Egrets fit&smooth as paper planes
caress the air-above-ground between
patches of trashed medians along US-1
splitting Lauderdale up-to-the-coast
 
isn’t the world failing—hasn’t it already
failed?—the thinned-out atmosphere
bloated with all-the-world’s-light
I’m anywhere else right now, I’m sure
 
in this state that swings-no-more
the chain-leashed pitbulls, heavied
in the heat, heave pendulously
there is garbage for all-of-us to eat--
 
cigarette butts and smashed
Steel Reserves silver sidewalks
Styrofoam dregs of consumption
are islands built to live ten-thousand years--
 
nothing lasts, nothing lasts—my bones
are inside-outting their buttery marrow
the Intracoastal is drowning yachts
it was delusion to think we wouldn’t
 
consume our fragile-little-selves
 


​

​I ache for my unborn son,
Who will be received into this earth from the body of a woman
Whose skin is etched with
Terrorist
Muslim
Banned
Less than
Unwelcome.
 
I ache for my unborn son, John or Jahan--
Or whatever name makes him more ordinary--
For his black hair will define him
He will wear a hoodie.
There will not be any PTA meetings,
His parents are always away, he says
Because they are
Not pale, with blue eyes that shimmer like the Pacific Ocean
They forget words and correct phrases
Their accents embarrass him.
 
John will
Deliberately forget his mother’s language and
Tattoo jungles and crucifixes on his arms
Because,
He sees his mother
Whose five inch heels
Break every day, when she
Without knowing how to stand firm,
Is expected to run.
Because John sees his mother
Still call her parents’ house on the other side of the globe,
Her home.
John will hang
The American Flag from his bedroom window
To say,
He has picked his land.
 
I ache for my unborn son
John or Jahan—or whatever name Starbucks baristas can pronounce--
Because for now, he will not be born in the Land of the Free
Because my dream is deferred,
My visa invalid,
My entrance denied.


​

Leila Zonouzi is an Iranian native currently living in Santa Barbara, CA. She’s a first-year PhD student in Global Studies at UC Santa Barbara with hopes of one day becoming a university professor, helping the younger generation to be more mindful of the world around them. She has received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. When she isn’t reading, she thinks about going to the beach, but then resumes reading.

​Down by the docks, America Jimenez
jettisons into the bay the snapped head
of a marigold she uprooted from its soil.
 
Barely a teen, she already suspects she’s loved
all the wrong men: the white Christ from her religion
book, Jamestown’s murderous Pilgrims, and Jimmy,
two grades ahead, who tried to reach under her shirt
on the bus before she brought the flower pot down.
 
A trace of diesel on the water, a promise
that something will burn, America
counts the seconds it takes
before the bobbing orange bloom
hits a piece of trash and goes under.



​

Lynn Marie Houston has published her poetry in over thirty literary journals and in three collections: The Clever Dream of Man (Aldrich Press), The Mauled Keeper (Main Street Rag, forthcoming) and Chatterbox (Word Poetry Books, forthcoming). She is the editor-in-chief of Five Oaks Press.

​We went into the forest, my friend and I, and the collie dog, following the path past giant boulders covered in moss and smooth grey-skinned saplings. The US Election came with us, nipping at our heels. It was cold. Newspapers blew across our minds, the expressions of so many faces, in electoral offices, in bars, on the streets. A woman holding her daughter with tears in her eyes. Stunned. Pieces of blue sky through a net of branches.
 
 
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
 
 
Our voices carried like the orange leaves blowing across the earthen floor. Immigration Canada’s website had crashed. Americans wanted to flee. But there would be no escape for anyone. It seemed the landscape had transformed overnight, from summer to fall. Was this Nature? Would we turn endlessly between night and day? Darkness and light?
 
 
“I saw his face,” my friend was saying. “At the White House meeting. He was sitting on that huge pin-striped old-fashioned chair, his red tie stuck under his buttoned blazer. He looked like a little boy, lost.”
 
 
The Fool. In the tarot card deck the jester is about to step off a cliff, all his belongings tied in a bundle to a stick over his shoulder. A little dog is prancing at his heels.
 
 
‘Look where you’re going.’
 
 
The card is unnumbered. Or some say it is zero. It is apart from the rest. It is both the lowest and the highest trump. His face is oblivious, but serene. He is about to dance off the cliff.  
 
