THRENODY (FOR THE VICTIMS OF HIROSHIMA)

by Howie Good

It’s years later,
but still August,

the sky erupting
in abrupt reds
& parsimonious purples

like God’s own
fiery flesh,

until nowhere
is everywhere,

& our faces are flecked
with sharp grains
of martyrs’ bones.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW

by Buff Whitman-Bradley





Lakota grandmothers in South Dakota
Report that the Department of Social Services
Illegally places Lakota children in foster care
Away from their communities
And extended families
And that those children are continually dosed
With an array of psychoactive drugs
Thus providing pharmaceutical corporations
With a lucrative market
As well as a ready supply of guinea pigs.
When two Lakota children’s noses
Would not stop bleeding
From the medications they he were being fed
Instead of discontinuing the drugs
Doctors sutured their nostrils shut

I know there are those who believe
That humanity is making moral progress
But I see progress in the opposite direction:
As the forces of accumulation and profit grind on
They have become ever more monstrously creative
And efficient
And effective
At mangling lives
Decimating communities
Torturing bodies
And pulverizing spirits.

The good Dr. King told us
That the moral arc of the universe
Bends toward justice
But if I were a little Lakota boy
Stolen from my people
Used as a lab rat
Gagging on the blood pooled in my throat
From a sewn-up nose
I might find that
Difficult to swallow.


Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.  He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective).  He lives in northern California.

LOVING SCRABBLE

by Tricia Knoll

"Hasbro pulls its support of Scrabble's organizing tournament organization -- the National Scrabble Association". --NY Times, July 14, 2013

Words for love: Japanese 2, Sanskrit 96, Ancient Persian 80, Greek 3, English 1

She, sidewinding from the center star: TWOS.

he building from sibilance, up to down: ONES

she slides, pushing tiles over and under ONES, LONESOME

grabbing g, he forges EGO

she built LOVE from loneliness

and he VAGUE from love

she bridges loneliness to vague: NAG

he pounced on VAGUE to USURP

and she that P for PAPA

he pushed TIT up to TWOS

triumph in hard combinations
bedding down together as if
WOO and WED
DARLING and ADORE
VEIL and LACE
TUX and TINGLE and COMMIT
outshone
YES down from YOKE
BUZZ and BLESS and BED,
JOY, JISM, SORROW, and SPARK
EX (triple word score) and SUE and LEFT
FIRE from IRE, ACE hung from AWE
STALE and MATE

she’s left at end with an unplaceable U
he with I


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who loves word games, plays several on her I-Phone and has known some scarey competitive women Scrabble players.

THE PENIS

by Cally Conan-Davies





I don't have one, or rather the one I have

hides discreetly in its little hood. As they should.

A piquant pea, appropriately kept to weather

all kinds of climates hot to chill, with folds

and layers to peel back. And a hook. When laid bare

it won't grow to a tree for all the world to see,

unless of course I'm really a spotted hyena

in which case it would serve a multitude

of purposeful functions: pee, nooky, parturition

(apparently, mine warms to big words though);

and it could be that because it doesn't grow

to industrial proportions, it's easier to ignore it,

easier to relieve it whether anyone is looking or not

and much easier to tell it no, no, no.

Cally Conan-Davies is an Australian writer and teacher who moved to the United States in 2012. Her poems have appeared, and are forthcoming, in Poetry, The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Raintown Review, The Sewanee Review and The Southwest Review, among others. She lives mostly in Oregon.

MPG

by Dawn Corrigan





For 6 years I didn’t own a car.
Then I bought a Jeep Cherokee.

It got 11 miles to the gallon.
As my friend Cameron said

when he took the job
at the missile factory

“I’m part of the problem now!”
Yet how quickly I settled

into driving again,
humming along

to Gnarls Barkley
on the 44-mile commute.

How the oil refineries
of North Salt Lake

glowed like enchanted castles
on the way home at night.

How snow packs formed
on the undercarriages

of the cars, then fell off
in blackened chunks

that dotted the highway
like sleeping birds.

How I imagined those birds
waking up, shaking the snow

from their feathers,
taking off for someplace else.


