2 Poems by Anthony Salandy

Distilled Diplomacy

How can agreement be quantified
by everchanging politics
that benefit so few?
One wonders,
 
how can distilled tears of the martyred
be cleansed from rubble,
drained of spirit
and tarnished by magenta?
 
How can diplomacy be truthful
in an era of guised greed,
nationalistic in tone
and vain in nature?
 
But obedience must be solicited
as paradigms consume beings
flesh and all,
into a distilled diplomacy—
 
where any humanity is rebuked, and only rapacity is left.




Songs of Revolution
 
are arias sung to taunting winds
that fluctuate with wandering opinions.
Like dawn break on summer’s morning,
there is no reprieve from assured change,
 
but hymns are only sung where consecrated masses
sway to collective effervescence primordial,
a tambour borne out of discontent
and silent shackles ever heavy.
 
For lies are told to appease heavy hearts
tempered by bitter oral tradition,
lullabies sang to the masses,
prayers whispered to the many
 
all waiting for sudden salvation.
 
But revolutionary fevers demarcate
warring humanity from mammals many
and intricate in existence,
where difference will inspire treason
 
and subterfuge beyond mindless decimation,
where warring groups divide ever further
and individualized dissent is the norm,
and songs of slaughter will again proceed
 
revolution radical, assuredly irrational.

Anthony Salandy is a Black Mixed-race poet & writer who has spent most of his life in Kuwait jostling between the UK & America. Anthony has 2 published chapbooks, The Great Northern Journey and Vultures and a novel, The Sands of Change. Anthony is Co-EIC of Fahmidan Journal. Twitter/Instagram: @arsalandy

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

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2 Poems from Tommy Archuleta’s My Travel Dream Dictionary

F [ire]


Twice I call out your name 

And twice the river stops flowing

Two men wearing long coats are standing where the road ends

One of them has a snake ready to strike embroidered on his back the 
    other a willow tree  

Touch either one and you’ll feel sick for a whole century     

Everyone knows that

Even so I want to soothe the snake  

Want to commune with each patiently sewn leaf 

I want to thank them on and all 

Feed them Christmas candy 

Both men take off their coats thereby exposing their wings 

As I burn with envy a picture of you stealing apples comes to me

You the hot yoga instructor who always forgets my name

Not you the distance between moon and meaning  

The phone rings     it’s the river     can I come over to console her 

Now I’m moving like Jim Morison 

Not the Jim having just shot one gram of heroin 

Rather the Jim on stage at the Hollywood Bowl circa 1968 

As if matters already aren’t tense enough 





O [uterspace]


Hating and loving people both goes the radio can happen to anyone

I’m driving slowly along a dirt road

At the foot of every dead tree rests a basket of daises   

Why won’t my headlights make the eyes of black dogs glow 

I stop get out and write your name in the snow 

Tired of feeling lonely everywhere you go 

I want to use my tongue but don’t  

Act now and receive this handsome knife set free 

Maybe nothing I do will bring you back to me

There’s a man standing knee deep in the river 

He thinks too much about outerspace I say to myself  

He says O you mean loneliness 

No      I mean outerspace I go 

No he says You mean loneliness     the god to so many down here 

Don’t you think loneliness is deadly up there too I say    

O yes he says most definitely     

More deadly even than fire 

Tommy Archuleta’s work has appeared recently in The New England Review, Laurel Review, Lily Poetry Review, The Courtland Review, and Guesthouse. His debut collection, Susto, is slated for release March 2023 through the Center for Literary Publishing as a Mountain/West Poetry Series title. He lives on the Cochiti Reservation.

