MY PLUS TWO ECLIPSE

by Earl J Wilcox   

Photo by Peter Forister, November 19, 2021 at 04:00, Charlottesville, VA, USA at EarthSky

My plus one last night, Alexa,

awakens me right on time.

I am up—groggy, sour-mouthed,

muttering, mumbling musing,

old guy grumbling despite

a magnificent moonshine worship

moment waiting above my balcony.

 

Alexa plays some familiar Mozart,

as agreed on at my bed time. Out-

side I shiver, huddle in a small chair,

I’m overcome with a sublime scene:

in the fog of near-freezing November

and my dense macular mist, a small,

bright Beaver moon hides half its face

behind a dark somewhat ominous shadow.

 

A distant shrill of sirens, ubiquitous

revving motorcycles break my

somnolent stupor. Even with a cold

arse my heart pounds with warmth and joy.

Unique as this moon light masquerade

provides, earth is the place for me.

It is not music of the spheres I hum

—just some earth-made melodies

by Mozart, our universal plus one

making a little night music.

Earl Wilcox has been humming and howling at The New Verse News for many years.

MOZART REQUIEM STREAMED IN A TIME OF COVID-19

by Anne Harding Woodworth

NOTE: This concert [of the Mozart Requiem] will be closed to the public; please do not attempt to visit the concert hall.
—Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, March 7, 2020


On this night of wrath and lacrymosa
the hall is hollow except for soloists,
chorus, orchestra and conductor, who,
at his back, feels eyes that aren’t there.

And at the end, when he turns to take a bow
before the crowd that has stayed away,
it’s as if he’s infected with the emptiness he sees.

The phantom audience, in its contagious silence,
offers no sound of shout or cough or applause,
no standing ovation for those who have just sung out
through an ether of airwaves to the undead.

Confutatis is understatement.

Against all advice, the conductor shakes hands
with the first violinist, who stands ready to leave
with her instrument that played flawlessly, while
the chorus begged eternal rest for whoever was not there.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of a six books of poetry, with a seventh appearing late this year.  Of her four chapbooks, The Last Gun won the 2016 COG Poetry Award, and an excerpt from it was subsequently animated at www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, and of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst MA.

WAYS TO AVOID BEN SHAPIRO'S TWITTER DISDAIN

by CL Bledsoe and Michael Gushue

Reinvent Mozart as a swastika.
Assert the superior caste of privilege-filled eyes,
while never mentioning your stigmatism.
Beige as the new black.
Be goddamned sure about something.
A hammer called reason to subvert any consideration,
Moral assumption as a knife to cut through the gray.
Go back in time and give Mohammed a hickey.
Dress all seed-vessels in the finest birthing habits.
Never look directly at those who rule us,
but use a mirror to avoid being turned
into stop motion playdough. Recite
The Pledge constantly under your breath:

There is a light that never burns out. I carry it 
under my tongue. When I stand on tiptoe, it will guide 
the unwashed through the wilderness.

CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love and the novel The Funny Thing About… . He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs, with Michael Gushue, at https://medium.com/@howtoeven 

Michael Gushue is co-founder of the nanopress Poetry Mutual Press, and he co-curates the reading series Poetry at the Watergate. His work can be found in journals such as Indiana Review, Third Coast, Redivider, Gargoyle, The Germ, and American Letters & Commentary and his books are Pachinko Mouth, Conrad, Gathering Down Women, and—in collaboration with CL Bledsoe—I Never Promised You A Sea Monkey. He lives in the Brookland neighborhood (“a shabby and decidedly unhip neighborhood” —New York Times) of Washington, D.C. 

WISDOM TAKES A HOLIDAY

On T***p’s Withdrawal from the Climate Agreement

by Jon Wesick

Lincoln plants cotton on the White House lawn.
Rachel Carson sprays Agent Orange.
Martin Luther King hoists the confederate flag.
Gandhi stops at a steakhouse
on his way to the shooting range.

Crick and Watson blow their Nobel Prize money
on swizzle sticks and lotto tickets.
Jacques Cousteau moves to Arizona.
Einstein downs a six-pack of PBR
before getting behind the wheel of his GTO.
Jonas Salk shares dirty needles in Haitian crack houses.

Picasso enters his finger-painting period.
Mozart releases his 99 Bottles of Beer Symphony.
e.e. cummings WRITES IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Julia Child dazzles guests with beef jerky à l’orange.
Dave Brubeck and McCoy Tyner embark
on their International Chopsticks Tour.

