Robert Cooperman

TRUMP REHIRES FIRED FEDERAL WORKERS: THE VOICE OF TRUTH

In a bold move, President Trump has proclaimed
federal workers from the Parks Department
will be rehired to man the nation’s farms, formerly misrun
to the point of collapse by now-deported illegals.
Since these Park workers have experience with the outdoors,
they will be ideal for their new, necessary assignments.

To ensure that they report for work punctually and ready
to serve in any capacity needed to guarantee
the nation’s food supply, they will be rounded up
by the Armed Services, local police forces, and FBI agents
who have publicly vowed loyalty to the President.
The pay will be minimum wage, the President declared:

“Far more than what those lazy bastards deserve,
for finally doing an honest day’s work.”

They will be housed in simple wooden structures
and purchase provisions at Company Stores on site,
to prepare healthy meals after their daily assignments
have been completed to their overseers’ satisfaction.

They will not have access to automobiles, thus
saving money for themselves and for the country
on what they would squander on gas and maintenance.

We applaud President Trump’s foresight
in remanning farms to save the nation’s food supply
and to reduce unemployment levels
that have exploded of late: workers, especially
DOJ traitors, spitefully walking away from their jobs.
to sabotage the President’s plan to Make America
Great and Moral and American Again.


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Trump Rehires..."


Cooperman confesses: "When Trump announced all the layoffs and firings, I thought he'd cause massive unemployment and inflation, and just utter disruption and ruin to good, hard working people's lives. So I put myself in Trump's head (not a pretty place to be) and came up with the 'solution' presented by this poem. If it sounds like something once perpetrated in America's ignominious past, that's intentional."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia, a retelling of Hamlet, with a slightly happier ending, at least for Ophelia. Steerage is the highly fictionalized story of his grandfather's misadventures on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20th Century. An Oar for Odysseus is the final collection in Cooperman's lifelong love affair with Odysseus and The Odyssey.

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.

Robert Cooperman

VALENTINE'S DAY BLIND DATE - PAULIE

She was waiting in front of her house,
with a bottle of champagne, so I thought,

“Wow, this is going to be so cool!”

In the car we toasted the fizzy volcano,
then she nuzzled beside me, her lips
nibbling like I was an Andes Mint,
my head a spinning dreidel.

At the restaurant, we tore through the courses,
her fingers playing inky-dinky spider
under the table, so I didn’t know
which way was up, and didn’t care.

But just as I was reaching for my Visa card,
she whipped out a piece the size
of the big guns on the USS Missouri,

took my wallet, everyone’s cash,
emptied the till, then grabbed my car keys,
and was gone like smoke blown
off a battlefield by a stiff wind.

After the cops grilled me
like a cheap cut of meat, I phoned
my brother’s wife Cindy, with murder
in my heart: her setting me up
with Bonnie and Clyde’s granddaughter,

though if Crystal had asked me
to go on the lam with her,
or even taken me hostage,
I’d have been out the door faster
than a steel rabbit at the dog track.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Valentine's Day Blind Date...":



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Bob confesses: "Believe it or not, I read about this in the local paper; I may have embellished a tad, but the bones of the story were right in the small article. Sometimes art does follow life."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are Go Play Outside (Apprentice House) and Reefer Madness (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A Nightmare on Horseback.

Robert Cooperman

GEORGE SANTOS, REPUBLICAN REPRESENTATIVE-ELECT FROM NEW YORK'S THIRD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

So I embellished? Like that gimp Libbo,
FDR, never embellished, but to Dems,
he’s a greater warrior than Robert E. Lee.

Like The Rail Splitter never embellished?
Talk about career padding! Show me
his callouses, and still that RINO’s
as close to Jesus Christ
as this country’s ever seen.

And who says I didn’t work at Goldman Sachs?
No record of my employment? Off-book, baby,
looking discreetly into irregularities
by their traders and the execs.

And claiming to be Jew-ish: incredibly brave
in this age of anti-Semitic white nationalists,
Neo-Nazis, and violent Holocaust deniers.
Believe me, any contributions from Jews
didn’t come close to the hate raining down
on me like fire and brimstone.

And if you think I’ll say where the 700 thou
came from to finance my campaign,
there are things a gentleman doesn’t talk about,
and I’m nothing if not a gentleman.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "George Santos...":



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Bob confesses: "Since Republicans are brazen, never-back-down liars, I thought Santos' response to his accusers should be one of unabashed chutzpah (Yiddish, for unmitigated gall), not only proudly crowing he did lie, but dragging the decent name of better men into the mud with his."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are Go Play Outside (Apprentice House) and Reefer Madness (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A Nightmare on Horseback.