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

listening to my belly by Deborah Bacharach

even scrunched under
tucks and turns, layers upon layers,
it’s undeniable
              my belly does not ask
for organization, thriftiness
it’s a snugged-up litter of wolf pups
growling, yipping
 
             and I listen because
my belly knows things I don't know
warns me the guy on the train
when he offers a pull on the flask
and I am young, alone
            some days it sulks
demands ordinary sustenance
                                         dark hungers
 
if with a gentle finger,
you wrote your name across
              my belly would hum like honey,
promise to rise, promise more than enough
sky between the trees
 
not always right—my belly
                           does not believe
I unplugged the iron no matter
I haven’t ironed in ten years—but 
when I hear
 
my belly that too loud friend
call my name as she stumbles
across the crowded airport, there’s
nowhere to go but into her arms

Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake and Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has been published in The Antigonish Review, Cimarron Review, New Letters, and Poet Loreamong many others. Find out more at DeborahBacharach.com Instagram @debbybach Twitter @DebbyBacharach

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

3 Poems by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers

Maroon

To feel like I’m escaping an uncontrollable season, I head to Maroon Bells. A moose rested on Maroon Lake. The guide at the entrance said, “keep moose a thumb-cover away,” so I gave that moose a thumb’s up and wink. Maybe next time it could help out and gesture back, I am ready to feel clasped by this planet, for my support system to include poetry and the poetry of land. 

I find it helpful when my feet are bare against sanded shore of lake or creek. A comforting memory evokes smiles, but I’m comforted thinking of you at your most hollowed, empty as wintered slopes. 

If we learn anything from mountain topography, it’s the creative way to remove reality; to pretend flood season isn’t coming after the char. Or to avoid comparing bodies with the continental divide; streams, blackened burn scars, deep crimson canyons, death-red cliffs. I ask the white-watered stream, “Is there anything else who is hurting? Is there something I can do to show I care?” When I sense her glacier-fed body tightening like screw into wood, I quietly repeat: someday you’ll know, someday you’ll know—




An Ache

I don’t mean to seem like I’m complaining, I never want that warmth to set, not even for a period to sleep, but today it’s one-hundred degrees with no sign the fires throughout these Rockies will pause. I’m really missing cool breezes on chipped porches—I have a difficult time facing pastel colors and palmed yucca during midday when we’re at our warmest, but I breathe. 

I read and reread “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island” and I ache all throughout, sweating spine and hips I forget to acknowledge, so consumed with endless day—Someday you’ll know—and I do know I want that backcountry erosion of self, of rising darkly, a body as shadow cooled from dark loam beneath the uncontrollable flamespread. A friend from elsewhere asks “What’s the difference between burn season and wildfire season?” I’ve been feeling a lot of silence in and around me; when children skip rocks on the creek while adults grill meat and still smoke cigarettes. There is silence at the opening of cans. The difference between burn season and wildfire season is silence.



Sunbathing through Wildfire Season

To mutate into something else, I lie on a faded lounge chair by the pool despite the smoke-fueled air which makes the sun a hot-tinged scarlet. Muted and so perfectly round, I see it daily these days as I sunbathe through wildfire season, I stay still and silent while miles of evergreens burn seventy miles away, blowing to me. 

Or, I lie in a hammock and feel it cradle me as a body-bag where the wildfires become mute as the fabric folds lightly around, off-ground and comforting, off-ground I can trust the trees which hold me. I could use some more trees to prop me up: Aspens, Blue Spruce, Piñon. (I could use a little less rocked crag caves and flood paths within me.)

Kristiane Weeks-Rogers (she/her/hers) is a Poet-Writer among other titles such as copy editor. She’s the author of the poetry collection, Self-Anointment with Lemons (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and 2nd place winner of Casa Cultural de las Americas’ inaugural Poetic Bridges contest.

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

The red tide signals we are ground zero for so many things by Nicole Tallman

On my morning walk, I pass by houses on stilts, sweat in a summer sun hotter than I can remember. I pick up piles of plastic, bury belly-up fish released by the ocean in high sighs. I pray for the strength of the cordoned squares safeguarding a sea turtle’s nest and the wooden crutches propping up a dying palm. I praise the salted air I can still breathe in and out freely. I praise this planet that keeps giving despite our abuse. I close my eyes and say to no one in particular: Let us cherish Mother Earth while there’s still time—before it’s too late to undo the damage we’ve done to her.

Nicole Tallman is the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, Associate Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal, and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review. She is the author of Something Kindred (The Southern Collective Experience Press). Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

2 Poems by Rhonda Houser

This Power, A Ghazal
 
A large crowd, mainly women, are taking back this power,
this right to choose, for their body, this pain and bliss power.
 
They are chanting and their signs are saying:
‘Grandmother, and mother, and sis power.’
 
‘Women’s rights are human rights,’ see
it’s not a moan and piss power.
 
‘Can’t believe we’re fighting for this still.’
It’s a we might and scratch and hiss power.
 
‘Get your bans off my body. Birth control is good
for the Earth,’ you don’t want to miss power.
 
The animal I am, human then, and woman is not
a radical, just standing up, righteous, for this power.
 



Degrees of Freedom
 
In Grandma’s yellow kitchen (circa 1993),
the aunts and one uncle do the dishes.
“Are you chasing an M-R-S
at that big University?”
another uncle says to me.
I break a cracker in the cheeseball.
I’d never heard of this degree,
but could roll you in a rug Uncle,
for all the ways you underestimate
the fire of my newfound freedom,
the fields of possibility beyond this town.
 
At Grandma’s funeral, still
wedded to his gut, and twice-divorced,
he chides me half-heartedly.
I look past him to what
the women in my family
gave up with their last names.
 
My mother’s maiden name was Rainey;
(her father’s name); her mother’s
maiden name was Leiser (HER father’s name).
Her mother was a Schmied; the pattern repeats.
Handed like gifts from father to husband
and labeled with his name.
 
Not much left to hold: old stories,
photographs and letters:
Flora rode a horse to teach
at the one-room school
all through the winter.
She drew graceful plants and birds
that grew restless in her notebook.
Her calling narrowed to watching
red birds from the kitchen sink.
Eliza had gleaming hair and hollow cheeks.
When she died of TB, her husband kept the boys;
and sent the girls to different homes.
 
Lena turns a neat heel; her curls
hold for all time; red lips defy
the black and white photo.
Granny Mabel looks up in a
half-smile, her chickens all around.
Her nursing degree hung
on the wall of the farm she never left.
She refused to marry,
seeing so many friends
in binding matrimony.
 
They could not choose
how to love and who,
to live alone,
to smile when they wanted to,
go to work or stay at home.
They knew the dread of
bleeding and not bleeding,
that each year could bring
another baby, valleys of hurt and love,
scribed in tiny headstones.
If they made it 40 weeks,
if they both survive the labor,
the baby gets the father’s name.
 
I can’t go back far enough;
all the names belong to men,
even mine.
But it’s women where the life is made,
Who work their hands and faces thin.
Whose strength and luminosity
should not be hindered or defined
by a name that’s not their own.
When do all our shining truths come home?

Rhonda Houser is an emerging poet living in the Midwest. She writes mainly poetry, but also essays and creative non-fiction. She writes alongside her career as a map maker and data wrangler. She has published poetry in 100 word story, Any Key Review, and Potpourri.

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

Dear _____ by Jennifer Martelli

I can’t say I love this country,

but where would I go? Me, without another language

or a compass. I don’t even own an illuminated faux leather red Bible!

This far down lower Manhattan, I can feel the Brooklyn Bridge loom.

To say I don’t love this country means very little, is neither noble nor brave.

There is very little I do love. I once owned a fine pen named for a snowy Alp,

traded it for something I thought I needed more. Now, my handwriting morphs into glyphs:

birds—or really, just the shape of what I think some birds look like flying away over the beach—

If I were to leave, I would have to text so you would know it was from me, that I hadn’t

forgotten you, that perhaps I wasn’t built big enough to love your expanse. 

Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens and My Tarantella, named a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her work has appeared in Poetry and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review.

The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.

How our rooster taught me to love? ~Amirah Al Wassif

My father picked me up with one hand.
Even I could touch God's throne.
I laughed so hard.
I laughed until I lost my voice.
I call my father Mr. Rooster.
He isn't a real rooster
And, of course, I am not a little hen.
Our identities prove that.
Yes, we are human.
In our Arabian Nights,
The rooster has a prominent place.
He is a storyteller
Just like my father.
As a little kid,
My Mother hung me
In her ears like a star. 
Shiny ones.
She taught me how to weave
A fairytale around
The waist of the universe.
We were playing drums
During baking bread.
Our dusty faces before our stove,
The birds pecking our napes.
Many delicious stories
Float through our bodies.
I am a verse hovering over the air.
My mother's scent enfolds
The horizon.
Our rooster starts telling us
How the ancient Queens and Kings
Revealed the secret of embalming.
We are in love with braiding
Our grandmother's hair.
Me, my father and my mother,
Fighting against the pain.
We dissolve our salty tears
In a glass of sugar and wine.

