ACHILLES IN MEMORIAM

by Janice D. Soderling

Graphic: Odysseus With Achilles In The Underworld. Attica red-figure vase, ca 480 B.C. When Odysseus visits the Underworld in The Odyssey, Achilles tells him, “Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.”

Eulogies are written by the living,

never by the dead,

who would probably have said

something quite different about life and giving.

Janice D. Soderling has often published at The New Verse News over the years.  Her most recent collections are War: Make that City Desolate and Rooms and Closets.

MARE NOSTRUM

by Janice D. Soderling

Eight children were among the 11 migrants who drowned when their boat sank off Turkey's western coast, state media report. Eight other people were rescued from the waters off Cesme, a tourist resort on the Aegean coast opposite the Greek island of Chios. —BBC, January 12, 2020.

It is the ghost ship Hope-No-More
that sails a bitter sea.
Stiff on her misty deck there stands
a doleful company.

Her sails are spun of baby breath.
Her masts are made of bones.
Her draft is deep, but deeper still,
the halls of Davy Jones.

Her keel is carved of hard goodbyes.
Her rigging wrought of grief.
Her rotting hull is empty as
the honor of a thief.

She sailed from war and hunger.
War and hunger are no more.
She sails like fog forever.
The good ship Hope-No-More.

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work was recently at Better Than Starbucks and Light. She has published one chapbook in Swedish and two in English, another soon forthcoming titled War: Make That City Desolate.

PRO PATRIA REDUX

by Janice D. Soderling

You won't find the old men going.
Death and rotting bodies are too much on their minds.
You won't find their scions going either.
Too much capital invested in those victorious sperm.

You won't find the old women going.
They are too canny.
They have dealt with blood
and shit and pain and broken promises
all their lives.

A few young women will go,
The gullible ones trying to prove their equality.
The rest, the smarter ones,
are too busy with their hair and high heels.

Uncle Samuel isn't going.
Uncle Samuel would like the glory, but he hedges;
he deals in futures and private equity.
And he figures, “Why do we have all these young men
if we aren't going to use them?”

So that leaves you, m'boy,
inner city dropout, son of immigrants.
Step up and make your country proud.
Yes, you from the backwoods, the back roads,
the back of the class, the back of the line,
the backbone of Exceptionalism.
And anyway there are no jobs,
and as everybody knows,
nobody (except in action movies),
nobody dies in war.

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her fourth chapbook, forthcoming in February, is titled War: Make that City Desolate.

RAPE OF THE FLOCK

by Janice D. Soderling

President Donald Trump has taken historically unprecedented action to roll back a slew of environmental regulations that protect air, water, land and public health from climate change and fossil fuel pollution. The administration has targeted about 85 environmental rules, according to Harvard Law School’s rollback tracker. … However, the consequences of eliminating these regulations include more premature deaths from pollutants and higher levels of climate change-inducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to research from the NYU Law School. —CNBC, December 24, 2019. Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone.

Higgledy piggledy,
Donald J. T***p
raped Mother Nature
in meadows and parks

till she lay dead with dead
bees and dead sheeple, dead
biodiversity,
dead oligarchs.


Janice D. Soderling is a poet, writer and translator with three poetry chapbooks and another forthcoming in February. All of them include poems that first were published at TheNewVerse.News.

THE BALLAD OF LINDSEY GRAHAM'S PICKLE

by Janice D. Soderling

Dong, dong, it pealed from each bell tower
until full twelve was said.
Cold, coverless and quivering,
Graham flopped around in bed.

He sat up, did the Senator,
and stared into the night
for at the footboard of his bed
commenced a nebulous light.

A ghastly apparation grew
and softly did it moan.
With trembling hands, it held aloft
a moss-bedecked tombstone.

"Oh, Lindsey," wheezed the ghostly guest.
Oh, Lindsey Graham, behold."
There on the mildewed stone was writ,
Orange glitter is not gold.

"And quid pro quo is not BS.
Go read the damning transcript."
A tortured moan froze Lindsay's blood,
"Far better men than you've flipped.

"Beware the traitorous pumpkin man."
The moan rose to a shout.
"I come to save you from yourself."
The frightened man cried out,

"Who art thou, apparation grim?
Who gives my blood such chill?
The Ghost of Hearings-Yet-To-Come?
Or that socialist, Joe Hill?

The glowing ghost gave mirthless laugh.
"Joe Hill has never died.
Takes more than guns to kill a man,
No matter how they tried.

"John sent me here to wake you up.
You're backing the wrong horse.
The bus is nigh. His game is rigged.
Stay off his damned golf course."