Dawn Corrigan's poetry and prose have appeared in a number of print and online journals, most recently at DIALOGIST, So to Speak, and Digital Americana.

WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

by James M. Croteau





I guess it's better,
your tone and all,
but get back to me
when you're ready
to end your claims
to nature's law,
and calls to chastity.
Rescind your stance
on who's "intrinsically disordered"
and I'm all ears.
I think your conscience
needs closer examination--
you have to know
that catechism words
like "grave depravity"
are the nails
in the coffins
of too many Catholic boys.


James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing.

IN TEXAS THE WORD WAS REDNECK

by Martha Kaplan

Image source: NPR code switch: “The Secret History Of The Word 'Cracker’” by Gene Demby, July 1, 2013

we sat on a wall above a bayou
on the edge of a large public square
thronged with the night crowd, neon
lights reflecting kaleidoscopic colors
on my fair and his dark epidermis,
when we were surrounded by white
thugs, threatening him, threatening
me, no one in the witnessing multitude
moving, when in an exchange of words
with the ringleader, I uttered, cracker,
and he blushed, surprising me, surprising
him, surprising those others, ignorance
of the meaning of that word deflating
him, dispersing the others; and I wonder
was it gender, class, or race that lent ignorance its sting?


Martha Kaplan now lives in Madison, WI. She has published with Branch Redd Review, Blue Unicorn, Hummingbird, Verse Wisconsin, Hospital Drive, Möbius The Poetry Magazine, and Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources among others.  She has received a number of awards and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

COLORED

by Sanford Fraser
 




Alone on the elevator
I press the ground-floor button.
Just before the door closes, you step in.

I turn my head
keep my eyes on the sinking numbers
and feel the floor falling.

In the street, we raise our  arms
to hail a cab. One slows, passes you,
stops for me.

A bilingual edition of Sanford Fraser’s first book of poems, Among Strangers I Have Known All My Life was published by Editions Tarabuste, France 2007 and by New York Quarterly Books, New York 2010. Tourist, his second book of poems, was published by New York Quarterly Books in 2009.

TO END HUNGER

by Darrell Petska



“The United States has higher rates of hunger and poverty than any other industrialized country. We may feel embarrassed, but we haven’t built the political will to actually do something to improve the situation.” --2013 Hunger Report


President Obama said:
Senator Reid said:
Senator McConnell said:
Representative Boehner said:
Representative Cantor said:
Representative Pelosi said:
The governor said:
The mayor said:

Tommy said: “I'm so hungry my stomach hurts.”
Tommy's Mama said: “Try to sleep.”
Tommy said: “Will we eat tomorrow?”
Tommy's Mama said: “I don't know, Honey.” And sotto voce:
“Some folks don't care if we live or die.”

The Senate Dining Room said come feast on our vermouth-braised
salmon with fingerling sweet potato salad, tarragon dressing,
sugar snap peas, and radishes.


Darrell Petska, writing from Madison, Wisconsin, is a freelance editor in adult education who previously worked as a mental health caseworker, nursing home evaluator, and university editor. Past publications include Modern Haiku, Verse Wisconsin, ProtestPoems.org and others.

THE MEASURE OF A LEADER

by Ed Bennett



SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Well, Bob, we should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws that we repeal.


And each broken bridge,
each rutted road paid for,
abandoned by our indolence,
these are the marks of progress.

Every hungry stomach rumble,
every second job to meet ends,
every idle worker without benefits,
these are the stories of self reliance

by those of us, four hundred fifty strong
(more or less)
who get full time pay
for part time legislation
(or none at all)

and nothing to show except
a blockade of obfuscation,
an obdurate session with
our greatest strength:
a calculated, orchestrated
shout of "NO!".

I am their leader,
the New Moses,
who would rather
sit in the desert heat
than move on to promises.

Let me lead you, brothers and sisters,
away from the evil of the Common Good;
kneel with me here in this desolate 'scape
to worship the imaginary calf
of a Laughing Baal.


Ed Bennett is a poet and reviewer living in Las Vegas, NV. His works have appeared in The Externalist, Touch: The Journal of Healing, The Lavender Review, Quill and Parchment and Lilipo. He is a staff editor for Quill and Parchment Magazine, the recipient of a Pushcart Nomination and the author of “A Transit of Venus”.

