Pandemic of Violence Anthology II – Poets Speak

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© remains with contributing Poets

Photographs © Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

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Thanks to all the poets who contributed to Pandemic of Violence Anthology II – Poets Speak  from North of Oxford. In order of appearance we present TS Hawkins, Charles Rammelkamp, Dee Allen, Mike Reis, Bruce Deemer, Kyle Toon, George McDermott, Lois Perch Villemaire, Alan Catlin, Megha Sood, Tony Dawson, Robert Cooperman, Roger G. Singer, Greg Bem, John D. Robinson, Patricia Carragon, Louis Faber, Henry Crawford, Michael Todd Steffen, Mary McCarthy, and M. J. Arcangelini

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Introduction

Violence of humanity has been with us since mythology came into existence. The myth of Cain and Abel, documents the first homicide; domestic abuse; jealousy of power, all of which continue today. Slavery, wars over land, homicides, and violence in cities and countryside’s have all been common occurrences throughout history. Wars over doctrine; religion; power; fascists; racists; monarchs; autocrats all opposed to freedom of will for people have been collected into the history of every nation and continent where, man has resided. School violence in North America can be traced to 1764. So where are we in 2022?

The poets speak in this anthology of war; racial division; lack of equity; of school violence; of domestic violence; of child abuse; the need for gun control, of violence in the streets. In some small way the editors are hopeful the words of the poets will cast light upon the darkness; make us better people; light a spark to cause humanity to begin to mature; cast the past away; end the violence that plagues our people. A tall order for a small online anthology, but the change has to start somewhere, a beginning possibly to ending thousands of years of humanities abuse of humanity.

g emil reutter

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we be peaches by TS Hawkins

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we be

we be soil

we be root

& we land at the bottom of humanity’s consciousness

yet, we be fruit

shouldering the nourishment of society

the world’s meaty moral compromise

still,

we be peaches

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we be

we be stars

we be bright

dimmed by perspective

we be unseen

blinded by the galaxy of noise

still, we be vast

we be dense

yet, watered down by milky ways

we be whitewashed

& hung in murky shadows

and,

we be beamin’ — despite

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we be

we be magic

from words,

to prayers,

then spells,

& incantations

we be lexicon

lingual rubric of mass destruction

we be silenced

yet, vibrate in fricative fury

summoning melaninated majesty

we be conjurin’ — despite

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we be

we be sound

we be electric boom

muted in alabastrine dissonance

we be music

we be rock

and roll

and rap

and soul

and rhythm

and blues

and funk

and pop

and classical

we be country folx

and bluegrass gospel

and indie

and jazz;

ambient, drumming, and proud

we be world — despite

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we be

we be ingredients

we be phalanges, tenderness, & botanicals

the anise

hyssop

jasmine

rose

sage

meadowsweet

sassafras

& soul salves

tossed, smashed, and shaken

we be ancestral

flavoring memory & survival in a tapestry of staples

we be displaced by banal palates

that xerox cuisines only nana’s palms can reproduce

we be blanched

yet, finding ways to simmer

and manifest,

and marinade to glaze future forward

we be recipe — despite

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we be

we be transcendent

we be optical particles

of daybreak & dark showers

fragmented watts cemented in yesteryears of lux

we be targets

infrared beings aiming solely for glory

we be in crosshairs

plucked for the picking

for just existing

we be luminous — despite

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we be

we be soil

we be root

& we land at the bottom of humanity’s consciousness

yet, we be fruit

the devil’s punchbowl across the globe

shouldering the nourishment of society

the world’s meaty moral compromise

and still,

we be

we be peaches

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TS HAWKINS is an international author, performance poet, art activist, playwright, and member of the Dramatists Guild. Plays, short works, and books include Seeking Silence, sweet bread peaches (formerly, Cartons of Ultrasounds), Too Late to Apologize, In Their Silence (formerly, They’ll Neglect to Tell You), #RM2B, The Secret Life of Wonder: a prologue in G, AGAIN, #SuiteReality, “don’t wanna dance with ghosts…”, Sugar Lumps & Black Eye Blues, Confectionately Yours, Mahogany Nectar, Lil Blaek Book: all the long stories short, and The Hotel Haikus. Ongoing projects: TrailOff and Community Capital: an Afrofuturism South Philly Walking Experience. TS HAWKINS

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Virgins and Pride by Charles Rammelkamp

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The Higgins kid came to school

with a gun hidden in his jacket

like a smuggled pet animal,

stood up during an English lit. discussion

of satire and irony,

started shooting his classmates

like targets at a carnival booth.

