Tears
In this theatre we call humanity
echoes a thunderous cry of shattered children’s hearts
the enemy roars shamelessly,
they scatter Palestina, but they can never kill God.
Shame on all cruel souls,
mourn your frozen laughter
heaven will carry the burden of clouds
illuminating the darkness, that griveous rafter.
Disguises conceal the countenance of the beast
while the everlasting grace whispers softly,
innocent smiles are stolen, I can hear the scream.
Patience endures long but conquers mercilessly.
Arrogant haughtiness, forsake all hope,
your pomp is fleeting as dry leaves,
eternity descends down the slope,
tears will sing where angels gleam.
Ana Petrovic was born on 05.02.1985 in Serbia, where she still lives. She wrote a book of poems that is not published yet, but finished medical school with a VI degree. Many of her songs are published in magazines and on portals. Some of them are translated into English. She has been working on special programs with kids who have paralysis cerebralis. She likes working with kids as much as she likes poetry.
Big Pharma Magic (Come Find Me)
I’m getting better just taking precautions.
Yes chickenpox covered my elementary body
raised spots inflammations I scratched
like hell & freed me from a classroom
for almost two weeks but now threaten
to reemerge since my years pass seventy;
hit me up with the shingles vaccine as I
diagnose health equipping myself with antidotes. .
Like today’s youth, I fell victim to an ADHD misdiagnosis
believed pharmaceutical product oracles that encouraged
overweight people to eat, dance and sing Jardiance jingles
pay a big pharma pipers to manage our personal A1C
sidestepping a professional cardiometabolic disease prognosis.
My breathing difficulty had nothing to do
with decades inhaling pot & tobacco smoke
no, no…, faceless voices convinced me
my malady’s simple: I’ve got COPD now I
respire steroids nursing seizures and sore throats
focusing attention on my impending Crohn’s disease
treating it and moderate ulcerative colitis with Entyvio
TNF-a inhibitors damaging my liver leaving plenty to rot.
An armchair pharmacologist I am one, tis true, tis true!
I write lists of disorders related to suggestive syndromes
while family and friends do crossword puzzles, turn off
television ads, and engage in gracious conversation
oblivious to my world of perceived ailments’ simple cures.
Apart from uncontrollable nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting,
Otezla surely medicates my dormant plaque psoriasis
Rexulti wards off all undetected hypertension
keeps my lurking dementia at arm’s length
as Austedo XR tempers quiescent body spasms
stabilizes my moodiness mutes self-expression
mitigates behavioral outbursts though it promotes
suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempts, and depression.
I’m a wanna be apothecary. A chemical herbalist. Solemn,
Learned. Impressionable. Stern. Yet if I glimpse beyond
prescriptive magic, daylight’s dismal night time’s bleak
so I refill miracle Dosette boxes swallow pills like sacred hosts
still, I’m in pain. I’m so far gone. I’m living dose to dose.
********************************************************************************
Among Clouds
Savants claim everything begins with a dream
whether riding on horseback or dancing
en pointe, wearing holes in living room rugs
as you practice arabesques and pirouettes;
I envisaged your face grinning as I approached
your house for a visit, an expression
that broke into a genuine smile as you
opened the door and invited me in; as long as I
stayed, your eyes, cheeks, and mouth moved
in unison like the sweeping arm of a clock.
Nighttime and waking hour fantasies remained
hidden too often; I hungered for authentic emotions
to shift from my mind’s eye, evade sky castle
realty, make way for enduring meaning concealed
behind your mischievous yet incomparable glow
as inviting and reassuring as a flirtatious wink
when you grasped my hand and pulled me inside,
knowing our romantic growth’s a pipedream stifled;
once effortlessly conjured, I’ve forgotten your face
a dreamscape terminated among clouds with a whimper.
********************************************************************************
Midwestern Strip
Pick-up trucks line city streets
like zebra striped parking lot aisles
polished chrome bumpers
refract antediluvian light rays
dirt-covered windows absorb
silvery beams down main streets
where saloons outnumber markets, schools,
theatres, restaurants, and medical centers;
taverns attract residents like watering holes…
there they’d congregate to drink, dance, and argue
blaming climate change on mother nature, poverty
on laziness, mass shootings on unarmed liberals.
