THE TEBOW AD HULLABALOO

by Barbara Lightner


The hullabaloo careened
through confused hearts and minds,
and into the interstices of the internet;
the pundits, the bloggers,
the huff-huffs and puffers;
unworthy of the sad tale it encumbered.
If you didn't know the story
there wasn't any story
to speak of.

Some millions spent on an ad:
an interesting-looking woman,
her grown-up son,
and fall-flat humor
about how she was tougher
than a quarterback.

That's the way
giving birth has been
since the beginning of time,
all of us birthing-woman
would agree;
taking it tough,
tougher than a quarterback,
no matter the circumstance.

Good to see homage being given,
the message finally got right
(though they didn't mean it that way,
ignorance casting its light).


Barbara Lightner is a 70-year old shameless agitator, retired. She is an avowed pro-choicer who currently lives in Milwaukee, WI. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Table Rock Review, Poesia, the Zocalo Press chapbook series, the feminist poetry anthology Letters to the World. Several of her poems will be set to music by composer Larry Smith.
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PALINOCITY

by Bill Costley


“Ask God’s Help”
Palin urges Tea-Party Convention.

coming soon:

"In God We Trust"
as a rider on all new mortgages.

Next, a new national silver dollar
with Jesus’ profile on both sides.
Early adopter Las Vegas' strip
declares Jesus’ Dollar new min. coin.
"Whenever Jesus spins, we all win!"


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
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MARRIED TO JESUS

by Kim M. Baker


if jesus had lived
had flown off the cross
like superman
just as the pharisees thought
she would be this
white hair
paunch
dark circles
under eyes alive
with social justice
and why
she would pick the scab
of uncertainty
from thin skin and grimace
when the phone rings

if jesus had lived
she’d laugh at methuselah
every time she blew out candles
from atop chocolate crazy cake
offering the first slice
to homeless joe
crave cheese and beef
and sneak the doll-sized
cosmetics from corporate
hotel rooms
for the needy down the street
around the globe

if jesus had lived
she’d wear purple and rage
at no health care reform
read mary oliver
to old ladies and golden retrievers
raise money and lower the boom
on hypocrisy
bring home the woes of those
we don’t know
find them safe space and dignity

and when god emailed
for a progress report
jesus would shake her Achilles head
wondering whether
two thousand years of being
human made enough difference
in anyone’s life


Kim M. Baker has been teaching writing in academe and business for 17 years. She currently is a writing coach at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, RI. Also an advocate to end violence against women, Kim has performed in the Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence: 2008 and 2009. She has been published online and in print. Kim's first play was chosen for the Culture*Park Shorts Plays Marathon, New Bedford, MA, November 2009.
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WHEN TEA-BAGGERS CRAFT SONNETS

by J. D. Mackenzie


Let us prevent clear logic to despoil
Our tenuous love for Sarah-the-Led
She, cherished maven of gas and big oil
Deserves a much higher honor instead
Cloaking her history, she won our hearts
Mother of multitudes (ornaments, props)
Courageous and skilled in the killing arts
Hopeful McCain’s second guessing soon stops
Truly, such powers we cannot ignore
Hers is a clear path, self-righteous and true
How could we commoners not love her more?
Perhaps if she quit again halfway through
          Sarah, deprive not your most thirsty folk
          You, bottomless well of side-splitting jokes


J. D. Mackenzie divides his time between work as a college administrator, kayaking Oregon rivers and writing poetry with an occasional political perspective. He recently celebrated the birthday of William Stafford by reading at a Friends of Stafford gathering.
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PUSH PULL

by Earl J. Wilcox


Autos
should be better made
than boxy so-called cars
running in the Soap Box Derby.
For kids
it’s OK
to have a brake pedal
made of soft plywood,
glue, nails, and chewing gum.
For grownups,
we really need brake
made of steel.
not toy autos.


