COOKIE BLAZE'S QUESTION

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Cookie Blaze is a persona created by the poet, but 89-year-old Penny Starr (above) stripped on America's Got Talent two years ago.

I’m 81, and I want to ask you

if that’s too old for me to return

to the excellent career I’ve had,

the career that made me happiest.

See, I was a stripper. I stripped

in Lou’s bar there in upstate New York,

and sometimes I sang, and sometimes

I stripped and sang all at the same time.

When you’re 81, you need affirmation—you know,

an assurance that you didn’t live in vain,

that you still have the moves, Cookie,

that your crowds still love you

and want to see your new acts,

that they deny anything’s happened

to your skin and your voice.

Oh, maybe I’m a little off-key at times,

and forget a word here and there.

If the crowds were to notice

these trivial changes, they wouldn’t care.

Tell me, is 81 too old for me

to get back up on the stage at Lou’s?

I feel good when you watch me.

Yeah, watch me.

I’m fine for just a few more years,

maybe four. What do you say?

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of an 8th book of poetry Gender: Two Novellas in Verse and of a 5th chapbook The Spare Parts Saga which looks at the USPS from the perspective of her trying to mail her 2008 book Spare Parts to a friend in Ireland.

HELP ME, JOE

by Alan Walowitz

I’m not the handiest man
though sometimes feel the need to prove I am—
at least among those still extant in my demographic
who might be foolish enough to wield a screwdriver 
a couple of  feet in the air
and intend to get close enough to what needs tightening.
Though not mistaken for the Wallendas
who repair the skylight when it won’t close right.
Or that D.B. Cooper guy I hire to change the bulbs
in the fixture that hangs a hundred feet in the air
from my foolish cathedral ceiling. 
You know, it’s been a while since
I climbed to the top rung. 
I’m happier watching from the ground
and telling those youngsters 
everything they’re doing wrong
and how I would’ve handled it
way back when, a couple of year before. 
Though I do remember from being up there, 
the thrill of the heights
I know when you fall, you hit with a thud.
Meantime, help me, Joe. 
Hold this ladder, will you? 
For this young one—
willing, ready  to climb up.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

THE COMEBACK KID

by Marshall Begel

Figure skater Alysa Liu, seen here at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, is to come out of retirement and return to competition.

The years since my retirement

Have left me unfulfilled—

Not meeting the requirement

For one uniquely skilled.

My body's manifested change

Since I was in my prime.

Returning to a decent range

Would be an uphill climb.

But I will muster up support—

Ambition? I have plenty.

But time to shine is running short,

For soon, I'm turning twenty!

Marshall Begel lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He has several pieces in Light and Lighten Up Online.

BIDEN’S AGE

by Paul Hostovsky

Of course it’s a concern.

I, for one, would like to hear him talk about it

more candidly, 

the constipation, for example, 

and whether he uses Benefiber or Metamucil

or Miralax, or is that a state 

secret? I’d like to know how long 

on average he sits on the john

before there’s any movement 

on the southern front, 

and whether he writes any speeches 

in that attitude, that pose like Rodin’s Penseur 

sur la toilette. Because I myself

have sat on the john for an eternity 

without making any headway

but I get some of my best ideas there,

this one, for example, about Biden’s age

and my desire as a Democrat

for my president to be more forthcoming

about the daily indignities of the old, 

such as constipation, an indignity it isn’t dignified

or presidential to talk about in public perhaps,

but if he did talk about it he’d get my vote,

and possibly the votes of more than a few

Republicans. Because look at Trump–

I mean the guy is full of shit 

but he won’t admit it. I think if Biden 

admitted it, he’d have a good chance 

of winning the race 

and maybe get the runs

which would really turn things around.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

IMPRESSIVELY LATE

by Harsimran Kaur

Several women’s organisations across [India] have opposed the government’s move to increase the age of marriage of girls from 18 to 21 years, which has been ironically touted as a measure of women’s empowerment. … Similarly, ‘Young Voices: National Working Group’ formed in response to the task force, comprising 96 civil society organisations, in its report published on July 25, 2020, had also opposed this move. The report brought out after surveying about 2,500 adolescents across 15 states stated, “…Increasing the age of marriage will either harm or have no impact by itself unless the root causes of women’s disempowerment are addressed.” —Flavia Agnes, “Increasing Marriage Age for Girls May Only Strengthen Patriarchy,” The Times of India, December 19, 2021

my friend got married at seventeen

in a gurudwara

singing the hymns her mother sang some

twenty-five years ago

on a cold day in January

her henna – impolite

her body wrapped in Red

her tiny legs blurting out of her salwar:

“maybe it’s too soon.” i don’t know

her forehead smeared in red

eyes black, cajoled

driven out of existence.

all i know is that she is my friend

who loves Jell-O, baked cookies & comfy blankets

i don’t know who taught her marriage

i didn’t know a red bindi on her forehead before

& seven pairs of bangles made from glass

hanging loose from her wrists

two for one.

brought from the corner shop with no name

i didn’t know red grew in a land that

burns, buys, believes, blue

& meanders our lives 

like the Ganges

Harsimran Kaur is a seventeen-year-old author of three books. Her work has been recognised by The Royal Commonwealth Society, Oxford University Press, and the International Human Rights Art Festival. She is currently a senior in high school in India.