 
We were in the Gatineau Park, 360 square kilometres of boreal forest in the Canadian Shield, Precambrian rock and limestone. We were far away from Washington, in Canada. Why would it matter? A pocket of wilderness. Untended earth grows wild, like places in the human psyche. Young men were sporting beards, the latest fashion, It reminded me of the beards of Islam. Young men were joining ISIL. Or turning against their own culture. The enemy is only the projection of our shadow. We become our own enemy. The rising of Trump comes from the space of earth where there is decay, but inside of it is life. The culture is full of rules and regulations, and political correctness where it is impossible to know how to speak or where to stand. It is a tangled mess. ‘Don’t eat this. Don’t do this. Do this. Be like this.’
 
 
It seemed impossible but there were trees growing out of the rocks. Cedars, water-loving trees, and they didn’t seem to care if they had to dig their way through granite and quartz. They wrapped their arms and fingers around the stone.
 
“I’m so depressed,” a friend had said, bringing in her fresh baked brownies to the store where I work. She is our local intellectual baker with a degree in Heritage Studies. She’d sent me an article from a magazine, depicting Trump as a narcissist. I returned another about gender and race.
 
We are eccentrics out here in the wilderness. We talk mostly about the weather. One ice storm and the lines go down. A bad rain moulds the hay. A drought burns the grass. Cows get loose, searching for greener grass. A warm fall affects the movement of deer and the hunters wait for nothing. A snowstorm obliterates us and we ask, ‘are the roads open? Can I get through?’
 
At the little General store, circa 1800s, I felt the pulse of the community, ringing in people’s goods, asking them how they felt across the counter. Trump vs Hillary.
 
 
“To be honest, I didn’t even think about it,” the tree cutter shrugged.
 
 
I had taken a liking to him, his red beard and green eyes and lazy smile, but now all my feelings dissipated. How can you not think about it? How can you just buy your beer and your smokes and remain untouched?
 
 
He said, “thank God we live in the bush.”
 
 
Yes, but how long can you hide in the trees? Look at your own personal paradox: The trees that hide you are being cut by your own hand.
 
 
“She’s a criminal!” my farmer friend cried, and we didn’t talk for weeks after. He is surrounded by females: cows, dogs, a horse called, ‘Jenny’. He knows the weather patterns like the back of his hands. But the double-standard annoyed me to no end.
 
 
“Maybe,” the soft-spoken musician said, buying a bottle of Perrier. “You should look at it as the darkness being exposed now, so it’s easier to work with…”
 
 
My own paradox: hiding out in my cabin on the mountain, yearning for connection. Yes, there is something at play here. Resistance. Trump standing on his box and cutting down everyone’s beliefs, the weak links. Personally, I have found that the more I defend my ideas the more I doubt them. Because if I believe in something so strongly why would I need to defend it? The beliefs separate me from the world. They become lodged in my system, blocking the light. Nothing moves.
 
 
“You want it darker?” Leonard Cohen sang and then he died.
 
 
I wrote to my mother:
 
“A sad day…the Poet leaving us and right after the fiasco with Trump. They’re so diametrically opposed, it’s weird.”
 
 
People laid candles, beads and feathers outside Leonard Cohen’s apartment in Montreal. As a child I remember looking at the picture on my parents’ album cover, of the woman burning in the flames. His song of Joan of Arc. He took the symbols and the saints and made them sing again.
 
 
We came out at the lake. The sun sparkled on the still surface. A crow floated silently above, reflected in the water. It made a call, acknowledging our presence, its feathered fingers holding the sky. The dog ran off, her black and white fur moving through the fawn coloured hummocks of water grass. My friend was wearing her green sweater with a silk scarf of pinks and turquoise wrapped many times around her neck and her red hair was blown and awry. I’ve known her all my life. We were free spirits partying at the lake. We were idealists and philosophers. Then the world was different. Did we know what would happen? We went off on our journeys. We both went to Africa. She wanted to be a journalist. She had a family. I wanted to be a painter and a writer. I gave up my love of Africa. And we came back to this place of our youth.
 
 
Two years ago I gave her a painting titled, ‘The Magpie’, from my exhibit, ‘Coup d’État’, (A Stroke of State). It was the Fool card. All the paintings were tarot cards. It was the spread of my life at the time and showed two things happening simultaneously, Al-Qaeda’s takeover of northern Mali and the end of my travels there, and the four-lane highway being constructed in our village in Western Quebec. Medieval archetypes came into it all, knights on horses, a Tuareg man sitting in the desert, holding up a sword, soldiers in camouflage with guinea hens at their feet, a black bear, a tank outside an ancient clay mosque in Mali, bulldozers in the pine trees, crows and monumental hay ricks, the Emperor on a white horse, an African medicine woman throwing the cowrie shells.
 