Then Lindsey woke, relieved, and said,
"Joe Hill's a loser Commie.
But that's the last time that I eat
dill pickles with pastrami."

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work was recently at Light, Better Than Starbucks, and La Libélula Vaga.

VANDALISM AT A MILITARY CEMETERY

by Janice D. Soderling

Dozens of Commonwealth graves have been daubed with swastikas and other symbols at a cemetery dedicated to those fought in the first and second world wars. The headstones were vandalised with red spray paint overnight at the Haifa war cemetery in northern Israel, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). It comes just days after several other Commonwealth graves were knocked over at Belfast City Cemetery in Northern Ireland. —The London Economic, October 11, 2019

Indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
the dusty lads sleep on.
Allied in unilateral descent,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
and to the tiffs of kings or president.
Unmindful of thick darkness and bright dawn,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent
the dusty lads sleep on.

Janice D. Soderling, poet, writer and translator, is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work in Spanish translation was recent at La libélula vaga and her own translations from Swedish to English are forthcoming at Better than Starbucks.

PERSPECTIVE

by Janice D. Soderling





We are each but a minuscule dust mote
adrift for better or worse.
This earth is our bobbing lifeboat
in an alien universe.

So if T***p builds a Southern Wall
is of no consequence at all,
except for those on history's pages
who have their babies locked in cages.

Janice D. Soderling is widely published in print and online journals. Her work is included in the anthologies Nasty Women Poets and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry.

JOURNEY OF THE SARACENS

by Janice D. Soderling

Cartoon by Matt Bors / AlterNet, Sept. 8, 2015.

Christ set out on a rubber raft for Greece,
looking for a place to lay his head.
His father Yusuf said, "We come in peace."
"We come for peace," his mother Rasha said.

And Christ said nothing, smiled his knowing smile
for he had sailed a desert ship before.
Their sea-swamped vessel swayed mile after mile.
"We seek a refuge," said they. "Nothing more."

Wild Herod, as you know, kills sons of men.
The raft was crammed with babes both aft and fore.
And Rasha nursed her brown-eyed Saracen.
And Yusuf kept a look-out for the shore.

Through wintry lands they walked their weary walk
and begged for shelter for a little while.
Amid the festive songs and Christmas talk,
sweet Christ said nothing, smiled his knowing smile.


Janice D. Soderling is a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

SORRY

by Janice D. Soderling

On Aug. 26 in Idomeni, Greece, a cousin of Ahmad's, Nisrine Majid, looked out of the train that would carry the refugees through Macedonia, to its border with Serbia. SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

When war comes to your country,
it will not just come to other towns than your town.
It will not just come to people you don't like anyway.
Sorry.

When war comes to your country,
the milk you buy at your corner grocery store
will not be there for the buying.
It will never be on your breakfast table again.
Sorry. No breakfast table.

When war comes to your country,
your children will be crying on live television.
Sorry. Life isn't always fair.

When war comes to your country,
it will bring you new knowledge.
Words which you never fully understood
will gain a deeper significance. Chlorine gas.
Barbed wire. Tear gas. Batons. Bread.
Sorry.

When war comes to your country,
when you flee with your family,
what should you take, what leave behind?
Family photos? Your new espresso machine?
No, be smart. Take bottled water,
a pan to cook in, soap, a towel,
band-aids for minor cuts and scratches.

When war comes to your country,
take sturdy walking shoes, woolen blankets.
Be prepared for a long wait. The borders are defended.

Sorry about any inconvenience.



Janice D. Soderling has previously contributed to TheNewVerse.News. She is featured poet at the October Quill and Parchment  and has forthcoming fiction at Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and Wasafiri.

