THE ANCHORMAN'S TIES

by Judith Terzi

Image source: The Nashua Telegraph

No matter what the news,
my neck is tied. The market
flies, the market plunges,
two thousand said I dead.
I wear white polka dots
on navy blue. Every night
a suit and tie. Citizens
coagulate fate, tie clothing
tourniquets. Amputees nod
goodbye to candy stripers.
Smoky gray geometric
shapes in a cool sea green
hang from my neck. I read:
brouhaha at the IRS, no
terrorism in Benghazi,
terrorism in Benghazi.
Every night a suit and tie.
Car bombs in Sadr City,
seventy dead in Tahrir
Square. Wisteria petals
float on an archipelago of
made-in-India silk. Our
government is tied down.
Arctic tundra will turn
to forest. The President
is fit. The President is fit
to be... I want to sever
ties with purple stripes,
yellow cloverleafs. I read:
human rubble in a garment
factory. Yellow and pink
palm trees and storks
and swans. Jewelry heist
at the Festival de Cannes.
I tie my thoughts way back
tight into my head. White
blossoms in an olive green
lake. I tie up my mind.
Exhumation of the Chilean
poet. The fires still roar.
Tie score for arson, climate
change, metaphor. Golden
bark, silver branches, ruby
berries. No matter what
the news. Bashar al-Assad.
Ferragamo. Collar and tie.


Judith Terzi holds an M.A. in French Literature. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies and has been nominated for Best of the Web and Net. For many years a high school French teacher, she also taught English and ESL at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. She is the author of Sharing Tabouli (2011) and Ghazal for a Chambermaid, forthcoming from Finishing Line.

NO. 2

by Sean J. Mahoney

Jose Gutierrez

You first surfaced 22 years ago, rising
From the concrete with much promise.
You are casualty number two,
From Camp Pendleton.

Perhaps you were the one who gave
Us directions to building 73A: down the road
A bit, past the cannon, turn right. We may
Have never met. You may never have asked
Me about the principals of electromagnetics
Though you wanted to know. You may
Have been jogging with your unit to song,
sweat turning your desert t-shirt
Into an apron of badges.

You could have been in one of the copters,
Practicing, too busy to see that we had located
The communications line the brass
Were so worried about. Maybe you were
In the mess when we opened up the sewers
To determine where all the shit went.

Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez -
You were combat casualty number two,
Killed in southern Iraq March 21, 2003,
Pieces of you will remain there.
The Republic of the Soil will erode
And wipe your thumb out over time,
Change the chemical properties,
And release your minerals.

I can imagine that as a tick feeding from you
While you had pulse and pause, I discerned
A lapse in your genetic rouge,
Chips in the clay of your latino
Beauty. And, knowing your end
Approached and no council could deter
That fact, I crept away and tucked into
Your wife’s folds. I would whisper
Into her skin the things I knew of you
As I fed: that you would have fathered
Two more, read Dianetics, won
16 grand in the lottery and lost most
Of it at the track. And that this
Would have come to pass once
You had broken your leg playing football
With the boys on a Saturday, Budweiser
Abounding. You would have slowed down,
Grown a bit around the middle,
Begun smoking cigars and paying
For manicures at the salon with
The wicked sexy Vietnamese lady.
I would issue into your wife anything
And everything about angels, guts
And glory of country for I am a bellcap
Of sorrow and brave people need
To stand up and tell the truth. But she
Does not hear that you will die soon,
And accidentally.

Jose Gutierrez - if I could have set
A 5-foot by 5-foot grid around you,
Marched up and down
The backfill of your life
With a conductivity meter
Through painted barrios and brush
Loaded with ticks I may have found
The locale your composition caved
And registered void.
Or, had I lit you up
With an 8 megahertz current,
I could have measured your growth
And your linear trend from
Your first surface expression
As breathing conduit to copper child
To weathered teenager to rusty
Soldier, to where your line vanished,
Ended suddenly
And without explanation.

That is what happens.
I could have told you where,
Not that it would have made
A difference. I still do not know
Why.

This is what happened.
Jose Gutierrez  - you first surfaced
22 years ago,
Rising from the concrete
With much promise.


