Word of the Day . by Sarah Chenoweth

To those who would wait

for the revolution

wearing John Lennon t-shirts and

Guy Fawkes masks,

tattoos on their arms,

braids in their hair,

waiting for the return of

Marley, Tupac, Marat, Cobain:

 

To those who would wait

for the tide to turn,

for the waters to rise,

for others to fall

on their swords,

for a new king to be crowned;

a queen forgotten:

 

To those who would wait

until it is convenient;

when their work is done,

when children have gone,

after that next big promotion,

vacation, fad diet, season finale:

 

To those who would wait

until the fat cats own their lives,

until the food riots begin and

the summers become too hot

for victory gardens:

 

To those who would wait

under overpasses,

in alleyways,

buried in inescapable debt:

 

Stop waiting.

The fight did not end

in 1789, 1865, or 1964.

 

Stop waiting.

The fight is now, and

 

the word of the day is Resistance.

 

Sarah Chenoweth graduated from both the English and Communication M.A. programs at Pittsburg State University. She has been published in print through I-70 Review, Communication Theory, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and the Journal of International Communication, and online through the Silver Birch Press and Kansas Time + Place.

Guest Editor 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.

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Smoky Hill Winery, Salina, Kansas by Sarah Chenoweth

On the hottest day of a Salina summer,

when even blessed grapes feel foul

and the sun sears the skins

of all living things,

I sit shaded under awning and toast the heat

which has created an accord with my body.

 

Sweet Smoky Hill sweat begins to form on,

but does not evaporate from,

my loosely crossed legs

as I melt into stasis,

on this shaded hill, with the

leafless Western plain.

 

I imagine the sweat soaking through my cotton dress,

staining it purple in robust, floral patterns.

I imagine it reversing its course,

like a river after drought,

reabsorbing itself back into my thighs

tracking through my stomach, up my esophagus,

and spilling out across my lips—

these tears, aromatic and sweet against the salt in my glands.

~ Sarah Chenoweth

Sarah Chenoweth is a graduate of both the English and Communication M.A. programs at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, and has been published in PSU’s Cow Creek Review. She has achieved little else thus far; happy to focus on Being, rather than Doing.

Melissa Fite Johnson, a high school English teacher, received her Master’s in English literature from Pittsburg State University in Kansas.  Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including I-70 Review, The Little Balkans Review, The New Verse News, velvet-tail, Inscape Magazine, Cave Region Review, The Invisible Bear, HomeWords: A Project of the Kansas Poet Laureate, Kansas Time + Place, Broadsided Press: 2014 Haiku Year in Review, Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, and To the Stars through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices. In 2015, Little Balkans Press published her first book of poetry, While the Kettle’s On.  Melissa and her husband, Marc, live in Pittsburg with their dog and several chickens.  (www.melissafitejohnson.com)

Melissa says, “I love ‘moment’ poems, and this one is especially lovely. Instead of the speaker’s mind wandering to an expected topic (a loved one, a sick dog), she stays perfectly in the present. I am no good at meditation, but I feel like that ending is trying to teach me how it’s done.”