Ask the experienced, not the wise one, Arab proverb

The ladies room is empty but for two.
Whisper – May I borrow just a few bullets,
I have an urgent need now.  Two handfuls
move from one handbag to the next.

She’s on her way to the secret hospital
in her uncle’s flat – a rebel needs an
operation – she’ll exchange the bullets
for anesthesia vials, stolen…

printers, guns, money – women have
a way.  Secret phone calls to TV and radio,
the world hears a woman’s voice calm,
it represents a people they are half of,

skilled, not just wise, and now is the time
to drive cars alone, build hospitals, to control
towns and people they’ve nurtured since birth
to stand and fight.  And believe they can

hoist the red of the flag, color of blood shed
when they shot at soldiers and the fiery blossoms
of pomegranate, the green for a new spring unfolding,
girls and women planted on the ground in plain sight.

© Lavinia Kumar

Libya’s War-Tested Women Hope to Keep New Power
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Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her family includes a variety of cultures and immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, and more.

They fell straight down.  A slow breath out.  The nation held its breath. The New York smell lingered for weeks.  Ten years later still a memory.  We remember Chris playing defense on soccer fields.  Gone.  His wife and children know memory in pictures, video, the sound of his voice, his laugh.  Soldiers in countries filled with pale brown earth now gone, too.

We will show their names when their pictures
are available  –

TV shows the family picture before faces and limbs were splattered by bullets, IEDs.  And no pictures or names of those bedridden in hospitals or homes, without legs, arms, working brains.  Without jobs.  No pictures of those not American either.
 
Around 4 Million Afghans face unemployment

nearly ten years later. Crops of poppies grown by Afghan men, they dodge bullets.  The pile of war dollars – even taller than the world trade centers – spent.  Gone.  Papers floated downtown while the holes grew that day, but no-one would read them.

Five more NATO soldiers killed in Kabul –

a headline forgotten by afternoon. Soldiers have memories of dust storms in Iraq and deep blinding snow in Afghan mountains.  They picture their partners in dirt.  Cars park and people walk where smashed dust was.  Chris’s name is on the memorial plaque at Ground Zero.

             More than one million people dead and gone.

© Lavinia Kumar

After a decade of war, the west is weak and in retreat
Editor's note: This is the first prose poem we've published, so it's worth remembering, we will consider poetry in any form. Lavinia tells us, "...somehow, it came out that way." We're pleased it did.
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Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her family includes a variety of cultures and immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, and more.

The Tea Party toddlers threw the US in the sea --
they had a tantrum -- stamped their little feet with glee
but while they were sucking their thumbs with their blankies
their parents were squabbling until they were cranky.

First came the Cantor, a wild shooter on his horse
and then came Boehner hoping he could get a divorce --
but the Tea Party todds kept on wanting the treats
they’d been promised if they ate up all of their meat.

Yep, the TPs as candidates had eaten rubber chicken
and bathed in PAC money till their hearts were quickened –
so they used divide and rule, and McConnell’s bullying glee
and invited the Cripps and the Bloods over to tea.

So now the boat is sinking and they are too little to swim
and at least one of their parents is sick of their whims.
Meanwhile, the dollar is burning, the lifeguards gone home
and everyone had hoped that September was a new dawn.

But, now the super committee comes armed with its spears
to throw at the White House and the man they can’t cheer.
Still, the TPs want to get behind those old wooden desks,
remember?  - they once held congressmen we could respect.

Meanwhile jobs are going overboard, just watch them gone
‘cos states must fire civil servants  – oh, but the lobbyists fawn
since the TPs want low taxes for the increasingly rich
who still haven’t created jobs for the lower class – a glitch.

So, here comes the GOP – who made deficits and wars -
looking for WMDs behind every door,
and while candidates postulate that the tea plants did not evolve,
they have sprinted to create more problems than they can solve.

© Lavinia Kumar

Returning From Recess to a Full Plate
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Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her family includes a variety of cultures and immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, and more.

Long robes, chappals on their feet, simple men
spinners of threads, of intricate webs – fabric
made of white cotton, but woven to hide pockets
where there are cups of salt taken from the sea,

goods from ships laden with steel, oil, coal.
And the many hands turn and spin to rot
knots in the web, till holes open wide wider
and money falls through where no one can see

but it is caught by tentacles of plastic gods
their arms around births, deaths, weddings,
businesses – pockets open before lighted paths,
gates for the gods that spin for champion of greed.

© Lavinia Kumar

India corruption: Hazare heaps pressure on government
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Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her family includes a variety of cultures and immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, and more.

Under the dew of the morning, soil rustles

as worms make their way down, larvae stretch

before re-curling in earth, and your fingers dig

around the tomatoes while droplets fall on the back

of your hands and marigolds reflect the early sun.



At night worms come up to air, band together

in pairs, ring to ring, while the moon hides its face

behind haze, a woman behind a veil, the air star-cold

on her cheeks as she looks away from animal ecstasy

in the wet open field of un-mown grass.



Now guns point at you as you pray on your land:

standing soldiers steal the earth, your children’s roll

down these hills, your women’s picking of oranges

and berries, even your sons’ watch over grazing

sheep - sons who would have taught their own sons.



You taste the grass as you bend to the east, the soil

under your knees, your feet, your hands, the ants

and beetles crawling as they have for centuries

on the rocks that you had jumped from as a boy,

and had once seemed solid as the earth.



© Lavinia Kumar



In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out

Editor's note : This article was published back in April, although the issue is very much an ongoing one. The original piece was revised and 'corrected', with regard to granting statehood to Palestinians on Israeli-controlled land.

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Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her family includes a variety of cultures and immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, and more.

They say that sadness is a sluggish river
of patience, or it’s a road to shape new time,
so he came over mountains, a night climb
through passes, as he prayed to the moon's silver --
a wheel of wisdom for a land now gone.
Years are gone too, but never gentle hope,
his people behind walls, quiet on slopes
of snow winds cold at their backs each dawn.

Yes, the karmapa and the young wait for him
to die, they yearn to travel up the river to fight --
claim right to fly prayer flags like kites in the sun,
their Buddhism streaked across the sky. A new leader,
rebirth of a holy sea, is ready to storm from under a banyan tree.

© Lavinia Kumar

A Young Tibetan Lama Prepares for a Greater Role
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Lavinia lives in New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, Caper, Pemmican, Ascent Aspirations, New Verse News, and the US1 newspaper.