AMERICA IS

by Ian Demsky
Ian Demsky, a longtime investigative newspaper journalist, often draws from public records to help make visible what J.G. Ballard called the "invisible literatures" of our society.  He is enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Idaho.
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LET ME LIVE IN YOUR TOLERANCE

by Lauren Camp


Do not say salaam aleikum in my taxi.
     Say Hello.
     Say Drive me to 42nd and 2nd.

As we move slowly up the Avenue,
     do not ask my faith, and do not ask me if I fast.

What I put in my body nourishes me;
what I leave out also feeds my soul.

Do not get out your knife.
     My skin knows its angles already.

     Say Here’s your money, sir
then please remove your soft body from my cab.

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"[A] baby-faced college student was charged Wednesday with using a folding knife to slash the neck and face of the taxi's Bangladeshi driver after the driver said he was Muslim."

— Associated Press / August 26, 2010

Lauren Camp (Santa Fe, New Mexico) is an artist and educator. Her poems have recently been selected for J Journal and the anthology Before We Have Nowhere To Stand, Israel/Palestine: Poets Respond To The Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2011). She is the author of a book of poems, This Business of Wisdom (West End Press, 2010).
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OBSERVATIONS ON HAVING THE SAME NAME AS A TROPICAL STORM

by Earl J. Wilcox


My mom always said I churned up a storm
when as a youngster I raced through our house

on my stick pony, long before I stormed life.
A child, I begged to learn to play piano, to sing

at the Holiness Church (we were devout Baptists),
prattling on and on like a whirlwind in my faux

holy-roller-speaking-in-tongues voice on Saturday
night. Like them, I jigged and danced across

the creaking floor of our small bungalow,
feeling I was in the eye of a hurricane—

or God’s eye—swirling around me, but never
once prayed my name might be spoken with

trepidation and some awe many decades later
when storm season revs up, and EARL flashes

across weather maps---digitized and analyzed
by forecasters speaking in unknown weather tongues.


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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POST INDUSTRIAL WATER LILIES: MONET'S DEEP WATER HORIZON

by Alan Catlin


In this post-impressionist
dream, a pond is a pit
bordered by tar, mounds
of it like fire ant hills gone
septic from wounds the earth
was not made to bear.
Flowers on the water
dissolve in viscous mess:
diseased, mottled, shriveled;
the unholy stink of it.


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Pygmy Forest Press is publishing the collected "Deep Water Horizon" poems.
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C@LL 3-B@LLED BECK

by Bill Costley

3-balled Beck parodies Dr. King
negatively in studied contempt,
a whiteman in a naturally-blond
near-bald-cut affecting Nazismo,

determined to dramatically
rupture religion’s commitment
to social activism from what
it was in the Hebrew Bible.

No Jew he, Beck prances nazily
proud of the figure he’s cutting
curl by bleaching curl, leaving
only bald refusal & denial.

Who calls his bluff? I just did.
You can call 888-727-BECK

Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA.
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KINDLE

by George Held


The sleek electronic reader,
now a digital sales leader,

spells anew Gutenberg’s death-knell,
showing volumes the way to Hell.

Whether Kindle, Reader, or Nook,
there’s no hope for the printed book,

that waster of lumber and ink,
now that most books have their own link

to electronic monitors.
How clever the youthful editors

who invented the “Kindle” name 
to ignite and send up in flame

a part of our cultural heritage
in this prolific Electronic Age.


George Held has collected many of his New Verse News poems in The News Today.
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TWO-TONE

by Judith Terzi

                        Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau
                                    of crimes and misfortunes. --Voltaire
                                                                                                       
The day Julius & Ethel were executed
I wore a white ruffled blouse & red plaid jumper.
Father was so anti-communist,
no one ever asked what he thought,
but I knew he was scared.
Ten years earlier he had changed his name to King.
I was the only Jew at Lodi Elementary in Syracuse.
Three days a week all the others left early
for catechism. Asked why I stayed behind,
I never said. I sat in Mrs. McKeever's 5th grade room
memorizing "Daffodils" & "October's Bright Blue Weather."
I could have gone pro reciting poetry,
had Mrs. McKeever not told my parents
that my posture was bad,
that I dropped my head too far to one side.
We had no Christmas tree,
so I never invited anyone over in December.
I wanted to wear an Easter bonnet
with a velvet ribbon & plastic bananas
& red cherries glued to the straw.
I wore a green gabardine coat instead––
two-tone like our 1952 Chevrolet
& the blue and yellow walls in our den.
The Cold War boiled.
Ivy Mike went off on my birthday.
Then God entered into our country's pledge,
but I wasn't sure whose God it was.


