DEATH CLEANING

by Melissa Balmain

“Swedish death cleaning [is the] tradition of decluttering and organizing one's life before passing away.” —The Spruce
 

My junk had piled up for years
wherever I could shove it.
Decluttering? Just not my thing—
and yet, this week, I love it.
 
So long, old pamphlets, pens, receipts,
and shirt with half a collar!
Hello, bare floors and empty drawers!
I’ve triumphed over squalor!
 
I used to think I’d never need
to death-clean like the Swedish;
no midlife ill had goosed my will
to keep my closets neatish.
 
Whose symptoms of mortality,
whose fast-approaching coffin
and crumbling bone, if not my own,
could make me tidy often?
 
Now as our nation’s vitals teem
with metastatic cancer
for which a cure is far from sure,
I’ve finally got my answer.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

ON "FLICKERING" BY YOSHIO OKADA

by Jenna Le

“Flickering” Box with Sprinkled Design of Jellyfish, 2020, by Yoshio Okada

Wood box decorated with

gold and silver lacquer

on a polished black lacquer ground

with shell inlays and shell overlays

depicting the coin and ribboned-hat shapes

of jellyfish, 

those invertebrates prophesied

to engulf the ocean entire

if climate change continues unchecked: 

if this is how we must die,

well, Yoshio,

this wood box of yours

would at least make a beautiful coffin

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011); A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards; and Manatee Lagoon (forthcoming from Acre Books, October 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. 

LOOK, UP IN THE SKY

by Michelle DeRose

Trey Ganem's company, SoulShine Industries, created special caskets for 19 of the 21 victims killed at Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas.

What music accompanies a Superman coffin?

What song will waft your boy over buildings

that block your sun, black your path

with shadow? Does the melody

to lull you to sleep exist, and 

will the hum of your own voice

be enough? Birdsong mocks, small 

throats on spindly legs, sparrows still

in the care of their father. Where 

will your boy fly now, outstretched 

arms and closed fists planing so fast, 

so fast, 

away from you?

Michelle DeRose teaches creative writing and Irish, African-American, and world literature at Aquinas College. Some of her recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Midwest Quarterly, Dunes Review, Sparks of Calliope, Making Waves, and The Journal of Poetry Therapy.

TWO VIEWS

by Jonel Abellanosa





Do we get to decide
what world we live in?
Old world babblers of peace and quiet,
birdsong in our neighborhood still treed.
I still believe tyranny isn’t armed
to the teeth. I still go to burial grounds
in a culture that holds
memory like a coffin

*

Placards and megaphones
alter streets, revulsion here to stay.
I’m familiar with the strange,
songs like barbed wires, grating
to my ears. I’m unable to think
with clarity, except that mine
isn’t the first religion
of public self-flagellation.


Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, the Philippines. He is a nature lover, an environmental advocate, and loves all animals particularly dogs. His poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary journals and anthologies, including Windhover, The Lyric, Star*Line, Poetry Kanto, Marsh Hawk Review, That Literary Review, Bosphorous Review of Books and The Anglican Theological Review. His poetry collections include Meditations (Alien Buddha Press), Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), 50 Acrostic Poems (Cyberwit, India),  In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art), and his speculative poetry collection Pan’s Saxophone (Weasel Press).

EXODUS: A HISTORY

by Carol Alexander 

People wandered streets with net bags of oranges,
spooked by the lonesome traffic lights. Each grew a compound eye.
Birds waxed tenacious. God willing they sang.
Apartment houses feigned cataracts with china pugs, ormolu
(gilded in desired shapes) while dog-walkers walked alone.
No one trusted fingers, floats of fleshy cut flowers; there were little crimes.
Sometimes they dreamed of the lost, how a coffin should gleam
when an unwilling heart was shocked into submission at last.
Seven o'clock marked an anniversary of quarantine and temperature.
The remains of the day—they held each other wordlessly, lawlessly
and on mild days the infection spread, over narcissus and forsythia.
Wind blew through the firehouse. Park benches said remember them.

Carol Alexander (on her fifth week of Covid infection, as is her husband) is the author of Environments (Dos Madres Press), Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press), and Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press). Her poems appear in various anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, Chiron Review, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Hamilton Stone Review, One, Seattle Review of Books, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News.  Recent work is forthcoming this year in Denver Quarterly and Raintown Review.

