• Poems

    Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco: Earth’s Birthday Party at the Retirement Home

    Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

    Earth’s Birthday Party at the Retirement Home

    At the Earth’s birthday party,
    we don’t celebrate in years.

    That’s not a thing,
    the kids might say, or maybe

    did. Years
    were a construct, a way Earth

    could see itself.
    It was like pictures:

    here I was in my goth phase, and here’s
    where I had dinosaurs. Earth

    couldn’t talk to us, by now, its teeth
    were gone. We draped

    a sash across its shoulders, found a crown. It
    was a theme, as much as anything,

    a way to pick the music. Green and blue and brown
    balloons, just like from space.

    Aged to perfection, said a sign,
    like Earth was food.

    We had a cake and sang and Earth blew

    out its candles, asked
    who everybody was, when we would

    leave. We laughed and laughed. When

    it rained, we moved
    the party back indoors.

    Something happened, and the toilet
    overflowed, ran down the hall.

    If no one cleans it, there’s
    a canyon, someone said, like

    this was news.

    Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley and works as a librarian at UC Merced. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and in several chapbooks. She co-edits One Sentence Poems and First Frost.

     

  • Poems

    Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco: Body Talk

    Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

    Body Talk

    What if you’re Helen
    but their boats were made
    to kill?

    What if each part
    served some small
    purpose — here:

    where they will melt you
    down.
    Or here: where they will rip

    you up,

    will take your insides
    out, will tell you what they are. Say

    that you’re Helen, sick
    of hearing how they made

    the fucking boats.

    What if a woman
    and a whale are the same

    thing?

     

     

  • Poems

    Desmond Piper: When I Was Young

    When I Was Young

    Any decent thinking man knows

    that when he passes the ammunition…

    he is participating in the killing also.”

                                        -Larry Dewy

     

    When I was young
    I imagined justice would taste sweet.
    Like a righteous knight satisfied
    to combat ubiquitous evil.
    But I’ve never met such a warrior,
    nor such justice, rarely such evil.
    Justice is a bitter Merlot,
    or Sumatra. An aged Bourbon.
    Fragile recipes fraught with risk,
    borne of ancient, intricate processes.
    One small variance,
    the batch is intractably tainted.

     

    From tax payer to sniper
    we have blood on our hands.
    Some righteous, some collateral.
    We so easily become what we have vowed
    to destroy. Yet destroy it, we must.
    Bitter justice requires impossible accuracy.
    The exact recipe has been lost to humanity.
    Maybe we only briefly had it, traded it
    for a forbidden flavor so long ago.
    Maybe the righteous knight is a myth.
    Maybe he wrote poems in the evening
    trying to make sense of his day job.

     

    As a child I would steal a sip
    of my dad’s coffee,
    but preferring simplistic sweetness,
    my innocent taste buds grimaced.
    Every now and then I reminiscently indulge
    the blissful ignorance of Halloween candy.
    Now middle-aged, I’m more satisfied
    with a morning cup of black coffee.
    Or with dinner, a red wine.
    The naive shock metamorphosed
    into provocative contemplation.
    I’ve spread my wings.
    I’d never go back, even if I could.

     

    The tongue inside my graying head
    prefers bourbon over ice cream.
    The burn reminds me I’m still alive,
    the smoothness teases that maybe
    I still deserve pleasure.
    Conflicting sensations generated
    from a single event.
    Pride and shame
    Regret and anticipation
    Humor and horror
    You’ll never experience that
    in a jelly bean.

     

    Merlot. Sumatra. Bourbon.
    Adult flavors for an adult world.
    My burdened mind and slight bulge
    between L4 and L5 seldom consent
    to a full night’s sleep.
    Having wrestled with Power greater than
    myself, I’ve earned my limp
    and been rewarded with knowledge
    of precarious joy, mysteriously
    laced within the harsh and bitter
    flavors of real life.

