Brother My Brother

Poetry by Shann Ray and Art by James Black

Brother My Brother draws from the brotherhood shared by Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho ledger artist James Black and Czech American poet Shann Ray opening a doorway into the powerful love among brothers worldwide. Cherishing intimacy while refusing to look away from humanity’s capacity for violence, this book engages the genocidal weight of history alongside the thermonuclear missile crisis proliferating globally in the present day. The visual art of James Black and the poems of Shann Ray offer a sense of fearlessness accompanied by peace and well-being against the imminent threat of annihilation. To hold the beloved’s face, to speak love not hate, to see blackbirds rise from a winter field and hear the quiet breathing of horses–to give witness to the beauty of wilderness and the beauty of the human heart. Brother My Brother takes as its project the reconciliation of people and nations.

Sister Who Saved Her Brother — Battle of Rosebud Creek

colored pencil and ink on ledger paper from 1895, 11 x 17”

… ^

only first notice

with me the Aggregat

series (German for “aggregate”)

a set of ballistic missile designs developed from

1933-1945 by a research

Program of Nazi Germany’s

Armed Forces (the Wehr-

macht) and remember even

now its greatest success was

the A4 more commonly

known as the V-2 fuel

ethanol and liquid oxygen

the 80s brought nuclear fear

but today its quite different

notice how there’s not near

as much jumping under desks

or wailing of loud sirens

or visiting bomb shelters

now everything’s different

… ^

notice too

the Kaliningrad K-5

(NATO reporting name AA-1 Alkali)

also known as RS-1U or product ShM

an early Soviet

air-to-air missile

with a speed of 800

meters per second

and beam riding

guidance that in later

years was replaced by

a beam-riding seeker

with infrared semi-active

radar homing for

missiles now given

the name heat seekers

… ^

notice too

the AIM-9 Sidewinder

(where “AIM” stands for

“Air Intercept Missile”)

a short-range air-to-air missile

which entered service with the United States

Navy in 1956 and was subsequently adopted

by the US Air Force in 1964

and since then the Sidewinder

has proved to be an enduring

international success so its latest

variants remain standard

equipment in most Western-aligned

air forces but don’t forget the Soviet

K-13 (AA-2 ‘Atoll’) a reverse-

Engineered copy of the AIM-9B

which was also widely adopted

by a number of nations such that

these newer seekers with rocket

motors can also equip attack helicopters

for greater kill force please recognize

these as among the oldest lowest cost

missiles also don’t forget the US Navy

hosted a 50th-anniversary celebration

for the Sidewinder in 2002 and Boeing

won a contract in 2010 to support

Sidewinder operations through 2055

… ^

today missiles

with names from A to Z

carry thermonuclear warheads

flying the earth wherever we ask

them to fly leaving and reentering the atmosphere

with pinpoint accuracy exoatmospheric kill vehicles

yes EKVs ride fast

so please remember

the ancient prophecy:

when you see standing

in the holy place

the abomination that

causes desolation flee

to the mountains let no

one on the rooftop go

down to take anything

from the house let no

one go back to the field

to get their cloak it will

be dreadful for pregnant

women and nursing

mothers pray that your

flight will not take place

in winter or on the day

of rest there will be great

distress unequaled from

the beginning of the world

and never to be equaled

again please note it says

if those days are not cut

short no one will survive

and wherever there is a

carcass there the vultures

will gather but be not afraid

for as lightning that comes

from the east is visible in

the west so will be the

coming of the prince of peace

Sister Who Saved Her Brother — Battle of Rosebud Creek, Detail #2

colored pencil and ink on ledger paper from 1895, 5.5 x 5.5”

… ^

declare

the Arrow or Hetz

(Hebrew: חֵץ, pronounced [ˈχet͡s])

a family of anti-ballistic missiles

designed to fulfill an Israeli requirement

for a missile defense

system that would be

more effective against

ballistic missiles than

the Patriot surface-to-air

missile jointly funded

and produced by Israel

and the United States

development of the system

began in 1986 and it has

continued since drawing

contested criticism yet still

undertaken by Israel Aerospace

Industries (IAI) and Boeing

it is overseen by the Israeli

Ministry of Defense’s Homa

(Hebrew: חומה, pronounced

[χoma] “rampart”) administration

and the U.S. Missile Defense

Agency it forms the long-range

layer of Israel’s multi-tiered missile

defense system along with David’s

Sling (at medium-to-long range)

both Iron Dome and Iron Beam

(at short ranges) and note it is warhead

directed high explosive fragmentation

flight ceiling exoatmospheric

… ^

please note

the al-Husayn

(Arabic: الحسین, romanized:

al-Husayn) “little beautiful one”

