HALF THE MERCY

by Tony Brown

Pope Francis confessed Thursday that he took the rosary cross of his late confessor from his casket and wears it to this day in a fabric pouch under his cassock. He said he did so telling the late priest, "Give me half your mercy." --ABC News, March 6, 2014

The Pope speaks

of how once he lifted a cross

from a corpse’s fingers,



left roses

in its place, and now

carries that theft
with him always

under his clothes.

Those innocent
severed roses still rot

in the dark of the tomb

where mercy is nowhere to be found
and there’s no redemption

or resurrection

to be had
as a crime is revealed,

no one is shocked, and once again

everything stays the same.


Tony Brown is a poet from Worcester, MA.  He works as a consultant and writer.

PASSOVER

by Mark Danowsky

At first, Rustem Kadyrov could barely make out the mark outside his house, in the Crimean town of Bakhchysarai, but it filled him with terror. It was an X, cut deep into the gray metal of the gate, and its significance cut even deeper, evoking a memory Kadyrov shares with all Crimean Tatars. Kadyrov, who is thirty-one, grew up hearing stories about marks on doors. In May of 1944, Stalin ordered his police to tag the houses of Crimean Tatars, the native Muslim residents of the peninsula. Within a matter of days, all of them—almost two hundred thousand people—were evicted from their homes, loaded onto trains, and sent to Central Asia, on the pretext that the community had collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Crimea. -- Natalia Antelava, The New Yorker, March 6, 2014

Image source: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

They say it’s happening again—Xs
mark the doors of Crimean Tatars.
They say Stalin was responsible
the first time around, but he was not
first to come up with the idea.
The ancient texts speak of markings
made in blood from sheep or goat
slashed on doorposts lest
the Angel of Death take your first born.


Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Snow Monkey and The New Verse News.  His poem "5am Summer Storm" won Imitation Fruit’s “Animals and Their Humans” Contest, in 2013. He resides in Northwest Philadelphia and works for a private detective agency.

PRAVDA

by Kelly Jadon

Nicholas Roerich, "Guests from Overseas"

Awaking in spring, gaunt from nursing cubs
in darkness, alone, in her den
So is Mother Russia with Ukraine, Georgia
buffers which she keeps within reach

Her snowy fur hiding blackened skin
for warmth against ancient frigid tundra
Crossed by Vikings, Rus', a brutal heritage
ancestral blood violented by Mongols

Hunting hares across drifts
she returns with raw prey
offerings of peace to cubs
Feeding rebellious spirits within her states

Drawing her babes outward,
she nudges them to follow
in her footsteps they plod,
Unbalanced, weak, young
not fully independent democracies

To the sea’s ice
she dives fishing
gazing into air holes of whiskered seals
her territory
As is Kiev, taken by Grand Prince of Rus'
Oleg

Swimming miles across open waters
she leads growing cubs
in her wake
Old Soviet thinking controlling masses
hammer and sickle
Berlin wall, Afghanistan, Georgia—
all unforgotten

Two years cubs follow the mother
learning her hunting and survival skills
As Viking thoughts prepare for Mongol behaviors
the Rus'
bear witness
truth of who they truly are


Kelly Jadon is a graduate of Spring Arbor University and holds a degree in English with a focus on poetry.  She is a teacher, poet, and writer.  Her poem "To Taste The Oil" was recently published by The Voices Project and was featured at the University of Colorado "Eye Contact" event as an audible poem.  Her poem "the snow pile" was published at Everyday Poets (1/2014).  "Destination Hamamatsu" to be published in Pavilion Magazine (Fall 2014).

UKRAINE: NOTES, 2014

by Kathleen Sousa Capps

@anadoluimages: A piano painted the colours of Ukrainian national flag at Independence Square in the capital Kiev.
Image source: Veooz 360

If I knew how to play
I’d set up a grand piano
In Kiev
In Independence
Square
Right now
While it’s winter
Though each note hang on the air
Like an icicle suspended
From the frame of a burnt out bus
It would still be carried with passion
Wrung from the heart of a nightingale
I’d play every Handel and Mozart Requiem,
Every song that blows out a candle
Every thought that says THIS IS NOT A COUP
This is a cry for human rights, to let us out of this
Dictatorship, this collaboration with fascism
To deny freedom of choice, to deny free trade,
Intellect, spirit, Ukraine and Europe.
Right now
While Kiev is burning
In flames
And riot police claim lives
And protestors toss Molotov cocktails
If I could I’d sit in front of a grand piano
And each moment would pray for peace


Kathleen Sousa Capps holds a PhD in English from University of Oregon (1998).  Publications in literary and academic journals, including Paideuma.   Dissertation topic: Image Trouble: Pound’s People-Making as Visual Discourse.  Trying to find an agent/publisher for her novel, Blackberry Woman.  Because Kathleen is hearing impaired and blind, her father forbade her to learn to play the piano; he said it was a waste of time.  And college is no place for women.  (That’s what he said.)