Clay Thistleton

WHERE DONALD J. TRUMP HAS BEEN JUMPING THE SHARK

storming the Capitol for a Facebook-tagged selfie
live-streaming on Insta in a bison-horned helmet
Rambos in the Senate cosplay with their zip cuffs

when in insurrection please do not touch the statues
where Donald J. Trump has been jumping the shark
the flayed skin of democracy as a casual jacket

a mortal last stand in the crush at the Speaker’s Lobby
a star-spangled thread count in Brian Sicknick’s lifeblood
the teargas hangs heavy with airborne diseases


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Where Donald J. Trump..."



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Clay confesses: "As a long-time student and an occasional teacher of American literature I was emotionally affected by the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. The U.S. is not just a country, it is a grand, shining idea and it was that idea under attack that day."


CLAY THISTLETON has taught creative writing and literary studies in universities, community colleges and not-for-profit organisations for over two decades. He is the author of Noisesome Ghosts (Blart Books, 2018): an Elgin Award-nominated collection of found poetry that investigates the phenomenon of ghosts and poltergeists that have the ability to speak or write. His current project, ‘Never Mind the Saucers’ (Stranger Press, forthcoming), examines documented instances of alien-human sexual contact. Along with his son Dylan, Clay lives in New South Wales, Australia with a fluctuating number of feral cats.

Katherine Heil

AFTER PARTY

You should clean up, darling.
Lipstick—that’s all. It’s on your teeth,
I can see it when you smile.

Clean up, before anyone sees.
Tuck that pistol away, darling,
pull out the mirror and ‘kerchief.
I’ll do it for you, if you like.
Your hands are rather dirty.

We’ve got time, darling,
don’t fret about it. I know,
but in a house like this,
it’ll take hours before they care.
The chandeliers will blind them.
They’ll look in the basement first.

You should clean up, darling.
Put on the fresh make-up—
we can’t have anyone recognizing us.
Give me the mirror when you’re finished.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "After Party":



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Katherine confesses: "I was inspired by the glamorous image murders can take on when the victim is rich or famous, that jarring combination of elegance and violence. It's what I think can power the intrigue of the public, alongside the draw of co-conspirators working together, even when they risk implication and betrayal."


KATHERINE HEIL is a Michigan writer who can be found writing anything she likes and listening to music at almost every waking moment. With a fondness for books that she can read in a flash, she is currently getting into mystery novels.

Robert Cooperman

THE HUSNOCK

A Star Trek: Next Generation episode
featured The Husnock: a race of highly
intelligent, incredibly brutal creatures;
but when they tried to destroy a small planet,
they faced the wrath of a previously pacifist
omnipotent being, and when they killed
his mortal wife and everyone else on his planet,
he confessed to Captain Picard
that he’d wiped out all the Husnock.

“What do you mean by all?” Picard,
with growing dread, demanded,
“all of the attacking ships?”

“No,” the being answered, “every last one
of them in the universe, all 50 billion.”

Forgive me, but I’d be tempted: starting
with Putin, his pals, his lick-spittle generals,
then the Russian army, which can't
defeat Ukraine, so is rendering it
into a giant, rubble-strewn body bag;
then every Russian who fell for
Putin’s bullshit propaganda, and then...

“You’d be doing,” you’d accuse, “exactly
what psycho-Putin and his goons did.”

If I were a better man, I’d agree.
But I’m not, so allow me my impotent
fantasy-rage, because at this point,
good riddance to bad fucking garbage.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "The Husnock":



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Bob confesses: "A few days before I wrote this poem, I was talking to a likewise Star Trek: Next Generation loving-friend and I remembered the episode with The Husnock, a race of utter brutes who really get theirs. I'd mentioned in passing that I wished someone would do a Husnock on Putin and his cronies and generals and the Russian army and all of them. The idea for a poem about the Russian invaders as present-day Husnock, and what Russia deserved, percolated in my head until it hit me how the poem had to go. It's kind of a riff on the thought game we played as kids: if you could go back in time and had total omnipotence, could you bring yourself to kill Hitler? Hell yeah."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are Go Play Outside (Apprentice House) and Reefer Madness (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A Nightmare on Horseback.

Kelly Sargent

HER SHADOW

War-torn moon,
craters, sunken, through the lens:
Shadows that cannot Be, Papa had said, without the light.

