REVENGE
by Howie Good
Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City more than doubled last month from a year ago, NYPD data show — a troubling trend that unfolded against a backdrop of high-profile figures making headlines for remarks targeting Jewish people. —New York Daily News, December 5, 2022
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The nicely dressed grandmother seated next to me at the holiday concert began to complain under her breath when the high school orchestra broke into the Chanukkah song “Dreidel Dreidel” after 40 minutes of Christmas music. It’s a good thing I’m accustomed since an early age to cringing inside. My father, after the factory permanently closed, would just stare at the TV for hours, a broken man, morose, prostrate, unshaven. Out of the corner of my eye I examined the still muttering woman and for once wished that life was like the plot of one of those direct-to-video Bruce Willis actioners— blah blah, pow pow.
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Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horses Were Beautiful (2022), available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems later this year.
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BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
by Darcy Grabenstein
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They plastered their hate-filled propaganda on walls, on posts, anywhere, everywhere They started with boycotts of businesses They isolated us, segregated in ghettos They labeled us with yellow patches They pilfered property, possessions They ruthlessly humiliated us They herded us like cattle to concentration camps Working us mercilessly through illness, hunger The cruelly conducted medical experiments They implemented the ”Final Solution” Until we could not gasp for breath. They attempt coups at the Capitol and across the pond in Germany They slaughter innocents in nightclubs synagogues mosques churches They ban books they ban choices they ban love They’re just warming up. And that chills me to my bones.
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Always a lover of words, Darcy Grabenstein started her career in journalism. Now a marketing writer by profession, she turns to poetry as a creative outlet. Darcy is a contributing writer for the thINKingDANCE. She has had works published on RitualWell.org and in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.