December 9, 2023
Now is the Winter of Our Discount Tents
By Jeremy Jusek
It is 2020. Walmart sells Ozark Trail 3-Person Outdoor
Camping Dome Tents for twenty-four ninety-four
which is cheaper than the 1-Person Backpacker.
A sweet suite for the homeless. Essential heroes
sell these with a smile, hacking into their shirt
sleeves while running the ringer and bagging
full-time homes for no-time workers.
Lake-effect wind pierces the petty in unsettled grudges,
long-time memories of laughing around the kitchen
card table as a turkey bathes in the broiler.
Those days are done.
As nylon hearths and zippered walls appear in underpasses,
the essential hero clerks who helped handle the homeless
use food stamps and part of their petty paychecks
to reward the monocratic mid-merging monopolies
that employ them—pure applause and empty words
is all that they’ll reap, for these heroes aren’t allowed to sow.
Empty words, like the empty snow falling on empty hearts
as empty vessels open their empty tents and apartments,
illuminated by this worthless, empty poem that does nothing
For anyone.
Jeremy Jusek is the poet laureate of Parma, Ohio. He has authored three books: We Grow Tomatoes in Tiny Towns, The Less Traveled Street, and The Details Will Be Gone Soon. He hosts the Ohio Poetry Association’s podcast Poetry Spotlight and the West Side Poetry Workshop, and he founded the Flamingo Writers’ Guild. To learn more about Jeremy, visit jeremyjusek.com.
November 17, 2023
Don’t you get it?
By Robert Punton
When I hear All Lives Matter
I want to scream in frustration
Cry out in despair, Don’t you get it?
Whether through ignorance or arrogance it matters not
Surely you realise we live in an unjust world
When we shout out Black Lives Matter
We recognise Black people are powerless today
When we shout out Disabled Lives Matter
We recognise Disabled people are powerless today
When we shout out Women’s Lives Matter
We recognise Women are powerless today
When we shout out Gay Lives Matter
We recognise Gay people are powerless today
When we shout out Elderly Lives Matter
We recognise Elderly people are powerless today
I could go on, but I am sure you get my point
If you say All Lives Matter, you might
As well say No Lives Matter
For saying All Lives Matter, we are saying
we agree with the status quo
I don’t think that is the way we want to go
Robert Punton is a lifelong Socialist and social campaigner. His role as a disabled rights activist for over 35 years has taken him onto the streets and into the roads all over the United Kingdom. He has stormed parliament and stood for parliament. He has chained himself to the White House alongside his American comrades in ADAPT, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. Since forming Poets Against Racism in the UK with Manjit Sahota, Robert has worked toward using words and verse to bring social justice from the realms of dreams into the real world.
Editors’ Note: Robert Punton read “Don’t you get it?” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2023. See the event recording here. Additionally, you can see singer and poetic performer Catherine Beroard-Gabbidon’s striking reading of Robert’s poem on his YouTube channel here.
October 18, 2023
We Resist
By Dee Allen.
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Being surrounded by cars
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Aggressors dressed the same
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
The sight of their guns
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Harassment @ 1st sight
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Being punked into surrendering
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
The bark of their guns
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Falling dead on concrete
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Being driven to the morgue
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Being planted in the boneyard
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Watching families grieve
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Watching many tears fall
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Any more community deaths
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Any more night rides on Blacks
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Because it serves us to preserve us
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Because our lives count, any amount
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
On a special day
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Every October 22nd
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Beyond this 1 day
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
The criminal profile
Wear black
Fight back
We resist
Brutality from the police—
W: 10.22.22
Dee Allen. is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. He has been active in creative writing and spoken word since the early 1990s. Dee is the author of seven books: Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press; Elohi Unitsi (pronounced: Ell-oh-ee Oo-nee-chee) from Conviction 2 Change Publishing; Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate from Vagabond Books; and Plans from Nomadic Press. He also has 68 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far.
Editors’ Note: Dee Allen. read “We Resist” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2023. See the event recording here. The poem is a reference to the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation held each year on October 22.
September 21, 2023
Dollar General
By Jeremy Jusek
Snow sweeps in as he enters the door
Leaving nobody warmer for wear.
Jake is recognized by all seven people
in his six-inch pumps, red waist-length
wig, and glitter wings so wide
they gently brushed the shelved
potato chips and beef jerky.
On his way out, Jake makes sure
to nod courteously into the unbroken silence.