An abandoned, skinned-knee teen follows her shadow,
fingers unseen that once fastened a golden charm on her bracelet:
a crescent moon, its craters in the dark.

Greasy bangs grown over her eyes—
hazel-flecked eyes, sunken like craters—
filter unspent sunlight.

Fingers, unseen and callous-tipped, grope her wrist and
pin it down—tender and bared—
one before the other onto the unsparing tar
that scorches her shadow’s edge.

Without light—her papa’s voice, now recalled—
your own shadow cannot Be.

She turns her head, her cheek pressed against the tar.
“My shadow, they cannot capture,” she whispers,
and my shadow is me.”


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Her Shadow":



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Kelly confesses: “The invasion of Ukraine reminded me of the heinous, often unspoken casualty of war - the rape and ravaging of women and children. I wanted to speak to the evil act of control perpetrated by conquering soldiers and authority figures that has been shamefully overlooked through the ages.”

KELLY SARGENT is the author of Lilacs & Teacups (Cyberwit, 2022) and Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, 2022), a Cordella Press Poetry Chapbook contest finalist. Her poems and artwork, including a 2021 Best of the Net nominee, have appeared or are forthcoming in more than forty literary publications, including Typehouse Literary Magazine, Stone Poetry Journal, and Newfound. She serves as the creative nonfiction editor of The Bookends Review, and has written for a national newspaper for the Deaf. She also reviews for an organization whose mission is to make visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors. Visit her at www.kellysargent.com

Sharon Waller Knutson

BLACK-EYED SUSAN

After the Garden of Eden prophet dies,
two men in suits carry her out
of the commune down to the road,
her long goldilocks waving in the wind.
yellow dress dragging in the dirt,
dark eyes darting like a rabbit
as they deposit her outside the gate
and she yanks on the chains, Let me
back in, she calls, I can’t breathe.

The prophet taught us to stay inside,
that the air outside was poison gas.
She takes a deep breath of the ocean
air as we walk along the beach
near the Encinitas weekly newspaper
where she writes headlines instead
of making them and I write stories
a decade after the scandal broke.

In pantyhose and skirt to her knees,
her hair its natural brown, Jeanette,
her birth name, recalls the day
she meets the prophet and her life changes.
His hypnotic green eyes stared
right into my soul, and she boards.
his Volkswagen bus for Laramie
right after graduation from Colorado State.

He names female followers after flowers.
I was his favorite, she says, which is why
his widow had her cast out. The cult leaves
Escondido shortly after that for Des Moines.
I would have done anything for him, she says.

Two decades later, I wonder if she
would have ingested a Euthanasia cocktail,
lay down on her bunk and waited
for a spaceship to beam her up
to Heaven in the Rancho Santa Fe
mansion like the thirty-eight followers
of another prophet with hypnotic eyes.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Black-Eyed Susan":



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Sharon confesses: "After watching documentaries of the 25th anniversary of the mass suicide of Heaven’s Gate, I recalled a fellow journalist I worked with who was thrown out of a cult and wondered if she joined another one."

SHARON WALLER KNUTSON is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014) and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021) and Survivors, Saints and Sinners forthcoming by Cyberwit. Her work has also appeared in Black Coffee Review, Terror House Review, Trouvaille Review, ONE ART, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, and The Song Is...

Robert Cooperman

DEATH BY VENDING MACHINE

"Thirteen people a year are killed by vending machines." —Charles Rammelkamp

What about us? How many of us
are killed each year by thugs?
Every time someone stomps up
with a fistful of change or bills,
I cringe, fearing if I don’t spew out
the candy or soda or condom
in a nanosecond to the horny bastard,
I’ll be beaten and stomped.

I have cracks in my window, dents
in my casing where I’ve been brutalized,
though so far, lucky not to be junked for scrap,
like so many of my brothers and sisters.
But I dread that day is coming.

No wonder we lose it and strike back: the thief
trying to steal a Mars Bars or scoop out
all the change and bills in our bellies?
Call us Old Testament, but shouldn’t
he lose a hand because of his thieving fingers?

The thug who shoves us like a bully
threatening a scrawny, eye-glassed kid
toting a load of library books?
We’re justified in falling on the cretin,
and if the ambulance shrieks up too late,
or not at all, well, vicious should hurt.