BILL GATES AND THE POET

by Earl J. Wilcox

For Richard Wilbur
Born March 1, 1921
Image source: Bluedragonfly10

In his Frost-country cottage, the poet
and his trusty L. C. Smith typewriter
labor in clear harmony this morning.
The machine does its clacking act
when the writer pounds the keys.

Only one whose finger muscles
are still strong enough to clutch
an axe handle or milk a cow, if need be,
can muster strength to strike with
force worn-down letters like y or z,
and others when pressed into action.

Here there is no angst or desire
for the ease which a chichi computer
keyboard could offer to curtail
the constant pain in the right hand
or the left one, too, for that matter.
Poet and typewriter conspire, create
a new song amid the view from the
open cottage window, where Bill Gates
seems irrelevant, does not intrude.


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.

EMERGENCE

by Catherine McGuire

Russia's version of Facebook is being used to recruit men to cause conflict in Crimea. --“Photos To Start A War By” by Kelly Weaver, Liberal America, March 1, 2014.

On a day twin lambs were born
and Russia grabbed Crimea
the rain riffed on roofs
and washed the blood off brick
into gutters already so wise, so cynical.

On a morning camellias bloomed
and some hens eggs were fertile
the spy nets bulged with threats and plaints
jet fuel burned as minions swooped
but the guns were smug, now silent.

This mud is not ready for green, nor spring.
Too much is drowning here.


Catherine McGuire fills her well of grief for the world with poems. She has published in the US and abroad and has four chapbooks: Palimpsests, (Uttered Chaos, 2011) Glimpses of a Garden, Poetry and Chickens, and Joy Holding Stillness.

ANOTHER SUNDAY IS POSSIBLE

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Although I would rather stay home
On such a splendid day
Pull a couple of weeds
Straighten up the mess on my desk
Maybe take a walk later
Fit a nap in somewhere
Instead I’m going to a meeting
Where we will make urgent plans
To save the world
From the depredations
Of the pernicious
Greedy bastards
Who are poisoning the planet
And dismembering our common life
Once we have accomplished that however
I’ll be spending my Sundays right here
Puttering around the house


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.

CARGO SHIP SPILLS

by Joan Mazza

(CNN February 22, 2014) -- On any day, between 5 million and 6 million containers are on the high seas, carrying everything from potato chips to refrigerators. But not all of them make it to their destination, as the crew of the Svendborg Maersk have just found out. Their Danish-flagged ship was in the Bay of Biscay last week as hurricane-force winds battered the Atlantic coast of Europe. Amid waves of 30 feet and winds of 60 knots, the Svendborg began losing containers off northern France. After the ship arrived in the Spanish port of Malaga this week, Maersk discovered that about 520 containers were unaccounted for. Stacks of others had collapsed. It's the biggest recorded loss of containers overboard in a single incident.

Image source: Shipspotting

Containers stacked, packed into ships overloaded
by unknown amounts until they buckle and bend,
tip their load into water. Each one the size
of a semi truck trailer, fully loaded, in stormy seas,
they dump flyswatters with sports teams’ logos,
thousands of Lego pieces.

The Hansa Carrier lost 80,000 unlaced Nike sneakers,
making it The Great Shoe Spill of 1990. Two more
containers of Nike Cross Trainers went overboard
in ‘99, offering a second chance at free shoes.
They race on ocean currents to land on shores
around the world, a colorful, startling pollution.

Traveling from China to the US in 1992,
28,000 rubber ducks and other bath toys
were dumped in the Atlantic by a rogue wave,
making them collectibles when found, turning
the waters into a bathtub for giants.

