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I recently extended an invitation to poets to submit work that reflects this time of COVID, Black Lives Matter, and a heated political season.
What follows are some of those submitted. More will appear in the future.
-Joe Maita/Editor and Publisher
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“Mood Indigo,” by Matthew Hinds (May, 2020)
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The Medieval Times
It is darker than I have ever known,
No light in street, window, or home.
All hopes for peace lie in ruins.
It is darker than I have ever known.
Grendel looms and not alone
His teeth munch on bloody bones.
It is darker than I have ever known,
No light in street, window, or home.
……………………….First published in .Rattle, Summer 2003
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By Michael L. Newell
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Rust Belt
……………for Bruce Weigl
My appendix burst in a car
like a paper bag and I saw Jesus in 1966
outside of Wheeling
I ate cereal and water by the side of the road
there was no milk
but a war
and the country was dying
like a drunk in Las Vegas
not even looking as it pissed all over
its shoes
Ornette was on a cassette tape
you remember those
that’s who I was thinking of today
and Charlie
when the virus came on little cat feet
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By John Stupp
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Listening To Brad Mehldau Under Quarantine
he makes me forget about the week
from hell
reminding me that
art can be
an oasis in a storm
he takes anarchy like radiohead
and turns it into an
olive branch
he shows me
we can live together as
brothers
he bends over the keyboard
in a bill evans
pose
and turns turbulence into
a thing of beauty
he is a magician with black and
white keys
creating brotherhood…
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By Erren Kelly, 6’2’20
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Alleged Choke Hold..NYC.2014
……………………………………(I can’t breathe)
that’s what they called it
the news caster said it
he said the police called it that
it was an alleged Choke Hold
my lying eyes saw the video
and I heard the guy
say
“I can’t breathe” “I can’t breathe”
“I can’t breathe”
………3 times………… he said it 3 times
that’s what they called it
the news caster said it
he said the police called it that
it was an alleged choke hold
but he was BLACK he was BIG
so therefore . etc……
they didn’t. couldn’t. hear him when he said .“I can’t breathe”
they were applying an alleged choke hold
that’s what they called it
the news caster said it
he said the police called it that
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By Oliver Lake
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No Curfews On Words
When there are so many empty streets that you are loath to roam alone,
and so many populated homes whose doors are closed,
shunning friends, colleagues and dogs,
you do not need to feel empty or forlorn.
If you are afraid that your own voice will betray you
with its emotional turmoil,
then do not call.
You can write without invoking the Muse,
who is probably wearing a mask and gloves too.
There are no curfews on words.
They are immune to every type of virus and germ.
They need no armor in their combats with foes.
They defeat woes.
When you have run out of ink, use your keyboard.
Your message in an instant can navigate the world,
creating bridges, with no portcullises or moats,
between you and the human globe.
Do not let words in your brain boil,
initiating a fever that your thermometer misconstrues.
Air your views.
The coolness would seep into your nerves like a zephyr
blown from the mouth of Aeolus.
Words can placate the anger of a child
who no longer has access to his playground or favorite lawn,
a few tales from Hans Christian Andersen’s lore,
but if you would rather not quote,
write your own shorts.
With words, you can commune with saints and gods,
with spirits across the threshold,
with the Celtic twilight that Yeats extolled,
with ancestral souls,
with sons and daughters.
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…………………….originally published in New English Review (June 2020)
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By Susie Gharib
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Elegy For George Floyd
It’s strange that a man should be arrested and then killed merely on suspicion that he’s using a $20 counterfeit bill. Forget that apparently a black man’s life isn’t worth more than $20.00 in the eyes of America! The world is filled with counterfeits that serve as currency toward more profitable ends. Eastern Colleges that banked on black labor to enhance its coffers and those of its student body. Southern states who used counterfeit currency in the form of slaves to serve the welfare of plantation owners; or the cheap labor amassed through the African workforce in the South, even after the Emancipation Proclamation; counterfeit education in minority enclaves and the rest of the disenfranchised concentrated in under served cities so the rest of us can cash in on racial inequities; the blank check accorded our black fighting men who risked their lives so we could live freely. The counterfeit gold medal that the great Muhammad Ali got from the Olympics that couldn’t barter a seat in an all-white restaurant. The counterfeit court trials allotted white serial killers accorded a jury of their peers that merit them a lifetime of prison food, while black men get a summary sentence of death handed down by policemen for selling cigarettes on the street. The counterfeit sympathy of otherwise clueless people like me and many in my generation who bewailed the violence going on in the South in the 50’s and marched only to the newspaper stand to read about it. The world is filled with counterfeit. What it needs is empathy and men of character with real currency who can finance change with political acumen.