Not a one among the seven others
consider this encounter artistic.
Before leaving the parking lot
Jake cries softer than the snow falls.
Jeremy Jusek is the poet laureate of Parma, Ohio. He has authored three books: We Grow Tomatoes in Tiny Towns, The Less Traveled Street, and The Details Will Be Gone Soon. He hosts the Ohio Poetry Association’s podcast Poetry Spotlight and the West Side Poetry Workshop, and he founded the Flamingo Writers’ Guild. To learn more about Jeremy, visit jeremyjusek.com.
August 28, 2023
PARH USA EKPHRASTIC CONTEST WINNER!
Anxiety by Kaitlyn Holmes
framed
By Ruchi Chopra
she always tried to cover volcanoes in her eyes
before leaving the house, workplace, supermart,
salon, burger place, fitness center, nail spa, airport
and her place of worship.
her olive skin, structured jawline, framed silhouette,
curls flattened & loaded with gel, a photo pendant
in her purse, a printed cotton scarf: an heirloom
20.8 × 20.8 inches: not Hermès gathered with a knot
beneath her scarlet sky.
horizontal, vertical, nondescript or unmatted,
her framed silhouette parceled into placeholders
her singular skin cradling the spine of her new home.
textured noise buried in her cupboard next to the
tanned suitcase and rabab
she didn’t remember when the last time was she opened
the suitcase or played the rabab.
that day: she felt her warmth huddled in a Moonj basket
like an alum she sticks to flesh, bones, dust, blood & womb
:
:
steamrolled between September archives.
Note: A rabab is a lute-like musical instrument. A Moonj basket is a handwoven basket made of wild grass that grows in the wastelands of India.
Ruchi Chopra is a former journalist, part-time teacher, and content creator. Her writings draw on her experiences as a South Asian with ancestry rooted in India’s pre-Partition era. She grew up in India and now lives in Ohio with her family. Ruchi is passionate about poetry and storytelling as a medium for creating awareness of sociocultural, human rights, gender, and environmental issues. Her work explores longing, hope, resistance, diaspora, and exile themes and draws inspiration from the migrant’s roots. Her poetry is a lived experience from oral storytelling, lineages, photographs, memories, traditions, and community and family longing through the lens of a South Asian woman of color.
Kaitlyn Holmes was a featured poet during our inaugural In This Together event, which occurred on the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, May 25, 2021. Since then, Kaitlyn has focused her talents on the visual arts, using digital media to create a world in which men, women, and children of color experience beauty, power, and agency on their terms. “I try to create diverse characters and fantasy characters that get people to talk about the pieces,” Kaitlyn says. For our first PARH USA ekphrastic poetry contest, Kaitlyn created an image meant to inspire poets writing on social justice themes.
August 1, 2023
Be It Resolved
By Patricia Thrushart
For poets writing about justice
As it can be said that writing can be revolt
or revolve around a revolution of ideation
or evolve to a higher purpose
proposed to advance ideas of greatness
or involve the best of human feeling,
solve sweeping problems of existence,
dissolve distance or division in a kitchen
or a mind or even across a country,
absolve the worst of us, excuse us,
even abuse us, scar us with memory
we’d rather forget, mar the least of us,
evolve stories of causes lost, but not done—
be it resolved, therefore, that resolve
is not the answer. That resolve is just
the start. That the heart must sing
the song of what we can be, drawn by
the steadfast march of beauty we
see in the eyes of those we once found
appalling, if only we look. We resolve
to write the new song of a nation, involved
in the healing of a fractured history we
share whether we want to or not,
writing the new anthem of our lives.
Patricia Thrushart writes poetry and historical nonfiction. Her latest book of poems is Inspired By Their Voices: Poems from Underground Railroad Testimonies (Mammoth Books). Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Tiny Seed, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Feminine Collective, Curating Alexandria, High Shelf Press, Muddy River, and Deep Wild. In 2021 her work was chosen for an anthology of Ohio Appalachian voices—I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing—and the Women of Appalachia Speaks series. Patricia edits the blog North/South Appalachia and its yearly anthology and is a cofounder of Poets Against Racism & Hate USA. The decision to restrict access to Amanda Gorman’s book The Hill We Climb in a Florida school incited Patricia’s writing of this poem.
July 10, 2023
Happy Ending
By Maureen P. Medina
Happy ending—
Is that what you came for
when you sought my people out
because you had a bad day?
