REQUIEM FOR CIVILITY

by Janet Leahy





And now it has come to pass—at a time when we most need him
—Civility has died. We are not sure how we can go on without him.
He tried to quiet the storm of ridicule, the spitefulness of debate
that swirls around us. He could not abide the absence of truth
in the public square. The Civility family has known several recent losses,
a younger brother Justice, worked at the border, tried to stop the separation
of families. After two years Justice came home, exhausted by the inhumanity
he witnessed, the callous treatment of little children, who need a mother,
a father, to hold them close. Justice died one year ago. And his sister
Compassion, protested when the electric company turned off heat to
families in arrears of payment. Last January she fell into a winter
of discontent, illness took her vitality and her life. His only surviving
sibling is Charity, a poet. She chronicles lives lost at the border, lives lost
fleeing homelands not safe to return to. Lives lost seeking asylum
in the land of liberty, the land of plenty. We remember bodies washed
ashore on the banks of the Rio Grande—Oscar, his arms wrapped around
his 22-month-old daughter Valeria, he carried her under his shirt
as they were swept up by raging river currents. We cannot erase
that picture, of father and daughter, it is locked forever in our memory.
Charity will read this poem at the memorial for her brother . . . we are not
sure how we can go on without him.

Janet Leahy is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry and works with critique groups in the Milwaukee-Waukesha area.  Her poems have appeared in Bards Against Hunger, the 5th Anniversary Edition and the Wisconsin Edition,  in Soundings, Ariel Anthology, Bramble, The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, and others. Online her work has can be found at TheNewVerse.News, Your Daily Poem, and Blue Heron.

FAITH

by David Chorlton

The lady’s hair protests
too much; it shines against her age
with glitter in the green
dye cresting on her head. She holds
a cigarette between her first
and middle fingers, exhaling into
the morning just now
clearing from the early clouds
as she walks with her breast on display
by way of the five bold
letters silvered on her black shirt that proclaim
her FAITH.
                     In what
remains unstated. And all the upper case sparkle
gives nothing away
as to what or why she believes,
but inspires a guess regarding which sea
her soul is sailing on
in these impeachable, divisive
and uncertain days within sight
of Christmas. The pigeons
circling overhead have faith
that someone’s crumbs will fall for them,
the traffic lights
that cars will stop when they turn
red, the president that every lie
will one day be a jewel
in his legend’s crown. But faith
is a blind man’s mirror,
                                          a step in the dark,
the makeup on a woman’s face
when she is past her prime
and needs it to steady
her walk. She’s sitting now, on a stool
looking across the parking lot, while
the country teeters
on a tightrope and the great
questions just hang in the air like
the scarf of smoke around her face.
Whether there’s a god
                                           and who
he’d vote for; how old
is the mountain draped beneath the northern
sky; what kind of pen
was used to write the Constitution?
These careless moments
spent gazing
at life’s passage end
with a tobacco stub trodden into the ground.
There:
something finished, over
and done with. What comes next?
                                                                Maybe read
a few pages of the King James version, or
the National Enquirer. A cough
to clear the throat, a storm to clear
the air. Walk a little
up and down, practice how it feels to doubt
which direction is the best. Look
into the clear light for rain,
check for bargains
at the Safeway, light another
and inhale the belief that nicotine
can heal. A little bell
                                     keeps ringing
charity, charity.  At her place in the arcade
here’s a warrior fighting time alone
while the starlings on the power line
chatter strength in numbers
and when she strikes another match
on the year’s shortest day
the flame reflects
upon the word by which she lives,
taking comfort in uncertainty.

David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavant. Reading T. S. Eliot to a Bird is from Hoot ‘n Waddle, in Phoenix, and a long poem Speech Scroll comes from Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library.

BREAKING NEWS AT 6 O'CLOCK

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Drawing by Asia Johnson-Brimmage of MICDS for the 100 Neediest Cases campaign of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 12, 2018

                       so it begins
        insanity at its finest
                the mall clerk warns
        fa la la car radios blare
        during this most wonderful time of the year
                unfortunately not everybody gets the message
                and ads visualize all the latest must haves
        ring the salvation army bell
                    the newspaper blares those in need
                         while choirs come to sing
        assisted living   et al
        and a large screen cindy lou repeats this year to mr. grinch
         no one should be alone on Christmas
        of course donations are gratefully accepted
          who would turn down paying
        for a month or two
                  maybe even three of bills
                so it ends
        duty called
        answered
        with i did my part
        months later while vacation dozes
                july also marks the faces of the poor


Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Last year she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.

ON THESE DAYS

by Leslie Prosterman

On my way to drink a coffee in the park,
I ran into an old acquaintance
on the corner of 4th and Lafayette. She spoke
of reading stories to children at Bellevue,
teaching them to make meaning
out of abstract marks on the page.

All these days when I can only
read the news through
squinted eyes, as though
seeing print through blurred slits of light
would make the stories any less dire,

on these days I stop for any chance encounters
standing on concrete with people whose stories

I want to hear with open eyes.

Leslie Prosterman, author of Snapshots and Dances (Garden District Press, 2011) and other poems in various journals and collections, recently collaborated with composer Charley Gerard to set her poem "FluteBone Song" to music, now out on CD (Songs of Love and Passion).  A former academic, she is also a dancer and a sometime student of trapeze.

FLASHES

by Jo-Ann Reid






We trade causes like children playing at double-dutch; tagged in and out like committee positions trading lip-service leaving the sheen of caring. Which cops are on the take? Why aren’t the good ones shouting to the rafters? Which are massaging bullets erect in flimsy pockets and digging for press conference notes? Anticipate the groove of pen strokes feigning apologies; the inflation of yellow tape and chalk the same shade that black boy used to trace; committing his own name to cursive.

Armored with gold coins some toss their blinding hair, glimmer in branded outfits from thousand-dollar plate dinner guests gorged on handshakes and conjured commitment.

Dialed-in causes that will do nothing but pluck our peacock feathers. Hooked on our own coins; the best parts of ourselves devoured; and still--our tongues click with unrest.

Are we any different?

Jo-Ann Reid is an Associate Professor of English at Dean College in Franklin, MA.  The youngest daughter of established Haitian immigrants, her work explores cross-cultural boundaries, gender, restriction and issues of social injustice. Ms. Reid won a poetry contest judged by Harryette Mullen while earning her MFA at The Pennsylvania State University.

FIRST RIGHT OF REFUSAL

by Laura Rodley

Don’t pray for me anymore
say the grey whales
birthing calves
off the Pacific coast.
Don’t pray for me anymore
say the right whales
siphoning plankton and krill
off the Atlantic coast.
Don’t pray for me
squawk the seagulls
pedaling pizza
on the beach in Ocean Park,
their beaks full of crust.
Don’t pray for me
say the dying in their beds,
sheets cool and soft.
Don’t pray for me
mewed the tiny black and white
kitten under the stairwell
at the Econo Lodge in Columbus,
it is not your pieces of chicken
that saved me, nor your water
though I was dying of thirst.
I can make it on my own.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.