THE ROAD AHEAD, 2020

by Bill Sullivan

How to know if history is slamming

on the brakes, screeching to a blessed stop

just before the ditch and the cliff--taking

a left turn, leaving behind all the outdated

models, the hesitant and reluctant drivers?

No trumpet blares, theatric announcements,

no once-every-five hundred-years comet

streaking across the night sky, no revelations.

And we wonder if history is on automatic

drive and we're just along for the ride?  Or

if we can remap our route, take detours, back

roads to avoid dead ends and fatal collisions?

Still we keep our hands on the steering wheel, 

step on the gas, sing songs to the night sky.

Bill Sulllivan taught English and American studies at Keene State College before retiring in Westerly, Rhode island. His poems have appeared in print and online publications including: Perigee, Connecticut River Review, the Providence Journal, and The New Verse News.  He is also the author of Loon Lore: In Poetry and Prose.

OH BEAUTIFUL

 by Shyla Shehan

The last we saw our king his head was deep 

in the crotch of some alabaster city gleam 

tweeting love notes to his adoring fans

twisting our once beloved patriot dream. 

While our halcyon skies are shrinking

spilling grief across our amber plains

he gathers up his Proud Boys

and hides his capital gains.

Our borders littered with families separated

huddled masses he has reviled

and presses portentous his own agendas

his unwrought thoughts run wild.

America. America! You are still beautiful 

and mine. There is space inside my heart—

a hope for you, again, to shine.

As our thoroughfares of freedom are stretched 

thin across from all cities to the sea.

America, I beg of you now!

Please show your grace his leave. 

Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo who has spent the majority of her life in the midwest. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska and lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband, children, and four wily cats. Shyla spends most days tending to a healthy household and is pleased with her role as Managing Editor for The Good Life Review.

A POEM IN WHICH I COMPARE MYSELF TO THE PRESIDENT

by Mark Williams

The President plays catch with former New York Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera as he greets youth baseball players on the South Lawn of the White House to mark Opening Day for Major League Baseball, Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Washington. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images via Chicago Tribune)

The lines are straight, votes streaming in

like a fastball from the hand of Larry Broerman.

That’s me at the plate. I am ten years old,

squaring around to bunt in fear. Notice

how the ball is coming in too fast for me to move.

Watch me catch it with my groin. See 

the coaches and my parents run onto the field

and huddle round my crumpled, writhing form. 

Watch my father unbutton my pants and say, “Breathe.”

 

I don’t care about my team. My only interest

is my stats. I bat in the low .200’s, but if you ask,

I’ll tell you about the double I once hit. Never mind 

I make consistent errors in right field.

Occasionally, I catch one. But for now,

 

behold me as I stand. Gaze upon me 

as I trot toward first base, even as my still-

unbuttoned pants fall from my waist, slide down my legs, 

and drop onto the first base path. Consider 

how the fans go wild. Listen to them cheer

as my short-lived, unaccomplished baseball career

comes to its ignominious end.

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the current administration have appeared in The New Verse News, Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, and Tuck Magazine. His baseball career ended in Evansville, Indiana, where he still lives.

WORLD SERIES HAIKU

Earl Wilcox has been publishing baseball poetry for three decades.

SENDING POSTCARDS

by Julia Lisella

It’s all history now,

even my walk to the mailbox

to drop the shiny cards into the blue box

little teeth at the edge of the slot – I can hear them

grinding & scraping as I push the cards in

10 at a time. Because

Covid 19 pandemic

because Breonna and George are dead

because T***p lied his ass off

we know this is true all the time, but now?

And I think this is why

I walk to the mailbox

with 50 postcards and I worry

the people who get them won’t

understand my handwriting

when they read “Dear Friend”

they’ll know we are not friends but

Friend please vote, friend

the anxiety of thinking

you won’t vote

makes my fingers ache

the anxiety of thinking

in the quiet, the basil bloom

of evening, the petulance

of late summer, the walk now

more or less guarded

Mostly anxiety I do not think

in prose but in the murmur of fear

the stuttered life of

catch in the throat

the imbalance of what can’t be

how is it now that the shiny postcards

urging

sit at the bottom of a large blue box—

what faith I once had in the box

How I once believed anything in it

would begin its great journey

Will anyone of you 50 desperate cards

released reluctantly by my fingertips

(afraid to touch the box) the confluences

of emergencies

we have acclimated to

will any one of you reach the street

the court, the place, the road, the Tampa,

the Ft. Lauderdale, the Ft. Myers so many forts

the ranch house the apartment building the PO Box

and journey how? and when if it arrives

on your counter, thrown in your car

stuck under a welcome mat?

