Tikkun

 By Aharon Shabtai

The horror
the dreadful disaster
disgrace
fractions of folly
dumb religion
obscurity of eyes
violent despair
won't repair, no officer
no bomb, no airplane
no more blood
heart-wisdom alone will repair
the physician alone will repair
the surgeon, the good teacher
the instructor alone will repair,
the medic, Arab, Jew, will amend
the calm traveller, the bike-rider
the sandwich carrier
crossing the street.
The one who opens the eyes will amend
The one who speaks in compassion
Will heal, the listener will amend,
The enlighted will amend,
awaiting and pausing will amend,
the guide in paths of generosity, of affection,
will amend, the painter will amend, the poet
will amend, disciples of peace will amend,
the gardeners of peace.

America is a Gun

By Brian Bilston

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football in the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

Words for You

By Ben Aragbaye

American history is mandatory
But black history is optional
Black literature a prop for show
Look at how they've accommodated
as we play along
With common outdated topics like
slavery doesn't exist, it's been
whited out
Well don't I feel liberated
But I don't know freedom
Freedom: Do you know me?
Am I important to you
or just an affirmative act?
Can I freely talk while still being black
and will you understand me
as I speak rhythmic words that beat, beat, beat
on your uncomfortable conscience?
Listen to me, Freedom,
because I have words for you
Black words
With a deep moan and tone
I will not atone for just existing
Words that are scarred, and whipped, and chained
only to break loose
with a strong hand and a fervent prayer
Words from the past, reverb,
bouncing off every corner. surrounding you
Words that are real
and cannot be whited out.
Because the color
The color always bleeds through.
Words with a history that is equal,
so please do not try and separate it.
I am not an option
I am concrete
I am finite
I am mandatory
You deserve to know me
You deserve to know Juneteenth
And I deserve to know freedom.

Hear the poet reading this poem here.

The Diameter of the Bomb

By Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

Trouble With the Stars and Stripes

By Naomi Shihab Nye

I couldn't make my annual flag cake, the one with strawberries for stripes and blueberries for states and white mountain frosting puffing up proudly between. I couldn't even wear a bandanna on the 4th of July. It hurts, this year. Let's talk about the difference between victory and public relations. Let's talk about the size of words. I weighed words during the war, putting them on secret scales, and never once did things balance out. My husband who never shouts shouted in his sleep while the bombs were dropping, "I just don't think humans are doing a very good job!" After the war he traveled to Iraq to make photographs. We have no idea. We can still feel good in this country about what we don't see, if we give it a good enough name. All forms of righteousness begin to terrify. A presidential address, a church. My husband stares when he hears certain words. My enemy - "Who is so beautiful," he whispers.

So Many Books, So Little Time

For independent booksellers & librarians, especially Nichelle Hayes

By Haki Madhubuti 

Frequently during my mornings of pain & reflection

when I can’t write

or articulate my thoughts

or locate the mindmusic needed

to complete the poems & essays

that are weeks plus days overdue

forcing me to stop, I cease

answering my phone, eating right, running my miles,

reading my mail, and making love.

(Also, this is when my children do not seek me out

because I do not seek them out.)

I escape north, to the nearest library or used bookstore.

They are my retreats, my quiet energy-givers, my intellectual refuge.

For me it is not bluewater beaches, theme parks,

or silent chapels hidden among forest greens.

Not multi-stored American malls, corporate book

supermarkets, mountain trails, or Caribbean hideaways.

My sanctuaries are liberated lighthouses of shelved books,

featuring forgotten poets, unread anthropologists of tenure-

seeking assistant professors, self-published geniuses, remaindered

first novelists, highlighting speed-written bestsellers,

wise historians & theologians, nobel, pulitzer prize, and american book

award winners, poets & fiction writers, overcertain political commentators,

small press wunderkinds & learned academics.

All are vitamins for my slow brain & sidetracked spirit in this

winter of creating.

I do not believe in smiling politicians, AMA doctors,

zebra-faced bankers, red-jacketed real estate or automobile

salespeople, or singing preachers.

I believe in books.

It can be conveniently argued that knowledge,

not that which is condensed or computer packaged, but

pages of hard-fought words, dancing language

meticulously & contemplatively written by the likes of me & others,

shelved imperfectly at the level of open hearts & minds,

is preventive medicine strengthening me for the return to my

clear pages of incomplete ideas to be reworked, revised &

written as new worlds and words in all of their subjective

configurations to eventually be processed into books that

will hopefully be placed on the shelves of libraries, bookstores, homes,

& other sanctuaries of learning to be found & browsed over by receptive

booklovers, readers & writers looking for a retreat,

looking for departure & yes spaces,

looking for open heart surgery without the knife.