********************************************************************************
Kaijū Redux
Remembering Elji Tsuburaya and Ishirō Honda
Heatwave & harvests, August’s end
weary straining leaves, neglecting chlorine
maintenance, bacteria bred in a plastic vessel
we once scrubbed to eliminate slimy walls
yet allowed toes to dig into a peatmoss padded
visqueen bottom rather than slip on a scummy bottom
above its softened footing. (Thanks Uncle Conrad);
we emptied our round swim center down the driveway
left a half inch stagnating in the pool expecting swift
evaporation during sizzling sunny days & muggy Leo nights;
Debbie noticed movement beneath the moisture first;
as mosquito larvae wiggled & squirmed below
we scooped fetid water in dixie cups that cradled
maggot-like creatures for captive study;
examining malaria carrier progeny under my microscope,
we recognized how yōkai and nature’s grotesques inspired
Japanese sci-fi sensei as they created irradiated monsters:
Godzilla to Rodan, King Ghidorah to Gigan,
Hedorah to Megalon, their eyes evil, jaws spiked;
twisted frames and geometric writhing brought
backyard Kaiju to life—a feat we proudly cultivated.
********************************************************************************
Panoramic Platform
New York City’s MTA thrives
cold rolled iron tracks
wake as the
Hudson
Rail
Yards
absorb
crimson light
amber hues fill skies
as Dawn’s rays glance off glass towers
******************************************************************************
Sterling Warner’s Brief BiographyAn award-winning author, poet, and former Evergreen Valley College English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Lothlórien Poetry Journal, Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry/fiction include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction 2019-2022, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas: Poems (2024), and Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Presently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, turns wood, and enjoys retirement in Washington.
******************************************************************************
Critically examine Amruta Patil’s Kari as a post-modern feminist graphic novel.
Comment on sexuality and gender identity as the two prominent themes in Amruta Patil’s graphic novel Kari. Does the text appropriate the act of looking or resisting the masculinist modes of seeing?
Amruta Patil’s Kari[2008] is the post millennial and new liberalization era hallmark of women studies and feminism testimony; graphic narrative that explores gender identity, feminine personhood and queer sexuality. This graphic novel is a bold and ambitious project
substantiating the retellings and recollections of the titular protagonist's memoiristic life as a queer lady of the allegorically Smog City or Bombay. Kari is exposed to the living hell and damnable existence both by her co-workers and her flatmates’ disparagement and derogation.
Kari is forlorn by Ruth after smog city’s insalubrious sewers transmogrify the site of “returning favours”; Kari adrift to ferry the raft to unclog and clean the darkest waters at night. Amruta Patil represents the black and white visual schema symbolizing the protagonist’s interior world; with colourful illustrations brought in sparsely to imply a sense of belonging and home.
This graphic novel is a fusion of magic realism and mythological subtexts. “There is no such thing as a straight woman” the controversial identity crisis of the graphic novel’s idiolect substantiates the reechoings of Olivia Laing in The Lonely City: The Art of Being Alone: Almost as soon as I arrived, I was aware of the gathering anxiety around the question of visibility. I wanted to be seen, taken in and accepted, the way one is by a lover’s approving gaze. At the same time I felt dangerously exposed particularly in situations where being alone felt awkward or wrong, where I was surrounded by a couple of groups.” “Don’t be scared [...] Death will always come to you as a friend” —----the birthday greetings to Angel reestablishes the framework of sapphic relationship through the reincarnated selfhood in the life-in-death as Kari’s acquaintanceship develops amidst looming deceasement.
Despair of a ruthless urban cosmopolitan dwelling is a decayed disfiguration except the boundless fluidity of the sea; a refuge of queer docks and beeches.
Amruta Patil’s queer gendered feminist graphic novel pictorial exposition illustrates self-exploratory adventure and fluidity of psychic spaces as the demeanour of ad-agency creative writer through heteroglossia and stream of consciousness. This experimental post-modern graphic novel resists and reprehends hypermasculinity and hegemonical heterogeneity through ink, marker, charcoal and oilbar, crayon and found images within-the-cross-over literary forms [...] the storylines/ diegesis/ mise-en-scene flows from voice over narrative style to visuals, then back to visuals again.
In this graphic novel the queer misfit heroine “trawls the drains dream after dream [and] can smell the sewers everywhere” recurrent image motif furthermore emphasizes and/or illustrates the “fluidity of her thoughts keep returning to the city’s lower intestines”. A dark cityscape having the back of Kari’s shadowy figure facing towards the readers and standing into the edge looking into the darkness of the overflooded canals with over-brimmed downpours. The serpentine space of herself ferrying the waterways as close-up shots of traveling, trawling and traversing magnifies the exploration of the self-hood and waxing and waning of her personal moons and/or the real and the imaginary.
