Tag: Trump

America’s Favorite Playground by John Arthur

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America’s Favorite Playground

My daughter asks if she can see
a picture of gravity.
She’s four but before I can answer,
more questions come at me,
gleaned, it seems, from the TV—
What’s a tariff? What’s a trade war?
We buy most of what we own
from the local thrift store.
Just home from work,
I sit next to her, still wearing
my new old peacoat, only $9.99,
one button missing, but warm
enough to get me through
at least the rest of this winter.
Now the anchor is saying Canadians
are expected to boycott—
no more trips this summer
to the Jersey shore.
When I was a valet in AC,
I used to count the Ontario plates,
smoking on the top floor
of the parking deck,
looking out at the gold plated facade
of the Trump Taj Mahal
before it was demolished.
It only took a couple
of well placed explosives.
I show my daughter a video
of the building imploding.
That’s gravity, I say.

*

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, DIAGRAM, ONE ART, trampset, Failbetter, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best of the Net.

America 2025 by Kelly Fordon

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America 2025

I have made enemies. My neighbor
just wrote to tell me all my suppositions
are wrong, that she somehow knows
better. Here we are, living in rural America,
with access to no one of any import. What
are we on about? Well, there’s my son,
for one–his safety. Also, the folks who run
the Mexican restaurant–the only good one
in town. What of them? And the eagles
circling now; searching for sustenance–back
when I was young, they were almost done.
My neighbor wants to drill under the lake,
and that’s the least of her infractions.
All week, I’ve planted myself in the window.
It’s January 2025 in America. We’re living
through a deep freeze. The only people
I’ve talked to since Monday are the waiter
at the Mexican restaurant and the librarian
as I was checking out Bunk by Kevin Young.
No news, no radio, no humans. I’ve started
to go mad. A little. Desolation. I don’t know.
At least I have the window. Monday went by
like the hours leading to an execution. On Tuesday,
I sat down in the window again. A few epochs in,
a red fox appeared, light-footing it over the ice—
so close to the edge. How she was managing
sub-zero temperatures—I can’t fathom.
Let me tell you what I did—so lonely, so
unnerved, still reeling, I ran for the door and
opened it wide. Hello, Fox! I yelled. Hello!
Of course, I scared her. She took off fast.
Soon, she was out of sight. It was a mistake;
but in the whole scheme of things,
one of the minor ones. I know she’s
out there now, and it helps. I’m not alone.
We’re not alone. I watched a small red fox
get the best of it–remember that next time
you’re facing down ice.

*

Kelly Fordon’s latest short story collection, I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book, Garden for the Blind (WSUP), was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019), was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. Her new poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, will be published by SFASUPress in 2025. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks and has received a Best of the Net Award and Pushcart Prize nominations in three different genres. She teaches at Springfed Arts in Detroit and online, where she runs a fiction podcast called “Let’s Deconstruct a Story” at https://letsdeconstructastory.substack.com/

Three Poems by Louisa Muniz

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We Will Remember

On the internet you can listen to the 9-11 conversation between
passenger Todd Beamer and operator Lisa Jefferson,
moments before Flight 93 went down.

I remember Jacqueline, my second-grade student,
who drew me a picture of a building ablaze
with people jumping from the top floor window.

I was so scared, she said. At first I thought it was bad weather
we were having but it was so much worse.

I can’t remember what I wore last week but I remember
on that day I wore a pink linen skirt & a matching knit top.

I can’t remember what I did with that outfit but I remember
I could never bring myself to wear it again.

I plant forget-me-nots every summer but I can’t remember
if they’re more partial to shade or sun.

Twenty- three years ago, I knew nothing
of digging up the earth to stay grounded.

Twenty-three years later, rain is falling in sheets
& down the street a car is floating in water.

And a man who lives alone in another town
has a leaking roof & is about to lose everything.

And a man who is a convicted felon has promised
to make our country great again.

It’s the year of the snake.

Outside the wolf moon is full—
a catharsis in naming things you wish to let go.

Everywhere we exist we will remember
the weight of what was.

*

Red Sirens

The common tern sits in fractured light
for hours on the ice pond.

Winter in her bones.

Its days are the length of a winding river.

