TOURISTS

by Stuart Salomon


So docile and attentive. Like they really
Care about how the first settlers planted corn
And made candles.
So fresh in their new, white Reeboks.
So patiently waiting for the ride at Disneyworld.
So willing to gog and gape at the Falls.

Sheep.

But tourists are pulse signals, kitschy ambassadors,
Testaments to peace.

How I’d long to see them flocking to Falujah,
Buying souvenir plates from the Hindu Kush,
Or bumper stickers with, “ I ♥ LOVE ♥ Ramallah,” or a
T shirt, “My parents went to Groznyy, and all
I got was this lousy shirt.”


Stuart Salomon is an English teacher at Jakarta International School.

THIS IS A POLITICAL POEM

by nils peterson

Three people stand in a shop in Paris looking
at an old piano. It might have been played by
Beethoven. The veneer is sumptuous, though
blistered where separated from the shaping
pieces. Inside, no cast-iron frame, but thick,
wooden struts. The woman attempts a scale, but
many of the notes are missing. “It’s like trying
to capture moonlight in a net." The man marvels
at the piano’s age and that it had been made
entirely by hand. The shopowner tells them,
"The trees for the wood were most likely planted
in the late sixteenth century. The woodworking
guilds of Germany planted trees so their children’s
children’s children would have the right kind of wood
harvested, sometimes, 250 years later. Then it was
cured from 10 to 40 years. Even in the nineteenth century,
such wood was rare, but now it is a substance
that has gone out of the world we live in."

Nils Peterson taught at San Jose State University for more than 35 years. He has a collection of poems called The Comedy of Desire edited by Robert Bly and published by Blue Sofa Press.

VALID

by Shahé Mankerian


TODAY, April 24, Armenians all around the world will march for justice. For 90 years, the government of Turkey has denied the crimes it has committed on the Armenians in 1915. The have often used the following statement to justify their denial: “A claim without an owner is not a valid claim.” -SM


“A claim without an owner is not a valid claim,”
A dog without an owner is not a valid dog.
A god without a son is not a valid god.
A liar without America is not a valid liar.
A turkey without a valid gobble-gobble is not a turkey.
A puppet without a protruding nose is not a Pinocchio.
A map without bloody borders is not a valid map.
Thus,
A country without its mountain it’s not a valid country.


Shahé Mankerian spent his formative years in Beirut, Lebanon. He migrated to Los Angeles in 1979. He received his graduate degree in English from California State University, Los Angeles in 2000. Los Angeles Poetry Festival recognized him as one of the newer voices of 2001. In 2002, he was featured as a guest poet on Inspiration House with Peter Harris on KPFK. 2003 was a busy year for Shahé. He won both Erika Mumford Prize and Daniel Varoujan Award from the New England Poetry Club. Writers at Work selected one of his poems for the Common Prayers project. In the summer of 2004, he was a recipient of a writing grant from the Los Angeles Writer’s Project. Recently, Edifice Wrecked nominated Mankerian’s poem “She’s Hiding My Keys” for the 2004 Pushcart Prize.

SHAKING HANDS WITH DEVILS

by Scott Malby

"Many red devils ran from my heart and out upon the page." S. Crane

A red, white and black mulligan in my coffee turns into a hairy mutt in my gut mixing with regurgitations from a rancid politico Neocon Presidential fund raising dinner when the waitress approaches and asks, *Want another?*

Though brain sizzles like a frying egg and my pulse races like mad, I say, *Yes, and yes I will Yes.*

How could I have been so stupid? I feel inside like I've swallowed a mystery stew along with the greasy spoon carrying me along for a ride on the back of Big Brother to a place of government cover-ups where I enter a world of bogus TV. Commercials ruled by Queen Ptomaine and her husband the Lord of Misrule.

Here, everything important isn't important anymore. I discover who I’m not where past, present and future tangle, I hurl, rotting from inside out, turning into a bizarre hallucinatory machine.