Judith Terzi is the author of The Road to Oxnard (finalist Pudding House 2009 chapbook contest). Her poetry has appeared widely in print, has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, and placed as runner up in the 2009 Alehouse Press Happy Hour Awards. A new chapbook, Sharing Tabouli, will be published by Finishing Line Press.
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ADMISSION

by Amy David

Today is CitizenGulf National Day of Action

A group of old white men in single-breasted
sport coats and paisley ties does not understand
the female body, nor would these boardroom
boasters care to try.  Raised on Playboy and
Victoria's Secret catalogs, the generation before
the internet, they like full bush and soft focus,
missionary and kissing only on the lips.  Few
had seen in person the elusive female ejaculation.

One had watched a few clips on an unlabeled
VHS and another once accused a girlfriend
of peeing on the mattress, but none realized
the power of orgasms that go beyond moist
to sopping, gushing, overflowing.  These stodgy
men entered the Gulf of Mexico with their heavy
equipment and they were shocked when Mother
Earth came hard.  Eleven men dead in her first
convulsions and her juices pouring out at fifteen
thousand barrels a day, no sign of letting up.

Covering the minnows, the pelicans, the algae
the shrimp, the animals will not be rescued
two-by-two from this flood.  From the coast
of Louisiana into the Atlantic currents and up
the Eastern Seaboard, she is coming, evading
every top kill, plastic cap, insertion pipe entreaty
to stop.  She has waited millennia for this release.

The men in charge find their tongues black-
coated and slick with excuses.  Dawn jumps in
with the money shot, a discharge of dish soap,
just a trick of the camera.  They are impotent
before her, spraying their chemical dispersants
without her consent.  This does nothing to clean
up the mess, just rubs it around on the mattress
and someone still has to sleep on the wet spot.

They offer her tennis bracelets and designer gowns
if only she will cross Florida over Texas and sit
like a proper lady.  They want her freshly showered
and sprinkled with baby powder, squeezing back
her own desires and ready for the taking.  They
try to shame her, the evidence of her pleasure
they call crude, but the Earth knows its power.

She knows how men expected her to absorb
all of the pressure while they harnessed all
of the energy.  She saw them ignore her signals
when the tension built too high.  She will not
love them, but they try to fuck her anyway.
Their mistake was thinking she'd submit.


Amy David moonlights as a poet and performer in Chicago.  Her work has appeared most recently in WordRiot, Shit Creek Review, and The November 3rd Club.  When not writing poetry, she is a PhD. student in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.
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PLUTO'S LAST LAUGH

by Earl J. Wilcox

On August 24, 2006, an elite group of scientists declared Pluto too small to be a planet
and instead dubbed it a “dwarf planet.”

Four summers
and four long winters ago
they took my pride,
my poles, my pretty
smile when late at night
sister Moon shines on me.

Four springs
and four long autumns ago
they took away my
rank in the galaxy,
said I am too small
to be a planet, only a dwarf.

Little they know:
size hardly matters
out here in the milky way
where I spin and shine
as I have always done 
for a billion years.


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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PEOPLE AND PLACES AND PATRIOTS

by Andrew Hilbert


My stomach is turning
And I no longer believe
In this country or its people
And I think that maybe
I should run away to some other
Country where the people
Are good and their intentions
Clear.

But this is stupid

Because this is the only
Country for me
Because any country I run to
Will disgust me
In the same way my own
Does
Only there I will probably
Need a translator.


Andrew Hilbert lives and works in Orange County. He also edits Beggars & Cheeseburgers magazine.
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PREPARING FOR THE RALLY

by Rob Spiegel


The mother and daughter paint
carefully the whiteface on the president’s
picture, the 10-year-old laughing

as she brushes a thick short mustache
on his upper lip. “Let’s nail him to these
stakes,” says Mom, “once the paint has dried.”

Dad turns off the TV and looks at the posters
spread across the dining room floor. “We
need to be out there by 7:00,” he says.

“I’ll set the alarm early for breakfast,”
says Mom. “Can we have pancakes?” asks
the daughter. “I’ll make waffles,” says Dad.

A thousand families rise early and stretch and eat
breakfast and pack lunches for the love of country.


Rob Spiegel's poems have appeared in dozens of literary publications. He makes his living as a journalist in New Mexico.
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PETER KINLOCH TO HIS FIANCÉE: AN EXPLANATION

by Molly Meacham

Briton Peter Kinloch dies after reaching summit of Everest --The Times

I’ve collected mountains
since I was 8. Pictures
at first. Everest taped
to the wall by my bed.

I made mountains
of everything. Paper,
sand, toys, cardboard.
In piles, in jars,
in corners of my room.

Climb is the stretch
and pull of limbs,
the tango of air
with wall or ground.

How much harder the hike
with closed eyes. My stomach
rolled when sight went, when floor
lurched. I climbed table
to door. Arms and legs
became antennae. I braced
for fall.  It never came.

I knew the risks she offered.
I was not toothless. I had nails.