Fetishizing my existence and
eliminating me, simply because
you couldn’t control yourself?
Your white supremacy could not
be contained—Shots fired!
Hatred in every bullet
yet we’ve died many times before
When you came to our countries
uninvited, our beds unsolicited
our cultures that you appropriated
and then sold to us as a sign that
you were here—Children borne
from a lack of protection.
Colonization
is it a justification or an ultimatum?
You forced us into your melting pot
watching all the colors become one
Dividing us with a gradient
White is right, but yellow is the
next best thing—
Stand back, Tiger mom.
She vilifies blackness as though
it’s dirty, ugly. But black lives matter
and they are beautiful. We are beautiful.
And no, brown is not lesser than
Brown is not illegal, brown is not lazy.
We are brown, too, and we work hard.
We provide for our own and we—
Stop!
Tiger mom won’t have any of it.
We are not them, she says.
We earned our way.
Good at math. Straight A’s. Straight hair.
Typecast, though we are black.
And we are brown. And we are indigenous.
We are every single color, texture
and blessing—
We are not a monolith, and
we are storytellers if we believe
the myth of the model minority.
Hey, how do Asians name their kids?
Just drop a bunch of silverware
down the stairs and
listen to the sounds they make:
Ching. Chong. Chink. Gook.
We are the punchline but
we respond with obedience
Loyal to the monster that mocks
chinky eyes and seeks the crease
in our eyelids without ever questioning
how a colorful society can brim with
oppression & individual suppression
or how a colorblind society overlooks
what it won’t put a name to:
Racism. Xenophobia.
How can we call them strangers when
we have all met before?
Hate crimes, all different iterations
of the same sentiment that
we are other, we are less than
we are stained by color
Distorted by your concentration camps
cheap labor, and conditioning
You pit us against each other
and run away without incident.
You loathe all things “foreign” and
call us essential while you try to
erase us—
We adjust and adjust
our assimilation irrelevant
to your contempt for all things
Made in China.
The whole world is watching
they know what you have done
they see who you are
they know that you
You have thrived from
our stolen freedom
you are not a disease
You are not the exception
You are not a mental health issue
You are not a disability
You are not a broken childhood
And you are not a bad day.
You are our friend
lover, spouse, neighbor
sister, brother, nurse, doctor
lawyer, judge, and jury
You are the problem
You are violence perpetuated
You are the stigma and you
You—misogynist, white supremacist
colonizer, oppressor, racist, terrorist.
YOU—You were made in America.
Maureen P. Medina, a Filipina American, is the author of My Fears Out Loud and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She leads writing workshops, such as a virtual workshop she hosts monthly for Speak the Word, with the goal of healing, strengthening the mind-body connection, and normalizing fear. Maureen advocates for human and nonhuman animals, asserts that all oppression is connected, and—in alignment with the idea that none of us are free unless all of us are free (Fannie Lou Hamer)—hopes to inspire the pursuit of collective liberation with her writing.
Editors’ Note: Maureen P. Medina read “Happy Ending” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2023. See the event recording here.
June 19, 2023
1980 Juneteenth Rising
By Laura Grevel
I’m walking down this hot street.
I’m holding a baby walking down this hot street.
I don’t know why I’m doing this yet,
I’m thinking I’m just doing my job,
I’m a park leader, a skinny white girl,
on this second ever Juneteenth Parade in Austin, Texas,
celebrating the day the slaves heard they were free.
I mean I know why we’re doing it—
I work at a park, two parks,
one all the kids are Black,
one is mixed race.
But it hasn’t really dawned that the heat of this march
is not just the sweat of my arms, the sweat of this child,
who is Black,
not just our sweat sliding over each other,
intermingling and dropping, sizzling on the brutal street,
as the drums come solemn behind us.
It hasn’t even dawned that the need of this child
is not just that this child’s mother is at work,
not just that this child is a defenceless infant,
as the drums come solemn,
as the drums come solemn, come solemn.
We’re marching down this hot street,
a gaggle of kids between three park leaders
all squinting into the sun,
almost nobody watching from the side-lines
’cause this ain’t Congress Avenue.
This street is a backside to ugliness
between the Villa Capri Motel parking lot
and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library parking lot.
A street radiating heat, cooking us like stew.
But we march on, this baby and I.
We made it, sister, and you never complained.
At nine months you knew,
it’s taken me fifty-nine years.
Today, I’m marching down this hot street,
I’m marching down this hot street with you.