I can only talk about what I don't know. Browse whole libraries of missing books. Back from Byzantium, a mechanical bird mutters, *Oh, to be human and not made of springs. Quackie quack baby. Ouch! Whoosh!*

I’m on a retinal scan planet under the influence of a raging hormonally unbalanced goddess bitch where children of greed don shadowy smiles to go with their stock portfolio fangs while twenty five German poets speak all at once in Geek. Still born gestures of compassion are laid out in coffins. A statue of Hitler hatches an egg. Twelve apostles take turns pulling out the hair of Christ.

Robot machines of destruction make subterranean swampy smorgasbord things spewing mass mind insanity pills the department of homeland security gives out to intellectuals suffering from a bad case of unpatriotic sniffling persnickety kerfuffles.

I feel like I’m going to Gitmo. I'd strangle myself if I could. My throat demands lungfulls of air, so full it’s shouting: Fire! Avalanche! Despair!

Chief Rumsfeld and the Cheney Boys micro-waved in aspartame turn into nuclear warriors unfolding tasar wings as they whisper in my ear that every commander looks for an edge and the deconstruction of perception takes balls of lead. I find myself standing before Queen Ptomaine who takes the shape of my uncle Sam’s wife and I'm naked in the poverty of her sight.

She says *Hey, I’ve been inside you thinking about you for hours. You know my husband and I are infatuated with you. We’re falling in love… I no longer know what to do! If you’re also unhappy, let’s chat and see. We would trade anything for a night with you. What are you doing later on tonight? Why don’t you join the National Guard?*


Scott Malby is a frequent contributor to journals worldwide.

HABEMUS*PAPAM

Niels Köhler
Auferstehungspornografie, 2001
Detail of the 12 panel Collage "Gott mit uns"
(2000 - 2002)


KING RAT: A Benediction
by James Penha

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,

doctrinaire enemy of abortion,

homosexuality, contraception,

a married or female priesthood,

and the idea of his own fallibility,

was today elected 265th pontiff

of the world's one billion

Roman Catholics.

Habem . . . us?

Nope,

he ain't my Pope.

James Penha edits The New Verse News.

OUR RIGHT

by Taylor Graham

We stood at the edge of highway right-
of-way holding aloft our signs
red white & blue
against the evening commute
sun glare in our eyes
sun snarling off oncoming windshields
blinding

honks & silhouettes of arms
raised inside cars headed home
fingers extended in Vs
or single birds or thumbs-down, fists
who could tell? traffic passing
mostly without much interest
headed home

under the Monday August sun coming down
hitting us over the head
until the squad car stopped
officer in blinding black uniform
telling us to disperse & desist
with our signs blue red & white
trespassing the right

-of-way. Our right.


Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler and is also involved in conservation projects for cavity-nesting birds.

THE PEN AND THE SWORD

pen_festival_title
Originally uploaded by J.Olson.

In an article in today's New York Times, PEN American Center President Salman Rushdie writes of how "in our dumbed-down, homogenized, frightened culture, under the thumbs of leaders who seem to think of themselves as God's anointed and of power as their divine right . . . it is harder for writers to claim to be, as Shelley said, 'the unacknowledged legislators of the world,' to believe in the literary art as the proper counterweight to power, and to see literature as a lofty, transnational, transcultural force that could, in Bellow's great formulation, ''open the universe a little more."

"Harder," says Rushdie, "but no less necessary."

IN MEMORY OF OSSIE DAVIS (1917-2005)

Art by Simantel

PURELY VICTORIOUS
by Ewuare Osayande

Act I

what is art
but advocacy

(so said Ossie)

nothing created
that ever was created
was wrought
in a vacuum

all art is made in the real world
where opposites exist and collide

of rich and poor
of less and more
of beauty and gore
of ignorance and lore
of despise and adore
of ill and cure

all art takes sides

whom do you create for?