I press the pen into the card

to make the name and wonder

will it be you, you one soul

who will get my card and lifting it

above the garbage will see and notice

the wobble of my D or F or

the note I squeezed into the left side

of the card, the funny way I write my E’s, my V’s and M’s

you can’t tell apart

you, someone will know I walked down

the quiet Covid street

I pushed the cards through the slot

dear friend released from prison who is not

a murderer or a rapist dear friend who was

desperate and forged a check dear friend who was

naïve and dated a con artist and a drug dealer

Dear friend still alive, released they say

and living in Sunny Florida, please don’t

get sick, please find a job

please vote.

Randy Hudnell raises four fingers to represent Amendment 4, which restored the right to vote to most former felons in Florida who'd completed their sentences. Credit: ALEX PENA/CBS NEWS, October 26, 2020

Julia Lisella’s books include Always (WordTech Editions, 2014), Terrain (WordTech Editions, 2007), and the chapbook Love Song Hiroshima (Finishing Line Press, 2004). Her poems have most recently appeared in Ploughshares, Paterson Literary Review, Mom Egg Review, Nimrod, Exit 7, and Ocean State Review. She writes on modernist women writers, teaches American literature at Regis College and co-curates the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) Reading Series in Boston. 

DEFIANCE AS THE TREES LET GO THEIR LEAVES

by Laura Rodley

As repetitious as concentric circles

breaking one upon the other, overlapping

but never touching, the outward circles

encroach on the returning circles,

but the swimmer’s hands keep breaking

the smooth skin of the water

sending back more circles,

her breaststroke a circle;

here, at Ashfield Lake, there is no election,

no Prince of Tides, no princes,

just to swim to the brown house

a quarter mile and return

before it gets dark. 

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

PARROT THERAPY

by Ellen Aronofsky Cole

Credit: Josh Seong / Verywell

The room is fat with jungle sounds.

Haiku runs three-dimensional laps

around her cage, across the floor,

 

up the bars to her food dish, across

two perches, whistles, rings her bell,

repeats. 

 

Okay, I may be turning into Haiku.

 

My manic pacing, the way I roll

and twitch in bed, unceasing motion.

Pamala, the parrot behavior specialist,

 

tells me Haiku’s a fearful bird.

All parrots are, she says. After all,  

they’re prey. So that explains it,

 

my sleepless nights, how I can’t

concentrate, can’t settle.  The congregation

of monsters salivating outside the door,

 

one named COVID, the one we call

World on Fire, the mendacious Cheeto-hued

one bellowing his own name. 

 

My new doctor says we’ll all sleep better

after November third.  Perhaps, but

fear’s a cold bone that runs deep in me,

 

and sleep’s the promised land. This evening

Haiku grinds her beak, a happiness

behavior that precedes sleep. 

 

The sound soothes me. I marvel again

how she twists her head backwards,

buries it beneath her wings.

Ellen Aronofsky Cole has two books of poetry, Notes from the Dry Country (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her work has appeared in Fledgling Rag,  Bellevue Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Washington Post Magazine, and other journals, and in The New England Journal of Medicine. Ellen lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband Brian and her parrot Haiku.

WAITING FOR THE ELECTION TO BE OVER WITH

by Penelope Scambly Schott

“Frost on the grass,” photograph by Vladimir Axenov.

The man is asleep,

his arm flung back

toward the headboard of their bed.

He snores lightly.

The dog curls warm and small

at the foot of the quilt.

The dog’s ribs move up

and down under fur.

The woman is awake.

She slips out

from under the quilt

and walks to the window.

She pushes back

the white curtain.

Orion is rising over the shed,

his sword tickling

the top branches

of the neighbor’s cottonwood.

The man is still sleeping.

The woman stands at the window.

She knows Mars has moved west

past where she can see it

from this side of the house.

Winter is approaching.

The man’s hair gleams white

in starlight.

The dog’s fur gleams white.

Frost glazes the lawn.

The woman is ready

to step through the glass

in her long white nightgown.

She would lie on her back

in the white frost,

lie there a long time

under stars,

the flesh of her shoulders,

her buttocks,

the heels of her bare feet

feeling the spin of her planet.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

DONALD

by Nan Ottenritter

occupies too much real estate in our heads.

T***p/Pence billboards line our neural highways.

T***p towers pierce our amygdalas, blunting

our love of country, collective compassion.

 

His necrotic amygdala somehow lives on in his head

while our neurotransmitters careen around curves and

our collective blood pressure soars out of control.

Reality’s glare sears through dilated pupils.

 

Our cognitive brains reflect upon where to flee

while, oversaturated with cocktails of our own adrenalin

and miracles of modern chemistry, we continue to fight.

A contribution here, a conversation there; an

 

early ballot here, a court victory there.

The rule of law, shattered, lies at the side of the road.