In Florida, a container of Doritos was discovered
and broken into, chips dry and mostly undamaged,
delighting beachcombers and gulls. Like trucks
spilling money on the highway, scavengers descend
for a free meal, toys, or mystery object: a huge
standing Lego Man, commanding Florida dunes.

The rest sinks deep or disperses like oil, results
to be seen later. Much later. Artificial reef or slowly
diffusing chemicals, leached into our oceans,
packing pellets in the guts of the fish we eat?


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

WAITING FOR THE TERRORISTS

by Richard O'Connell

                 after Cavafy's "Waiting for the Barbarians"


Why are we waiting, desperate for information?
Because the terrorists will strike today.

Why has Congress adjourned and gone into hiding
and set up a secret shadow government?

Because the terrorists are on their way,
muffled, dressed like cut-rate dervishes,
and they'll abolish speeches and elections.

Why did our president evaporate
on a jet, spirited to a distant site,     
enthroned in a lead vault deep under ground?

Because the terrorists will strike today
and the President and his advisers must
survive to issue proclamations and appeals
for public calm and broadcast patriotic hymns
surrounded by bright panoplies of banners.

Why are so many generals on television   
parading their medals, beating the drum
for prophylactic war with loud boasts about 
our unprecedented military might? 
Why is the press in bed with mad Procrustes?
Why is criticism greeted with derision? 

Because the terrorists will strike today
and one person's patriotism is another's prison.

Why have our moral leaders disappeared?
Why have our laws and civil rights been trashed?

Because the terrorists are on the way
and death's their only concept of due process.

Why do we see nightmare in every face
we encounter?  Why can't we sleep?  Why are our cities
impoverished for the sake of imperial projects?
Why do we hide in our homes afraid to speak?

Night falls and the terrorists are still not here.
Rumors abound that they have been destroyed
by a virus they were carrying to envenom us.

Now what will become of us without the terrorists?
Those people were some sort of a solution.


Richard O'Connell lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Paris Review, Margie, Measure, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Formalist, etc.

THE ZERO OPTION

by Rick Gray

“Obama to Pentagon: Plan for ‘zero option’ in Afghanistan” --Aljazeera America headline, February 25, 2014

Doesn't include my friend Daryl, or my student Zohra,
or that guy at the end of the hall
with the ponytail and the funny shoes.

It doesn't include my class this afternoon
when we will attack the final act
of Romeo and Juliet.

It doesn't include the scruffy kid on the corner
who sells stolen tangerines next to a muddy white horse
or his circling gang selling chewing gum made in Saudi Arabia.

It doesn't include the butcher over there slitting that sheep's throat
or the sound of the man's boots pacing the roof above me with a gun
or my secret escape plans through the School for the Blind.

Come to think of it, the zero option
doesn't even include me, or anyone I really know,
or anything any of us have ever done in our ordinary lives.

We are those whose lives have not
been calculated into the numerical system
of my nation's Department of Defense.

And when our deaths come, as they must,
without flags or trumpets or Arlington,
some of us may still be in Afghanistan

where, with God's infinite mercy,
the streets will be undefined with blast walls or barbed wires
and the uncounted will stroll with minds as empty of war or worry as zeros.


Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.

LUNAR IMPACT

by Martha Landman



Phil Plait writes on February 24, 2014 in Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog: “On Sept. 11, 2013, an asteroid hit the Moon. That happens all the time, but most of the cosmic debris is tiny, far too small to detect from the Earth. But this one was different. Roughly a meter across and moving at interplanetary speeds when it slammed into the lunar surface, it created the brightest explosion ever seen on the Moon! The whole thing was captured on video.”


Walking in the moonlight then,
we basked in that long afterglow,
our lips a molten mass, your face
a spectacular episode in the whiteness
of moon. At the sight of your silhouette
gliding in the water, desire dislodged
like lava, with the force of a fridge
hitting the moon; an asteroid
through a sea of clouds.

Through a sea of clouds
the moon gazed at us, her naked
eye a telescopic lens, her smile
a thermal glow. She moved at
elegant speed around the earth,
dodged and winked at every
meteor along the way.


Martha Landman writes dry poems in the wet season of tropical North Queensland, Australia.

EL BORDO

by Kristina England

Image source: Mexodus

‘South Texas businessman [and Texas Senate candidate] Chris Mapp, 53, told this editorial board that ranchers should be allowed to shoot on sight anyone illegally crossing the border on to their land, referred to such people as “wetbacks,” and called the president a “socialist son of a bitch.”’--The Dallas Morning News editorial (16 February 2014) endorsing Sen. John Cornyn.

