CHOSEN VENUES

by Joan Colby


Where you are dancing.
Where you celebrate.
Where the bands play.
Where you congregate for coffee
Or conversation. Or to view the match
Or the marathon.
Anywhere you go to enjoy
Invites the strike. The explosive vest
Or car aimed at the thick of things.
What they seek to destroy is this:
Free pleasure. The authoritarian shift
To beheadings in an arena
Where you learn what to expect.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

OH, MOTHER EARTH

by Gil Hoy

Boston, MA. Photo by Sarah Levy via National Weather Service, January 28, 2015.

Oh, mother earth,
Is this global warming
or climate change?

Atop this particular Goldilocks
planet, on this particular 22nd
day of February, in this city
this particular hour

: "Frankly, my dear, I don’t
give a damn." I’m freezing
My toes are cold. Where

the hell is the Congress
Did it think the Tennessee
senator's words an inconvenient
truth?  I’ve got ice dams in

my living room  Snow statues
surround my home. Oh, mother
earth,  To lie down on one
of your sizzling beaches.  With no

Headless Coptic Christians
in orange death masks,
Where the hot orange sun

never glistens on freshly

red-tainted steel. My gutters
are filled with frozen things
Sixteen minutes exposure to
life-giving air causes corporeal

damage  Eight feet of God’s
cold stuff already on the ground,
But    Boston

is a tough nut to
crack.

Oh, mother earth,
Americans have hardy souls.
Terrorists, beheadings, cruel wars
Snow cannot stop Us.  Frozen crystals

of atmospheric vapor have their
redeeming qualities, although to this
particular poet, in this particular state

of mind, on this particular Sunday,

they seem few and far between
in the New England tundra.


Gil Hoy is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.  He is a Boston trial lawyer and studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction a year ago.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in Third Wednesday, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Potomac and The Zodiac Review.