PETITION
Taj Mahal surrounded,
cameras and lights.
Throngs screaming,
Give us our rights!

Mindless chanting
for change, today,
for respect and freedom
long since given away.

Oh, Holy Government!
Only you can save.
Care for us
from cradle to grave.

Please do for us
what we can’t.
Security and equality
only you can grant.

Solve our problems
that we create anew,
when we give up
our power to you.

In eternal delusion
we forever abide.

—Greg Mamishian

Practical Love Poem #46

On a land line from the UK
Joshua enquires, does he have one
Eye? Or a television for a face?
What color hat? Is he round like
Humpty-Dumpty, or does his
head come to a point in the back?
Is it the one with the webbed skull
Face or the orange ghost with a star
On his chest? Does he have a horn?
Are his arms in fists? Or does he
Look like he is wiping his mouth?
The special ones have dents
In the bottom, he adds. Are there
swords across his stomach?
Does he have pointy ears like a pig
or square ears like a box? Does he
have feet? I think it’s Powi or it
could be Welu. In frustration, he shouts,
What number’s on the back? Is
It seven? If it is orange, it might be
Mindok or Moor he says carefully
As if talking to a smaller child.
I have three Horos he exclaims proudly,
But only one Terin. I’m looking for a Beli
And a Dosk. Thomas Charles lost
Okimo in the backyard. What color
was the packet? Was it gold or red?
He is furtherly frustrated when I have to
explain my eyes are too old to see
The microchip in the circle on the back
of each toy figure. Josh says, continuing
On from our dialogue of a few minutes
Ago, I have one of those you mentioned
Before, in turquoise but it’s a twin.
I’ll send you the double Gogo in purple.
It’s a sort of pink purple with two white eyes,
one of them is larger than the other
but they are connected by a dark line
under the nose, like a mask. He’s a villain,
Josh proclaims, A very bad man but,
With special powers, he says, I think
You’ll like him a lot.

—Millicent Borges-Accardi

Every Day’s A Season

There’s a strong clean feeling of a successful day turning the earth and turning with it.
Planting the seeds to raise our daily crop.
Watching over seedlings and harvest.
The better-off afterwards of it all.
The now-to-sleep of having given it your best to wake and seed the crop of light given by god to do his work and yours by that same light.
It’s all we can do.
All we know to do since there’s no instruction sheet—
Or rather there’s too many instructions of every kind from every source for what to do and what to believe.
But what do we believe?
And what do we do?
What comes to us directly, unprompted by other forces?
What is our Nature?
We wake. We eat. We forage. We sleep. We Love. Laugh. Cry.
We sleep and we wake to another day, another chance to earn and spend the heart’s currency of being alive.
To buy freedom for ourselves and the ones we love.
To sleep and start over the next day.
We do what we can.
Bat the balls as they come across the plate.
Answer the calls.
Put ourselves out there.
Calm our nerves and strengthen our resolves.
As a child of nature, every day’s a season.
Every hour a story.
Every minute a flight.
Every second a second chance.
No matter the day, it’s gone with sleep and the dance of the divine.
We always rise to bigger things.
Is there a better game than life
To begin and end, wind playing us like a song?
We give our best.
At night, we rest.
To begin again, anew.

—Alan J. Adler

Modern Day Testimonial

Susan Clark, my creative healer, my fierce nurse.
Persevering as fire, patient as a sacrificing mother.
When I was broken, you carried the vision of my recovery.
And insisted on three mile walks along the bluffs.

You taught me the meaning of advocate.
Squaring your shoulders in turquoise scrubs,
Using medical-speak, rendering primary doctors pale 
And ready to grant authorizations.

You combed out my rat sookens* hair.
And kicked our home into a higher gear.
I will be forever enriched by your stories, your wit,
And the queen sized breakfasts!

Though I squawked and howled, and clawed
At the air, your hands remained calm.
Topanga Animal Rescue is God’s work, and I am
The luckiest animal you’ve ever saved.

—Megan Rice 2019



Illustrations by David ANSON Russo