A NEW BEGINNING

by Ron Shapiro

Step back from lies, greed

and corruption if only for

an afternoon in Chicago

for the opening of Obama’s

center on the south side.

Feast your eyes 

on an alternate

amerikan reality

where character,

kindness, community,

and truth matter. 

 

Listen to diverse voices

speak of the amerikan promise:

life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

 

Hear words and songs

that elevate our country.

 

No need for a violent spectacle

on the lawn of the people’s

house. No need to reshape

and destroy this nation’s

original sins of slavery

and indigenous genocide.

No need to hide your gender,

skin color or faith. 

 

You are welcome in this place.

 

Come bring your children to

learn of the struggles for

equality, justice, and freedom.

 

Join hands with a stranger,

dance in the moonlight,

sing of hope and change,

believe in this country again. 

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and two chapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.  

DARK MATTER

by Lavinia Kumar

The early Universe was a strange place. Early in its history—in the first quintillionth of a second—the entire cosmos was nothing more than a stunningly hot plasma. And, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this soup of quarks and gluons was accompanied by the formation of weird little primordial black holes (PHBs). It’s entirely possible that these long-vanished PHBs could have been the root of dark matter. MIT’s David Kaiser and graduate student Elba Alonso-Monsalve suggest that such early super-charged black holes were very likely a new state of matter that we don’t see in the modern cosmos. “Even though these short-lived, exotic creatures are not around today, they could have affected cosmic history in ways that could show up in subtle signals today,” Kaiser said. “Within the idea that all dark matter could be accounted for by black holes, this gives us new things to look for.” That means a new way to search for the origins of dark matter. (Graphic: Depiction of a primordial black hole forming amid a sea of hot, color-charged quarks and gluons, a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.) —Universe Today, June 17, 2024

The British gentry are old hands at dark matter,

invisible behind those large gates,

lengthy curved lanes lined by trees

that lead to rumors of manors, 

over-trimmed gardens, and shootable 

deer, duck, and pheasant.

 

A lesser Brit, Stephen Hawking, created

a jigsaw of calculations, found 

what he thought must be the dark matter

in those hidden places—hiding thirty percent

of universe’s riches in those exotic 

out-of-the-way spaces.

 

But now, two scientists agree with him,

have found the hidden more interesting 

than plebian places, like village houses,

like quarks glued together by gluons.  

And, as is proper for dukes, princes, and lords,

each dark piece is far away from another,

with much space between.

 

But, alas, other nosy scientists, stars 

in our universe, are now spying on this matter, 

to find why, how, such riches were achieved.  

And who wouldn’t?   Will it lead to equality?

Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is a reprinting of her short book Beauty. Salon. Art. 

GOODNIGHT EARTH

a cautionary tale, a cry from the heart,

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

after Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

“Goodbye Earth” by Satovi at Deviant Art.

The fires, floods and extreme weather seen around the world in recent months are just a foretaste of what can be expected if global heating takes hold, scientists say, as the world’s leading authority on climate change prepares to warn of an imminent and dire risk to the global climate system. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will on Monday publish a landmark report, the most comprehensive assessment yet, less than three months before vital UN talks that will determine the future course of life on Earth. —The Guardian, August 8, 2021

Goodnight Earth

So blue and white

We’re sad to leave

Your days so bright

And starlit nights

Goodnight Earth

We cannot say

We did our best,

Now there’s no way

That we can stay

Goodnight raging forest fires

Goodnight rising seas

Goodnight melting glaciers

Goodnight honey bees

And so much more than these

Goodnight to the children

Who never breathed clean air

Who ate contaminated food

And didn’t have a prayer

Of a world that was fair

Goodnight to those who fought

For justice and equality

A return to wiser ways

Of diversity and sanity

And universal community

Goodnight friends and loved ones

Goodnight plants and beasts

Of our little planet 

That we caused to overheat

And otherwise mistreat

We won’t be coming back

We had our chance and blew it

Our story has a moral

But no one left to listen to it

(Or again to misconstrue it?)

So goodnight creek

Good night birds

Goodnight music

Goodnight words

Goodnight window

Goodnight door

Goodnight slippers

On the floor

Goodnight games

Goodnight toys

Goodnight girls

And goodnight boys

Goodnight chair

Goodnight spoon

Goodnight stars

And goodnight moon

Goodnight lark

And owl and thrush

Goodnight old lady

Whisphering Hush

Goodnight Earth

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poetry has appeared in many print and online journals.  His new book is At the Driveway Guitar Sale from Main Street Rag Publishing.  He podcasts poems on again, memory, and mortality at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife, Cynthia, in northern California.

LOSERS AND SUCKERS

by Nan Ottenritter

My Dad 

Date of enlistment:                                         21 May 40

Education:                                                     grammar 8, high school 2, college 0

Military occupation specialty:                       Surgical Technician 86

Battles and campaigns:                                 Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe

Demobilized at the

convenience of the Government RR 1-1:       July 28, 1945

Mustering out pay:                                         $300

For five years, two months, and eight days my Dad served

our country, proudly defeated fascism.

He is my hero, our hero, our American hero.

I wouldn’t trade him for all the fathers in the world.

Nor will I let anyone call him a loser or a sucker. 

Call him that, call me that too for I 

carry his beliefs, his pride, and his trauma.

I was enlisted as an American on the day of my birth,

I am a warrior up until this day, and I will never

muster out, have Donald’s government demobilize me,

stop campaigning for voting rights, justice, equality, 

health care: the battlegrounds of our time.

I will soldier on. Our current enemy will be defeated.

Author's Note: The first half of this is a found poem with language taken from my father’s discharge papers. Battles are unique to time and place, yet have commonalities. I will fight on, not only because it is right, but as an homage to my father and all service men and women.