(so said Baraka via Mao and DuBois)

cant vacillate on the sidelines of life

while the world is backed up against the Wall Street
facing the firing squads of imperial goons
and critics
who deify dollars
who reify the status quo
with their front paged lies

who don’t know poverty
except as an entry in Webster’s dictionary

but we who toil in the defecation of dictators
fertilize an existence from their waste
to indict and defy
those who would have us die

but with each utterance
each manifestation
of our minds

we define for all time

what we see, what we know and we wish to be

the will to free or enslave

if we are conscious or depraved

is carved in the bone of our art

and we are not saved
by it
whether sold or sought

what matters in the end
is the quality of our quest
for beauty and truth

all the rest
is worth no more or less
than the blood
than courses through our veins


Act II

Purlie Victorious
our whole lives are but satires
the enslaved mocking the massa
crackin up under the tracks of tears
that trek down our brown faces
we know more than we let on

sometimes
sometimes

even to ourselves


Act III

and here comes another long-distance runner

race man

carrying the baton passed on by Robeson
he bequeathed to you his vision and voice
and there you stood
smooth chocolate baritone
like a Mingus bass line

(from “II B.S.”)

ba doom doom doom doom

da da doimp doimp doimp

da da doom doom doom
da da doom doom doom

doom dippa doom dippa
da da da doom da da doooooommmmm

doimp!

a smooth bluesy
Georgia cotton drawl
spoke in the cadence of dignity
a diction of defiance
to hear you was to hear our history
calling out loud to a future yet to be
to be
to be
to be
to be
true to what we know is so
a steady rhythm of words laced with longing

you constructed verse like a scientist
finding the appropriate weight or measure
you treasured words and the meanings they held

but your most precious gem
was the Ruby you wore around your heart
a courtship of commitment
your marriage was one life-long kiss
the bliss of living on the pulse of purpose
to struggle
to fight
against those that would deny us our love

serenaded by Marian Anderson’s contralto
cracking the glass ceiling of whiteness
with the siren of her sincerity

actor with a worker’s heart
and hands
carrying our demands to governors
who blocked the doorway to our destiny

you eulogized
both King and the man you called
our Black shining prince
your words covered them like burnt incense
a holy offering
sacred incantations
that can resurrect the dead
still

your shoes cannot be filled
the souls of your feet
88 years thick
double infinity
eternity times two

who will make us live again?

who can speak words whose truths wont choke them before they leave their mouths?

who can utter a vision then walk it without contradiction?

who can say with you that

"The profoundest commitment possible to a black creator in this country today
--beyond all creeds, crafts, classes and ideologies whatsoever—
is to bring before his [or her] people the scent of freedom."

I have caught a whiff
from you

Da Mayor

forever saying

“Doctor, always do the right thing”

I’ve got it.

I’m gone.

Copyright © 2005 by Ewuare Osayande

Ewuare Osayande (www.osayande.org) is a poet, political activist and author of several books including Black Anti-Ballistic Missives: Resisting War/Resisting Racism. His next book of poems entitled Blood Luxury will be published by Africa World Press in 2005. Currently, Osayande resides in Philly, PA where he is the facilitator of P.O.W.E.R.: People Organized Working to Eradicate Racism.

AMERICA

by Heather Taylor

Inspired by "Standing in the Shadow of Love" by the Four Tops

I'll do time if I stand in line to protest this democracy. Make signs, march in time to a beat of underground movements ready to pounce on a mis-said word, action, deed. Screaming freedom, smelling teargas, sitting in jail because we forgot, thought a democracy meant equal rights, a chance not life in a jail cell for peaceful protest for no reason but being there. This state of policy turning us into a police state.

He says: We need to track terrorists.
He says: We need to protect our citizens.
He says: We need to defend our liberty.

In a church, in a town, in the middle of wide open places I check in men, in women, in families. Faces clouded, fleeing from lives unseen within our borders. Our cocoon wrapping is what they search for, a new beginning, a new life, as men with federal badges search the papers, search the files, search their lives because of their foreignness, their differences, their threat. For me it’s horror, disgust at the filtering, an idea of being patriotic but to those families, to them it’s like they’re still home.

He says: We have reached a time for hope.
He says: We are confident in the future
He says: Our country is the greatest nation on earth.

I’m surrounded by suburbia. A perfect suburbia until the plant shuts down, files out, abandons us. All the windows in my neighbourhood turn to broken teeth. A lit street fades to a few fireflies. Friends move out, move on, sink in while

He says: I’ll work to build a nation of justice
He says: I’ll work to build a nation of opportunity.
He says: The American dream is alive.

My friends, father, brothers, cousins, sisters, mothers, sons, march as cannon fodder for single minded walking time bombs, not minding what faces as long as they turn faceless. No one knows why they are there, a generation of people who just want to come home.

