Mike Maggio

To Live
by Yerusalem Work

I seek forgiveness 
without the shedding of blood. 
Adam, alayhi salaam, learned words of inspiration from God. 
Between us, 
is there forgiveness for what we have done? 
Rockets remind us we look upon the same sky. 
Rocks slung from David to Goliath—generations of conquering giants. We are more devoted to Muhammad, peace be upon him, 
than an earthly king’s subjects are to the crown. 
For believers, this world is upside down. 
We are under pressure to obey our oppressors. 
To Allah we belong 
and to Allah we return. 
To Palestine we belong 
and to Palestine we return. 
To Ethiopia, I belong and to Ethiopia I return. 
Torn from home, 
I worship God alone. How will we know our repentance has been accepted? 
Will the woman at the well fetch water or 
does she have a story to tell? Will Ethiopia despite her alliances heal her daughters? 
I see the sacrifice the innocent make, the burnt face. 
We kill our brothers. 
We die in ongoing struggles. 
A peace offering—a poem. 
To give birth to a child 
unfettered by apartheid, 
unhampered by inequality. 
To smile from the inside. 
To live with dignity and pride. 

Copyright 2023 by Yerusalem Work

Yerusalem (Yeru) Work has a heart for interfaith dialogue. She is an award-winning essayist and bestselling author of poetry and short stories available on Amazon. She earned a master’s degree in library science and a bachelor’s degree in film studies. As an Ethiopian-American artist, educator, and librarian, she wishes everyone compassion and endless inspiration. She lives in the Washington DC area and her web site is https://yerusalemwork.wixsite.com/thenewjerusalem

Gaza
by Gene Bruskin

As a non-observant but well-qualified Jew, 
Having lost family in a Russian pogrom,
Once visiting Israel, as an internationalist first, a Jew second,
My Jewish side having long reveled in the Jewish Bund, 
The Workman’s Circle, heroic textile worker Clara Lemlich,
Having supported many revolts against the powerful, foreign and domestic,
I met with Palestinian workers about their rights.
At my airport departure, an armed Israeli guard locked me in a closet, 
Demanding names of Palestinian workers whom I had met.
This war leaves me distraught and outraged.
Why is that, since Jews were crushed in Europe,
Palestinians had to be crushed in the Middle East?
Conveniently for the US,
The guilty West put the Jews in the middle again, old story.
And now they have become like the West, and then some.
The traumatized oppressed become oppressors. 
Is it ok that Palestinians suffer daily, 
Because Jews want a homeland?
Is it ok for a Brooklyn Jew to join a settlement,
With full rights over a displaced Palestinian, now stranded across a field?

Copyright 2023 by Gene Bruskin

Gene Bruskin was born to a Jewish working class family in South Philadelphia and has been a life-long social justice activist, union organizer, poet, and playwright. Since his formal retirement from the labor movement (“redeployed” as he describes it),  Gene has produced two musicals for and about workers and is currently producing a 3rd, The Return of John Brown.

Washing War Off Me
by Susan Notar

The sun hovers like a raw red egg yolk
over the water at the edge of the horizon.
Dogs dodge, children squeal.
Somewhere a colibri sips sugar
from a purple climber vine.

I sit sipping Herrudura
freshly squeezed lime
from a salt-rimmed glass
watching.

	Emblazoned in my memory
	a child is pulled from the rubble in Aleppo
	a sixteen-year-old girl is raped on a public street in Bucha.

How at the sea
when the sky isn’t scarred 
by buildings or bombs biting it
we allow ourselves peace.

Somehow the sea heals me too
and allows me to hope for the return
of the light.

Copyright 2023 by Susan Notar

Susan Notar is a Pushcart prize nominated poet who has flown over Iraq in helicopters wearing body armor and makes a mean beurre blanc sauce.  Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Antologia de Poemas, Alianza Latina, Burningword, Burgeon, The Bridgewater Review, The Forgotten River, Gyroscope, Joys of the Table:  An Anthology of Culinary Verse; Penumbra, The Poet, Poets for Ukraine, The Poetry Society of Virginia Centennial Anniversary Anthology, and Written in Arlington.  She works for the U.S. State Department helping vulnerable communities in the Middle East.

