YOUR VOICE * YOUR VOTE

by Jen Schneider

I.

Our Vote Is Our Voice. Why Can I Not Hear It?

 

Question 1. 

If my ballot is complete yet not received, do I still count? 

 

Question 2. 

Which of the following words is least like the others? Most?

A.    Vision

B.    Victory

C.    Voice

D.    Vacuum

 

Question 3. 

If I speak yet no one hears, does my voice matter?

 

Question 4. 

Which of the following words is least like the others? most?

A.    Count

B.    Calculate

C.    Curate

D.    Collect

 

Question 5

Which color is least like the others? most?

A.    Blue

B.    Red

C.    Purple

D.    Green

 

Question 6

What percentage of inmates in county jail are innocent of all charges?

What percentage of inmates in county jail are allowed to vote?

What percentage ultimately plead guilty, despite innocence?

What percentage ultimately fail to vote, despite eligibility and desire?

 

Question 7

Define fundamental.

Define right. 

 

Question 8

When Election Day bleeds and blends with the days that follow, does the notion of a 24-hour day persist?

 

Question 9

Define day.

Define vote.

Define right.

 

Question 10

If I lose an absentee ballot, am I too absent?

 

Question 11

Which word doesn’t belong?

A.    Left

B.    Right

C.    Wrong

D.    Accurate

 

Question 12

Which word doesn’t belong?

A.    Territory

B.    Prison

C.    Jail

D.    Shelter

E.    Cell

 

Question 13

How do the following terms differ in meaning?

A.    Suppress

B.    Oppress

C.    Repress

D.    Regress

 

Question 14

If I look like a different person on each of my 3 forms of ID, who am I?

 

Question 15

What word would you add to this list? Why?

A.    Patient

B.    Patience

C.    Poll

D.    Pure

E.    Pacify

 

Question 16

Define Hope. 

Define Crossroads.

How are the two concepts similar?

How are the two concepts different?

 

II.

Where Crossroads Meets Paths Forward

A Crossroads

1.     The color of fear

2.     A bitter flavor, seasoning, and word. Three words. 

3.     A sound that comes from the sky

4.     A sound that comes from the ground

5.     The word for when fear, anger, disbelief, and disillusionment meet 

6.     The word for where fear, anger, disbelief, and disillusionment meet

7.     A favorite hobby

8.     Adjectives that describe your worst qualities - three

 

A Path Forward

1.     The color of a favorite garment

2.     Lyrics from a beloved song. Three words.

3.     Another word for cry

4.     A sound that describes sadness

5.     The word for when hope, empathy, and understanding, and compassion meet

6.     The word for where hope, empathy, and understanding, and compassion meet

7.     A bemoaned chore

8.     Adjectives that describe your best qualities - three

 

Hope

Hope is the color of _1__, the flavor of _2__, and the sound of ___3___ 

and __4__. Hope is ___5__, __6__, and __7__. 

Hope is ___8___.  Hope is everywhere. Choose Hope.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

WHY BLUE

by Catherine Gonick

“Animated Water” by Dragonlord-Daegen at DeviantArt

of all the light sent by the sun, blue scatters the most in all directions

to be seen by everyone 

 

it fills our sky and waters, most of our planet when seen from space,

yet in the rest of nature blue is rare,  

hard to find in minerals and plants, or food, except in blueberries 

and cheese, and difficult to make, ask any chemist

 

O blue of lapis lazuli, sleep and twilight, moon and Monday, ribbon

and blood, of medieval cathedral windows, glaciers, and forget-me-nots

 

O blue warm and cool, in hues of indigo, ultramarine and aquamarine,

turquoise and teal

 

blue that lowers our pulse rate, warns of poisons, protects against

the evil eye when used in pendants, painted on doors and houses

 

there is a blue of stability and distance, of peace and sadness, 

eyes of people who survived ice

 

a blue of harmony, seen in the flag of the United Nations,

a blue of storms, in uniforms for soldiers and police

 

but for the most part blue is everywhere we’re not—and invites

us to join it

 

of all the light that reaches Earth, blue is the sun’s favorite 

Catherine Gonick's poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Sukoon, and in anthologies including in plein air and Grabbed. She works in a company that mitigates the effects of climate change.

TEAR GAS AND WOAD

by Peleg Held

A nude protester—dubbed later “Naked Athena"—faces off against law enforcement officers during a protest against racial inequality in Portland, Ore., on July 18. Credit Nathan Howard/Reuters via The New York Times.

Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem. —Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars


She fingers the blue on slowly, feralled in its wake;
she counts the steps from inside out the fenced-in fields of grace.

A vitrumned likeness wavers, a cats-lick from the rim,
in the tea cup in the circle of the saucer's closing ring.

Let the tongue tip shape the watchword in the shallows of its bow;
let sentry sleep and serpent sing beneath the shuddered vow.

Here is where their end is born; there is nothing at the gate
but ink and skin, the sylph herself: the cunt-directed state.

Caesar may misread you in the peripherals of his glass
or more likely overlook you, a needle in the grass

but as you plunge into his heel he will see the face
of what gives womb its dark and what gives blood its taste.