HER NAME WAS SANDRA BLAND

by Janice D. Soderling

Here I am, back home in the land of the free and the brave
where fewer are free and many required to have courage.
A rainy morning, the bus backs out from its slot,
the driver honks like a steamship captain leaving the dock.
Across the aisle is a thirty-something pretending to be a kid,
his belly hanging over red bermuda shorts, his dirty red
dunks on the seat. He swerves through excuses. "Forget it,"
he says, "forget it." Every politico wears a flag pin and the Court
says corporations are persons, and the war on poverty mystically
became a war on the poor. The trendiest Wall is domestic.
A red state is not a reference to Russia, but to a Republican bastion.
When the wall fell in Berlin, protest poetry plunged out of fashion.
That was way back in 1986, Sandinista, Khomeini, arms for hostages,
Ollie the supporting actor, Ron the Baddest crying in the backwaters,
preparing the political way. That was the year of Iran-Contra.
Who remembers? Who these days can find Nicaragua
on the map let alone spell it? Can that fat man-boy, barking
into his cell phone at his mom? That selfsame year Mr. Gorbachev
released Irina Ratushinskaya from a long prison sentence
handed down for poetry-writing addiction. Who remembers?
In prison Irina suffered multiple concussions and US poets took notice.
Now jail concussions are as commonplace as tear gas and tasers.
Who remembers that the Court declared abortion was a fundamental right
Martin Luther King got a federal holiday
Who will rescue the dignity of snitched autopsy reports declaimed as poetry
at academic forums? I am home again, home again, where something honestly
important has been forgotten, torn down, jettisoned, jerry-built,
abandoned, collapsing around our ears. The bus enters the freeway:
again so much hate in the air, the American nightmare, waves of banker gain,
and marginal difference between tabloid TV and election campaigns
because bad cooks are spaciously in control and the biggest political party
these days is the party of non-voters. Who reads poetry anyway,
and what was that black woman's name, the one found dead in her cell,
that Illinois academic pulled over in Texas for an improper lane change?


Janice D. Soderling is a frequent contributor to The New Verse News.

BAZAAR

by Janice D. Soderling

At least 19 people have been killed and several injured by a bomb strapped to a girl reported to be aged about 10 in north-eastern Nigeria.—BBC News, January 10, 2015. Photo: NY Daily News

Weep, weep, weep,
for small fishes in the bay
caught in nets of intricate knots
where they only came to play.

Let fall a tear for hedgehogs
caught in a guileless snare;
duped by an innocent carrot,
and hoisted in the air.

Past cinnamon and saffron,
she glides with modest grace;
bundled nails and shrapnel,
brief inches from her face.

Weep, weep, weep,
for humankind's tragic flaw:
it feeds its tender brethren
into godhood's dimpled maw.


Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to The New Verse News.

CIRCUS BUT NO BREAD

by Janice D. Soderling

Image source: Ann Telnaes Archive

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday continued its abolition of limits on election spending, striking down a decades-old cap on the total amount any individual can contribute to federal candidates in a two-year election cycle. --NY Times, April 2, 2014


Democracy is not for you.

She's for those who can buy

her wholesale. You can kiss good-bye,

your obsolete world view

that politicians' pas de deux,

adagio, is danced for you.

Democracy!



For businesses are people too.

Like other folks they like to screw

around. Now lift your glass on high

and toast King Cash. Mud in your eye,

Democracy.


Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. Recent and forthcoming work at The Rotary Dial, Rattle, Hobart, Blink|Ink, B O D Y, Shot Glass Journal et al.

KOMMENO

by Janice D. Soderling

On August 16, 1943, the Greek village of Kommeno was destroyed, and one hundred fifty villagers massacred. 74 were children under the age of 10. Photo source: Kommeno. A narrative reconstruction of a war crime committed by the Wehrmacht in Greece.

Always they are with us in this room
watching as we laugh or write or rest.
Some never learned to speak. Like vaporous spume
they drift, small shades: dry-eyed, perplexed, distressed.
Months pass, and years, and decades, still they wait
for honest news, and even the littlest
ones keep watch. Men who exterminate
small babes like rats must surely have good cause.
One day, one may drop by to motivate
the deed—mistake or joke or small-print clause?
The little sprites want only to know why
they had to die.


Janice D. Soderling has often had poems at NVN. She is a poet, writer and translator whose work can be read in many print and online magazines and anthologies.

WILL WORK FOR FOOD

by Janice D. Soderling

Madrid Homeless from The Sketchbook Blog of Louis Netter

If the 44m people who are unemployed in the mainly rich members of the OECD lived in one country, its population would be similar to Spain's– The Economist

Rain trickles down the pane
in unpredictable paths.
A flyspeck, a chance gust
can alter water's course.

In the cold glare of a department store window,
a coughing man beds down on the sidewalk,
inside a black garbage bag. Only eleven pm
and already November. I think of socialism
as a bird, or a tree; as upward motion, dignity.
It is not a coin tossed grandly in a cup.
Some define it as a moral choice,
a plan for upholding civilization.
Others simply call it fair play.


Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. Recent work at Kin, Prose Poem Project, Origami Poem Project, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Thrice Fiction and forthcoming at American Arts Quarterly, Literary Bohemian, Boston Literary Magazine and Penduline Press. In October 2012, she was featured reader at the Rattle Reading Series (La Cañada/Greater Los Angeles), and special guest at First Wednesday Formal Reading Series (Oakland/Greater San Francisco).