POEM IN AUGUST

by Julian O. Long

“August Painting” by Ivan Kolisnyk

First day of my eighty fourth

year to heaven, I got up

turned off the O2 machine, hung

its canula over the arm of the walker

beside my bed, intimate with

these acts as I am with my hand

on my thigh the last thing before

throwing off the covers,

                                       intimate too

with comorbidities (only recently

learned that word) my troubled heart

remembered from recent echoes, aftermaths

of strokes that stopped parts of my brain

and legs (maybe other things

as well—hard to tell with all

the medicines.

                        Still, one more stick

and I’m boosted, at least in a qualified

sense; I’ll continue intimacy

with covid fully vaccinated, as I

was those childhood summers with series

of asthma shots, but this birthday

I am choosing as well to quarantine

myself—better that than bronchial

spasms, since this virus kills.

Writ large does the covid pandemic shed

light on die ups such as the great

reptilian? Chances are it will run

its course and become endemic among us

like the flu. But what if it doesn’t?

And what if unlike plagues of past ages

this is the one big one? Will it

usher in new times of dearth,

strife, and loss driven by vicious

death-demanding ideologies?

Will we humans learn care for one

another in such new times, or will we

follow the worst among us and in

ourselves? Chances are we’ll do

the latter.

                        Cogito ergo sum,

unassailable formulation, works

both ways, Latin doesn’t care

it’s the perfect sum of being, balking

at prospect of its own quitclaim

consciousness cannot fail to name

itself, but no heuristic can

afford me knowledge of my death;

I am intimate with that absence.

Conversely, no perception affords

me knowledge of another’s. In these

times it’s a forced option to choose

intimacy as well

                           —with that absence.

Julian O. Long’s poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Texas, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. His chapbook High Wire Man is number twenty-two in the Trilobite Poetry series published by the University of North Texas Libraries. A collection of his poems, Reading Evening Prayer in an Empty Church, appeared from Backroom Window Press in 2018. Other online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, The Raw Art Review, and Litbreak Magazine.  Long has taught school at the University of North Texas, North Carolina State University, and Saint Louis University. He is now retired and lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.

IN JEOPARDY

by Gary Glauber

 

My potent potable’s amber glow

reflects the lights and I reflect

that we are in jeopardy.

Everything has become a contest.

Surviving a Global Pandemic for 1000, Alex.

Science becomes a new focal point.

The game is charged with toxic partisanship

and many ignore even the obvious clues.

It’s a contest rife with unfathomed wonder,

close and chaotic and requiring an overall knowledge

that frightens the general populace,

yet the game continues to another round.

Heading to commercial, the camera

pans over a studio audience—too old, too white.

Suddenly, a few minutes of pharmaceutical ads

tells me of exotic brand names that can cure my ills

so long as I’m fine with a litany of side effects 

that seem worse than the targeted ailment.

And soon we are back. Alex battling

against his own threatened mortality;

contestants making small talk 

while trying not to self-embarrass

through slow or ignorant response.

Alex may chide them for being too young

to know a particular answer, and this

is the microcosm of how culture shifts,

the ways generational views differ on 

what defines patriotism, which lives matter.

Rule of Law for 600, Alex. 

Conspiracy Theories for 800.

The numbers indicate much is at stake

as we collectively head into the final round.

The category is irrelevant:

life revealed as a ruthless game.  

What are the parameters of true compassion?

When is a life worth less than economic progress?

Do the necessary math, then

wager it all when you realize this:

all the answers have been phrased as questions 

for far too long.   

Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has three collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit) as well as two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. Another collection, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing), is forthcoming soon. 

FLYOVER

by Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory




As the F-16s flew over Newark,
I wondered how many of my grandfather’s friends
who, too, lied about their ages in order to enlist

flashed back to Normandy,
whether the walls of ICU rooms at University Hospital
dissolved into the photographs he’d kept
Matryoshka-ed within boxes in his attic
until they were discovered by me,

exhaustion-emptied and grasping
for any signs of him I could still see
after both he and his Emily left the Earth,
but before the house was shuttered.

How many prayed
to trade one invisible war
for another,

the virus for vanishing neurons,

and wished
to change their ages
this one last time
to escape the draft?

Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory is a defense journalist and poet who was born in New Jersey and subsequently transplanted in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and Writing from New Jersey City University and an M.S. in Journalism with a Health and Science Reporting Concentration and a National Security Reporting Specialization from Northwestern University's Medill School.

