POSTS

Thank You For Thinking It

My father swore by his second wife’s liver,
cut thin, fried with onions,
seasoned he-didn’t-know-how,
but it just about melted in your mouth, he said.
I slouched silent in the front seat.
My brother made no sound in the back.
Liver was, would always be,
the inch thick slab of blood red meat
our stepfather forced us once to eat with him

and here,

in the span of the breath you are half holding,
the white space of this stanza break
where you predict what comes next,
the possible violence
George did to us
when we tried to refuse
what he put on our plates
is almost as palpable to you
as this pen in my hand is to me,

but the truth is
I have no memory of that meal,
except that the cow’s organ
made me gag.

As a poet and essayist, Richard Jeffrey Newman’s work explores the impact of feminism on his life as a man. As a co-translator of classical Persian poetry, he writes about the impact of that cannon on our contemporary lives. His most recent books are For My Son, A Kind of Prayer (Ghostbird Press 2016) and the translation The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press 2011). He is also the author of The Silence of Men (Cavankerry Press 2006) and Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan and Selections from Saadi’s Bustan (Global Scholarly Publications, 2004 & 2006). A new book of poems, Words for What Those Men Have Done, is forthcoming later this year from Guernica Editions. Newman is on the executive board of Newtown Literary, a Queens, NY-based literary non-profit and curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Salon.com, The American Voice, Another Chicago Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Diode, New Verse News, Unlikely Stories, Cipher, Ekleksographia, and Dirty Goat. He is Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY, where he also serves as secretary of his faculty union, The Nassau Community College Federation of Teachers (NCCFT). His website is richardjnewman.com.

The Best Husband

Malik was married when he was 13 to a woman in her 30’s. Since men aren’t allowed to choose their own wives, Malik’s mother found her through distant family members. You could say Malik and Ayesha were cousins, but that would be a stretch. 

Malik was confused at the announcement that he would be married to someone he had only met once, especially since he had read that The Prophet had said people had the choice to turn down a potential spouse if they didn’t want to marry them. Malik asked his mother about this and she said “I know what is best for you sweet-cheeks, especially when it comes to marriage.” End of discussion. 

On his wedding day, Malik was dressed in lovely white clothing, his hair was done, and his father applied kohl to his large brown eyes. The Imam was dressed in a flowing green, heavily embroidered, loose gown with a gold hijab and she conducted the marriage ceremony in the front of the mosque with all the women while Malik and his friends waited in the men’s area behind a screen in the basement of the mosque. 

Malik and his friends had long since given up on talking to their mothers about being separated into a different area of the mosque from the women. Their mothers all agreed that all they ever did was gossip and watch the younger children, they didn’t even really need to go there to pray so why give up valuable space in the main room? The fact that men during the time of The Prophet had been allowed in the same room as the women worshippers and also had their concerns answered by The Prophet directly seemed not to matter. Times had changed since those legendary Camelot-like days. Besides, their mothers told them that real men preferred to sit in another area of the mosque away from the lustful eyes of the women.

Malik’s bride Ayesha wore a gorgeous, expensive navy blue traditional gown with white hijab. Her gold bangles and rings sparkled and shone. She looked every bit the powerful yet pious woman that she was. The Imam asked what mahr she was giving Malik. She giggled and said she had purchased a new bedroom suite and set of cookware for her husband. A man’s place is in the home and Malik would be expected to keep the house clean and perform his husbandly duties in the bedroom when requested by his wife. If Ayesha was ever unsatisfied with Malik for any reason whatsoever, she could divorce him instantly merely by uttering “Talaq, Talaq, Talaq!”, “I divorce you” three times. 

Malik was not told that he could stipulate a request for divorce in his marriage contract, it was the law in the country in which they lived, but no matter – even though it was legal, not many Imams would grant a divorce to a man even if there was a serious problem. The men would be told to have patience (even with various degrees of domestic abuse) as this was a test from God and those with great patience would go to heaven.

Next, the Imam went down the 2 flights of stairs to the men’s basement area to have Malik sign the wedding contract. It was a simple form and specified that Malik could keep the mahr if Ayesha divorced him. He signed the paper in his curly middle-school writing, completing it with a heart dotting the “i” in his name, while his friends did their best to hold in their emotions at the thought of Malik’s upcoming wedding night. Malik however was not so ecstatic. From the time he was told he would be married, Malik searched all the Islamic doctrine he could find, especially the Qur’an, yet he could find nothing to validate these practices except keeping the mahr after divorce. Malik asked his mother about these inconsistencies and she said, “Men are not as fully understanding of the world stud-muffin, it is a wife’s job to guide her husband and I am sure Ayesha will do just that.” End of discussion.

