by Ed Sanders

They say the English masses were so angry
at the Germans after World War I
they demanded harsh reparations

of the sort that fueled the rise of the right
and the Beerhall Putsch

Is that so?

The people can rise to a boil
that’s for sure

Recall the lines of Aeschylus in Agamemnon
when a herald has announced the fall of Troy

and the nervous chorus of elders tosses forth
some unsettling matters with Klytemnestra

such as

“Powerful is the voice of the people stirred with anger
It has the strength of a whole nation bound as one”

Aeschylus knew how the people can boil
but can they boil toward aught but war?

I don’t know Clio doesn’t know Helen is unaware
Gandhi wasn’t sure the Kennedys thought it could

and it’s our only chance

by Ed Sanders

I borrowed my neighbor’s aluminum boat
and rowed back to the house
with a list from Nell and the kids

Nell wanted the parakeet food if I could find it
Sally her stuffed beagle,
and Lonnie his box of CDs
which might be upstairs still dry
and maybe some of our photo albums.

Tied the aluminum to an old metal gargoyle
and went in through the upper window
loaded up two plastic bags with drawstrings

Just out of reach I spotted the row of my
friends’ unpublished manuscripts
under the water

Then I noticed our bathroom mirror
somehow it was rafting among the books!
I stared down at the clown in the glass:
it was I!

I had to make some choices-
I saved the old family Bible from Tennessee
our wedding pictures
and my first edition “Howl”

but had to leave the manuscripts behind

“I saw the best minds
of my generation
melting in the vast nomenclatureless neantification”
came off my lips
as I rowed back to the van

that would take us to Baton Rouge

by Alice Notley

I have come to you
      past rules unspoken
  I am in another “time” as I tell
I’m standing before you then flowing in.
      This group of words stands
     then flows through and on I am in
   your language I ask you to obey no
one I ask you to eat less to dream more to
     find me in your heart the core of you
    you are thou the beloved anyone and we
       the universe these the beautiful
     sayings that and enter and linger
       not really to pass I ask you
     not to suffer I ask you to let
   suffering dissolve into me
     the cloud that passes the mist
   without appointments whose
      arrows are soft it is to be
    the only condition and is in you
        find it separating out from
         tasks of rigid obedience
    I hold and seem to pass but I
      always hold you have only’
     to remember that you are held
    cut to pieces you are not cut
         do nothing bad to others you’
      have always been with them
           and will be do not obey them
       or ask obedience you are loosely
     connected in an equality of com-
   munication of holy minds held to-
     gether no form no symmetry no duty