JANUARY 28, 1986

by Bonnie Proudfoot

All morning we waited, the January air frigid and clear, 

"Come see," I said, pointing at the tv. You settled your 

not-quite 3-year-old body beside me on the corduroy couch, 

my belly swelling with your little brother not yet born.

You were my playmate, usually you told me who to be, 

sometimes you were Robin Hood and I was Maid Marian, 

mostly we were Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, 

but that day I called you the first spaceman, John Glenn, 

I was the first space woman, Christa McAuliffe, I pronounced, 

my teacher heart swelling, and then, you were leading me 

by the hand, into the capsule, we were waving to school children 

gathered to see the launch and even Tom Brokaw seemed 

to have his heart on his sleeve when he introduced 

mission control for the countdown, the lift off. 

 

On our couch from a mountaintop in West Virginia, 

surrounded only by the universe, we could almost see 

the Challenger capsule heading to that place beyond the sky, 

except, a jagged fork, that looked wrong, and then 

the waving stopped, hands covered mouths, children stood

in silence, and you looked up at me for answers 

I did not have. I'm sorry, I wanted to say. I'm sorry 

I called you over to watch with me, that you had 

to see this. Again and again, the tv replayed the lift off, 

as if, if they showed us once more, it would go differently. 

 

But no, the small streak of light, the speck of fire. Sometimes it takes 

so long to figure out what I want to tell you, even longer to know 

which words to use, and now, 35 years later, deep-sea divers find 

sets of Challenger tiles on the ocean floor, like pennies dropped 

into an infinite well. Oh, my boy, now man, now father, 

sometimes what you long for will disappoint you, and sometimes 

what you love will rise because of your love, and you'll rise too. 

All afternoon, on our little speck of earth, death walked 

beside us, his index finger waggling, a broken branch, 

and we did the only thing we could, we walked down the lane, 

gathered warm eggs from the hens, picked up limbs the wind

had flung onto the road, all eyes scanning the empty sky for signs

Bonnie Proudfoot has published fiction, poetry and essays. Her first novel Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for Great Group Reads, was long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway Award, and received the WCONA Book of the Year Award. Her poetry chapbook Household Gods was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2022. She lives in Athens, Ohio, and in her spare time she creates glass art and plays blues harmonica. 

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.

THE RIBCAGE CLINGS TO A LOVER TIGHTER AFTER YET ANOTHER TRAGEDY

by J. Bradley

A man and woman hug on the streets of Manchester. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA via The Guardian, May 23, 2017

The talking head reads the names of people
who are no longer people. The expert
offers the hypothesis that the network paid for.

You ask this lover whether he knew
anyone in the building. He wipes his tears,
shakes his head. You try soothing him,
your tips coaxing his grief.

Once, you invented a shoulder
for a lover who knew someone
who died by bullet, explosion.
He heard the whir of helicopters
for weeks after it happened.

When he asked you to move in,
you left behind your shoulder,
a note: this is all I can offer you.


J. Bradley won Five [Quarterly]'s 2015 e-chapbook contest for his collection of flash fiction Neil. He is the author as well of the graphic poetry collection The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014) and the prose poem chapbook It Is A Wild Swing Of A Knife (Choose the Sword, 2015).

WORDS

by Wayne Scheer




The American presidential election
has come down to a
words matter candidate
and her
it's only words opponent.

One uses words
the way a munitions expert
approaches a live grenade,
the other
tosses the grenade
to see
what will happen next.

One respects,
considers, even fears words
while the other
sees words as fuel
and acts surprised
when an explosion results.

One selects words
as carefully
as one chooses a diamond ring,
the other
loves only the sound
of words,
unconcerned with their appearance
or meaning.

One will be elected president
and speak
for America.

Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He's published numerous stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments,  a collection of flash stories. His short story “Zen and the Art of House Painting” has been made into a short film.

AT CENTURY 21

by Rick Mullin

Image source: drjudywood.com


It happened. And the man in front of me

exploded straight up off the street, a mile

high. Many things seemed similarly

amplified. A woman cried as all

the contents of her briefcase scattered

over Dey Street. I assume she worked

in Tower One and would have made it in

by 9. And then the transit cruiser parked

on Broadway hit its lights and faded in-

to smoke and mirrors and a sense that mattered 

more than any rational surmise.

A shadow stream. Outrageous hip hop sneakers

rocketing. I saw the clearest skies

rain paper as a fire at the farthest reaches

closed a ring on everything that shattered.


Rick Mullin's new poetry collection is Stignatz & the User of Vicenza.

JULY 5th

by Marjorie Maddox

All the flag-clad oohs and ahhs fizzle
just past midnight, a slight singe of burn
hovering over today: patriotic hangover
with stars and stripes banging about in brains
that never Ok’d reciting names and dates
in 4th grade History. Such a dazzling,
distracting explosion: all that reality behind
the pomp, so ceremoniously like that other
season’s parade: winter’s green/red (the frigid
red/white/blue) pa-rum-pa-pum-pummed
into “Little Drummer Boy” with only tepid recognition
of the day’s conviction. Holy Mother
of Jefferson, the fireworks’ dizzy outbursts
of Me! Me! Me! reveal our belief in nothing
but the day’s commemoration, the morning after’s
leftover hot dogs or eggnog a hodge-podge of forgotten births:
nation and God piped-in patriotically
as afterthought for the background.


Director of Creative Writing and professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has 9 books of poetry, most recently Local News from Someplace Else Wipf & Stock 2013), which focuses on living in an unsafe world, and an ebook of Perpendicular As I, winner of the 1994 Sandstone Book Award.

MARATHON

by James Penha



                                           after Lucian of Samosata

Philippides, who could run all day
reported the Marathon victory
to the judges awaiting the outcome,
saying, ‘Rejoice, we have won,’
and saying this, died
at the same time as his report,
expiring with the salutation.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.