And if our attacker fumes our chocolate
looks older than a redwood, drier than the Gobi
is that our fault? Blame the greedy stock-guy
holding back fresh bars and letting sodas go flat
as dinner plates kids ruin their appetite for,
by scarfing the crap we’re made to dispense
and wouldn’t, if we had any say in the matter.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Death by Vending Machine":



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Bob confesses: "I thought why not take the beleaguered vending machine's point of view and complain about the abusive treatment the machines are subjected to by humans, how we take out our frustrations on inanimate objects and how'd we like it if they decided to get even."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are REEFER MADNESS (Kelsay Books) and GO PLAY OUTSIDE (Apprentice House). The former is partly about Cooperman's misspent youth and partly inspired by a news article that stated the Girl Scouts of Colorado were cool with troop members selling cookies outside of pot shops; the latter is a love letter to Cooperman's lifelong unrequited romance with basketball.

J.M. Jordan

NOCTURNE

The signs have flickered off.
The trains have settled in the dark,
and unmarked police cars slumber
in quiet corners of the park

The pigeons have found their minarets.
The bats have left their towers.
Machinery slows and stops in these
quiet unoccupied hours.

So step into the vacant street,
look both ways and stand
there in the night as still and cold
as the pistol in your hand.

Now pull your hood up tight,
hunch your shoulders and go
into the unmade world where silence
blankets the streets like snow.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Nocturne":



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J.M. confesses: "I first wrote this piece without the third stanza as a kind of open-ended urban lyric, but it seemed a bit insubstantial. So I added the third stanza to give it a strange, darker tint - like Chekhov's gun with the second act unwritten."


J.M. JORDAN recently began writing again after a twenty-year hiatus. A Georgia native and Virginia resident, his poems have appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, Image Journal, Louisiana Literature, The Potomac Review, Carolina Quarterly, Smartish Pace and elsewhere.

Nancy Scott

OR SO IT SEEMED

He was a fine raconteur, drawing applause
for his stories about growing up
in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania.
How easy to tattoo hayseed on his forehead
had he not been a scholar and colleague.
Or so it seemed.

While others were harassed into producing
what amounted to intellectual trash
or chastised for tribal squabbles which, in truth,
were no more than penis envy,
his outlier star shone brightly.
Or so it seemed.

How could one find fault with a colleague
who, as a child, ate onion sandwiches for lunch,
shared one teacher with six grades
in a single room schoolhouse, and took turns
chipping ice in the privy on cold winter days?
Or so it seemed.

His father died of black lung disease; his mother
heart failure because they could not afford
a doctor. The sons delivered papers for pennies.
Yet, all three managed to earn PhDs.
What an amazing story!
Or so it seemed.

Alas, when the skein of lies began to unravel,
he was hard-pressed to explain.
Whatever our goals, how many of us wish
we could inhabit a different history?
Sure, go ahead and improvise,
but pray no one steps forward to debunk it!


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Or So It Seemed":



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Nancy confesses: "Identity theft is not a rarity. This poem is actually true, I think. I want to believe it happened that way but I am not sure. I am not a suspicious person, but I’m afraid to answer the door to a woman with child asking if Bennie lives there."

NANCY SCOTT has been managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets for more than a decade. She is also the author of nine books of poetry and a novella, Marriage by Fire (Big Top Publishing Company, 2018). Before she retired and turned to writing, she had a long career as a social worker for the State of New Jersey which informed and inspired many of her poems. Originally from the Chicago area, she has resided in New Jersey for many years. www.nancyscott.net

Robert Cooperman

AN OPEN LETTER FROM A FUNERAL DIRECTOR TO THE ANTI-VAXXERS

I thank you all! Business is booming,
cases rising like Hurricane Katrina
from so many refusing to wear masks,
claiming they’re immortal, or the virus
is a hoax, so a big shout-out to the crew at FOX,
from Murdoch down to good ole Tuck.

Don’t go blaming me: I haven’t
infected anyone, just taken advantage
of imbeciles who had no problem
taking the flu seriously enough
to get vaccinated, but Covid?
If their god, Donald, tells them
it’s nothing to worry about,
they’ll believe any crap
that flim-flam artist shovels at them.

When I was a kid, I loved Bugs Bunny.

“What a maroon!” he’d smirk
after befuddling Elmer Fudd.
Now, enough maroons get wheeled
in here for me to send our kids
to the most expensive colleges.