The Fool painting showed a magpie astride an arrow that had missed the mark. I’d seen magpies in Mongolia, flocks of them picking at the earth, strutting and swaggering, making the most incredible sounds, cheeky whistles, cat meows, harmonic flute sounds, bells and trickling water. They were eyeing my lunch. They flew up to the telephone wires, then down again. They were trying to distract me while others crept up from behind. Funny, but highly intelligent. They can mimic car alarms and telephones, people’s voices, other birds. Mimic: someone who copies the voice, the actions or movements of others to mock or entertain.
 
In archery ‘the magpie’ is the third ring out from the bullseye. For beginners it is something you manage to hit when you are aiming for the centre. It shows a wavering in your will.
 
My friend said she had felt it in herself, the paradox of the fool. How hard it was to hold the tension of the bow -two opposing forces: linear and horizontal- and to aim for the centre. One side outweighs the other and everything collapses. How exactly do you maintain balance?
 
 
The images of Aleppo reminded me of the film ‘The Hunger Games’, after the Capitol had fallen and the people were evacuating, in their rubber boots and kerchiefs, with their bundles on their backs. One leader replaces another. Which one is the right one? Or the real one?
 
Trump was twittering from his tower, calling out GM, the Media, women. He was bringing down the system. But the stocks were ticking their numbers like clockwork, going up. The collie dog was waiting patiently at the wood pile for the chipmunk.
 
 
“Look!” my friend cried.
 
A sudden gust of wind entered the pines and swept the boughs high above our heads. A breath of life, a call. The feeling when you are about to embark on some journey.
 
She told me about a book she’d read about Fanny and Anna Parnell of Ireland. They were members of The Ladies Land League that stood for the partisans and peasants. Fanny, the Patriot Poet.
 
 
The day after the Inauguration, the girls went off to the Women’s March in Ottawa. I couldn’t bring myself to go. I sat on the mountain contemplating. It comes back to opposing sides. It swings back and forth like a pendulum. I think of my friend who has created a beautiful family, but is frustrated, longing for her old self, the one that answers the call. Or my other friend who gives everything for her daughters, attempting to shield them from darkness. Or myself, hiding out after all my travels, stopping in my tracks. We are middle-aged. It has happened. The turning point. You can’t go back. Move forward into change or get stuck in the past.
 
The newspapers sprouted fear. People came into the store. The sad-eyed man with the dog named, ‘Jack Sparrow’ said:
 
“Well, it’s done now. He’s in. Such a buffoon, a joker, like the court jester.”
 
Another local was overwhelmed, ranting about Hitler and Stalin. He’d once been a cartographer, but lost his way. He’d had a breakdown, then became an artist. The mental precision comes into his art. His art is holding him. He’s learning to go out of the lines.
 
The Fool is not a person but a reflection. We stand on the edge. Fall or fly?
 
The Magpie is a beautiful bird with jet black head, blazing white shoulders and belly, wings of iridescent blues and greens that fan out into white, and long turquoise tail. In Mongolia, they are auspicious and said to affect the weather.


​

​Erika Connor is an artist and writer and lives off-grid in a cabin in rural Quebec, Canada. She has travelled by horse in Africa and Mongolia, volunteered at a wild horse reserve in Mongolia, and at a dog shelter in Rajasthan. She is inspired by nature, philosophy, myths and culture. Her stories are published in Travelers’ Tales, WOW! Magazine, The Doctor’s Review, and Touch Wood Editions: “How to expect what you’re not expecting.” She is working on publishing her books and novels and putting up a website of her art and writing.

​Geneva Chao is the author of one of us is wave one of us is shore, a discours amoureux in French and English (Otis Books | Seismicity Editions), and Hillary Is Dreaming (Make Now). Chao has translated Gérard Cartier’s Tristran and, with François Luong, Nicolas Tardy’s Encrusted on the Living; Christophe Tarkos’s “Worddough” in Ma Langue Est Poétique (Roof Books), and Yves Di Manno for A Review of Two Worlds: French and American Poetry in Translation (Otis). In 2015, Chao translated and installed Román Luján’s poem “Playas” in Spanish and English broadsides on the border fence at Playas de Tijuana, Mexico. 

