty-to-fifty years of life/grinded on corporate gristmills/enslaved by financial tycoons/they get the dollars we keep the cents/make sense of it all/go on just try

alternative reality/a nightmare sold as the American Dream/topsy-turvy/round the traditional marry-Mary-merry-go-round/contorted into an Amerikan scream/while fish/sunsets/sand/mountains/snow/redwoods live without 9-to-5 schedules/what a way to fake a living/that morphed into 24/7 work-a-day/workaholic lives for blue/white/pink collar/we the people who keep the country running/well/oil/machines

seven days a week not enough anymore/nothing is enough even with BOGO’s/All-you-can-eat/2 for 1/Buy 2 Get 1/rebates/% off/nickel-and-dimed/morning-noon-night/all the days of our lives

going off grid/off trail/off track/something we the people dream about while chained to our desks/on the go/on the ball/on the clock/on the mark/on the hook

they manipulate line and sinker/swallowed/every time another breaking/our hearts/news “story” [cums] spurting into our living rooms/terror in the palm of hands/held device/detonating every second/frightening/keep the masses afraid/react in fear/with fear/don’t ask don’t tell/caught between repeal/repent/rescind

equality is given a hand job by politicians/cum-coming to a con-sensus/ eliminates queer/black/women/Hispanic/trans/children/they are only concerned with unborn children/they always say consider the children/the eight-year-old girl who might be in a stall next to a trans-woman/never mind that the girl and trans-woman just need to/piss and get off the pot

where a gal or guy takes a piss in the good ol’ U.S. of anti-gay/moral majority cause for concern but not when a white frat boy rapes a girl behind a dumpster/pissing on her future/in this lurid PTSD/make-Amerika-rape/hate again nation

we the people conditioned to ask not what our country can do for us but what we are willing to suck-suck/chug-chug/swallow from our country

news doesn’t broadcast real stories/loop-recycle/deluge of shit/strain/ constipated by lies/in a civil lies nation/built by immigrants they want to boot/axe/let’s talk about real fear/terrorism/actual issues melting/floating away/like polar ice caps/we the people/distracted/detracted

they want us to obsess over trannies in bathrooms/email scandals/take the key and lock her up/lock her up/what we the people talk about over our take-out family-size bucket dinners/buy the bucket then kick it/that’s the Amerikan way/while the government is dismantled/hostile takeover of truth-liberty-freedom-justice

they chide when questioned or challenged/manufacture dissonance/plant seeds of suspicion/grow scandals/pull hoods down over our heads/so we the people won’t see the real executioner’s face

Journey McAndrews‘s poems and essays have appeared in The Feminist Wire, Kudzu Literary Magazine, Motif, LILOPOH, New Verse News, Inscape, and the HIV Here & Now Project, among others. She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction with a minor in Poetry from Spalding University. McAndrews received an Individual Artist Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and an AWP Writer-to-Writer Mentorship. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her two rescued cats—Catticus Finch and Boo Catley.

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