He says: We have a calling from beyond the stars
He says: The cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory - overwhelming.
He says: We need to stand for freedom

Standing in the Shadow of love, we wave our flag, pledge allegiance, erect towers, monuments, remembrance of people missing, maimed slaughtered. We wear pins, t-shirts, badges our hearts on our sleeve, we wait by the TV, radio, polling station to make a difference, make our choice, forget the heat of the sun as we stand in endless shadow.

And he says: Do you? Do you? Do you love this country as much as I do?


Heather Taylor studied music, acting and writing in western Canada where she first began performing with Mirror Theatre, a group that co-created and toured social theatre pieces for youth. After working on over 30 film and theatre productions both onstage and off, Heather began performing her own solo work in Vancouver and co-produced the multimedia showcase Skidrow Theatre with Silent Productions. Her writing has led her to claim a first place poetry prize with Speak Out and a top-ten position in the Praxis Screenwriting Competition with her full-length screenplay "Two Fists." In January 2002, Heather pulled up stakes and moved to London, England. Since arriving in the UK, she has been a featured performer at Borders, Poetry Café with New Blood, Ladyfest Amsterdam, and at the Spitz with Writers on the Storm. She has also performed at Brave New Word, Backroom Vodka Bar, Backstage Lounge, Aromapoetry and Walking the Dog. Recently, Heather's work has been published in X-Magazine, Wolf and Unpublished as well as various college and youth papers. When not working on her writing, Heather acts as a co-editor for the Veg Out section of youthone.com and has most recently been working as an intern for Sable Literary Magazine.

THE WAR ON WILSHIRE BOULEVARD

by Scott Odom


The palm trees line the sky like anti-aircraft bursts
              above the graffiti bricks and the chain link fences
              and the cars thumping war thumps,
              above the spinning red and blue lights of the patrol cars
              that have cordoned off the block,

              and the sweat-stained uniforms
              of the policemen, five of them or so,
              standing beside the ragged shot body of a homeless man,
              and the German tourists who told them
              they thought he was a bag of garbage.

Someone had tried to set the man’s leg on fire
              and a policeman laughs as he pokes at it.
I think that’s the guy from Hollywood, the sergeant says.
I busted him last month for drunk and disorderly.

An Uzi fwaps in the distance.

A helicopter turns above the flak and the lights
              and spins excitedly, like a buzzard smelling carrion and
              at the edge of the man’s coat, the embers are still warm.

His dead hand is raised to shake like a true gentleman,
              a bottle of Windex and an oddly spotless rag
              are half hidden beneath him.

Yeah, the sergeant says, wiping his mouth,
              definitely that guy from Hollywood, the windshield washer.
              Who cares? someone says.

Then the wind changes and they turn from the horror,
              one of the officers puts a handkerchief over his mouth,
              the helicopter spins madly,
              and the sergeant whispers a eulogy above the dead monster:
              It seems like everyone out here wants to kill you.


Scott Odom is a writer and teacher living in Los Angeles. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The New York Quarterly, The New York Magazine of the Arts, Prairie Poetry, and other mags and zines throughout the country. A novel he has written called 95 South will appear in December.

LINE IN THE SAND

by Ken McManus


Linear perception of the Balkanized has Americanized us:
Let us believe that forward motion is manifest.
We don’t see the elliptical nature of things,
Circles turning over and under, separate circles
Spinning concurrently, orbiting, rotating,
Like the universe or seasons or crops in the fields,
Or like the clouds of sand—
Billowing, filling, rolling over themselves, sweeping
In all directions on all planes—
Which will soon envelop our most tender buds,
Work as burial mounds for the other hemisphere’s
Most cherished.


Ken McManus has published poems most recently in Warpland (Chicago State University), Coloring Book (Rattlecat Press) and Word Is Bond (Unblind Communications). He lives with his family in Connecticut.

