October 22, 2023

Sarah Manasrah

‘Gaza death toll tops 5,000,
nearly half of them children’

I wish my 4-year-old
would never have to learn
the word genocide.

but it’s already carved into
our family tree, nourished by
burning tears instead of rain
braided into the strands of her
Jewish-Muslim-Palestinian DNA.

its trunk knotted with
displacement’s premonitions
one branch silhouetted by
the painfully blinding sun
forgetting what it’s like
to struggle for subterranean breath.

28 solitary stems broken, asphyxiated
sinking back down to smother
the bulbs who know earth intimately
who teach each seed
how to break free.

‘choose life’ God implores them every year
but this time it’s too late —
they’re bowing not to a golden calf,
but to a blue and white flag
that casually turns entire families
into thick white dust
destroys souls as if it’s a videogame.

my 4-year-old says
‘my cousins are dead’
after asking us why we’re crying
(we didn’t have the heart to lie)
‘you’re safe here,’ we tell her
though we can’t be sure it’s true
(Wadea Al-Fayoume)

my 4-year-old is holding a sign
that says genocide
when will the world listen?

our family tree, rooted in
blood clots instead of soil
remains sumud (steadfast)

because the bilingual fire raging
between her neurons
behind her glistening eyes
means our survival.

1

Rituals

Tricia Knoll

— A minister in Prague, Norbert Capek, created a flower communion in 1923 to celebrate diversity. Each person contributed one flower to a vase. Later each left with someone else’s bloom. In 1941 the Gestapo arrested him; he died in Dachau in 1942.

One man stuck a carnation
into Viet Nam’s rifle barrel.
Remember his photo?
He died of AIDS.

Teddy Bears and roses
slump at white crosses
outside schools.
Later, lifted candles
light the night. Hugs
come as hard as grabs.

Let the widow
with gray braids
and a backpack
choose a yellow iris

as the man with glitter
on the bill of his ballcap
offers a lilac sprig.

Carry orange gladiolas to the wake,
calla lilies to the grave.
Clasp hands like rosebuds.

Allen Ginsberg called masses of flowers
visual spectacles, love rituals
that bank on the front lines.

2

Autumn Leaves

Paul Smaldone

The factories are shutting down
equipment rusted

After pumping out oxygen
all summer

They fall
gently
to earth

3

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Charles Tarlton

We know little, but presume the things
behind the things, the wind that in its whorls
revolves our worries, the knife-edge slicing
up against the whirring lathe which curves
and hollows table legs, purely human
shapes unknown in Nature. The dark swoop
and stroke of the Osprey over the marsh,
a silent music writ in long bowings
in and out of the shadows. The scattered
dust of planets testifies destruction,
wrought from within, the crown turned
vermin in a wasting world, darkening
with every setting sun, and running down

4

Bronze birds, yellow flowers

LJ Ireton

My sunflowers are half-sun, half-rust ring
unusual - the petals are starting
to drift
still beautiful, lone flyers
like the bronze wings above them
flying right over the sun –
a clawed kite, haloed fork tail
stirring me from numb
wordlessness.

I write of this flame that you might know
the yellow flower, look up –
up, where prayers go,
riding briefly on birds of prey.
That the hollow cold of not knowing
can fill, burn with just a flutter past the eye,
a kingfisher blur,
like orange sugar to a curious mind
wandering in the shade.

5

Still Life with Late Flowers and Chemo

Aaron Fischer

I just don’t want to look like a ghoul. A lifts
her face like someone expecting a kiss.
L scootches closer, slowly begins
penciling in her friend’s eyebrows with

sure, short strokes. Her hand restrains
A’s cheek with a touch. I look away.
We’re sitting on the porch in deep autumn —
shirtsleeves and surgical masks. The late

flowers’ lyric chatter, the yellow fuchsia,
and orange mums turned up a tad too bright,
the white petunias marked with red crosses.
L holds up the mirror like a stylist

in a beauty salon, done with her task.
A looks and looks and looks and laughs.