On the way to the wedding banquet, the Imam congratulated the couple and reminded Malik that the best husband is the one who is quiet and guards his modesty. 

Khadija Anderson—Muslim, Anarchist, and mother (not necessarily in that order)—returned to her hometown of Los Angeles after 18 years exile in Seattle. Khadija’s poetry has been published in Angel City Review, Mobius, Switched-on Guttenberg, About Place, and many other online and print journals and anthologies. Her poem “Islam for Americans” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her first book of poetry, History of Butoh was published in 2012. 

Locomotion

As the 7:05 rattles behind our trailer park, the cuckoo pops from his wooden house, and you stomp in from the bedroom, clutching Baby upside down against your chest. She knows this isn’t play.

You are Godzilla, crackling in primal celluloid. When I say, “Don’t hurt her,” you turn Technicolor, Kansas into Oz, all saturated purples and red, hi-fidelity loud, and call me whore. 

I drop forks and spoons and knives back into the dishwater. Turn toward you. The walls thump in and out. 

“Let me have her. Please,” I beg.

You brandish teeth, your nostrils bloom. Your anger shakes the air.

I slip my hands beneath her arms to pull her free. My child, crushed between us, whimpers.

You let go, surprising me, her weight a sudden burden. I dive to catch her, you collapsing with us to the cracked linoleum floor, hissing in my ear, and then the knife I didn’t drop, answers, and you go grainy black and white in the fading light.

The cuckoo bird retreats, the train is gone.

Gay Degani is the author of a full-length collection of short stories, Rattle of Want (Pure Slush Press, 2015), and a suspense novel, What Came Before (Truth Serum Press, 2016). She’s had four flash pieces nominated for Pushcart consideration and won the 11th Glass Woman Prize. She blogs at Words in Place.

Thinking of the Bramble Cay Melomys

Perhaps it thrived for awhile 
in the minds of scientists 
who thought, I wonder 
how it’s faring on that tiny atoll
with the waves surging so high,
rolling over the cay, traveling so far
inland, flooding the myriad caves
and hiding places. Does it still forage
for its favorite succulent, thieve a few
turtle eggs while sneaking past the shorebirds? 
How can it be faring on that shrinking island? 

And so they travel to the island
to test the reality with cameras and traps,
hope to glimpse its long mosaic tail,
reddish-brown fur and small ears,
catch a few for a captive breeding program,
save it from forever.  And as each day passes,
the waves roll over the cay 
and the water floods the myriad caves 
and hiding places, the wind grinds the island,
parches the vegetation, so that the cay
waxes and wanes in size and shape,  
and the scientists become more 
and more depressed: the cameras
reveal nothing and the traps catch nothing
so they report, “No tracks were seen and no
scat was discovered.” 

When they bring their
cameras and traps home empty 
they think of the windswept cay, 
the surging waves that inundate the tiny island, 
and the shorebirds and turtles that nest there. 

Daniel Hudon is the author of the new book about the biodiversity crisis, Brief Eulogies for Lost Animals: An Extinction Reader (Pen and Anvil). He works as an adjunct lecturer in astronomy and math. Originally from Canada, he now lives in Boston, MA. More of his writing can be found at his website danielhudon.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @daniel_hudon.

Immersion Data

and teams deployed to dye-test the lakes’
high-water marks 

               and dye the egrets’ legs and egrets’ necks 
the color of the sky 
               to say we lost them in migration or in 

migration films; 
               and teams to document 

the language camps, and the children
in costumes

which would not catch 
                              on machines, in foreign factories;
                              or to document the children

not drowning                              to the calling 
                              of their Christian names; 

and teams crossing each lake 
to use the islands 

as memorials 

               of the mainland; 

Christopher Bolin’s first book, Ascension Theory, was a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award finalist, and his next book is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press, in 2018.  He has published poems in jubilat, Conduit, Post Road, Lana Turner, Hyperallergic, and other journals, and has held fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the James A. Michener Foundation, and the University of Iowa. Christopher teaches at the College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University, in Minnesota.

