I WILL MISS THE LARGE ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA

by Michael Brockley

Woody Guthrie in March 1943.

The bison. The grizzly bears. The jaguars that can’t leap over the wall along the border river. I will miss reading irreverent books. Novels where Jesus has a friend named Biff. Comic books where Deadpool is a hero. I will miss news reporters who know that Kansas City is in Missouri and that Benjamin Franklin never resided in the White House. I will miss the White House. The Smithsonian, the Statue of Liberty, and Yellowstone. I will wonder how Old Faithful might be disappeared. I will miss pennies. And the Beatitudes, the part of the Bible Kurt Vonnegut valued the most. I will miss voting for women. I will miss movies that tell the stories of men and women who don’t look like me. I will miss being able to see Venus and Mars on clear nights. I will miss strawberries and tomatoes and watermelons and sweet potatoes and cranberries and sunflowers and cherries. I will miss guitars with This Machine Kills Fascists scrawled across their bodies. I will miss dogs that look more like wolves than weapons of war. I will miss saying  Feliz Navidad, Fröhliche Weihnachten, and Mele Kalikimaka. I will miss finger-pointing songs. I will miss licorice. Yes, I will even miss licorice.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana, His prose poems have appeared in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Red Eft Review, and Unlikely Stories Mark V. Brockley's prose poems are also forthcoming in Ley Lines Literary Review, Seat at the Table, and Alien Buddha.

THE INNER LIFE OF A HENCHMAN

by Michael Brockley

Photo by Amy Volovski at Birds&Blooms.

The cardinals nesting in the barberry bush beneath my bedroom window work together as if they have fledged many chicks during their brief lives. The mother, dusty brown and patient, approaches her chicks through aerial feints. And by hopping from lower branches to the upper fork where the hatchlings await the spiders and crickets she delivers. The scarlet male darts and barrel rolls toward its forage with what I pretend is pride. 

Soldiers were once children in such a hurry to fly. I was such a boy aiming toy bazookas and sniper rifles at Lincoln Log forts under siege. Now I celebrate the appetites of five hungry gullets, hoping the chicks survive the neighbor cat’s overnight prowls. If I can’t protect the spring’s latest brood, how can I save the children of Jerusalem and Rafah.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Parliament Literary Journal, Stormwash: Environmental Poems, and Barstow and Grand. Poems are forthcoming in Of Rust and Glass, Ryder Magazine, Otherwise Elsewhere Literature and Arts Journal, and The Prose Poem. 

I'M TIRED OF CONFUSING WHAT I WANT WITH WHAT I DESIRE

by Michael Brockley

Bibles with cherrypicked scriptures highlighted in red lay scattered along the culvert on my way to Casa del Sol. Border songs play on my radio. In a decade all the rock-and-rollers will turn out the lights after their final encores. No more rockin’ in the free world. No more trouble in the heartland. No more Ruthie in her Memphis honky-tonk lagoon. The waitress who serves a whiskey sour with my aroz con camarones is beautiful with her black widow tattoo inked down to her wrist and in the way she outsmiles Halle Berry. She wears a diamond stud in her pierced nose. Rides King’s Island’s Invertigo and Banshee without a safety net. When music award shows play on the television behind the bar, she roots for Drake or Cardi B. Says her mother bought records by Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. Remembers wearing out a 45 of I Heard It Through the Grapevine one summer. I listen to sharecropper songs on the drive home. To songs by a singer named for a woman who rings like a bell in the night. A woman of constant sorrow who walks the freedom highway. I toss my dashboard Jesus out the window. The white Messiah. No one sings we won’t get fooled again. No one is running on empty tonight.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Jokes Review and TheNewVerse.News.

LYRICS FOR TREASON DAY, JULY 16, 2018

by Michael Brockley

“Send in the Clowns” trumpet solo performed by the US Air Force Brass in Blue.

What if the king wasn’t caught in a trap, and we were no longer stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues? What if we had never stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona? Or lost our driving wheel? What if we weren’t running on empty and were still too proud to beg? What if we quit holding out for a hero? What if the king couldn’t find a new place to dwell while midnight no longer fell on the oasis? What if we know who stopped the rain? What if she wasn’t a black-haired beauty, and there were no diamonds on the soles of her shoes? What if she hadn’t had Bette Davis eyes, and the king hadn’t seen her first? What if she hadn’t been Jessie’s girl? What if a peaceful man hadn’t pulled into Nazareth, and the knight hadn’t been on the run? What if there hadn’t been a wino in the road? What if we’re no longer living in a Cheerio world and God hadn’t kissed this guy? What if we miss our water? What if there isn’t a piece of our heart left to take? What if there are no more clowns to send in?

Michael Brockley is a 68-year old semi-retired school psychologist. He has been publishing poems for approximately four years now and recent poems have appeared in The Blue Nib Magazine, Zingara Poetry Picks and TheNewVerse.News.

