MIDWESTERN AMERICAN DREAM

by Svetlana Litvinchuk

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

My American husband wants a quiet life. He’s ready for it 
to be predictable again, as it unfolds across the flat, 
easy soil in the American Heartland. He says he knows 
what to expect from people there.
 
He’s nostalgic for the kindness of strangers
holding doors open for one another and for all 
the seasons to parade in and out in an orderly fashion. 
He wants rectangular plots of easy to tame lawn 
and fresh cut barbecue Sundays where the wildest 
thing is grass prairie housing clean water in gleaming
towers.
 
He wants starchy cuisine swimming in dairy, lactose 
intolerance be damned. He craves a place so bland 
that they ship newscasters there for vocal training 
to drop any accents that might offend. 
 
We’ve entered the low-drama era of our lives.
The low-stakes, low-excitement Zen that urbanites 
don’t know they’re missing.
 
He wants toothless fish that surrender to the hook 
from stocked lakes in subdivisions so that he can 
appear capable of anything, heroic in the eyes
of our daughter.
 
Soon she’ll take her first steps. So, it is time to decide
on our preschool of choice, their waiting list coveting 
our checking account. We’ll roll around the cul-de-sacs 
in the comfort of our Sienna minivan, a synecdoche 
of a humble family life.
 
We’ll choose our couple-friends, who will also be 
parents and he’ll swig beer with someone named Chris 
by the grill while I’ll have low-voiced table chats 
with someone named Emily as we keep watch out 
the sliding glass door as our children play in the yard 
and there will be 
 
no war planes flying overhead and we will be 
so safe that we’ll have the luxury of taking for granted 
just how safe we are.

Photo from US European Command video of Russian warplane over the Black Sea

Svetlana Litvinchuk is a poet and permaculture farmer who holds degrees from University of New Mexico. She is the author of a debut poetry chapbook Only a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, Sky Island Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, ONE ART, Apocalypse Confidential, Union Spring Review, Longhouse Press, and elsewhere. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she now lives with her husband and daughter on their organic farm in the Arkansas Ozarks where she derives satisfaction from watching cucumber plants climb their trellises skyward. She is a reviews editor with ONLY POEMS.

AMERICAN DREAM ‘22

by Scott C. Kaestner

The American Dream Art Print by cindy nguyen

We have to unlearn everything 

we’ve come to know.

Forget the past so as not to

forsake the future.

Be the change coming.

Believe it’s possible.

The Milky Way understands.

Asteroids do slam into planets.

And dinosaurs will disappear.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and deadbeat dreamer extraordinaire. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

PALIMPSEST

by Greg LeGault

Marcus Jansen, “Rural America,” 2018. Oil enamels, oil stick, paper, cloth and spray paint on canvas. 50 x 74 inches. From the collection of Corrado and Christina.

Back in the day

fifty years ago

flames lit the night

as cities glowed.

Brother turned on brother

black on white

young on old

hawks on doves

chanting left on

canting right—

how terribly brief that

“Summer of Love.”

We raced into space

walked on the moon,

grieved when dreamers

were taken too soon

followed different drummers

with funkier beats

preached peace while running

wild in the streets

searching for answers

blowin’ in the wind—

“The old world will crumble

and a new one begin!” 

And through it all each America gleaned

that it was pursuing the American Dream.

 

Comes the day

five decades on

the flames still burn

the Dream seems gone.

Brother turns on brother

every color fearing white.

Radical left

ultra-right

patriot versus patriot—

who is us and

who is not? We

race to the brink

dance on the edge

armed to the teeth,

at odds is an image

and what lies beneath;

tectonic plates always

pushing and shifting

united states

untethered and drifting.

We hold up a finger

in hopes we’ll begin

to find the hint of an answer

blowin’ in the wind.

Something to tell us that what we are seeing

isn’t the end of American dreaming.

Greg LeGault is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS.