The boatman mythical allusive subtexts interweaving in-betweenness of this earthy life and futuristic utopian reciprocates the assertion to Lazarus that “she had neither been an armchair straight, nor an armchair gay, except being an active loner.” She metaphorically espouses nothing but Ruth by her non-committal tagline to lesbianism and lushness of the peach epitomizes the fleshiness of feminine corporeality —the vagina. Grey-scale image of the panel
represents morbidity and mundanity while the colourfulness contrasts panel wit-in Smog City that offshoots epiphanic moment, reflecting subjectivity and interiority heralding the mainstream satirical gazes and alternative interpretative voices. After all, “there is no thing as a straight woman” herein, interiority as a narrative tool enables visualization of the subversive gaze of the female protagonist offering resistance to the symbolic gaze of the male order and masculinist modes of seeing.
Magic realism in the metaphorical depiction in the parting farewell of cutting romantic cords recaptures imagination and visualizes transcendental nostalgia, memory and longing through non-containment.”My time is up, boatman. I need you to ferry me over” the rhetoric of Angel is counterfeited by Kari’s unfathomable infinity that “Don’t be scared, death will always come to you as a friend”.
Amruta Patil's Kari is available here.
I watched for provinces and states both, the wires go up and down outside the car window, always a Buick. in some places fireworks seemed to be for sale everywhere and I placidly but still curiously looked at the designs and words on signs, on walls, on box trucks parked and painted. when the sea was reached, past pastoral fields where birds formed visions in the skies moving moving moving; where infrastructure went past graveyards right in the middle of overhead highways because I suppose it’s wrong and difficult to move the dead even amidst worldly progress, and where hotels and motels lined strips,- I could hear the waves. carnival barkers hankered for attention and a ferris wheel gently touched and traversed the little heavens. I could hear crowds of people and in the night a man and a woman bumped into each other and fell in love at first sight. they were embarrassed about it,- and hardly really knew what to do. I don’t know what happened to them as the car moved on. in the north it rained and was serious and drab, melancholic, while in the south it was clear and bright and more spacious. a truck was on its side, under an overpass, and the yellow and orange and red fires, coupled w/smoke, all like Medusa’s hair aflame, scratched the air on an otherwise regular enough earth, like a small country trying to fight a larger one, the fire versus the firmament.
I liked much of the rest of the world there and felt sad for the truck and anyone hurt. almost every place I saw had industrial corridors bleak, grey, and also areas w/many units in buildings made for manufacturing and distribution. I could hear air brakes. and I think whistles. the air was thick. on the coast cargo ships slid the horizon line like ghost vessels and planes flew banners w/advertisements. the intercoastal bridge opened high, mechanically, and the world definitely and almost defiantly knew what it was doing. I looked around the stores and could smell the shirts they ironed on logos and pictures to. it’s a loud place for a daydreamer, a lost soul. yet- the rains in the morning sunlight strange and surreal were okay and somewhere still, the warm breeze must make the branch leaves to sway above grain and stone, near step and bench and water blue, in a place where later, witching hour dreams are borne, dreams one tries to remember, dreams almost sacred, dreams where one has a glimpse of a home forgotten.
“I’m like a disease that only I seem to have caught…” begins a jarring introductory soliloquy from Elizabeth Sawyer, the principal character from “Witch” as played by prolific Boston based actress Lyndsay Allyn Cox. Written by New York based playwright Jen Silverman and directed by Boston local Rebecca Bradshaw, this production is playing at the Huntington Theater’s Calderwood Pavilion/Boston Center for the Arts.
“Elizabeth”, a single woman presumed to be a “Witch” lives in what is described as a country village in Edmonton. Amidst navigating a life of persecution and vitriol saunters in “Scratch” who is the devil incarnate as played by Michael Underhill, who previously appeared in the Huntington’s production of “Man in the Ring” back in 2018. He proffers to her an opportunity for “revenge” against her tormentors in exchange for her soul, nonplused and intrigued by her leery propensity to not readily yield to his protracted cajoling particularly since some other members of the town folk have already become ensnared in his trap in exchange for their souls. This essentially marks the starting point of interest in this mordant play for the scenarios that resulted out of what could have been a predictable afflicted witch revenge story turned into a complex tale of forbidden love, lust, gender biases, challenging systemic inequality and emphasizing ideologies of “the other” in our society and daring to challenge the status quo of the power structures that has defined our lives for centuries.
“The character of Elizabeth is forcing you to look at the status quo and question it,” explained “Witch” director Rebecca Bradshaw in an interview with Huntington production dramaturg Pascale Florestal. She went on to say, “That is so important right now, to not get stuck in our own ways or in societal ways and to really think about why we do the things we do.” Ponderings that have become even more pressing during the pandemic inertia while the world was in quarantine.