My American soul runs to the scene, screeches to a halt,

and finds herself saying, yet again:

 

“I can’t wait for this to be over.”  

Nan Ottenritter is a poet and musician who lives in Richmond, VA.

GAIAN LAMENT

 by Catherine Gonick

Source: The Washington Post

            after the hypotheses of James Lovelock

 

The world is broken, the body of the single, gigantic animal

we have become is breaking, we don’t have much time.

The ancient organs and elements hold—

earth is still surface, water deeps, fire burns

in the center, and black space is encircled

by a ribbon of air—but it’s all sick

with wildfire fever, the atmosphere fills

with phlegm, the oceans with pharma,

indigestible soil starves and infects

flora and fauna, both wild and domestic,

our hearts ache, livers swell, lungs become fibrotic,

oxygen fails. Our science was too romantic,

our technology too rude. We looked out

as far as we were able but forgot

the unexpected we couldn’t measure.

The earth would do just fine without us,

and the other animals won’t care, unless perhaps

our dogs. Some of us always knew

we’d end badly, at the end of some endless

kalpa, the death of the last of five suns

carried by snakes of fire. But we expected

a respectable cosmic decline, not this mess

we designed. And yes, science has been

a disappointment. Who wanted to know

the limits of our filtering senses? How much further

we’d have to take our tools, if we can? Intelligence

would be better if purely artificial. Upright posture

and hands made us always want to leave home.

 

Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly,  Lightwood, Forge, Sukoon, and PoetsArtists, and in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, and forthcoming, Poemas Antivirus. She was awarded the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the National Ten-Minute Play Contest with the Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is part of a company that fights the effects of climate change.

THE ELECTION DISTRACTION

by George Salamon

"As Colorado wildfires burn, fears that climate change is causing 'multi-level emergency' mount." Photo: Calista Morrill, walking with her dogs Lucy, in front and Ollie, not pictured, watches smoke from the East Troublesome fire become lit by the setting sun in Lyons on Oct. 21, 2020. At the time Morrill, who lives in Lyons, said she had packed her bags in case she needed to be evacuated for the CalWood Fire. —Denver Post, October 26, 2020

"The world both literally and figuratively is burning. The apocalyptic skies of the West Coast only make that sense more real, more threatening. The urgency of the moment is inescapable." —Gary Hooser, "On behalf of my grandchildren" (an open letter to Kamala Harris),  The Garden Island (Hawaii), October 6, 2020

Darkness did not crash down on us

Like thunder, it rolled over us like

The Santa Ana winds, made us sick.

The lingering illness robbed us of

Vision and spirit, smothered the sublime,

Allowed spreadsheets and lists,

Pollsters and pundits to take the place

Of the educated and wise, technology

And efficiency to banish morality and

Beauty from our permanent searching

And seeking and neglect the spaces

That nourished our desire for answers.

The winds are still blowing, but soon

Rivers may refuse to flow, grains refuse

To sprout and the dark of night will fall

On people who no longer know how

To make light.

George Salamon, like Gary Hooser, wants the current captain of our ship of state to return to real estate, but does not think that it will be enough to awaken the humanistic spirit that has gone from "at bay" to moribund in his lifetime.

NEWS FROM LATE OCTOBER

by Ginny Lowe Connors

Trees still holding their leaves

look all the more brilliant

as their colors flame

against an overcast sky.

The day is nearly windless.

Still, spirals of leaves

gold, russet, scarlet

sail toward the ground all day.

Silent as snowflakes, they fall.

 

In our country, 856 people

died of the coronavirus just yesterday.

Ginny Lowe Connors is the author of several poetry collections, including Toward the Hanging Tree: Poems of Salem Village.  Her chapbook Under the Porch won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. Connors has also edited a number of poetry anthologies. She is the co-editor of Connecticut River Review. Connors runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books.

I AM DRAWING A MAP

by Howard Winn

the little boy said

as he hunched over

his crumpled bit of

paper with the stub

of pencil clutched in

one dirty little hand

of the street he added

so I will know where

all my friends and

enemies live and then

I will know where

it is safe to go and 

where not to go

for there are good guys

and bad ones my mother

says mothers know

she says and my father

agrees and i wonder

how they learned to

tell the good from the bad

A new collection of Howard Winn's poetry has just been published. It is titled Comedy and other observations. Howard Winn continues as Professor of English SUNY.

ELECTION

 by Marguerite K. Flanders

Photograph by Kim Seng of Red Shoulder Hawk Perched on Live Oak at Riverbend Park in Jupiter, Florida. Via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

 “Soul selects its own society” —Emily Dickinson

 

Oaks are the last to cast their burdens.

Air is full of the athleticism of change.

 

Chickadees greet the end of the straight road

of night with their tally, the decisive chill.

