NO COUNTRY FOR OLD KENTUCKY HOMES

by M. N. O'Brien

In an interview Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said the agency is preparing for severe weather events of similar magnitude. “This is going to be our new normal, and the effects that we’re seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation,” she said. —The Washington Post, December 13, 2021

Echoes of memories: the crunching gravel

under departing tire trucks drowned out

by a howling freight train. Gnashing

through the house, using its churning debris,

corpses of livelihoods to kill more. Leaving

only the warm December stones behind.

In the distance, coal is exhumed

with Kentucky's unbridled spirit.

M. N. O'Brien received his B.A. from Roanoke College, where his work was published in On Concept's Edge and received the Charles C. Wise Poetry Award. His work has appeared in SOFTBLOW, Right Hand Pointing, and The Ekphrasis Review. He currently lives in Christiansburg, Virginia, taking seasonal jobs that do not interfere with writing poetry. He despises writing about himself in the third person.

DECEMBER

by Clara B. Jones 

Image source: Gawker

It's December so I bought lights brighter than the sallow skin of my guardian who is nice enough but never invites me to Christmas dinner since the five-year-old is afraid of robots. My surrogate said, On a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you like to spend the day at Starbucks®? I decided to walk because humanoids ask me personal questions when they corner me alone. Are you happy? Do you want a mate? Do you wish a mechanical family had adopted you? Starbucks® promotes diversity so no one stares when I order peppermint latte and a cranberry scone though a little girl in line called me, Tin Man®—a slight more amusing than offensive. Besides, I am superior to anyone here since my microchips are programmed with the complete works of Charles Dickens, and the Mayor invited me to play The Christmas Carol in the town square at six. My performance will be bot-streamed to my Facebook® page, and I have habituated to the bullying I receive in public since a technician dampened my sensory registers that should function well until my expiration date next year. The Mayor asked me, On a scale of 1 to 5, how close do you want to stand to the Wise Men? I pretended not to hear him since it sounded like a trick question.

Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Silver Spring, MD (USA). As a woman of color, she writes about the “performance” of identity & power & conducts research on experimental poetry & radical publishing. Clara is author of three chapbooks, & her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous venues.

SHORT DAYS

Widely-published writer Lewis Gardner blogs here.

FIFTY-FIVE DEGREES

by Laura Rodley

USA Today

What do I do, what can I do,
in the face of global warming?
I paint my house, cover holes,
burn less oil, wear sweaters,
give praise for the fifty degrees
to get one more coat of paint on
before we’re clobbered with snow,
give thanks for the large moth
that slept by my doorway last night,
forgetting how to knock,
all moths welcome, birch moths,
lunas, crecopias, though not
clothes moths; I climb on the roof,
slather paint like shaving cream
on the face of my house, work it
in, lubricate each cedar siding board,
hoping such a shield will require less oil,
hoping for peace on earth,
hoping Santa will find his way
in the dark with no snow to reflect
the light of his lanterns.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

DECEMBER ONCE AGAIN

by Diana Woodcock

"Jazz Beat" painting by Debra Hurd

What can I write to shed light
on this dark December night?
A Connecticut town grieves for
twenty-six dead—victims of the latest
school shooting.  Tibetans are setting
themselves on fire for freedom,
ninety-five since February, 2009.
Listening to musicians walking the bass,
feathering the line, I let the blues take me,
wrap me in the Great Mystery.

All are one, meant to sing and sway
together, to love.  The blues is all about
love, longing, loss, listening,
improvising, sharing our stories and
struggles, recognizing each other
as sister and brother.

Look into the faces around you
moved by music—see how they
seem familiar?  What better way
to pray for justice, an end to violence,
than to sway to the swing of jazz?

A Pakistani girl shot in the head
because the Taliban cannot understand
her hunger and yearning for higher
learning; they do not recognize
she is their sister.  Let the blues take me.
shape my prayer for peace, lead me
to transcend nihilism, alienation.

Listening to the blues, to the sounds of
migrant workers in this oil-rich desert town.
Thinking about blood diamonds,
underground railroads, women and girls
sold into the sex trade.

This is Advent season, time
for preparing for the light.
Long dark December nights.
Listen to the blues.  Gaza.  Aleppo.
Keep listening.  The call to prayer
mid-day, the mosque.  Revisionist
Zionist leaders.  Jihad.  Refugees.
Cambodian children amputees
still playing among landmines.

Dear jazz drummer, please
keep feathering the line.


Diana Woodcock’s first full-length collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders—nominated for a Kate Tufts Discovery Award—won the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Poetry Prize for Women and was published by Little Red Tree Publishing in 2011.  Her chapbooks are In the Shade of the Sidra Tree (Finishing Line Press), Mandala (Foothills Publishing), and Travels of a Gwai Lo—the title poem of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She has been teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar since 2004.  Prior to that, she lived and worked in Tibet, Macau and Thailand.