And Marie can go on the shopping spree
of a lifetime: but online, no way I’ll let her
into a brick and mortar Nieman-Marcus.
Fools believe it’s safe to mingle; I know better.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "An Open Letter...":



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Bob confesses: "It struck me that mortuaries must be making out like bandits, during the pandemic. So this poem was my paean to human idiocy and fecklessness. If you don't believe in Covid, Covid believes in you. And if you think the government shouldn't tell you what to do, sometimes the government, like Mom, knows best."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Aldrich Press). Forthcoming from Apprentice House is Go Play Outside, which chronicles Cooperman's lifelong one-way love affair with basketball. Also just available is the chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells from Finishing Line Press.

Robert Cooperman

FOOD SHOPPING IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC

We’re two of the lucky ones,
our groceries delivered, though
feelings of guilt it’s so easy,
while so many suffer food insecurity:
a polite way of saying they go hungry,
have to risk their health, their lives,
to shop in supermarkets.

But as I said, we’re among the lucky ones,
the ones with money, with credit cards,
the ones who don’t have to venture out,
like mice fearing the cat’s lurking jaws.

The ones who can order cookies,
pecan tarts, ice cream, not just vegetables,
provisions to make stews that last all week,
who can call up the local pizzeria,
the catering service, and pretend nothing
strange and dreadful has occurred,

that hundreds of thousands haven’t died
from Covid, gasping, alone, terrified.
That others haven’t been shot or choked
by the police in that other pandemic,
because they’re Black which, in America,
seems to be a capital offense.

So yes, we don’t have to worry about
being murdered, about empty bellies,
about not having chocolate chip cookies
for three o’clock snack time.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Food Shopping..."



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Bob confesses: "This poem has been simmering for a while, the recognition that my wife and I are lucky, with enough resources to ride out Covid and with the right skin color to avoid being shot by trigger-happy cops, while others aren't nearly as fortunate."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Aldrich Press). Forthcoming from Apprentice House is Go Play Outside, which chronicles Cooperman's lifelong one-way love affair with basketball. Also just available is the chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells from Finishing Line Press.

Frederick Shiels

DRIVING PAST THE OLIVER HOUSE

One day late in 1966 in drowsy Hattiesburg,
Phillip Oliver, nineteen, shot
his step-mother four times
in the face and chest with a ten-gauge,

tossed what was left of her
in the back of the family’s Ford pick-up,
drove out to an empty lot
on the edge of town, unloaded her,

emptied a five gallon can of lawn mower gasoline
and dropped Ohio blue-tip kitchen matches--
two lit as a fuse for the rest— on her,
backed away quickly.

He then drove to the police station
downtown and told everything. That’s
how the newspaper reported it,
at least, that’s how I recall it.

Funny thing though,
it was also reported that
quiet Phillip, cutting lawns and
doing odd-jobs, just out of high school,

said he "didn’t mind the lady,"
they had argued a bit that particular morning.
His father remarried a little quickly, he thought—maybe,
and that was that, or so I remember fifty-five years later.

We drove by their red-brick ranch house
on Adeline St. with a shudder every day for months,
then less so, as a For Sale sign went up in the front yard.
I always suspected that the buyers would be from out of town.


Gerald So reads "Driving Past the Oliver House":



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Frederick confesses: "I was seventeen when Philip did his deed. His house was four blocks from mine. I drove past it every day. That was enough.”

FREDERICK SHIELS is a historian, professor and poet. He has published in New Verse News, Deep South Review, Hudson River Anthology, Westchester Review, and elsewhere. His poetry was recently included in a book solely devoted to Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights." He lives forty miles north of New York City. and has also published five books on historical International Relations, including Preventable Disasters: Why Governments Fail.

Robert Cooperman

TRUMP AT THE CASKET OF JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG, REPOSING IN STATE

He bowed slightly and whispered,
as if to impart a heart-felt goodbye:

"Thanks, Bitch. Now I can get a Court
that respects, loves me, and will do anything
I ask, like deciding I can rule for life."

Then, when he started to straighten up
to strut away as if he’d slain a dragon,
the casket lid flew off; the draped
American flags winged at Trump's face
like flocks of outraged ravens,

and a small, steel-strong hand grabbed him
by his wrist, and hurled him onto
the velvet lining, Trump shrieking
to his Secret Service detail,

“Get the horse-faced slut off me!”

They shrugged helpless shoulders,
while the gathered mourners gasped,
and Trump failed to tear free.
A few observers noticed he was alone
in the casket, and others claimed
they saw a black-robed figure rising.

One young woman leapt up
the Supreme Court Building's steps,
and slammed shut the lid, the insides
thudding with his kicks, vibrating
with his screams, while a hole opened,
and the casket descended
with the gravity of the damned.


