What We Eat (the Freedom tarot, traditionally the Chariot) by Jericho Hockett

for Melanie, the Inclusive Pedagogy Research Group, & the Inclusive Teaching Writing Institute, upon their willingness to be disturbed

We are searching out
hidden nests wanting
to be found. We are
snake, wide-
jawing, chased out
the coop with egg
in mouth. We are
water-colored
fingers outstretched
to identify those
we claim. We are
bird, feather-painted:
each one different
in color, each one
named. We are
cloth corners soaked
in milk, lip-dipped
to teach to want
to eat to strive. We are
calf, fresh-emerged,
cocoon-wet nuzzling
urgently. We are

learning bodies’ words,
watching ears & wings
& shivers, shifting hands
to hollows, forming
shapes to shelter
each creature’s flesh—
mammalian, shelled,
amorphous, camouflaged,
winged, serpentine. We are
furred or sometimes skinned,
bare bones gleaming
brown as bread & some
are melted into ink,
into tallow. Some have teeth
sharp that show when soughing,
some muzzles soft
with steam when lowing.
We see the way
this barn’s been built
by hands for hands, we say
with tongues in turn
clamorous or clever,
contending to survive,
sustain, tongues licking
blood off blistered
thumbs rubbed raw
from cleaving tight
to pens as we are
revised, reconstituted,
ourselves rewritten
relentlessly resubmitting
against rejection
our course common
with those we eat
to be eaten as we are.

Jericho Hockett’s (she/her) roots are in the farm in Kansas, and she blooms in Topeka with Eddy, Evelynn, and Bastion. She is a poet, social psychologist, teacher, forever student, and dreamer, most whole in the green. Some of her poems appear with or are forthcoming from Mom Egg Review, Coffin Bell, and Pilgrimage Magazine. Her first chapbook, ‘Rituals for Dissolution,’ is forthcoming from Eastern Iowa Review/Port Yonder Press. Instagram: @jerichomariette

About the Guest Editor: Dennis Etzel Jr. (he/him) lives with his spouse Carrie and their five boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has numerous books, including My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015) which was selected by The Kansas City Star as a Best Poetry Book of 2015. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, FUGUE, Puerto del Sol, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others.

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Sit: a Spell by Jericho Hockett

before you miss intimate           years paint yourself
an old abandoned           grey room
take conscious           measures create color in
your life           desires urgently calm
radical inattention           spends without counting
worried dollars           purchase few friends
eye rubble and speculation           grieve seasons
give screens           a sabbath night for surprises
diversion reduces           world thinking
of poetry           temples to technologies of heart
absorb images           observed in day
dreaming a planet           free to sense music
in silence sit           a spell to shift

Jericho Hockett’s (she/her) roots are in the farm in Kansas, and she blooms in Topeka with Eddy, Evelynn, and Bastion. She is a poet, social psychologist, teacher, forever student, and dreamer, most whole in the green. Some of her poems appear with or are forthcoming from Mom Egg Review, Coffin Bell, and Pilgrimage Magazine. Her first chapbook, ‘Rituals for Dissolution,’ is forthcoming from Eastern Iowa Review/Port Yonder Press. Instagram: @jerichomariette

About the Guest Editor: Dennis Etzel Jr. (he/him) lives with his spouse Carrie and their five boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has numerous books, including My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015) which was selected by The Kansas City Star as a Best Poetry Book of 2015. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, FUGUE, Puerto del Sol, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others.

Whispers / Silence by Barbara Waterman-Peters

Barbara Waterman-Peters, (BFA, Washburn University, MFA, Kansas State University, Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Washburn University) whose award-winning work is in museum, corporate and private collections, is represented by several galleries, including the Jones Gallery in Kansas City, MO, the Strecker Nelson West Gallery in Manhattan, KS, and the Beauchamp and SouthWind Galleries in Topeka. She was a founding member of the Collective Art Gallery (1987-2014) and is a charter member of Circle of 7.  She has shown regionally, nationally and internationally in more than 300 solo, invitational and juried exhibitions. 

