Sylvia Wenmackers

BALLAD OF MENSTRUATION & CRIME

Good girls act up, their grades are low,
their mums go on a stealing spree,
their aunties’ police sheets grow,
‘be nice’ is not their cup of tea,
they’re into theft or burglary,
and forgery while feeling blue.
They are retaining water, too.

When caught, into a cell they go.
But once in prison, we foresee
they keep up hustling like a pro,
behaving so disorderly
that guards report and ask maybe
the governor to follow through.
Are they retaining water, too?

Kath’rina Dalton wants to know
do menses cause this, are they key
to crime and mood swings, yes or no?
Well, do they now, statistic’lly?
Kath’rina draws tables to see
if her hypothesis is true.
Is it retaining water, too?

So, is it PMS or flow?
Well, with a probability
from here to one in Tokyo
premenstrual tension they may plea:
hormonal woes should set them free.
The women prisons hold, who knew,
they are retaining water, too.


Sylvia's YouTube video reading of "Ballad of Menstruation & Crime"


Sylvia confesses: "This poem was inspired by Katharina Dalton's 1961 article “Menstruation and Crime” in the British Medical Journal."


SYLVIA WENMACKERS is a Belgian philosopher of probability. You may find her near a field of four-leaved clover or on Mastodon as @SylviaFysica@scholar.social.

This could be it.

The Five-Two needs six poems to finish its twelfth year, especially a poem to publish July 31-August 6, 2023 to keep the site going uninterrupted.

If I don't receive a poem, the site will go on hiatus until I do get six more. After accepting those, the site will close to submissions for good, but the published poems will be available in the archives.

Five-Two alums, if you wish any poems removed, let me know. Thank you, everyone, for your support over the years.

UPDATE: I have accepted poems to run July 31 and August 7. I still need several more to commit to a thirteenth year of fifty-two poems.

J.H. Johns

A CRIME UNSPOKEN

There’s probably a plan-
there has to be a plan-
I’m sure
there’s almost always
been a plan;

just talk at first;
maybe wishful thinking
or
a drunken indiscretion;

formalized-
back then-
with
a nod of the head;
a muffled laugh;
a raised glass;

becoming-
over time-
more secret;
more elusive;

moving from
the dining rooms,
libraries
and
private places;

waiting now,
waiting for that
moment
just shy
of
“too late;”

when it will
mysteriously become
a crime unspoken.


Paul Churchill Mann's YouTube video reading of "A Crime Unspoken"


J.H. confesses: "We have one family member much along the actuarial chart; throw in an inheritance; throw in the "birth" of intrigue, greed and betrayal- with the birth 'rearing' its ugly premature delivery before anyone has actually died- and you have the inspiration for 'A Crime Unspoken.'"

J.H. JOHNS "grew up and came of age" while living in East Tennessee and Middle Georgia. Specifically, the two places "responsible" for the writer that he has become are Knoxville, Tennessee and Milledgeville, Georgia. Since then, he has moved on to Chicago—for a brief stint—and New York City—for a significantly longer stay. Currently, he is "holed up" in a small town where when he is not writing, he tends to his "nature preserve" and his "back forty." His goal is to surround his house with all sorts of vegetation so as to obscure it from the gaze of the "locals." He is assisted in this task by his coonhound buddy and companion, Roma.

Sarah Das Gupta

MIDSUMMER MISCHIEF!

Milk stands in wooden basins
A fly crawls along blackened rafters
an escape from the midsummer heat
I have many names in the villages and fields
Robin Goodfellow, Puck, Hobgoblin
Spirit of mischief, trickery and jokes
I trace my fingers over the clotting cream
in the evening twilight.
I chuckle to see it turning sour.
In the herb garden, parsley, thyme,
sage, rosemary, burdock,
I touch them so softly –
they wither and droop.
Out in the pastures, the sheep graze.
I ride on their woolly backs
in the dim light I leap
from one to another
In the farm pond eels twist and turn,
through the green, darkening water
I sprinkle a tincture of dried yew
In silver, moonlit meadows
I dance in the magic fairy circles
I creep into lovers’ chambers
strewing heartsease, wild pansy
over the linen pillows
As the horizon lightens
I sleep in a buttercup


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Midsummer Mischief!"


Sarah confesses: "This poem centers on the 'crimes' committed by the spirit Puck or Robin Goodfellow in the 16th century and famously in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'."


SARAH DAS GUPTA is a retired school teacher living in Cambridge, UK. She hastaught in UK, India and Africa. Her work has been published in many magazines/journals - 'Paddle', 'Dipity' 'Waywords', 'Little Seed', 'Bar-Bar', 'Bull', 'The Chamber', Intrangience', 'Dorothy Parker's Ashes', Green Ink' and others. She is interested in equestrian sports, politics, history, the environment, old churches, and ghosts.

Adam Stemple

BAR FIGHT

he throws the drunk
to the barroom floor
sickening crunch
of skull on cement
but the drunk is up again
nose flattened
and blood
from a thirty stitch gash
streaming down his forehead
he’s half-blind with it
but doesn’t know
he’s hurt
and he’s still throwing
haymakers
like he’s Don Quixote
and the bar is full
of windmills.

eyes wide
with the knowledge
of what he’s done
the first guy eats the next three
punches clean on the chin
before we pull them apart


Adam's YouTube video reading of "Bar Fight"


Adam confesses: "I’ve seen this a few times and experienced it myself: that moment of stunned inactivity when you realize what horrors you’re capable of inflicting on another human being."

ADAM STEMPLE is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."

Paul Hostovsky

OSIP

Osip Mandelstam wrote a poem
making fun of Stalin. It got Osip
in a lot of trouble. He recited it
at a salon where it got some laughs
and then someone informed on him
and he ended up dying in a Gulag
in the Soviet Far East. I wrote a poem
making fun of Donald Trump and it got
no attention because this is America
where nobody listens to poets or reads
their poems. And maybe Osip would say
I should be grateful I live in a country
where nobody listens to poets or reads
their poems, a country where you are free
to say what you want to say, no matter
if it’s false or hateful or hurtful or divisive
or throwing gasoline on the fire that
OK maybe you didn’t exactly start
or exactly yell in a crowded theater,
but you’re fanning the flames and it’s
not only legal but politically expedient,
and all the snow in Siberia won’t put it out.


Paul's YouTube video reading of "Osip"


Paul confesses: "I published a poem making fun of Trump called 'Trump Inaugural Poem' (because he didn’t have an inaugural poem). It got no reaction. I couldn’t help thinking of Mandelstam–who got a reaction–and of the crimes of Stalin, and of the crimes of Trump. Then I wrote this one."

PAUL HOSTOVSKY's poems have won Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best American Poetry, and The Writer's Almanac. Website: paulhostovsky.com