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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PORT-AU-PRINCE CHARMERS

Poem by Charles Frederickson; Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote

Let US decide what’s best
For IOU declaring independence upon
Tio-Taco Bell rusty hollow clanger
Resonating echo Salvation Armageddon struck

Dunkin’ DoNot’s listless emotionally disturbed
No Deposit – No Return nobodies
Fleeced goody-goody shepherd willful powerbrokers
Enticingly remove shearlings from flock

Know-it-alls claiming Divine hotline intervention
Put on a Ha-Ha-Happy White-face
Minstrel show don’t tell farce
Villains masquerading as MarveloUS heroes

Shotgun mirage bribe end gloom
Awfully wedded blessed depressed bliss-ters
Everything turned inside-out sliver lining
All-American-can XS greedy mo-motives ceremoney

Greenbacks tarpapering Pizza Hut shacks
McHaiti ho-humbuggers 7-11 crapshoot snake-eyes
Walmart True-Values uncommon cents markdowns
Penny-pinching TLC ethics sold out

Let US prey net prophets
Jesus saves green food stamps
Spellbound Hoodoo-Voodoo enchanting elixirs
Facing final judgment wreckoning alone

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote together comprise PoeArtry. Flutter Press has just published Charles’ new chapbook fanTHAIsies.
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BEING AN ADULT

by Scot Siegel


"Oregon Newspapers Agree, Measures 66 & 67 Are Job-Killers . . . We Encourage You to Vote Against Them . . . This Is A Paid Advertisement"

-- after an ad running in The Oregonian through the month of January 2010

I am a small business owner and have a family
to feed and I am conflicted over these measures
that would keep the mentally ill off the street
and lengthen the shortest school year in the nation

I am conflicted because the anti-tax fiends, 'ahem,
were right to point out the proponents lied to us
about the measures' effects on partnerships, sole
proprietorships, and other small family-owned

businesses, like my wife's tutoring center and
the guy down the street who presses the banker's
suits for a buck seventy-five, and his wife the seamstress
who mends those black dresses of the mayor's wife

I am confused and conflicted because Oregon
schools are the butt of Doonesbury jokes, because
The Oregonian is owned by a republican and edited
by democrats, because I have enough food

but don't know how to give some to the people of Haiti
who have no government and few ways to receive
our gifts; and because, despite my degrees and regrets,
I must confess to being stupid for having voted

with my conscience, for consenting to working harder
year after year, for the same less pay, as I have done
my entire adult life.


Scot Siegel is an award-winning urban planner and poet from Lake Oswego, where he lives with his wife Debbie and their two daughters. Siegel serves on the board of trustees of the Friends of William Stafford. In celebration of Oregon’s Sesquicentennial, the Oregon State Library and Poetry Northwest selected Siegel’s first book Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008) as one of Oregon's Outstanding Oregon Poetry Books. Pudding House released Siegel’s chapbook Untitled Country earlier this year. Siegel edits the online poetry journal Untitled Country Review.

PIGS

by Gil Fagiani


In Trivigno, Don Gigi
believes we're all God's children
lets immigrant Muslims
perform sadat in the church's oratorio.
The bishop thunders: Santa
Maria Assunta will not be used
by the islamaci for prayer meetings.

In Padua, militants from the Lega del Nord
declare Pig Day
unleash a Yorkshire porker
to bless the grounds
where a new mosque is to be built
taking back the gift
the Communist mayor gave the infidels.


Gil Fagiani's poetry collections include: Rooks (Rain Mountain Press, 2007), Grandpa's Wine (Poets Wear Prada, 2008), A Blanquito in El Barrio (Rain Mountain Press, 2009), Chianti in Connecticut (Bordighera Press, pending 2010) and Serfs of Psychiatry (Finishing Line Press, pending 2010). He is on the Board of Directors of the Italian American Writers' Association and is the Associate Editor of Feile-Festa.
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FREE TO BE CORPORATE

by Bill Costley

". . . the Senator from Du Pont Chemicals with his forty-five votes
. . . the Senator from Nash-Kelvinator with his six."
--Pohl & Kornbluth, The Space Merchants (1952), pages 13-14.

