A Tidings of Magpies

by Kevin Carey In grammar school I stuttered, felt the hot panic on my face when my turn to read crept up the row. Even when I counted the paragraphs and memorized the passage, I’d trip on the first or second word, and then it would be over, the awful hesitation, the word clinging to the lining of my throat rising only too late to avoid the laughter around me. I was never the smartest kid in the room, but I had answers I knew were right yet was afraid to say them. Years later it all came out, flowing sentences I practiced over and over, Shakespeare or Frost, my own tall tales in low-lit barrooms, scribbled in black-bound journals, rehearsing, anticipating my turn, my time, a way of finally getting it right.

Staff Sgt. Metz by Dorianne Laux Metz is alive for now, standing in line at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear and buzz cut, his beautiful new camel-colored suede boots. His hands are thick-veined. The good blood still flows through, given an extra surge when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam caught on his bottom lip. I can see into the canal in his right ear, a narrow darkness spiraling deep inside his head toward the place of dreaming and fractions, ponds of quiet thought. In the sixties my brother left for Vietnam, a war no one understood, and I hated him for it. When my boyfriend was drafted I made a vow to write a letter every day, and then broke it. I was a girl torn between love and the idea of love. I burned their letters in the metal trash bin behind the broken fence. It was the summer of love and I wore nothing under my cotton vest, my Mexican skirt. I see Metz later, outside baggage claim, hunched over a cigarette, mumbling into his cel...

of the Thirteen United States of America ...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are acc...

please note: sung with exiled Iranian singer, Andy Madadian as always, peace be with you...

"The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we're going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some trouble in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons."--President Barack Obama To further quote from Jonathan Gurwitz's editorial(Sunday, June 28, 2009. San Antonio Express-News), "But what is taking place in Iran is about something fundamentally far greater than whether Mousavi is better than Ahmadinejad. It is about the Iranian people expressing a desire for freedom and truly democratic institutions. It is about the enduring conflict between those who use violence to retain power and the people who stand peacefully against that power. We have seen them in many lands in recent decades — in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Ukraine and Lebanon. We've seen them in the United States, in S...

I'm starting a bit early. The green background is part of the support/awareness effort to add one more voice and ten more fingers, though I hunt and peck with two, to the support of human rights and freedom in Iran.