  • Poems

    Nate Didier: Truce

    Truce

    We were just trying to kill each other, and beside you I now sit.
    I am exhausted.
    You are full of holes…
    …from the rounds I put in your chest.
    Your breathing is getting shallow, you don’t have much time. I will never know your name.
    I wonder if you have a family you won’t see again.
    I have a daughter I haven’t met.
    Your eyes get heavy. I wonder how you’d treat me if our situation was reversed.
    I wouldn’t want to be alone.
    So here I sit, shooing the flies aways as you take your last breath.

  • Poems

    Michael J. Galko: Regarding the half-eaten calves of midshipman Purvis off the Brazilian equator, 1812

    Regarding the half-eaten calves of midshipman Purvis off the Brazilian equator, 1812

    A fortnight
    since fire consumed the ship
    in the mid-Atlantic.
    Ten days since the last rain.

    ​The launch started with twelve.
    One jumped overboard
    with his madness, certain
    he could swim it.

    ​The next three
    were hoisted over
    with all due respect
    and ceremony.

    ​A fourth of these
    sank two days ago.
    Then, yesterday,
    Purvis passed.

    ​But his body rested astern
    by silent assent.
    What seaman
    has not regarded,

    ​with longing even,
    the fine tan legs
    of his fellow sailors?
    But these bloated shanks?

    ​Whose idea was this–
    this blasphemy
    against the vaulted
    primacy of the soul–

    ​this heretical notion
    that the dead’s flesh
    will somehow serve them
    after their death?

    ​Some few, their eyes
    red and scarce by day,
    have considered this

     

  • Poems

    Luther Allen: the strayed moon

    the strayed moon

    has lost its way. forgets
    where to rise and set.​

    bulging, bulimic. confusing
    concave with convex. bangs

    ​on drums to make an entrance
    and whimpers as it goes down.

    ​neglects the sun, becomes grey.
    can’t manage to shine that old kind light​

                                             upon the earth.

    ​wait. that’s not the moon.
    it’s us.     us.

  • Poems

    jim kacian: black tuesday

    black tuesday

    and the following week my various inboxes are filled with earnest notes asking after my safety and that of my family—I come to realize that I am, in a modest way, the face of America to these many and far-flung people, and what happens to America must happen to me—and I respond that I am unharmed for the moment by the terrible assault which has galvanized us all, but that it will be a long time in coming before we know the full extent of the damage that has been caused . . .

    after the tragedy—
    the neighbor boy behind a tree
    with his toy rifle

     

    *appeared previously in ephemerae

  • Poems

    Don Krieger: Four Poems

    For No Reason*

    The right carotid,
    a vascular case
    with stroke risk
    so I am here.

    For no reason

    her heart stops,
    her brain too.

    I know You from Your
    world and Scripture.

    You drowned everything
    when You repented

    the brutal world You had
    made. You murdered

    Lot’s wife
    for remembering

    her city
    as You burned it down.


    What’s her crit?
    When it comes back low,
    Where’s the hemorrhage?

    He cracks her sternum,
    closed heart massage
    minute after minute
    no rhythm or hope.

    You glorified Moses
    who lay in wait
    to murder.

    You hardened Pharaoh’s heart
    to alibi your slaughter
    Egypt’s first-born to the last​

    When I take over
    the bone edges
    grind under my hands

    her pliant heart beneath
    soft and silent

    but then living

    pulsing
    pushing back.

    Time after time
    You boasted I do this
    so you know how mighty I am.

    Half her brain returned.
    They gave blood
    placed a pacer
    and an assist pump

    got her off the table alive
    but no further.

    How can I find You
    righteous and trustworthy,
    love You or even
    fear and obey You –

    it’s a hundred generations
    since You’ve spoken.

    Since then that surgeon turned
    to cosmetics, varicose veins,
    I work with numbers
    they don’t push back
    or need reasons.


    * originally appeared in The Red Wheelbarrow.

