the strongest argument against war
is the nature of war
here is a boy who has lost his shoes
below the knees
and a mother with no sons
—p
Behind the Mask
"Behind the Mask" is a collaborative poem written by the students of Saugerties Jr/Sr High School and Ellenville Jr/Sr High School. It was assembled by librarians Sari Grandstaff and Asha Golliher into a visual poem.
Thirty and Fifty-Four
Stepping out of Good Will into a flash freeze of
January New York air
I stand in the sunshine,
take a minute to decide
if today is the day
I stop going to liquor stores.
It’s a new year, to be fair.
Instead, I think of the plastic bag in my fist,
full of secondhand jazz-
old vinyl, cardboard jackets
smelling like attics, cobwebs, mothballs,
wreaking of vintage swagger and class.
What better match for Good Will than cheap wine?
Three or four doors down I dust into
a tiny shop full of dustier bottles and
over-advertised lotto,
room small enough to highlight the
imaginary neon sign above my head-
arrow pointing toward my heated face, flashing:
lost.
I finger eight or ten bottles, maybe twelve.
The process itself is half the fun:
1) Red. Usually Malbec—
Argentina seems a good match for Good Will caliber.
2) Label. I’m buying, so sell me on
a hipster photo of a plunger, or runner,
or crisp white background with classy
black lettering for the days I feel put together.
3) Price. On the white-label-black-letter days
I might splurge
(for what most people would consider bottom bottles).
I settle a debate with myself.
At the counter, I step toward the man behind it.
Light skin for a black guy. Freckles. Curly hair.
Generations older than I.
In my white skin I wonder what life was like for him.
Did he listen to vinyl?
Did he notice my bag of vintage?
Does he think it makes me cool?
Next to the register there’s a sign for
a red bottle at $5.99.
I ask the guy if it’s any good.
He tells me “They’re all good.”
Gives me a genuine smile.
Says he refills the rack two, three times a day.
I swap out my bottle for the popularity.
Does he think it makes me cool?
He rings me up, I pay, and
then he asks if I’m twenty-one.
I tell him I’m almost thirty,
say I can’t believe it’s happening already.
I don’t show him my ID but
he believes me, convinced by
the neon arrow above my head, I think.
He tells me his best birthday was fifty-four.
I ask why, and he replies
because he was still alive.
Imagine that.
Tells me he has friends who
have been dead twenty, thirty years.
Silence.
And I see the whites of his eyes glazing
over as the tears swell in:
ocular capillaries as red as the wine in my fist,
and he says
“Except for David Wolf who died when I was eight.”
I listen as he tells me about the “heart thing”
that took his little friend and broke some heart thing
inside this fifty-four-year-old man.
His sobs send shock waves down
my arms which reach around a stranger
who holds me back for dear life.
Holds me back for being alive.
Letting go his lungs finally fill with
all the things he says he hasn’t said in forty-six years.
He doesn’t show me ID but I believe him.
Maybe it’s the neon arrow above his head.
And just like that, he steps back—
wiping torrents of tears
from the roof of his mood
and says “Enjoy the bottle. They’re all good.”
—Riston Benson
Winter's War
This is the one, the hindmost goodbye,
the end-of-world, unholiest one.
These are the funeral-plumes rising—
Beelzebub red, hot, fermented black.
These are the old ladies, the children.
They stumble and stagger over
what used to be windows and walls,
babushkas slipping from their heads,
mittens escaping frozen fingers.
They are wild, they lift their arms,
they fall and cut their legs
on porcelain plates and silver forks
that ride the sea of human debris.
Hungry, they weep, they thirst,
they howl for bread; their bellies ache.
There is no warm place, never, no more.
—Bertha Rogers
First published in Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems, edited by Richard Levine and Michael Young on Djelloul Marbrook's "Prism" substack.
Requiem for Haiku
Quiet as new snow
falling upon fallen leaves.
Dark moonlight sighing.
Beginning to sing,
birds let me know it's morning.
I wake praising them.
The rain doesn't cry
as much as it used to.
Its friends wonder why.
Words gather like words
when no one knows what to say.
Silence knows better.
—Robert Harlow
Failure and What of It
I’m 60 and I have failed at the American Dream.
I am slowly pouring it out now, like a bag of sand,
shaking out the crumbs. A burden is lifted.
Instead of relief, the sack is just empty.
I’ve been caring and caring and now nothing.
Well, there is the sky, and the bare trees, and the creek
still flowing behind the house.
—Nina JeckerByrne
Some Mornings Even Spring Couldn't Save
Not April, not coffee, not purple
tulips opening on the table, not
you, or her, or even the early hour
sounds of my own mother's kitchen.
—Ryan Brennan
Blank Page
meeting you
I want to say
I’m a clown’s assistant
and a funerary violinist
but I don’t speak
I hear your heartbeat
time pacing one second
per second
as we lie here
together
now
now
now
false words later
—Wayne L. Miller
The Homecoming (Cain in the Age of Forgiveness)
Sun loiters in the oak tree
Where the katydids debate;
At last, I think I’ll stay
To hear their verdict.
This guilt of mine,
Coal-dark and heavy,
Drove me desolate
From corner to corner
Of the wide and lonesome world,
But every dirt-packed road, it seems,
Was headed straight for home.
Those burnished fields,
These soiled hands,
This wretched ache for green;
How could I forget?
The forgiveness of a morning,
The absolution of the earth.
Tomorrow, when I start to plow,
I’ll hope, in every harvest,
To find what I betrayed:
Your smile when I gave you
The best half of my mandarin
In the shade of the oak tree.
—Emily Murnane
Intuition
My dreams
tell me
Truths
your mouth
won’t.
—Nicole Hughes
A New Tattoo
Thumbing through pages
Wildflower line drawings
From my grandmother’s book.
You want a new tattoo
Something feminine and graceful.
The ones you have seem to say
“I am arduous,”
“You cannot love me.”
Trillium, monarda, poppy.
Black and white or color?
You deliberate aloud.
Elbows bump and graze
We are huddled together on the sofa
Our vessel for the hypothetical.
Dirt clings to the creases in your toes
There’s a new line on your forehead
Since our last meeting.
A wildflower tattoo will not soften you.
Nothing will.
—Megan Phillips
Battleships
After all of this time
under the sparkling white streetlight
you held my face
(held my breath)
all at once.
There you were.
—Eli Thompson-Jones
Springtime
Where do the petals of a flower go
when they—
fall?
To Hell, she said.
Very well, very well, it is—
natural.
—Liam Connor
Caught in the Works
Cuffed to my wrist,
my watch,
a triumph
of technology,
how ever often
I look at it
has only one thing
to say to me,
Keep running…
—Clifford Henderson