Correction

In the recent issue, the poem "Poets Supporting Nazis" is by Dale Jacobson and waa mis-attributed to Dale Johnson -- an honest typo. It is correct in the contents listing. I love this poem and feel bad about the error.

Poets Supporting Nazis

It could be someone named Victoria Nuland
did not orchestrate a coup in Ukraine in 2014
for someone named Obama, the murderer of Libya.

It could be Obama's henchwoman never said
"fuck the EU" when deciding Ukraine's new government
after she and her Nazis dumped the old one.
And then she didn't give them cookies.

It could be no threats were made,
no assassinations were ordered,
water was not shut down to Crimea
the same as Israel does to Palestinians

and no collective punishment happened,
fifty souls were not burned alive by Nazis in Odessa,
the people of Donbas were not shelled for eight years,
and they did not die, and a comedian strutting tyrant
did not make all parties except Nazis illegal.

It could be the United States of Liars did not lie
despite all previous tradition of lying well.

It could be the U.S. did not break its word,
and NATO did not expand from 17 nations to 30
up to Russia's border with its missiles and bombs.

It could be that these U.S. poets really cared
about the peoples of Ukraine dying
(though not those of Donbas or Crimea,
where math also died) and they were not
poor historians who blamed Stalin, 68 years dead,
or the Red Army that no longer existed,
the one that defeated Nazis in World War II.

It could be these poets cared enough about words,
they protested loudly, or even a little,
when Ukraine outlawed Russian music and books
though a third of its people speak their own
Russian tongue. No more Tolstoy, Pushkin,
Dostoyevsky. It could be these poets
did not ignore that the U.S. is an empire
that starts wars in defense of greater wealth
for the empire, and that it started this one in 2014,
and these poets were not dizzy in praising Nazis
because they were told Nazis were heroes
and were not Nazis, even though the Nazis
said they were. O yeah. It could be
they condemned Obama's murder of Libya.

It could be.
But it wasn't.

-- Dale Jacobson