THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, ALRIGHT

by Akua Lezli Hope

Thank you for taking up the cause
for taking on bright lights and not freezing,
for seizing the issue and not flinching
and not folding, for moving through our tears
and your fears which must be there
which are there, ever present behind closed eyelids
and dreams and even waking moments
you carry them through words you must say,
you swim through that treacle that could
embalm, could preserve could choke even as it feeds
you could stay stuck and yet you gather
and you plan and yet you clear your throats and
call us to listen how even choked and choking
heartsore and stumbling you move forward
you coalesce you make arguments that cleanse
that sear that burn obfuscating debris, clear dross
of entrenched rationales of life-taking, of warped
permissions of deranged access,
don’t listen to the naysayers, don’t,
ignore their percussive braying about
what’s become reasonable, their platforms
boom loud, are hollow bleating, you inherited a world
that has made the unthinkable usual
don’t listen to them betting against you
they always bet against you when you say no
to what prevails, when your fresh eyes refuse
to see the unseeable, foreseen, predictably
tragic, decrying the inevitability of senselessness
don’t let their demeaning misnomers distract you
whose lives are on all the lines and ransomed for
profit, whose lives underwrite the very notions
that steal them. we grieve for you we grieve for you
we’ve forgotten we’ve forgotten we’ve forgotten
to think twice about it, about the shortest distance
about straight lines, so thank you for giving
us back to ourselves who called for peace
years ago, who cried for parity, who marched and
moved and were not stuck, or tired, or worn or weary
or silent, who fought for our lives, who sometimes won

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, handmade paper and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, adornments, sculpture and peace whenever possible. She has published 117 crochet designs. Her poetry collection Them Gone will be published by The Word Works Publishing in 2018.

RETURNING TO THE SCENE

by Devon Balwit

Parents and students arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Sunday for the start of what officials are calling a “phased reopening” of the school. Credit David Santiago/Miami Herald, via Associated Press and The New York Times, February 25, 2018

You know you have to go back in,
that day, still sticky and unscabbed.
The border between the past and now is thin.

Few you know have stood where you have been.
Your journal entries wander, the writing crabs;
You know you have to go back in.

You stagger in the web—the whole thing spins—
talking heads with agendas—all the blab.
The border between the past and now is thin.

You hear the pop-pop-pop, the chilling din,
the screams of those now still, on slabs.
You know you have to go back in,

your soul benthic, nothing but a fin
above the waves, a periscope, camouflaged, drab.
The border between the past and now is thin.

You enter, jaw tight, leading with your chin,
by turns belligerent and undone, seeking hands to grab.

You know you have to go back in,
though the border between the past and now is thin.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.

BIRDSONG

by Bunkong Tuon

Abby Spangler and her sixteen year-old daughter Eleanor Spangler Neuchterlein hold hands as they participate in a "lie-in" during a protest in favor of gun reform in front of the White House, Monday, Feb. 19, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) via Boston Herald.

Here, in the Northeast,
There is snow on the frozen ground.
Birds are flying from the South,
Crying madly in the mourning sky.
A man with a gun is hunting them.
The branches shake against
My bedroom window.
Their song is plaintive,
Sad, and urgent.
My glass window will shatter
If nothing is to be done.
They sing about a teacher
Crouching in the broom closet
With her high school students.
A survivor says afterward,
“First we thought it was firecrackers.
Then my friends fell down,
One by one.”
They sing about the adults
Behaving like children,
Taking no responsibility
To protect the young.
They sing about the children
Acting like adults
Marching to that great mansion,
Lying on cold concrete,
Eyes closed.  Some held hands,
Others over their chests,
As if caught dead in prayer.

Bunkong Tuon is the author of Gruel (2015) and And So I Was Blessed (2017), both poetry collections published by NYQ Books.  He's also a contributor to Cultural Weekly.

2018 LAMENT

by Kathryn Almy

Spring is running 20 days early.

It’s exactly what we expect, but it’s not good.

—The Washington Post, February 27, 2018

Please deliver us from this winter of discontent, with its frigid
squint and brimstone breath. Don’t blame February, there is no
cruelest month, only this year’s hateful season with its germ
swarms and ineffective flu shot, its too-big coat and small, grabby
hands. We did not vote for these mad swings of frost and thaw,
this bomb-cyclone of caprice. Enough with the floods and plagues
and frozen buds, the constant sneers and taunts—If you don’t like
18 degrees, how about 45? Too muddy? OK, it’s 12. Loser.

