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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JUST LIKE LADY MACBETH

by Michael Monroe


I wash my hands incessantly.
I don’t think it’s OCD.
I don’t count the times
I let the water fall through my fingers,
rub the soap through my skin
until my palms bleed;

I just wash them
thoroughly,
and then wash them again.

I think I’m trying to remove
the grime of this world,
the germs of swine flu,
the oil spills
of Capitalism gone awry,
the blood of war
drenching faraway streets

like stains I can’t remove
from my clean hands.
No matter how hard I rub,
no matter how many times
I wash and wash,
the cleanliness
is merely illusion.


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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THE DOWNFALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

by Andrew Hilbert


we were two costco employees
bullshitting about nothing to pass the time
to drown out the buzzing beeping
of the machines we worked that drowned
down the sound of our own minds

and of course we talked about videogames
bragging of our virtual slaughterhouses
on our murder simulators
we were proud of our kill/death ratio

an older lady glared at us
she had patches of hair on her chin
and she says
"videogames are the downfall of western
civilization"
she felt righteous and walked herself out

she didn't say goodbye

i didn't say have a nice day

i became silent and thought about
the downfall of western civilzation
i thought about hiroshima
i thought about nagasaki
i thought about auschwitz
and buchenwald, gulags, abu ghraib
and napalm

i couldn't put a beginning to the end
of western civilization
and every day was potentially a new
end


Andrew Hilbert lives and works in Orange County. He also edits Beggars & Cheeseburgers magazine.
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VICTORY

by George Held

    A sequel to “Defeat,” which struck some readers as too pessimistic.

Forget your troubles, come on, get happy—
It’s the American way

We shall overcome, some da-ay-ay-ay-ay—
It’s the American way

America, America, God shed His grace on thee—
It’s the American way

Let not the oil contamination in the Gulf
The abomination in Afghanistan
The deflation of our economy

Dim that good ol’ tried ’n’ true American
Optimism, for we shall overcome—
Don’t ask how or when—

We shall overcome, we shall overcome:
Say it, sing it, love it—

It’s the all-American way!


George Held has collected many of his New Verse News poems in The News Today.
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AUGUST 6, 1945

by Howie Good


Birds igniting
in midair.

Women
whose skin

hangs
from them

like a kimono.
Would it not

be wondrous
for this whole

nation to be
destroyed

like a beautiful
flower?


Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 18 print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009).
_____________________________________________________

PAUL TIBBETS

by Mark Zimmermann


It appalls—as bullets appall.
Battle built it;
labs test it,
label it: U.S.A.

I use it.
Plate, bat, ball:
a blast leaps.

Put up a slate tablet? Salute
Paul Tibbets?     Bull.
Let all applause pass. I'll sleep—
a late, pale blip.


Author’s Note: This poem is a lipogram. A lipogram is a writing in which one or more letters of the alphabet are deliberately excluded. In this case, the constraint is determined by using only letters that appear in the title/subject's name, Paul Tibbets = a-b-e-i-l-p-s-t-u.
_____________________________________________________

Since 2004 Mark Zimmermann has lived in Milwaukee with his wife and two cats, teaching writing and literature courses at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Previously (1993-2004) he did the same work in Japan, Hungary and Poland. He has had poems published in New Letters, Verse Wisconsin, The Writer, and many other publications.
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DIEGO RIVERA'S DEEP WATER HORIZON

by Alan Catlin


Muscular workers with hard hats,
stained short-sleeved shorts and filthy
jeans, men hunched in corners of
a view of the Gulf, bracketing discolored
ultramarine water slick with residues of
oil, deserted and working rigs, large
metal protrusions thrust upward
into early morning fog, objects from
a nightmare of exploitation and greed.
Vivid streaks of unnatural color, fireball
red, orange, yellow, create new horizons;
even the water burning.


Alan Catlin's latest chapbook is a long poem, Thou Shalt Not Kill, an updating of Rexroth's seminal poem of the same name. Whereas Rexroth riffs on the abuses of the Eisenhower adminstration, the update observes abuses of power in the previous administration with particular attention to the cynical, criminal behavior towards the Katrina hurricane victims.
___________________________________________

DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


I’m fine reading reports like the one coming through right now about the man who killed 8 at the beer distributors in Connecticut, then killed himself  I’m fine reading about the cluster bombs dropped on Serbia and the Serbian snipers who picked off Bosnian Muslims as they waited in line to buy bread I’m fine reading about the Jews of Hungary who were rounded up late in the war, in mid- ’44, after everyone knew the war was lost

This guy I know - Dmitry – tells me he’s proud of me for reading what I read  He says that if people chose to remain uninformed the insanity will never stop  He says that it’s hard stuff to process, but he’s making darn sure that his kids know about the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda and Darfur  Dmitry takes his kids to documentaries at The Film Forum  Dmitry is positive that for change to happen we must remove our blinders

He’s probably right  Don’t you think?

And, as I said, during daylight hours I am fine with all of this

At three in the morning, though, and I’m not sure why, I turn into something else  My reflection in the oven door isn’t me It’s scary, actually At three in the morning, I sometimes fall to my knees  Dmitry would laugh, but at three in the morning I even sometimes pray to God

It scares me, this change, this middle of the night change This middle of the night change into the man I saw on the news today, leaving the scene of the shooting,  the man who   “…did not want to be identified, (who) … quickly got into his car” At three in the morning me becoming the man who did not, could not, would not  Save The Day  The man who only wants to get into his car and find where daylight went, saying, as he drives away: “It was a sad day I was in there”


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.
_____________________________________________________

THE DAILY BLAB

by Earl J. Wilcox


Last week, our family planned a trip out west.
Fate intervened in the form of medical news
For one of us. Best not travel at this time.
But mail and papers have already been stopped,
We implored one above, some postal or daily
Newspaper deity aware of our fixation on reading
The same news, getting the same bills and flyers daily.
Four days later---mail and papers still on hold---
Our lives seem improved. We talk at breakfast,
Take walks during time we once pored over
Ho-hum editorials, classic comic strips, lousy
News that our baseball team has once again lost.
We’re considering faking our demise so that mail
And papers are forever on hold till our return.


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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HAVE YOU HEARD?

by Larry Jones


spread the word,
the oil in the gulf has disappeared.
it's some kind of
mystical
magical
miracle.
                 
really it's all gone,
vanished.

thank you jesus
thank you mr. obama
thank you wolf blitzer


Larry Jones lives in Beaver, Utah. His poetry appears in The Camel Saloon, Haggard & Halloo, Amphibi.us and others.
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FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

by Gretchen Fletcher

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed...”

All the energy of the sun's fusion
of hydrogen into helium – the bright burst
we feel and see as heat and light
makes possible photosynthesis.

Lumbering creatures once ingested that energy
in the form of ferns or the flesh of fern-eaters.
Trapped under what was once dry land
and the pressure of eons, the energy

has now been released
like a genie from a bottle
with an inexorable rushing whooshing gush.
No longer recognizable as life forms,

the creatures have become great globs
of potential power, slick slime riding the waves to shore
in the form of a rainbow of broken promises.
Like ills from Pandora's box, this energy cannot be put back.


Gretchen Fletcher was a winner in the Poetry Society of America’s Bright Lights, Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron as she read her poem in Times Square. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including upstreet, Chattahoochee Review, Inkwell, The Mid-American Poetry Review, and Poetry as Spiritual Practice edited by Robert McDowell. She leads writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbook That Severed Cord was published by Finishing Line Press.
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