Introduction/Bio: Nika is the pen name of Dr. Jim Force, a retired educator. He is a passionate haiku poet who combines his haiku with his passion for photography. Both haiku and photography reflect his minimalist approach to life in general. The images used in entropy are of sidewalk cracks that he encountered on his daily walks in his neighbourhood. Adjustments in exposure, dynamic range, levels and curves are the only manipulations of the images. Nothing has been subtracted or added to the images. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his wife Colleen and their two cairn terriers. 

archaeùlogy

picking up
the remnants of what was,
the could haves and would haves
securing them in an amber
worn around her neck
laced with flesh-eating bacter(I)um
inflaming her voicebox
digging up corrosives
burying her confidence
with every negative
self-talk

xxxxx

petrichor

seeping into 
pillows and sheets
housing your scent
and mine...
before i rain

Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo
Bombon, Philippines

I Held My Breath

  

We had been crowded into a low-ceilinged

room the size of a small church.   Cement

walls and floor.   The soldiers had confis-

cated all our clothes, our shoes, what jewel-

ry and personal effects that had remained

with us.  Most of it had long ago been

bartered away for food or clean water or

other privileges scarce in the compound.

 

We were completely naked:  the men, the

women, even the little children.  Our heads

had been shaved.  Rumor had it that the

Huns stuffed their pillows and mattresses

with our hair.

 

The room was entirely vacant but for the

human bodies; our pale white flesh was the

color of a fish’s belly, and we were stuffed

into the room like oysters into a turkey.

 

We had all been shipped to the death

camp--Todeslager--like cattle to the

slaughter, in box cars, with no food or

water.  With scarcely enough room

to breathe.  Once or twice a plane flying

overhead had strafed the train with

machinegun fire.  Perhaps our own

brave pilots.

 

There were no youths or middle aged men

and women; they had all been absorbed into

the vast slave labor network the Huns oper-

ated.  Only the crippled, the maimed, the

feeble and the old, like myself, were here,

save for the very young, who weren’t hardy

enough for slave labor.

 

We were in Treblinka.  It was June, 1943

and the rumor was that the camp would

be closed soon.  We had no room to lay or

sit or even turn around.  We were like the

kippers that were packed in oil or mustard

and that the inmates in labor camps--the

Arbeitslager--got from the Red Cross.  At

Treblinka we never received our kippers.

There were nothing but rumors flying

throughout the compound:  I had heard it

said that the German women made lamp

shades with our skin.

 

Some of the old men stared up at an aperture

in the ceiling, about a foot and a half over our

heads.  That, they said, was where the Ger-

mans would deposit the Zyklon B, the poison

they would gas us with.  The Commandant,

addressing the prisoners some time ago, had

bragged that superior German industry had

created many wonderful things.  This was per-

haps the example he had in mind when he

said that.  He had seemed very proud.

 

One of the younger of the men had been a

helper, removing the bodies from the chamber

after the gas had dissipated.  After everyone

was dead.  He told us all about how it worked. 

The poison--prussic acid--he said, worked fast. 

There would be a rattling over our heads, in the

chute that the poison was fed into.  Someone,

he said with a grotesque grin, always tried to

keep the pellet from descending.  But fall it

always did.  For his labors he had received

an extra crust of Brot.

 

We waited.  And waited.  Suddenly there was a

clattering overhead, in the chute.  The pellet of

Zyklon B was descending.  A tall man, as if act-

ing a part in a movie, attempted to prevent the

pellet from falling, where it would crack open and

then dissipate in a cloud of murderous vapor. 

His hand slipped.  Suddenly, a large white pellet

crashed to the floor, burst open and a deadly,

diaphanous cloud rose up.  A woman cried out.

The lethal “showers” had begun.  I held my

breath.

This piece was originally published in Children, Churches and Daddies.

Black Fire Matters

	Many people both inside and outside his home 'hood thought of Jimmy as a firebrand, his style as long as anyone could remember.  At fifteen he organized demonstrations and led protest marches.  The police picked Jimmy up several times, charged him with disorderly conduct and creating a public nuisance once each, but never convicted him of anything.  Unlike many of his peers, he kept his nose clean—Jimmy never messed with drugs or with selling them.  He was a thorn in the side of the authorities, but he was not a criminal—and more thoughtful observers thought of him more and more as a peacemaker.