A GIRL MUST BE BRAVER THAN WE EVER ASK OURSELVES TO BE

by Michael Brockley

by Cardow, Ottawa Citizen

I wasn’t surprised, just scared. Chaos hides wild cards in its holster. An heirloom is twice as valuable when broken. My hair covers my eyes as I lean into the reporter’s mic. Those saxophone solos I listened to, those mad songs with titles I no longer remember. C’est la vie. I always expected it would happen here. I can no longer tell where you begin and I drop out. I fled past the echo of gunshots. Past the corpse of my first boy friend. Before a detective outlined his body with chalk.  I used to write poems with line breaks but now I write broken poems. The time we wasted on love songs. Thoughts and prayers. Chaos slipped a joker into my purse as I smiled the way one does when monsters hold five aces. When I found the jester entangled in my last kleenex, I read on the card the vow Chaos always honors: “Let me introduce you to your bogeyman.” 

Michael Brockley is a semi-retired school psychologist who works in rural northeast Indiana. His poems have appeared in Flying Island, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle, Atticus Review and TheNewVerse.News. 

SWAGGER TIME

by Michael Brockley

Image source: OKdoodle

After VICE reports that White House staffers deliver a folder filled with complimentary news twice a day to Donald T***p.

You’ve got that Ron Jeremy thing going, what with your necktie bulging from your crotch. The alpha dog always lets the runway walkers know what he’s packing. You're numero uno in Chico, CA and Beattyville, KY. You're not yet tired of winning. The picture of you in this morning’s paper grasped the essence of your majesty. That angle where your shoulders could almost be a wall. Your Rushmore jaw. Your golden mane. No wonder some kid from West Virginia rated you the all-time greatest president for infinity. Better than that guy with a big stick. You've only been the Leader of the Free World seven months, but those blondes on FOX keep saying you're a lock for 2020. The graph-drawing dweebs and pollsters had to invent higher numbers just for you. Like the newest figures on the bottom line of your bank accounts. In Muscle Shoals Ted Nugent and Kid Rock have recorded an album of Trump anthems, naming the first single “Make America Great Again.” A release date set in time to fight the war on Christmas. By the way, “Covfefe Snow” would make a stirring Christmas carol for 3 Doors Down. Along the border, folks are volunteering to carry bricks for your wall. The Army Corps of Engineers herds jaguars and roadrunners across the Rio Grande while handing out free MAGA hats. Like you, everyone in Brownsville wears an extra-large. Tomorrow Jeopardy debuts a category they're calling America’s Greatest Hits. The answer to every question will be “Who is Donald Trump?” All the world’s First Ladies wish they could ride Air Force One with you.

Michael Brockley is a 67-year old Hoosier who retired from a 31-year career as a school psychologist in northeast Indiana. A few of his poems have appeared in past editions of TheNewVerse.News, and recent poems were published in Atticus Review, Gargoyle and Jokes Review. Poems are forthcoming in the Tipton Poetry Journal.

EQUILIBRIUM FICTION

by Michael Brockley

 

Atlas Shrugged. Trickle down. Glass-Steagall. Laffer curve. Hidden subsidies. Citizens United. Corporate welfare. Cognitive capture. Nickel-and-dime. Incentive bonuses. No-bid contracts. Risk aversion. Safety net. Privatized profits. Efficient markets. Predatory lending. Booms. Busts. Bubbles. Wall Street bailout. Goldman-Sachs. Lehman Brothers. Distributional consequences. Socialized losses. Retention bonuses. Austerity. Sequestration. Gridlock. Middle class. Too big to fail. Entitlement cuts. Right-to-work. Minimum wage. Jobless recovery. Golden parachutes. Too big to jail. Capitalism and Freedom. Moral hazard. Rogue markets. "Curiosities."

Michael Brockley is a school psychologist who works in rural northeast Indiana. Recently, his poems have appeared in The Tipton Poetry Journal, So It Goes, Facing Autism in Muncie and The New Verse News.

THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE SUMMARIZES HIS PARTY'S TAKE-AWAYS FROM THE SENSITIVITY TO GENDER DIFFERENCES SEMINAR

by Michael Brockley

Cartoon by Paul Szep

I think I speak for my colleagues when I say we’ve profited from today’s session. Most of us have friends, even family members, who are proud Vagina-Americans. So let’s agree to put the finer points about consensual and legitimate rape in the round file cabinet. Let’s pledge to redouble our efforts to create a society where our feminist friends and other unattractive women can access the mainstream success stories we take for granted. By starting small businesses, for instance, making gingerbread cookies or doilies and then expanding until they’re competing with Famous Amos and Walmart. I foresee a time when dozens of our members have mommy parts. Free market women with empty nests and a knack for memorizing the Good Book will stand beside us against minimum wage socialism, interspecies marriage and bans on the private ownership of drones. No doubt Code Pink has neutered American men, so we’re going to have to mothball bills requiring rape insurance until the deep pockets put our fat boy in the White House. And let’s not muddy the waters with any off-the-cuff remarks about rape being a gift from God. We can mend some fences by giving teachers merit pay. A hundred bucks. My better half always warns me against bringing gifts that come with electrical cords and surprises that run on batteries. Maybe the NRA can discount those pink snub noses I saw advertised last Christmas. I don’t think a dollop of estrogen poses any danger to our objectives. But I was surprised to discover 54% of voters prefer to leave the toilet seat down so they don’t fall in. Almost half. Who knew?


