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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Monday, May 15, 2006

A QUICK LESSON ON MAKING THE CUT

by Carol Elizabeth Owens

“Connecticut hasn't always given its poor and minority students an education as good as it's given its rich and white students.”
– CNN.com (4/20/06)

equal.
isn’t access
to resources factored
in? probability says class
is always what really
counts. poverty
adds up.

the books
just don’t balance
properly across lines
artfully drawn to subtract some
who are calculated
as having less
value.

behind—
“no child would be
left,” they said. yet so much
(of such little things) goes without
saying. the budget’s sharp-
tongue is swift. no
kidding.


Carol Elizabeth Owens is an attorney and counselor-at-law in Western New York (by way of Long Island and New York City). She enjoys technical and creative writing. Her poetry has been published in several print and virtual publications. Ms. Owens loves the ways in which words work when poetry allows them to come out and play. The poem "a quick lesson on making the cut" [above] is written in a form called 'eintou').