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By Frank de Canio
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Not Tonight, In Memory Of Laquan Mc Donald
See me and Charley was smoking weed
drinking, you know that cheap shit you get
at Sam’s LIQ, we was talking bullshit,
took a hit on the pipe, time to go, getting
late, but my stomach talking to me
maybe grab myself a burger except I ain’t
making no sense, I pull out my knife, cause
I’m fucked up, don’t know what I’m doing
Pretty lady behind the counter say
she gonna call the police unless I get
the hell out of there, I’m out
I hear ‘em coming, whole bunch of
em just for me, hollering shouting
I see guns, I just want to get the fuck home
I know Mama got something on the stove
Down the middle of the street, staggering
still got that damn knife in my hand
HALT!, no, I’m going home, no jail
tonight, not for me
STOP NIGGER! Put your knife down
Glued to my hand, can’t let go
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK
RAT-TAT, TA- TAT
16 hot pops to my back
I’m not going home, not tonight
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By Aurora M. Lewis
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Singing In The Shower
Sometimes I recognize that you will forget me,
that we will forget all of this, and that all of this
will forget us, that we ever inhabited this space.
But these days, I find that when I’m not thinking
about the present or the past, I’m often thinking,
“Don’t think that—just please don’t think that.”
I slice open my middle finger while chopping up
vegetables for dinner. Maybe it was an accident.
Maybe I wanted some outward display of what’s
inside me. Maybe it’s a little “fuck you” to myself.
It just feels like I’ve been so damn malleable lately.
I call up my mother to let her know I’m not “dead
on the side of the road,” as she seems to like to say.
She tries to comfort me by saying she thinks we’ve
avoided something worse, something like a civil war.
She means well, but it’s not much of a comfort to me.
But I think about D.H. Lawrence, how he said that we
have “to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
I put on John Coltrane records until I’ve run through
all my John Coltrane records, then start back at the top.
And that seems to do some damage. It seems to tame
the beast a little. I think I’m good to step outside and
confront the world. I’m getting ready and I’m singing.
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By Scott Silsbe
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We Have Been Briefed
…………………………….(found poetry)
They have very little people
that take this drug for malaria.
You know, you go to major hospitals,
sometimes they have two ventilators.
Some of these people who are dying—
they’re gonna die.
Maybe that’s correct, maybe it’s false.
You know, we just had another sock rocket—
you saw that, right? We have a thing
called the Constitution, which I cherish.
I could cause panic much better than even you.
Did you know I was number one on Facebook?
I’m a cheerleader for this country;
the president of the United States calls the shots.
Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry. I hold a rally.
Did I hold a rally?
I don’t take responsibility at all.
Supposing you brought the light inside the body.
And then I see the disinfectant…something
like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning.
You’re going to have to use medical doctors.
Maybe you can, maybe you can’t;
I hope people enjoy the sun.
When you test, you find something is wrong with people.
If we didn’t do any testing,
we would have very few cases.
Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?
I’m just here to present talent;
people don’t want money.
