Siddall, Sherry.  Sweet Land (Finishing Line Press, 2021)

     Sweet Land is a Love poem:  the unknown, the personal touch.  Ark charts a walk on the beach, meditation:  the ocean’s tongues lap, and the shells wash up and on as “buttercups,” the whole inner and outer changed for the good. 

     “Before the Frost” is an example for Love and Hope.  Memory of a nursing home, as I interpret: “I never thought it would come to this . . . :”  Poem ends:

“winter is coming

it will be glorious soon, all

the light absorbed, done.”

     And North Carolina’s state bird lives in the poem “Cardinal.”  “I hear fierce birds again, as a brown horse watches me over the fence.”

     Sherry Siddall’s Sweet Land rocks and waves with Love of words and surround.  Bareness crackles and winter’s gone, “no future here, no joy, but still those buds,” always the breaking in the sweet sweat of living day to day among “supple” twigs that become the red bird that settles all.  And then “Elegy,” cardinal dead beneath my window.

     Who has not seen this?  Siddall lets us spread the “redness where there is no color.”

     “Hunting Season” speaks for me, for I feed the small game I hunted for the table when I was a boy, a “hunter.”  Her poem’s about hunting ducks; I substitute doves in my memory in her words, “limp feathered bodies” on a rail. 

     These two lines in Sweet Land sum Hope:  “None of earth’s beauty holds us so fast / as this sky, this immensity flying past.”  

---

Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s poet laureate, 2015-2018. His recent book is Shelby’s Lady:  The Hog Poems.

Night Descends on the Nation’s Capital   

                  January 6, 2021  

Smoke rises from the Nation’s Capital. 

Flashbangs explode used by the rioters. 

Along with bear spray attacking the police.

Killing an officer and harming many others.

A mob of white rioters invaded the capital in daylight.  

In full military gear with zip ties and Trump flags,  

Using the American flag to beat a police officer.   

It was a dark night in our nation’s history  

Like the nights in 68, when D.C. burned to the ground.  

You remember the night that Dr. King was assassinated. 

The nights when the black community took to the streets.  

The nights that the national guards patrolled the streets,

The police Shot tear gas into the crowds of black Americans. 

The jeeps and military vehicles raced down the streets.  

Guns mounted on the jeeps in the nation’s capital

Remember as troops stood on the steps of the capital. 

A night when a little black boy hid in the bathroom.   

Afraid that he would die in the fire of the night.   

It all happened with the looting and vandalizing. 

Our democracy and the foundations of the nation attacked.  

They looked to assassinate the Vice-President,  

And the speaker of the house and others.   

It was a night of total pandemonium as Trump watched.  

A coup perpetrated by Neo-Nazis with Trump’s blessings.  

Unchecked, as they shouted death threats repeatedly.   

The night when a hangman’s noose,  

Was erected on the Capitol grounds.  

White supremacy has gone unbridled,  

For decades terrorizing those of color in America. 

It was that night that America was blackened,  

And the President watched with delight.   

Black Americans have been lynched for decades.  

This night the night our congress was being hunted,  

By the mob in combat gear without their hoods. 

Wanting to lynch as many as they could find.  

  While parading the confederate flag in the halls of the Capital.   

Note: Lawrence O’Donnell spoke of military jeeps with guns mounted in D.C. 68 riots on one of his shows. I remember the jeeps in the riots; however, I have not been able to source it currently the jeeps with mounted guns in D.C. There are photographs of jeeps with mounted guns in riots in Illinois

Source Alan Taylor, The Atlantic April 3, 2018.

1-25-2021  

My American Flag   

It hangs on to the edge of my desk.  

Ripped and torn for years of flying on that old car. 

After the September 11th attack on America.  

This was a moment in which America meant so much to me. 

Confused

A picture of her spoke a thousand words
but when I held her hands and walk away
I feel that the whole world is peaceful and
incredible until we are reached the boneyard
She kissed me and told me “don't be confused”.
I remember the twilight of infinite satisfaction
She would exhale and let me exhale to end my
fatigue, difficulty, and still help me to dream of
strolling back to Baghdad without any barriers,
or even hold a weapon from the era of the war.
She is the motivation, she is the justification
If you ever meet with her, let her know that my
heart is weeping with her scent, and my eyes
are bleeding from the times we touched the broken
star to collect your elegance to the moonlight.
The sun is the same sun without her silky hair
The winter is the exact winter without her soft lips
Today is a delusion day because people are
everywhere and everyone is wondering if her
death is the terror that provoked me to live miserable.

Snow Day

Three pills into my day, three inches of snow,

My driveway beckons, as it has so often before.

At my age this is what passes for duty, this is

One of the tasks I have left, the others left me

Or I left them, so here I am tending to my to-do

List, a list I keep privately in my head to keep

Me on track, so I don’t look out later and ask

Why the snow seems so deep, untouched, just

There, still waiting. This may be the winter of our

Discontent, pandemic deep into ourselves, dead

Piling up, cases more than ankle deep and drifting

Away from us. My day, the snow, my driveway,

My sense of self become trivial, now not even 

A footnote or a smudged comment written in

The margins of today, but here I am again filling

The page, since it too is one of the tasks I have left.

Sunday

It’s Sunday, I can tell, I get up the same time as always

but on Sundays, like this, the neighbors’ cars are in their

driveways, where I left them last night, some must still be

sleeping, the scene out front is quiet enough to imagine

it as a portrait of quiet, a portrait I’m painting in my head

with words and colors, peaceful, almost motionless, calm.

On the seventh day god rested, right, and so the demi-gods

amongst us take their turn at it. Now there is no flooring to

sell, no patients to attend to, no restless class of children to

teach, no more universes to create, so they rest, sleep in,

while I stand here looking out trying to catch what I can of

the tranquility of Sunday, the day of rest that time lends us,

leaves us here to make the best of it, like this.