ON THE VACANT BRANCH OF THE SPOTTED OWL

by Tricia Knoll

Killing barred owls will aid recovery of Oregon's spotted owls, federal wildlife officials believe. --The Oregonian, July 23, 2013

Talons withdrawn, nests gone,
the spotted owl loses its grip
on security, abundance, old-growth,
silenced victims of manipulated
moaning forest. The wind hears
loss

in the call of the barred
owl, manifest west from the east,
filling a niche
like the coyote
jumping at chance, taking bets

to eat what the wolf wouldn’t,
go where the wolf couldn’t.

An answer: slaughter 3,600
barreds. Invite spotteds
to return and they will
say biologists managing trays
of barred dead. The wind
puzzles out wagers of kills
to save life.

A croupier spins the wheel.
Wrenching bets on black, and the ball
explodes.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. In these days of dwindling biodiversity, she was recently thrilled to see a barred owl on a highway stanchion in Seattle, a place the spotted would never light.

THE CANDIDATE MAKES A PUBLIC STATEMENT ON A PRIVATE MATTER, HIS WIFE AT HIS SIDE

by Michael Cantor





There’s something in the rules, I guess, to make
them brave the scene, dead pale, beside the jerk,
because they all endure it; none will shirk
the role, not one has said, Give me a break,
you asshole, can’t you tell how much I ache –
you’re on your own  – instead, she takes her place
and stands there, shaking,  life drained from her face
as hubby asks the world for time and space.  

There is no way, José, I am forewarned,
you’d ever see me shame myself like that.

I change the channel, give her knee a pat, 

suppress a little joke on women scorned.

I'd like to think she’d stand by me, but still, 

I’ve never run for office, never will.


Michael Cantor’s full-length collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry. A chapbook, The Performer, was published in 2007; and his work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Measure, New Verse News, Raintown Review, SCR, Chimaera, The Flea, and numerous other journals and anthologies.  He was also a finalist for the Nemerov (twice), Richard Wilbur and Robert Penn Warren poetry competitions; and has won the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford prizes.  A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe, and presently resides on Plum Island, north of Boston on the Massachusetts coast.

OUR DATE

by Maria Lisella

Skittles-covered Bicycle. Image source: Foodbeast.

My stepson spent
the afternoon in detention
for lying to a nun.

I told them my name means
pheasants in Italian,
but no one believed me.

Half white, half Puerto Rican,
Italian last name, nappy hair,
said otherwise.

At the perfect age of 10,
my stepson and I
had a date one afternoon.

Determined to teach him to fly,
forget nuns, divorced parents,
over-protective mother,

or, just ride a bike.
A two-wheeler, banana seat,
shiny, chrome, bells, streamers.

He’d run alongside it
throw one leg far and wide
in time to find the pedal

on the other side.
I clutched the back of the seat
sent him off as far as I could.

Like my father did for me,
knowing spills and harm
would follow.

Years later,
a knot in my heart,
his dusty, tear-smeared face

lips quivering, telling me
of a quick ride to Pelham Bay
where he was chased down

by taunts of "You don’t belong here."
            I tried to tell them my name
            but no one listened.

I think of all I don’t know
about courage ­– how to build it,
pass it on, when to fight, to flee,

and when to leave your bike
behind, save your life,
find your way home.


Maria Lisella's Pushcart Poetry Prize-nominated work appears in Amore on Hope Street and Two Naked Feet as well as a number of journals such as Feile Festa, LIPS, Paterson Literary Review, Skidrow Penthouse and online at DanMurano.com and First Literary Review East. Her forthcoming collection, Thieves in the Family, will be published by New York Quarterly Books in 2014. She is a charter member of the online poetry circle, Brevitas and co-curates the Italian American Writers Association literary readings at Cornelia St. Cafe and Sidewalk Cafe in NYC.

MUSCLE FAILURE

an unrhymed blues, an unformed villanelle

by Sadie Ducet

Image source: Black Agenda Report

Somewhere between his death and the time it took

for outrage to find my community we lost

an hour in the morning, gained an hour in the afternoon

so the sun hangs, belting a disbelieving blues.

I join the suburban ballet shuttling kids

between activities and lessons, between his death

and the time it took a young writer

to ask me How do you write about violence?

I don’t, I say. Not violence per se. Not about it.

If there’s violence seeping up out of the poem,

like night coming on, that’s called losing an hour

in the morning, gaining an hour after noon

in the slow descent. What I mean is,

let me tell you about the workouts at my gym:

between his death and the time it took,

it’s all resistance. We push and lift against ourselves

until we can’t go further, holding the pose,

suspended for an hour in the afternoon.

Teeth gritted til the count is done,

that’s where I’m at, sidled up

somewhere between his death and the time it takes.

Between his death and the time it takes.

Sadie Ducet's poems appear here and there, curated by Sarah Busse, who is one of two current Poets Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin, and the co-editor of Verse Wisconsin.

UNAFRAID

by Caroline Harvey



On tour in Ireland, Bruce Springsteen dedicates "American Skin (41 Shots)," his song protesting the death of Amadou Diallo, to Trayvon Martin.


                Boston. 2:05pm, April 19th 2013.

my father, an attorney,
represented the new york state police bureau in the 80's.
when I was a child we had police stickers on our cars
and police license plates sat smug on our bumpers.
the officers and captains knew him by first name,
which meant we were waved through all the
barricades, the checkpoints, the
I’m sorry I was speeding, how's it going Jim, tickets.
I grew up imagining that
I was something remarkable,
that the cops had my back, especially.

I did not know
what my body meant.

I did not understand, not really
until Amadou Diallo
not until I lived in Oakland
not until I watched old women get beat down
for their purses
watched innocent black boys get cuffed and kidney punched
saw three year olds of every color huddle next to crack addicted moms
not until I learned to dance the orisha prayers in LA
got god-drunk with Maria, who was brown and Cuban
and her husband Alex, who was white and from Chicago
not until I traveled alone in Thailand, in Guatemala,
got spit on and kicked and attacked for my ignorance

not until I lived as an adult did I know
what it meant to be a child
white
and female

and to come from enough privilege
enough money
enough education
to grow up unafraid
of the police.


While the Boston Police, The FBI, and The National Guard hunted the Boston Marathon Bombing suspects, poet and educator Caroline Harvey endured the terrifying and mandated "Shelter In" by writing three poems every 90 minutes. Caroline has been featured on Season Five of HBO’s Def Poetry, and has shared stages with Melissa Ferrick, Livingston Taylor and Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), among others. Most recently, she was featured at the US Embassy in Serbia where she performed original work and led workshops about free speech for the first generation of youth to grow up post-Milosevic. Her work has been published in national and academic literary journals, including the National Poetry Slam Anthology “High Desert Voices,” Gertrude Press, Radius, The Legendary and The Lowestoft Chronicle, and she was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. Currently Caroline lives in Boston and teaches at Berklee College of Music.

AFTERMATH

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

 

Image source: PostcardCollector

Birch postcards scattered on the lawn this morning.
They’re for me though I can’t read them.
Zinnias all spindled in the storm’s path.
My neighbor rakes the street because he hires his yard done.
A downed limb arches over a small tree, very St Louis.
An empty nest means the storm came late enough.
Air so fresh there’s still cellophane on it.
Spider webs scoured from the shrubs.
Thanks for thinning the sunflowers.
We can all start over.


Elizabeth Kerlikowske reports here on what is happening in the Midwest.

REMNANTS OF A 100 DEGREE DAY

by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Image source: Brain Pickings

I. Walking to the market

Moist wipe on the sidewalk
and a matchbook that says Thank You

In the mortuary planter
an empty Menthol Marlboro

And a Funeral car window sticker folded
on a parking space looks like Fun

No surprise, a discarded used cigarette
and a Popsicle stick in the other planter

Farther, on the driveway, a straw wrapper
and a pack of Camel Menthol in a flowering bush

At the corner gutter a plastic twisted
shopping bag waits for any flow of water

Across the street a trail of toilet paper
forms an S in a rectangular planter

On the church steps an opened veggie bag
is imprinted Stay Open To The Possibilities

Bus stop planter sports a half-used Arby's
Tangy BBQ Sauce tublet and what I believe
is a mangled Kit Kat wrapper next to a
torn four tablet package of Pepto Chewables

There is also a balled up sandwich wrapper
printed with the word Comment inside

II. At the market

Parked next to a car an almost clear McCafe cup
and next to another one a barely sipped
El Pollo Loco drink might be lemonade

G Series Gatorade Prime 01 packet squeezed
out and discarded on a parking lot median

On the asphalt between the lines of a space,
hard plastic container used to hold
Home Grown Sweet Flat Peaches

A concrete space bumper has the ripped off
label of a pack of Value Soft White Facial Tissue

A classic crushed in two red plastic drinking cup
reflects late afternoon Alhambra sun

And what's this? A soiled menu for a Chinese
restaurant and another crushed cup (this one
was a Golden Mini Oreo Bite Size Go-Pack!)

III. On the walk back

A banana peel in a parking space
looking like one of Prince's guitars

A Popsicle stick partially stained orange
and stuck in its plain white wrapper

An upside down In-N-Out smashed cardboard tray
with equally flattened red palm tree emblazoned cup

I think I found the clear plastic lid
that belonged to that soda

Yellow soda cap, another Arby's wrapper,
another moist wipe, another emptied clear cup

Finally!  A single dandelion on the mortuary lawn
ready for a confused child in need of fun

And not far away two tossed Super Heavy Duty
Eveready batteries in the grass below the viewing room

IV. Back home

One apartment's got 14 cigarette butts
resting on the window air conditioner

Another has three recently finished
plastic bottles: two water, one Coke Zero

And the pool below our apartment supports
two broken parts of a blue Styrofoam noodle
floating near an un-tethered life saver 


Don Kingfisher Campbell has recently been published in Statement, Poetry Super Highway, Writers At Work, The Bicycle Review, Crack The Spine, Lummox, Poetic Diversity, The Sun Runner, and Poetry Breakfast.  He is currently working on an MFA in Poetry at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

AFTER THE VERDICT

by David Radavich

Howard University Medical Students (Image source: Carmar Descamento-Park)

There’s no end
to the battles.

My heart
can’t take
so much fighting,

yet it goes on
spinning
and spinning

like silk
of a forgotten
tapestry.

I am not alone.
You are not alone.

The ramparts
are worth climbing.

The ramparts
are life,

the moat death,
slow and inexorable.

We must
carry our swords

as if we
were masters,

cross the
infested waters,

call out
justice
to the wind,

sing our
blood home

in unison
climbing high

into
the fortress.


David Radavich’s recent collections include America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007), Canonicals: Love’s Hours (2009), and Middle-East Mezze (2011).  His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe.  His new collection, The Countries We Live In, will come out later this year.

PIED AUTHORITY

by Ralph La Rosa





           after Hopkins

Glory be, he is by God a dappled being—
His house now couple-coloured as a brindled cow;
For faces all a-stipple standing by him;
For words he says for burnt-brown Trayvon’s dying;

Statescapes gutted,pieced—white, black, & now
A verbal fight in which Floridians mock him.
All things countered, North & South estranged;
Wars un-civil embers; inscaped Jim Crow.

With words puzzled, clear, sweet , sour, bright, dim
My president insists this will be changed:

Praise him.


Ralph La Rosa is widely published in print and online journals.

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK

by James Penha

My name is Doc; you can call me Sir. I'll be your server tonight. The maitre d' tells me our regular menu holds no interest for you. But we will not let you starve. Or find another restaurant. Or review us at TripAdvisor. And so I am here with the specials. Sit back as we tuck you into this special chair. Like business class on American. A few extra belts maybe, and, no, no champagne. But we do take one page from Larousse: the foie gras page. The starter is something like a sausage casing. Even empty, it fulfills from nose to stomach. What's good for a goose is good for a gander. This bib we set just so around your neck and over your lips. No mastication necessary. And no more talk. It's dining as you have never dined before: more like breathing in a whole lobster liquified in drawn butter. Nutrition in charge! So very special.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.