    ​

    Saturday Night on Call*

    A sheriff guards the operating room. Inside
    we fight. Her neck was broken in a brawl –

    she thrashes and spits as we hold her shoulders
    and head still, work to realign the bones

    constantly checking, dreading the worst,
    blunt silence, slack body. Hours later

    with neck straight, flipped on her belly,
    moving arms and legs before she sleeps,

    I step out for a breath. The surgeon
    is at the scrub sink, She’ll just kill someone else.

    That may be, I say, but we won’t have killed her.

    It’s been decades. I still dread and hope for her
    and I treasure the stubborn skill of that surgeon.


    * originally appeared in Neurology.

    ​

    Dream Street*

    I left her the house
    and got a place on Torley.
    Each night the neighbors

    put chairs on the sidewalk,
    turn the TV face out, drink Iron City
    and watch the kids play in the street.

    I get home from work at 6 or 10
    or 2, shower and then sleep
    with eyes open:

    a child shrieking on a hospital gurney,
    her spine flayed and straightened,
    the smell of burning in my hair,

    a new mother life-flighted from the mall,
    brain shifting in the scanner,
    crushed by bleeding while we watch.

    We drink coffee and wait
    while a father facing doom in our hands
    says goodbye to his children.

    Each day I pedal in over the Bloomfield Bridge,
    or drive when called at night, never dreaming
    what will come next.

    ​


    * originally appeared in Verse-Virtual.

    ​

    Battle Fatigue*

    The surgeon carves, dissects, sears the bleeding.
    The anesthetist: numbness, paralysis, stupor.

    My part: to hear and report
    each limb’s electric murmurs,

    the brain’s muffled replies,
    mixed with the whine

    of machines, arrogance, fear.
    We fight for normal life on waking.

    We trust normal will return for us.

    They are out there, our charges,
    ten thousand who woke well,

    those who did not. I don’t recall
    their faces, just the smell

    of blood and burning,
    the urgent charge, uphold life,

    sick wonder when the lamp goes dark,
    why did I have to see that?

    ​

    *originally appeared in Neurology.

  • Poems

    Heidi Slettedahl: : Lavender Burned Black

    Lavender Burned Black

    We burned it, my sister and I
    that note you wrote on lavender paper.
    The lavender burned black and fell apart.​

    You slapped me when you saw
    the purple black ashes
    but I was numb to the tingle and neither of us cried.

    Oh mother, mother, I don’t want to know
    of wrinkled sheets and whispered conversations
    and feel the pain of trying not to love you.

    But I will not forgive the evenings
    you were gone, the days
    my father spent in anger, mending the cracks

    in the house’s foundation
    pounding the nails into soft, pliant wood
    drinking warm beer

    while you cooked dinner in tense, frustrated silence
    we all ignored
    until your anger flashed and caught me with your tongue.

    You taught me lessons even in your silence,
    the dance of avoidance, the masquerade.
    The anger

    lingers in that house you left.
    It sits in the corners with the heavy dust,
    A guest we don’t dare disturb.

    The anger follows you,
    reminds you of the ashes of your love letter
    and the daughters who burned the words you wrote.

    Its tendrils grasp for me
    as I realize my handwriting mirrors yours.
    Oh how the anger flashes when I see I write those letters too.

  • Poems

    F. J. Bergmann: Three Poems

    Guardian Demon*

    If you elicit true candor (which can
    be done in many ways, like sharing
    a six-pack, a fifth, or maybe even
    brownies with a special ingredient),
    you’ll find that pretty much everybody
    has a beef: some secret grudge or sense
    of injury (using the term “sense” loosely),
    something about which, with the right
    sequence of nods and grunts, muttered
    agreement, judicious use of the words
    Grandpop used for the kind of people
    he disliked without knowing anything
    about, you can get them to start being
    more outspoken, to meet up with others
    like them, to talk a lot about the kind
    of guns they own—like throwing a stone
    into a pond, to create circular ripples
    you can watch spread out, for fun.