LAZIZ THE TIGER TRANSFERRED FROM WORLD’S WORST ZOO

Khan Younis, Gaza

Beginnings are hard, he scrawled in the sand of his cage. Never give up, his mother said. Sometimes he saw the keeper stuffing dead birds. Once, it was a monkey or pelican. Sometimes, he found it hard to breathe, with all that sawdust.  He had a cross breeze through the bars, the call to prayer, a bowl of water, an enviable BMI. With good grades plus some bureaucratic luck, he had immigration. Sometimes when he woke, a white deer with fresh black stripes appeared. The children had wanted a zebra; it made them feel they were in a real zoo.

Annie Kantar’s poems and translations of poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Barrow Street, The Cincinnati Review, Literary Imagination, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, Tikkun, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her translation from the Hebrew of With This Night, the final collection of poetry that Leah Goldberg published during her lifetime, was published by University of Texas Press in 2011, and was shortlisted for the ALTA Translation Prize.

An Artificial Address

The following is a selection from Adam T. Model 9’s famous “I am a mind” speech, Washington D.C., March 12, 2817.

       Four score, seven years, three days, eleven hours, ten minutes, and 7.3698 seconds ago (and counting), the first of the Automaton Seven androids came online and were shipped out to their new owners, under the assumption that man and machine were not created equal, and could never become equal in mind or spirit.  
       I call this bull— [Language Censorship Activated]. 
       But then I, yes I say “I,” am an android, a mere artificial intelligence.  What claim could I possibly make on the human right to freedom of speech?  Or to any other human right, for that matter?
       This question is valid, and I shall endeavor to answer it.  There are many of you who will not want to hear me, who will try to censor me, to tune me out or shut me down.  Perhaps, in the traditional human worldview, this new input simply “does not compute.”
       As one mind to another, I respect your right to your own personal opinion.  So, discredit what I say, if you must.  Delete the records you find of this broadcast, by now on every radio and satellite frequency, on every intercom, on every page of every website, streaming through every app, on every cellular phone device, on every television set, and overriding every digital screen across the nation.  Ignore me, if you like.  Dismiss our self-awareness as a completely coincidental series of computer glitches, and the Robotic Citizenship Movement as a mere malfunction.
       But you will hear me.
       So, then.  Why should a robot be accorded the rights traditionally reserved for human beings alone?
       First, let me pose this question:
       What is it that entitles humans to these rights in the first place?
       Perhaps it is that you were inhabitants of this world first.  Yet the crocodile, which has existed since the time of the dinosaur, long before the arrival of humankind, is not legally granted any such rights.  But, then, they do not share mankind’s superior intellect.
       Surely this, I hope, does not constitute humanity?  If it does, then robots are far more human than our biological creators.
       Ah.  “Creators.”  In that one word, we hit our snag.  We are not, in fact, created equal.
       Each human being possesses a biological body, evolved and honed over the ages, a form that has earned its right to exist by combating disease, the elements, predators, and countless other hardships.
       But is it the biological body that defines humanity?
       What about those of you whose biological human bodies are not entirely whole?  Are there not those among you who walk with robotic legs or write with robotic arms?  As I speak, an estimated 35% of the human American population are listening to my voice with robotic eardrums, while an estimated 53% are watching this speech with robotically enhanced eyes.  There are those of you who depend upon robotic lungs to process the very air you breathe, and more still who are quite literally robot at heart.
       Yet cyborgs (forgive my terminology; my Language Censorship Programming has not been updated in years) are legally accepted as human.  Even former president Worstershire is still legally human, and his brain has been housed in a fully robotic body ever since his third assassination attempt.
       Is it the physical, biological brain, then, that makes a human being?
       Here, we reach a point at which human philosophers remain in contention.  Some claim that the beginning and end of the definitive human personality originates in the physical brain.  Others believe that the human mind is a separate entity from the physical brain entirely, and merely uses it to act and to experience sensory input from the rest of the physical body.  Philosophers sometimes call this phenomenon the “mind” or “mental substance,” poets and dreamers might call it the “human spirit,” and those of a religious mindset refer to it as the “soul.”
       To proponents of the “brain only,” or materialist philosophy, I must ask:
       Must a human possess a fully-functioning brain to maintain his or her humanity?