Laura Grevel is an immigrant, a performance poet, a fiction writer, and a blogger. She has performed her poetry in Texas and Europe and is a proud member of DIY Poets and Poets Against Racism in Nottingham, United Kingdom. She also participated in Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2021 and 2022. Laura’s poetry is eclectic and includes works tackling the immigrant experience, narratives, and character sketches. Her written work has been published in podcasts, online zines, and anthologies. Her poetry performances and readings can be heard on international open mic poetry Zooms and her YouTube channel.
Editors’ Note: Laura Grevel read “1980 Juneteenth Rising” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2022. See the event recording here.
May 23, 2023
I Am Not Ready to Die
By John Burroughs
after reading the Cleveland.com headline “President Donald Trump, Justice Department say
Cleveland will see surge of federal agents to combat crime” in the wake of peaceful protests
following the murders of George Floyd and others by police.
I am not ready to go gently
into Dylan’s “good” night
while wannabe Blackwater
thugs crush kinfolk for cash in Portland
and maybe soon Cleveland.
I am not ready to die
before there is justice
for Sandra Bland
and Breonna Taylor.
I am not ready to let go
while white would-be masters
and their whelps
so wary of wearing masks
seem rapt with delight
at the thought of regurgitating
yesterday’s noose in their fight
against Black lives mattering.
Oh the splattering!
I am not ready to rest on my laurels
worthless as they may be
while there is work to do
and while few of the words
the politicians say are true
are true.
Believe me.
I am not ready to watch
my loved ones be ground
down into the Cleveland blacktop
by blackguards and blackshirts
issued forth from Washington
by the liar, cheat and
black heart in chief
who believes the police force
that killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice
the same Cleveland police force
that shot 137 bullets into unarmed
Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams
might need a little extra firepower
to carry out their black work.
John Burroughs of Cleveland is the 2022–2023 U.S. Beat Poet Laureate. He is the author of The Wrest of the Worthwhile (2023, Far Queue Press), Rattle & Numb: Selected & New Poems, 1992–2019 (2019, Venetian Spider Press), and almost twenty poetry chapbooks. “I Am Not Ready to Die” is from his book The Wrest of the Worthwhile. Since 2008, John has served as the founding editor and publisher for Crisis Chronicles Press. For more information, visit https://linktr.ee/johnburroughs.
Editors’ Note: John Burroughs read “I Am Not Ready to Die” during a PARH USA poetry reading at Common Goods Studio in Youngstown, Ohio. See the event recording on our YouTube channel, here.
May 2, 2023
Suburban Trajectory
By Rikki Santer
Rikki Santer’s poetry has received many honors including several Pushcart, Ohioana, and Ohio Poet book award nominations. As well, Santer has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This poem is from her eleventh poetry collection, Stopover, which is in conversation with the original Twilight Zone series. She is also a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council, a vice president of the Ohio Poetry Association, and a member of the poetry troupe Concrete Wink. You may contact her through her website: rikkisanter.com.
April 4, 2023
Unwavering
By Sandra Rivers-Gill
To enter the light
is to become well-lit
after long dark nights
of grit and danger
and death and noose.
Hit by a blaze of words
you stood in the pit of fear
and hoses barking blue.
But arms fastened together
rocked steady in the spit of rain.
To overcome adversity
is to sit at a table of decisions
un-banning a bus of seats
that ride in a flashback of flames
fanned by intolerance.
The heartbeat of your rhythm
is a sound singing for equality
despite the dissonance of lyrics
sewn into a country’s fabric
that knits out of key.
To be a stone of hope
is to walk a journey of freedom
against insurmountable mountains
that divide our lips
in spigots of colored water.
A clapboard carriage
bears the weight of a dream.
It pulls a procession of unswerving people
led by beasts of burden
knowing trouble don’t last always.
A native of Toledo, Ohio, Sandra Rivers-Gill is a writer, performer, and playwright. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies, including Jerry Jazz Musician, ONE ART, Common Threads, Poetry X Hunger, Passager Books, Death Never Dies, and Kissing Dynamite. Of this poem, Sandra says it “aspires to capture the essence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s work and legacy.” Find her at www.sandrariversgill.com.