[this is how it begins-]
For Trudell

this is how it begins--
deep in the minds
that have been mined
for the machine--
counterfeit community--
untied unity--
this is how it begins

this is how it begins--
history aloft on green back
today scrolling blue and grey--
where some say hate
and some say wait
but all say ok
when they come for someone
else--
let us make no mistake--
this is how it begins

when they come for someone
else
we are too busy acting free--
a counterfeit community--
“I’m rich,” he says
and we buy the sarcophagi
called home--
where the bootstraps roam--
this is how it begins

this is how it begins--
with both a bang and a whimper--
with walls--
a death march
of our sickly heart
until they come for me--
deep in the minds mined
for the machine



Open letter to the baby boomer generation
​
Dear baby boomers,

I know that you are not all the same. I know that many of you have devoted your life to bettering
our society, fought hard for small gains, and sacrificed much. But we are now at a crossroads
and must look honestly at ourselves and our histories. At this juncture it is difficult to see the
sun beyond the clouds, to see the hard work that built the crumbling edifice. I am thirty years
old—a millennial—and I write you on behalf of my generation and those to come. Frankly, I
write you in disgust. According to polls, around sixty percent of voters ages eighteen to
forty-four opposed Trump. So we’re looking at you, baby boomers, and have come to thank you.

Thank you for the next four years. Thank you for failing to nail the coffin of the KKK. Thank
you for the school to prison pipeline. Thank you for record student loan debt. Thank you for
killing the electric car. Thank you for letting the movements of the sixties wither and fade, for
forgetting Alcatraz, Selma, and Berkeley. Thank you for never making reparations. Thank you
for failing to think through social security. Thank you for fifty years of inflation and no real
wage increases. Thank you for the largest wealth inequality in history. Thank you for ongoing
illegal wars in which, unsurprisingly, you ask us kill and be killed. Thank you for increasing
carbon emissions to record levels. Thank you for causing dozens of species to go extinct each
day. Thank you for saving us from having to explain a glacier to future generations. Thank you
for putting profits ahead of your children.

We are your children and we see you. We are the smartest, strongest, and most mobilized
generation yet. We will overcome the horrors of your choices, the aftermath of your scorched
earth behavior, and the poverty of your fear. We will do so in the face of a racist, sexist,
homophobic and xenophobic executive branch, a greedy and pathetically incompetent congress,
and a reactionary judiciary. We will look in the face of this abyss and we will work to shape a
society where it doesn’t matter where you come from, what you look like, or who you love, you
are treated with dignity. We will succeed where you have so miserably failed, such that—should
we survive the coming administration—our children and grandchildren will never have to write
this letter.

Sincerely,
Miles Sarvis-Wilburn



​

Miles Sarvis-Wilburn is an award-winning writer and researcher currently based in Northern California. His work spans critical theory, literary critique, and creative writing. Find him in a corner of the internet called www.westwardness.com.

​Who cannot adopt
her queer children.
Who lives in a hooded
state, perpetual
swagger.
 
One staggers into
swift-shut doors,
history's face.
 
If blue lives matter
more, swear by
color. These uniforms.
You police.
 
The premise of law
is not order
              but justice.
Sea to shining
may be something.
 
I stare at your flags.
Those barred stripes,
prison chords,
incantatory twang
of plantation.
 
Look again.
What stars swear
is blurry--
             and vast. 

Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. Her book A Wife is a Hope Chest will appear in 2017 as the first full-length collection in the Mineral Point Poetry Series from Brain Mill Press. She also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rights the world's wrongs via her character, Miss Agatha Whitt-Wellington, at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found here. 

​​I learned recently the winter solstice marks the beginning of storytelling season in Indian Country. From then until early spring, elders from native cultures used storytelling to pass cultural values and traditions through the generations. Oftentimes, one story held multiple elements of a tribe’s specific culture. In particular, the Hopi told stories of the Katsinam—spirit messengers who bring rain, bountiful harvests, and good fortune in the coming year. They bring gifts, and teach the Hopi people how to represent their name—the Peaceful Ones.  As I read, I began to believe I was bearing witness to a reverence for humanity that I don’t hear often enough anymore. The words of Hopi poet Ramson Lomatewama stuck with me. “Winter is a time to gain the reverence of the spirits,” he wrote. “It is also a quiet time; the time for telling stories, and learning from them.”  This is storytelling in the raw. It’s a way to re-center our reverence for humanity.
 