ON THE DAY THE POPE DIED

by Ngoma


On the day the pope died
no one knew that he'd been dead since before 911
no one told you
no one paid enough attention to push him over
obviously not crusaders
praying to jesus
while bombing mosques
they say he was a man of peace
admonished by St. Lauryn Hill
for the sins of pedophile priest
gas prices rising like the flames
of souls dying for oil
and the lies about those
weapons of mass destruction
yet to be found-
Tsunami's rage
like the tears of the planet
wounded and ravaged
of a raped ecology
as water becomes the next commodity
It wasn't on the Disney Channel
so don't look on Fox 5
or Hot 97
where misled hip hoppers
pimp coca cola
and labor leaders disappear from Columbia
where the peso is worth even less than a dollar
Did the evangelicals tell u in church on sunday
that social security has been high jacked by gangsta's
the christians that lied and stole 2 elections

on the day the pope died
the most impoverished people of the land
who are mostly Black, Beige and Brown
still genuflect to a white man
heads bowed
kneeling on the ground
not realizing they've been
hoodwinked into thinking that they've sinned
giving their hard earned cash
to one of the richest men on earth
while the kingdom of heaven is within

so on the day the pope died
the truly faithful cried and gave praise to Mary-the Black Madonna
otherwise known as Isis,
marched in the street bearing death symbols-
turned their backs to the vatican
for not excommunicating Hitler
opened their closets
and burned sage to exorcise demons
set fire to democracy disguised as witches
fanned the coals
while channeling phoenix

on the day the pope died
el Salvadoran martyrs
were still not vindicated
Archbishop Romero
turned in his grave
as the death of Sister Dorothy Stang
of Brazil is being investigated
and the conspiracy of murder continues
for peasants protecting the rainforest
angels of justice guard
brave priests like Reverends Leclerc
and Sandoval
as they preach the theology of liberation
in a world that is still evil and hostile

on the day the pope died
it seemed as if no one had been listening
as millions of oppressed nationalities
left the earth from man made dis-eases
while coat hangers return for those seeking abortion
still Mumia Abu Jamal sits on death row
and our children suffer death from MacDonald's
trying to pay student loans w/salaries from StarBucks
dreaming of a making a living on Def Jam
combing the country doing
open mics and poetry slams
til realizing the dream's turned into a nightmare
as Def Jam Poets line up for Welfare

on the day the pope died
we pray for a new regime
that truly projects a "culture of life"
where the strong will truly protect the weak
as bells ring in the vatican
vibrations striving to save the planet
for true liberation of the human spirit


Ngoma is a performance post, multi-instrumentalist and paradigm shifter based in Harlem, NY, who for over 30 years has used culture as a tool to raise socio-political, and spiritual consciousness. For continued news and updates visit his site Ngomazworld at http://www.ngomazworld.com/Ngoma_ParadigmShifter26E.html by clicking on the following . . .

WILD DONKEY

by Shahé Mankerian

Where have you come from and where are you going? – Genesis XVI:8

I come from a city where the wells are dry,
and the walls divide the sliver moon
from the sapphire star.

I come from a land where women,
barren by choice,
refuse to feed the children to the war.

The fish no longer swim near the cliffs,
and fishermen eat carcass for breakfast.

The bang of the backgammon silences
the streetwalkers permanently;
the click of their heels rest
against the fallen cedars of Solomon.

The donkey strikes the tendon
attached to the socket of the hip.
Our common thread is the flesh-eating fly,
and the bullet that does not discriminate

the children of Jacob and Esau—
locked in the womb of the countryside,
separated by the burning stew.

The sun rises and sets
in this land of sour milk and wild honey.

Where are you going?
“I’m running away from my mistress…”

Where are you going?
“I’m running away.”

Where are you going?
“I’m running.”


Shahé Mankerian spent his formative years in Beirut, Lebanon. He migrated to Los Angeles in 1979. He received his graduate degree in English from California State University, Los Angeles in 2000. Los Angeles Poetry Festival recognized him as one of the newer voices of 2001. In 2002, he was featured as a guest poet on Inspiration House with Peter Harris on KPFK. 2003 was a busy year for Shahé. He won both Erika Mumford Prize and Daniel Varoujan Award from the New England Poetry Club. Writers at Work selected one of his poems for the Common Prayers project. In the summer of 2004, he was a recipient of a writing grant from the Los Angeles Writer’s Project. Recently, Edifice Wrecked nominated Mankerian’s poem “She’s Hiding My Keys” for the 2004 Pushcart Prize.