STAND YOUR GROUND

by Emily Pittman Newberry

Cartoon by Mike Lukovich

There is a 9 mm gun
that cracked the door open
to no tomorrow.

There is a story
of two young men
with only one voice
left standing.

There is blood
on the ground
and tears flowing
from the heavens.

There is a state
that loses justice,
raises safety
on a pedestal
and gets death
in the mail.

There is a community
that puts its frustration
at past crimes
into the holster
of a man.

There is a teenager
eating skittles,
and the news says
too much sugar
can kill you.

There is a trial
and the rule of law rules
that 9 millimeters
of assumptions
and 300 years
of black history
are not admissible
as evidence.

There is a twitterverse
where dueling assumptions
give voice
to well intended fears
and the hopes
of competing histories
have no ending.



Emily Pittman Newberry is a performance poet and writer living in Portland Oregon.

TIME FOR THE INDIGENOUS

by B.Z. Niditch

Former Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt goes on trial
Image source: ianbunn

 

The big people,
even prime ministers
face the cry of justice
all over the world,
think of it
through international law
we may now retrace
any dictator's steps
with his cruel hostility
when in a past century
of genocide and penury
he could decide our fate
as a head of state,
now the ordinary people
can take the stand
among theft and murder
and speak up
as witnesses of atrocity
and have the back
against those who plot
the misery of others,
after all,
nothing is more true
that we are
all sisters and brothers.
 

B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Kadmos (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

CONCEAL AND CARRY

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

The families of victims grieve near Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a gunman opened fire on school children and staff in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Adrees Latif

In a landmark announcement,  yesterday’s breaking news, licenses in Florida to conceal and carry, will reach one million, who’s willing to parry, as gun owners may also choose, to Stand Their Ground, and who will defend the dead victims found; who will speak for little children, in kindergarten class,  who dead and dying in numbers amass,  who clutching crayons and teddy bears, will carry horror in numbered  years,  who can no longer say, what we learned in Newton today, as gun fire boomed, and tiny bodies fell, who will give witness to what they can tell,  what they know and what they saw, who will add to the numbered law?


Lucille Gang Shulklapper is a poet , fiction writer , workshop leader, mother, and grandmother.