Money talks. Politics calls:
“Steve, I need to know where
what’s left of GM stands on this.”
“I hope you’re recording this,”
asks GM Senator Steve Steeves.
“Yes, I am,” says UAW Senator
Paul ‘Polack’ Propulski. Silence;
neither realizing they’re tapped
by Ford Senator Henry Ford IV.
who thinks “Those jerks don’t
realize all this is legal now” with
corporate masters humanized,
according to SCOTUS, free to
exercise 1st-amendment rights.
“Speak up, you 2!” says Ford,
breaking their cautious silence,
"Be freemen in a freecorporate
world. You're finally…free!
Let's work a corporate deal.”


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
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EYES ON THE PRIZE

by Jon Wesick

after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision

Finally corporations stand up for their rights!
Segregated in industrial parks no more!
Inspired by the Wall Street Renaissance,
that flowering of creative financial instruments,
freedom riders in sleek limousines
double park at Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven
to remind us how oppressed they are.

Throughout the nation executives slap
company credit cards on lunch counters, CEOs hang
placards stating, “I am a man,” in boardrooms,
and National Guard troops escort ads into high schools.

The march on Washington
fills the halls of Congress with a million lobbyists
but justice delayed is justice denied.
How long must we wait
before a corporation is elected president?


Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
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LIVING ON FOODSTAMPS AND THE $150 THEY GET FROM NIELSEN

by Catherine McGuire


A prolapsed couch, some blankets,
a punched-down pillow, makes a nest
to watch tv from; the tinker-toy tower of gadgets
piled black and silver in one crowded corner —
topped by the Nielsen box. Here are your prime
viewers: unemployed, living on foodstamps
and an equal mite from their willing exposure
to Nielsen's counters. The furniture's hocked
except for that big-screen altar they sacrifice
their lives to. After a year, unemployment
ran out — the queues for jobs still impossibly long.
The day is full of bacon sandwiches,
cup o' soup and prayer. They light
their HD candle, let the glow flood the room
flood their hours with Judge Judy,
with their peephole into rooms of other lives
more fraught than theirs; praying, rapt,
for rich teens marooned on islands
who are surviving on their wits.


Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with more than 120 poems published in venues such as The New Verse News, The Cape Rock, Green Fuse, The Quizzical Chair Anthology, The Smoking Poet, Portland Lights Anthology, Folio, Tapjoe and Adagio. She is currently assistant director at CALYX Press in Corvallis and will be co-leading a community college workshop, “Ready, Set, Submit!" in April.
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J.D., WE HARDLY KNEW YE

by Earl J. Wilcox

J. D. Salinger, 1919-2010

Dear Phoebe,

You don’t want to know all the ways
I’ve tried, so I have got to tell you, Phebes,
What a sorry sack of shit I am.
After all these years I’ve not been able
To rub out all the fucks on all the walls in the world.

God knows, I’ve tried. Graffiti painters
Rappers, comedians, politicians, poets,
Even Presidents and would be kings
Keep saying fuck like it was a secret
Code or something. You and I know
They’re being lazy. It’s got so bad
I just don’t want to talk about it any more.

See you in the funny papers,

Holden


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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SPIRIT AT TROY

by Mary A. Turzillo


On Tuesday, January 27, 2010, NASA said that the robotic explorer Spirit will stay permanently trapped in the deep Martian sand that snared it in the red planet's southern hemisphere in May 2009. --Space.com


Two able rovers, one called Opportunity, the other Spirit,
launched as the Achaeans did to conquer Troy.
Their scientist masters said follow the water.
They landed, trundled through Mars dunes and dust.
Their quest for truth must not be abandoned.
They moved with energy drunk from the sun.

The rover first to spread light-leaves in the sun
was the one who had launched first, robotic Spirit,
true to the earthly life she'd abandoned,
hailing each new rock as if it were legended Troy,
until her sun-wings were defiled with dust,
no cleansing by little green men's feather duster or rainwater.

How can you clean a solar cell without water?
How can it gather energy from the sun?
Both rovers were dirty, hazed with Martian dust.
It seemed the end of both body and spirit.
It seemed they were headed for Hades, not Troy.
After their triumphs, their task must too soon be abandoned.

But the caprice of nature had not utterly abandoned
the rovers. For we found that wind, and not water,
was the secret that cleansed, like Helen bathing in Troy.
Dust devils whisked their solar cells clean in the sun
and their bodies were willing as were their spirits.
The winds blew them free of the crippling dust.