    ​

    *First appeared in One Sentence Poems (2017)

    Losing*

    The uniformed security guard said he couldn’t help it,
    couldn’t change anything;
    he was just there to see that the eviction went smoothly,
    which it didn’t.
    You’d think they could have waited till after Christmas.
    Somehow the kid had managed
    to save enough from his subsidized job to buy presents,
    if not pay rent.
    He’d even tried to wrap them.
    He didn’t know how to fight it
    and his social worker was on extended vacation.
    All his damaged life
    had been planned by others around his circumstances,
    beyond his control.
    And when he saw all ruined by the whirlwind
    sweeping through his story,
    he let it take hold of him too
    and opened the window and began
    throwing his gifts into the street,
    where passersby picked them up
    and walked away with them.
    It was that kind of neighborhood.
    As he flung them he was shouting,
    “that one was for my mother,
    that one was for my sister, that one …”
    And throwing them out the window,
    that was for himself.

    ​​

    *First appeared in Pemmican November 2009

    ​

    To the Victims*

    You, the ones who, captured, face to face with death,
    knelt to kiss the ground or spat through your last breath,
    your torturers, your killers, still concealed,
    remember damage done or harmed heart healed:
    the knowledge that in their midnight’s ascendant hour
    they chose to do these things, to use this kind of power.
    We vote or abstain: no reason to believe or doubt;
    no signposts mark the dangerous, descending route.
    To crush all opposition; to force through schemes:
    that’s the stuff of evil, bloody dreams,
    metalled with chrome-plate hate and driven
    by the corroded engine of religion.
    The clouds press down; the winds grow stronger;
    we’ve all seen better days, and longer.
    Now the last leaf of love falls in a black November
    and is burned, and no one is left to remember.
    There was a chance: we made our choices;
    there will be other years and other voices.
    Leaching into groundwater or suspended in smoke,
    you might be anywhere:
    your chemical signatures imprint a billion volumes of air.

     

    *First appeared on poetsagainstthewar.org 2003

    ​

  • Poems

    Bill McCloud: Two Poems

    America

    Just before I killed him
    I saw his eyes
    Pleading
    Then blood was running between them
    and he stumbled
    and fell to his knees
    and it was over
    He lay on his back
    and still his eyes were open
    moist
    I checked his pockets
    and found only a snapshot
    of a beautiful child
    with shining eyes
    A younger replica
    of the man who lay before me
    I dropped my gun
    and replaced the photo
    buttoning back the pocket
    I sat beside the body
    until Harper came up and said, “Let’s go”
    I said, “Go ahead
    I’ll follow”
    but I knew I wouldn’t
    I began digging in the ground
    and worked
    and sweated more than an hour
    then rolled the body into the hole
    and followed it with my gun
    I filled it back
    and sat beneath a tree a few feet away

     

    ​Slow Motion

    Once I put my fist
    through a window
    for no reason at all​

    and watched the
    glass breaking
    in slow motion

    ​

    *Both poems are from Bill’s book The Smell of the Light: Vietnam, 1968-1969

  • Poems

    Arvilla Fee: All Is Fair

    All Is Fair

    He didn’t ask for this—this land war;
    nor did his father, his grandfather, or
    his grandfather’s father,
    and yet—the scream of rockets,
    plumes of fire and acrid smoke are as much
    a part of his home as olive trees and ravens.
    He thinks about his ancestors as he slinks
    through a narrow alley beneath a bleak,
    mid-waning moon and wonders how many
    before him have cut down the same dark streets,
    careful to avoid the bodies of the uncollected,
    careful to remain unseen by prying eyes
    as wildly desperate as his own.
    Looking over his shoulder, he inches himself
    towards a building, which, by some kind fate,
    has remained standing—and within its limestone
    walls lies something far more precious than gold,
    a gift he will give to his children so he can soften
    the hollow points of their cheeks.
    He places three loaves of bread within the folds
    of his overcoat and whispers, God forgive me
    before closing the broken door.