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He popped Brian Eastman,

sitting like a sultan

behind his student’s desk,

two holes in his chest.

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Only the day before,

a harem of girls

swarming about him

in the cafeteria,

Eastman scorned Higgins

with a playground bully’s taunts.

“You ain’t had pussy

since pussy had you.”

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The girls’ tittering rang

a greater humiliation

than Eastman’s words.

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The look of terror in Eastman’s eyes

just before Higgins shot

erased the pain of his disgrace,

sure as pulling the plug on a computer.

Nothing left to do

but turn the gun on himself.

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Charles Rammelkamp’s latest poetry collection, The Field of Happiness, has just been published by Kelsay Books. Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip and The Compulsive Reader.

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Boneyard by Dee Allen

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Shovel the earth &

shovel it deep

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Lower into the sepulchre

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Surround the burrowed

Space w/ lilacs & eulogies—

Family tears

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Seal up the earth again

for a child had been

consigned to rest here

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For another child

embittered

had shown him his most

glorified toy from youth

his lifelong phobia:

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The receiving end of a

pistol. The known face of doom.

Locked. Loaded. Blown.

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Hate-crimes—engaging in war

head-on pale in comparison

to what keeps the silent bosom of the

Boneyard full w/

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                            Fleeting

                                         time

                            Fleeting

                                          shots

                                                    in

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Places to learn

Places to play—High-risk

High-calibre consecration

Blasting away the future

to bleached bone.

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African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 7 books—Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black [ all from POOR Press ], Elohi Unitsi [ Conviction 2 Change Publishing ] and his 2 newest, Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate [ Vagabond Books ] and Plans [ Nomadic Press ]–and 56 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far.

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For George: Evenight by Mike Reis

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Ascending screaming from vicious knee,

How can your tongued flame

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Reckon in the shelters of chagrin,

Enkindle from glass-sharp asphalt,

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Open us like fire

Set to long-stunted flowers,

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Like new chalk scribing

Change-colored murals over rueful brick,

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Word-wielded pain, word-wielded evenight

Keened to a quickening?

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Mike Reis is a writer and environmental historian with poems published in North of Oxford, Gargoyle, Lucille, Urthkin, The Archer, Laughing Bear, The Galway Review, Grand Little Things, Crossways, The Broadkill Review, The Raven’s Perch, Amelia, and Northern New England Review.

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Snow White by Bruce Demmer

Isaiah 1;18-20

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No report I’ve read

said if parents of these dead

children own such guns

as slaughtered their sons

and daughters, the cross hairs’ cross

pinpointing our loss.

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Would those parents’ guts get wrenched

seeing what these weapons did

to their kid,

skid off course, or dig in, grow entrenched,

like those who’ve attacked

as faked news, as made-up fact

the floods that have drenched

schools, neighborhoods with a sense

of targeted innocence?

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Our divided quarrel states

no peaceful debates;

Guns – fewer or more –

threatens a lopsided civil war,

treads on mass murder at worst,

both our houses cursed.

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As if in Nature’s inverse,

a cold-blooded, social climate change

grows increasingly chilling,

with each new killing;

persuasions seen as perverse

threaten to derange,

make the world turn strange.

Bodies shot to shreds

choke our minds and heads,

compounded by the set, shoddy rounds

shot as biting sounds

rendering thoughts and prayers

a cauldron for 2-tongued soothsayers

and ambitions without bounds.

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Are we bewitched by power

only to be pawns

when the sun’s reddened eye dawns,

wakes us to cower

at bad dreams that wet our bed

with bloody slaughter,

accumulate just like lead

in our streams and ground water?

Good days or bad days,

some part of this always weighs.

No little cat Z will wash it white.

Like Lady McB,

all the game shows on TV

will not bring peace, the price never right.