Yet worse ills arose, engendered by gritty dust:
Spirit's wheel jammed. Yet she wasn't abandoned.
The Earth scientists didn't lose spirit,
didn't give up their "follow the water."
The rover named Spirit still charged her engines with sun.
She limped till she stopped, stuck, at the rock named Troy.

Utterly stuck. But nothing could entirely destroy
her mission though now trapped unmoving in dust,
as long as her cells are tipped to the sun.
But forward driving has now been abandoned.
She must measure Mars' cycle as she once followed the water.
The rover is weak, but there's strength left in Spirit.

The rover called Spirit sits sand-locked at Troy
Searching for water, it finds only dust.
It sleeps abandoned, awaiting the sun.


Mary Turzillo's Nebula winner, "Mars Is No Place for Children," and her novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, serialized in Analog, have been selected as recreational reading on the International Space Station. Her fiction has recently appeared in Analog, Year's Best Lesbian Fiction 2008, George Scithers' Cat Tales, Space and Time, and Otto Penzler's The Vampire Archives. Her story "The Sugar" just appeared in Vera Nazarian's Sky Whales and Other Wonders, and her 2008 Nebula nominee, "Pride," will appear in Ellen Datlow's Tails of Wonder and Mystery. Her poetry collection, Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, was a Pushcart nominee, as was her New Verse News poem "Sculpture, Ohio, Spring 1970."
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THE STATE OF THINGS

by Andrew Hilbert


O American children
with panhandle halos

the swollen eyed angels
of Candy Land dreams


Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
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IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT

by Kim Doyle


He dealt with the thin ice of expectations.
The must haves, the wannabees, the sweet
smell of failure dressed as success.
Like a sailor on the great wide sea saying
there is a lee shore that we must avoid,
but all the riches there are ours to share.

He skated over all the silly objections.
The can-nots, the ought-nots, the wanting
to table things, or to make a study; to hire
a consultant; a trillion, trea-cly, whining caveats
that dripped down like melting icicles on his
and everybody else’s head.

But then a skate broke through the ice;
he was exposed, and the sharks were up to their dorsal
fins in his flesh. His wife moved to their beach home,
and he was all alone. What happens next is your guess.

It is the age of overexposure; of Just Say No, sir.
But he was so, so accustomed to the big Yes.


Kim Doyle notes: "Sometimes I am pleased to have what some consider to be a woman's first name."
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WAR-MART

by Lizz Bronson


Johnny skips (tra la la) to War-mart cuz its tomahawk Tuesday
The red alert special
In the store, red lights go winding and sirens blare while customers run and dive
For prices, like its bombs or something
Johnny skips cuz its tomahawk Tuesday:
Buy ten atomic twinkies for two dollars cuz
America’s foreclosed and war never
Tasted so good especially when it’s undeclared.
Johnny skips to buy atomic twinkies ---ones he likes even though
They are dangerous but that’s all
Grenadey the cartoon character sells on TV
Despite the sonic boom when opened and the flares going off like red strobes
Grenadey says its good for you
Everybody races to the war store
It’s the only store there is
Instead of atomic twinkies he comes out with a blunt, a forty, and three hand grenades---back
Home all he knows is sirens and chalk outlines
The psychiatrist says he’s out of his mind.
Johnny skips (tra la la) to War-Mart
Everyone wonders why five year old Johnny can fire a gun
But he can’t read.


Lizz Bronson’s work has appeared in The Daily Planet, Diablo Valley College's Magnum Opus, and The Oakland Tribune. She was a prose editor for Milvia Street Journal in Berkeley, and has been featured at several poetry readings throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
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SUNDAY TIMES

by Margaret S. Mullins


scattered remnants of snow
melting
hurried by the steady gray rain
falling
a dark and quiet day to read
wondering
if the editor of the times was
choking
as he placed pictures of haitians
starving
next to advertisements of tiffany's
selling
fifteen-hundred dollar celebration
rings


Margaret S. Mullins splits her time between the quiet of rural Maryland and the rumpus of downtown Baltimore. Her work has appeared in Prairie Poetry, Loch Raven Review, Welter, New Voice News, Manorborn 2008, Sun, Chesapeake Reader, Gunpowder Review, Long Story Short, and Persimmon Tree. She is the editor of Manorborn 2009 (Abecedarian Press).
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OBITUARY

by Jon Wesick


Affordable Healthcare lost his battle with cancer this week. Friends say he passed peacefully after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disconnected his ventilator. Doctors had been optimistic about his recovery until the Massachusetts Insurance Company refused to pay for standard chemotherapy labeling it an “experimental treatment.”

