CUTBACKS

by Catherine McGuire

Cartoon by Politico's Matt Wuerker

“It’s gotten hard,” he said, shaking out a Lucky
from the pack, lighting, sucking nicotine.
“Bank slammed us with overdrafts, landlord
wants us out. Two jobs folded –
there’s nothing in this county. Nothing.”

Drizzle feathers his worn shearling coat.
He glances at me, away.
Under the anger, terror. At thirty,
strong, skilled, he chases two-bit jobs, like mine.
Between rabbits, he tells me of the farms shut down,
or selling out, of the rattle-trap car too complex
for him to fix. The job forms, the ad in Craigs List,
the silence. He dispatches the second rabbit,
cuts short its squeal with practiced aim.

He shrugs. “Might have to leave. Alaska,
shale fields… but moving costs money – what if
there’s nothing there?”
I give him five bucks, offer him a rabbit,
let him have his pick of homemade jams.
No welfare for single white men.
Let them work, the Lear jet crowd sneers.
or let them starve.


Catherine McGuire has had almost 300 poems published in venues such as: Adagio, Avocet, Folio, Fireweed, FutureCycle, Green Fuse, Main Street Rag, New Verse News, Nibble, Portland Lights Anthology and Tapjoe. Her chapbook, Palimpsests, was released by Uttered Chaos in 2011. She has three self-published chapbooks.

SHELL OIL IN NIGERIA

by B.Z. Niditch

Mixed Decision for Shell in Nigeria Oil Spill Suits --NY Times, January 30, 2013;
Image source: Aljazeera January 31, 2013

In gutted morning
of the Ogoni villagers
the poor wake up
as we earth friends
of the Niger delta
hold faithful pencils
and write
of your struggle,
knowing each bruise
on the assembled
gathering to hear
the radio
with battered lilies
from years of pollution
in the injustice
of acid rain
dulled by hunger
without fishing grounds
under the rope
of tar skies
oil once filled
the delta
as Aaron's beard,
in the name and life
of Ken Saro-Wiwa
you are not abandoned
to the huge profits
of yet another
international corporation.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.