We’re so tired—more tired than from the long cold blizzards
of our youth, more anxious than in those strange warm spells
that make us worry for the north. Reduced to wishing for
a singular ordeal: If it must be bitter, could the skies at least
be clear? If there must be an early melt, could we save the rain
for later? We believe we could accept some simple difficulty—
summer’s scorch, early fall—but won’t agree which hardships
we can weather. We’d promise to repent, but who are we
kidding? Don’t let it get worse. Better yet, just make it spring.


Kathryn Almy is a Michigan writer whose work has appeared in various print and on-line publications, including The 3288 Review, City of the Big Shoulders: A Chicago Poetry Anthology, and Great Lakes Review's narrative map, and is forthcoming from The Offbeat and Star 82 Review.

TRIOLET TO A RAINMAKER

by Robert West




                                  “ . . . a society awash in gun violence . . . ”
                                                                    – Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2018


If only you could get this through your head:
   we’re drowning in a bloody flood of guns.
We need to stem the torrent, count the dead;
if only you could get that through your head.
You call for more guns, everywhere, instead.
   Who knows whose daughters might grow up, whose sons,
if only you could get it through your head
   we’re drowning in a bloody flood of guns?

Robert West lives in Starkville, Mississippi. His poems have appeared in Light, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Alabama Literary Review,  American Life in Poetry, and other venues. Co-editor with Jonathan Greene of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013), he's also the editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, published in two volumes in late 2017 by W. W. Norton.

SYRIA

by Cally Conan-Davies

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables) featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

plaster dust and blood
spattered face

strong words from diplomats
cannot touch or taste

what of us
compared to those

souls with eye-holes


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who expresses here her rage.

GOD GAVE US THE RIGHT

by Howard Winn

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables) featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

to bear arms
announces the high priest of
the Church of the Rifle
and not a mere mortal
even though the government
wrote the laws that
support the dogma of this
Faith where the AK-47
has replaced the wine
and wafer that becomes
the blood and body of
the redeemer who kills
children without a qualm
as part of the new sacrament


Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

PARADISE THEATER 1936

by Marie G. Fochios

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables") featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

Movie house where splicing comes unglued
And the malignant image
Repeats itself again and again and again
Indecent as a pistol shot penetrating,
Entering a random target.

Fumbling, he grabs the child’s hand,
Pressing down.
Only the darkness and the voices and the shadows
Conceal the agony
The hardening into a freeze frame.
Encrypted for life
Until . . .
#MeToo

Marie  G. Fochios lives in New York City and taught in the New York public school system for over 30 years. She studied poetry at The New School with Pearl London.

THE ARMED TEACHER

by Anna M. Evans

I own an arsenal of ways to think,
and choose the weapon just as I see fit.
I’m packing color markers and red ink;
my Power Points are reinforced with wit.

I used a Glock once, at a rifle range,
but, even muffled, couldn’t stand the sound.
I wasn’t a bad shot, but it was strange,
the way the target swung with every round.

Sometimes I think, what if it happened here?
I’d lock the door, of course. I know the drill.
But every day we need to fight the fear,
and fear’s not something you can shoot to kill.

So, you can keep your bullets, guns and knives.
I’m armed with words, and working to save lives.

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her new collection Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic is out now from Able Muse Press, and her sonnet collection Sisters & Courtesans is available from White Violet Press. 

TRUMPET MINISTRATIONS*

by Jennifer Davis Michael




Perhaps the application
of an ear trumpet

to amplify the cries
of a ravaged nation.

Or the sounding of a blast
heralding the doom
of democracy,
the triumph of bombast.

The ancient shofar
has yielded to tweets—
“My button is bigger”—
braying for war.

Jericho town
had beautiful walls
until Joshua bugled
and they all fell down.

John of Patmos heard seven
trumpets, unrolling
the scrolls of apocalypse,
unveiling heaven.

Our manacled minds
check Facebook and hope
for Shelleyan prophecy:
can spring be far behind?


*After mishearing the phrase “Trump administration” on the radio.

Jennifer Davis Michael is professor and chair of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, specializing in British Romanticism. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Poetry Reviw, Cumberland River Review, Literary Mama, and Mezzo Cammin, among others. She has also published a book of criticism, Blake and the City (Bucknell, 2006).

BREATHMAKER

by Jeremy Bryant

"A five-day-long bombardment by Syrian government forces is reported to have killed more than 300 civilians in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area." —BBC News, February 23, 2018

This image—girl child with blood as rouge, with liquid eyes—how?
What words? "These children are part of the human cost."
There is only this—brokenness, only an endless gloaming.
What sights in the blurry background?
A mother who was making bread when the roof fell,
a mother whose dust caked face is lined with vertical tear stripes,
a mother waiting for her child's last breath. There is only this.