a short-range ballistic missile developed

in Ba’athist Iraq an

upgraded version of

the Scud missile the

al-Husayn was widely

used by the Iraqi Army

during the Iran–Iraq

War and the Persian

Gulf War weight nearly

15,000 pounds warhead

1,102 pounds of payload

high explosive chemical

biological and nuclear

capabilities but also note

fuselage and warhead prone

to break into fragments while

reentering the atmosphere

… ^

see

the Aspide

(the Italian name for

the asp) an Italian missile

produced by Selenia (then by Alenia

Aeronautica now a part

of Leonardo S.p.A.) it

is very similar to

the American Sparrow

an echo design is the

UK’s Skyflash the Asp

uses the same airframe

as the Sparrow but an

inverse monopulse

seeker far more accurate

and much less susceptible

to electronic countermeasures

(ECMs) than the original

conical scanning the Asp

also has original electronics

and warhead a new more

powerful engine with closed-

loop hydraulics for better

downrange maneuverability

and different control surfaces

replacing the original triangular

wings with a newly designed

common cropped delta fixed

wing maximum speed Mach 4

(4x the speed of sound) explosive

force open torque from a four tube

Asp/Sparrow launcher boxlike indifferent

… ^

note

the Type 01 LMAT

(01式軽対戦車誘導弾,

01-shiki kei-tai-sensha yūdō-dan)

a Japanese man-portable fire-and-forget

Anti-Tank Missile

(ATM) development

began in 1993 at

Kawasaki Heavy

Industries and was

accepted into service

in 2001 during

development the

missile was designated

with the codename

XATM-5 later it was

known briefly as the

ATM-5 not modeled

after the deadliest anti-

tank missile known as

the Javelin the ATM-5

unit cost $250,000 the

weapon employs a

sophisticated Command

Launch Unit (CLU) that

is re-loaded for multiple

firings reliant on kinetic

energy through shaped

charge explosives using

the Munroe effect to

penetrate heavy armor

the charge collapses a

metal liner inside the

warhead into a high-

velocity shaped charge jet

capable of penetrating

armor steel to a depth of

seven or more times the

diameter of the charge

and can be delivered

without the high velocity

required by armor-piercing

devices and thus less recoil

Sister Who Saved Her Brother — Battle of Rosebud Creek, Detail #1

colored pencil and ink on ledger paper from 1895, 5.5 x 5.5”

James Black

Both Cheyenne and Arapaho, artist James Black is a Southern Cheyenne Sundance priest and ledger artist. A descendent of Black Kettle, the renowned Cheyenne peace chief, and two of the original Fort Marion ledger artists of the 1800s, Cohoe and Making Medicine, through his art James honors his people today.

Shann Ray

American Book Award winner Shann Ray teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University, and poetry for Stanford and the Center for Contemplative Leadership at Princeton Theological Seminary. Czech American, he grew up near Lame Deer, Montana, on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.

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Sonnet for trigger → obsessional doubt → consequence

Erica Dawson

The surgeon left my ovaries intact.

And, once a month, they still release an egg

which slowly rots beside my spine, in back,

my spleen, in front, between my ribs. I beg

you, menopause, come sooner than later.

Filled with half-lives, degrading, in my hollows,

I know mother nature always caters

to men, their bodies stronger, so it follows

I should break down. But what if each egg was a spore

that could give rise to something new without

a man. Maybe just a tiny core

of a human. Some fifty guts to stomach the doubt

of whether or not my body is blameless,

if it’s awful to survive being buried in darkness.

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Miss Lorenz

Clint Margrave

should’ve been sipping wine in a Paris café,

but instead she drank Folgers

and taught passé composé

to a bunch of acne-faced inmates

in the asylum known as Canyon High School.

I’m not sure how she imagined her life

when she took that degree

in a Romance language,

but it had to have more romance

than kicking Carl Mulligan out

of class for wearing a Cramps t-shirt

that said, “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”

It had to be more French than busting

15-year-old metalheads hotboxing

Camels by the chain link fence

behind her classroom wall.

But everyone has bills to pay.

Everyone has a bouche to feed,

even if it’s only your own.

Miss Lorenz must be retired now.

I like to imagine her living

out these late years eating mussels

under a red awning in Montparnasse

or sampling Beaujolais Nouveau

at a little round table by the Seine

or maybe just taking in the view

from her own backyard

of all that’s in the distance.

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make a poem out of nothing

JC Talamantez

maybe some men just

amass an immovable nature

your father would’ve turned sixty today

—a few times at his mother’s / you could be alone with him

he returning—military—

from some place you didn’t understand

put headphones so you wouldn’t watch Halloween—he loved horror movies

and dark legs land-bound on the precise blanket

below a window riot

of apricot, on hill country summer

paint each leaf

but an absent father’s jovial Spanish, is still just a man

you don’t know

and he was in the sky missing feathers

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Two Poems

Jess Yuan

BIOSPHERE

The bowl of Los Angeles dreams of stretching over itself
            a skin, a bubble

of conditioned air. Strung with light, the city bleeds
            and swells

like a mosquito bite itching up the globe, inflamed by that little siphon.
            Whining up

and down the highway for miles, each oil derrick nods agreement
            with the others.