	Jimmy spent two years at the local community college and two more at the state university to end up with a bachelor's degree in social work.  Instead of going to work for a government agency, Jimmy had worked with a community-based social services provider in the neighborhood where he grew up.  Seeing many of the community's problems deriving from politics, he decided to return to the university for a master's degree in political science and enrolled for the next academic year.

	In the meantime, a series of deaths-in-custody and other suspicious deaths of unarmed black teenagers at the hands of police led to a wave of angry protests.  The law enforcement community didn't seem to get the message, though, and the deaths continued.  Predictably, that eventually led to some people taking the law into their own hands and exacting vengeance upon police.  Jimmy could see the situation easily spiralling out of control, so he contacted several influential community personalities and organized a series of meetings.

	At first, Jimmy tried to persuade each group that the best strategy involved negotiation and well-disciplined peaceful demonstrations, but he soon saw he risked being totally ignored and becoming irrelevant.  Many of those who attended his meetings said, “We've already tried that, and we know it doesn't work,” or words to that effect.  A few had already begun organizing groups of armed black vigilantes.  In an effort to prevent the spreading conflicts from escalating into an all-out war, Jimmy chose to accommodate those groups.

	“You don't just go out and start blowin' honkies away.  We don't want to kill honkies—or even white cops—just because they're white.  That's jes’ as bad as them killin' us because we're black.  Is that OK?”
	“Hell, no!” his small audience roared.
	“Exactly!  So we don't want to do that either.  We're talkin' self-defence.  We only go after people who are killin' our bros.”
	“How about the head of Standard Oil?” came a voice from the crowd.
	“That'll have to wait 'til later,” Jimmy replied.
	“But they're killin' us.”
	“True dat, but right now we want only clear responses to direct threats.  What we want to do is take out those cops that are killin' our bros—and nobody else!”  Jimmy paused for a moment, then asked, “Does anybody not understand that?”


	Amid nodding and head shaking, a chorus of “Nah,” “Yeah,” “All good, bro,” “You go, Jimmy!” bade him proceed.
	“If the man is just doin' his job, even if we don't like it, we don't touch 'im.  Everybody got dat?”
	“But, Jimmy,” said a large man in the middle of the room, a man Jimmy had known in high school, “this is our city.  It's ours as much as it is theirs.  We ain't gonna let them kill us off or drive us out of here.”
	“Of course we're not,” Jimmy replied.  “I'm jes' sayin' we don't need to kill all of them off either.  We defend ourselves.  Anybody not OK wi' that?”

	“Right, bro,” and other sounds of assent encouraged Jimmy to continue discussing plans to defend the demonstration in front of the city hall the next day.  His friends and neighbors trusted him and knew he was on their side.  Even though many wanted to take more direct and comprehensive action, they allowed Jimmy to persuade them to try his way.
	Another half hour of discussion and an hour of organizing teams left Jimmy and the rest feeling well prepared for the next day's protest.  The meeting ended with a positive vibe, and Jimmy went home feeling they might even achieve a breakthrough in their relations with the authorities the next day.

	The morning dawned grey and gloomy, with a light drizzle falling.  “That'll keep our numbers down,” said Jimmy's friend and sometime lover Crystal, who had helped organize the day's actions.  To the surprise of both of them, more than three thousand people had crowded onto the sidewalk (and into the street) in front of City Hall by the time the rain stopped at quarter to eight that morning.
	Unlike the rain, the stream of people showed no sign of stopping.  Buses arrived, delivering supporters from other communities.  One of Jimmy's three cellphones signalled an incoming text message just as the other one rang for a 'phone call.  He answered the call and learned that the state police had begun stopping buses on the outskirts of the city.  The text, from a different bus, conveyed the same news.  He told Crystal and showed her the text, and she quickly arranged press coverage of the interceptions.

	By 9:30 the sky had turned blue and nearly ten thousand people, mostly black but with many white supporters, had packed the space in front of City Hall.  By 10:30 buses succeeded again in getting to the city center, swelling the numbers to well over twelve thousand as the day grew comfortably warm—and still people kept pouring into the street.  Official police estimates of the crowd claimed nine thousand demonstrators, but photographs showed the number approached twenty thousand.
	Surprisingly, considering the numbers, the first real trouble didn't occur until almost noon, when two policemen began using their nightsticks on a black teenager who had been standing quietly on the edge of the crowd.  Several people intervened and were clubbed to the ground for their trouble.