My aunt loves to eat Mexican food
so we go out for dinner,
order guacamole, flautas, fajitas.
None of it is authentic,
but what is these days?

My aunt asks the waitress where she's from,
how to say "you're welcome" in Spanish,
then says "Gracias" about nine times.
If we were at any other restaurant,
she'd complain about poor English,
that it's a God-given right to be American.

My aunt knows nothing about El Bordo
or the displaced people living there,
deported by our government,
left between two countries
in a land full of sewage and trash,
most having lived in America so long
they are unable to speak with Tijuana.
Tired, hungry, they walk the border,
no longer sure which direction is home,

while my aunt, red in her politics,
fills her belly with wine and beans,
stumbles over the words "De nada,"
her language gnarled by barbed wire,
disjointed, misplaced.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Gargoyle, The New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other magazines. Her first collection of short stories will be published in the 2014 Poet's Haven Author Series.

VIKING APOCALYPSE

by Jennifer Lemming

The Gjallerhorn. Image source: Swide

I waited for the Viking apocalypse,
nursing a cup of hot chocolate,
like it was mead, thick with brewing,
reading Beowulf, looking at the moon set
in the western sky, wondering if the young boy
with the hoodie pulled up and dark circles under
his eyes, walking past my window

on this milder day, after a winter that feels
like it was eleven years long, is the wolf son
of Loki, escaped and battling for the last hundred
days. I’m thinking I could go outside and pull
bark from the tree, scratch on it some

Viking graffiti that says, “kiss me,” the scent of
alpine clover in the air,
and return into my lair, take up my mead/hot chocolate
burrow under the blankets again,
waiting for the world to fall into the sea,
waiting to dream of Valhalla, laid in state
on my bed, a proper Viking funeral.


Jennifer Lemming’s works have appeared in Tipton Poetry Review, Earth’s Daughters, Ichabod’s Sketchbook, Out Rider Press Anthologies, Foothills Press Anthology, Rufous Press, The Idiom Magazine, and The Poetry Garden. Jennifer was a Finalist in February 2011 for the “Poems for Mr. Lincoln” contest sponsored by Brick Street Poetry. In the San Francisco based poetry contest, The Dancing Poetry Festival, she won first place for her poetry in 2004 and third place in 2009. In 2012 her latest chapbook The Clever Level was published by Celestial Panther Press.

THE DEMISE OF THE MONARCH

by Tricia Knoll

“Monsanto’s Roundup and genetically modified crops are harming everybody’s favorite butterfly.” -- Warren Cornwall, Slate, January 29, 2014
 
“The monarch earned a mention yesterday at the summit between the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada. ‘We have also agreed to work on the preservation of the monarch butterfly as an emblematic species of North America which unites our three countries,’ Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said at the conclusion of the one-day summit.” -- Tim Johnson, Miami Herald, February 20, 2014


Lear floated his orange and black king-robe
over a land of riches, undivided by boundaries,
surrounded by gilded butterflies of court,

assuming he had many to choose
from, the daughter-flowers of his loins,
his flight certain in reign and retinue.

Sorrow. His good world
not so good. Poisoned. Vicious.
Short-sighted. All he took

for granted a last wingless jump
from a low cliff, obscure.
His day of the monarch dwindling

as branches wind-ripped from firs,
the flattering tongues of milkweed
and sycophants lying, patterns

dividing machinations
of the false from the loyalty
of the good

magnetized migrations.
Lear asks Cordelia to share
who wins, who loses.

This monarch,
the oldest who hath born
the most.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland poet, snowbound alone in her house for seven days. Her chapbook Urban Wild is now available from Finishing Line Press.

QUEER MUSIC

by Tom Lennox

In the ice dancing competition in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Russia’s bronze medalists Nikita Katsalapov and Elena Ilinykh “brought down the house with their performance to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.”

They chose the queer for their music
to dance upon the ice
queer ice
deep and Russian
dense with dreams
with the thrill of passion’s thaw
a triumphant heart
beating beneath the ice
Russian heart
queer heart
within the swan
black swan beset by
the magician
black heart
his veins too
Russian passion
queer passion
that slices
through the ice
lifting the heart like a waltz
queer waltz


Tom Lennox’s poems have appeared in Miriam’s Well and The New Verse News. He has published two chapbooks, Aerial Acts and Once Twice. He lives by a creek in a wildlife region in southwest Florida.

