A MURDER MOST FOUL

by Christina Pacosz




Jimmy they're digging up the earth again
to find you,  a Valentine's Day baby
from the Hoosier state.
An old farm of disturbed earth. Not even a barn remains.
I am crying at the news.  Startled by my tears.  So much went down with you.
July 30, 1975.  Nixon, for chrissakes, pardoned you.  You did your time.
Your  children mourn you still.  Your daughter, the retired Missouri judge,
says she is grateful to the FBI for trying to find you.
A bone fragment, a bit of hair. Something.  You were a man others turned to.
You understood the word solidarity as something in your bones. Your blood. They could kill you
but not that.   The Oakland County sheriff calls your disappearance an open wound for Detroit.
You made the Teamsters the biggest union ever and used your clout until they took you out.
You.  Hoffa.  Your son still runs the union.
This isn't pop history but a midden heap, a litany of woes you tried to fix
so what if you wanted to get yours?


Born and raised in Detroit by working-class Polish-American parents, Christina Pacosz’  poetry/writing has appeared in literary magazines and online journals for almost  half a century. A poet-in-the-schools and a North Carolina Visiting Artist, she has published several books of poetry, including Greatest Hits, 1975-2001, Pudding House, 2002, a by-invitation-only series.  Her chapbook, Notes from the Red Zone, originally published by Seal Press in 1983, was selected as the inaugural winner of the ReBound Series by Seven Kitchens Press in 2009.

EXHUMING NERUDA

by Catherine Chandler

Was Pablo Neruda killed by Pinochet? When the great poet died 40 years ago in Chile, it was said to be from cancer. Now, lawyers say it was murder. --Nick Clark, The Independent, June 2, 2013

At Isla Negra, Neftalí, you sang of joy and pain,
of poverty, Matilde, birds, of artichokes and rain.

And once at Isla Negra, they searched each corner of
your hideaway, but all they found was bread and wine and love.

And now at Isla Negra, they are digging up your bones;
they'll fly them to the capital then rearrange the stones.

In Santiago, Chile, nearly forty years have passed;
may this, your final journey bring the truth to light, at last.


Catherine Chandler is the author of four books of poetry, including Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011) and This Sweet Order (White Violet Press, 2012). Her second full length collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons will be published by Biblioasis Press (Windsor, Ontario) in March 2014. Catherine is a native of New York City, but has lived and worked in Canada for many years, most recently as lecturer at McGill University's Department of Translation Studies.

WIFE SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING IN BLAZE

by Darlene Pagan

Image credit: defokes / 123RF Stock Photo

She never imagined the sheet she lit
would curl him in its hot tongue, never
believed he wouldn’t wake in those flames,
throw back the covers, and wash his feet like
she’d been asking him every night before bed. 

The air buzzed with a lightning storm.
The chickens refused to lay and no matter
how long or hard she kneaded the dough,
all morning, the loaves cooked up
dense and hard as baseball bats. 
At least, no child again this month. 

A photo of them as newlyweds, so young
they look like children playing dress up,
hangs in the hallway.  Too stubborn to quit
a decade later and now look where it’s got them. 

Black petals fall.  Bits of sheet, newly caught
rise like cardinals.  A door opens, the wind
roars, timbers spit and splinter until she finds
herself outside in the grass watching

lightning split a sycamore.  She looks from
the tree to the body they’re pulling too late
from the burning house.  She believes it
when she tells them she has no idea who he is.


Darlene Pagan teaches at Pacific University in Oregon, where she lives with her husband and sons.  A book of poems, Blue Ghosts, was published with Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and essays have most recently appeared in journals such as Calyx, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Madison Review, Poet Lore, Hiram Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Memoir(and), Brevity, and Literal Latté, among others. Pagan recently completed a full-length poetry project tentatively titled, Setting the Fire. She loves to bike, hike, dig at the beach, walk in the rain, sing, and ride roller coasters now that her boys are just tall enough to ride. 

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.