6

Amaryllis

Candace Kronen

On the day you left us, the amaryllis bloomed
We watched you both on that flickering month

You sinking in the bed, weak and atrophied
She snaking her way triumphantly skyward

You, pale-cheeked, emptying your stomach
She, sneering smugly, drinking in the sun

The day we turned off the monitors and waited
She was at my back, waiting too

- I noticed it first - Your lips lost their colour -

She burst into a violent red
A proud peacock against the sterile room

Don’t speak to me of beauty
No more talk of rebirth

I want to sink my hands in damp soil
Turn myself towards the shade

See where the dead things can linger
Learn what survives in the dark

7

Underside

Kym Mac

Forgive me,
for I
mistook
the under-
side of
a dandelion
for an
arbor.
It’s
astigmatism
or narrow
vision.
A dizzy view
clouded by
the canopy
of a common
weed.
When did
I become
so meager?
How did
I forget
the wide
unobstructed
sky?

8

Rafflesia arnoldii in bahasa melayu

Farrah Lucia Jamaluddin

I have code switched so many times,
My accent is permanently posh.

In a gilded mirror taken from a temple faraway,
I see the padma raksasa –
I don’t know how to pronounce it
But I try to push the vowels out,
From a secret place in my throat
Maybe my sun-soaked grandma understood.
Once a blazing beast, and then the white man came
And placed his name over mine and made my parents
Believe that we needed different tongues;
Changed robes; new rituals and rights.
Deep down, he fears what I have discovered -
My stink will overpower the place one day,
An acrid anecdote that tells my truth,
And my gaze will return a greater pity than the
Concrete jungle has ever known.

9

Thirteen, Beware

Georgina Davis

Flower of the dead, lean your longing leaves
toward the sun, drink up all this delicious living.
Gulp it down like a feral thing,
let it spill onto your chin, your hands
tacky with it, lap at the remnants on
your tar-palms until your belly bursts with it.
Like all things, you will wither and fade,
the petals of your skin will pucker and prune
into something new, something old.
You will pull at each thready vein
(in your skin, your petals, your paper-wings)
and tie them into neat little bows.
Just let the petals fall.
They will flutter into your lap one afternoon,
a good omen glazed in the skin of a bad one
(like two for joy, but one is hidden behind a wall.)
You will grieve for the golden you used to glow,
but there is beauty in brittle, Marigold,
there is strength in crumbling.
All flowers, once picked, disintegrate.

10

Thistle in Humble Soil

Mark Murphy

Perhaps your closed crown defies the wind
in a field where shadows bully
the faithless, but we live
here where faith is currency to silence
the pulse of nature.
Where is the doing word that gives us
the upper hand. We speak
while we still have use of our tongues.
In less than a heartbeat,
your spiny leaves will shed
their armour under the heavy boots
of our shadow-play
but your florets prevail in the field’s heart
as if poised to mend
the world. You who thrive
in the barest of ground, rise up again
in winter’s glow. Testament how we live
to fight another day.

11

Spring Equinox (do not forget)

Lucy Coats

(after Mahmoud Darwish 1941-2008)

Yesterday’s lambs frisk in pea green fields,
a leap of whirling tails, of milky nuzzlings.
(do not forget the new born babes, suckling
mute at starved-dry mothers’ breasts).

Lone daffodils sway in a stiff west wind,
cherry pink cups nectar-seeking bees.
(do not forget the million ancient olive
trees, burned & bulldozed to oblivion).

In the endless blue above, skylarks sing,
invisible black dots, ecstasy-full of music.
(do not forget the families, huddled close,
praying death drones fly past their silence).

Catkins dance on hazel trees, yellow
pollen drifting gold-heavy in a still air.
(do not forget the mother sprinkling flour
on dust, for her just-killed children’s iftar).

Four roe-deer graze on wildflowers,
ears ever alert, ready to leap and run.
(do not forget the boy with a car seat,
fleeing missiles, all spilt tear eyes & terror).

There’s a run-over hare on the back lane
outside, flattened berry-red on black.
(do not forget the blooming teenage lad,
his crushed flower flesh, his living blood).

As you gaze on spring, fresh life, think
of ruined Gaza, her murdered people.
(say: “I will not be silent. I will not
be silent. I will be a candle.” Repeat).

12