KENNEDY CENTER CLOSING SALE

by Martin Dickinson

i want the music stand

that leonard bernstein used

remembering becketts play i saw

recast the seats from the opera house

set them up in a park in maryland

o maryland my maryland my safe

blue state and we will sing and dance

and to hell with your golden columns

i want oak trees and maples

to surround us instead of plaster

falling from the ceiling as today

the little red italian mice run rampant

i want stravinsky wynton marsalis

itzhak perlman renee fleming

all to myself and placido domingo

on the hillside overlooking great falls

nessun dorma or carmens habanera

or how about alvin ailey dancers

in a park where everyone 

who wants will come for free 

unscrew the doors empty the

parking lots give away all

the snacks from the snack bars

free drinks and for security guards

lifetime pensions send all volunteers

to the royal albert hall and lets

dance on the beach in rehoboth

barefoot and laugh out loud because

everyone in this fair land deserves it

Martin Dickinson has published four collections of poetry. His forthcoming book is in texas, a live oak. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

GEORGIANS ON MY MIND

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

George Balanchine with, Mourka, his cat. Photo by Martha Swope (1964). NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5120841

Police behind riot shields beat protesters facing Europe,

robed in Georgian flags, calling for new elections.

 

     Sometimes Russia moves with planes and tanks.    

     Sometimes it strangles slowly, so no one notices.

 

Cat floats around my home like a ballet dancer

waving her curved plume tail, padding on velvet paws.perfume, 

 

     Sinking on velvet paws, she pliés

     before jumping, leaping.

 

Choreographer Balanchine used to throw his cat

in the air and photograph her on the way down.

 

     Threw his cat in the air to watch her gymnastic grace.

     Taught his dancers to move like that.

 

Taught them, too, the perfume of Russian ballet.

Though his real name, Balanchivadze, was Georgian.

 

 

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet who lives in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Nixes Mate Review, Streelight Magazine, Witcraft, and The Orchard Poetry Journal.

GOODNIGHT, MINI-MOON

by Shawn Aveningo-Sanders

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

Soon an asteroid, captured in our gravity,

will pirouette our planet like a little moon.

I picture the new satellite wearing a tutu 

with pink tights wrinkled at the knees.

Wait, do moons have knees? Maybe

Mother Luna will teach her new prodigy 

how to pose for the light, waxing & waning

through each phase of its two-month stint,

orbiting around our world. 

 

                              When my girls were little,

I taught them the five basic poses of ballet.

Fifth position was always the toughest—

toes pointed out, toe-to-heel-to-toe-to-heel,

rounding arms up above your head to form 

a full moon. And like their short-lived interest

in leotards and ballet slippers, this mini moon

will soon grow tired too, of twirling around

in the same old circles. She will break free

to see what’s in store, to explore the unknown,

chart her own course, no matter how bleak 

or cold it may seem to me. 

 

Author’s Note: According to an article in The New York Times, an asteroid, 2024 PT5, will be captured in Earth’s gravity and circle our planet from Sept 29 thru Nov 25, effectively becoming a small moon, until it breaks free and flies off into space. 

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’ poems have appeared worldwide in literary journals including  ONE ART, Naugatuck River Review, Eunoia Review, The New Verse News, Poemeleon,  About Place Journal, and Snapdragon, to name a few. She is the author of What She Was Wearing, and her manuscript Pockets was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. She’s co-founder of The Poetry Box press and managing editor of The Poeming Pigeon. Shawn is a proud mother of three and Nana to one darling baby girl. She shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon.

THE BALLET DANCERS OF UKRAINE

by Suzanne Morris

      –after Alexei Ratmansky’s staging of “Giselle,”

        a romantic ballet in two acts

They fled from

all over Ukraine

screaming sirens the

new dance master

from towering wings

of concert halls

to air raid shelters’

indifferent walls

emerging, resolute

En avant! 

for the performance of

their lifetimes:

operatic defense of a

a venerated Art now

threatened with extinction.

Some took their positions

à la barre in the Hague,

others journeyed farther

into the arms of

Ratmansky’s Giselle

at Washington’s Kennedy Center:

Ghostly figures from the

18th century

swathed in clouds of

transparent tulle

float in an ethereal

pas de bourrée

returning to a place that

they once knew, but

now is no more

than an apparition

like the beautiful

peasant girl

beloved of one forbidden

to woo her 

pursued by another

jealous to own her

lost in a Potemkin village

where pantomime

and pirouettes fuse

in Act One’s show-stopping

conclusion:

Giselle’s tragic death

from heartbreak.

When the curtain ascends

the maid is mourned

flowers laid at her grave,

her spirit torn between

heaven and hell’s

treacherous pas de deux

...and yet au fil du temps...

the story’s hopeful end,

Ratmansky’s wish come true

the audience releasing

a long-held breath then

rising to their feet, Bravo!m

What will become of the

soul of Ukraine

when Russia’s

dance to the death concludes

and the grinding thud of

invaders’ boots

is but a ghostly echo?

Will her steps be mired

evermore 

in a Wilis encore of

revenge?

Or, will her soul

like the peasant girl’s

leave hate in the grave,

and forgive?

Au fil du temps… 

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and a poet.  Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Texas Poetry Assignment, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Pine Cone Review, Emblazoned Soul Review, and other journals and anthologies.