In the city itself, they are hidden behind hollow facades
            lining the road

to the corporation’s glass shell. How does the glassworks installer
            resolve the seam

where one adjoins another? Two curves are held together
            with structural silicone.

A scab hardens two sides of flesh into place.
            I keep picking

where its texture invites a fingernail. Two thousand
            man-hours per year,

two million man-hours per millennium. How many man-hours
            to start over?

There is no starting over.

CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION

after quitting, every day
I thank heaven I’ll never

have to see another building again
nor fear them hanging over me

except when I walk
through this world tied together

by so many other hands
and when I enter and sleep and possess

each adjacent item as mine
then all of it hangs over me

a single bulb but at least
the naked filament

has a hard enough time
lighting what it is

to reveal anything else
at least the empty stage

can sometimes turn away
after telling a good joke

with a straight face
while the breeze enters

as a new neighbor
and then the storm.

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Two Poems

Jose Hernandez Diaz

Ode to the Weekend

Time to break free of routine
By jumping into another routine
Watching too many sports on a plethora

Of cable channels teams I grew up

Watching based solely on proximity

Now I root for them for life

Organize schedule around games
What season is it check the sport on TV

Football means pumpkin patch

Halloween Thanksgiving

Basketball spring lilacs Easter

Baseball in the summertime

Besides beachside barbecues

The weekend means relatively loose
Like prose poetry aesthetics or anti-aesthetics

Spontaneous open to discovery

Whereas weekday grind feels more

Like Poetry with a capital “P”
Like Shakespeare’s sonnets

On meter rhyming and on point

Ode to the Skateboard

When I was young, I wanted to ride you
But it was hard to find the right balance

Settled for the smoother less hip longboard
More convenient, less falling on the pavement

Skating was born in southern California
Like Hollywood cinema or Burritos with French Fries

Inside of them when we were young

My friends all skated or played sports

Free and unassuming no responsibilities

Now they’ve mostly traded it in for blue-collar jobs

And picture-perfect families to support

The skateboard, however, remains an iconic

West coast symbol of freedom, irreverence,

Expression, though it can also simultaneously

Be found at the Olympics on mainstream commercials

Selling the timeless image of youth and vigor

Seems far from early gritty days of Venice Beach

Boardwalk before bohemian Venice

Became gentrified by millionaires, techies,

Venture capitalists, not necessarily

Complaining just observing evolution

Besides purity is for saints and martyrs

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Two Poems

Jane Zwart

Plots

I know: people want roads. They want room
for paths to fork and converge. A story is better
if its hero might be lost, if no one has taken
reversal off the table. But a great plot is too much
for me. I max out at raised and sunken beds.

A repurposed sandbox, fine: beans’ greedy ringlets,
an argyle trellis; tomatoes drooping outside
steel gyres; a frame of marigolds to put off deer.
Blind alleys under lawns, yes, and fraud roses
and knee prints, balloons in every stage of dilation.

The woman thinning the zucchini; the child
plowing a stripped crayon, lengthwise, over a page
his father holds square across a gently canted
stone: I cannot tell you their befores or their afters.
Those plots are beyond me. I can only write Look.

Used Benison

Tonight I am borrowing a septuagenarian’s life,
his lap full of husks and silk, his friend running
streetlights; they are rushing ears of sweetcorn

to boiling water, they are racing sugar’s corrosion
into starch. I am borrowing everything. The chrysalis
a boy set on his dresser for its shape alone. The brief

pet it bred. I am trying on a whole record of wonder:
the child’s, an inning into summer; the groom’s,
his paisley a distraction to the Baptists; the old

fellow’s—

if this is life who could earn their keep—when he

throws
up his hands. There is a joy that helpless. I borrow it.
I too have been loved more than makes sense.

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MISSING THE FARM

Travis Mossotti

Here’s the orchard someone else will tend to.
And the crawl space beneath the porch
of the house where someone else’s barn cat
will slumber through the summer nights
dreaming of long-tailed mice in the high grass.
Over that field, the light dips and refracts
through the broken glass of the muck pond
where a catfish will take someone else’s bait
and hook—that it might meet the refined
heat of a skillet. The ghosts of a thousand
head of cattle walk through the woods at night
in someone else’s dream while the windows,
cracked slightly, let a mild breeze pass
through the empty rooms like an appraiser.
There is no death that cannot be undone
by simply turning the compost with a pitchfork
or by scattering scratch in the dirt for chickens
who sing each time they lay, but every repair
is only a gesture against the torment of slow
winds and steady rain and heavy sun. It will be
someone else who grows too old to climb
the ladder into the barn’s cool loft or the flight
of stairs that lead to and from their own bed.
It will be their hand weighing the mortgage.
It will be their face forgetting its smile. Listen,
if the well pump kicks to life at dawn, it will be
someone else drawing a bath for the last time—
joints relaxing as their form submerges, body
recovering and failing in the same held breath.

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Tag: National Poetry Month