I want to tell you about melancholy. It’s ancestral—
a blanket of resolve hand-knitted upon me.

I’ve grown fond of being alone.

Is each day an un-mapping of never going back?

In the dream I break into a house.
I must save my children. I search
and search but I can’t find them.

What do I really seek?

Across the footbridge the baby sparrow
finds refuge in the leafless tree
that aspires to the sky.

It’s left its nest and won’t return.

But what of this brave new world,
a voice asks.

No sun to warm its wings or seeds
to speak of beneath the barren sky.

In the distance—
sound of red sirens
screaming.

*

The Weight of Warmth

January—
gray-eared, stretches out like a cat.

Blooming shades of purple. I tire of my mood.
Alexa plays Gymnopedie No.1. on loop.

Intentional simplicity.

No smell of tulips clawing through the dirt.
The sparrows interrogate the empty feeder.

I roam the house slippered in thought.
Best feeling thought, I tell myself.

I build a house of summer sky & sweetgrass.
Design the orange door leading out, open.
Drag my feet from room to room.

In the bedroom, I discover
the dormant orchid awakened.

The flower buds swell.
The petals poised in promise.

I squeal in delight like a solitaire singing
its tinny song to no one but itself.

The winking sun sprawls across the bed.
I lay down next to it.

Hitch on to the weight of its warmth.

Later, the wind—flutters, swells, sways—
to the winter blues of dusk.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Jelly Bucket, PANK Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains was released in December, 2020. Her chapbook, The Body is More Than a Greening Thing will be published in the spring of 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

Everything is Fine from A to Z by Michelle Matz

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Everything is Fine from A to Z My neighbor told her 3 year old son that guns shoot flowers. When a kid at preschool told him planes drop bombs, she said bombs are filled with orchids and marigolds, periwinkle and hollyhock. He’s 16 now. At dinner, he says Biology was fine and English was also fine and meeting with his advisor about next year’s schedule was fine, too. Everything is fine from A to Z. The weight of her sadness at the dinner table is similar to the lead apron her dentist uses during x-rays to protect her internal organs. She often declines the x-ray, having some vague notion she's had too much radiation over the years. Once she even said, Just say no to radiation! pretending to hold up a sign as if she were at a protest, but the dental technician looked at her quizzically so she brought down her sign. She is tempted to tell her son to please eat the broccoli she spent time blanching, patting dry, tossing with olive oil, sprinkling with a pinch of sea salt and roasting at 425 for 18 minutes, but her life is reaching a breaking point, and if he tells her he doesn’t want any broccoli or the broccoli’s edges are too brown or he no longer likes broccoli, she is afraid she might push her chair back from the table and begin to gather the decaying flowers littered across the kitchen floor.

*

Michelle Matz’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous publications, including Mud Season Review, Atlanta Review, The Lascaux Review, Dodging the Rain, and Atticus Review. Her chapbook was a semifinalist in the Ledge Poetry Contest and was published in 2006. Her book, Acoustic Shadow, was recently published by Main Street Rag. 

Writing Poems in the Middle of a Catastrophe by Özge Lena

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Writing Poems in the Middle of a Catastrophe

is like saving the oleanders
while the forest is on fire.

But their petals hold thousands
of bees around their poison-colours.

Bees mean nectar, nectar means life,
and life is always meant to be saved.

Yet the forest is an ablaze beast, too big
to be saved by you, even larger than life,

and you have already run out of water.
The only thing you can do is to save

the oleanders to save the bees
in order to save your life because

you know no other way to survive but
to write poems even in the middle of a catastrophe.

*

Özge Lena is an Istanbul-based poet & writer. Her poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Abridged, Orbis, The Selkie, 14 magazine, and elsewhere across thirteen countries. Her ecopoem “Undertaker” is forthcoming in the Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War Anthology of Scarlet Tanager Books in the USA. She was nominated both for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Özge’s poetry was shortlisted for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2021, then for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023, and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024.

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.

The Election

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After the presidential election on November 5th, regardless of the outcome, ONE ART will publish poems the following day, the day after that, and the day after that.

In certain ways, November 6th will be just another day. So will January 6th, 2025. So will January 7th. Each day, there will be poetry. That much I can guarantee.

Mark Danowsky
Editor
ONE ART