No kiss-it-and-make-it-better prince arrives

as the maddened make-believer thrives.

Is Reality’s new Rule:

bring poisoned apples to school?

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A rising, thick flood

fattened with lambs’ blood

makes words float and bob as civilization’s debris:

 those I try to assemble

make my gorge tremble.

There’s no strong, safe branch on reason’s tree

to climb above our heavy, heavier tread

into a deepening, sticky dread.

Bearing arms does not leave our arms free,

leaves us grasping for purpose,

gasping to surface,

all exhaled breaths

failed, wasted, when the last word is death’s.

I keep tasting lead;

I keep seeing red.

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For Columbine, Sandy Hook, the Mennonite school children, Ukraine and Uvalde, etc., etc. etc….

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B. H. Deemer is the author of two self-published books of poems.  He has retired to the shore of Lake Huron

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Real War Crimes by Kyle Toon

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It’s becoming harder to breathe

as nation-states and collective

governments contest to seize,

control, and obliterate

civilization at a swift speed

anxiousness ensues as the

military siege feeds off the

wounded—bleeding from their

hands to their feet, desperate

for upside and reconciliation

amid irrevocable catastrophe

the air is thinly filled with

toxins and pollutants that

can asphyxiate those involuntary

in the crosshairs seeking

refuge and personal safety

open doors. closed doors—

The disguise of an open border—relegated

inhabitants organized by

race, gender, and class

while in the backdrop

the cries of agony,

grief, and bereavement

permeates and settles

as normal ambient background noise

the curtains are wide open

and the luminous light

of socio-racial strife shines

bright—the scope of perspective

is sharpened and focused

giving the observers of the world

a front and centered view of what

moral insensibility looks and feels like

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Kyle is a voracious reader of all books on black history, poetry, significant experiences depicting racial inequities, and social justice issues. Currently, he is reading The Destruction of Black Civilization by Chancellor Williams and just finished The First Black Slave Society by Hillary Beckles, and The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday. He is hugely supportive of mindfulness meditation techniques for emotional and cognitive regulation and a steadfast advocate for seeking mental health services. Kyle is a member of the UNIA-ACL (Atlanta chapter), CBPM, and the I Love Black People movement.

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Parallax by George McDermott

From Parkland to Tallahassee

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These students drove six-and-a-half hours

from their blood-soaked school to the capital

to beg the bloodless officials for help—

the sanctimonious guardians

of grunting, wheezing privilege,

the elders who brush children aside.

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These students were taught they hold the future:

their duty, they learned, is to shape the world.

But then came the shots, the shouts, the screams,

and then they were running away from their school,

the air corrupted with misplaced odors—

smoke and ozone, blood and vomit.

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They remember a trick from when they were little:

            by reaching out and squinting one eye,

they could block the sun with the tip of a thumb.

Or erase a looming obstacle.

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They’re looking now at the capitol buildings—

raising their fists, extending their thumbs,

blinking one eye and then the other.

The buildings remain.

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They blink again and wonder if maybe

they’re the ones who disappear.

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George McDermott is a Philadelphia poet who lives in Florida (that’s not impossible, not even particularly uncommon). He’s also been an English teacher, a speechwriter, and a screenwriter (those roles are not mutually exclusive, not even especially different). His chapbook, Pictures, Some of Them Moving, was a winner of the Moonstone Chapbook Award, and his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Painted Bride Quarterly, Fox Chase Review, Notre Dame Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Chicago Quarterly Review.

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Two Poems by Lois Perch Villemaire

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Such a Beautiful Day

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Local leaders speak into microphones and say

“It was such a beautiful day”

like terrible things should not happen

when the springtime sky is sunny and blue

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A teenager drove from the other side

of New York State to Buffalo

posted words of hate in a manifesto

fully armed wearing tactical gear

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He came to kill innocent people shopping

to buy bread or whatever they needed

for the week never imagining this ugly display

on this Saturday —such a beautiful day

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He didn’t wait to enter Tops Market

started shooting unsuspecting women and men

in the parking lot leaving a trail of death

he confronted and shot the security guard

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Police quickly appeared on the scene

he still had time to kill 10 on such a beautiful day

all shot with an assault weapon they lay

before he gave himself up falling to his knees

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His motivation was called “pure evil”

setting out to murder based on race

in a close knit African-American community

this killer had carefully pre-planned the place

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It’s happening too often in cities and small towns

We can’t tolerate mass shootings anymore

ending lives as they go to school or shop at the grocery store

innocently making their way on such a beautiful day.