IN ALEPPO

by Rick Gray

Image source: The Telegraph

                                                                      

He hides under the spitting rage of barrel bombs

Thundering below another’s day’s bolting attack.

Buried in the dark basement below his broken home

He vows to its ghosts he’s never coming back.  

It’s always Miriam, his sly sister, or Mohamed, a reckless brother,

Too hungry to fake dreams anymore,

Who creak on naked feet around the booby traps

Down the twisted stairway into the hum of a shattered kitchen.

In darkness he learns to hear

the miracle of an empty bowl filled,

and the holy whisper of long-life milk over looted cereal

before mercy comes crackling through his bitter spells.




Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.

ACCOUNTING

by David Radavich

Image credit: gemenacom / 123RF Stock Photo

A culture’s values
lie in its treasure chests.

What people spend
money on day in day out.

Rock concerts, sporting events,
hairstyles, boob jobs, four-wheel drive,

airline tickets
to the Caribbean .

What we buy we love,
and that loves us,

breath of life
and song and sight.

These coins I hand
to the beggar

before me
is small pittance

for a world
that doesn’t care.

We can even
sell our blood
and zygotes

for a big new screen.

The better to see
ourselves

in a good story

full of racing death.


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 is The Countries We Live In.

THE KING OF CHICKEN STREET

by Rick Gray

Chicken Street, Kabul. Source: Streets of Afghanistan Project

Not yet fourteen, he swings on donated crutches like an old jazz hand
Brushing the bad news lightly to his orphaned platoon.  

Cute won’t work anymore, the foreigners are all leaving the war.                        
Our new mission is grabbing anything they abandon.

Slip thick blankets off their emptied beds, still warm with home dreams.
Seize their Pop-Tarts, some good glue, and those spittoons. I have ideas.

And the general’s long strategy desk we saw on that looted TV, he commands,
Smash it into firewood with your remaining little hands.

We’ll need the heat.  And the meat, he squints, lifting his right crutch and aiming
Its chicken-bloodied tip at a shadow taking cover underground.

The others understand.
Any rat alive, or close enough. 


Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.

WILL THERE BE HOMEWORK?

by Howard Winn

A college course in love has been suggested
because in this hook-up world,
the young and nubile have lost their
way to an enduring connection.
It will be for credit, of course,
and probably not with a distant learning format,
because the student will want to qualify
for that all-important B. A. in Something-
or-Other that will look impressive on the
transcript of grades to add to the CV.
A+ in Love should win an internship,
one would think, if all else fails.
Unpaid, of course, since it is the experience
that counts in the long run, along with
the invaluable networking that follows.
If hooking-up no longer makes the world go round,
let’s give love a chance.


Most recently Howard Winn had poems and fiction published in The Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Cactus Heart, Main Street Rag, Caduceus, Burning Word,  Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Southern Humanities Review, Cutting Edgz and Borderlands. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His graduate degree is from the Writing Program at Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at New York University. He is a State University of New York faculty member.

YOUNG BROTHER AMERICA

by Tony Rivera

Timothy Stansbury, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis

Being a big brother is exhausting.
Timothy wants me to pick him up
hold him up high. I oblige, to see him
alive . . . as much as his laughter is painful.

After a game of catch, Sean begs me
to bring him back to the jungle gym his
friends play at . . . be that as it may, be fatal.

Then there's Oscar and I on our way to
a celebration. Taking in his knees on the bench,
face at the window . . . we depart Fruitvale Station.

"RaMarley", "Charley", "Marley Charley" echos
a chorus of joy from the bathroom.  My knock
for the boys to lower their voices . . . is gentle, safe.

There is something peaceful about watching
Trayvon assemble planes, after a football game
. . . I just cant help but turn away, every time he runs.

And I am beat, trying to keep Jordan in one place;
his jokes wear me down to a smile  . . . boy is it loud! 
but boy, am I too tired, to turn the music down.

Being with young brother America, is exhausting.


Tony Rivera is an activist/educator from Brooklyn, New York.  His poetry has appeared in several print and online publications, including: Caper Literary Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Verse Wisconsin, and 5x5 Literary Magazine.