DEMOCRACY AS A WAY OF LIFE

by George Salamon

"We need to save democracy from capitalism, and save capitalism from itself." —Kevin J. Delaney, “American Workers Deserve to Live With Dignity,” The New York Times, July 5, 2020


Let us pretend this leopard can
Change its spots, let us dream
The impossible dream once more.
Not this old boy, who's not ready
For one more plunge into an
Unfulfillable dream to overturn
The one created by our Indian-
Killing, slave-owning heroes by
Our greed-consumed wheelers
And dealers and salesmen from
The Frontier to Silicon Valley, a
Dream without roots in democracy
But in the cult of Mammon and Mars,
Talking the big lie, the bigger promise,
But walking in the bloody footsteps of
Absurdities and atrocities committed
Against the humanism no magician or
Leader can inject into the heart of our
Homegrown capitalism.
We can "save" democracy in America
By making it our way of life, democracy
With its own culture grown from the
Essential democratic truths about the
Values of human life, beginning with the
Long march of democracy, sustained by
The new American Dream, through the
"Unprecedented waves and storms" our
Poet of democracy predicted and, with
Grit, patience and luck reach that "city
Upon a hill" as it morphs from myth into
A place of democratic life.


George Salamon, inspired by Whitman, in St. Louis, MO.

SWEAT IS NO LONGER THE COIN OF THE LAND

by George Salamon

"Of all the days celebrated for one cause or another, there is not one which stands so conspicuously for the social advancement of the common people as the first Monday in September," Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, The New York Times, September 4, 1910


"While you're planning that Labor Day weekend family cookout or a last minute getaway to one of the world's best food cities, we're gearing up for some serious savings in the form of Labor Day 2018 sales," in "All Of the Labor Day 2018 Sales You Need To Know About," The Huffington Post, August 24, 2018


Who still loves ya, underpaid
Working stiffs of America?
Laboring on  assembly lines,
In the streets and sewers of cities,
In fields on farms, scrubbing
Hospital floors and cleaning
Offices in the towers of wealth.
You've been abandoned and deceived,
Promises were broken, leaving your
Hopes and expectations unrealized.
Sweat is no longer the coin of the land.
Fat cats who control the price at which
Your labor is bought and sold
Turned you into losers in
The marketplace they own.
Once celebrated as the backbone of
America, as heirs to Rosie the Riveter
And Joe Lunchpail, you've been
Dehumanized and deplored.
The bargain you made for that
Shot at the American Dream
Was shredded, equal opportunity for all
Became an unmentionable in the
Corridors of power and at the
Spectacle theater of the ballot box.
Things could be different, but you
Struggle to imagine a future that is
Different from what is.
Let's enlist in the task of
Building a people's democracy,
Inspired by a many-splendored Dream
Bigger than the one for the self and the few.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. once a strong union city.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS DREAM

by George Salamon

President Trump speaks at the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention in Nashville, Tenn. on Monday. Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images via NPR

"Farmers are the president's people," Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in an interview with Morning Edition on Monday. "These are the people that elected the president. The president knows that. These are the people the president cares about. And he wants them to enjoy the American Dream just like all the people in the cities." Farm income has suffered in recent years from sagging commodity prices. Net farm income in 2017 was up modestly from the previous year, but still only about half what it was in 2013. —NPR, January 8, 2018

It's too soon to bury the old American Dream,
Riding wobbly in the saddle of our minds.
Put there by the founding fathers,
It grew into the million-dollar salesman
Of Wall Street's enormous con,
The nation's permanent floating crap game
Of wealth and power and fame.
The dream infected our people's soul,
Crushed their spirit, played with their hearts.
It immersed us in flush darkness,
Acquiring new horizons every might,
Yet gaining new followers every day.
It gave us under-educated leaders
Emerging from ivy-covered breeding grounds.
It left no space for nobler visions,
For women who know, for children who care.
It governs our minds through men with no vision at all,
Men with the temperament of their attire,
The stern-browed suits of the old American Dream.


George Salamon watches the pursuit of the American Dream from the heartland in St. Louis, MO.

MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, EVEN IF IT KILLS US

by George Salamon

“Young Americans are dying from despair. After the Great Recession, people aged between 25 and 44 started to overdose on opioids at an alarming pace. Overall, death rates for this age group rose an astounding 8% between 2010 and 2015.” —Jessika Bohon,  “Deaths of despair are rising in America. They are claiming lives all around me,” The Guardian, June 22, 2017. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Flavius Josephus chronicled
The suicide of 960 Jews in 73 CE
Besieged by a Roman legion in Masada.
It may be history, it may be legend.
What young Americans are doing today
Is the real thing.
It is making America ugly and mean
And a mockery of the American Dream.

George Salamon has been watching the crumbling of the American Dream in and from St. Louis, MO.

IMMIGRANT

by Alan Catlin

Does it matter?
Now,
here, today

That they were
grunts in Vietnam,
her father,
uncles, cousins

and that she
the niece,
daughter,
married an
Asian guy

Not a Vietnamese,
not a Japanese,
or a Chinese
but a neighbor
to Nam guy

That he spent years in
refugee camps
before he made
it here

All of those awful years
dreaming of a better
life, of America

That he finally made it.
Worked a decade, more,
for his phd,
fought
prejudice,
discrimination,
ridicule

Does it matter
That he has
a good job,
no a great job,
is a provider
is the father
of their grandchild,
their only grandchild

a half-Asian,
half-American
beauty?

Oh, yes it matters

A lot.


Alan Catlin is poetry editor of online journal misfitmagazine.net. His latest book of poetry is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.

LABOR'S LOST LOVE:A LAMENT FOR LABOR DAY

by George Salamon

"We don't really care if the economy is in tatters'cause no one is doing badly; well, at least no one who matters."               —“Send a Billionaire to Camp," Union Song by Davis Gloff

Hey, folks, you old enough to remember
When Labor Day was for America's working stiff?
For the bricklayer, printer, the waitress in the diner.
Well, today our masses celebrate something finer:
The lifestyles of the rich and famous,
The antics of adolescent celebrities and pubescent starlets
Where once, in the decade after Rosie the Riveter
Chester Riley the riveter played the backbone of America.

Those were the days but they did end.
Now Labor Day means hunting for bargains at Walmart
Where working stiffs are stiffed every day
And "organized labor" is dirty talk.
Politicians mumble "working American"
The way TV anchors slur over "sex offender"
Before moving on to the latest thrill
Provided by the Kardashians and their kin.

The blue-collar life is for losers,
An occasional joke for sitcoms' white collar elite,
For the upwardly mobile professionals we
All want to be with fewer than ever making it.
Blue-collar misery, studies tell us, is a
Life-long journey and the American Dream reserved for a few,
For masters of the resume who become priests in the
Church at the intersection of Wall Street and Capitol Hill.

There's nothing to celebrate on Labor Day if
You're toiling on the assembly line or sweating on the loading platform,
If your collar is blue and the music of your life even bluer.
You got sourced out and sold out by business and government.
You are anachronisms fearfully waiting to be replaced by the robots of tomorrow.
So, indulge in a bit of nostalgia on Labor Day and listen to Pete Seeger doing
"Solidarity Forever" or Phil Ochs singing "The Ballad of Joe Hill."
A touch of sweetness for life's bitter pill.


George Salamon taught German literature and culture at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter for the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor on Defense Systems Review. He published a study of Arnold Zweig's novels of Word War One and a reader in German history. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

HOW FAR IS AMERICA FROM HERE ?

by Howard Winn

Image source: Tnooz

What has happened to the sign posts,
the route numbers,
and why does the compass
seem not to work?
Has someone burned the maps,
torn up the directions,
pointed in the wrong way
while standing at the side of the road?
The noise from the speakers
seems to disguise the words
or make them into a meaningless mumble.
Who is talking?
What do they want?
It is difficult to see past that mirage
created in the Texas heat
over the road onward.
The scene appears like a cool lake,
shimmering in the sunlight,
calling for a redemptive baptism,
that turns the highway ahead
into seeming holy water.
Will we walk upon it,
following some self-defined sacred leader,
or will we find the surface
hard and black like the shadows
of the storytellers who lead us.
How far is America from here?


Howard Winn's poetry and fiction has been published recently in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Taj Mahal Review, Descant (Canada), Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. He has a B. A. from Vassar College and an M. A. from the Stanford University Writing Program.