Waterman-Peters taught at Washburn and Kansas State Universities as well as for Lassen Community College in California. She has received a Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Achievement from the State of Kansas and the Monroe Award from the Washburn University Alumni Association. In 2011 she was awarded the ARTY for Distinguished Visual Artist from ARTSConnect in Topeka.

Waterman-Peters was the staff artist for the Washburn University Theater from 1999 until 2016. In 2010 she founded STUDIO 831, an artists’ space and gallery in the North Topeka Arts & Entertainment District (NOTO). She has served on numerous boards, most recently the NOTO Arts & Entertainment District Board. In addition, she was part of Heartland Visioning’s Quality of Life component, and a curator and panelist for various arts institutions. Currently she is part of the ARTS Leadership Roundtable.

She is co-founder of Pen & Brush Press with author Glendyn Buckley. She and Glendyn each received a Children’s Book Award from Kansas Authors Club for their work on their second book, Bird. Their first book, The Fish’s Wishes, was placed on the KNEA’s Recommended Reading List. Recently, she worked with poet Dennis Etzel, Jr on the exhibits, art, and book for the Two Ponders: A Collaboration project.

Working with other authors she has created cover art and illustrations for numerous books, most recently Marcia Cebulska’s Watching Men Dance. Her art has appeared in such publications as Inscape (Washburn University).

She writes articles about art and artists for TOPEKA Magazine and other publications. One of her creative non-fiction essays was recently included in 105 Meadowlark Reader.

About the Guest Editor: Dennis Etzel Jr. (he/him) lives with his spouse Carrie and their five boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has numerous books, including My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015) which was selected by The Kansas City Star as a Best Poetry Book of 2015. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, FUGUE, Puerto del Sol, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others.

Note about the poem: The two-voice poem is hard to accomplish, for sure. It isn’t simply writing two poems for two readers to synchronize reading at the same time, but the effect of it–that the form is about juxtaposition as much as it is about synchornization. Barbara Waterman-Peters shows her mastery of this through even the titles, “Whispers” and “Silence,” because in these difficult times both forms are catalystic in moving to change.

Spill — by Annette Hope Billings

A near-perfect carry technique

results in safe transport

of coffee from barista to table.

No slosh as hot liquid sways

in tandem with a measured gait.

 

Don’t look at it and it won’t spill.

 

Saucer-cup ensemble is slid slowly

onto a table’s solid surface

with careful consideration

to not waste such vital fluid,

to keep each drop its rightful side of wall.

 

Don’t look at it and it won’t spill.

 

Black ink on morning newspaper,

printed proof of latest violence

this time on foreign ground,

to soak up life spilled

from arteries to exsanguination.

 

Don’t look at it and it won’t spill.

 

Vision clouds at lists of victims

until eyes avert to waiting coffee—

lifeless now, cooled to tepid.

It and headlines are pushed aside

neither valid when left to grow cold.

 

Don’t look at it and it won’t spill.

~ Annette Hope Billings

Annette Hope Billings is an author and actress known for her spoken delivery. She has received a Renna Hunter Award for theater and an ARTSConnect ARTY Award in Literature (2015) Billings’ published works include A Net Full of Hope (2015), a collection of poems and Descants for a Daughter (2016), a collection of inspirations. Her poetry and short stories are included in a number of publications and anthologies. For additional information and performance videos, visit website: http://anetfullofhope.com/

Guest editor Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016).

Ezekiel Visits His Dead — by Jericho Mariette Hockett

Ezekiel pulls up to the cemetery

in a dusty blue Buick Cadillac

leather interior

(his heart)

worn well

with travel but still

supple

still has give

enough to take

this drive every day

because

 

Ezekiel visits his dead

wife at 3 o’clock

pulls a yellow lawn chair

from the back seat and catches

his breath

before unfolding

(his heart)

it’s part of a set

from their wedding in 1957

still sturdy

enough to hold

an old man full of memories

because

 

Ezekiel lingers, leaning

hands clasped in front of her name

on their shared gravestone marker

(his heart)

murmuring

quiet prayers until

his stooped shoulders sag

in a trembling sigh that pulls him

sinking

into the chair to gaze at her

three photos in the marble embedded

her red lipstick smile still bright

enough to feel

rested there in her presence

because

 