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye 

 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

In Praise of Their Divorce

By Tony Hoagland

And when I heard about the divorce of my friends,
I couldn't help but be proud of them,

that man and that woman setting off in different directions,
like pilgrims in a proverb

—him to buy his very own toaster oven,
her seeking a prescription for sleeping pills.

Let us keep in mind the hidden forces
which had struggled underground for years

to push their way to the surface—and that finally did,
cracking the crust, moving the plates of earth apart,

releasing the pent-up energy required
for them to rent their own apartments,

for her to join the softball league for single mothers
for him to read  
George the Giraffe over his speakerphone

at bedtime to the six-year-old.

The bible says, Be fruitful and multiply

but is it not also fruitful to subtract and to divide?
Because if marriage is a kind of womb,

divorce is the being born again;
alimony is the placenta one of them will eat;

loneliness is the name of the wet-nurse;
regret is the elementary school;

endurance is the graduation.
So do not say that they are splattered like dropped lasagna

or dead in the head-on collision of clichés
or nailed on the cross of their competing narratives.

What is taken apart is not utterly demolished.
It is like a great mysterious egg in Kansas

that has cracked and hatched two big bewildered birds.
It is two spaceships coming out of retirement,

flying away from their dead world,
the burning booster rocket of divorce
                                 falling off behind them,

the bystanders pointing at the sky and saying, Look. 

A Poem for Pulse

By Jameson Fitzpatrick

Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don’t think it’s going anywhere any time soon,
I said, though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop—
 properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that’s not a gay bar —
we just call those bars, I guess
— and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren’t queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.
We just call those people, I guess.
They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just
people. But I didn’t let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear
— an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed fifty people. At least.
 Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
by the sight of two men kissing recently.
What a strange power to be cursed with,
 for the proof of our desire to move men to violence.
What’s a single kiss? I’ve had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence—
but there is a place you can’t outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.
It might be a bullet, suddenly.
The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead—
Two men kissing. Last night
is what I can’t get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn’t believe they’d die, who couldn’t have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people mostly, which cannot be a coincidence in this country.
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I’m thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government’s response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Reagan was a terrorist.
Now we have a president who loves Us,
the big and imperfectly lettered Us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of Us,
some of Us getting killed.
We must love one another whether or not we die.
Love can’t block a bullet
but it can’t be destroyed by one either,
and love is, for the most part, what makes Us Us—
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there’s nowhere else for Us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.

Behaving Like a Jew

By Gerald Stern

When I got there the dead opossum looked like
an enormous baby sleeping on the road.
It took me only a few seconds—just
seeing him there—with the hole in his back
and the wind blowing through his hair
to get back again into my animal sorrow.
I am sick of the country, the bloodstained
bumpers, the stiff hairs sticking through the grilles,
the slimy highways, the heavy birds
refusing to move;
I am sick of the spirit of Lindbergh over everything,
that joy in death, that philosophical
understanding of carnage, that
concentration on the species.
---I am going to be unappeased at the opossum's death.
I am going to behave like a Jew
and touch his face, and stare into his eyes,
and pull him off the road.
I am not going to stand in a wet ditch
with the Toyotas and the Chevys passing over me
at sixty miles an hour
and praise the beauty and the balance
and lose myself in the immortal lifestream
when my hands are still a little shaky
from his stiffness and his bulk
and my eyes are still weak and misty
from his round belly and his curved fingers
and his black whiskers and his little dancing feet.

Third Gender

By Kit Yan

all right so gender should be as simple as gay or straight
cuz if you are attracted to the opposite gender
you’re straight
if you are attracted to the same gender
well i guess you’re gay
therefore if you have a penis you’re a man
and if you have a vagina you’re a woman
straight shot
straight answer
gender
see gender is man next to woman
not touching but separate
gender is america’s controlled nationalism bullshit
gender is birth certificates for babies born into gender
housing applications check boxes and even getting an email address
this is gender
but i ask you
is it truly worth
embarrassment
imprisonment
or harassment
for your gender identity?
so excuse me are you a man or are you a woman
and you’ve changed your name to Kit now
so do you wanna be straight?
and you look like a boy now so you’re straight, right?
but back when you were Laura you were gay
as if sexuality and gender were something that you could purchase on impulse
pulling up to the register and carefully picking out
gay straight
man or woman
neatly packaged for easy consumption
then you should be able to do it with ease
purchasing a gold foiled bar of gay and plastic bag of man
and walking out of that grocery store fabulously onto the set of Queer Eye
but it’s not that easy
because sometimes my gender is
boy who looks like a girl who likes boys
and sometimes my gender is trans
and sometimes my gender is chilling out in between
but most of the time my gender is fuck you mind your own business
but it can’t be that way
because gender is so rigidly defined
neatly outlined and nicely colonized
organized and clearly understandable
yet the gap is becoming gendered and
i’m standing in line for the bathroom with
girls birls boys bis transsexual transgendered queer questioning curious polyamorous intersexed flexual asexual trisexual omnisexual multisexual pansexual gender neutral genderqueer multigendered androgynous drag king drag queen butch femme fairy two-spirit bear dyke lipstick tranny boi (with an i) ftm mtf boydyke bi-dyke half-dyke queerboi ex-straight and that’s just the beginning
but ask a member of the Zuni tribe about the lhamana’s gender
and they’ll tell you it’s lhamana
the South Asians about the hijaras
and they’ll tell you that it’s hijaras
the Hawaiians about mahus
and they’ll tell you that it’s mahu
the Americans about the trannies
and they’ll tell you that they don’t know
see there may be as many as a million genders identities and sexualities
just floating around waiting for the right person to snatch them up
put them on and proudly parade around in their new skin
unrestricted by layers and identity
or limitations of culture society or social construction
this new gender is a function of inner desire and
genuine understanding of self to be lived
so go ahead
and show us where the bathroom is

