INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Fahredin Shehu
Elisavietta Ritchie
Uvie Gwewhegbe
Jennifer Burd
George Miller
Robert Penick
Laszlo Slomovits
Richard Gartee
Gale Acuff
Stephen Sleboda
Robert Nisbet
Chris Spitters
Silvia Scheibli
Michael Lee Johnson
Alicia Mathias
Alan Britt
Y. Przhebelskaya
Helen Gyigya
Aneek Chatterjee
Alex Ferde
Running Cub
Joanie Freeman
Shutta Crum
Fred Wolven
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2020
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
------------------------------------------------
AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 55 years all together....
----------------------------------------------
staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
When the train derails: inspectors, first responders, authority-fueled officials, tactical research and restoration team leaders, security-garbed credential-laden buttoned down micro-managed affiliate board associates and coordinators descend upon the wreck where: wallets, packets with unfamiliar markings, chairs, staples, paper clips, cardboard boxes, folders & tacks, laptops, cellphones, coffee cups & other familiar furniture fragments, clothing too and shoes, watches, rings, roses & wine bottles have been strewn about.
There are other items hidden where evidence could easily be mistaken for Trip Tix to Disney World in the spring.
And objects under broken pieces of twisted and dismantled iron recognizable only by the light of day, that remains absent now, and on its own crash course with reality thousands of miles to the west.
Then the bodies begin to reveal themselves: wild eyes, broken noses, collapsed lungs, infrared & underfoot, yet one has this look never seen before, a peaceful, child-like gaze enveloped in the spirit-world, already on the way, leaving troubles & worries in its wake, on muddy and rubble-filled footpaths alongside the murky runoff from the hill above & the storm that moved east overnight.
SHOOT THE MOTHERS: DECLINE OF CIVILIZATION AS HAS BEEN KNOWN OR EARTH’S LAST GASP 7/28/2020
6:30AM
And it’s shoot the mothers
Detain any troublers/face-masked
brothers brawl with Molotov cocktails
Long guns loaded and hang on shoulders
Images quick to raise the tempers
Lost are the fathers in their suburban druthers
Where keepers of peace reflect all those random murders
Graffiti culture above all other
A time for war if there ever was one
Push down gas-masked soldiers with unauthorized marauders
Take to the streets of Amerikakaka burning
The changing times, the mumble-filled anthems
Take to the knees like fashion-wave hypesters
Insurgents of disturbance, reckless & twenty-four hour
Rule of law global pandemic soothsayer republic
Pardon me mister where is the sisterhood black lives matter
Swallowed hole in media belly bloated from reactionary focus
Bloodied night swashbucklers, steam-fed federales
Stomped down on tar and shot down with maimed-like precision
The decision is yours on the couch at the country-club disgust fest
Full & sore & annoyed and deployed like scapegoat syndrome
Rhythm and release tension from central rant free rattle storm
Troopers and tricksters mismatched & plague-smashed like
Cold hearted orbs & metal detector grinder mashers
Home, home on the silent lip range rule reincarnations
No more God’s glory, no more heavens sentries, does this say anything at all
When the moon & it’s hotter, the cold & it’s wetter
Along ammunition highway lie skeletons of here afters
And over and over goes under & turn away cryptic gilded plunder
Stop at the red light & let the one-if-by-land, two-if-by-sea
Go three two one blast off to the sun.
IN THE DARK 8/5/2020 10:26AM for Alamo
The two-wick candle full
of past voices
whispers between it’s flickering light.
Do not despair, the language
you thought was yours
turns out to have it’s beginnings
buried amongst pine cones
under the footpath that stopped
at one sacred burial site.
Water, wind-sun, breathe-earth
is all you’ll need.
Blindness has returned.
It wants to hold your hand,
the one with the scar,
from night
full like a plate
glass window.
The nightmare three score
years behind the memory of
the body in the attic
only sleep would welcome.
The attic
in a house on
a street named
after a tree
with roots in
cold ground where
to be a pebble
only brought
more
sound,
dark, and
like thunder
sways with hesitation,
into a hidden place,
fills
past voices
that whisper to
candlelight.
Stephen Sleboda, Holyoke, Massachusetts