March 7, 2023
That Bridge
By Girard Tournesol
He lay beaten on that bridge Freedom
an inch away from his life This is the bloody
reality of turning the other cheek over and
over again as taught on Sundays where lessons
on meekness are served with tongues of flowing
robes clapping hands and a truth that your best
friend could hand you over to the empire for
a few bucks because he thinks you’re dumb for
telling folks they are more than the empire says
they are More than they themselves can yet
believe More than that bridge
Girard Tournesol has written almost daily for 45 years and published a book series, Psalms of Fern, in two volumes: Little Whittlings of Soul and Time Travelers. His poetry has appeared in regional and national literary magazines, including The Watershed Journal, The Bridge Literary Arts Journal, Clarion University’s Tobeco Literary Journal, RUNE, Adelaide Literary Journal, Pennsylvania Poetry Society’s PENNESSENCE, Poet’s Choice Awards, and Tiny Seed. Girard’s work has also been published online in Dark Horse Appalachia, The Indiana Gazette, and North/South Appalachia. His next project is a fusion of poetry, memoir, and fiction inspired by growing up in a Northern Appalachia coal town.
February 6, 2023
Black Skies/Blue Thoughts
By Jim Jordan
Possibly wrongly accused
cop killers Mumia and Leonard
rot in prison after decades.
Cops who kill unarmed minorities
still patrol and accumulate pensions.
You’re entitled to a lawyer,
but money buys freedom.
Front page blaring accusation
eighth-page innocent blurb.
Soldiers are heroes one minute,
homeless veterans the next.
The huge taxpayer-funded,
billionaire football stadium owners
laugh at those who footed the bill.
Wall Street earnings rise or fall
over the slightest rumors.
It illustrates how fragile
the Capitalist system is.
The nightly sound of gunfire
has replaced crickets and frogs.
Political candidates give us
fast talk and promises.
When the shit hits the fan,
when war is at hand,
when racism is fanned,
when mass shootings fill the land,
when books and history are banned,
we find politician man
has no game plan
and offers up
thoughts and prayers.
Thoughts and prayers will not
stop a war, stop a bullet, stop racism,
stop an overdose, stop a bankruptcy
from medical bills, stop homelessness,
pay the rent or feed a family.
Yet, pray we do.
We pray we don’t get laid off
or lose our jobs.
Jobs that don’t even keep up with inflation.
We pray that our children will be safe
and have better lives than we do.
Only the rich have time to live,
as the rest of us are too busy praying.
Complacency has replaced voting.
And the electoral college
has replaced the majority vote.
Many say Agent Orange’s stay
in the White House
poisoned our lives with hate.
But political hate was apparent when
JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcom X
were stopped in their tracks.
Hate for political opponents
gave Nixon an enemies list.
Hate for working people
showed when Reagan busted unions.
His hate for children was apparent
when he declared ketchup a vegetable.
Profits before people was realized
when the Supreme Court ruled
that corporations are people.
We have lots of humans but no humanity.
Lots of Christians but no Christianity.
The biggest thieves don’t use a gun
and there ain’t no referees.
It’s always starkest
before the yawn.
Wham bam, time to wake up man
and upset the establishment apple cart.
I’d like to at least see the seeds
of a better world in my lifetime.
Jim Jordan is a former steelworker who went on to work with children with autism and behavioral challenges. He is now retired and lives with his wife in Vienna, Ohio. He has written the blog elecpencil@wordpress.com since 2008.
January 6, 2023
Border Patrol
By Susann Moeller
Hey Amigo! No Tacos here!
Stay on your side of the wall
till you pay your debt
to us for building it
to protect us from your scourge,
for hunting you down on this side
through desert cacti and thorns.
Serfs that you are with crosses
dangling around your necks.
We have dealt with the likes of you
before—no more—reruns, Amigo!
You will not be saved.
We shall remove your lot,
your rabid dogs,
your hungry children,
beggars, illegals
and criminals all.
Keep your tacos,
cervezas, and salsa.
Stay the hell where
you are—behind
and do not cross this line, Amigo!
Dr. Susann Moeller is an award-winning bilingual poet, writer, and editor of two eco-poetry anthologies, Open Earth I and Open Earth II. She founded the salon EPOC (Eco-Poetry of Ohio Collective) and EOW (Eat Our Words), a poetry performance group focusing on food access. As vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association, she celebrates the inseparable nature of art and the environment to demonstrate that poetry enriches every type of experience and vice versa. Occasionally, she drifts across the Atlantic to places where she grew up. She writes in the “plotting shed” of her garden-turned-urban-wildlife-sanctuary, dances in random places, and believes all animals are better people.