  • Poems

    Vera Kewes Salter: Things My Husband Told Me

    Things My Husband Told Me*

    When college fell apart I returned
    my burgundy Mustang and joined the Marines.​

    I was in my new uniform when a friend called
    to me in horror as I crossed a San Francisco street.

    We marched through the City of Hue before
    it was destroyed and returned through the rubble.

    I loved hearing Dionne Warwick as she
    blasted over loudspeakers.

    I jumped out of my well-dug foxhole
    when an armadillo jumped in.

    I felt warm as a baby in the arms
    of the corpsman who carried me out with malaria.

    We loaded body bags from the Forrestal fire
    onto our hospital ship; there were more dead than they said.

    They did not want black leaders but had
    no choice after so many soldiers were killed.

    The commander sat on the hillside as my
    squad led this large Tet Offensive operation.

    I told the radio man to go to the back but he said
    I’m coming for you and slumped dead over my body.

    Airlifted to a field hospital under gunfire I saw
    a soldier strangle a wounded prisoner.

    At home I discarded my uniform and almost
    joined the Weather Underground but married instead.

    ​

    *Originally published in Persimmon Tree.

  • Poems

    Harvey Schwartz: The Hard Stuff Is the Easy Stuff

    The Hard Stuff Is the Easy Stuff

    My latte life light as foam
    sunny day my favorite trail.
    turns to coffee grounds with just one look
    at an effigy that limps toward me 
    a muted message of familiarity.
    Turning wheels shopping cart gravel and dirt.
    His empty-planet eyes pull me in like gravity.
    And his cavernous face drops me in the pit
    of a story he hasn’t told that I somehow know.


    He’s Dave, let’s say. His fall was hard
    like the booze he used when he used to care.
    But clouds of drugs were a cushion to him
    as he floated off too easy. And since then
    nothing is easy for Dave.


    His life is full: blood-soaked wounds
    machine gun blasts napalm gusts ‘copter blades.
    Dave found out that the hard stuff is the easy stuff.
    Now, nothing is easy for Dave.


    Who flew to Vietnam
    like a strong proud goose
    in a V-shaped flock.
    Victory eluded him
    and vice took its place.
    Now, a vise grips his head
    since he woke up hung-over
    to see, that he had been used.
    So he used. And no one told him
    that he would find,
    the hard stuff was the easy stuff.
    Now, nothing is easy for Dave.


    Who can’t fly away that way.
    He can’t pay the fare or just doesn’t care.
    I look aside afraid of his eyes
    I don’t want to see them
    mirroring me.

    He who had fought
    what some thought that I ought.
    And my tennis shoes morph
    into combat boots as I march into a fog
    where nothing is easy.

  • Poems

    Lorna Wood: A Legionnaire Reflects After the Battle of Mons Graupius, 84 CE

    A Legionnaire Reflects
    After the Battle of Mons Graupius, 84 CE


    . . . an awful silence reigned on every hand; the hills were deserted, houses smoking in the distance, and our scouts did not meet a soul.

    —Tacitus, Agricola


    Stabbing and thrusting in our legions,
    outnumbered two to one,

    we were pushing the savagery out of ourselves,
    as well as the land and its people,

    so that later we could fill
    the empty waste with civilization.​

    When, in fear of us, the Caledonians set fire
    to their own thatch and killed their own families,

    ​glory was written in the flames.
    Now it is only a trace against the sky.

    The clean grass, the clear blue
    after the last wisps dissipate—

    these are not fresh pages awaiting good Latin
    but our own uncertain emptiness​

    writ large, not exorcised. We stand
    awed by our powers. We tell ourselves​

    we honor the dead,
    but secretly we despair.