Stephen Hawking competes
in the Ultimate Fighting Challenge.
Bobby Fischer takes up checkers.
Elon Musk trades space flight and electric cars
for Pez dispensers. Warren Buffet
wires money to an exiled Nigerian prince.
Jean Paul Sartre guest stars
on Jackass.

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels.

TWO ROADS

by Judith Terzi

“You don’t have to read Robert Frost to know. You have to live life to know that the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference for the future of my country, the security of the Middle East and the peace of the world, the peace, we all desire.” --Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United States Congress, March 3, 2015

after Robert Frost

Two roads diverged on a snowy morning
on Congress' floor. The travelers could not
journey together along each path, one trodden
with storm of angst & warrior remains.
The other looked about the same, but hope
was sprinkled along the edges of the trail,
& sunlight could be seen streaming through
the fabric of oak & pine & fir. The travelers
listened to the vibes of each path, cupped
seasoned hands to ears to hear the trials
of trees, the brag of wind, the bend of earth.
Now some preferred the leitmotif that emerged
from one––a lighter tune they heard, say
a Mozart flute. They chose that road, skipped
stones into a mountain lake, while Spanish
broom stretched yellow necks toward
rain-swept sky. And two hummingbirds
tangoed overhead as if to say: "You've taken
this road, & it will make all the difference."


Judith Terzi is a poet and educator living in Southern California. She is the author of Sharing Tabouli, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, and most recently, If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus). Her poems appear widely in online and print journals and are included in anthologies such as Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's (Barefoot Muse), Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes), and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque). 

UKRAINE: NOTES, 2014

by Kathleen Sousa Capps

@anadoluimages: A piano painted the colours of Ukrainian national flag at Independence Square in the capital Kiev.
Image source: Veooz 360

If I knew how to play
I’d set up a grand piano
In Kiev
In Independence
Square
Right now
While it’s winter
Though each note hang on the air
Like an icicle suspended
From the frame of a burnt out bus
It would still be carried with passion
Wrung from the heart of a nightingale
I’d play every Handel and Mozart Requiem,
Every song that blows out a candle
Every thought that says THIS IS NOT A COUP
This is a cry for human rights, to let us out of this
Dictatorship, this collaboration with fascism
To deny freedom of choice, to deny free trade,
Intellect, spirit, Ukraine and Europe.
Right now
While Kiev is burning
In flames
And riot police claim lives
And protestors toss Molotov cocktails
If I could I’d sit in front of a grand piano
And each moment would pray for peace


Kathleen Sousa Capps holds a PhD in English from University of Oregon (1998).  Publications in literary and academic journals, including Paideuma.   Dissertation topic: Image Trouble: Pound’s People-Making as Visual Discourse.  Trying to find an agent/publisher for her novel, Blackberry Woman.  Because Kathleen is hearing impaired and blind, her father forbade her to learn to play the piano; he said it was a waste of time.  And college is no place for women.  (That’s what he said.)

KNOW WHAT I MEAN

by Stefanie Pickett Buckner

Image source: Weather Whys, TAMU

Heat lightning awakens me and fragments of sky
at midnight—
a brief but rapid winking through the bedroom
window— then surrenders again to dark
night air. Thick thunder soon accompanies this
momentary light. My husband sleeps, his hand snug
in the curve of my waist, each finger pressing into my flesh
deeply at different times. He is reliving scenes from Iraq
in another “dream.” I pretend he is playing one of Mozart’s Sonatas,
perhaps in C. I close my eyes, but hear the sky groan. Tired
or not, we sense violence when it’s there.

In the morning, we sit by the bay window, drink coffee, and read
news about a movie theater massacre—a deranged man who shot
Batman fans with a grin on his face
at midnight—
where 12 people are dead and 58 injured.
We watch cell phone footage, hear the screams, listen
to victims’ stories, gasp and sigh, swallow hard, shake our heads.

Thunder still fumbles heavy and clumsy through
the house as the sun tries to rise. The lonely orchid in the corner
vase quavers at the sound, but stands erect and delicate despite it
all. It shares news too—of looking up while landing
inside a major chord—of every note, light, petal, and touch ending
in resolution—of hearing storm but believing
in sonata—

I grab my husband’s hand, pull it towards my waist,
and ask him to play Mozart again. He smiles but doesn’t
know what I mean.


Stefanie Pickett Buckner’s poetry has appeared in Byline Magazine, Time of Singing, Sacred Journey, The Penwood Review, SP Quill Quarterly Magazine, Ruah, and Lyric.