Sean J. Mahoney lives with his wife, her parents, an Uglydoll, and three dogs in Santa Ana, CA. He works in geophysics after studying literature and poetry in school. His first published  piece appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of MiPOesias.

THE RED LINE

by Roger Sedarat 
 




                “We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear
                weapon.” -- Leon Panetta (former US Defense Secretary)

“Where’s all this terror they find in Iran?”
She asked, over the New York Times. “They act
Like it’s the Nazis or the Soviets.”
Long married, they’d had this same talk before.
He wanted to take notes on what they said,
Banal reporter instead of poet.
“They mean the military threat.” He poured
More coffee, pleased to stir the pot again.
“Okay,” she said, the iPad in her hand:
“A single missile on a transport truck.
I saw one of these last time in Shiraz;
They brought it out in some stupid parade
To show their military might (such men).
It’s really all they fucking had besides
Teen soldiers, bearded boys who looked hungry,
As if they missed their moms.” It was his turn
To launch a counterstrike, antagonize
The enemy like Ahmadinejad.
“How do we know what they might be hiding?”
She dropped her breakfast bar and rolled her eyes.
“Oh sure, a nuke! Just like Bush with Iraq;
I think the threat’s completely overblown,
A bluff in poker.” “But Muslims don’t bet,”
He interjected. Using his smug tone
She knew belonged in academia.
“Oh Roger! You’re just looking for a fight!”
“I know,” he said, ‘performing’ my Iran.”
“I know,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“It all comes down to art for you, who cares
About reality as long as it
Becomes a poem.” “Life is just a dream,”
He said in Persian. “Just a dream?” she asked.
“Suppose we drop real bombs and people die.”
“But you yourself keep saying it’s a game.”
He knew this last comeback had gone too far.
“You’re being difficult!” She slammed her fist.
“I know, and so are you,” he said in kind.
“It’s like we’re taking turns at acting like
The U.S. and Iran, always at war.”
She sighed, frustratingly, and he sighed back,
Aware how much she hated being mocked.
In silence they went back to the paper,
Avoiding talk of new conflicts they read.


Roger Sedarat is the author of two poetry collections: Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, which won Ohio UP's 2007 Hollis Summers' Prize, and Ghazal Games (Ohio UP, 2011). He teaches poetry and literary translation in the MFA Program at Queens College, City University of New York.

ARAB SEASONS SPRING ETERNAL

by Earl J. Wilcox

     

Clay Bennett,
 Chattanooga Times Free Press, Aug 20, 2002
EditorialCartoonists.com
(click here to view)

Ten years have passed—
Ten long winters and ten long summers,
Ten long springs and ten long autumns.
Yet the WMD are still absent as they were
When the first waves of shock and awe
Killed the first ten thousand.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.

KNOW WHAT I MEAN

by Stefanie Pickett Buckner

Image source: Weather Whys, TAMU

Heat lightning awakens me and fragments of sky
at midnight—
a brief but rapid winking through the bedroom
window— then surrenders again to dark
night air. Thick thunder soon accompanies this
momentary light. My husband sleeps, his hand snug
in the curve of my waist, each finger pressing into my flesh
deeply at different times. He is reliving scenes from Iraq
in another “dream.” I pretend he is playing one of Mozart’s Sonatas,
perhaps in C. I close my eyes, but hear the sky groan. Tired
or not, we sense violence when it’s there.

In the morning, we sit by the bay window, drink coffee, and read
news about a movie theater massacre—a deranged man who shot
Batman fans with a grin on his face
at midnight—
where 12 people are dead and 58 injured.
We watch cell phone footage, hear the screams, listen
to victims’ stories, gasp and sigh, swallow hard, shake our heads.

Thunder still fumbles heavy and clumsy through
the house as the sun tries to rise. The lonely orchid in the corner
vase quavers at the sound, but stands erect and delicate despite it
all. It shares news too—of looking up while landing
inside a major chord—of every note, light, petal, and touch ending
in resolution—of hearing storm but believing
in sonata—

I grab my husband’s hand, pull it towards my waist,
and ask him to play Mozart again. He smiles but doesn’t
know what I mean.


Stefanie Pickett Buckner’s poetry has appeared in Byline Magazine, Time of Singing, Sacred Journey, The Penwood Review, SP Quill Quarterly Magazine, Ruah, and Lyric.