Mount Everest is the blind
search of hand and foot
for another safe hold.

The peak is a knife-point
at the wrists of the sky.

They thought it was the snow
at first. My team. We had taken
our victory photographs. When
fate wrapped her hands
over my face. Surprise.

Death is the hourglass
draining mountains of sand
or the child’s hand
pressing mud flat against stone.

They took me home to you,
my accomplishment still smiling
in their cameras. Put me on the wall,
but don't cry. I have become part
of the climb: my muscle, fresh soil—
my bones, new stone. I am another precipice
in the mountain that made me.


Molly Meacham  is a member of the Speak'Easy Poetry Ensemble.  They performed in Germany for the Bertolt Brecht Festival. Molly has read her poetry across the US and in Australia.  She has published with Dew on the Kudzu, Foundling Review, and Right Hand Pointing.  She teaches in a Chicago Public School the rest of the time.
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ENCOUNTER

by Sharon Lask Munson


Captain Cook Hotel
Anchorage, Alaska

     Ted Stevens died in a plane crash today, Monday,
       August 9, 2010, thirty-two years after surviving
       the plane crash that took the life of his first wife, Ann.
       
Leaning on the cushioned settee
stretched the length of the café,
I sip my Kona refill,
push away remains
of a fresh crab salad —
the waitress swoops in,
a float plane making touch 'n' go’s,
removing plates, crumbs.

Looking down the line of tables
I glance at Senator Stevens
and his wife, Ann,
amazed at the small-town tenor
of Alaska’s largest city.

Ann walks over, sits, begins to chat —
Ted’s leaving to make a call.
Isn’t this drippy weather disheartening
after the warm autumn we’ve been having.

My after-lunch companion is easy and natural,
a kindred spirit.
We talk of the gallery on Eighth,
Bristol Bay’s salmon run,
schools in The Bush,
Nordstrom’s move into downtown.

When the Senator returns, he joins us,
sits for a moment, preoccupied, before they both stand,
slip into rain gear, bid me good-by,
and walk toward the lobby
into random destiny.


Sharon Lask Munson lived and taught school in Alaska for twenty wonderful years.  Her work has appeared in Verseweavers, Earth's Daughters, Windfall, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, among other publications.  She now lives in Eugene, Oregon.
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PRATT STREET, WEST BALTIMORE

by Michael Monroe


Crumpled newspapers in the
street pocked with pot holes,
gutters cluttered with garbage,
windows of houses covered with plywood,
black and white advertisements
plastered over walls and street lights,
brown faces staring from bus stops,
garage doors of metal armor
tattooed with graffiti tags
pulled down over storefronts
of pawn shops and nail salons,
murals painted on sides of buildings,
bodies sprawled on row house stoops,
soaking up the summer heat,
liquor stores on corners lit up,
breathing humanity out onto the concrete,
church nestled between row homes,
oil spots, sweat, and burnt rubber,
broken glass and cracked pavement,
sterile white mingles with brown stone,
brick red and laughter,
“Baltimore, the Greatest City in America”
painted on dilapidated benches,
lost pigeons in empty lots
where green life seeps up through trash
and broken sidewalks.


Michael Monroe's work has been published in the Loch Raven Review, Manorborn, and Poet's Ink. He also has poems due to be published in upcoming issues of Gargoyle Magazine and Lyric Poetry Magazine. Two of his poems were recorded on the Words on War CD produced by Birdhouse Studios and he often does poetry readings with Gimme Shelter Productions to raise money for the homeless in Baltimore.
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SUMMER SCENES OF FIRE AND OIL

by David Chorlton
     

I
As he walks, a man in the forest
looks to the ground
although the black trunks are still tall
and recall their silver days
of pointing to the sky.

II
A pelican has opened its oily beak
and lifted itself up
from the sand, turning
toward the deceptive reflections
on the surface of the sea.

III
One cross holds firmly
to the small dome on the blue tower
while the other has begun to lilt
as the wood gives way beneath it
and trees in the churchyard lean
with a warning to run
if there is anywhere to run toward.

IV
Fishes wash ashore like broken
rainbows. A gull on its back
flaps in the oil
and cannot understand
why water is heavy when
the sky is so bright.

V
Preserved fruit in the cellar
survived the blaze. It’s being raised now
from the ash. Some memories
are kept in air-tight jars.

VI
The turtle on the beach has exhausted
its strength and stopped
dead in its slow tracks
like a breath
that turned black.

VII
Some men in a small town sit
on a stone bench and wait
for the smoke to pass when that is all
there is to do except to light
another cigarette.

VIII
The dragonfly holds its long blue torso
straight and steady
as it tries to clean its wings
on marsh grass
where drops of water hang.

IX
With a metal relic in her hand
and icons in her lap,
an old woman from the wooden age
watches her village being taken
in smoke while she speaks back
to a God who has spoken first.