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Close the Skies

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We watch as history

unfolds on CNN

a leader looming

on the screen addresses

a silent reverent US Congress

this modern day hero

young, strong, unafraid

grateful for

overwhelming support

needs more for

the survival of his people

forced to leave their

destroyed homes

some remain to defend

freedom of their land.

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Voice of the translator

sounds out of place but

words are true and honest

“Close the skies”

This man, this warrior

appeals to leaders of

our country to save lives.

He asks them to recall

            the horror of Pearl Harbor

He asks them to recall

            the destruction of 9/11

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A video reflects suffering

of his people, his children,

his eyes are steady

on the rest of the world

asking for compassion

asking for everything.

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Lois Perch Villemaire resides in Annapolis, MD . Her prose and poetry have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies such as Ekphrastic Review, Flora Fiction, and One Art: A Journal of Poetry. Lois was a finalist in the 2021 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. She enjoys yoga practice, amateur photography, and raising African violets.

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Alan Catlin

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I remember

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standing behind

the bar at work

TV tuned to CNN,

sound that can’t be

adjusted turned all

the way to loud whisper

watching the kids

from Columbine

hands clasped on

their heads

running for their lives

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I’m in shock

in tears and the night

waitress, a college kid,

 asks me,

“What’s wrong?”

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I tell her that

someone is shooting

high school kids

The ones you are seeing

are the ones that made it

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We stand there,

silently watching

a sequence that seems

stuck in an endlessly

repeating loop,

crying

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Who knew this was

only the beginning?

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Alan Catlin is the father of two teachers and the grandfather of four school age grandchildren.

He is the poetry and reviews editor of misfitmagazine.net Home Page

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The Revolving Door by Megha Sood

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I start the radio first thing in the morning

blaring noises, starving children screaming

dying in the refugee camps

a place for refuge,

a place for solace

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A diffused IED unexpectedly

goes off in some part of the world

abruptly ending the dreams

of a 5-year-old

on the way to eat his favorite bread

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The movement is on the rise

the streets are jam-packed

my heart is emboldened with grief

and the eyes have run dry

another day,

another set of fliers,

and another hashtag trending

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But this incessant fear of endlessly trying

like a hamster on the wheel

succumbed to this voiceless din

with no destination in sight

a blob in the pool of

faceless charades

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I drag myself sluggishly

to my office building

waiting at the entrance

of this giant rotating door

to start its next turn.

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Megha Sood is an Award-winning Asian American Poet, Editor, Author, and Literary Activist from New Jersey, USA. Recipient of 2021 Poet Fellowship from MVICW (Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creating Writing) and National Level Winner for the 2020 Poetry Matters Project. Poetry Editor Literary Journals Mookychick(UK), Life and Legends (USA), and Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, Stanford University. Author of Chapbook (“My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress, 2022). She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/  and tweets at @meghasood16.

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Two Poems by Tony Dawson

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Screenshot

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Children are screaming, their mothers are weeping

as they pick their way slowly over the rubble

of what used to be Mariupol.

Unburdened by luggage but weighed down with anxiety,

they scramble to safety

through streets strewn with sadness.

Hemmed in by havoc, pale faces, red-eyed with tears,

transmit their fears to us,

safe at home watching the news.

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Picture Post…Mortem

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Watching reports of the war on TV,

viewers are horror-struck to see

a frantic mother, howling in despair

while a pair of paramedics try to save

the life of her shrapnel-wounded baby.

Maybe, just maybe they can… but they can’t.

The maternity hospital was not bombed in error,

it was a deliberate act of Russian terror.

Next, the camera shows another young mother,

face blank, hair lank, flopped on the floor

of a hospital corridor.

She’s clutching her child that survived the air raid.

Stunned, in shock, she’s silently crying

because her other two children

are presently lying dead in their beds.