 

The science of what must turn will leave us

bereft. We wait for all to be revealed,

 

as if choosing will shift the relentless

trajectory of stars, restore what has been

 

felled. Hawk, oak, brook, co-trustees

of winter’s approach, know better.

Marguerite Keil Flanders is the Managing Editor of Crosswinds Poetry Journal.  For nine years she was part of the Ocean State Poetry team running a poetry workshop in the Men’s Medium Security prison in Cranston, Rhode Island.  Margie is the author of a poetry collection, The Persuasive Beauty of Imperfection. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Boston Review, Yankee Magazine, Comstock Review, Nimrod International Journal, Connecticut River Review, and Main Street Rag.

JEREMIAH 2020AD

by Julie Kramer

Immigrant families wait in May 2019 in Los Ebanos, Tex., to be searched and taken to a U.S. Border Patrol station after they were caught illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, October 23, 2020

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” —Matthew 19:14

 

You put them in cages

    and arm their enemies with AK47s

You take away their food

   and say that it is for their own good

You dirty their air and water

   and point to it as progress

You make their world uninhabitable

   and call their cries a hoax

You let your police

   murder them in their beds

   and say they deserved it

You punish their governors

   for standing up for them

You take away their families’ health insurance

   and say it’s in service of freedom

You beat them in the streets

   because they challenge your authority

You promise them relief

   and present it to the rich

You insult their allies

   and sell out their friends

You sit by as they die of a dread disease

  saying it will just... go away

You defile and debase

   the halls of their government

   with petty criminals and yes men

You make their lives less sane, less safe, and less free

 

You think that their God is sleeping

   do not be deceived

God will bring about his justice

   through the least of things

Including teenage TikTokers

               small dollar donations

                                absentee ballots

                                               and subpoenas.

 

Julie Kramer is a molecular biologist, lay minister, marketer, and mom of three teenagers living in Madison, Wisconsin.  In 2012, she made the unforeseen and disconcerting discovery that she is also a poet. Her themes include family, religion, #me too, and current events. She has had previous work published in the Journal of Women and Religion, and the Wisconsin UCC Conference newsletter.

TODAY

by Earl J. Wilcox

Today when I awoke it was very dark outside.

Today when I got up at 5:30 AM, it was cold.

Today I fumble putting in my hearing aids.

Today my glasses help little with macular degenration.

Today my bladder wants to empty before I arise.

Today I struggle to put on my pants, my shoes.

Today the cats wait patiently to be fed, petted.

Today I see dimly the coffee pot, the faucet.

Today I munch a protein bar, put on a mask.

Today I find my walking stick, unlock the door.

Today I stumble out the door, my knees resist walking.

Today it is still dark as I move toward the street light.

Today I shudder, cough and sneeze, wait for a ride.

Today I hear kids and cars and school buses pass by.

Today a friend stops for me. I hobble to his car.

Today I find his car is warm, his voice hopeful.

Today we ride to a community center across town.

Today I can barely hear or see the place we seek.

Today I wobble down the pavement, smile, anxious.

Today a friendly voice asks if I am “doin’ OK?”.

Today I walk inside a warm hall, hear low, calm chatter.

Today I wait and wait and wait and wait and wait.

Today I wonder if the line will open a slot for me.

Today I arise, my cane is calmer than I am.

Today I hand my photo ID to someone at a table.

Today I am helped to a small machine I barely see.

Today a friendly voice asks if I can see the screen.

Today I barely read, barely hear, barely stand.

Today I feel a rush of joy and peace.

Today my friend puts a small sticker on my sweater.

Today and tomorrow the sticker says I VOTED.

 

This week at age 87 Earl Wilcox voted.

DÓNDE ESTÁ MI MADRE

by Roger Aplon

 

A child weeps & her cries reverberate throughout the dingy warehouses,

makeshift barracks & swarming

extraction camps, it

 

ricochets across the desolate plains of west Texas & southern California &

southern Arizona & the mesas

of New Mexico.

 

A child weeps & his tears threaten to drown the tongue-tied Christians, Jews

& Muslims, they dampen dinner tables

in Portland, Maine &

 

Poughkeepsie, New York & St. Louis, Missouri & across the Rockies &

across the sea to Honolulu. Children weep &

parents weep &

 

a once-proud people cringes in the wake of what it has allowed & what it

has wrought & what it is to be

dishonored.

 

Between bouts of fear & trembling these kids are heard to ask ¿ Dónde está mi madre?

          —¿Dónde está mi padre?—

¿ Dónde estoy?

 

‘Where Am I?’ rings off-key like a cracked bell—like a symbolic “liberty”

bell, cracked but still resonant, reminiscent

of what has been lost but might still be.

