Mike Maggio

Raw Footage
	--after Leonard Cohen
by Mike Maggio

I was sitting watching the news
and there were bombings and killings and all the usual kinds of violence
being perpetrated against innocent people in all parts of the world
and they were talking about this 16 year old Palestinian boy
who had strapped explosives around his waist
so that he could blow up some Israeli guards at the border crossing
and I was wondering what could make someone so young so desperate
and then they told us how the kids had all made fun of him because he was short
how he was promised 23 dollars and 7 virgins if he blew himself up
and then they brought his mother and she was crying and complaining
about the people who take advantage of children
the most vulnerable of the vulnerable in this sick sad world
and I asked myself how a people could become so hopeless
that they had so little left in this life, that they had given up everything
that the last and only thing they had to offer was the only way
they could imagine that there was even a glimmer of hope that they would get out of 
this situation that had kept them prisoners for so many years

I was reading a book about the holocaust
and there was pain and suffering and pathos beyond the capacity of human endurance
and I remembered a time when I was a child of 6 or 7 years old
I was at a friend’s house and there was a movie playing on the TV 
and I watched as a roomful of women holding babies and young children were herded naked into showers
and when the spigots were turned on there was gas instead of water
and I watched in horror as the women held on tight to their children
in their one last gasp of motherly love
and the pain was so great that I closed my eyes and wished that I hadn’t been there in that room at that time but the image by then was so seared into my memory
that even today as I write these words, as I wonder how much misery
could be caused in name of politics and power
the pain is still so great that I consider ending my life
just to stop it, just to ease it just a little bit
because so many people have suffered, so many people are still suffering at the hands of the greedy
for reasons that even the wildest animals could not comprehend 

I was walking down Constitution Avenue
in this capitol of the free world
where the archives of democracy are housed in a museum not far from here
where the president of this great country resides in this not-so-great era of our history
and I came upon a man huddled by a fire wrapped in an oily, grimy cloth
and I looked beyond the feigned smile and the request for spare change
I looked into his vacant eyes and his hollow face and I saw raw fear
draped over his frail frame like a pall
the face of a man who was enduring the last indignity
in a long line of indignities his people had faced when they were wrested from their villages 
when they were shackled and sold and beaten and stripped of every ounce of humanity
and I looked in his eyes and I saw myself
and I thought this could be me lying in the street hungry and cold
this could be my son, my daughter, my wife, my mother, my friend
it could be you my friend
it could be anyone of you, lying out there helpless and destitute
wondering what angry god could have allowed any and all of this to happen

I was sitting at my desk writing a poem
or a story or some other piece of nonsense 
that some venerable publication might see fit to print between its pristine covers
and I was thinking that maybe I could make a difference
that maybe we could make a difference
that maybe we could do something about the pain
other than write poems or sing songs or paint pictures
or talk about it over cocktails or huffed over a hot mug of Starbucks
or hiding behind our newspapers in our cozy cafes
while the homeless and the destitute parade outside
like ghosts, invisible in their veils of pain
because it could be you my friend, yes you
or the person sitting beside you or the person sitting across the room
take a look now, stand up, walk around, try to feel your neighbor’s pain
because we are all in this together my friends
because my friends as we share this moment now
we are all getting closer to that time when we will eventually be in pain
whether we become destitute or homeless or maybe lose a spouse or a loved one or maybe you’ll wake up one morning and find yourself alone looking in the mirror
asking yourself what have I done with my life, wondering where all the friends are
as you pick up the razor blade and wonder whether you should use as directed
or to make one simple cut across the flat of your wrist instead

And I want you to promise me my friends, that when you leave here tonight
while you’re going home by yourself or with your loved one or with your friend
and you come upon someone who is in pain
maybe one of the homeless that live just behind this building
or the woman who has been abused by her husband
or the teenager who’s selling his body on the street corner
because he ran away from home and doesn’t know any other way to survive
or the man who is recklessly shooting his gun because he lost his job, or his wife or his best friend to some incomprehensible act of violence
or the street whore who hides her wretchedness behind a patina of heavy makeup
when you see any of these people I hope that you will go beyond your shrugged shoulder or your offer of spare change or your attempts to assuage your guilt
that you will do something bigger and braver to help ease the pain of your brothers and sisters

And if you promise me this tonight my friends, then maybe, just maybe, for just once
in these long, miserable, painful 52 years
I might get just one complete night of rest.