EXHUMATION OF RELICS, 2008

by Julie Steiner

“I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Father Ambrose St John's grave—and I give this as my last, my imperative will.” —Saint John Henry Newman, 1801-1890, canonized on 13 October 2019; the quotation is from “Written in Prospect of Death,”  Meditations and Devotions, Part 3, 1876). See also "“The Empty Tomb: Cardinal Newman's last laugh?” in Commonweal, October 8, 2008.  Photo: Ambrose St John (left) and Saint John Henry Newman.

A miracle, of sorts: an empty tomb—
a skeleton-less grave, though shared by two.
One hundred eighteen years should be too few
for bones and teeth to seep away like rheum.

The undertakers managed to exhume
two coffin handles; damp had rotted through
all else except a gold-thread tassel. Who
could tell which soggy humus went with whom?

Could Church officials separate the clay
of John from that of Ambrose? In a way,
the two became one flesh while six feet under.

Saint John’s been moved; St John stayed put, they say.
And yet the pair defiantly obey
“What God has joined, let no man put asunder.”


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

COUNTING RHYME

by Darrell Petska

The Greek Coast Guard recovered the bodies of 34 migrants, including 15 children, on Sunday in the Aegean Sea after their wooden boat flipped over in strong winds as it attempted the short but often perilous crossing from nearby Turkey. --NY Times, September 13, 2015

Each little coffin

one two three

a boatload of dreams

lost at sea

Where to lay them

four five six

waiting on the oarsman

plying the Styx

From whence to where

seven eight nine

Hush now, you boxes,

no jostling in line

Ten eleven

twelve thirteen—

what rhyme or reason

worth losing a one

Fourteen fifteen

sweet moppets spent

weep fast: offshore

bob boatloads more

Darrell Petska is a retired university editor with poetry or fiction appearing recently in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Boston Literary Magazine, and Tule Review. He lives near Madison, Wisconsin.

THE WAR COMES HOME

by George Snedeker

Veterans Day Weekend 2014

Many came.
The preacher spoke.
Hearts were broken.
Mourners had nowhere to turn.

With money earned
and with bodies burned.
Someday they will learn
what there is to learn.

Families and friends came to the funeral.
The body was shipped home
with a flag draped over the box.

Tuition paid
for a college education.
He hoped to find a job.
That was his hope,
so many hopes,
all gone now.

Fallen on the battle field:
a post office was named for him,
as if that meant anything.


George Snedeker has published scholarly articles in the areas of social theory and Literary Criticism as well as short stories and poems. His poems have appeared in both literary magazines and sociology journals. His book The Politics of Critical Theory, published in 2004, received several positive reviews in scholarly journals. His satirical novel about college life The Cutting Edge was published under the pen name of David Lansky in 2013. He is the book review editor of the journal Socialism and Democracy and  has served on its editorial board since 1985.

WHAT HE’S PAINTING

by Joan Colby

Painting by George W. Bush

He is painting dogs, we’re told.
So far, he’s done fifty. One shows
a fluffy terrier, another a Maltese,
both on backgrounds the color
of morning glories. His teacher says
he’s moving on to landscapes
like Winston Churchill. I’d like to see
studies of coffins offloaded from planes
in secrecy or one of a legless soldier
or an Iraqi child shot at a checkpoint.
This painting from the viewpoint
of one seated shows his feet
sticking up out of the bathwater.
Another depicts him in the shower.
I have to wonder why he favors
himself immersed like a baptism.
He has that cocky sense of humor
so you could almost like him.
I’d like a painting where he’s holding
a mandate to waterboard the constitution
or one clearing cedar brush, his previous hobby.
His teacher lauds his talent, says he
could be a master. He grins, brush in hand
to watercolor history.


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 was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). 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) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Her latest book Properties of Matter is just out from Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014:  Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

by James M. Croteau





I guess it's better,
your tone and all,
but get back to me
when you're ready
to end your claims
to nature's law,
and calls to chastity.
Rescind your stance
on who's "intrinsically disordered"
and I'm all ears.
I think your conscience
needs closer examination--
you have to know
that catechism words
like "grave depravity"
are the nails
in the coffins
of too many Catholic boys.


James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing.