BEULAH LAND BLUES

by Earl J Wilcox

Gunshot kills woman sitting at home

( Headline in The Herald, Rock Hill, SC, Feb. 2, 2012)

She was up before Monday’s sunrise, putting the sheets
in the washer, sweeping the little back porch, swatting
mid-winter flies away from the kitchen sink where

she’d left a small plate with tuna crumbs from last night’s meal.
Before her grand baby, Chloe, should arrive, she’d have
everything tidied and cleaned and stored, leaving plenty

of time for her to watch Curious George with Chloe
who always came galloping into the tiny house when
her momma dropped the toddler off around eight o’clock.

When 7:15 rolled around, Alma sat in her rocker, tilted
her head back for a brief nap, awoke when St. Peter
called her name, asked her to step lively as the morning

dew was almost gone from the deep back yard grasses
where she was hanging out her fresh wash on a peaceful
mid-winter Monday.


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.
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SIX MORE WEEKS

by Roxanne Hoffman

on Groundhog Day

Awake anxious burrowed below
curious critter doubtful dutiful emerges
eyes furtively facing greyness groundside
harbinger hunched instinctively intuits
jowly judges kingdom keenly

Legendary Litmus:
maybe? maybe? 
no... not...
oh! oh!

Prognosticator’s  Proclamation:
quivering quixotic
regards  retreats
sunshine’s shadow seen
tanking temperatures unrelenting

Underground:
vernal vibrancy waits
wintering yogi yawns
Zzzz-zoned


Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline for a New York home healthcare provider. Her words can be found on and off the net in such journals as Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, The Fib Review, Hospital Drive, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, and Shaking Like A Mountain; the indie flick Love And The Vampire; and the anthologies The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70 (Wising Up Press), and  It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). She and her husband own the small press, Poets Wear Prada. 
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SMALL GOVERNMENT

by E. F. Schraeder


A shadow operation manages
to paint itself minuscule.
It solves problems

by shrinking beneath doorways,
into bedrooms
to stop lovers from wedding;

into doctor offices
to peek beneath the paper sheets,
and block reproductive services.

Small enough to fit into wires,
listen to protestors plan permitted
events in gated public spaces.

Small enough to build walls
between countries
and boost border brutality.

Small enough to fit into dictionaries,
rename activists as terrorists,
liberals as radicals, radicals as socialists.

Small enough to shrink corporate dollars
into unlimited campaign funnels
in a public court

and small enough to fit
neatly, like a concealed carry
law, in a small space,

offering a perfect fit
for closed
minds.


E.F. Schraeder's work has appeared in Haz Mat Review, Blue Collar Review, Hiram Poetry Review, and elsewhere.  She is currently working on a new manuscript of poems.
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TURN THE WORLD -- #Occupy

by Buff Whitman-Bradley


It is not
Upside down
We wish
To turn
The world
But right-side
Up


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals.  With his wife Cynthia he is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, Outside In,  and co-editor of the forthcoming book About Face: GI Resisters Turn Against War (PM Press, 2011).  He is also co-producer/director of the documentary Por Que Venimos.
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SONNET FROM THE AMERICAN

by Judith Morehouse


Wikipedia, how did I miss thee? Let me count the ways.
I missed thee to the depth and breadth and height
That false information can reach, when the answer was out of sight
And I tripped during the researching race.
I missed thee to the level of everyday’s
Most urgent need, when the fist of knowledge was tight.
I missed thee freely: I have no money;
I missed thee purely, knowledge from error.
I missed thee with a passion, for thy uncensored wealth.
I missed thee with a mind that I seemed to lose
With my lost internet,--- I missed thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if SOPA should pass,
I shall but miss thee more after death.


Editor's Note: This poem was written in a responsive style. Lines were alternately written by Judith Morehouse and Sarah Graf. The complete poem was edited by Judith Morehouse who holds all rights to the poem.

Judith Morehouse is a performer and poet. She is currently preparing the role of Inez in Verdi's opera Il Trovatore and the role of Yente in Fiddler on the Roof. In her sparse, spare time, she keeps up with politics and reads.
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TRANSPARENCY

by David S. Pointer

                     Transparency

interferes with
                       the absence
                        of insightful dialogue
                       transmitted to people

interferes with
                       the preference
                         for high level privacy
                       during economic piracy

interferes with
                        the low pay repositories
                         the free people usability continuum
                        the lifecycle curiosity extraction

interferes with
                       the data purge
                         of financial, medical
                       and chemical information

interferes with
                       the myth, beauty, trivia
                        poetry professors pretending
                       they are above the fray

interferes with
                      the myth of the great man
                       the domestic assassination
                      the international assassination

interferes with
                      the diversionary entertainment
                       the familial and world peace
                      the quiet green horizons to come


David S. Pointer lives and writes from Murfreesboro, TN. He has recent acceptances at Rattle, Static Movement, and The Spirit of Poe anthology at Literary Landmark Press. All proceeds from the Poe anthology will go to benefit the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Baltimore, MD that lost $80,000 in government funding.
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BBC REPORT FROM [INSERT COUNTRY NAME HERE]

by Richard Storm


And now, daytime traffic is allowed again.
The smell of burning in the air.
So many families have lost loved ones.
This was something else.
A man was standing in front of his home. “Your children are okay then?” He refused to give his name.
The people here, however resilient, will need time to recover from this.


Richard Storm moved from his native Oregon to Manhattan in 1978 to pursue an acting career. A charter member of brevitas, an email poetry collective, he believes poetry need not be obscure to be poetic.
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ATTRACTED TO DISTRACTION

by Kim Doyle


The big questions are, admittedly,
hard to face.  It’s easier to twitter, to iPad,
or wonder if one has enough Facebook friends.

What was written on your “wall” today?
Technology lends itself to calculated
thinking on the right side of the brain -
which lends itself to "final solutions."

Social networking is a shadow of the real thing.
The emphasis on caring in its biggest sense
is lost - caring for those who reveal the world
in all its multiple, mind piercing satisfactions -
caring for the essential business of being-ness.
How should I live the engaged life?  It is a planet
filled with war and blood and ill-starred sacrifice.
The big questions have no traction.
In-authenticity is rife - the ending of a life
causes no ripples, quietness has no magnetism.
Loving the earth as oneself is just another
ecological faction.


Kim Doyle writes Op/Ed poems for The Brunswick Citizen in Brunswick, Maryland.
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OCCUPY THIS

by Martin Willitts Jr


After 110 days of peaceful demonstration, Occupy Syracuse was forced out of “Perseverance Park.”


110 days to break us down,
dismantle us, like words
are deconstructed or misused
or misheard, bent
by politicians by their belief
in co-opting or shouting against us
how wasteful and destructive we are,
when all we wanted
was a chance to say something,
like kindling fire,
to make people restless
at the possibility we will disturb their dream
of what we should be and are not,
a consumer of lies, like they are, tents
folded into origami memories,
protest signs sighing,
and the things we stand for
are portrayed as destructive,
even though peaceful and supposedly our rights,
stampeded by the right,
so what we are is 110 words of loss,
what is the length of an eviction notice,
how long did it take you to notice me,
where are 110 justifications
for the wrong things we see,
the 110 things you think we are doing wrong,
taking a 110 minutes to sign
a proclamation declaring us illegal,
antlers growing and steam in your sentences
to sentence us,
110 gavels by the judge,
110 steps pacing a cell door,
110 watt light bulb flicking out on liberty’s lamp,
110 minutes for me to make one phone call
and my time was up and I am crap out of luck,
110 stars visible in the night
or is that 110 snowflakes or is it 110 degrees,
or does it matter when my freedom is withheld,
kept in check and balances,
the scales of justice tilting like a smirk,
as I count backwards from 110 to keep busy
and focus, as you wonder if I used 110 words.



Martin Willitts Jr was nominated for two Best of The Net awards and his 5th Pushcart award. He has had nine poetry chapbooks accepted in 2011 including True Simplicity (Poets Wear Prada Press, 2011), My Heart Is Seven Wild Swans Lifting (Slow Trains, 2011), Why Women Are A Ribbon Around A Bomb (Last Automat, 2011), Art Is Always an Impression of What an Artist Sees (Muse Café, 2011), Protest, Petition, Write, Speak: Matilda Joslyn Gage Poems (Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2011), How To Find Peace (Kattywumpus Press, 2011), Playing The Pauses In The Absence Of Stars (Main Street Rag, 2012), No Special Favors (Green Fuse Press, 2012),  and Secrets No One Wants To Talk About (Dos Madres Press, 2011). 
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3, 4 0R 5-TOED DRAGON

Poem by Charles Frederickson; Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

 
Year of the Dragon roars
In breathing glows-in-the-dark spitfire flames
Consumed by pulsating solar energy
Before being swallowed into oblivion

Everything old becomes new again
Recycled wishes given second chance
Shining example experiencing daily rebirth
Propitious omen foreboding divine spirit

Yesterday’s realities become tomorrow’s fantasies
Past Present Future trading places
Time-warp distorting what you see
Isn’t actually probably never was

Dreams within dreams awakening overnight
Consciousness clutching security blanket comforter
Stuffed downy pillows passionate moments
Consoling blissful suffering eternal love

Legendary mythical creature that laid
No eggs had no young
Can heal itself if injured
Salty teardrops healing mortal wounds

5-toed fifth Chinese Zodiac Sign
4-toed Korean soaring 3-toed Japanese
Golden phoenix claws clutching pearl
Auspicious symbol signifying celestial happiness

Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present 28 YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .
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APOCALYPTICS

by David Radavich   


We want
the world to burn

and everything
we dislike

destroyed in a burst
or a deluge

so there’s no
mistake

we are the good
guys, God’s favorites,

who will finally
own all
and be all

we dreamed
since

our partial
birth.


David Radavich's new book of poems Middle-East Mezze (Plain View Press, 2011) focuses on Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt. Previous poetry publications include Canonicals: Love's Hours (Finishing Line, 2009),  America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (Plain View Press, 2007), Slain Species (Court Poetry Press, London), By the Way (Buttonwood Press, 1998), and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press, 2000). His plays have been performed across the U.S. and abroad, including five Off-Off-Broadway productions. He also enjoys writing essays on poetry, drama, and contemporary issues.
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PICKING PRESIDENTS

by Kathleen Flenniken

Perhaps Americans are Iowans in essence.
Granite Staters. South Carolinians. Our system teaches us
the states in the west

don’t need or have a say—speaking as a westerner—
so we don’t field candidates, in essence,
we don’t have presidents from the great northwest.  Would any of us

want the presidency anyway?  Kissing babies, wars, and crisis.  None of us
meet these egregious sweater-vested villains in person.  We moved out west
for independence and (still remember) privacy.  These hand-picked states in essence

represent us. It’s essentially democracy by proxy. The west just watches on TV.


Kathleen Flenniken’s new collection, Plume, from University of Washington Press, is a very personal history of the Hanford Nuclear Site.  Her poems appeared in recent issues of Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, and the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology.
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FOR HAMZA ALI AL-KHATEEB

by Peleg Held

Many tributes to Hamza al-Khateeb, such as this one drawn by a child, were posted to a Facebook group  to commemorate his life and death.  Source: Aljazeera.

Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, a thirteen-year old boy 
tortured and killed in Syria on April 29, 2011. 

He kept homing pigeons.

From my father's roof I rise, circling
the loss I cannot gather with these permeable wings

The bridge from pigeon to dove,
the broken body of a child.
From obedience to unruly honor,
the broken body of a child.

From this day forward the words
I carry will be mine alone,
home or elsewhere.
Words lifted into fury,
legs folded and burned but
still unbanded.


Peleg Held is a writer and a carpenter living with his partner and their brigand children in the southeast United States. He is a former member of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to lift the economic sanctions on Iraq and other failed attempts at decency.
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LEGISLATION AS EUPHEMISM

by Jon Wesick

NVN Editor’s Note: This video accompanying Jon Wesick's prose poem was created by David Holmes and other journalism students at Jay Rosen's NYU's Studio 20 as part of their collaboration with ProPublica.org to build better explanations of progressive issues.

A few years ago Congress fracked over the American public by exempting hydraulic fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Typical for corrupt politicians to sell us out to greedy corporations that don’t give a frack whether we get cancer from drinking poisoned water as long as there’s a quick buck to be made. I have one thing to say to the motherfrackers who voted for this obscenity. Take a flying frack at a rolling donut.

Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as the The New Verse News, New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
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PRIMARY COLORS

by John Palen


when a death squad came
people banged on pots and pans
jammed streetcorners

when a fighter pilot
strafed a schoolgirl by mistake
she jumped in a ditch

when village women
turned out, soldiers let them pass
shot them in the back

red yellow blue green
cotton over limbs and torsos
so easily riddled

tell me, Yogi,
what game is it that ain’t over
even when we win?


This is John Palen's third appearance in The New Verse News. His first collection of flash fiction, Small Economies, is forthcoming from Mayapple Press. His reviews of literary magazines appear in New Pages. A Central Illinois resident, Palen blogs about poetry and fiction at www.johnpalensblog.blogspot.com.
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BACK TO THE FUTURE

by Helen Padway


SUMTER, S.C. — The conservative bedrock issues of abortion, gay marriage and faith that have long shaped Republican campaigns in the South moved toward the forefront of the presidential contest here Saturday as candidates scrambled for the support of evangelical voters. --By Philip Rucker, Washington Post, January 15, 2012


At the narrow end of the funnel
of her mind - stained  red brick
building, alley entrance - steep steps,
foot sounds muted on torn rubber treads.
Finger marked hall walls, printed
black numbers on frosted glass,
the edges ready to flake, door hinge
squeaking like a rabbit caught in the claws
of a horned owl. A brass doorknob
layered in the grunge
of sweaty palms.  An empty waiting room.

Three chairs,
cracked yellow plastic covers,
curled copy of Modern Screen.  
Gray asbestos tile floor.
From the open inner door
a paunchy figure
with no face, only the white plump
hand beckoning. Inside the room a narrow black
leather table and a steaming Nesco Roaster
filled with boiling water
and hot sharp steel. Do you have the money?
Handoff of rolled bills fastened
by red yarn. He counts, has clean fingernails.
You can keep your bra and shirt on.


Helen Padway lives, writes and contemplates life in Wisconsin. She is happy to see her poems published in journals throughout the US. She is concerned about the political scene but is able to smile as she interacts with her family and other poets.
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ON POST COLONIALISM

by E. F. Schraeder


I read the term first
in a smart book

I borrowed from the library
back in grad school and

I wondered
When did they leave?


E.F. Schraeder's creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in the anthologies Kicked Out, Whitechapel 13, Father Grim's Storybook, and others.  Schraeder’s poetry has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, Bluepepper, On the Issues, Blue Collar Review, Haz Mat Review, New Verse News, and other journals.  She is working on a new manuscript of poems and waiting for more snow.
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THE YEAR IN PREVIEW

by David Feela


This year will be different:
suicide bombers will be kinder,
senseless shooters more considerate,
the banks less greedy.

Congress will get to work
legislating America’s confidence
and hangovers from drunken holidays
will be covered by Medicare.

European debt will melt like polar ice
and dead movie stars will come back to life.
It will be a landmark year for self delusion.
Earthquakes, tornadoes, and oil spills

will manifest themselves
for study instead of destruction. 
The homeless will begin to relish
the freedom of not owning a home.

Wildlife will adapt to the virtues
of domesticity, nuclear power plants
will generate the scent of fresh snow,
and a forest of electronic books

will be harvested by hackers,
to be left on the virtual doorsteps
of overcrowded online schools. 
An abducted child will be found

alive -- the police apprehending
a network of journalists who suggested
that things would not turn out
as well as they did.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches (Footnotes from the Four Corners), has just been released through Raven's Eye Press.
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POEMING THE BAMBINO Part 3

by Rochelle Owens

Click here for Part 1 of Poeming the Bambino

Click here for Part 2 of Poeming the Bambino

Amazed at the sound
the little wooden bambino
l  i s t e n s

the blocks falling
on a stone floor
“in my father’s house”

Amazed at the touch
The little wooden bambino
 f e e l s

an icon hanging
on a nail
“in my mother’s house”

Amazed at the sight
the little wooden bambino
s t a r e s

on my mother’s face
a melancholy look

disease  famine  torture  war

a spider rendering light

on my mother’s face
one eye cut into pieces

covetous brotherly love

Amazed at the smell
the little wooden bambino
I n h a l e s

poison

an apple and a knife
paring the apple
without breaking the peel

throwing the parings
beyond the edges
of a page

disease  famine  torture  war

Amazed at the taste
the little wooden bambino
b I t e s

an apple

his rosebud mouth an irregular shape

covetous brotherly love
beyond the edges of a page


Rochelle Owens is the author of twenty books of poetry, plays, and fiction, the most recent of which are Solitary Workwoman, (Junction Press, 2011), Journey to Purity (Texture Press, 2009), and Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000). A pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement and an internationally known innovative poet, she has received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her play Futz, which is considered a classic of the American avant-garde theatre, was produced by Ellen Stewart at LaMama, directed by Tom O’Horgan and performed by the LaMama Troupe in 1967, and was made into a film in 1969. A French language production of Three Front was produced by France-Culture and broadcast on Radio France. She has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan’s novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Oklahoma and held residencies at Brown and Southwestern Louisiana State. This is Rochelle Owens' twenty-fifth New Verse News poem.
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ANOTHER WORLD: A NEW YEAR OF POSSIBILITIES

by Mary Saracino


“Another world is not only possible. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing.” --Arundhati Roy


Softly, on the sigh of a breeze
in the steady certainty of her quiet exhale
another way unfurls, answering our longing
for a different world, a place of peace and possibilities
where children always have enough
and mothers and fathers
always love without limitation
giving no thought to the things that hinder
or impoverish their hopes, their dreams.
Where on this wide round planet can
that kind of world exist if we cannot find it
within our fragile hearts, tender with desire
bruised from too many years of silencing,
too many clamoring voices drowning out
the visions of prophets and seers
poets and peons, the brilliant,crazy ones
who know that the only thing we need
to do to change everything is to be still
open our eyes, un-jail our hearts, rid our tongues
of hateful words, liberate our weary minds
of bigotry and separation, open our lungs
to joy and celebration, ride the winds of change
as if we had no other choice.
We must bury our war dead forever
bury our wars, too. We must cultivate
compassion for everything, big or little, human or not
making room for every woe, every jubilation
for it is only here inside our blood and our bones
that the breath of the world can birth her precious promise
fill us with the fortitude we need to create
a new way of life, a new way to live.
If we listen we will know how to join her
in her quiet revolution, how to echo her nonviolent wail
for justice and equality for every being
everywhere a breath is breathed, everywhere a life is born
until at last we all are free to come home
to the only home we have every truly wanted
the only place where we can resuscitate our meager hopes
with the replenishing air of her unfailing breath.


Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet and memoir-writer who lives in Lafayette, CO . Her most recent novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Her short story, "Vicky's Secret" earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.
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