alternate names for black boys

By Danez Smith

1.   smoke above the burning bush

2.   archnemesis of summer night

3.   first son of soil

4.   coal awaiting spark & wind

5.   guilty until proven dead

6.   oil heavy starlight

7.   monster until proven ghost

8.   gone

9.   phoenix who forgets to un-ash

10. going, going, gone

11. gods of shovels & black veils

12. what once passed for kindling

13. fireworks at dawn

14. brilliant, shadow hued coral

15. (I thought to leave this blank

       but who am I to name us nothing?)

16. prayer who learned to bite & sprint

17. a mother’s joy & clutched breath

Approaching Waterfalls

By Gerry Fabian

We are not pandemic appropriate.
A small bar restaurant
no one can enter;
we are like a polluted river.
We wisely make the early switch
to the current of take out and delivery.
The business government check
is like temporary patch on a large leak.
Weekend sales
like a row boat with one oar
barely keeping us afloat.
We can now hear
the sounds of falls
in the distance.

R. Gerry Fabian is a  published poet and novelist.  He has published four books of his published poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and Ball On The Mound.  In addition, he has published four novels : Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, Seventh Sense and Ghost Girl. 

The Moon is Trans

By Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

From this moment forward, the moon is trans.
You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.
You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.
You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is
 to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.
 She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,
 telling you to shut the fuck up already please.
 Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth
 that broke off when another planet struck it.
 Eve came from Adam’s rib.
 Etc.
 Do you believe in the power of not listening
 to the inside of your own head?
 I believe in the power of you not listening
 to the inside of your own head.
 This is all upside down.
 We should be talking about the ways that blood
 is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon
 but we’re busy drawing it instead.
 The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.
 The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead
 for any extended period of time
 in all of her existence, but
 she is not delicate and she is not weak.
 She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.
 She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.
 She will outlive everything you know.

Wife

BY ADA LIMÓN

I’m not yet comfortable with the word,

its short clean woosh that sounds like

life. At dinner last night my single girls

said in admonition, “It’s not wife-approved”

about a friend’s upcoming trip. Their

eyes rolled up and over and out their

pretty young heads. Wife, why does it

sound like a job? “I need a wife” the famous

feminist wrote, “a wife that will keep my

clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced

if need be.” A team word that could be made

easily into maid. A wife that does, fixes

soothes, honors, obeys, Housewife,

fishwife, bad wife, good wife, what’s

the word for someone who stares long

into the morning, unable to even fix tea

some days, the kettle steaming over

loud like a train whistle, she who cries

in the mornings, she who tears a hole

in the earth and cannot stop grieving,

the one who wants to love you, but often

isn’t good at even that, the one who

doesn’t want to be diminished

by how much she wants to be yours.

Sleeping and Waking

By Gregg Shapiro 

My husband recently confessed that when he gets into bed 

 every night, pulls the top-sheet and comforter over his legs 

 and torso, locates the perfect pillow groove in which to rest 

 his weary head, he wonders if it will be the last time he ever 

 partakes in such an action. The constantly expanding and 

 evolving inventory of ills, pains, tremors, night sweats, thirst, 

shortness of breath, urgent bathroom visits, restless legs, dry 

 mouth, vocalizations, and recurring teaching dreams, borders 

 on being Encyclopedia Britannica-esque, capable of overtaking 

 every inch of available shelf-space, entire rooms, personal real 

 estate. I don’t tell my husband that since he’s made me aware 

 of this, that I sleep lighter than before. Listening intently for 

 signs of life, spans between inhalation and exhalation, hints of 

 disruption. I never say I worry about where it is his horizontally 

 sprinting legs are taking him. Towards or away from me. Would 

never share that every morning, I’m equally surprised that my 

 own eyes still open, although it takes longer for them to focus 

 than it used to. That when I stand and stretch and greet the day, 

 I am a bundle of knots and nerves, my heart rattling in my chest 

 like the loose seeds in a maraca, an instrument I will utilize for 

 the healing ritual I must perform when the time comes. I was 

 born vigilant, and ready for action when the dire moment arises.  