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Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. His writing has appeared in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Poems-for-All, Chiron Review, and Pure Slush, as well as online at Loch Raven Review, London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, Beatnik Cowboy, Retreats from Oblivion, and Home Planet News, (in the latter case in both Spanish and English).

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The Great God AK-15 Speaks by Robert Cooperman

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In the beginning was the blunderbuss,

slow and inaccurate as a drunken mosquito;

then flintlocks, less cumbersome,

but still not the speed of a good bowman:

Red Coats lucky, and alive, to prime and fire

three rounds a minute.  Only two?  They died.

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But with the repeater, the six-shooter,

my power started to flex and grow, though

it took the Gatling, the Tommy, the galloping

Apocalyptic Horseman of the machine gun

for men to realize the gun was God.

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But it wasn’t until my divine birth

that I was worshipped: men enraptured

to give my trigger the merest flick,

so I’d preach I sacred tongues.

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You accuse I tempt madmen

to murder innocents for no reason

except that it’s far too easy to obtain me

along with enough rounds to obliterate

a whole elementary school.

But is anyone, no matter how young,

really innocent?

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Men tremble in ecstasy, to be conduits

of my righteous power: a million holy volts

coursing through their trigger fingers:

better than sex, than fentanyl,

they beg to be my slaves.

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Robert Cooperman’s latest collection is GO PLAY OUTSIDE (Apprentice House).  Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A NIGHTMARE ON HORSEBACK

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Sharp Corners by Roger G. Singer

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I hear the

drowning in my head

where turbulent waters

behind the eyes

swell and wane

coursing to the sides

with pain pressing

against judgements

serving proof of

a prisoner locked

within the gray lines

without a key

as the story is

replayed between

the walls

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Roger G. Singer lives in Florida and is Poet Laureate Emeritus Connecticut Coalition of Poets Laureate

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Figures by Greg Bem 

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1: Musing

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The crack is the rupture inside. The lines form crooked to the horizontal. Dreams are beautiful and chaotic. The hands are enflamed and jagged. Winged fingers. Ruptured bubbles within microscopic crevasse. Moonlit airplane sinking across to escape. And the wizards wait. And the witches choke on cackle. On highway alert, rumble of fiction. Imagine just out of  sight of the interstate.

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Imagine that and I am coughing through peace. Diadem of karmic gesture. The completed jester’s smile. Home again, a safety net, a safer Net, an etiquette to bind them, and in their hearts the binding is glowing and growing. It can’t be stopped. It can’t be. We will be consumed, dwarfed by replay, the result, the reverb. We will be consumed, con, a con, the Mac Low Eon instance.

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Just in time: justice, in time as I write this, right this.

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2: Them

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The Drone Women

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Less about the human than the carriage. Carrying age, carrying life of our age.

This is the speech with which we birth, circuit blood and broken spines, slippage.

And the meander through a pit-scape of ohs and ones, what’s it even say?

What’s even it mean? Hallmark of the creators, the robot pleasantly demonic,

blue eyes gazing into my abyss, of limited possibility, and we’re all attached to hip,

we’re all diming our way through time’s latest, the “say” of sooth and the errs of our ways.

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The Ghost Knight 

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Herald of mist and slew, slough and what’s missed, what’s been missing, really,

what have we been dreading with the lengthening of days, more of an exposure, really,

the lines getting longer, the lies playing out louder, liars challenging sour,

and I am a pondering being, slipping in and out of the purvey, the periphery,

the puff puff bliss of history, and the wash is a light, cloudy blue, cloudy eyes,

mistakenly foggy, but the devil is in the details, where we get lost and stand, violently, still.

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The Radioactive Man

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At the poet’s keep, a book with a cover with two beings lacking faces,

south lake where we go to find the canny connections, a canopy for hummingbirds

and cobwebs, a place lightly lit by a mooted sun, muted, mutant, mutate,

and the ochre suit matches the ochreish face, also blank, I spun it around, I hid it,

I’m ogrish, malevolent benefactor, the sinners in my hands, my anger disruptive.

The thin, black gun represents vacuums and the vacuous, pushing and pulling at once.

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The Samurai 

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It is the katana that forms, thin slice of whole, slice of thought, sliced, rotted, at once.

