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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

REMINDER BEFORE RITA MADE LANDFALL

by RaynRoberts


Hurricanes are not stopped by prayer and it’s
nothing to joke about, I know
still I cannot but recall
how after Katrina
some ministers blamed
The Big Easy‘s sinful history
for provoking God's wrath upon the city.
So as Rita turned for Texas,
knowing the damage could be Biblical
I said she was God's judgment
on the president’s home state
for the war in Iraq, the deaths of so many Americans
not to mention 100,000 Iraqi men
women, children gone to untimely graves--
An unreasonable, unkind
stupid point of view? Yes,
and exactly the point: It is not
in the nature of Love
to curse the world with untimely death, disease,
disaster and war, "God is Love."
You’d think his people would’ve gotten that by now.


RaynRoberts is found in print and online at Rattle, Rattapallax, The Sow's Ear Review, Thunder Sandwich, Pedestal Magazine, Poetic Voices, Voices in Wartime and many others. He appears in four anthologies. His poetry is known in cities across the United States. He toured the U. S. in 2003 to promote "Jazz Cocktails and Soapbox Songs". He has also published in England, Australia, Italy & South Korea where he teaches English. His books are distributed by Poetic Matrix. A new book published by Poetic Matrix, Of One and Many Worlds, is expected out September 2006. Website: www.geocities.com/raynrobkorea.