A Prayer for Our Country

By George Clooney

I pray for my country.
I pray we can find more that unites us than divides us.
I pray that our leaders want to do the same.
I pray that young children like Tamir Rice can feel safe in their own neighborhood.
I pray for all of our children.
I pray for our police and our first responders.
I pray for the men and women of our armed forces.
I pray that dissent will always be protected in this great country.
I pray for a more perfect union
And when I pray, I kneel.

Days of Awe

By Alicia Ostriker


elul: psalm 27

we are told to say the following
every day for a month
in preparation for the days of awe:

you are my light my help
when I’m with you I’m not afraid
I want to live in your house

the enemies that chew my heart
the enemies that break my spine
I’m not afraid of them when I’m with you

all my life I have truly trusted you
save me from the liars
let me live in your house

***

rosh hashanah

the birthday of
the innocent earthling
and the day hagar and ishmael
found water in the desert

in memory of whom
mud staining our shoes
water flowing in handfuls
we sniff the smell of living dying things

reach into our pockets
for the bread that represents
our sins, toss it in, praying release
us, help us, forgive us

the river answers
by swallowing our crumbs

do our prayers travel upward
do they defy gravity
like rain splashed on the windshield
of a car speeding through storm

in ten days we will go hungrier
pray harder

***

yom kippur

we destroy we break we are broken
and this is the fast you have chosen
on rosh hashana it is written
on yom kippur it is sealed

who shall live and who shall die
which goat will have his throat cut
like an unlucky

spitting a red thread and which goat
will be sent alive to the pit where the crazies are
thread lightly tied around its neck

who will possess diamonds and pearls
and who will be killed
by an addicted lover

who shall voyage the web of the world
like an eagle, and who shall curl to sleep
over a steam grate like a worm

who shall be photographed and whose
face will disappear like smoke

this is the fast you have chosen, turn return
how to turn like leaves like a corner
what is our knowledge, what is our strength

I am like the stones people place on graves to make them a little heavier
such a stone says, in its oracular way, don’t come back or return only as grass
but it is tired of being a stone, it wishes to be open, it would like to be an egg

honeybees manufacture honey, a power station generates electricity
cotton plants extrude smooth fibre, and my cells secrete anger
my mind propagates envy, but repentance, prayer and good deeds

avert the stern decree, I am like a ramshackle house during a hurricane
struck by guilt waves and fear waves, the walls could collapse any time
but the foolish old woman who lives there refuses to leave

October 18, 2001

Today, driving to work, I had to stop
and wait while the MAX train
crossed in front of me, car after car
filled with people on their way to work.
I could see them, every face, every suit
and hairstyle, perfectly clear through the glass:
one lady in a lavendar skirt and coat was smiling.
Tears filled my eyes, by the time the train
passed I was crying. And that is what it has been
like walking through this city, going to work.
Yesterday, I glanced up at the tallest building
and tried to calculate the number that would be
inside, tried to imagine the hole it would leave
if it collapsed straight down.
Every day in the elevator
I look hard at the person next to me,
not the one I know, but the stranger I have yet
to meet, the one I never will, who could have
disappeared into melted steel and dust
lost to my world forever. Every airplane is ten
times louder than it should be, and has a strange,
eerie look, like a bullet shot from an oversized gun
pulled by a giant hand to hit something far away,
something close. When I breathe I remember
I could be taking in the powdery spores of death,
and not know. Each night I come home and think
about all the people I know who are far from me,
I think about what I would say, how I would say it,
and it is not much different than what I would have
said two months ago: death is only two steps away,
the world is small, anything might happen, I love you.


Written by Ariana Kramer on October 18, 2001

The Last Election

By John Haines

Suppose there are no returns,
and the candidates, one
by one, drop off in the polls,
as the voters turn away,
each to his inner persuasion.

The front runners, the dark horses,
begin to look elsewhere,
and even the President admits
he has nothing new to say;
it is best to be silent now.

No more conventions, no donors,
no more hats in the ring;
no ghost-written speeches,
no promises we always knew
were never meant to be kept.

And something like the truth,
or what we know by that name -
that for which no corporate
sponsor was ever offered -
takes hold in the public mind.

Each subdued and thoughtful
citizen closes his door, turns
off the news.  He opens a book
speaks quietly to his children,
begins to live once more.

The President Elect

By Norman Stock

I wake to hear the latest news
Trump’s adviser dislikes Jews
should I take cover, should I run
will I be under the gun
with Donald Trump it's hard to say
he keeps changing every day
first he’s in a Twitter war
then he’s talking to Al Gore
and  gets a phone call from Taiwan
is he taking China on
or just kidding, what’s the deal
is this nincompoop for real
does he even have the guts
to straighten out, or is he nuts
are we facing the abyss
with this madman, or is this
like his campaign was, just a con
what the fuck is going on
whatever this election meant
it made him the president
as I said when it was done
holy shit, the bastard won

Pickled Dreams Naked, Buying Breakfast For My Kamikaze Pilot, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, College English  The New York Quarterly, Verse, The New England Review, Denver Quarterly, and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies and textbooks. The recipient of awards from the Writer’s Voice, Poets & Writers’ Maureen Egen Writers Exchange, the Bennington Writing Workshops, and the Tanne Foundation, he has also been a Bread Loaf fellow, a Sewanee scholar, and a finalist for Poet Laureate of Queens. Formerly the Acquisitions Librarian at Montclair State University, from which he retired  in 2005, he lives with his wife, Lydia Chang, a clinical psychotherapist, in Jackson Heights New York.