ON BUOYANCY

by Julie Steiner

Look for the helpers, Mister Rogers said.

Whenever you feel sad or scared about

the news, look for the people helping out.

Keep those within your sight. Your heart. Your head.

It’s good advice. On days when all I’ve read

puts basic human decency in doubt,

and all I’ve heard’s what hurtful people shout,

I focus on the helpful folks instead.

Or try to. Sometimes all that’s in the frame

is evidence that helpers never came.

Two long, light-gray balloons, like downturned lips,

say several states withheld their rescue ships.

No helpers in the picture. Not this time.

But you can help bear witness to this crime.

A shipwreck off the Libyan coast has reportedly claimed the lives of 130 people, despite SOS calls for help, the UN migration agency IOM said on Friday [April 23]. The tragedy was confirmed late on Thursday by the volunteer rescue vessel Ocean Viking, which found dozens of bodies floating in the water northeast of Tripoli. It had been in distress since Wednesday morning, the NGO said in a statement. IOM spokesperson, Safa Msehli, told journalists in Geneva that the victims had been on board a rubber dinghy for two days before it sank in the central Mediterranean. “For two days, the NGO alarm phone, which is responsible for sending distress calls to the relevant maritime rescue centres in the region, has been calling on States to uphold their responsibilities towards these people and send rescue vessels. Unfortunately, that has not happened.” More than 500 people have drowned on the so-called Central Mediterranean sea route this year according to IOM—almost three times as many the same period last year. —UN News, April 23, 2021

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

GO BALLOONS

by Richard Garcia
                        from the Democratic Convention, 2004  

No confetti. No confetti yet. No confetti. All right. Go balloons. Go balloons. We need more Balloons. All balloons. All balloons. Keep going. Come on guys, let’s move it! Jesus, we need more balloons! I want all balloons to go, goddammit! More balloons! No confetti. No confetti. No confetti. I want more balloons. What’s happening to the balloons? Jesus! We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down! Balloons. Balloons. Balloons.  What’s happening! They’re not coming down. All balloons. What the hell! There’s nothing falling! What the fuck are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down. Go balloons! Go balloons! Go balloons!

Author's note: This is a found poem gathered from versions of an unintentional international audio transmission at the Democratic Convention 2004.


Richard Garcia's poetry books include The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE DELEGATES

by David Feela






I’d prefer if you counted
the red, white and blue balloons
instead of politicos,
inhale the rhetorical helium


that transforms normal voices
into falsettos of hypertension,
words lost in the vast empty
ceiling of a Cleveland arena.


Try stabbing a finger
into the paunchy gut
of the next vacuous promise
inflated by rage.


Oh Ohio, all week you’ve built
a future on a platform of fear,
thinking it will rise
for the next four years.

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.