Gregg Shapiro is the author of eight books including the poetry collection Fear of Muses (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2022). Recent/forthcoming lit-mag publications include The Penn Review, Exquisite Pandemic, RFD, Gargoyle, Limp Wrist, Mollyhouse, Impossible Archetype, Red Fern Review, Instant Noodles, Dissonance Magazine, and POETiCA REViEW, as well as the anthologies Moving Images: Poems Inspired by Film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2021), This Is What America Looks Like (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2021) and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America (Belt Publishing, 2021). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.

Doctor’s Appointment

By Gary Beck 

The streets are crowded on the way to the doctor’s office,
making me even more nervous,
since no one is distancing.
The nurse takes my temperature,
allows me to stay.
I look suspiciously at other patients.
They are here for sports injuries
but I don’t trust anyone
in a time of pandemic.

Finally I see the doctor
who is detached, impersonal.
He treats my ankle,
gives me a shot
of I don’t know what.
Says goodbye. Leaves.
The nurse bandages me.
Says goodbye.
I rinse my hands with disinfectant,
walk home on crowded streets
and hope I didn’t contract
a fatal disease.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 32 poetry collections, 13 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 3 books of plays. Gary lives in New York City.

Beaumont to Detroit: 1943

By Langston Hughes

Looky here, America
What you done done -
Let things drift
Until the riots come.

Now your policemen
Let your mobs run free.
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me.

You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
From the ku klux klan.

You tell me mussolini’s
Got an evil heart
Well, it mus-a-been in Beaumont
That he had his start -

Cause everything that hitler
And Mussolini do,
Negroes get the same
Treatment from you.

You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power -
And you’re STILL jim crowing me
Right now, this very hour.

Yet you say we’re fighting
For democracy
Then why don’t democracy
Include me?

I ask you this question
Cause I want to know
How long I got to fight
BOTH HITLER – AND JIM CROW

Where do pelicans die?

By Sharon Lopez Mooney 

I’ve never seen a dead pelican on my dock where they fish, 

does a relative or others fly in formation bringing the
body out to sea into the maw of deep currents? 

How do their mates mourn? 

Do neighbor pelicans bring them a catch of the day 

so they don’t have to leave their grieving? 

How about the energetic wrens? Who tends the chubby little body 

when there’s a death, do friends gather in their favorite ficus tree 

sheltered, to keen for the lost youngster who couldn’t sit still? 

I, too, have lost friends over these last years, 

not lovers or family, just lovely friends 

and I felt the quick cut of aloneness wound me anew. 

I cannot go back in time to the first flush 

of that friendship, cannot travel back over miles to 

lay my hand on their door to say good-bye. 

They pass like those fallen pelicans, those friends, teachers, comrades, 

pass from me like the slowing of my gait, the limits of my eyes 

in an ache of loss that hardly shakes the world. 

Sharon Lopez Mooney, poet, is a retired Interfaith Chaplain, who worked in the death and dying field, now lives in Mexico on the Sea of Cortez, and visits family in northern California. Mooney received a 1978 CA Arts Council Grant for a rural poetry series and helped publish a regional arts journal and has produced poetry readings and performances. Mooney’s poems are or will be published in The MacGuffin, The Muddy River Poetry Review, The Avalon Literary Review, Adelaide International Magazine, Galway Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, California Quarterly, Hags on Fire, The Ricochet Review, Roundtable Literary Journal, Visible Magazine, NewVerse News, Evening Street Review, among others.

Two poems by Karen Loeb

Glamour in the Age of the Pandemic 

 

My short hair grows 

longer, and longer still.
The ends remember
they have cowlicks,
curling, some up, some
under. There’s no limit

to their acrobatics.


Baking in the Age of the Coronavirus

The dough had a mind
of its own. It was bread
all right, but it was going
to rise on its own terms.
With no yeast to be had
each baker, solo at home,
had to improvise. 

Karen Loeb finished a two-year stint (2018-2020) as writer-in-residence for Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Gyroscope Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hanging Loose, Pinyon, and other magazines. Her writing has won both the fiction and poetry contests in Wisconsin People and Ideas. Poems about the pandemic have appeared in Quaranzine, Volume One and forthcoming in March 2020 in a Bent Paddle Press anthology Sheltering with Poems.

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