PIVOTS

by Roseann Lloyd

He says he doesn't want the people
to come off the cruise ship
because his numbers will go up...
He likes lots of kinds of numbers
besides the ones that go up
especially the ones he can throw around--
like the millions of masks
like the bigshots who call him at midnight
like the number of reporters he can dress
down in one presser:
That's a nasty question
You don't know what I've ordered
You're a terrible reporter
That's a nasty question [yes, for the second time]
It's not racist to say 'Kung Flu'
I'm not a shipping clerk!

I must pivot away from this vicious old man
and so I turn away from anger to the child
who has come up to me in my chair.
Who says, You look so old. Really old.
Yes, I say, I've had a birthday since I saw you.
Did you see me before I was born?
No, I saw you downstairs playing.

How many numbers do you have?
(After a brief pause for me to decipher)
Desmond, I say, I have 76.
Oh, that's really old.
How many numbers to you have, Desmond?
He holds up fingers on one hand and counts out loud.
1, 2, 3, 4.
Yes. Four. You are growing up.
His grandmother smiles and says her number: 67.
We're sort of twin numbers.

Later at home, I say
Husband, our days are numbered.
Let's enjoy each one.
Let's get married again
When summer comes.

Roseann Lloyd lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has published four collections of poetry—Tap Dancing for Big Mom (New Rivers Press), War Baby Express (Minnesota Book Award for Poetry),  Because of the Light, and The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars: A Memoir in Poetry (the latter three from Holy Cow! Press)—as well as an anthology co-edited with Deborah Keenan, Looking for Women: Women Writing about Exile (Milkweed Editions), winner of an American Book Award.

OLD STORY

by James Penha

Mythical Beings May Be Earliest Imaginative Cave Art by Humans: The paintings on an Indonesian island are at least 43,900 years old and depict humanoid figures with animal-like features in a hunting scene. —The New York Times, December 11, 2019. Photo: A humanoid with a bird-like head was among the eight therianthrope figures depicted in a cave painting on the island of Sulawesi. Credit: Ratno Sardi via The New York Times.

I know an anoa
when I see one
even in the oldest
story ever told
on cave walls
in Indonesia. But
the humanoids who
herd or hunt or
beseech the buffalo—
an anoa is a buffalo—
I do not recognize:
therianthropes,
they have beaks
and wiry tails;
they are lithe
for their age, for
forty-four thousand,
only now becoming
chips off the old
blocks of limestone,
a condition I share.


James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News from his home in Indonesia.

TO JAMES TATE

by Martha Deed

Image source: Tin House

To James Tate who died ‒ The New York Times and other places say
"after a long illness" at age 71, it is certain, Mr. Tate, that you are not dead
because the poet James Tate, the man this obit purports to bury
is a man wild with words and metaphors and would not "die after a long illness,"
but expire actually only after being hit by a meteor in broad daylight
while taking a break in a green, white, and yellow striped canvas covered, oak-
framed lawn chair purchased for a dollar at the very same tag sale where the coffee blender
was offered ‒ insultingly ‒ to anyone willing to take it off the crazy seller's hands
for free and now it appears that the coffee blender should have been accepted for the rotten
gift it seemed and no money should have changed hands over the lawn chair whose faded
cover harbored screws rusted at the core that sent the poet into oblivion just as he was
contemplating the next line in his next new poem the perfect nonsense of a next line replete
with toy guns and real ammunition unearthed by a small boy with dark skin and brown eyes
whose future would include 1600 on his college boards and admirable physics scores as well
who would grow up thinking a trip to Pluto was not out of the question whose inquisitive
nature matched James Tates' who cannot be dead at the premature age, barely biblical age,
of 71. We do not believe this, because we are great admirers of James Tate and we know
he does not have much truck with death and, in fact, he welcomes conversations with dead
men whom he meets at every opportunity and whom he challenges to live past their prime
even as they peer down his fevered throat and declare a person hopeless while extracting
every dime from their wallets and this in 1976 before the rest of us understood doctors
or invented Safe Patient Projects or petitioned Congress for relief which Tate already
knew ‒ before 1976 ‒ was at best a captious notion indeed, for Tate was a wise man
who understood it is every man for himself in this ungainly world and the women are smart
but the men are the drivers and often deaf to women who advise them to avoid the potholes
and bumps in the road and the men age and look gray and grumpy and finally the women
capitulate and love them anyhow because those silly old men remind them of Black-capped
Gnatcatchers rare in Arizona but cousins of a comfort commonplace Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
in the white birches in their front yard at home in North Tonawanda by the sea.


Martha Deed is the keeper of a tumblr blog Sporkworld and has published several poetry collections.  Her most recent is Climate Change (Foothills Publishing, 2014).

95 YEARS

by David Feela





Shadows of the first days lengthen
like steel bars across the floor.
Parallel lines take the mind

down its railroad track,
a freight train that won’t stop
for more than 10,000 days.

It doesn’t matter
if you stand or sit.
Life.  You stop counting.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.