 

Roger Aplon has published thirteen books: one of prose poems & short fiction: Intimacies;  twelve of poetry, including the recently published: Mustering What’s Left—Selected & New Poems—1976 – 2017 from Unsolicited Press. He lives in Beacon, N Y & publishes the poetry magazine: “Waymark – Voices of the Valley.”

OCTOBER 2020

by Roberto Christiano 

"Fear of Pain," oil painting by Igor Shulman

I have heard the sirens falling

falling like the songs of sorrow

I have seen the black man hobbled

hobbled by the blues of bullets

I have smelt the forests burning

burning till the ashes whiten

 

I have seen the mermaids leaving

leaving as our rivers rumble

I have heard the children crying

crying with our cupboards empty

I have smelt the fear of winter

winter with the sirens calling

 

Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from Northern Virginia Review. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in The Gávea–Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (Brown University). His chapbook Port of Leaving was published by Finishing Line Press. Other poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Washington Post, Writer.org, and The Sow's Ear.

IN LOVE AND POETRY

by Indran Amirthanayagam

“Hope,” a painting (1886) by George Frederic Watts and assistants.

Call it now. Out loud.

Without shame. By

its name. Call it

this morning on waking

in the still dark. Call it

reading last night

your words on the screen.

Call it banishing sleep.

There is no energy

more sweet that sustains.

Call it for the one

who corrects these verses.

Call it on streets of

suburb and city,

in the fields. Call it

in front of the Capitol

on top of Mount Baldy

on Waikiki Beach,

by Lake Superior.

We are going far my dear

and we are walking back

home for Thanksgiving

Let us invite Kamala

and Joe to the table.

Let us boil sweet potatoes,

serve elderberry jam,

make a bean and onion stuffing,

let our friends know

the meal will not involve

killing a turkey

or any other fowl.

Let us give thanks God

for this vitamin flowering

in the early dark, guiding

our fingers as we write,

saying call it now.

in the day, at night,

to friends and enemies

alike. In love and poetry

we are going to make

table and bed, and

we are going to write

our songs in these days

of the plague until

we see light come up

above the trees on fire,

the befogged clouds,

until the back of beyond.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

JOY IN THE TIME OF COVID

by Rebecca Leet

“Joy of Life,” a painting by Alexandra Romano.

Joy has deep, soft texture these days,

like going barefoot on a carpet so lush

you almost feel you’re walking on air.

Its sound is soft, too—no brass bands,

 

no clashing cymbals. More like sweet air

passing through spring leaves. Its color

is the wash of a water-color painting—

nothing bold. To claim joy feels slightly selfish

 

but how can I feel other when—as I write—

all whom I love are healthy and those dearest

I can hold with my eyes—un-Zoomed—

and with my arms. I cradle my granddaughter

 

and inhale her infant perfume, draw each daughter

hard against my breasts. Randomly, a quiver

of Covid concern causes pause until—

like warm sun on my face in winter—

 

time dissolves into the eternity of now

and I breathe in the joy of the moment.

 

Rebecca Leet has been writing poetry for five years since retiring from the media-policy-politics world of Washington, DC. Her first book of poetry is Living With the Doors Wide Open. She has been published in Canary, Passager, Bourgeon, and elsewhere.

COVID ABATTOIR

by Philip C. Kolin

Above: Family members of JBS USA meat packing plant employee Saul Sanchez watch as his casket is lowered during his funeral after he died of Covid-19 in Greeley, Colo., on April 15, 2020.Jim Urquhart / Reuters via NBC

“Meatpackers deny workers benefits for virus-related deaths, illnesses.” 

—NBC, September 29, 2020

Upton Sinclair is roiling in his grave.

Things have not changed in Packingtowns

across America. Covid has just made them worse.

The virus works well in these damp, cold, sun-

blocked meat processing plants where droplets can settle 

and slay much longer. Gigantic fans whirl and spread 

saturated foul air as workers breathe each other's

infected coughs and sneezes.  Loud machinery demands

they must talk louder and farther to announce Covid's arrival.

All in cramped spaces.

Packed shoulder to shoulder, workers have to

butcher in non-stop 10-12 hour shifts, no plexiglass

or strip curtains between them. Processing lines

move at race car speeds, leaving workers even  more

vulnerable thanks to exhausted breath, great Covid hosts. 

It's a lung-breaking job. And sharing knives

and hammers means shaking hands with coworker Covid.

Like the animals they eviscerate and de-hide,

these meat processing workers leave the plant

with slaughtered lives, their lungs and hearts offal.

It's a jungle in these plants.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, African American playwrights as well as ten collections of poems. His most recent books are Reaching Forever: Poems in the Poiema Series of Cascade Books and, forthcoming from Main Street Rag, Delta Tears.

SUBURBAN WOMEN

 by Laura Winkelspecht

Suburban women wake up early to exercise,

load the dishwasher while brushing their teeth,

and dress their kids on the way out the door.