Playwright Jen Silverman echoes Bradshaws’s assertions that “…the question of transformation, whether or not we are capable of change, how far people will go to feel visible, to be perceived the way they want to be perceived…how we get trapped by systemic power dynamics [and] what it takes to break free.”
This is the first play I’ve seen since the 2020 Covid pandemic hiatus of well, EVERYTHING, but for this purpose, particularly the arts. Amidst challenging times like these, I truly believe that the arts proffers creative altruistic opportunities to be a guiding light in immanent darkness, a beacon of hope in all worldly madness. “Witch” sets the stage, granted it’s a stage rightfully full of questions but also lays out ample opportunities to decipher a plethora of possible answers.
Right from the onset, “Witch” casts its spell and snatches our attention with a bold and foreboding soliloquy from principle character Elizabeth as the witch. As she delivered her inauspicious speech, she radiated confidence, authority and control and I, for one, readily surrendered to Madame “Witch” and with marked accelerated heart rate– due to a fair amount of trepidation, was willing to go wherever she saw fit to take me…
One of the most important characteristics of the theater is the ability to be pliable, the ability to shift to reflect what is happening in a precise moment in time. Although this play was written in 2018, it still manages to be relevant in 2021 since we are still facing some of the same afflictions from 2018. The pandemic is still lingering on with Covid19 “variants” morphing into other more deadly “variants”, remnants of a precarious political climate since the contentious election of Joe Biden, social unrest due to a panoramic number of issues ranging from America’s reckoning with racial justice and gender gaps to abortion rights and rainbow flag communities all fighting for unequivocal equality. “Witch” becomes a buxom motif for “the other” in a society where not all are necessarily created equal. The fact that Elizabeth as the witch is played by a woman of color, a black woman in particular, was not lost on me.
Elizabeth explains how she doesn’t feel “seen”, how people make uncorroborated claims about her character simply because she’s been labeled a “witch“, much like some people make uncorroborated assertions about those who have been labeled “black” simply because they are black. Even though this play is based on the 1621 Jacobean era original play “The Witch of Edmonton: A Tragic Comedy” by William Rowley et al, it still manages to be relevant in contemporary times, underscoring our prejudices against each other, whether conscious or subconscious. It is a grievous reminder that treating some like “the other” is not a present day anachronism that should have been left in the past. It is a present day reality that we as a society is constantly railing against so that it does not become the legacy we leave behind for our posterity.
Smart effective staging that weaved in and out as if seamlessly, casting that could only be compared to a strike of lightning hitting the same place twice, which as we’ve learned is VERY unlikely, and a deliciously contrasting tension of the erotic and the demonic sort between the characters, mostly due to a devilishly handsome devil stirring the pot that will ignite towns peoples’ stealthy passions and desires.
Although the staging resembled 17th century England with a Jacobean décor, the dialogue is modern, fresh and sometimes caustic without any “fake” English accents per the request of the playwright. One particular moment of modern dialogue that brought delight and laughter from the audience was when Elizabeth boldly tells the devil that he’s been “talking sh*t” ,just to give you an idea.
This production is a bewitching Risorgimento wailing for an apocalyptic end to the status quo in a manifested sociopolitical uneven social order replete with glaring disparities. With palpable chemistry between the stellar cast, a non sequitur fight scene bringing the play to a bizarre yet touching crescendo, Existentialist ideologies amidst pandemic quarantined musings asking us to reexamine our purpose, conventions and priorities during our impromptu stillness, ostracized individuals feeling seen and known for who they really are only some of the major themes. There were some guttural laughs and guffaws resounding from the audience including myself brought about by the play’s dark comedic genius or madness interchangeably, made even funnier and even more awkward since I was seated next to an austere male audience member who tensed up annoyingly every time I dared to enjoy myself…I once read that if you don’t like something change it, if you can’t change it, you can laugh at it. Well this play proffers ample opportunities for laughter and more importantly, proffers possibilities for change in the form of a brighter more equitable future. It is a miscible concoction heralding inclusivity and equity for those living seemingly in the perspicuous margins of humanity.