An earlier memory where I’m passing aisles of filthy books, thinking perhaps I’m rotten.

And perhaps it’s a ronin, masterless, dead masters on thinly sliced floors, clean,

corners and ridges, etches, meaty palaces, thin slip of rounded beam, wood like bone, bracing

heavens, passage towards made by body’s breath, an elegance unlike the Maoist quote on a Samurai website, where have I gotten, found myself, in this lossless space, wilderness, kempt and upkept.

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The Recidivist

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Inching forward into the depths, memory comes to light after 12 years of entombment:

the Waldrops, loving Gizzi, loved the New Depths of Deadpan, and how could you not!

Knotted in the world, Ezmeralda and Bogota one moment, Aleksi Perälä and Lahti the next,

I dream in poetry that knots, that colludes, that jumps out of windows and tails it highly to

the weeds, never greasy, always chaffed, long dry spell sting of skin rubbing skin, blades

upon blades, figure rejoined, saga etc, continuity, bearish committal, suddenly I remember

how resin can stick.

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Madly a Scientist 

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Flock of dread spikes, the dreaded spike in the fluted chamber, greenly and wizened,

sickly you’ve become wise in your old brews, methods of Bunsen decades long in the make,

the way you wear your grin is a calm psychopathy, hiccup, run away with ye, goes the zone,

a kind of eureka blast toward Eureka hills, smell of weed-encrusted decision-making spills

across intersections, sinks in sticky to the heel, the world melting into Dalisean clockwork.

Meanwhile, lest we forget: a black glove, the green splatters, buttoned buttons, and the red lenses.

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3: Missing

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Bowl in one hand, plastic in one hand, lift up, pour corn past teeth to mouth, and the chewing, and the swallowing into a throat’s greeting. The eyes glaze over. What’s missing? The nose crinkles. What’s missing? The ears dry out and flake. What’s missing? The neck grows bumps and loosens. What’s—missing? Safe passage. Safe construction. Safer discussions. Safety has its place. You are in good hands. you are in, good hands. You are, in good hands.

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On my way here there was a feather. And there was a myth. And the spilling of the beans. And the rickety footsteps along the rotted floorboards. And the night that spoke in corners and the boundaries of the lamplit curbs. Chirps from dead smoke detectors. A laundry list of constraints. Everything around a tool and a curse. Those wizards, those witches, that jester, that gesture. All comes crumbling down, into a puddle of something vaguely edible and objectively terrifying to the

onlooker.

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What’s missing, what’s missing. A smooth transition as the six have gone home to be with their masses and prayers.

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Greg Bem is a poet and librarian living on unceded Duwamish territory, specifically Seattle, Washington. He writes book reviews for Rain Taxi, Yellow Rabbits, and more. His current literary efforts mostly concern water and often include elements of video. Learn more at www.gregbem.com

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Katie in California by John D. Robinson

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When she was one year’s old her father

moved the baby into the basement,

chaining her hands to a toilet-chair:

she made too much noise: she slept in

a playpen with a top that was locked:

he would violently force feed the

little girl and as she could not

swallow comfortably, she would

vomit and her father would become

enraged and would shout and

scream vileness and would bark

and snarl like a rabid dog and on

countless occasions he would beat

her with a big stick:

mother and two teenage sons

lived in fear, knowing of the

horrors happening below them

every fucking day: after eleven

years, her mother and one of

the son’s took the young twelve

year old to hospital: initially

the nurses guessed her to be about

seven or eight years old:

shocked at the girl’s physical

appearance and neglect she was

hospitalised: she was unable to

walk or speak, and the

authorities were alerted: the sadistic

asshole father was charged with

severe child abuse and neglect, before

trial, he shot himself through the

head: the mother was judged as a

victim of psychological, bullying,

coercive, threatening, controlling

abusive behaviour: briefly the girl

moved into a State-run children’s

home and then was placed into a

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family foster home who held

extreme Christian views and values:

one time, when she vomited into a

bowl and then continued to eat,

the foster father hit her hard

across the head and then she

refused to eat as she feared that

would vomit again: she would

self-harm by scratching

her arms repeatedly until they

bled heavily she was then taken

back to hospital and after, she

was given back to the care of her

mother, which lasted just a few

weeks before she returned her back

to the authorities who again

placed her in a children’s home.

her days thereafter are unknown

and even fifty years later the

real identities of the little girl and her

parents have not been revealed.

