INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Bilall Maliqi
Duane Locke
Eddie Awusi
Silvia Scheibli
Amit Parmessur
Lyn Lifshin
Juan Hongi
Shutta Crum
Peycho Kanev
Fahredin Shehu
Lana Bella
Laszlo Slomovits
Abdulrahman M Abu- yaman
Elisavietta Ritchie
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Keith Moul
Aneek Chatterjee
Tom Evans
Robert Nisbet
Paul B. Roth
Alex Ferde
Alan Britt
Ali Znaidi
Running Cub
John Grey
Jennifer Burd
Fred Wolven
Helen Gyigya
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2018
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 51 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
A CORNUCOPIA
Hungry people enter the café, now disappointed to hear
there will be a thirty minute wait to sit, then preparations
delayed by placement at end of the queue. If trained and
patient, some accept the situation; other faces turn stony,
implacable, even angry at this small obstruction in life.
After all, a vacation from daily stress to substitute hunger
is no vacation. As the plain’s oasis, the café draws crowds
from around, locals arrive early as greased parts of custom,
tourists resist pause until famished and exhausted, some
cart cool sandwiches, meet back outside with disappointment;
travel instinct envisions the breadbasket as a cornucopia.
FORCED ISSUE
Generations surround us in dust, land
ascends, ever empowering our feelings;
we take lowly red squirrels, lichen cliffs,
and somber shadows on snowdrifts of land:
we desire stars to evolve to star ownership.
Placer gold winks but forces no gold rush.
Our issue must seize a crumb of chance.
Will ordinary men rise to be extraordinary?
Will harshness make firm their future hold?
Might we exorcise our enemies’ hateful spells?
Lawful trial: 38 warriors hang in a long row;
scaffolds set geometric stays to primitive wills
ignited by hunger, robbed by protectors, fated
to abandon lands they had no power to keep,
our seed claimed its destiny; since manifest.
Our hair shirts to assuage such memories:
history written regularly alters in its telling,
teeters on meanings that can steal rights.
Excise 1862 from memory, memory crumbles.
But Federal hands finely cemented our futures.
The families’ mutual trust, mutual reparations:
excise 1862 from history, 38 warriors hanged
at once by the Federal Government’s hand.
Hunting and fishing and helping with planting or
harvesting. We spoke honestly of our differences
and preferences, our highest ideals and beliefs.
Sure, no one acquires and keeps their land
without privileged effort in their quivers.
Buckets filled with more than blood drops
and stains of that type persist forever wet,
But we avoided most conflict for the best.
NO OFFENSE
The totem conveys it all:
an aphorism applies here:
a hawk eats the sparrow whole.
Warriors who lose reason for the chief's
objectives must keep wandering
through Nebraska and Wisconsin.
Weakness gives no offense, but
embarks early for eternity.
Keith Moul, Port Angeles, Washington