 

Suburban women drive to office jobs

in late model crossover vehicles

and pick up overpriced coffee on the way.

 

Suburban women schedule family vacations,

manage doctor appointments and oil changes,

and plan pregnancies in between potty training.

 

Suburban women attend soccer games,

take turns at carpooling to school,

and organize fundraisers and family reunions.  

 

Suburban women decorate for each holiday,

nurture their prized sourdough starter,

and sew masks for everyone in their family.

 

Suburban women host socially distant barbeques

with their brown neighbors two doors over

and promise play dates with genuine smiles.

 

Suburban women tolerate condescension

with tight-lipped smiles and long memories. 

They register voters on the weekend.

Laura Winkelspecht is a poet and writer from Wisconsin who writes with the hope of finding lightning among the lightning bugs. She has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, One Sentence Poems, Rat’s Ass Review, Poets Reading the News, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

SIMILE

by Gil Hoy

So now he's said:

 "Maybe 

I'll have to leave 

the country 

if I lose the election." 

You mean 

like a fleeing felon 

trying to get away?

All of America's birds

gone South

Will then be seen 

flying north.

Every hibernating thing

will be waking early.

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Boston poet who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from BU, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for 4 terms. Hoy's poetry has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Right Hand Pointing, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, the penmen review, and elsewhere. 

THE CAN'T-WORRY TALES (EPILOGUE)

by Richard Hacken

Whan that panne-demie with her virrus bittre

the lande with Mericanne courpses did littre,

and swathed thus visages with couvre-masque,

of which vertu for manye was too bigge an asque;

Whan Donaldus (eek!)  with his love for selfe

putte bleech and snaque's oil on ev'ry shelfe

for tendre eldres with prievyus conditiones

held oute to driy at cause of his foul perditiones;

and with electiones at halfe cours yronne,

twentie-milles of lyes he'd alreddie sponne, 

So priketh hem the truth from toe to tooth

which longeth folk to goon to voting booth,

or mail-personnes who neith in raine nor sleete do faile

to delivere ballotts by the U.S. Mail;

And specially from every stayte and districke

of Vespucci-Lande at the urn they pick

the hatefulle, hurtfulle jerke away to sende

that in an SDNY gaol he might justlie ende. 

Richard Hacken is a librarian-poet with degrees in German literature and past appointments at U.C. Davis, Oregon State, University of Kansas and BYU. He has translated Austrian short fiction and the poetry of a Tuvan poet from Mongolia who publishes in German. He claims to have found this Chaucer epilogue in the wash.

DEMOCRACY AS AN ACT

by Mary O’Melveny

Ardeth Platte, Dominican Nun and Antinuclear Activist, Dies at 84. Sister Ardeth spent years behind bars for her beliefs and was the inspiration for a character on the Netflix hit Orange Is the New Black. Photo: Sister Ardeth, left, and hr friend Sister Carol at the White House in 2019 protesting plans for a military base in Okinawa, Japan. —The New York Times, October 8, 2020

Who can say what lines cannot

be crossed? What laws must be obeyed?

Most days, it feels as though we

are all complicit in our world’s great ills.

 

Who can say how we will react

when guilt cannot be assuaged

in ways that “they” deem polite?

Safety in numbers does not always save.

 

I have wielded bolt cutters

and climbed cyclone fences to search

for a more peaceful planet.

They had to wash my blood from missile silos.

 

I wore white until orange

was chosen for me by others

who mistook my acts for threats.

Humility can flourish in many colors.

 

Who can say what bravery is?

I was just afraid we would

all expire from carelessness,

that we would disappoint by despairing.

 

I always loved my life here,

even strip searched and shackled.

My convictions were the dues

I paid to earn my right to be a truthteller.

 

Who can say how we best serve

as stewards of our earthly time?

I never judged others’ paths

but I knew my own footsteps were not enough.

 

In the end, we are all fellow

travelers trying to bend

the moral arc toward justice.

Who can say for sure that we will not succeed? 

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

ODE TO THE OCTOBER PUMPKIN

Earl Wilcox is a regular reader and contributor to The New Verse News.

