Artwork © Ira Joel Haber

 

Pax Romana

The Roman gods
cared less if humans

believed in them as long
as maintenance was paid.

Our peace, too, requires
no acts of faith. Per his request,

I check Vincenzo’s emails
for mistakes—misplaced

apostrophes in what he calls
the Saxon genitive. In the kitchen

he spreads his civilization.
I buy guanciale (pork cheek),

not bacon, Italian flat leaf—
never curly!—parsley.

 

Rat Academy

When we say humane,
we never mean
that we won’t come
for them, but must we
be medieval, torturous?
No need for them to bleed
internally. We’re not
at war. Still, the Rat

Czar will root them out.
Odorless gas eases
their voyage to Hades.
Savory snacks
target the ovaries,
disrupt sperm streams,
render rat couples
sterile, if not clean.

 

Hilary Sideris is the author of Un Amore Veloce, The Silent B, Animals in English, and Liberty Laundry. She grew up in Indiana and fled to Brooklyn. She is a co-founder, curriculum developer, and teacher coach for CUNY Start, a program for underserved, limited-income students at the City University of New York.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had nine one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 online and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.