--from DeMockracy (Plain View Press, 2007)
Copyright 2007, 2023 by Mike Maggio

The Old War 
by Julia B Levine
			From the place where we are right
                                                           Flowers will never grow…Yehuda Amichai


When the old war explodes again,
a high-speed convoy climbs over the Judean Hills 
towards the disputed heavens, 
twenty-six children sleeping 
with their heads on their mothers’ laps, 
and thirteen of those mothers ride in you, thirteen in me, 
all of them staring blankly out the dusty windows, 
while the buses lift above the mountains 
with its ibex and oryx and a single wild iris 
in your origin myth, in mine, two bulbs 
wired underground and waiting for rain 
to detonate their beauty, rain that will run 
into the rivers of the one true God 
setting the other true God on fire, 
the waters divided and brimming 
with a St. Peters fish glinting in the talons 
of the sea hawk in you, the sea hawk in me, 
both ospreys killing and singing 
and flying over the temples 
where the zealots pray for the world 
to end in the name of the holy, 
their bitterness waking the twenty-six children 
who press their faces to the windows,
worried what they missed in sleep, 
while their mothers gather up the dropped books 
and game-boys, and because already 
the children have forgotten their dreams, 
you and I must carry those too— 
the operas of birdsong and blaring sirens, 
the soccer cleats and number 2 pencils,
jostling beside black hooded men 
shooting out the nursery doors—
but what can we do?
Tell me, I’ll tell you, 
the brutality that is your history 
and mine, can’t be undone. 
And yet, go on, ask, When, 
and in whose field, 
will the lamb in me, the lamb in you, 
lie quietly together in shadow, in sun?

Copyright 2023 by Julia B Levine

								

Do Not Eat
by Kristia Vasiloff 

A dead dove nests in my empty refrigerator; 
I have lost all appetite to abusive apathy. 

Rage comforts and confronts me. 
Confusion unravels thigmotropism in me.

The door sticks with cold and coos,
of psalms and duas shot down from the sky.

Each tertiary feather falls on plastic
containers where little eggs used to hatch.

Found now in cracked mosaics, supplicating  
in a fetal configuration on the floor 

before being stepped on, swept out.
Insomnia is mean with the air of hollow bones.

The world would stuff my refrigerator full if it could.
A buffet of everything killed in mid-song.

I didn’t know it would be like this. 
I didn’t know it would be like this. 

The door handle bends into my hand
until we unite. My clumsy mouth coos.  

Copyright 2023 by Kristia Vasiloff 

Kristia Vasiloff is a disabled, queer poet living in North Carolina with her amazing Spouse. She writes on reality, mortality, and disability. She has appeared in Scars Press, B’K Press, has been supported by the North Carolina Poetry Society, and others. She believes in a world where all lives are equal, and fights against a world who opposes that. Free Palestine.

First Person
by Emily Carlson 


I didn’t see the crash
from where she stood
while our children 
rode bikes in the street 
but I could have 
as I am also a bird
alighting and the crown 
of the little dogwood 
beside us. When she tells 
me, “We planned to move
home to Israel, then
the pandemic hit,” I begin 
like a fool for connection, 
“I was in Beirut when 
Israel invaded—” as if that’s 
a friendly handshake. But
I meant it like, small world. 
She cuts in, “I wouldn’t call 
that an invasion. That was 
a war. They captured  
our soldiers.” Or, I meant to 
make her see it my way. 
Supersonic fighter aircraft vs. 
soldiers in lawn chairs, 
their guns on the ground. 
A fiery blast.
A smudge of ash. 
To fight meant we’d be 
wiped from the face 
of the earth. Like wiping  
a tear from a face, 
that easy. I could let go
of my story, remember 
wisdom is the omniscient 
mind. But— 
says the I, what we call  
a thing isn’t just semantics. I could 
walk away. Or, I could look 
at her like a sister, 
ask of her family back home 
from ten feet, six feet—  
while our children play in the street.

Copyright 2023 by Emily Carlson

Emily Carlson is a teacher and the director of Art in the Garden, an LGBTQ+ led, joy-centered arts and ecology program that addresses the impacts of childhood adversity and trauma. Their poetry chapbooks include Why Misread a Cloud, selected by Kimiko Hahn as the winner of Tupelo Press’ 2022 Sunken Garden Chapbook Award and I Have a Teacher, selected by Mary Ruefle as the winner of 2016 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. In 2006, Emily received a travel scholarship from the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh which took her to Lebanon. Why Misread a Cloud explores connections between military and police strategy, specifically looking at Lebanon during July War of 2006 and police violence in Pittsburgh in 2012. Emily, her partner the poet Sten Carlson, and their three children live in Pittsburgh in an intentional community centered around a garden.