Nan Ottenritter is a poet and musician who lives in Richmond, VA.

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

by George Salamon

Graphic by Know Your Meme

"Put your money where your mouth is."

—Rainbow Round My Shoulder: The Blue Trail of Black Ulysses

by Howard Washington Odum. 

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1928: 132.

Words and gestures demand no sacrifice:
BLM marches for criminal justice,
We could sure use more of that.
Corporations commit to workplace equality,
We could sure use more of that.
Progressives call for wealth redistribution,
We could sure use more of that.
Liberals seek equality in healthcare access,
We could sure use more of that.
But what are they doing to get more?
I propose 10 years of a tithe for justice
And equality at work, in the doctor's office,
In courts of law, in schoolrooms and
Lecture halls across our divided nation,
Ten percent for ten years, collected from
The institutions, organizations and persons
Now placing ads, shouting and painting
Slogans, writing columns and letters and
Op-eds advocating a life of dignity and
Freedom from want for the working poor,
The unemployed poor, the homeless poor,
For Black and Brown, Yellow and White
People in the Rust Belt, in Appalachia and
On Farms, in crowded and sunless apartments,
Sleeping on kitchen or bathroom floors or in
Shelters seeking a safe place for themselves
And their children, blocks away from the condos
Where the CEOs, COOs, CFOs, Esq.s, MDs,
CPAs, MBAs and their lobbyists allow a few
Crumbs to fall off their richly laden tables for
Those "less fortunate" at Thanksgiving and Xmas.
Put your money where some of you have put your
Mouths and signatures and contribute from your
Billions in assets to gradually transform a decaying
Society into a working community, acknowledging
That "happy days" are not the privilege of a very
Few in a land of vast natural and human resources,
And that we will never be in the American experiment
Or enterprise together unless you do better by
Doing good.


George Salamon casts a cold eye on what our "meritocracy" is doing to, but not for, working-class and middle-class Americans,  but will wait and see how many mean what they now say—at least for a while, in St. Louis, MO.

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE: ASYLUM IS OUT OF STOCK

by Joanne Godley

The United Nations refugee convention of 1951 provides the basis for American asylum laws. Unlike the Trump plan, it does not prevent refugees from traveling through several countries before landing in the United States and seeking asylum. But it does ban signatories to the convention, like the United States, from deporting asylum seekers to countries where their safety is at risk, a process formally known as “refoulement.” —The New York Times, September 14, 2019. Photo: Members of a migrant caravan made up mostly of Hondurans and Cubans resting in the town plaza of Escuintla, Chiapas, Mexico, in April.Credit: Brett Gundlock for The New York Times.

put the word out  on the street    we’re out of asylum         finished      weʻre not stocking asylum this season    there’ll be no safe harbor here    if you were looking for justice / equality / a listening hand / freedom from persecution     we used to carry all those things but no more
asylum was way too popular!     everybody wanted it!   we couldn’t keep it on the shelves    it got out of hand     anyway we won’t be offering asylum under this current management
you ask—is there anywhere  you can go to  get some asylum these days? under the table? you’d pay above market price?  you say  you just want a whiff?  well   you might try our neighbor to the  north—they may have a small amount of vintage asylum  left         i wouldn’t advise trying our southern neighbor    they’re liable to tell you “si, como no    asylum”  then try and  interest you in  some AR-15s smuggled from here to there

Joanne Godley is a practicing physician and poet whose work has appeared in the anthology 50/50: Poems and Translations by Women over Fifty and the Kenyon Review blog. She lives in Maine.

THE NEW WORLD

by Barlow Adams


It’s not my birthday
but they bring me cake,
a rainbow bearing my name
with candles like lighthouses
on a multihued shore,
welcoming me to safe harbor.
What a beach,
what a holiday we have discovered,
a paradise prescribed through 
HR interventions, signs saying
love is love, we are all one,
Life Gets Better Together.
We get tomorrow off for the parade.

I face the flames, 
wax runs with my mascara
sizzling like sugar.
Caramelized callousness, 
calls back the heat in my shoulder
where a cluster of circles remembers where
my father used to snuff his Pall Malls.
A fag for a fag, here’s a flag
I claim this land, you scallywag.
And none of these brave explorers of equality,
in business casual and formal apology,
realize that they are not the first to arrive,
that I am not an undiscovered country.

Barlow Adams is the author of two novellas. His poetry has been featured by Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel and Dos Madres Press, and is set to appear later this year in formercactus and Finishing Line Press.

SUNFLOWERS

by Ed Madden

for Dónal, Dublin, May 2015

At dinner in Dublin only days before
the vote, a friend told a story about
being on the 13 crosstown bus,

carrying a bunch of sunflowers for Gary.
He was wearing his Tá Comhionannas pin.
A drunk began to harass him, snatched

at the flowers, pulled off the head of one.
He said the Dublin grannies on the bus
got the driver to throw the fellow off

at the next stop. One picked up
the broken flower, returned it to him, saying
something about his girlfriend.  When he replied

that the flowers were for his boyfriend, he said,
the whole bus seemed to be filled
with grannies talking about the referendum—

all the rest of the way all the Irish
grannies telling me they’re voting yes.
Oh, to be on that bus.


Ed Madden is an associate professor of English and director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of South Carolina.  He is the author of 4 books of poetry -- Signals, Prodigal: Variations, Nest, and Ark (to be published spring 2016).

MARCHONS!

by George Held

   To the indelible spirit of “La Marseillaise”                                                          

Though assassins dealt a death blow                                                                        
To cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo,
Now the free world joins to say “Non!”
To terrorists who trade in woe:
“Vive la satire!” “À bas” the foes
Of liberty, equality, fraternity,
Those magnificent words English
And French and their multicultural
Societies share and now renew
Their commitment to.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.