Amirah Al Wassif’s poems have appeared in print and online publications including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus, The Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now, and others. Amirah’s poetry collection includes, For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate (Poetic Justice Books & Arts, 2019) and a children’s book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories.

November Editor, Ronda Miller was state President of Kansas Authors Club, 2018 – 2019. Miller has three full-length books of poetry: Going Home: Poems from My Life, MoonStain, WaterSigns, and a chapbook, Winds of Time. Miller’s first children’s book, I Love the Child, was published 12/13/2020. The book’s illustrator is Katie Wiggins, a found cousin. I Love the Child won first place for The Children’s Book Award at the Kansas Authors Club State Convention, October 2020.

butcher rack by Cei Loofe

 i wanna be a boy!
 that’s what i told every ‘old lady’ 
 that came to play bridge with my grandmother. 
 they would smile…
 ruffle my hair and say
 ‘you are cute honey, but you’re a girl.’
 and they were right. 
 i was cute.
 saddle leather tanned
 feathered with incorrigible
 able to fly with a wing span imagination wide 
 i ran shirtless, chest first into everything i could
 i would be cowboy, riding propane tanks all the way to dallas
 and building callouses on my hands from swinging on the kill rack
 long into the night
 washing the blood off before i came in.
 by the time i was seven i knew the meaning of sin.
 i didn’t know wanting to be a priest
 instead of a nun qualified
 so i lied after grandma’s disapproving glance
 and her suggestion i find a better habit. 
 i can still say mass, word for word. 
 i heard all her all their admonitions
 shame on you, young lady.
 wore the blouses they put me in
 my hair held perfect ringlet curls
 i became the precious i was expected to be
 and somewhere in the process
 i lost me. 
 my skin became pale.
 my feathers fell.
 i was no longer able to fly.
 the callouses left my hands, 
 i hung from the rack by a rope.
 long into the night. 
 but with a foothold, not a noose
 wishing to wash off who i had become,
 begin again, in new skin.
 two thousand  ‘what if’s’ and hundreds of ‘why not’s’ later
 i grew courage-gained new feathers sprouted in confidence blue.
 my arms stretched hallelujah-finally wide and i began to fly. 

Cei Loofe writes and makes art in Seward, NE with an ASL speaking dog and a quad of stone flipping fish. Loofe spent 25 years as a free-lance journalist before switching to creative writing. Since, he has been included in several anthologies and has been published three times independently.

November Editor, Ronda Miller was State President of Kansas Authors Club, 2018 – 2019, Miller has three full length books of poetry: Going Home: Poems from My Life, MoonStain and WaterSigns and chapbook Winds of Time. Miller’s first children’s book, I Love the Child, was published 12/13/2019. The book’s illustrator is Katie Wiggins, a found cousin. I Love the Child, won first place for The Children’s Books Award at the Kansas Authors Club State convention, October, 2020.

Creative Collaborations at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, KS on 1/4/2020

Creativity gives me community
voices pushed by the voices
of my ancestors– love
 
creativity allows a clear mind
kindness in my life
don’t judge me but feel me
 
creativity gives me freedom of spirit
we are better together than apart
purpose
 
passion with purpose = power
 
we are shaped by what we create
we create what we hold in our heart
 
creativity lets you express
your soul to the world
 
creativity is the expression derived
from the internal collaboration
of the two selves
 
your voice is you power
to live a creative truth
words become wings that
give birth to the future
 
I dream of a day when all are
equal & live without fear
 
thankful for moments to reflect, now onto
reality; nephew’s memorial service,
post suicide
 
Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you
become your reality or define you
don’t go looking for evidence that you
don’t belong
 
be willing to uplift others
leaders are created
when you teach others
how to lead




 

Exquisite corpse: (from the French term cadavre exquis), A method by which a collection of words or images are collectively assembled. I collected these poems as I traveled through Kansas. These poems are written collectively by Kansans at readings, open mics and workshops. The titles of each poem are the locations and dates where they were assembled. They are part of Exquisite Kansas, a collection to be published at the end of my laureateship.

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