Michael Brockley works as a school psychologist in rural northeast Indiana. Several of his poems have previously appeared in The New Verse News. In 2013, he had poems accepted by the Indiana Humanities' tribute to National Poetry Month, the Borderlands Project: Eastern Poems and the Vonnegut Library Literary Magazine.

FIREWALL

by Michael Brockley

"The Pequod in the Waves" by Robbie W Hudson. Pencil on paper, 180 x 260cm.

                                                                                                                                                                                 “Viewed through the lens of history, Obama represents a new 21st century politician: the Progressive Firewall.” --Douglas Brinkley, Rolling Stone, November 8, 2012


You are the kind of woman who wears jewel-colored scarves. The kind who photographs abandoned homes and immigrants at crosswalks. On a Whidbey Island beach, you sat beside a man who owns volcanos. At the close of the year the President reread the tragedy of the white whale. In the month his hair turned gray. A walrus tossed its body onto the blond sand. It bellowed while the man who owns the Black Hills admired your photographs of totem poles. The snow clinging to Mount Rainier. The undaunted shadows of Lewis and Clark over the Cascades. Behind your resort patio, a woman in a yellow poncho walked with the fog along a hiker’s path. Her wolfhound barked at the walrus as it lumbered onto a barnacled pier. A Cessna skywrote dusk into the sky. You told the owner of Niagara Falls the President’s favorite comic book hero is Conan the Barbarian. He pretended to be the Cimmerian reiver while crooning “Let’s Stay Together.”  Shadows climbed the volcano in the mountains east of your sunset. You had photographed its trail sign earlier that day.  A caution for a firewall President ascending to the crow’s nest of a landlocked Pequod. “Falling can be dangerous.”


Michael Brockley is a 63-year old school psychologist who has worked in special education in rural northeast Indiana for 25 years. He has poetry publications in Wind, The Windless Orchard, Spitball, The Indiana Review, The Indiannual, The Spoon River Quarterly, The River City Review and The Ball State Literary Forum. Tom Koontz’ Barnwood Press published his chapbook Second Chance in 1990, and Brockley has lately placed work in Indiana publications such as Maize, Country Feedback, Flying Island, The Tipton Poetry Journal and Facing Poverty. A video of Brockley reading his “Hollywood’s Poem” which was published in Facing Poverty can be found on YouTube. His poem “When the Woman in the White Sweater Asked at the Cancelled Charles Simic Reading Asked If I Was David Shumate” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Barry Harris of the Tipton Poetry Journal. Recently, Brockley’s poems have appeared in The New Verse News.

THE CANDIDATE TAKES A DAY OFF AFTER WRESTLING THE ARCHANGEL OF TRUTH

by Michael Brockley

The candidate is plucking the creases of his stone-washed jeans after his wife has crossed the hall to iron a pair of Neiman-Marcus socks when the archangel of truth trumpets his battle cry behind him. He turns to this challenge against his honesty to find feathers fluttering above the floor around a vanity table. The grim creature is naked as a G. I. Joe doll. Fragrant as brown sugar. It crouches in a sumo stance while the nominee rolls the sleeves of his white oxford and snugs an Ayn Rand cravat against his Adam’s apple. He circles the archangel, calculating angles until the vanity is behind him and he can grope for the bayonet in the miscellany drawer. A fusion of fog and fury attacks the candidate who stabs at the bald dimple of its crotch. The beautiful mouth. The monstrous, hallelujah eyes. A chandelier crashes around them as the politician flails at wisps of feathers. A whirlwind ransacks the room, shattering windows and mirrors. The daemon materializes behind the standard bearer to slam him to the floor in a half-Nelson. Vipers breed in the contender’s brain. In triumph, the archangel seeds a halt in the candidate’s hip, vanishing at the click of the wife opening the door to investigate the commotion. She helps her husband with his socks. Asks how he stubbed his toe. When she knots the laces of his Italian shoes, he retrieves a paper from his pocket with the day’s lies erased.

Michael Brockley is a 63-year old school psychologist who has worked in special education in rural northeast Indiana for 25 years. He has poetry publications in Wind, The Windless Orchard, Spitball, The Indiana Review, The Indiannual, The Spoon River Quarterly, The River City Review and The Ball State Literary Forum. Tom Koontz’ Barnwood Press published his chapbook Second Chance in 1990, and Brockley has lately placed work in Indiana publications such as Maize, Country Feedback, Flying Island, The Tipton Poetry Journal and Facing Poverty. A video of Brockley reading his “Hollywood’s Poem” which was published in Facing Poverty can be found on YouTube. His poem “When the Woman in the White Sweater Asked at the Cancelled Charles Simic Reading Asked If I Was David Shumate” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Barry Harris of the Tipton Poetry Journal.