Poem by Bruce Wise

Beneath Red Sodom’s Towers

               by Radice Lubewse
               “Against society he rose, just one, put in his place,
               placed in the grave. Why cry—th’ unneeded choir’s shallow praise,
               excuses mumbled full of feeling? Fate made his ukase!”
                             —Alecsei Durbew

On February 27, 2015, right
smack in the shadow of the Kremlin and Red Square, at night,
he was assassinated—Boris Nemtsov—someone in the dark,
shot four times in the back. Some ask, Did Putin strike the spark?
His passing in the middle of the city left a hole.
It was but twenty minutes till midnight, out for a stroll.
He was attacked upon the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge,
that spans the Moskva River—in winter, cold as a frig.
So far from sunny days upon the beach and happy thoughts…
beneath red Sodom’s towers, darts of pain assault…sandlots.

“Drone Paradox” © Richard Montgomery

Bruce Wise: The author of this poem, Radice Lubewse, alludes to Anna Akhmatova’s poem Lot’s Wife. His bio follows:

Radice Lubewse is a slavophile poet, a follower of Russia, but also the Ukraine, and all the Slavic peoples from Poland to Bulgaria. He admires the Russian Modernists, Nabokov, and is an intimate of poets, like Alecsei Burdew, Leci Ubaw Serce, and Cirel Daw Useeb.

Richard Montgomery: “My philosophical surrealistic drawings are known for their unique twist on life and our perspective of it. The “hidden in plain sight” details of my work are ruminants of the great masters like M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali. I have been drawing my entire life and have had no formal training other than just my own desire to create from the time I could hold a crayon or pencil. I enjoy many different types of art yet surrealism holds my passion the most.”