BAD BREATH

by Dick Altman

Pump jacks at sunset near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Climate-warming methane emissions rising faster than ever, study says. —The Washington Post headline, October 26, 2022

NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometers) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin, one of the largest oilfields in the world. —Barron’s, October 25, 2022

Northern New Mexico

Pump jacks looked to me—as a child

on the West Coast—like animated

Tinker Toys—Half a century later—

here on the high desert prairie—

they terrify me—Cows wander

and forage next to them—Hay

grows in the same field—Backyards

brim with them—Schools look out

on them—Indian reservations dance

with them—Oil and sister gas ops

balloon the air with toxic methane

wherever I look—Except I can’t see it—

unless—over the next hill—a flame

three-stories high—shatters the view—

Drive through “jack country”

and you’re afraid to breathe—

afraid—in mid-summer—to run AC—

afraid to hike ruins—because you

never know when you’re going

to run into “jack”—and all his bad

friends—Sometimes—at a distance—

they remind me of grazing buffalo—

their humped backs—connected

to bobbing heads—glaring down

from bluffs—I know they’re

machines—but unlike most—

they exhale—and what they

breathe out—you don’t want

to be caught breathing in—unless

of course—you want—over time—

to be caught dead—New Mexico’s

called “The Land of Enchantment”—

I call it “The Land of Bad Breath”

 

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

BUFFALO HAIKU

Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian in the Catskill Mountains/Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals including The New Verse News, The Mainichi's Daily Haiku, the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association's Haiku in Action, and Prune Juice. 

LE GRANDE REPLACEMENT

by Susan Cossette

Image credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Blood moon rises over the horizon,

over Minneapolis, Auckland, Buffalo,

over blood spilled in schools and supermarkets,

hot orb, hatred splayed on the pavement.

 

In Minnesota you know you’re dead to the world

if you see your obituary in the Star Tribune a week before you die.

The loons’ eerie tremolos and yodels call to you—

outsider, peculiar threat, excised one, unwelcome.

 

Strange bugs come calling each spring.

They crawl up your walls in curious unison,

fleeing, seeking escape.

You find them on the kitchen floor,

dead in the window wells,

silent and withered.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.

HAMMER

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Members of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) picket outside the BlackRock headquarters in New York City. Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters via New York Magazine, January 20, 2022.

Unionization efforts involving some of the most recognizable names in business have dominated headlines across the United States in recent months. Starbucks workers in Buffalo and Amazon employees in Bessemer, Ala., and on Staten Island have recently moved to unionize, as have workers at an REI store in Manhattan last week. Successful strikes at John Deere and Kellogg have drawn new attention to the state of the labor movement as well. —The New York Times, January 25, 2022

The first tool I ever bought was a hammer

at Western Auto in the Central Park Plaza,

in Buffalo, in 1974. I liked the feel of it,

not too light, not too heavy, oak handle,

a pretty grain. I liked the idea of having

a tool. I wanted to hang posters, to fix things,

a stuck window that needed a tap, a carpet runner

that curled on a stair tread. I liked how the metal head

went tink, tink, tonk as a nail sunk deeper 

into wood. It said power, power, power.

These days, the handle still fits my palm,

the wood has darkened, smooth as skin,

tough as bone, like the forearm of my grandfather,

a union man, steady and tanned, a guy

who’d drop everything to lend a hand

to anyone. When he died, I chose his scroll-saw

and drill, some chisels with steel blades that

I’ve used well and misused, too, by whacking them

instead of tapping, by going against the grain. Nothing

can fix everything, though sometimes I want to be a hammer,

to use extra force to make emphatic the connection

between mind and thing. Sometimes one hit

is not enough, I want to hear a chorus of power, power.

I want to be a chisel, too, a sharp one. A union

can be a hammer, a contract can be a nail,

collective bargaining, shared governance, chisels.

Ideas can be hammered on until they strengthen,

nailed down, or shaved and honed. Power, power.

I’m twenty years older than my Western Auto hammer.

I’m still learning what to try to fix, what tool to choose.

I know the task is the real teacher. When I look out

at this broken world, I still see my grandfather,

his steady arm, his sure aim, how right it sounds

when it all comes together, when it all works. 

Bonnie Proudfoot lives in Athens, Ohio. She has belonged to several unions in her life, most recently the Ohio Education Association. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in online and print journals, and her novel Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) was Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction in 2021.

ODE TO CARIOL HORNE

by Julie L. Moore

November 2006, Buffalo—

Cariol channeled

Fannie Lou, meeting white rage

dressed in blue that throttled

Black breath with bear hug 

headlock,

 

& yanked the uniform’s

manly collar, traded blow

for blow, throwing

her fists in rhyme

to the mantra keeping

time: by any means 

necessary.

   

When IA cleared

Kwiatkowski,

not Officer Horne,

when he sued her

& won, when her

car became her home,

she sang I will 

overcome.