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John D. Robinson is a poet from the United Kingdom and is the publisher of the micro press Holy&Intoxicated Press.

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The End of the World by Patricia Carragon

(sung by Skeeter Davis)

.

In her dream,

her parents’ wedding photo

burned slowly.

Their ashen marriage

vaporized in life and death.

A grayish puddle formed a stain

on the chest of drawers.

.

She woke up

and went about her day,

listened to an old song,

“The End of the World.”

Depression read her Tarot cards.

A heart bled,

pierced by three swords.

A woman tied and blindfolded,

surrounded by eight swords.

A woman wept in bed,

nine swords hung above her wall.

Her futility walked

in her parents’ shoes.

.

The world didn’t care

if her life was going nowhere.

The sun and stars went into hiding,

two mourning doves stopped singing,

islands of plastic floated in the sea.

Bad news kept recycling—

the world still on suicide watch.

.

On the news,

there was another shooting.

Children’s hearts bled,

pierced by three bullets.

Justice tied and blindfolded,

surrounded by eight white men.

Mothers wept in their beds,

nine AR-15s hung above their walls.

Futility walked

in American-made shoes.

.

Patricia Carragon’s latest books are Meowku (Poets Wear Prada, 2019) and Angel Fire, (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). Patricia hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is an executive editor for Home Planet News Online. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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We by Louis Faber

.

We fled the ghettos

in fear for our lives, the mob

hating us for our faith, for

being the other, for being there.

.

We came here hoping

to share in the promises

we heard, but we were still

the others, shunned, forced

into new, unbordered ghettos.

.

We now blindly support

the country established

for the likes of us, a place

where the others are shunned

and forced into ghettos.

.

And we shun those

from the south fleeing

for their lives, the gangs

hating them, saying they

are the others, but we

say the promise no longer

applies, and we turn them away,

and we die a bit more each day.

.

Louis Faber is a poet and photographer living in Port St. Lucie, Florida.  His work has appeared in The Poet (UK), Dreich (Scotland), North of Oxford, Erothanatos (Greece), Defenestration, Atlanta Review,  Glimpse, Rattle, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others. A book of poetry, The Right to Depart, was published by Plain View Press.

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Bullet Points by Henry Crawford

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Let’s start by shooting

Franz and Sophie Ferdinand

and soon we’re digging trenches

but before you can say the words

Pearl Harbor

we’re lowering the boom on Nagasaki

and crashing planes into the 9/11 sky

it’s just a need we have

to make things clean

destroy the town to save the town

show our Shock and Awe so we can say it’s done

like Agamemnon

finally getting his winds or Paris before him getting his prize

the way The War to End All Wars

ended in a double replay railroad car

no appeasement in our time

whether crossing the Rubicon or dropping fire

on the sleeping streets of Dresden

or raining missiles on a Ukraine mall

we will get our way

saying never again or remember the Lusitania

or this will not stand

my father died at Marathon

he died on Pork Chop Hill and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

and it’s always just

300 men and just four years

or make it 30 or maybe just 100

and there’s always just the wounded

or just collateral damage or just a few with minds aflame

unable to forget just killing one another

in another just war.

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Henry Crawford is the author of two collections of poetry, American Software (CW Books, 2017), and the Binary Planet (The Word Works, 2020). His poem, The Fruits of Famine won first prize in the 2019 World Food Poetry Competition. His poem, As We Were Saying Goodnight, was nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award given out by the Science Fiction Poetry Association for the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror poem of the year. He is a co-director of the Café Muse literary salon, and was the creator of the Zoom poetry series, Poets vs The Pandemic, sponsored by The Word Works.

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Two Poems by Michael Todd Steffen

.

Victim

.

There was a daily weirdness in her life.

Nose rings. Fluorescent hair. Leather. Joan Jet.

At one with her youth, she did nothing by half.

She took a class on Shakespeare that I taught.

Cross dressers. And a dude with sonnets for

another dude. The Bard was like way cool.

Brightly she got the double sense of fair.