Peleg Held lives in Hiram, Maine with his partner and 21 chickens led by the world's tiniest rooster, Gavroche-That-Lives.

NOVEMBER 2020

by Gil Hoy

Graphic: MoveOn.org

When the poet's
arrow hits the mark,

a wishful paragraph
can become

a single word:

Blue

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and served four terms as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman. He is a member of the Brookline Democratic Town Committee. 

A VOICE FROM THE BLUE

by George Held

Her sharp metallic voice says,
“Your record of on-time payments
Qualifies you for zero interest
On your new credit card. Please
Press 1 for our authentication department.”

God knows what questions will be
Asked, what fees charged if I press 1
But her sharp metallic voice
Warns me to beware. It’s like
The brisk, urgent frat-boy voice

That offers me forgiveness
Of my car loan or the sanctimonious
Voice of the pitch-man soliciting
My donation to some starving
Reservation in remote Montana.

The voices might as well welcome
Me to the age of vulnerability,
Of forgetfulness, of frailty,
Of being a mark for any con
Preying on the inept and the lonely,

On those who might be careless
Or dying to squander their shekels in reply
To a disembodied voice from the blue
And its promise of only connecting
For one last desperate minute.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

BIPARTISAN TO BIPENNATE

by John Beaton

Eagle with One Wing by Christopher Hall.

I saw a bird with just one wing.
The poor thing could not fly;
it fluttered in a clockwise ring.
Another squawked nearby,

similarly handicapped,
but anticlockwise in
the one-winged way it feebly flapped.
They filled me with chagrin

and then a bright idea brewed—
what if I was to tie
the two together? Then they could
Siamesely fly.

And so they did, the left wing and
the right, united, flew.
It happened in cloud cuckoo land—
one wing was red, one blue.



John Beaton, a retired actuary who was born in Scotland, is a widely published poet and spoken word performer from Vancouver Island, Canada.

DOG WHISTLE POLITICS

by Jacqueline Jules

Embed from Getty Images

A pitch prepared for ears
sensitive to a certain frequency.

Meaning my neighbor
doesn’t hear the same message
in the sign he posted in his front yard.

Words that scream for me
like teenagers in a slasher movie
don’t make him blink. No more disturbing
than a housecat meowing for supper.

He waves at me from his white porch
wearing his red sweater, unaware
of the sirens he’s set off in my head.

Though I suspect he steams, just as I do,
at the prospect of sharing a sidewalk
with someone who steps on his vote.

I wipe my eyes on the sleeve
of my blue sweater. Breathe deep.
Remind myself
we are both howling
at the same cruel moon
for different reasons.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum and Stronger Than Cleopatra. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Little Patuxent Review, and Gargoyle. She is also the author of 35 books for young readers.

WHILE ON FACEBOOK

by Andrea Murphy

I’ve become obsessed
scrolling and clicking
to read the obscene
blood splattered justifications
of racism in blue,
in blue with
bullets and badges.

One says: “Black Lives
Matter. Blah, blah, blah.”
Another says, “Kill the
blue rat bastards killing
us.”
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE

And I am black scrolling
And I am blue scrolling
And I am filled with
the numbers
of the mentally ill. Killed.
Of little black boys
with toy guns. Killed.
Scrolling and clicking
in terror, I beg my
husband to be a
loyal puppy,
docile dog when in a car
with expired tags
or broken tail light
or when caught making an
illegal turn. We have
a five year old daughter.
He’s sworn to wear
his license as dog tags.
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE

They dog-tag toes
of black men at
the morgue five times
more often than whites
killed by blue men.
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE
“Don’t shoot;
hands up.”
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE
And gasp
And grieve
at death and hate because
I am obsessed with the
loss of our humanity.



Andrea Murphy is a fifteen year educator, who is currently on hiatus. She has taught English at both high school and community college. During this hiatus, she has decided to focus on her passion for creative writing and is an emerging poet in the St. Mary’s of California MFA program. Recently, she published a poem on Moonglasses.com. If asked what she plans to do with her degree, she would tell you that she intends to enjoy it.  She loves the lyrical expression of language and has made it her primary intention of study as she writes about family, legacy, illness, and blackness from a “womanist” perspective.  

THE VERSATILITY OF BLUE

by Tracey Gratch

The world’s newest shade of blue, a brilliantly bright, durable pigment called YInMn blue, has been licensed for commercial use and is already in the hands of some artists. The pigment was discovered in 2009 by chemist Mas Subramanian and his team at Oregon State University while they were conducting experiments connected to electronics. For one series of tests, the scientists mixed black manganese oxide with a variety of chemicals and heated them to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (The name comes from the pigment’s elemental makeup, which includes Yttrium, Indium and Manganese.) —artnet news, June 20, 2016

Blue is sapphire when on fire
blue is indigo in the night sky
Blue is cobalt, elemental,
YInMn's bright – blue's latest dye

Blue is navy when it’s strong
blue is sadness in a song
Blue is the diver drown in the lake
blue's the baby miscarried for heaven's sake

Blue is turquoise tile in the bath
blue's the jay to cross my path
Blood, spent, returns through sky-blue veins –
to the heart to be renewed again.


Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four children. Several of her poems have appeared at TheNewVerse.News.