MAXIMUM SECURITY, DENIED

by T R Poulson

Gary West is offering a $20 million reward to the owners of Country House, War of Will, Long Range Toddy, and Bodexpress if any of those horses finish ahead of Maximum Security the next time any of them race against the colt through Dec. 31, 2019. West will give the owners of Country House (the elevated winner of the Kentucky Derby), War of Will (placed seventh after finishing eighth), Bodexpress (placed 13th after finishing 14th), and Long Range Toddy (placed 16th after finishing 17th) $5 million each if they finish ahead of Maximum Security the next time they meet in a race. Kentucky stewards determined each of the latter three horses were fouled by Maximum Security in the Derby. West announced the reward May 17, one day before the Preakness Stakes (G1) at Pimlico Race Course. His horse crossed the wire first in the May 4 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) but was disqualified to 17th for interference. Maximum Security is not running in the second jewel of the Triple Crown. —BloodHorse, May 17, 2019

The Derby runs, complete with roses,
and the list of things all banned.  Poles,
selfie sticks, confetti, balloons, frisbees,
banners, and umbrellas.  It rains again,
and those in the grandstands roar, wet
as horses on the track, unfrightened.

A bay horse with a question mark
blaze breaks clean, runs fast, leads, kicks
mud on the rest, until the final turn.

One hundred fifty thousand fans, drenched
with drink and rain, scare the bay with the blaze
(He’s a baby, his jockey will say after). He drifts
from his lane, unraveled, and then hooves,
shod with steel and nails, tangle, the next horse
somersaults, mane into the mud, legs bent
the wrong way, and more horses hurdle, tumble,
jockeys’ bodies flop into the slop.  Rain drops
drizzle silks and broken goggles.  Backs,
withers, and empty saddles leave impressions
turned to puddles, bright as mirrors. Would this
be better than a rose blanket, stolen?


T R Poulson is a University of Nevada alum and life-long racing fan.  Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as Rattle: Poets Respond, Verdad, Trajectory, Raintown Review, The Meadow, Alehouse, and J Journal.

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS

by T R Poulson

I wish all emergencies could take place like this:

a theater in the city, stage guns made of rubber

and metal to withstand so many drops and hits

in rehearsals, forgotten lines and flubbers.

The line: I am not throwing away my shot,

as the killer creeps in—Lord show me how

to say no to this—that flutter, why not

here among the songs? The heartbeat now

slows, the patron falls, as Aaron Burr’s pistol

pops. Dying is easy, young man, living

is harder. It plays out as in a crystal

ball. Gun! No prayers, thoughts, forgiving

this time. If only hearts could always feast

on rhymes, as the attack of living lurks, looms,

the gunman a mere actor, a ghost deceased

long ago. I want to be in the room 

where it happens, where everything is just

musical, where lights give me an eyeful,

where words spoken, though fiction, I trust,

and paper walls surround non-shooting rifles.

T R Poulson lives in San Carlos, California.  Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, J Journal, and others.  She enjoys basketball, windsurfing, and going to plays, including a recent performance of Hamilton in San Francisco, which took place the day before the performance in which there was a false shooter alarm.

PROPOSITION EIGHT

by T R Poulson




Who is she, the woman whose blue eyes reach
out in ads, voice strong, hair blonde?  Her clinic
at stake, she says a thousand lives beseech

me, the voter-hero, to Vote No. I remain the cynic.
Draped with red-filled tubes like snakes, a man bids me
Vote Yes! Gown-wrapped clients refer to unhygienic

rooms where unseen life forms lurk and kid me
not.  Gloves, urine, needles, machines, puddles,
fill my mind along with missing kidneys,

those pulsing beans now shriveled, blood now muddled.
I die without dialysis, a man’s voice proclaims.
My barre-toned back holds twin flesh-cuddled

organs pulsing, cleaning. This vote-luring campaign
forms paths and forks that twist and feel the same.

T R Poulson lives in San Carlos, California.  Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, along with Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, Trajectory, J Journal, The Meadow, Delaware Review, and Raintown Review.  She enjoys windsurfing, basketball, and horse racing.

IN THE DENISOVA CAVE

by T R Poulson

Once upon a time, two early humans of different ancestry met at a cave in Russia. Some 50,000 years later, scientists have confirmed that they had a daughter together. DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The discovery, reported in Nature, gives a rare insight into the lives of our closest ancient human relatives.Neanderthals and Denisovans were humans like us, but belonged to different species. —BBC, August 22, 2018

This at last is bone of my bones

—Genesis 2:23

The wind blows, brittle as a bird bone needle
in this cave where skeletons dance in layers,
time folds in eons, and we seek the seed, dull
as the Beginning, a stone bracelet our prayer
to grandfathers unknown. It must have begun
with fire, the flames that made flesh tender,
laid bare the bones of beasts, broken, undone,
crying. The flames that twisted up like slender
ribbons, teasing, heating. Here, a strange man
enters, here a woman’s bones turn away a suitor
like her, here bone meets bone. Here, the clan—

Genes spiral, twist, through bones, as computers
tell of fire, of seed. We see an orphan long bone
splinter. We see ourselves, unmixed, alone.

T R Poulson, a University of Nevada, Reno alum, lives in San Carlos, California. Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, The Meadow, Trajectory, J Journal, and others.