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By Diane Elayne Dees
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Statues Of Limitations
The miniature statue
Of St. Francis
Holds court over the small garden
He is patron saint of
Arm raised in praise and blessing
For all the flowers
And creatures
He embraces with Peace
Meanwhile, in Boston
Christopher Columbus has lost his head
And, in Richmond
He has been tossed into the river
While the fate
Of Robert E. Lee
Is a bone of contention
In the renewed Civil War
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By Jim Mello, 6/11/20
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Soliloquy And Song At The Bathroom Mirror
Don’t mind what is coming for a moment—
maybe the end of days, the end of you, a cold
gray dawn, the lawn all soaked with morning dew
while distant cities named for saints, and others too,
are burning, one by one and two by two as you peer
into the steam upon the glass, and marvel at the ass
you have become, the sum of things you’ve learned
minus those you’ve failed to grasp. There’s not much
left once that’s subtracted. But in your defense, half
the words have been redacted, so just for a moment,
don’t mind what is coming as you serenade the misty
looking-glass so softly with a little folk tune that you
have never even cared much for,The Foggy Dew.
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By Joel Glickman, 6/11/2020
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St. John’s Church Lafayette Park June 1, 2020
Staring stunned motionless
I gape at the televised universes
both within and outside of me,
I contemplate the sting of
Anguish that tear gas delivers
to children’s children gathered
and since nature abhors vacuum
the emptied space draws the vacuous
perpetrator the toothless old dictator
this poseur hoisting someone else’s decalogue
nevertheless somehow he correctly identifies it
as “a bible” which prop to him suffices
after all he is performing once again
on television holding a sacred book before a
hallowed church in a lately teeming place
here emptied by him who dominates any
untamed spaces in the manner which disgraces
his own senseless carcass and his failing nation.
Yes certainly we will be unleashed from
the fatted golden calf
by death our own or from his leaving the world
while children our own and his are begging us
for food in forms of gentleness and meaning
when home where the heart is said to be may for all be
missing as our nation fails its singular mission.
Home and hearth, quaint concepts where
lessons once learned have been forgotten
where the only legacy easily may be
the one decreed in idiocy.
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By Ed Coletti
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A Swedish Midsummer 2020
Geography the usual;
The place on planet just the same;
The night light full till after midnight,
Daylight’s dawn at one or two
With so few hours in between.
This year then,
A little different.
Last year when
A crowd would meet
To dance and sing and drink and eat
On park or lawn or balconies,
Families and friends to hoopla til a dark
Which almost never comes
Makes the ending for them.
This a deviating year;
Debating and departing from
The customary dancing, prancing,
History may chronicle as Distancing,
Fiascos, blunders, six-feet-unders.
Romance from six feet of space
This midsummer in the North
Coming forth with likenesses
Has, by the laws of nature
Put the emphasis on differences
Which we, survivors as a race
Will surely neutralize and chase away
One future day.
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By Arlene Corwin, 6/15/2020
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On One Day At A Time
in these troubled times
and false spring
after seventy
but also before
those older years
try and find
on one day at a time
find something in each day
you will enjoy doing
something good and interesting
you absolutely love to do
on every
single
day
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By Alan Yount
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Postscript: written on June 6, 2020
seventy third birthday,
with hope of strength and peace
in these times.
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“To be a jazz artist in America is a risk to begin with and then came Covid 19. The pandemic has not only put the future of live jazz into question, but has claimed the lives of so many musicians so far, Ellis Marsalis, Wallace Roney, Henry Grimes, Guissepe Logan and Lee Konitz. The disproportionate number of African-Americans who have died from the virus, moreover, speaks of the structural racism of the country that Black Lives Matter is seeking to redress. On a more personal note, my sorrow only grew after the stark contrast of the joy I experienced from being lucky enough to attend the William Parker and Marshall Allen’s Sun Ra Arkestra concert at Town Hall, the last great jazz show in NYC before the walls came tumbling down, what now feels like a century ago.”
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Matthew Fallon Hinds received his PhD. at the London School of Economics in the field of International History. He has worked as a lecturer and academic in the US and Europe. His most recent written work can be found in the newly released edited Volume, Geopolitical Amnesia: The Rise of. the. Right and the Crisis of Liberal Memory, published by McGill University Press. He lives with his wife and two children, a stone’s throw away from the Williamsburg Bridge where Sonny Rollins honed his craft all those years ago.
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Michael L. Newell’s newest books are Wandering and Each Step a Discovery. They can be found online at Amazon, cyberwit.com, and Barnes and Noble. Newell lives on the Florida coast.
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John Stupp’s third poetry collection Pawleys Island was published in 2017. His manuscript Summer Job won the 2017 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize and was published in August 2018. A chapbook entitled When Billy Conn Fought Fritzie Zivic was published by Red Flag Poetry in January, 2020. (From 1975-1985 he worked professionally as a mediocre jazz guitarist). He lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and can be reached via email at [email protected].
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Erren Kelly is a two-time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston whose work has appeared in 300 publications (print and online), including Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine, Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, .and .Poetry Salzburg.
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Oliver Lake is a saxophonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader who in 1977 founded the World Saxophone Quartet. He has performed on more than 80 albums. In addition to his musical endeavors, Oliver is also an accomplished poet, painter and performance artist. He has published two books of poetry, and has exhibited and sold his artwork internationally.
Click here to visit his website
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Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. in English on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Mad Swirl, Down in the Dirt, The Ink Pantry, Impspired Magazine, A New Ulster, Westward Quarterly, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, The Opiate, Penwood review, Crossways, Amethyst Review, Synchronized Chaos, Pinyon Review, Leaves of Ink, Peacock Journal, The Blotter, and many others.
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Born and bred in New Jersey, Frank De Canio works in New York. He enjoys music from Bach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, Opera. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost , Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.
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Aurora M. Lewis.is a retiree having worked in finance for 40 years. In her fifties, she received a Certificate in Creative Writing-General Studies, with Honors from UCLA. Aurora’s recent poems, short stories, and nonfiction have been accepted by The Literary Hatchet, Jerry Jazz Musician, The Blue Nib, Trembling in Fear, Jitter Press, Scary Snippets, Copperfield Review to name only a few.
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Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems
have appeared in numerous periodicals and have been collected in the
three books: .Unattended Fire, .The River Underneath the City, and
Muskrat Friday Dinner. He is also an assistant editor at Low Ghost Press.
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photo by Alice Mello
Jim Mello is a counselor and clinical supervisor in the substance use disorder field. He’s also a part time clergy person, and has taught in the University of Maine system as an adjunct professor. Besides People, .his passion is music and he.became a poet by default. He has three books published, two by Moon Pie Press, and one self-published.
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Joel Glickman taught music including jazz history and the jazz band at Northland College, Ashland Wisconsin, from 1974 until retirement in 2017, where he has resumed teaching about jazz again, part time. He has written and published poetry over a wide range of subjects. Primarily a classical clarinetist and folk singer-song writer and banjo player, his jazz and saxophone skills lag behind these. He resides in Ashland with wife Susan and their Bichon, Madeline.
He can be reached via email at [email protected]
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Ed Coletti is a poet widely published internationally and he curates the popular blog “No Money In Poetry.” His most recent book Appollo Blue’s Harp and the Gods of Song is available at amazon.com or from the author at edjcolettiATgmail.com. Additionally, Ed is a painter. middling chess player, and harmonica player. He lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California.
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Arlene Corwin…Brooklyn born. Age 85. Harpist, pianist, singer. High School of Music & Art. Hofstra Univ. BA. 2 films (lead in one, composer in the other — see IMDb) original lead in “The Nervous Set, introducing “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”. 19 published poetry books, yogin since the age of 20-something. Lives in Sweden. Jazz musician forever. Mother owned jazz club, The Turf with Slim Gaillard in the 50’s, Hempstead, Long Island. (See.Arlene Corwin. Poetry.com .for longer version.). See Youtube for Arlene and some good tunes.
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Alan Yount, 73, has published poetry for over 50 years. His poems have appeared in WestWard Quarterly (featured poet for summer, 2018). Big Scream, Spring: the Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society, and Waterways.
He has been in three anthologies: Passionate Hearts, Sunflowers.and Locomotives: Songs for Allen Ginsburg. Alan was one of 31 poets, along with Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Also Chrysalis Reader.
Alan plays trumpet and has led his own dance band.
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Click here to read “A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Spring, 2020 edition
Click here for information about how to submit work for consideration
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