She got the perilous privilege of the Fool.

The ways of the world are anything but just.

She marched to end corruption, AIDS, and hunger

and twerked on the dance floor where a sudden burst

of gunfire took her breath, and sealed his anger.

His ‘butch boss’ had fired him from his job

so he unloaded on a whole night club.

.

Deaf Heaven

.

For they lie, our departed, in the satin

lining of their coffins. However hard

we plea for their return, we are not heard

with them, chalked and indifferent as church Latin.

.

The heart cries to the sky that’s gray and leaden—

Light and blue, o please! By heaven’s withered

blossoms the bees wax the hives of the dead

son and father, infant, mother, maiden,

.

our beckoning throats hardly above whispers.

Here the silence of churches pounds its gavel

solemn as the one tone of a vespers

.

bell with the darkness falling. From the navel

we are fed this knowledge. Our last gasp goes

oblivious under the requiem in the chapel.

.

Michael Todd Steffen is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and an Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in the window of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, as well as in journals including The Boston Globe, E-Verse Radio, The Lyric, The Dark Horse, The Concord Saunterer, and Poem. Of his second book, On Earth As It Is, now available from Cervena Barva Press.

.

For the Parents by Mary McCarthy

.

What can I give you

so deep in your well of losses

there are no miracles to pray for

no return to hope for

no remedy for all the empty

places in your hearts

.

I wish I could hold you up

keep your head above

the swell of grief,

protect you from

the urgent undertow

offering to sweep you

forever away from shore

.

That place so full of stone

and sandpits ready

to swallow you

replace grief with a choke

of sand, crush your chest

like an empty can

filling the terrible hollow

stopping the howl

that is the only word

you can still make

.

A hard wind scouring you out

clean and dead as bone

leaving you nowhere to hide

to get past this blasphemy

of murdered  children

the sin of survival

the heavy burden

of empty arms

the cursed chance

defying reason, useless now

as thoughts and prayers–

.

It will not get better

only farther away

the days relentless

in their progress

yet unable to tear you away

from this day, this place

this house, your last

connection, before everyone

dries their eyes

and tries to forget.

.

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including “The Ekphrastic World,” edited by Lorette Luzajic, “The Plague Papers,” edited by Robbi Nester, and the latest issues of Verse Virtual, Gyroscope, Earth’s Daughters, and Third Wednesday.

.

Memorial by M. J. Arcangelini

.

This is not just a memorial

for 9 murdered transit workers,

10 murdered shoppers,

19 murdered schoolchildren,

and the countless number

who have come before

and since.

It is a celebration

of the depth

of the ongoing love affair

between America

and its guns.

It is a demonstration of the

devotion felt for blood and bullets,

testament to the tenacity of

those who place the freedom

to shoot quickly, irrevocably,

above the lives of those

who would be killed.

And this is not just a poem

it is a cry of pain and fear,

a howl of frustration,

a wail of warning,

as again we mourn

the senseless murders of

people whose only mistake

was to show up for work,

or school, or go shopping on

a day when a festering

malcontent with

a personal arsenal

finally snapped.

.

M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini, born 1952 in Pennsylvania, has resided in northern California since 1979. He began writing poetry at 11. He has published in little magazines, online journals, & over a dozen anthologies.  He is the author of five published collections, the most recent of which is “A Quiet Ghost” 2020, Luchador Press. Due out in the summer of 2022 is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press.

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The Editors

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, a native Philadelphia poet, is author of four full-length poetry collections and most recently a chapbook, COVID-19 2020 A Poetic Journal (Moonstone Press, 2021). Published in North American Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sequestrum Journal of Literature & Arts, Chiron Review, The Pennsylvania Journal, and Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal,  The Northern Virgina Review, among others. Poetry Editor at North of Oxford, an online literary journal, and former high school English teacher, she currently teleworks full-time as a Procurement Agent. More can be found about Diane at her website :  http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/

g emil reutter is a writer of poems, stories and occasional literary criticism. He is the books review editor and site manager at North of Oxford. Seventeen collections of his poetry and fiction have been published and he can be found at: https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/

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Pandemic of Violence Anthology I – Poets Speak: https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/12/27/pandemic-of-violence-anthology/

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