MADNESS

by T R Poulson

Nevada looked like its NCAA tournament was going to come to end Sunday in the second round. But after trailing by 22 points in the second half, the Wolf Pack rallied to beat the Cincinnati 75-73 and advance to the Sweet 16. Nevada’s stirring comeback – the second-largest in tournament history – came just two days after the No. 7 seed rallied from 14 points down in the second half to beat Texas for its first NCAA victory since 2007. “Nothing feels better than this,” Nevada coach Eric Musselman said. “Nothing. Sweet 16!” —USA Today, March 18, 2018

A snow hiker finds fifty-four hands: frozen hands, unfettered hands,
gnarled hands, grisly hands, bloodstained hands, dissevered hands.

So many cats:  cougars, bearcats, panthers, tigers, wildcats
pounce on blue jays, bulls, highlanders with their weathered hands.

A thundering herd evades the cowboys’ ropes, pursued by shockers,
those pesky prods pressed to haunches by men’s leathered hands.

The quakers fight, their weapon, inner light, as those jayhawks
swoop and fly, yellow beaks like iron, wings like feathered hands.

Even friars shake in fright, as lawless aggies bare their whips
and guns, no honor to men bound to God with forevered hands.

From myths, the titans from old kingdoms rise to snuff out fires
of boilermakers, crush the torches, hammers of endeavored hands.

Will the gods send hurricanes to spin and drench and swirl,
to tame all claws, talons, hooves, with wind’s untethered hands?

But wait.  Imagine the wagging retriever, prancing, dancing.
He takes the bone from cavaliers’ unwilling, levered hands.

We’re in the madness.  We back our pack of wolves who dodge
the long, curved horns.  The bearcats loom.  We lift together-hands.

T R Poulson, a Nevada Alum (yep, I proudly sign my ghazal with support for my Wolf Pack. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, Verdad, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Tuck Magazine), currently lives in San Carlos, California.  

SESTINA IN BROWN

by T R Poulson

UPS workers react at the scene where a gunman shot and killed multiple people including himself at a UPS facility in San Francisco, California on June 14, 2017. Several people were shot on Wednesday at a San Francisco warehouse and customer service facility operated by global parcel delivery service UPS, authorities and the company said. UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin told AFP the incident involved four workers at the sprawling facility, which employs 850 people. Photo credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images

The Warriors were on fire
we said: those crisp plays and passes
around the curved black line, the ball and net’s
dance, again and again, those hands
lifted like a lover’s wave. The players
taunted and shoved and said they were joking.

Game four was a joke.
Overseas, nobody laughed as the fire
climbed higher, higher, disrupting play
in bedrooms and out. Things curved and passed
and fell through smoke and flames. Hands
dropped a blanket-wrapped baby through the net

of smoke, as below there were no nets
to catch him (this was not a joke).
The baby fell, and different hands,
sure as Steph Curry’s, took him from fire
to something unknown, a no-look pass,
from love to a chance to make plays

on dark courts like the one where we played
off Arlington Street, Friday nights, the net
of work behind us as the moon made its pass
above us, until dawn loomed, and our jokes
grew strange.  Here, my memory’s fire
smolders.  Years pass, and still underhanded

bosses rule us, who judge and hand
out warning letters, or play
with our numbers, even try to fire
us, though our union’s safety net
saves us.  It was only a joke,
the bantering words that slanted and passed

among us, about a coworker who could pass
for a molester in a movie.  We pictured his hands
with a gun.  It was only a joke.
My buddy used to pretend, to play
the creepy coworker, his friendship a net:
“When he brings in a Glock, he won’t open fire

on me, and I’ll hand him a list.”  Names passed
between us:  the spitfire loader, the sorter with the net
stockings at home, the player of wives.  A joke.  A joke!

T R Poulson is a UPS driver out of the Menlo Park, California, center.  She attends community classes at Stanford, and her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Verdad, Main Channel Voices, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Verdad.

THE RALLY

by T R Poulson

Image source: Snopes.com

Crowded around the gleaming
convention center, protestors light flames
and collect bottles, in piles

as the candidate inside talks and shouts
about how much he loves coal mines
and beauty salons, the people of New Mexico

and dollars donated to tall towers.
Outside, the haze forms leering ghosts
as the protestors sway and swarm.

The mounted police appear, helpless
against the storm, and then the renegades,
passionate as the politician they hate,

single out one of the horses, a dark bay
with an upside down white heart
beneath his forelock.  Later, we learn

his name is Stryker.  I once bought
a horse, from a woman who’d rescued him
from the track and tried to love him,

but when her husband found her
wrapped in his best friend’s arms
he took revenge, every night

by flinging rocks at her thoroughbred.
At least this is the story I heard
and believed, because when I bent down

to pick up a dropped brush or carrot,
he would tremble like cornered prey.
So, when I heard about Stryker,

and the mob of haters, snarling
like lions, who reached out to take
bottles and rocks to hurl, hard as fists,

at at him until he fell down,
his cannon broken as a politician’s
promise, the vet finally able

to penetrate the sea of humans
and prick his damp, dark neck
with that final, merciful injection,

I wanted to punch those protestors
in the face.  Except, that Stryker’s leg
was never broken, he wasn’t euthanized,
and nobody knows why he fell.

via Snopes.com

T R Poulson lives in East Palo Alto, California, and takes writing courses through Stanford’s continuing studies program.  She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Reno.  Her work has appeared in Verdad, The Raintown Review, The Meadow, Trajectory, and Alehouse.