Blind

What? A walk, of course

It fits the day, snowless cold

And the dog is along

He’s blind now

So we follow his nose

Or his memory

He knows the way

Better than we do

We’ve put the holidays

Where they belong

Behind us

Memories now, almost sightless

We know our way away

From now – into what?

A walk, covid slow, still a walk

Into a future we guess at

You say summer, maybe spring

Our walk goes on and on

Years end like this

Not with a bang but a whimper

The blind walking into

Whatever futures hold

For them.

---

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Black Coffee Review, New Feathers Anthology, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, and Highland Park Poetry.

Title: The Blueprint
Adapted from a book by Chimezie Ihekuna (Mr. Ben)
Screenwriter: Robert Sacchi

Genre: Fantasy

For reviews, production consideration and other publicity, please contact us through the email addresses below.

mrbenisreal@gmail.com

rsacchi@rsacchi.20m.com

Synopsis/Details: 

The war among the extra-terrestrials at the Peak of Eternal Abode over the ownership and rulership of its domain saw the defeat of Illumination and his cohorts. He wanted to be on the same level as his Maker, The Source.

Illumination was able to gain support from some of the multi-dimensional members, including some of The Elements: Wind, Water, and Fire, and persuade them to rebel against their Maker.

However, what Illumination thought was the only way to strip The Source of his kingly authority turned out to be futility. His Maker, through the instrumentality of the rest of his created subjects as led by his guard, together with his Profound League of Justice Keepers, orchestrated an eventual Mark of Defeat. This led to a wide Gap of Banishment and a consequential Seal of Demotion into the Neutrality for Illumination, his followers, and the elements that followed them, far below the threshold of his habitation.

THE  DAY  DEMOCRACY  DIED
 
We will never give up!”   
#45  fires  up  the mob at  his  Save America Rally.   
The election was stolen from us…We will never concede.”
He stokes fear.  “If you don’t fight like hell,
you’re not going to have a country any more.”

This coup was planned and advertised on social media.
#45  tweeted, “Big protest in D.C.  Be there, will be wild!”
They came from all directions, ready to hit the streets.
Armed Proud Boys.  Q-Anon T-shirts.  MAGA diehards.
Gullible pawns and street thugs, shoulder to shoulder,
eager for trial by combat.   Eager for revolution.
                       
“Stop the steal!”  thunders  #45.  “Keep up the fight!”
“Take back the country.”  The mob eats up the lies,
and the lies feed their appetite for vengeance,
accelerate their frenzy to smash,  crush,  extinguish,
vanquish those evildoers gathered inside,
gathered to count the votes of state Electors:
to declare Biden president-elect,  306 to 232.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching
to the Capitol building,”  says #45, egging them on.
“I will be with you.”   (He got in his limo and left.)
As rioters near the Capitol,  the dam breaks.
 
An American flag is ripped off its pole
and replaced with a TRUMP flag.
Someone erects a gallows.  White fists pump the air
Protestors pepper-spray police,  bash them with poles.

Vandals batter down the doors of the Capitol Building,
leaving a trail of wreckage:  glass everywhere,
cracked plaster,  overturned desks,  trashed offices.
Security is overwhelmed.  Emergency lockdown!
Congressmen and women flee,  hide under furniture.
The looting begins.  Out go lamps,  chairs,  laptops.
A rioter in body paint and horns carries off a podium.

Clouds of tear gas fill the Rotunda.
In the melee, one woman is shot, dead.
A young cop is bludgeoned to death.
 
So—on January 6, 2021,  over 150 years after the Civil War,
Confederate flags wave in Senate chambers for the first time.
This brand marks a new brother-against-brother conflict:
                        a war of  law  vs.  power,
                        a war of  service  vs.  greed,
                        a war of  democracy  vs.  dictatorship.

From the White House,   #45 Twitters:  “We love you. 
You’re very special… Remember this day forever.”
World leaders watch the farewell riot, appalled.
 
#45 watches, too.  Watches his TV screen, smiling.
He has groomed his militia carefully with lies and false hope.
He lit the fuse and watched it explode.
Sent a message to henchmen, like Pence, about loyalty--  or else.

When the dust settles, 6 Senators and 121 Representatives
still vote to accept his conspiracy line,  call the election “rigged.”

Tomorrow, some outrage and finger pointing.   So what?  
No one can touch him.   
He won.                                                                                  
                       
 
                       

GOING  VIRAL
 
A virus isn’t interested
in storming the perimeter;
a virus attacks the control tower,
the nucleus of DNA patterns,
seat of future growth.
A virus seizes the reins,
takes command,
changes direction,
riding roughshod over objections.
 
We’ve seen it happen.
In nursing homes.
In families.
In the nation's control tower:
the White House.
 
How did a failed realtor and TV star
breeze through the winnowing process
and land smack-dab in the oval office?
Why do the Come-to-Jesus people
think he’s the new Messiah?
Is it possible that his racism
is an attraction?
His misogyny?  His lying?
Or are these new directions
enabled by frightened Republicans
suffering through an abusive relationship?
 
Masks can’t ward off this virus.
Too many supporters have masks over their eyes,
refusing to see.
Hand-washing is irrelevant.
After the insurrection at the Capitol,
too many Congressmen
are doing the Pontius Pilate hand-washing in public
while backing presidential conspiracies
when it comes to a vote.
 
 
                       
                        This virus, like all viruses,
                        can be blunted by stronger
                        immune systems.
                        Perhaps this brush with demagoguery
                        will make us stronger.
                        But, like all viruses, it can mutate.
                        When all Hell breaks loose,
                        and it won’t be long--
                        we shouldn’t be surprised.