The staging illuminated subtle balances of light and shadow adding to the perceived nefarious undercurrent embodied within this cryptic tension filled drama. It made me think about things. I find it rather questionable how some sanctimonious humans see it fit to torment and torture “other” humans simply because they are different from them. Why not question why you may think you matter more or you matter less than your neighbor? The play argues that it is imperative that we question long established social conventions and disparate hierarchical structures of power; an ideal world would be where power is sought, power is achieved and ultimately power is shared. Is that too much to hope for in an increasingly changing world? Haven’t we progressed enough as a civilization? All marginalized “others” vying for a morsel of the American Dream…perhaps it might prove more viable to “live and let live” as the dictum goes…Is the possibility for equality such a farfetched ideology?
“Witch” speaks to the empirical manifestation of worldwide protests against societal polarities.The play basically woke me up from a long quarantined aesthetical sleep and catapulted me into the world of the occult, myth, intrigue and the communal hallowed earnest yearnings of humanity striving for something better than what is immanent; compounded by a sterling cast whose astute banter and chemistry ricocheted like a ghostly yet robust echo around the stage, making for tender magnanimous moments of artistic excellence, exhortation and pure exhilaration! This play confirmed why I love the theater…” I give this bewitching gem a 5 out of 5 stars!
Jacques Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Author, Educator and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His book “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc…
Evoking the spirit of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs de Mal, Alex Johnson’s The Flowers of Doom whips together imagery from various sources to craft its near-apocalyptic nightmare and warning visions.
References from modern cosmology, Greek mythology, Biblical mythology, modern music, and news headlines and social issues blur together in these vivid lines. Johnson pays tribute to artists he respects, including Baudelaire, Ellyn Maybe, Kafka, and Jordan Gallader, by incorporating their imagery or through direct poem dedications. A common thread among those he admires is the ability to look at times of change with a mixture of awe and repulsion.
Poems at the beginning and end of the collection directly address current social ills such as environmental destruction, authoritarianism, racism, war, genocide, and religious hypocrisy. “Cat on a Hot Tin Horror Cast,” a relatively optimistic piece for this collection, urges the world’s people to sidestep their leaders and directly work to oppose mass murder and fight together for peace. “The Fire Anyway” champions unjustly maligned and marginalized people through the resilient character of Lilith while lambasting colonialism and the devastation of people and the planet.
Other poems in the middle fill out the collection with techno-futuristic, fairy tale, gothic, or rock-and-roll aesthetics. Some motifs recur, such as powerful and sensual femininity (the goddess Aurora in “Aurora’s Roar Against Death,” Aurelia in “Darker Matters,” and a nameless and original figure in “I Myself am Strange and Unusual”) and off-kilter musical references (“slay bells” in “Living Fast and Surveilled,” "St. Johnny Ramone” in “Radio Free Calaveras”).
The Flowers of Doom by Alex Johnson is a worthy read for its layered sensibilities as well as its messages.
The collection is forthcoming from Plasma Press in an omnibus edition with Thunderstruck by Alex Johnson and Sandy DeLuca.
Brute Questions of the Hour
The emptiness of age engulfs me now often,
With the fear of immortality of my own image-
And the world moves in the pursuit of happiness,
To embark on a profession including a sage!
A spirit that never grieves nor hopes for anything,
But promulgates enviable brutal and tattered law-
Will blow out the lights of fairness and justice,
Slanted back on an anvil to hammer out a flaw!
World’s daring greed may originate on the cobwebs,
And trace the stars, or haunt the heaven for the power-
But the question remains: Is it the dream of eternity,
And needs to be rejuvenated by a heavenly shower?
In the event of a whirlwind, protest turns into prophecy,
Profaned, plundered, and disenchanted for sure-
And the times’ tragedy will be napping in aches,
While the rift of dusk and dawn will never cure!
Power and greed have made the world a platform of war,
And the humanity bereaves in brooding silence and fear-
While the thoughts about immortality have come to a halt,
Ans the fangs of distortion and terrorism swallow the tear,
How will the future reckon and reflect with the man,
Against irreconciliation and brute questions of the hour-
And the dumb terror will rise and crawl to rule the world,
From the peaks of only artificial intelligence (AI) tower!!
“Milestone”
December 26, 2023Hillol Ray, D.Litt., Ph.D. (Doctor of Humanity), D.Phil. (Theology), Ph.D. (Honoris Causa), D.Phil. (Nigeria), D.Litt. (Morocco), Poet Laureate, Author, Translator, is an Environmental Engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Dallas, Texas. He is listed in Who’s Who in Asian-Americans, Marquis Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, and Who’s Who in the World. His books “Wings of Time” and “Metamorphic Portrait” were recently released.
https://bwesner.wixsite.com/hillolraypoetry https://bwesner.wixsite.com/hillolraypoetry/e https://bwesner.wixsite.com/awards-2016-to-2030
