IF GOD GOT US TO IT, HE'LL GET US THROUGH IT, SAID THE MUFFIN PAN TO THE BACON PRESS

 by Laura Lee Washburn

Image source: John Darkow/Columbia [MO] Daily Tribune

You like your muffin pan with butter.
You eat it whole so the cups don’t stick
in your throat.  The butter helps.
You like your waiters black in white face.

You like stock still dark black men with trays for a party.
You drink iced tea with mint.  You smile
and belch a champagne-coated muffin tin burp.
You’re like a cookbook with hand drawings

of the Skyline drive, Smithfield ham on buttered
biscuits.  The muffin tin constipates you
a little bit.  China will manage spiral-cut hams
with your face on their packages.  China
makes your muffin tins bigger every year.

You eat muffin tins for lunch.  You eat
muffin tins, buttered, for breakfast.
You keep the cast iron bacon press greased
with bacon fat.  Nothing sticks in your craw.

The cast iron bacon press tastes like Tennessee
in 1963.  Your little monkey cooks it best.
Everything’s so hard to pass these days,
goes down easy, but sticks and stinks, a black
hard stool in your soft pink bowels.


Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky.

BE OUTRAGED

by Joan Mazza

Image source: Mashable

The morning news is meant to wake you up.

Your phone records are being collected
at the government’s request. The deep sea
floor is littered with trash, most of it recyclable.

A man running for lieutenant governor in Virginia
warns that Yoga lures Satan into your life because
you empty yourself during meditation.

In Texas, a man was acquitted of murder after a date
with an escort who refused to have sex with him.
He shot her and took back the 150 dollars he’d paid.

It’s not even six and I haven’t made coffee and gray
wolves are no longer an endangered species. Isn’t it
too early to despair, especially over gray hair?

China, whose milk industry killed and maimed
their own children, now owns Smithfield farms,
largest pork producer to the world.

A pregnant actress tried to frame her estranged
husband for bioterrorism by sending ricin letters
to President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg.

Why worry when there’s so much good news? Cheating
wives are ready to have an affair with me NOW!
Beautiful Russian women want to marry me.

Plenty of Viagra available for the many men
in my life. And yours, too. We can have solar
power installed in our homes at no cost at all.

Several lending companies will deposit 2,500
dollars into my account in the next ninety seconds.
Why would I accept a pittance when I can have

9.2 million? Surprise— I’m next of kin to Roger Morris
who died in a plane crash in 2004! I’ll just tell them
where to deposit the money. No bad news today.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, sex therapist, writing coach and seminar leader. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Rattle, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Permafrost, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Writer’s Digest, Emerge Literary Journal, the minnesota review, Personal Journaling, and Playgirl. She now writes poetry and does fabric and paper art in rural central Virginia. “By reading and writing poetry, I come to terms with my obsessions.”

TIBET IS A COUNTRY

by Judith Partin-Nielsen

Image source: globalpost

BEIJING — Chinese police officials have detained a Tibetan monk and his nephew and accused them of playing a role in a series of self-immolations, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The move appeared to be part of a campaign to prosecute Tibetans who are accused of aiding others who set fire to themselves in protest of Chinese rule. --Edward Wong, The New York Times, December 10, 2012 



1

young monk’s red
and saffron robes
dissolving into flame
the intersection of
faith, courage and despair

2

Outside the rug shop
Tibetan flag flutters
Mourning the death
of the “land of Snows”


Following a trail of words, mountains, spirit and tears, this writer, mother, wife and eventually psychoanalyst left Texas for Colorado in 1985.  The land of the Arapahoe welcomed me and called me by name.  The love of poetry, poet and high mountain valleys has warmed my heart and made my home.  Freud said “everywhere I go, the poet has gone before me.”  May we keep following those footsteps on our paths thru the worlds.  Judith Partin-Nielsen teaches contemplative psychotherapy at Naropa University, practices psychoanalysis and writes poetry.