During the first day of Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R-AL) hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told a story of Sessions’ involvement in Michael Donald’s murder case. Cruz’s narrative championed Sessions’ willingness to corroborate in the investigation and how the Klansmen suffered the death penalty because of it. As I listened, I was struck by the way the Republican senators told similar stories in attempt to reinvent Jeff Sessions. Rhetorical stories such as Donald’s were coupled with leading questions for Sessions to nod his head to.  Their tactic was to decentralize the allegations of bigotry against Sessions from the conversation. As a whole, the Republicans’ testimony in its entirety read like William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying—every one offered a different perspective on the same narrative. Apparently storytelling season is the same as confirmation season in politics.
 
I was reminded of the Hopi story of The Blue Corn Maiden. The Maiden is the prettiest of all the Blue Corn sisters, and brings a year-round harvest and peace to the Hopi people. One day, Winter Katsina takes the Blue Corn Maiden to live in his home. She is terribly unhappy living there, and finds blades of yucca to make a fire once Winter leave the house. As the fire burns, the door to Winter’s house melts and Summer Katsina comes to rescue her. Winter returns and fights Summer over the Maiden. The story ends with the Katsina agreeing to share time with the Maiden equally. Half of the year, she will provide corn to the people, and in the other half she lives with Winter.
 
To me, the story is a lesson about both value and choice. Every choice is made with a greater good in mind. Winter chooses to let the Maiden go because of how much her corn means to the Hopi. The Maiden sustains life for the Hopi by providing corn, and in turn teaches the Hopi the value of each harvest. Here, we can see how choice is a prerequisite of value. Winter chooses to release the Maiden at his dismay, implying the Katsina value sustaining the Hopi community over their own pleasures. The story shows that choices made which help sustain life are inherently good.
 
Conversely, the GOP’s storytelling presents a false choice between Sessions’ political past and the story being built around him today. These two are not mutually exclusive. It’s because of Sessions’ checkered past that stories like these are necessary. They present how valueless storytelling is when more than one story is needed to prove a point.  As Ronal Regan once said, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing”.  The GOP have a clear path through confirmations since they have the majority in both houses of congress so the term ‘losing’ applies loosely. The numerous explanations offered for their actions will ultimately erode the trust and good-faith in politicians which Donald Trump claimed his administration would restore.
 
We can never control a story’s ability to bestow values on future generations. Everyone reads them in different lights. As the hearing ended, Sessions quipped: “Last time, I was unprepared. There was a calculated effort to characterize me as something I am not. This time, I had a good team around me.” Essentially, Sessions’ mistake in 1986 was not preparing his story well before the hearing. This time around he brought backup. 



​

Robert Davis is a freelance writer currently living in Colorado with his girlfriend Victoria. He writes about sports, politics, culture, technology, art, and their intersections. ​

​(Erasure from first Trump press conference on January 11, 2017)
 
Nonsense was released today,
it should have never been written,
fake news.
I’m not allowed to talk about it.
It’s phony stuff.
They put that crap together.
I think it’s a disgrace. I think it’s an absolute disgrace.
Fake news was indeed fake news.
 
Look what Nazi Germany did.
I think it’s false and fake.
Never happened. A failing pile of garbage.
It’s terrible, fake news.
It’s just something we’re going to have to live with.
People were absolutely destroyed, but I didn’t do that.
I will tell you, that this should never, ever have happened,
maybe it didn’t happen, it’s possible.
 
No matter where you go today
there will be cameras in the strangest places.
Cameras that are so small with modern technology,
you can’t see them and you won’t know about it.
You better be careful. Cameras are all over the place.
The American people are concerned about it.
But, I don’t think they care at all if it happens.
Because no matter where you go, it will happen,
almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter.
It will be essentially, simultaneously,
probably, the same day, could be the same hour.
Very complicated stuff.
I don’t feel like waiting a year or a year-and-a-half.
 
People will go crazy.
It will happen.
People will all scream out;
and they will scream out --
I don’t want to wait a year-and-a-half.
It will happen.
I think what we’ll do is we’ll wait until Monday,
and then also next week.


​

​Denise Sedman’s short stories, poetry and provocative essays have appeared in local and national publications. Abandon Automobile, published in 2001 by Wayne State University Press, includes her signature poem “Untitled” about how words saved her life. The same poem inspired a creative installation by architecture students who gave the words back to the city of Detroit. This project appeared in University of Detroit Mercy’s 2003 [sic] v.10. Her poems are included in the Coffeehouse Poetry Anthology, 1996, published by Bottom Dog Press, and in several past and the current issue of Wayne State University’s Wayne Literary Review. She is a regular on the poetry scene since the 1990s and has been a featured reader many times.