Pray for Peace
by Ellen Bass

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail,
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, twirling pizzas—

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your Visa card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Copyright 2007, 2023 by Ellen Bass

"Pray for Peace" is from Ellen Bass’s The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

Ellen Bass’s most recent poetry collection is Indigo. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and co-authored the groundbreaking, The Courage to Heal. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz jails, and teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program.

A Pantoum Prayer for Nadeen
by Carl Stilwell

Eight people including 5-year-old boy killed by Hamas rockets fired into Israel.
Israel airstrikes kill close to 139 Palestinians, including 39 children.
“When I woke up I saw houses gone — nothing but dust.”
Large parts of the Gaza Strip is left in rubble.

Israel has now killed about 219 Palestinians, including 63 children.
“They’re just kids. Why would you send a missile and kill them?”*
Large parts of the Gaza Strip is left in rubble.
Bodies of 16 women and 10 children are pulled from the debris.

They’re just kids. Why would you send a missile and kill them?*
U.S. President says Israel has the right to self-defense.
More bodies of women and children are pulled from the debris.
“The street? I don’t think it will go back to what it was.”

U.S. President says Israel has the right to self-defense.
No electricity—waiting in dark for when next strike will come.
“The street? I don’t think it will go back to what it was.”
All commercial areas are destroyed, so are the roads.”

No electricity—waiting in dark for when next strike will come.
Palestinians live in open-air prison under air, land & sea blockade of Gaza..
All commercial areas are destroyed, so are the roads.
“There’s no place in Gaza that’s good for life.”

Palestinians live in open-air prison under air, land & sea blockade of Gaza.
“What do you expect me to do? Fix it? I’m only 10.”*
“There’s no place in Gaza that’s good for life.”
This 2021 war in Gaza followed those in 2008, 2012 and 2014.

“What do you expect me to do? Fix it? I’m only 10.”*
Nadeem Lateef’s 1st birthday was in 2012, her 10th in 2021.
This 2021 war in Gaza followed those in 2008, 2012 and 2014.
A yellow canary lays crushed on the ground.

* QUOTE FROM 10 YEAR OLD NADEEN ABED AL LATEEF

Copyright 2023 by Carl Stilwell

Carl Stilwell is a retired teacher who taught for over 30 years in mostly the Los Angeles Unified school District.He was born during the depression in Oklahoma and came to California in 1959 and has lived here ever since. His pen name was inspired by the Joads struggle for survival In The Grapes of Wrath and the songs and life of Woody Guthrie. He has lived in Pasadena since 2003 and has published poems in Altadena Poetry Review, Blue Collar Review, Lummox, Pearl, Prism, Revolutionary Poets Brigade–Los Angeles, Rise Up, Sequoyah Cherokee River Jornal and Spectrum.

Peace Resolution
by Carol Alena Aronoff

Ask me what matters
How well have I loved

Ask me why stars cry
Why rivers run away

Ask for the lonely
the wounded, oppressed

Eat pomegranate seeds
and pray for the fruit

Pray no one else will 
know the hurting

That fruit will ripen
instead of bombs

Pray that hearts like 
flowers will open 

Pray that no one else 
will die

Copyright 2023 by Carol Alena Aronoff

Earscape
   what a blind woman in Gaza hears
by Kathi Wolfe

The blood red siren
song of shrapnel
hissing 
in her bones

The victory cry
of hunger
circling
her baby’s belly

Her useless eyes,
wails from her acrid-
tasting mouth
singing

in bomb-scarred
harmony:
the siren song
won’t cease
without peace

Copyright 2023 by Kathi Wolfe

Kathi Wolfe, who has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, is a legally blind writer and poet. Her most recent poetry collection The Porpoise In The Pink Alcove is forthcoming from Forest Woods Media Productions.

Rage
(in remembrance of the October 7 Massacre)
by Judith R. Robinson


It disturbs, this slanting light
yellow & rapturous
and once a part of promise.

Mocking now, and strange
these sighing palms
that stirred with expectation.

How like betrayal
the stillness of desert flowers
quiet, beautiful, unfaded.

I was not an alien here.
I was as one with the light
the palms, the cactus.

Why did the earth I loved
not cry out for me
as my life’s blood 

Copyright 2023 by Judith R. Robinson

Judith R. Robinson* is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. Teacher: Osher at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Her most recewnt poetry collection is Buy A Ticket, WordTech Editions, (2022).