Gerald So reads "Trump at the Casket...":



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Bob confesses: "The poem was inspired by a doctored photo a friend had sent, of Trump leaning over the late Justice's casket, her arm protruding, giving the old devil the finger. So I took that image one further, and had her grabbing him, flinging him inside, while she rose to Heaven and Trump cast into hell, where he belongs."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Kelsay Books). His most recent chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Terry Dawley

SHOT THREE TIMES

Having been shot three times
my body is well acquainted with
the piercing sting of hot-metal
as it rips through flesh,
shattering bone, slicing tendon,
opening vein, exploding
nerve endings in white-fire pain.

Having been shot three times
my body is well acquainted with
the mind-dope of morphine,
chill of an operating room,
fog of recovery,
teeth-gritting rehab, fighting
to regain what I once had.

Having been shot three times
my body is well acquainted with
the disfigurement of limb, and scars
that will forever mar the mind and skin.


Gerald So reads "Shot Three Times":



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Terry confesses: "In the early morning hours of July 7, 2000, I was in a close-quarter gun battle with a suspect in which twenty-three rounds were exchanged within seconds, leaving me with three gunshot wounds and him with four. This poem is about what it’s like to have been shot and the aftermath."

TERRY DAWLEY is a retired police officer from Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Cleveland Review, Mused BellaOline Literary Journal, Soft Cartel, and Law Enforcement Today. He is an award winner of the Writer's Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition and a six-time award winner of the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest.

Emory D. Jones

ENGLISH TEACHER, OR AN INSTITUTIONAL NIGHTMARE

English teacher—
it sounds so much like prison guard
with students serving sentences,
exercised in grammar—
the dull round of verb, noun
pronoun, compound direct object.

We serve them with papers,
haul them in by their principal parts,
block them off in regimented rules,
and then expect instant rehabilitation—
we coerce them into Received Standard,
at best a dream that never was.

We have kept watch too long,
drained away their lives and ours,
replaced it with pure prison pallor—
surely, there is a better way.


Gerald So reads "English Teacher...":



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Emory confesses: "I am a retired English teacher who has taught in the middle school, high school, and community college level. This poem is my personal observation of how English has been taught."

Dr. EMORY D. JONES is a retired English teacher who has taught in high school and in several community colleges. He has four hundred and twenty-eight credits including publication in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Cotton Boll/Atlanta Review, Writer’s Digest, SNReview, Jellyfish Whispers, Wild Violet Magazine, Smokey Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Stepping Stones Magazine, Peninsula Poets, Down in the Dirt, The Light Ekphrastic, Old Red Kimono, Common Ground Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, American Poetry, Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, Belle Rêve Review, The Common Journal, The Ibis Review, Deep South Magazine, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, The Cumberland River Review, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS. He is retired and lives in Iuka, Mississippi, with his wife, Glenda. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Ankit Anand

HEAT

It’s the heat that gets you first, the smoke
Follows. Maybe it’s the blanket. It is
Summer, after all. Did I leave the
Stove on? I nudge him. Did I leave
The stove on? Go back to sleep, he says.

The smoke is thicker now and I begin
To cough. Something’s wrong. Crackle. What
Was that? I throw the bedsheet off, run
Open the door. There’s fire in the stairway.
It has a punk haircut; orange and blue
And purple. I grab him by the nightshirt
. It’s too large on him. Fire, I try
I try to say. Then point. His eyes widen
“Open the window,” he screams. I slip and scamper.

I see him. Standing below. My husband. What has he
Done? I deserve it. I sit. The fire burns.
He screams. My husband looks. I don’t look.

He’s charged with manslaughter. I hope he goes to
Hell. Because if he comes up here
I won’t be able to look him in the eye.


Gerald So reads "Heat":




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Ankit confesses: " wrote this poem as an exploration of passion, and the ambiguities associated with it."

ANKIT ANAND lives and works in San Jose, California.

Terry Dawley

SPENT CASINGS

Spent casings scattered
on a summer-night street

like dead brass bees
emptied of their stingers.

The spent body nearby,
emptied of its soul.


Gerald So reads "Spent Casings"



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Terry confesses:"As a police officer, I worked the high-crime hours of 8 PM to 4 AM, and on many summer nights observed spent casings scattered on a city street with a dead victim lying nearby. The simile of dead brass bees having spent their stingers struck me."

TERRY DAWLEY is a retired police officer from Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Cleveland Review, Mused BellaOline Literary Journal, Soft Cartel, and Law Enforcement Today. He is an award winner of the Writer's Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition and a six-time award winner of the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest.