the burning american by DB Cox

(or “citizenship lost”)

the pitchless hum
of an idling greyhound
combines with the suffocating
fumes of diesel fuel
to soak the night air
with noisy poison
a homeless veteran
sits crumpled like lost luggage
outside the brownsville
bus depot
one of those forgotten people
living a half-life
just beyond anybody’s caring
hard times & places
chiseled on his face
like engravings
in a tombstone—
he’s wearing
a faded military field jacket
a large patch
is sewn across the back
an upside-down
american flag
engulfed in flames

two hollow eyes
look blankly
past the human caravan
moving along
with its assured sense
of destination
there’s a wrinkled
square of cardboard
at his side—a kind of
faded-brown, contemporary
american business card
the fractured graffiti
“out of work”
scrawled across the front
one look
at this burning american
& you know he’s finished
the whole story
is right there in his eyes—
like looking
at the floor of the ocean
he glances up at me
as if i could save him

preface by Jameson Bayles

when your entertainment comes in a can
and you realize that your can opener is broken,
and your dog ate your church key because your resume was stale,
and you realize that the campaign ads that haunt you in your dreams
are nothing more than discontinued lean cuisine casseroles
that you have burnt in your microwave while you mulled over
your third eviction notice
and you are too tired
too drunk
too crunked
too oversexed
too under sexed
too lack of free sex
too sodium free
too fat free
too gluten free
too GMO free
too condoms free for college freshman
too sleazy
to sleepy
to dopey
to grumpy
to anti-Trumpy
to care
and you watch digital dialogues transverse your social media status update
and no one really sees the lighthouse in your mind among the tsunami of
insanity
and you watch the ebb and tide of twitter feeds, Instagram likes, snap chat face
swaps and you have purged these recycled conversations without comment
and you watch food bank lines en mass despair, plasma centers donate lifelines to
the forgotten dreams of childhood that hashtag fightforfifteen merely drowns
and you watch suicide/depression ward lobbies weep and moan
during the ethereal silence of man
and you watch the unrehearsed screams of poverty
and you watch
and you watch
and you watch
so no
no
I don’t
watch
reality
TV.

____________
Jameson Bayles is a roving correspondent for Poetrybay and his work has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines; most recently in Poems-For-All, Hedgerow, The Ambriel Revolution, Thirteen Myna Birds and on Rumrazor.com. He has been published in ten books. Currently, his work can be found in the collaborative reader “A Case For Ascension” (Asinimali Publications, 2015), the 2016 Hessler Street Poetry Fair Anthology (Crisis Chronicles Press) and “Delirious- A Poetic Celebration of Prince” (Night Ballet Press, 2016). His book “legends of doe hoe” will be published in 2017. Jameson resides in Kansas City, Missouri

 

A boxcar in July by Sissy Buckles

 

In the 60s we were babies
her son and me now it’s 1988
and 5AM dawning in his
mother’s living room
“a poem is some remembering”
said Robert Bly and I’m
trying my best not to look
at a strange fat man’s
naked tootsies
on the spotless rug
in Rancho Bernardo
the community part of the
old Mexican land grant
issued in 1842
Conrad’s heart of darkness
in pink wake-up feet
clean socks and loafers
a powder blue striped leisure suit
with a matching pastel matron
upright dummies picking teeth
in a vinyl booth
smeared with Denny’s
coffee shop grease
from the senior starter
eggs/hash browns
underdone soggy white toast
rancid margarine
en route to the Tijuana aeropuerto
and a flight to Acapulco
chauffeuring his well-bred
mom & her beau taking a
vacation to visit our friendly
neighbors in the south
I forgot my beaded handbag
bought at Purple Heart Thrift Store
in her locked car
w/the bumper sticker
‘a woman’s place is in the mall’
the old mans’ wet
strawberry slicked lips
hanging open
amazed
that his house in Peñasquitos
was broken into twice
a year to the day
almost apart
now he keeps his Cadillac
in the garage to guard
against birdy doodoos and
dirty day labor illegal
migrants living in the nearby
hills & arroyos with their
thieving plastic bags —
in the newspaper I’d read about
eighteen of them involved in
what the authorities called
a bungled smuggling attempt
and violently perishing in a
locked steel-walled boxcar
they boarded at El Paso
90 miles northwest
of Sierra Blanca on the
brutal Texas-Mexican border
the guy supposed to
unlock it at the end of the line
missed his queue while
fierce120 degree heat
sizzled their lungs
dirty nails claw iron sides
convulsions
shitting
screams
fighting each other for air
a lousy peso a job a hamburger
some goddamn fucking hope
the 19th survived by desperately
punching a hole in the
floor to breathe —
he keeps big grey boxer shorts
under his widow girlfriends’
bathroom sink
along with his favorite treat
oreo ice-cream sandwich cookies
raw w/freezer burn
in the gigantic new fridge
her son and me made it
kneeling cum spots on her
silk brocade couch
among Illinois farmwives
knick-knacks preserved
without dust on the shelves
homecrafted dolls and crystal
handed down if I had a bomb
I would blow up R.B.
all this kink
is getting me nowhere.

When … by D. A. Pratt

When …
was America ever great?
The slogan on the hat
has me wondering …
the hats with the slogan
will soon be buried
in the sands of time –
Shelley’s Ozymandias
comes to mind …

Powerful … yes … but
when was the United States
of America ever great?
What qualifies as greatness?
I guess it’s in the eyes
of the beholders – as usual …

I want to say that Americans
have been “at their best”
from time to time …
definitely … many times …
but not as often as some
would want everyone to believe –
this too is all about perspective …

And Shelley’s Ozymandias
keeps coming to mind …

CHASING THE GREEN CARD by Mather Schneider

It is absurd
what men have made
of life:
this government office
tucked away in a low rent warehouse district
behind a run-down McDonald’s
where the bitch security guard
makes you take off your belt
and shoes
and give her all your things
and walk through the metal detector
like a portal to
hell:
the big room with 60 chairs lined up
and not a single person
not a plant
or a picture
nothing on the walls
no windows
not a single piece of lint on the carpet
no water allowed
no food, they barely
allow air.
And you sit with your Mexican wife
and wait for the door to open
and the little mousy government official
to poke his head out
and mispronounce your names
(but don’t correct him, god!)
and usher you into his
tiny office, again
no windows, nothing on the white walls
but oppression, righteousness
and a military calendar.
And in this tiny room you will beg
for leniency, for him
to let your wife stay in this country
beg him to believe you are really
in love
that you are good people who just want to live
together and be happy
to live a simple life
without trouble, that you didn’t ask
for this to happen
she didn’t ask to be born
in Mexico with no money, she didn’t ask
to have hope
and courage
and you didn’t ask to meet her and fall in love
and if you can’t properly define
what it means for two human beings
to need each other, he will
tear your life apart.
And you will watch his face
for any signs of compassion
and see none, no smile, nothing
just nods at your answers
as he makes his little checkmarks and notes
on a paper
and looks at a computer screen
you can’t see
and this man who has lied 20 times already that day
will judge you both immoral
and unworthy
and point to a tiny paragraph
in a 1,000 page law book
as proof.
When it’s over
he says you will never see him again
and you will receive notice
in the mail, yes or no, yes or
no
maybe in a week, maybe a month
maybe the post-person
will lose the fucking thing, maybe it will get
sent to your asshole
neighbor.
If your request is denied, what then? you ask
as your wife begins to cry
and he looks at you as if that is a
stupid question.
She will have to go back
to Mexico, he says, so calm
so absurd, so easy
as he sips his water from a clear bottle
and shows you the door
as if you’ve forgotten where it was
and that’s it:
he’s got his paycheck, it’s
Friday
he’ll have his pension
at age 55
he’ll go to Puerto Vallarta
for vacation
and give the poor beggar children
pennies
and think nothing absurd
about it.
You want to kill him and wonder
who is more insane
him or you
which is more absurd
his life or yours
and you leave the building
and stand in the sun
and hug your wife
as she cries.
There’s still hope, you say
pulling her closer.
And so you wait, which is what you’ve been
doing for 2 years
all your life it seems
the small man who has no power and so must
say to himself things like
“roll with the punches” and
“be like water”
and “love your fate”
but the truth is
it hurts:
this absurdity
this waiting
without knowing
what will happen to you.

Thump by Wayne F. Burke

a loud THUMP on the door of
liberty
has splintered the wood,
shattered the glass;
the barbarians are at the gate:
the alarm sent too late,
Alaric in the driver’s seat
and boots tramping on varnished floors…
A seismic shift and
spin and axis altered–
a redneck win
hick victory
evangelical triumph–
the looting of the shrines begins–
the Know Nothings, disavowed by the Republic
in the 19th century
have arisen from the dead
and the country trembles.

Jesus Did Not Come by Helen Losse

When things go wrong,
“they” act on their own experience
sometimes as former church-hoppers,
most often protestant. They call us
christians who are not “real Christians”
and hypocrites. They try to make us
judge who is and isn’t genuine.
Do they do this because “they are hurt?
We, too, are hurting. Do “they” think
the world’s ills do not concern us, too?
Everyone has been disillusioned, hurt,
forced at some point to buy bottled water
when no fresh supply gurgled from dry earth.
What I think they mean is, listen to this.
And yes, “they” are right, we should all listen
both to each other and to God. We should act
on what we know. History matters.
They should know we must include “they.”

There is a tenderness within us all,
but not all tenderness is visible.
Some keep their tenderness hidden.
Tenderness also resides in Jesus,
who was, in fact, the most tender man
of all. Remember the picture of Him
with those lovely children, those tiny lambs?
Yet God never said that tenderness
and understanding alone could save us
from either hell or each other.
What Jesus said was,
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,
Follow me, Eat my flesh, and then only
to His disciples—Will you leave me, also?—
for the mob disbanded because His way
became hard to follow. Jesus did not come
to bring peace to all who live upon the earth,
at any cost, now. Without both our faith
and works, He brings violence
like the shifting of bones.

GROWING UP IN AMERICA by A.D. Winans

As a child I thrilled
To the railroad trains
Riding out of the badlands
Not knowing they were owned
By robber barons

I watched the Calvary charge the
Indian villages like Attila the Hun
Believing Custer a hero and
Sitting Bull a savage

Not taught in school about the
Deadly smallpox plague
Diseased blankets traded Indians
For title to their land
A secret plot to murder
An entire nation

Generations of ripped-off cultures
Gather in the museum of history
Dolphins die in tuna fishermen’s nets
While pelican eggs refuse to hatch
Victim of man’s greed and waste
As the blistered hands
Of faceless migrant workers
Reach out for a token of respect
Only to find death in pesticide laded food
The tools of revolution laid aside
Rusting from affluence and false security

The dreams of thousands upon thousands
Of brave warriors lay buried
In unmarked graves
No historical monument
Will make mention of them
Their children buried in graves so small
Their parents wear them in their hearts
Like an anchor weighed
To the tip of their tongue

emperor of 26th avenue by John Grochalski

the emperor
of 26th avenue
stands baked a fine brown
wielding his cane like a sword
outside the deli
underneath the pimple dick sun
he says, we don’t rent from the chinese here
i don’t let ‘em
good italian folks, he says
you can’t be renting apartments
from those chinese
when there’s still good italian people
that got clean rooms for rent
this neighborhood
everybody back then
they were the salt of the earth
but now…
now they’re all in those muslim headbands
or speaking spanish
squawkin’ that gook talk
the emperor
of 26th avenue
has his two dollars at the ready
for a cup of coffee and the post
the trick is, he says
i don’t let ‘em rip me off
i know what coffee
and the news are worth
but do they?
back before when this deli was run by italians
sometimes you didn’t even have to pay
or they’d let you slide a quarter here and there
folks helping each other out, ya’see?
but not them running the show now
they want to take over america
and turn us into something different
all those buildings
with all those different languages on them
muslim and chinese and spanish
chicken scratch
that’s why i stand here
most mornings and most afternoons
hell, i’ll stand here all day if that’s what it takes
to get things back
the emperor
of 26th avenue
puts his coffee cup on a stoop
and hobbles to the corner
he stands there by the stinking garbage
and the blowing leaves
like a bird shit statue
then he shakes his head
and comes hobbling back
looking like the statue of liberty in bermuda shorts
nursing a bad back
and a bum right knee.

Epilogue for an Election by Donal Mahoney

 

After the TV mavens had their say
the gnomes crept out of their caves
spoke and returned to their caves.

Thunder struck, hell broke loose
and the mavens came back on TV
predicting Armageddon.

In cities all over the nation
pimples popped and broke.
Pus flows in the streets.