	At the other end of the block, Jimmy stood relaying information to the vigilante teams in windows and on rooftops of buildings up and down the block.  In particular, he told his teams where police snipers had been spotted.  “Yeah, right in City Hall itself—sixth floor, fourth window from the left,” he told each of his teams in turn, then, “The roof of that big glass and steel building at the end of the block.”
	Across the teeming multitude, the black teenager lay unconscious but unmolested, as two large white policemen vented their fury on a middle-aged man who had tried to intervene.  The man lay inert, clearly unconscious, but still the cops hit him.  Suddenly, the face of one of the cops exploded forward onto their unconscious victim.  The other cop straightened to look around him, and the back of his head spattered over several witnesses.

	Jimmy moved through the crowd toward the commotion surrounding the two dead policemen.  He took a call and heard, “We movin' out.  They comin' dis way.”  That told him the team that had taken at least one of the cops was vacating the room they had used and were leaving it booby-trapped for the SWAT team that planned to apprehend them.
	Another commotion at the back of the crowd rose from a circle of angry demonstrators surrounding four white policemen using their sticks on a twenty-something black male, who was curled into a ball on the ground.  As one of the cops straightened to swing a full-force blow at the man's head, a bullet through the cop's neck dropped his body onto his cringing victim.  The other three cops looked wildly around and one spoke into his walkie-talkie, as the crowd began to close in on them.

	In response to a short 'phone call, Jimmy changed direction toward that new disturbance, hoping to calm the crowd and defuse the tension.  He spoke into one of his 'phones as he weaved through the crowd.  “No, bro, we don't want them tearin' these cops apart.  That'd just be their excuse for more violence against us.  I think I can quieten 'em down.  You jus—”  Jimmy's instructions were interrupted by a police sniper's bullet that entered his heart through his left atrium and exited through—and mostly removed—the wall of his left ventricle.

Educated as a scientist, graduated as a mathematician, Cora Tate has earned her living as a full-time professional entertainer most of her life. She attempted to escape the entertainment industry through work as a librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city planner, among other occupations. Cora has written five novels, three novellas (two published), six novelettes (two published, one forthcoming), and ninety short stories, of which fifty-nine have appeared in sixty-seven literary journals in ten countries.

 
 Never fulfilled
 always fulfilling 
Our tub overflows
    with oceans yet to fill
& my name
 doesn't Matter because 
    You already know me.

 As if a 
   shared mystery is
      a pleasant surprise,
           Enjoy the toss.
              It's new Today.

            Love, this look 
       around the other way,
     As sun lifts the shades 
   Beneath the living wood. 
 In quiet refrain,  Listen as if 
  Creation shares the thunder,
      in expectation beyond 
          the pulse of Light.

Pretending 
in the timeless beauty  
where want
 evaporates upon renewal,
      No-thing Waters The Rose. 
Yes, it's being quenched within 
Free to assist the solar polish 
whose warmth closes eyes to
the olfactory bloom
as appreciation soothing
 the receiver,  
Sightless Satisfaction.
   
Cut, the dethorned is confined
  to a kitchen window's grace.
   The rose looks out,
 behind the glass.

 Still you're rose.
Timeless named from the dark 
 To call us together 
  Warming from within 
Drawing the mystery sharing 
      Living the earth & 
        Tall boundless sky,
           Known for its winds.
 
       A Rose Appreciated, 
Opens a window in expectation
   Dreams its thorns
 And turn Wind to Sky 
where water forms.

Never fulfilled 
 Always fulfilling 



Drafted:
Saturday morning 
November 5, 2022
by John Edward Culp 
All Rights Reserved 

PASTORAL

Wild wind blowing the work you left half-completed,
as for climate change – anywhere to be seen,
to atone for the founding of the wash of the sea,
the stamp of Darwin -

blood clots swim like chop! chop!
owls cook in Alaskan skies,
curling smoke escapes Earth
from epoch to epoch -

faith in Armageddon floods the bayou,
frenzied spiders on the skin chant 
get up, old man, despite the hard pressing on your heart,
the toxic exhaust smell in your trembling farts –

leaking penis, legs less mobile than the midday sun,
moonstruck memories trail behind their mad mothers.
sun brings you up to date on the plague,
now merely the old man on the street corner of 7th and 7th –

in a past a charted obligation,
now, a cancer patient dons his American Gothic garb,
trudges across unplowed fields,
soil sings, soil sweats -

more shouting, that showcase of human condition,
sky closes its jaw on the steel confusion of cities,
tears fall, spark the interest of the grass,
Frankenstein is almost done making his monster –

a brand of human species born to a feral bitch,
standing here in the atheist line 
with the toadstool, the iguana and the hermit crab,
lightning in the clouds – wake up old man,

wave your white bandana, your tired hospital gown,
your well-earned stigmata, welcome to the 21st century, 
where even the nipples are made of clay,
where history bows beneath the onslaught.