Jeremy Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Bryant is a spiritual writer who often explores universal suffering. His work may be found in Pikeville Review, EAOGH, TheNewVerse.News, and Prism.

COST

by Neil Creighton

Parkland students watch as Florida legislators vote down a resolution to discuss a ban on assault weapons.

So Sam rose early, saddled his donkey,
and took his children up the mountain.
And his children said
“Where is the offering, our father,
and who is this god we praise?”
“You are the offering, my children.”
Then hail of fire descended
and bright blood flowed until all were gone.
Sam sighed, thought he would pray,
wept a little as he descended the mountain.
A congregation waited below.
“It’s hard,” he said, “so hard.
But what can we do?
We don’t wish it but we must worship.”

And the great congregation shouted “Amen”.

Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It also made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work reflects strong interest in social justice. Recent publications include Poetry Quarterly, Poeming Pigeon, Silver Birch Press, Rat's Ass Review, Praxis Mag Online, Ekphrastic Review, Social Justice Poetry, Peacock Journal, Poets Reading the News and Verse-Virtual.

A CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

by Ralph La Rosa

The evolution of revolution
is a student-led crusade,
its first and foremost resolution:
the NRA must be waylaid.


Ralph La Rosa’s work has been published online, including at TheNewVerse.News, and in the books Sonnet Stanzas and Ghost Trees.

A KEEPING PLACE

by Mark Tarren

Mungo Man returned to ancestral home where he died 40,000 years ago. Traditional owners say the return of the remains of the historic Mungo Man, who was removed by scientists from his resting place more than 40 years ago, will provide closure and is a step toward reconciliation. More than four decades ago anthropologists removed the ancient skeleton of an Aboriginal man—the discovery of which rewrote Australian history. Now he has been returned home to his descendants, travelling for days in a hearse from Canberra. —ABC News, November 17, 2017. Photo by Dean Sewell, The Guardian, November 19, 2017.

These are the winds
of Country.

That birthed fire leaf and smoke
fish, ear and bone

upon the grinding stone
sparks hooded in a eucalypt sky
the footprint of a face.

A fire of Yellow Box and peppermint
of scented leaf, sand and cloud

that carved out a timbered lake
with gentle ochre limbs

hands crossed deep across
the womb of beginning
in the wounds of Country.

These are the winds
of Mutthi Mutthi, Paakantji
Ngyiampaa

sung forever in the tears
of the tall man’s journey
to return to Country.

My white skin burns against
the red-gum casket lung

unable to remain in this life
as he wraps me to unfold me

in the ancient sands
of dunes and desert wounds

the crack, cry and howl as
my white skin dies
swept away
in the scales of shedding,

of waiting.

Come and dance across our hearts
so we can find

the first fire that remains.

Mark Tarren is a poet and writer based in Queensland, Australia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including TheNewVerse.News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press and Tuck Magazine.

SHE WAS PLEADING WITH HER EYES

by Darrell Petska

Samir Salim is a White Helmets volunteer in Syria's Eastern Ghouta. Already out on a rescue mission when another air strike hit, Samir rushed toward the smoke: a Syrian government air strike had destroyed his house. He saved his infant nephew, sister, sister-in-law and father, but he could not save his mother crushed by the ceiling. He vows to continue his work.

Save the baby, Samir.
Now, fast to the girls.
Your Papa: Take him!
His cries tear my heart.

Samir, my angel,
release my soul
from this burden of being.
Be strong, as I taught you.

I am above you, Samir.
I am all around.
Tell them we are more,
more than paltry flesh.

Inhabit their eyes, my son.
Toward life's supple altar
draw their misspent hearts.
Show them we can fly.


Darrell Petska learned of Samir Salim and his family and felt a great sadness.

VIGIL

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

The Pieta Com. by Water-Lilly-Love at Deviant Art

                your child’s body stretches out on your lap    a pietá

                 as you remove the thorned crown of thoughts and prayers

                                       blood slowly crawls down the leg of your chair

                 then drop by drop marks your vigil on the floor

                                      visitors pass           your silence answers their questions

                 the outside darkness fills the window pane

                 the Senator's secretary says

                                      i have to lock up now

                  you reply

                  i’ll be back tomorrow

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a poet, writer, and a certified spiritual director.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News.  Her first book of poetry was entitled she: robed and wordless.