  And 15 years,

180 months,

65,700 days,

1,576,800 hours

later—

             after he

pled guilty in 2011

to civil rights

violations against

4 Black teens

whose heads

& torsos he shel-

lacked & shoved
into a cruiser, 

after he spent 4

months in jail—

 

after 12 year-olds

DeAunta Terrel

Farrow & Tamir

Rice bled out

with toys

    in hand,  

after Charleena

Chavon Lyles

& the baby

in her womb

were christened

with an ungodly

spray (she

thought police

devils & KKK),

 

after Terence Crutcher,

Philando Castile,

& Alton Sterling,

after matriarch

& Missionary Baptist

“Betty Boo” Jones

received

   an offering

of lead the day

after Christmas,

never to raise her voice

in the choir again—

 

after Sandra Bland,

after beloved Juniors,

Freddie Carlos Gray

& Michael Brown,

after John Crawford III,

after Eric Garner

could no longer savor

the flavor of American

air, after Miriam

Irish Carey’s wrong

turn

drew 26 bullets

from Capitol Police
(who didn’t hesitate

then), after Alesia Thomas

got kicked in her legs,

her abdomen, her groin—

barbarian at her L.A.

gate!—

 

after Aiyana Mo'Nay 

Stanley-Jones

caught a slug

in her seven year-old

skull, after Tarika Wilson

embraced her son

while a cop rendered 

a grotesque

       of Madonna & child,

 

after Botham Jean
& Breonna Taylor

learned a house

can become a noose,

after George Floyd

cried for his mother

with his last, agonizing

gasp,

after

Daunte Demetrius Wright—

 

finally, 

finally, 

finally,

this fierce

& beautiful Black

woman, with a law

now in her name,

heard the judge proclaim,

the time is always right

to do right.

A Best of the Net and six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and Verse Daily. She is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University, where she is also the poetry editor for Relief Journal.

VOICES FROM THE PAST

by Gil Hoy

Their homes, cone-shaped poles
of wood covered with buffalo hides.
Set up to break down quickly
to move to a safer place.

She sits inside of one of them.
Adorning her dresses, her family’s shirts
with beads and quills.

Watches over her children. Skins, cuts
and cooks the buffalo meat. Pounds clothes
clean with smooth wet river rocks.

When she sees the blue cavalry
advancing, she begins to run again.
Is that what made America great,
back then?

African families working hard
on hot cotton farms. Sunrise to sunset,
six days a week. Monotony broken only
by their daily beatings. By their singing
of sad soulful songs.

Like factories in fields, dependent solely
upon the demands of cotton and cloth.

You could buy a man for a song, back then.
Is that what made America great,
once again?

There are swastikas in our streets today.
Black men being murdered. Whitelash.
While the new man at the top
tweets videos ranting of white power.
While the old man at the top
says he’ll make America great again.

They say the full moon was bigger and brighter
last year than it’s been in 73 years.
Than it’s been since Jackie Robinson
played his first big league baseball game.

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Right Hand Pointing, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and TheNewVerse.News.

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.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BISON

by Peg Quinn

“On Monday, May 9, 2016, President Obama signed into law the National Bison Legacy Act, which designates the bison as the official mammal of the United States. . . . Lobbying for the official mammal designation was a coalition of conservationists; ranchers, for whom bison are business; and tribal groups, such as the InterTribal Buffalo Council, which wants to ‘restore bison to Indian nations in a manner that is compatible with their spiritual and cultural beliefs and practices.’ . . . Before the mid-1800s, bison (also called buffalo) lived mostly in the Great Plains, but were also found throughout the continent. . . . The U.S. Army led a campaign to wipe out bison as a way to control [native] tribes. . . . Columbus Delano, secretary of the interior, wrote in 1873: ‘I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western plains, in its effect upon the Indians.’ —Elahe Izadi, The Washington Post, May 9, 2016.  Image: A colored-pencil drawing by Peg Quinn of a bison’s head.

A bison's bladder holds seven pounds,
about one gallon, enough
for indigenous people to use
for storing water, clothing,
or food when hunting

Horns sufficed as drinking cups,
or carrying hot ash from one fire
to start the next

Fur became blankets,
papoose and moccasin lining

Skin became saddles, or, when
stretched over low lying branches,
sewn to form teepees, clothing,
quivers, drum heads and ‘canvas’
for recording the year in pictures - their
‘winter count’ during freezing blizzards

String was pulled from sinew
then threaded into carved bone needles

This is no metaphor:
drumming sticks were made
by dropping a round rock into
a testicle then wrapping with tendons
to the end of a stick

Sinew binding teeth and hooves
made door rattles outside the teepee
for announcing a visitor

Bones were carved into knives,
scraping tools, and toys while
tails had second lives swatting flies

Eyes, brains, tongues and organs
were reserved as treats for tribal elders,
meat, berries and fish the daily diet
Snacks were made from intestines
packed with dried herbs and jerky

Though no one knows how they used the nose,
it’s no wonder they were worshipped

Peg Quinn grew up in a rural area outside Lincoln, Nebraska. As a child, she once got her head stuck between the tail and rear-end of a life-size buffalo statue in a public park. Today, she teaches art and paints theatrical sets in southern California, always wearing a bison ring made from an Indian head nickel and morns how they were slaughtered as a means of controlling indigenous people. Her Great-Grandmother was Sioux.