Ezekiel shuffles to the end

of the graveyard lane

to say hello to a friend

his brown cane

(his heart)

holds him up

pulls him along

and though this walk is still hard

enough to hurt

he presses on

because

 

Ezekiel goes back to his house

a place that is loud with colors

as afternoon light dances

over photos on the walls

and his and Josie’s grandchildren

run laughing down the hall

when the family visits on Sundays

after Mass

and though he visits the cemetery

on his own he knows

these moments are more than

enough to not be lonely

because

whether there or in his home

(his heart)

he is not alone.

~ Jericho Mariette Hockett

Jericho Mariette Hockett is a native Kansan, social psychology researcher, teacher, poet, writer, crafter, dreamer, mother, lover, daughter, and sister. Her work and play address the quest for meaning and identity, relationships among the living (and the dead), resisting oppression, and empowering self-determination. Her research appears in various academic journals, and her poems appear in SageWoman and Touchstone.

Guest editor Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016).

Hangover — by Melanie Burdick

My head aches – I stayed too late at the party.

Oh, it was a nice time, shining and sparkling

and smiling beautiful people. We were celebrating something.

Curled now on my sofa, wrapped in a quilt

I drink organic, bitter coffee I ground myself in my electric machine

and brewed in another electric machine while toasting bread

in my other electric machine.

I turn on my laptop after swallowing painkillers

and brown eyes of orphans stare into mine,

darker squinting eyes of adults, brown faces and exploding

rubble behind them beneath headlines of chaos and large numbers

in a place I’d never heard of before a few months ago.

I should have slept in.

 

My head pounds.

I’ve never had such a headache, but then I did have those cocktails

last night. It was an open bar after all

and we were celebrating something.

Too many pink desserts filled with too much sugar were

soft down my throat with butter and cream.

My stomach turns and twists.

The coffee is too strong.

My screen mentions the four-year anniversary

of that one school shooting

where the smallest of us were taken

away unbelievably small unbelievable heartbreak.

 

My head aches more and I am shivering even

with the quilt and coffee.

Perhaps a migraine. Perhaps I’ll turn the thermostat to warmer,

take a hot shower, lie on my bed.

I hope I can sleep this off.

I turn on the radio as my head drops into my feather pillow.

I hear there is oil spilling miles away

into rivers and the ice prevents proper clean-up.

How many black gallons I cannot imagine.

Perhaps it is only a small river that doesn’t feed

anything important.

Skipping the shower because I am dizzy, I click

the voice off before it can say more

about people halfway around the world

are they waking or sleeping?

I wonder and close my eyes to sleep it off

The music and dancing last night

What was it we were celebrating?

Melanie Burdick lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her husband and children, and teaches writing at Washburn University.

Guest editor Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016).

Great American Nostalgia Train — by Laura Lee Washburn

All the places we grew up have changed.

In California, you can’t get into a restaurant.

Your Virginia Beach is guarded

by four story parking garages,

and your childhood bike is still missing or stolen.

 

Here in Kansas, we aren’t expecting

East and West coast overflows any time soon—

though we have room. If they came,

we would welcome their Grocery offering fresh made sushi,

their deli counter mustards, in-store olive bars,

the good kind of sesame buns, but we go now

 

into our Walstores for a pint or a script,

not noticing the silences and absences,

the way it might appear the benevolent aliens

have finally come and opened a gateway for half

our children and folk to ascend,

leaving us not lonesome not crowded.

 

The abducted folk might have gone through the gateway

into our short pasts, the remembered simple,

rather than our futures. They might have found

egg salad in wax paper and frankfurters turning

on Ferris wheel spits, the lady at the counter

crushing limes into ade and paper straws. I have

a simple list of where America went wrong:

 

We took down the two hundred foot dunes,

dunes taller than forest. We

filled in the swamp and the wetlands for the navy,

believed too hard in plastics, dismantled

the public works, sent the photographers home,

gave the police armored machines. My list

keeps getting longer. America,

 

we took a wrong turn in 1838—no—when Adams

signed the Indian Springs—No, no Monroe,

as long as the grass shall grow, with the big lies,

with tobacco, with the Dutch and the Spanish—

Oh Europe, with your fine cafes, your clotted cream,

your tea, your coffee, pain au chocolate, what,

just what have you done?

