By M. Anne Sweet

I.

I am Mirabel
Mirabel Anne
descend’d from Hannibal Hamlin
Maine senator selected
Abe Lincoln’s first VP

On this day my mother Mirabel
her thin skin torn
bandage bled through
cannot contain the pain

We are white
I am white feckless freckl’d
I yearn for Hannibal
swarthy-skinned
anti-slavery
politics sway’d against him

By Sarah Carleton

Beware false poets who write

odes to gestation, sputtering doggerel

caught in its own fumes like a car that won’t start

—drivel clogged with ego spit—

for they title it Law and graffiti this glop over

the verse we women breathe when we soar past

nailed guy, robed guy, whining guy, dollars guy

to a place as lofty as a cloudless womb.

By Joseph Musso

Wander Night Streets
stagger
&
stumble
&
fall
&
crawl
back
up
&
stagger
&
stumble
&
fall

By Tania Love Abramson

Alice Neel (1900-1984) was a prolific artist, primarily focused on portraiture. Though she painted continuously from the mid 1920’s until her death, she did not receive the wide acclaim she deserved for many years after she died. Neel was a radical, a Communist, a feminist, and an observer of the world around her. She centered what was most important to her – social justice, race, class, motherhood, and LGBTQ+ issues – in her life’s work. Family, friends, neighbors, gallerists, as well as other artists (even Andy Warhol) were her subjects. She was a self-described ‘collector of souls’ who lived her life exactly as she chose.

By Russell Willis

Paralyzed
Incapable of doing that which must be done

Not for lack of caring
There is enough passion

Not for lack of courage
Though fear has been weaponized all around

But passion runs amok, and fear
Numbing hearts and minds

By Gary Greene

The wounds of the body soon scar

The wounds of the mind stay raw

Lashes of long-ago will not show

No longer ignored in this year

Still cut deep by the soul that saw

Wrongs of the past and even now

Change so painfully slow

How can we ask them to wait?