Best known for arranging free clinics that treated thousands of uninsured, Affordable Healthcare was a graduate of the Toronto School of Public Health. Inspired by a government that actually cared more for its citizens than its corporations, he tried unsuccessfully to adapt the Canadian insurance model to the United States. He is survived by his ailing wife, Hope. They have no children.

Republicans will mark Affordable Healthcare’s passing with a seven-course dinner at L’Auberge Chez Marcel.

In lieu of flowers mourners are requested to help pay Affordable Healthcare’s outstanding hospital bill.


Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
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LUNCHTIME

by David Chorlton


When you stop for lunch in a landscape
three parts light to one of earth
with vegetation struggling to hold on
to the open space with mountains
pressing up from each horizon
the wind blows cold across the table
next to yours as fragments
from the conversation drift: You know
there was never an armistice so legally
we’re still at war with Germany,
a point which hasn’t occurred to you
during the drive on dirt and asphalt,
but local politics can take a vicious turn
especially when it comes to a candidate
for Sheriff who, in the event of Washington
calling for a gun grab, won’t obey
but deputise everyone in Cochise County
which, I’m reminded looking back
to the TV shows of years ago in England,
is Wyatt Earp country. Black hat, frock coat,
dark moustache, the farthest shooting gun
in the territory, the reluctant lawman
with a cause to justify every bullet fired
as if frontier justice were a blueprint
for foreign policy. Your sandwich is served
as a side dish to eavesdropping
on more complaints about all
the radical extremists out there.


David Chorlton lives with his wife, four cats, a dog, and some birds in central Phoenix, where he also organises a monthly poetry series at The Great Arizona Puppet Theater. After thirty-one years in the USA he continues to appreciate being an outsider, which sharpens vision and makes otherwise mundane observations meaningful. His new chapbook, From the Age of Miracles, appeared in 2009 from Slipstream Press as the winner of its latest competition.
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8 SHOT DEAD IN VIRGINIA

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


What with all the news from Haiti and Massachusetts
It’s understandable that the story of the man who killed eight people
Near the Appomattox Court House
Where the Civil War came to an end
Might get lost
After all, what is 8 dead when you look at Haiti?
8 dead, all adults except for one male teenager, is
Nothing
Health Care Dead
The headline read
A pretty woman said
It looks like the Dems are out of luck
Scott Brown has a nice, shiny truck
His daughter was like fourteenth on American Idol
She’s tall and pretty and plays basketball for Boston College
Did you know they’re called the Eagles?
Did you know that
Virginia is known to have quite lax gun laws.
          Despite the murders at Virginia Tech, the gun laws in the state
          are still some of the most lenient in the nation.
Scott Brown is the kind of guy I’d like to have a beer with
Naked or not
Scott Brown voted for health care for all in his home state
Last year a fella killed 8 folks at a nursing home in North Carolina
Same number dead, different date
There was another aftershock in Haiti today
A big one, 6.1
The Virginia shooter killed seven adults and one male teenager
The male teenager might or might not be his son
8 people shot dead is not Columbine
It’s not Killeen (Luby’s or Fort Hood)
For the Republicans, yesterday’s news from the Bay State is pretty good
The 8 shot dead is no Virgina Tech
Or Charles Whitman in the Texas Tower
Scott Brown assures us
He’s gonna speak truth to power


Steve Hellyard Swartz, a regular contributor to New Verse News, has piles and piles of poems ready to be published. He has won Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg, Mary C. Mohr, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. In 2009, poems of his were published in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, which he wrote and directed, opened at The U.S. Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. He was recently selected Poet Laureate of Schenectady County in upstate New York.
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