HONORING THE FALLEN

by Mary Kay Schoen

At Chichen Itza the guide said the ancient
Mayans threw innocents into the cenote
human sacrifice to forestall the end of the world

In World War II young Americans
died to defeat an evil regime
human sacrifice to make the world safe

At Littleton and Sandy Hook
and the school down the street
we send in our children

innocents in the line of fire
to defend the rights of congressmen
to finance reelection to defend the rights

of the folks who want assault rifles handy
in case the US Armed Forces are insufficient
or a deer might bound away

Shall Congress not hand out thanks
and Gold Stars to all the grieving parents
whose children gave their lives

to keep safe those seats on Capitol Hill?

Mary Kay Schoen is a Virginia writer whose feature stories have appeared in The Washington Post and association publications. Her poetry can be found in Persimmon Tree, America, and an anthology of Southwestern poetry from Dos Gatos Press. She spends too much time reading the newspaper.

THEY AREN'T JUST TAKING SELFIES

by Tricia Knoll

Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'. CLICK HERE to see her dramatic speech via CNN.

having sex before graduation,
or trying pot before sloe gin.

They volunteer, ride horseback
to halt pipelines, engage

with hip hop, rockers and rappers
to say words that need saying,

march in Washington and our city,
enlist, vote, call for police accountability,

and want citizenship for DACA immigrants.
Teenagers and twenty-somethings

see a world every day on their phones
where shooters slaughter friends

in school because there is no will
to ban assault weapons and control guns.

They know shots crack living room windows
on residential streets, that gangs fight useless

wars. When young people knew rightness
of the opportunity for gay marriage,

the nation swayed and so did judges.
They are screaming for gun control

and the right to sit in school
and learn without fear

with no more brush-off praying
for teachers and families

until something is done.
Yell with them.

We need them
to know we’re with them.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has signed petitions for gun control for more than forty years. "We are children" say the survivors in Parkland. Do we need to hear more? She doesn't. She is tired of the empty rhetoric of pray for the families and do nothing to stop gun lobby money in Washington. Her book How I Learned to Be White is coming out from Antrim House in 2018.

DRIVING ALL NIGHT IN THE RED STATES

by David Tucker

Graphic from The Georgetown

I will drive all night in the Red States
I will take backroads through towns with one traffic light.
I will shop at gunshows that stay open late,
their windows festooned with assault rifles
at discounts that will make me weep.
I will make my peace with Jesus billboards
that glow from hilltops and welcome signs decorated
with bullet holes. I will make no comments
on the sexual confusion
of flag-emblazoned pickups, the twinkle
of their gun racks. I will give in
to the longing of satellite dishes as they turn
to early bird jewelry sales at four in the morning.
I will marry a trailer park beauty
who sits in a lawn chair beside a road, winding
pink curlers into her hair, I will slouch
in a lawn chair beside her, smoking Camels
as the sun comes up. I will reject national healthcare
and Islam, I will ban homosexuals and burn newspapers,
I will denounce foreign nations, ambitious women
and abortion, I will ignore the jails overflowing
I will oppose food stamps and Spanish,
I will wave to everyone who passes
glad to see them,  glad to see them go.

David Tucker’s book Late for Work won the Bakeless Poetry Prize, selected by Philip Levine, and was published by Houghton Mifflin. He also won a Slapering Hol Press national chapbook contest for Days When Nothing Happens and was awarded a Witter Bynner Fellowship by the Library of Congress. A career journalist, he supervised and edited two Pulitzer Prize winners for The Star-Ledger newspaper.

THRESHOLD

by Scott Bade

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is all
of them aligned in their identity a row
of matching matches each one the source
of course of course to the extinguishing
moment that follows a spectacle of what
we have to believe about what we can’t
believe. I’m not shaking anymore, neither
am I feeling much beyond the growl of dog
fattened on tables scraps lounging next to
the fire as someone pounds on the front
door their urgency their hands their rapid
fire knocking their pulling and pushing
and twisting the door handle it will not
give it won’t turn and then the turning
to living room window peering through
frantic hands binocularing now a palm
flat slapping window all heat red as you
guessed it a rose blooming in palm’s lined
lives & the dog’s ears inside perking
as the flames spread from room to room

Scott Bade earned his Ph.D. in creative writing at Western Michigan University (WMU). In addition to teaching at Kalamazoo College and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Scott is also the coordinator of the WMU Center for the Humanities. He is a former poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine and editorial assistant at New Issues Press. His poems have appeared in Fugue, Shadowgraph, H_NGM_N, Foothill and elsewhere.