~ Laura Lee Washburn

Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review. Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri. She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.

Guest editor Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016).

Geese — by Ronda Miller

circle around,

fly backwards,

fail to synchronize,

flail and squawk,

eventually fall

away into space,

their instincts

as confused as my own.

 

This year an antichrist

strides, legs long enough

to reach Kansas from D.C.,

or is that New York?

 

Native Americans fight

for clean water rights

the world over, stand

their ground as others

around me shrink and smirk,

shirk family duties.

How do we triage

those we love?

Why can’t we inconvenience

ourselves, downsize our homes,

or simply ask that aged

parent for a loan,

live together as one?

 

I keep faith/presence

with like minded people,

promise myself

to continue the fight,

search the sky for geese,

who by instinct,

know where they’re going,

take flight,

and so do I.

~ Ronda Miller

Ronda Miller enjoys wandering the high plateau of NW Kansas where the Arikaree Breaks whisper late into the sunset and scream into blizzards and thunderstorms. She lives in Lawrence close to her son and daughter. She is a district president and state vice president for Kansas Authors Club. She is a life coach specializing in working with those who have lost someone to homicide. She dances every chance she gets. She has poetry in numerous online and hard copy publications that include the Smithsonian Institute. Two books of poetry include Going Home: Poems from My Life and MoonStain (Meadowlark Books, May 2015).

Guest editor Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016).

Returning to this American Gothic — by Laura Madeline Wiseman

I’m on the wrong side. You’ve forgotten your pitchfork. I’m not scowling at you, wearing a dress, or posing as your wife when really I’m your sister. You’re not wearing the bibs you don’t own. You still have all your hair. The trees behind us are not the shape of orbs and the house is one in which we never lived. We buy a magnet. We consider donning costumes. The gardener who is also the photographer who is also the cashier doesn’t mind the humidity, the cicadas’ song, the drone of tractors, or maybe semis, maybe the highway we took to get this picture. I’m looking for Rosanne Barr’s ex-husband who bought a house here once, rode a bicycle on RAGBRAI, any proof of mists that divide, impossible deaths, a possible life. You’re looking at the map in your head, the one you point to in the air showing me where we’re going next. I’m listening, practicing that magic. You’re telling me you’re the hero of this Midwestern American tale. I nod because today you are. Here we stand, side by side in Iowa, fecund and green, no pitchfork between us, just our hands.

~ Laura Madeline Wiseman

From An Apparently Impossible Adventure (BlazeVOX [books] 2016).

Also appeared in California Ekphrasis, January 2016.

Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of 25 books and chapbooks and the editor of Women Write Resistance, selected for the Nebraska 150 Booklist. Her collaborative book Intimates and Fools is a Nebraska Book Award 2015 Honor Book. Her latest book is Velocipede. She teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Guest editor Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016).

That December in 2016 — by Dennis Etzel Jr.

we can look through the holiday photos to remember

how exaggerated we made our smiles how the words

in carols about peace and love are easy to remember

sing on cue by the teacher or there’s another detention

stay silent through the night or you’ll get something

to cry about yes we have faced Trumps in our lives

faced the shouting as we shut down like tree lights

we know the pine needles know the break of ornaments

so if you think it isn’t in the holiday spirit to decorate

our facebook walls boughs of links against Trump

against pipelines and hate please understand

we’re hopeful for a better new year than imagined

for peace on Earth which means joining choirs

to sing with those who got pushed to the side

~ Dennis Etzel Jr.

Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. Please feel free to connect with him at dennisetzeljr.com.

Guest editor bio: Annette Hope Billings is an author/actor whose published works include a collection of poetry, A Net Full of Hope, and a collection of affirmations, Descants for a Daughter. Her poetry, prose, and short stories have appeared in a number of publications. She resides within the delights of being mother to one, grandmother to two and friend to many in her village of Topeka.