X
A crumpled gannet lies with its head
too heavy for its neck
and its wings
spread like a hand of cards
a gambler threw down
when he lost.


David Chorlton has lived in Arizona for more than thirty years and loves the landscape, but laments that the state legislature has more thorns than the cactus.
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TRICKLE-DOWN

by Jean Thurston Liebert


                                    Trickle-down.  Trickle-down.
                                    Who believes in Trickle-down?

                        “ I,” said Nixon.
                        “I believe in Trickle-down.
                        “I refuse to be kicked around,
                        “And wire-tapping will abound.”

                        “I,” said Reagan.
                        “I believe in Trickle-down.
                        “I will communicate with all,
                        “And set up our unions for a fall.”

                        “ I,” said G W Bush.
                        “I believe in Trickle-down.
                        “All corporations should soar,
                        “As well as the Haves and Have-mores.”

                        “I,” said Greenspan.
                        “I believe in Trickle-down.
                        “I now admit Friedman was wrong,
                        “But I’ll weasel out as I go along.”

                        “Not I,” said Obama.
                        “I don’t believe in Trickle-down.
                        “Give the man at the bottom a living wage,
                        “And Krugman will help us turn the page.”
                      

Jean Thurston Liebert became a Democrat when she discovered she could attend the University of California for five years but couldn’t earn a living wage without organizing to deal with CEO’s. That is all one needs in America: a job with a living wage. Everything falls into place, if Big Business is regulated. At 91, all she writes is colored by this philosophy. Her poetry recently appeared in The She Project.
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SUMMER 2010: GOD'S PLENTY, SAVE ONE

by Earl J. Wilcox


Today I poke around in my garden,
hover over plants suffering August
angst. My cucumbers—early bloomers,
fast growing veggies, pickles practically
on the vines before Easter each spring---
are holding back this summer. I have
watered and watched, mulched their
fuzzy vines, waited for mother plants
to give me baby pickles. Under shade
of large leaves, tiny gherkins peer up
at me sweetly, watch patiently as I
move on, snip yellow squash, pick purple
eggplant, gather more tomatoes than
Adam’s extended family could eat.


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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GIVEN THE CHOICE OF BARBIE

by Aaron Gillego

a poem in response to CNN's special: "Kids on Race: Doll Study Revisited"

Julia turned six today
and she celebrated the American
way--hot dogs, pizza, french
fries--at a bowling alley
with friends her own size.
Dressed in ruffled pink
like Tinkerbell, she was poised
to play and win: to roll
a ball and knock things down
and score points--training
for real life, I suppose--
as Pheona and Abby chanted
her name, she beat them
at their own game without
even realizing it, without a care
in the world. None of them
could count past twenty
and they're too young
to keep score.

When the party was over
Julia opened her gifts:
one was a Barbie doll
with turquoise eyes
long brown hair and un-
fair skin, a mermaid
though I don't recall a brown
mermaid in the movie.
Julia loved the toy, she
brushed its hair and didn't care
about its soy-colored skin--
akin to each of us there
around her. It appalled
my sister: who had given
the doll, she wondered,
then gave us a question
to ponder: given a choice of color
Barbie--white, black or brown--
which would we choose?
The answer is a matter
of what you're willing
to win or lose.


Aaron Gillego resides in Miami, FL, where he teaches high school English. He pursued his MFA in Poetry at the University of Miami. He has been published by The Advocate and has contributed four poems previously to The New Verse News.
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CALL AND RESPONSE

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


My teacher wrote to me:

Appreciated the take on the beer murders.
Suddenly it's all about race again, though i suspect it never went away.
Again translation.
How do we communicate the rage that has become synonymous with living here?

I tried to answer his question but fell ass-over backwards into a poem (oops)

My reply:

Disguise, disguise, disguise

One mask for when we sit on the hill, eating lunch as we watch the war rage

One mask for this and that

All the time insisting that it's bad but it could be a lot, lot worse

And now the spectacle of the victimized white person

The fat, ugly, screaming, censorious white

The angry grasping fainting clawing white

Crying because he knows that there are millions out there who would happily see his war and his lunch taken away


Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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DORSIMBRA FOR TONY HAYWARD

by Diane Elayne Dees


The oil-covered birds that wash up dead,
the turtles that you've burned alive, the marsh
that's turned to brown, the callous things you've said--
all make your fate a good deal less than harsh.

Lies, abandonment, blaming victims--
you used Katrina as your template:
Who cares about inhabitants
whose boundaries are eaten away?

What happens to you now is not important.
What matters are the toxins in the air,
the vanished incomes, poisons in the water--
the families who buried the eleven.


Editor’s Link: Dorsimbra.
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Diane Elayne Dees's political poetry has appeared in several publications. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women's professional tennis.
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