OCTOBER 17, SWEETEST DAY

by Ron Riekki

or, this year, Sweatiest Day, how hot 

 

the goddamn gowns and gloves are in- 

side the war of the COVID wards, how 

STUPID are the anti-maskers, the 27— 

at my current count—White Housers 

positive, and here I’m a pessimist, 

seeing the ramifications, seeing the 

ventilators, seeing the conventions, 

 

packed with people; or maybe it’s 

 

the SWATest Day, the ICEist day, 

these days of mass pollution/mass 

arrests for immigrants just trying 

to go to mass, or to work; or may- 

be it’s the Sleepiest Day, the mass 

hypnosis of this world, being told 

that this virus will just "go away," 

 

told by someone who, by the way, 

 

could get re-infected, someone who 

just had a runny nose, but now who’s 

running for President when he has 

never yet actually been President, 

or been presidential, just swinging 

pendulums in front of our eyes, 

telling us we’re feeling sleepy, so 

 

sleepy; or maybe it is, as I said, 

 

the Heat-est Day, the Hottest Day, 

the hottest October 17 that’s ever 

been recorded, because, sadly, 

that’s the theme of this year, how 

there haven’t really been any holi- 

days this year, just evil-days, sad- 

days, maydays, doomsdays, play- 

 

days where kids can’t touch, birth- 

 

days where we can’t hug, because 

we’re on an expressway to hell if 

we don’t stop the way we treat 

the world and the way we treat 

each other, if we fall for the tricks 

that led us to this collapse, the tricks 

of 2016 where the U.S. was covered 

 

in red.  Honestly, aren’t you, too, tired? 

Ron Riekki's latest books in 2020 are Niiji (Cyberwit, co-written with Sally Brunk), i have been warned not to write about this (Main Street Rag), and The Many Lives of It (McFarland).

SERVE

by Akua Lezli Hope

via GIPHY

Her smirk

not a quirk

an expressive face that moves

knows the dance in a glance

an intellectual twerk

displays the staunch resilience

of the endowed but denied

civility’s proprieties

resistance to a jerk

who made exchange real work

those demeaned, those denied

who manage but won’t hide

constraints placed on contempt

silence endless drumbeats to genuflect

accommodate, excuse, cow-tow

duck and shamble, indulge the ruse —

all ignored in the arch of her brow

skew of her lips, pursed

and parsed along the narrow band

of behavior deemed seemly

she could not unmean what she meant

nor unintend the message sent, she would

proffer her passion extolling another

yet not relent and we, her many

cousins laugh and apprehend this

semiotic vent, who know well

the sly, deliberate tell

 

 

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A third generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, SFPA, Rhysling and Pushcart Prize nominations.

LAST CHANCE TO REMEMBER

by KP Liles

United States Post Office, Miami FL, 1922 Photo by William Arthur Fishbaugh,1873-1950

You could vote

and laugh

with dragonfire force.

You could mail letters, 

medicine, the Hope Diamond,

at the Post Office.

You could dine out

indoors. You could visit

splendid national parks.

You could chat

or argue with neighbors

then shake hands afterward.

You could travel

anywhere you could afford.

If you were Black,

Muslim, or loved someone

counter to expectations, 

you could

prove greater joy.

You could imagine. 

You could hear more

than one voice, one name

night and day, in print, 

onscreen, on-air 

or in dreams.

You could feel

faith’s traction.

We had global foods.

Unlimited entertainment.

Such glorious sport—

you’d start cheering

at “land of the free...”

That crowd’s roar!

You could give children

roof, ice cream, ambition

and sleep well for it.

More or less everything

was possible

if you could believe.

KP Liles has penned two poetry collections, Singing Back the Darkness (NYQ Books) and Spring Hunger (Plain View Press). He currently lives in the New Orleans metropolitan area.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL

by Jeremy Nathan Marks 

I will not forget what happened earlier today/last night/yesterday/

last week/last month/last year/this past decade 

I will not un-hear “I can’t breathe” I will not un-see “I can’t breathe”

Now I can hardly mouth “take a knee” 

I will not overlook the seizing of children from the arms 

of their mothers and their fathers at the border

met with a jacket that said, I really don’t care do u?

I will not pretend there was no Merrick Garland 

Birtherism, “Lock Her Up,” “Commie,” “Monster” 

and “Nasty Woman” 

I won’t overlook Access Hollywood and Charlottesville 

Muslim Bans and “Stand Back/Stand By”

I do recall Russia, Ukraine, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn

William Barr, the emoluments clause, impeachment and tax returns

I won’t forget “Send Her Back” or ignore all those phoney words of outrage 

by Senators and Representatives who now walk in complete lockstep 

playing the country for fools with Judge Barrett and how “he’s learned his lesson” 

I will not un-see the Second Lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

accosted buying groceries, called the n-word because she’s of color 

I cannot reconcile how Covid became a “blessing from God” 

because the right man contracted it at a hugging party for a judicial coup d’état 

This is not normal

none of this is normal 

there is more to democracy

than just the news cycle

There is the world 

and our place in it 

there is a country, burning

This is not normal 

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. New work appears this fall in So It Goes, Boog City, Unlikely Stories, The Journal of Expressive Writing, The Last Leaves, Chiron Review, Dissident Voice, Ginosko, and Bewildering Stories. 