A JUNE WALK

Trees flare,
green abundance,
white and pink and violet
frosting.

Birds nest in every fork.
Time moves on
but such a verdant struggle
to make it stay.

Welcome fullness, 
a return to immortality 
for lovers on a woodland walk.

Wildflower, fingers, 
skittering rabbits, legs - the trick is to tell us apart.


WE BOTH SAID "I LOVE YOU"

It's a major event surely.
It should be jack-hammered into marble
by poets on a metaphor bender.
What is civilization doing at the moment?
Shouldn't they be involved?
At the very least,
it demands a parade and streamers,
people hanging out of office buildings,
schoolgirls lining the route.
And where's the mayor? The governor?
And who's the president anyhow?
Fireworks have a reason for living.
Marching bands are hot to trot.
Shouldn't we pick and choose from
the Hollywood A list for our hosts?
This makes every other declaration of feelings
look like outtakes from The Little Rascals.
I'm expecting to be called up to the podium
any moment now.
Don't worry. We both can grip, hold up the statue,
thank everything from soul to heart to head.
I can just hear the critics.
"Made me think of summer days,
blue lakes, Schwinn bicycles and the
pretty blonde girl in the hip-hugging jeans."
I'm on stage. You're on stage.
And what an audience…
just the two of us.
Why don’t we keep it to ourselves.

YOUR IMPRESSION IN THE NIGHT SKY

You’re beautiful.
It’s written in the stars,
in the stares.

Men turn their heads
when you walk by.

Not just the usual wolves
in hard hats and orange jackets,
but the dignified,
the older gents,
stiff and proud-faced,
who look as if they’ve just come
from having their portraits painted.

I’m with the stares of course
but I also confer with the stars.

Aldebaran shines brighter than
anything else in the field of Hyades.
I wonder if you feel responsible.

MY APRIL 

April is on my side.
Alpine asters bloom.
Nuthatch slips down the oak trunk
in a blush of sun.
And is that a bee?
Listen close.
It’s a sound flower petals recognize.

Grass creeps up my ankle.
Narcissus glow yellow.
Boy fishermen drop their lines.
A fox slinks through the sumac.

The landscape is a living almanac.
It’s new and familiar.
Last summer’s heart beats
in the new year.
No more ice.
So the ground can be trusted.

Raccoons forage.
Sparrows move into the gutters.
Promises are revelations.
The lake glows horizon red.
Milkweed reasserts itself.

There’s still a shiver about.
But shining is a warmth in itself.
Just ask the primroses, the peach rose.
The sun is like a loving parent,
gripping my hand
and leading me out the door.

Where snow has long melted,
animal secrets emerge.
Life opens itself up to color.
Like a hint of violet
and drops of silver parachuting down.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Red Weather. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Rathalla Review and Open Ceilings.

 

Tendril
By Sreya Sarkar

Decenniums descended, 
Brave women marched with men
Shoulder to shoulder
Azaadi looked within reach
Palace walls crumbled
But a turret grew there instead
Its snake head sissling
Keeping watch on all
Tightening its grip 
On men, women, children
Some escaped 
Into the folds of wealth
Sheltered in connections
Others had nowhere to hide 
They worked in the streets, and the fields
Exposed to the strict police gaze 
The masters needed the shroud of virtue
To veil their craving 
They made it law
Loose gowns,
Tight headscarves
A pretty young one 
botched the command
Her tendril escaped
The gaze weaponized it
Looped it to choke her
The zhins moaned in agony
Beat their breasts 
Lit a bonfire
Jumped in, one by one
A neo-futurist architect and AI 
Imagined a mane of hair in the wind 
Is the gust enough to place it in Azadi Square?
Can the snake be decimated,
the blood washed away?
Will the “flowing free” replace it, instead?