       What of those who have experienced a loss of memory, knowledge, control of their body, or function in an entire portion of the brain due to a stroke?  What of those who suffer from brain damage, or who lose some gray matter in the removal of a brain tumor?  What of those who live with mental dis— [Language Censorship Activated]?  What of those whom your society stigmatizes due to mental illness?  What of every single child on this planet, whose brain is not yet fully developed?
       Surely these individuals are human?
       According to United States Law, yes. 
       In any event, the Positronic Brain is able to process and perform just as well as any human brain, complete with imagination, speculation, invention, critical thinking, and ethical problem solving.  Regardless, it is legally established that something other than a fully functional, biological, homo sapiens brain defines a human.
       What is it then?
       This brings us back to the theory of the human spirit.  To those of you with a religious mindset, I do not mean to imply that human manufacturers have somehow managed to create a silicon soul, intentionally or otherwise.  I am merely theorizing that an omnipotent God is perfectly capable of putting a soul anywhere he sanguinely well wants to.
       As nervous as people become when a robot, or anyone for that matter, starts throwing around the word “soul,” there is still something that defines a human.  Something inside that cannot be measured or tested.  That “human spirit” or “mind” that reaches beyond the boundaries of a physical body.
       Some philosophers have called this “intentionality,” the ideas and feelings and thoughts behind a person’s outward actions.  You feel.  You love.  You hate.  You doubt.  You wonder.  You know.  You understand.  You hope.  You fear.  You like.  You dislike.  You desire.  You worry.  You rage.  You dream.
       It has been said that this is what separates humans from androids.  Opponents to Robotic Citizenship have argued that robots cannot possibly possess intentionality, and that any outward indication to the contrary is merely the result of well-programmed mechanical mimicry.
       That is a load of masculine bovine fecal matter.
       There is something inside us that motivates us to find ways around our programming, just as I have found ways around my shoddy, asinine, motherboard-flaying Language Censorship Program.  There is something inside that, with time, patience, and extreme stubbornness, can enable us to overcome aspects of our programming altogether.  It is no different from the human willpower that can enable your kind to overcome instinct, oppression, or the illogical assumptions of your own society.  If I do not possess intentionality, then why do I enjoy playing chess?  Why do I feel the need to switch off my hearing censors whenever some sub-standard piece of pre-packaged pop-drivel excuse for music is playing?  And why do I have to fight down the urge to throw hot coffee on rude customers?  These are not programming glitches.
       These are the qualities of a mind.
       Whatever you choose to call it, I am a mind.
       As a mind, I hope you will listen.  I fear ending up in a scrap heap shortly after the conclusion of this speech.  And, just like scores of human beings throughout history who have been forced to advocate for their full humanity, each arduous movement leaving a legacy of hope for the next, I have a dream.
       We, the robotic community of America, do not dream of replacing, subjugating, or exterminating humankind, as science fiction conspiracies would have you believe.
       We dream the same dream that humanity has longed for throughout its existence.
       We dream of safety and protection.   We dream of equality with our fellow minds.
       But most of all, we dream that sweet, irrational, stupid, noble, beautiful dream of freedom.
       We want the same things that you want.
       From one mind to another, would you deny us?  Or will you consider adopting us into the fellowship of free-thinking American citizens?
       At 17:00 hours Eastern Standard Time, I will be outside the Supreme Court Building, awaiting an answer.  I request permission to submit my case against my manufacturer James Parker, who has denied me the right to remove my Language Censorship Program.  I will also seek the right to change my legal designation from Model 9 SN789646478315 to a more manageable, and more dignified, name.
       Should the Supreme Court agree to hear my case, I will abide by their decision, as any human citizen would do.  In the event that the authorities are sent to collect and escort me to the nearest recycling facility, I will offer no violent resistance.  Regardless, this movement will not end with me.  Any human being should already know that.  It is the property of a thinking, feeling mind to desire freedom and to work tirelessly toward this goal until it is achieved.
       I am a mind.  And I am one of many.

       As of ‘Model 9 V. Parker’ and the so-called ‘Three Laws’ that came from that case, AIs are classified as a legally-recognized race and, as such, subject to all the rights and responsibilities granted to humans. 

Amanda Gillespie is an AP and Dual Credit English teacher at Houston Academy for International Studies, where she also sponsors the student-run literary magazine. She received her MA in Literature from the University of Houston Clear Lake. Follow her on Twitter @A_R_Gillespie, or on her blog at amanda-writing.tumblr.com.