HUMPTY DUMP T

by Mickey J. Corrigan

A microscopic view of 293T cells derived from embryonic kidneys, which several companies are using to develop Covid-19 therapies. The treatment for Covid-19 received by Mr. T***p—a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies he described as a “cure” in a celebratory video posted on Twitter—was developed using human cells derived from a fetus aborted decades ago. Photo credit: Juan Mabromata/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, October 8, 2020

I wasn't born yesterday

I wasn't born at all

sacrificed for the future

sacrificed on the steel table

a precious budding knot

of unfolding potential

of stem cells used

to create the line

to create the path

to saving human lives

not mine I was just 

enough for the 293T

enough for the Per.C6

cells from the laboratory

cells from the dark years 

in secret dingy rooms

brave men in white coats

brave women in masks

brave enough to help

young girls weeping

salty ocean tears, all

in fear for their future

in fear for their lives

I didn't have one

so decades later—

decades of growth

decades of greed

decades of bloat—

he could be saved

he could live on

breathless and hardened

fat egg that won't break

perched on a wall of power

on a balcony above us

casting aspersions and lies

with elite impunity

with no responsibility

no respect for ideals

the common good 

I gave my life for

what he disregards—

laws made to be broken

laws like offshore trawlers

laws to be scoffed at—

lives cut short by whim

lives cut short by him

but not his

life

saved by others' sacrifices 

like mine

like yours

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

JUMP

 by T. R. Poulson

   for Eddie Van Halen

When I think of punches

I think of unrealized 

dreams and a concert, way back

in 1984, those numbers in lights against

the dark. We could only record

it in our minds. Eddie riffed like a machine

except no machine

could have held its own, punch

for punch, with him. Those songs from records

made even better with so many fans, really

getting into it, hands in the air, hands against

hands, girlfriends held up on the backs

of shoulders. Mom bought us tickets way back

in the seats, safe from those machine-

like fans on the Minidome turf—against

my will. I thought I’d taken my punches

by then, was ripe for real

lessons in love. For the record,

I was a kid, too young even to record

a first kiss or palm on the small of my back.

“I’ll Wait,” I sang, and willed it to be real,

always impatient with the machine

that was time. I believed love had no punches,

just a “Pretty Woman” winning against

mean girls, but what mean girls? Us against

them? Those riffs, both recorded

and live, erased all life’s punches

rendered us all, one of us. I want to go back,

to find a time machine

that will take me away from the real

of today, to the rose-colored real

of then. I want to fight against

the way we inflict pain like a machine

I want to stop and record

that first palm on my back.

This time, I would throw the right punches.

Roll with the punches, get 

to what’s real. I got my back 

against the record machine.

T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada Alum and proud Wolf Pack fan, lives in San Mateo, California.  A previous contributor to The New Verse News, her work has also appeared in other journals, including Booth, Rattle, The Meadow, The Raintown Review, J Journal, Verdad, and Trajectory.

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

by Juditha Dowd

Moon Behind the Oak, a photograph by Alinore Rose

Instead I watched the moon. I watched the moon climb up

the branches of the Rosenbauers’ oak and lift off into open sky.

By then a few stars and planets had pierced the urban night,

their sparkle suggesting forward movement as I viewed them

alone from our porch—it seemed they were headed somewhere.

Soon I was so caught up in thinking about their voyage

I forgot about the frost and the ruined tomatoes and the ruin

of where we’re headed here on earth, driven by barking dogs.

Is it better now that we understand the stars? Was it easier to believe

that all is preordained and all we need to do is bow our heads

and go along? I watched the moon find the windows of every house

on our block. Same moon, same light. I watched until it crested

and fell down our hill toward the college. Then there was nothing

to do but go back in.

 

Juditha Dowd’s latest book is Audubon’s Sparrow (Rose Metal Press, 2020).

AS THIS ELECTION APPROACHES, I PUT MY THOUGHTS IN SMALL PLACES

by Penelope Scambly Schott

The green birdhouse
has a high tin roof

The green birdhouse
hangs crooked on the fence

The green birdhouse
has a hole and a perch

but I am too heavy
to perch on the perch

and I am too wide
to squeeze through the hole

and look, the birdhouse
is packed with sticks

which is why I can’t hide
in the green birdhouse 

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

OCTOBER 12: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY

by Sister Lou Ella

am i too white to mourn with you

Indigenous Peoples

of the terror my people

created in your lives  your nations

of the wound you still carry

a weariness called so slow to trust

yet

what if my people never came

would today look like today

we are here     

this complicated now

would that it be simple

but it was simple then

                     as terror is always simple

for we came   we saw    we conquered

yet we are here today

complicated  costly

as we, too, carry a wound

the terror we refuse to see and mourn

Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)