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Zvi A. Sesling, Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA, 2017-2020, has published poetry and flash fiction nationally and internationally. He won First Prize in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition held in Israel and was featured at the 2010 and 2019 Jewish Poetry Festivals. He edited Muddy River Poetry Review and edits 10×10 Flash Fiction. He reviews for The Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene. He is a five-time poetry Pushcart Prize nominee. His flash fiction story was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Sesling authored the poetry books Simple Game and Ghosts of Fenway, Baseball Poems; War Zones which was nominated for the Mass Center for the Book Poetry Award, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Jewish Poems which was nominated for both the National Jewish Poetry Book Award and the Mass Center for the Book Poetry Award, Fire Tongue, and King of the Jungle, both nominated for the Massachusetts Poetry Book Award. He has two poetry chapbooks, Love Poems from Hell and Across Stones of Bad Dreams. His flash fiction books are Wheels, Secret Behind The Gate, and Forty Stories (with Paul Beckman). A Vietnam Era Navy Veteran, he has a BS in Journalism from Boston University and a JD from Suffolk University Law School. Sesling taught at Suffolk University, Emerson College and Boston University. He lives in Chestnut Hill, MA with his wife Susan J. Dechter.

The Cell

Zvi A. Sesling~Photo by Susan J. Dechter

I visited the place where my father was
a prisoner, where the British had taken
over a Crusader castle in Acco to hold the Jews
they thought were resisting the king’s rule.
My sister, seven years older, recalls seeing
him behind the bars now polished like a
pistol barrel, he then like an animal in a zoo
the cell now sterile, whitewashed and cleansed
of the past: the dirt, the straw on the floor, the
food served on a metal tray, no dishes and while
he sat there reading the classics, the resistance
went on, humpty dumpty against all the king’s men.

— Zvi A. Sesling