Tag: election

A Few Days After the Election I Woke Up in a Hamburg Jail Cell by Justin Karcher

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A Few Days After the Election I Woke Up in a Hamburg Jail Cell

my head throbbing as an officer handed me
a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich
like I was taking communion. He couldn’t
believe I got as far as I did on two tires.

Maybe I was trying to escape the light
because where I’m from, it can eat you alive.
A pincushion sun shining with the blood of birds.
When I black out, some friends call me
Ghost Justin. I’m just grateful nobody got hurt.

I went back to Buffalo in an Uber and as we drove
over the river, my dad’s last words to me echoed
in my head. “You’re a better man than I am.”
Suddenly I smelled lilacs and thought about
my mom who plants her garden in the gritty earth.

That night at my first A.A. meeting, nothing smelled
like flowers but people still dug up their roots
and talked about their pain. I learned that it takes
a community for any exorcism to work.

*

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: @justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright from Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Buffalo Bills Need Our Help” (Alleyway Theatre). https://www.justinkarcherauthor.com

Lost by Jennifer Mills Kerr

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Lost
        post-election, 2024

This is where I live now: clutching
a nest of thorns and spent blooms.

Last night, an intruder opened every
window of my home to startling cold.

No wood for fire. No socks or coat.
My closets hold spring dresses, thin

cotton, paltry, owned by another woman.
In this strange country, I search empty

rooms for blankets, matches, candles,
an exile, holding dead flowers. Even

their broken bits I pick up, to clasp
what’s fallen, cradling what’s gone.

*

Jennifer Mills Kerr is an educator, poet, and writer who lives in Northern California. Say hello through her website or connect through her newsletter, Poetry Inspired.

Abecedarian for the Friend with Chronic Soul Injury by Agnieszka Tworek

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Abecedarian for the Friend with Chronic Soul Injury

Although albatrosses’ wings are covered with soot and oil,
Bears wheeze dreaming of bulletproof bones,
Castaways crave the freedom of clouds,
Dreams you raised have been plucked,
Extricate yourself from fear’s arms.
Forgive yourself for wrong turns and falls.
Grow gardenias, zinnias, and geraniums.
Hide the hints of light in an unbreakable vault.
Ice the bruised areas on the feverish earth.
Jot down the lark’s morning song on your palm.
Kick back a ball to a lonely kid in the park.
Listen to waves while lighthouses beckon toward the lost boats.
Make marionettes out of magnolia leaves and linen threads.
Name all the trees on your daily walks.
Orient yourself toward the sun even when it’s camouflaged by gray.
Praise the tenacity of perennial plants.
Quiet the quivering poplar’s twigs with your touch.
Remember your way home even when your home is no longer there.
Serenade your worries to sleep.
Try to learn a poem by heart each month.
Unlock the cage with your past and release it into the wild.
Visit headstones forgotten in the tall grass.
Wave to a woman sitting in front of her house.
X-ray humanity and strive to heal its heart.
Yield the way to bees because they came here first.
Zoom in on hope despite, despite, despite…

*

Agnieszka Tworek was born in Lublin, Poland. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Rattle (Poets Respond), The Shore, Third Wednesday, Mobius, Lake Effect, The Indianapolis Review, and in other journals.

Take Me There by Andreas Treki Dohtdong

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Take Me There

There are no asylums for the restless souls
Lost in a world not of their own.
Half a universe away
There could be a town
Where all our dreams blossom
Like some rare wildflowers spreading
In between all the shrubs and space invading trees.
There, where each spot of light is not fought for
But given by some guiding hand,
Take me there.
Where a new sun births a new love,
Not of this earth,
But of something more.

*

Andreas Treki Dohtdong was born and raised in the city of Shillong, Meghalaya, India. He is a member of the Khasi community. Some of his favourite poets are Ovid, Auden, Rilke and Cavafy. He is an aspiring writer and filmmaker.

Poems by Aidan Coleman

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Election

Bees polling
every flower.

*

7 Poems

cold morning –
the bus shuddering

In the quiet house
I love my kids
again

hum of traffic
a blotting paper moon

birds chatter
the cat sunning itself
leaves them to it

in the schoolyard
a dozen sons
without my glasses

above neat houses
even the sun bored

*

Aidan Coleman has published three collections of poetry, Avenues & Runways (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2005), Asymmetry (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2012), and Mount Sumptuous (Wakefield, 2020).

Election Year by Nancy Sobanik

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Election Year

This is a year with no escape
hatch, by July Quackgrass
and Sowthistle hem roadsides,

knee-high weeds root in flinty gravel,
then the flail mower rumbles closer.
Since morning I’ve heard

its approaching drone, ominous
as an enormous hive on high alert,
the sound of swarm fills my ears.

I once thought winter would not pass,
now I wonder if this ludicrous,
over-the-top debacle will ever end?

Summer brings it on, carnival huckster
stoked by a massive infusion of green.
The blizzard comes in autumn this year.

Flail drum blades arrive to shear
thin-skinned saplings into headless pikes,
shave Sweetfern and Yarrow to late-day stubble.

Cut Japanese Knotweed and it returns
with a vengeance, tenacious as black flies
drawn to exhalation for their blood meal.

An ugly business, all this destruction
caused by a flail mower, but without it
roads narrow, and line of sight is gone.

A car needs a shoulder to cry on
when it goes wild, to justify all this ruin,
all this compost spat out and left moldering.

*

Nancy Sobanik is a poet whose work can be found upcoming in Frost Meadow Review, Vol. 12, Triggerfish Critical Review; Sparks of Calliope- Best of The Net Nominee 2023 and Pushcart Nomination 2024; Verse-Virtual; Sheila-Na-Gig; The Ekphrastic Review and ONE ART. She was awarded second place in the Maine Postmark Poetry Festival Contest 2023.