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Saturday, September 21, 2013

INK THREATS

by B.Z. Niditch


A series of demonstrations concerning the anti-fascist hip-hop artist, Pavlos Fyssas’ murder by Giorgos Roupakias, supporter of the Greek political neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, are organized in European capitals by Greek immigrants and local left-winged organizations and students. - Greek Reporter         Meanwhile, mass protests against police abuses have resumed in the Turkish city of Istanbul, as well as in Ankara, the national capital, and in Antakya province on the Syrian border. The latest country-wide demonstrations began after the death on September 10 of Ahmet Atakan, a male aged 22, in Antakya. -- Gatestone Institute


Because poems
touch your faraway eye
and dictators
flee from word memory
silence cannot conceal us
from any occupying justice
our initials in blood
rise on city graffiti walls
over roofs and presses
others are written
with bark of hundred years
on old trees,
whether in Turkey or Greece
or anywhere on headlines
we hear impure speech
of the general staffs
who wage war
against people
even in nuclear times
only with ink threats
of our pens
can fascism be exposed
and die off.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; LeGuepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.