ISRAEL LAUNCHES OVER 100 AIRSTRIKES ON LEBANON IN TEN MINUTES WITHOUT WARNING

by Moudi Sbeity 

as if a warning is a good excuse. 

This means over ten airstrikes per minute. 

What else could we do with a minute? 

I won't name anything lovely for you. 

I won’t save you from this terribleness, saying 

we could plant more than a hundred seeds. 

That perhaps we could feed a hundred people, 

sustain a worldwide hymn till heaven hears this 

aching chorus. Some poems need to show you 

how much it hurts. Some poems need to leave 

you wondering

just how tightly a heart must be closed in order

to champion a thirst for destruction. Just how 

desperately the soul must be choked before 

waging its inner horrors. Just how much more 

can we rip each other before remembering that 

a minute is sixty seconds, and a second is about 

one breath cycle, and one breath cycle is all you 

need to stay alive. I won't even do the math for 

you, the one that calculates all the breath cycles 

that encompass a minute across the millions of 

people now breathing in the unsanctioned dust. 

Just how much ignorance, and how heavy of a dose, 

and how often, does it take to poison one person’s 

blood before he decides to launch more than a 

hundred missiles, before his guilty fingers 

violently reach into God’s pulse. 

Moudi Sbeity is a Lebanese-American poet, author, educator, and psychotherapist. Born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, he moved to the United States at the age of eighteen as an evacuee following the 2006 July war. In Utah, Moudi founded and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by The New York Times as “the future of queer dining.” Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, he is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression.

JULY OF ELECTION YEAR 2024

by Tarn Wilson

This year, if I keep my pace, 

I’ll read over 100 books.

I don’t know if this is a victory 

or a sad state of affairs.

I don’t know if I am in love 

with the world or addicted 

to distraction. Preachers and 

politicians used to call novels 

filthy and frivolous, wanted

us to read only stripped facts 

and sermons on virtue. Now, 

we’re pleased if children read

at all. Everywhere you look

screens hold miniature stories, 

trapdoors and tunnels toward 

truth and illusion. Last week, 

I asked a 24-year-old which 

candidate will win the youth 

vote for president. Biden is 

ridiculous, she explains: all

those gaffes-turned-memes.

Trump, she decides. He’s funnier.

 Funny? I ask. He has wittier 

insults. He says what we all wish 

we could say. Democrats are 

schoolmarms, then? I ask. 

Mothers who make you feel 

ashamed? What about the danger 

to our democracy? Low wages /

high rents. It’s all the same to us. 

We need more facts and tracts 

on virtues. We need novels, too,

about civil wars and WWII, 

about loss and love and grief 

and trees, anything to help us 

feel, in our bones, what it is 

we have to lose. Actually, she says, 

face lighting, RFK is trending 

on TikTok. His policies are crazy,

I say. He’s doing pull ups, she says. 

He looks strong. People like that.

Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and the craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write. Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet, and The Sun. 

MELT

by Chad Parenteau

“Heat Check” by Headlines at The Nib, July 8, 2021.

If the earth

is warming

why is there

still ice?

It’s summer.

Leave affairs

to boil on

picnic table.

Why else our

country a pot

if we’re not

to pour in?

Stand ground,

plant feet

in malleable

tar roads.

Cook skin

to bronze,

be own

memorial.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.

OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE

by Gary Glauber

The action’s good and nasty
till late in the game
when angers flare
on the hard court:
sudden death, annihilation,
season-ending elimination,
the paint inside, the pain out.
There are no more fouls to give.
Nothing but sharp sounds
of rubber on wood
punctuate proceedings
until whistle blows and
we awaken to a world seething
in misdirected rage, driving the lane
under falsest of pretenses.
Shots in the back are foul shots.
And criminal ignorance walks unimpeded,
as if rewarded points for
an intentional flagrant
as pseudo-reparation,
a false notion of prejudice
masquerading as protection.
Serious spins go deking and ducking,
a head fake here and next thing
a body leans in to draw
the biggest foul imaginable,
the same one that has
poisoned outcomes
before the game ever begins.
For now, there is outrage,
hope replaced by those
sick and tired of playing at
this unjust and unfair contest
like hurling one up from half court,
wishing it might yet go in
when life repeatedly
shows you otherwise.
Sadness and frustration
dictate the facts that
for now, this game is over.


Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has three collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit) as well as two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. Another collection, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing), is forthcoming soon.

PITY THE NATION

by Kent Reichert

after Kahlil Gibran

after Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Pity the nation whose people look and speak and act alike,
embracing white as the color without hue.
Whose citizens chant in auditoriums,
as if the act of uttering the words
will make it so.
Whose minds, in the light of day,
shutter themselves from its rays,
preferring darkness as their dwelling.
Whose sacred books,
transformed into photographs,
are impotent.
Who fabricate fanciful explanations
atop a single grain of sand,
and cloak their ignorance in veneers of “rights” and “freedoms.”
Pity the nation whose lawmakers
bury their discerning eyes in graves of party
genuflecting to the loudest, vulgar voice
in fawning adoration at the words,
“…for I alone can save you!”
Pity the nation whose leader paints only forgeries
and whose citizens cry, “Masterpiece!”
Who fondle each new lie in bed at night,
seduced by its base allure.
Pity the nation to whom the glory of the myth
is the only truth.


Kent Reichert is retired from schools but not from words. His poems have appeared in The Dead Mule.  He is the author of two chapbooks, Soon Ah will be done… and Chronology of Spirits.

OPENING OF AN ORATION AGAINST T***P

by George Salamon

with apologies to Cicero

How long, T***p, will you abuse our patience?
How long will the farce of your presidency mock us?
To what length will your limitless gall go on?
How far down will your ignorance and deceit take us?
Your cruelty, greed and narcissism have undermined
The very foundations of the state itself.
Congress can decree that a president must
Resign, so that the state and its citizens shall
Suffer no more harm from your madness.
Where are the men and women with the
Courage to suppress the audacious effrontery.
Abuse, deception and contempt by you
And your band of bungling braggarts and fools?


George Salamon lives, writes and still reads Cicero in St. Louis, MO.

INSCRIPTION FOR A BURNING BOOK

by Sarah E. Colona

On October 19, Paul Dorr checked out some books from the Orange City, Iowa library. Mr. Dorr was offended by our nation's founding principles of freedom of information and the First Amendment, so he decided to burn books he didn't like - deliberately destroying public property. The Orange City Library strives to "enrich a vibrant community by providing a comfortable space for the community to discover their roots, express creativity, and celebrate diversity through literacy, information, and technology." Through its mission, the library has included LGBT+ literature, which Mr. Dorr found incredibly offensive because he does not value the First Amendment. Because Mr. Dorr chose to censor thought and derail freedom, we would like to restore the books he burned to the Orange City Library. To make sure he will not censor speech and attack the LGBT+ community, we seek to replace the books with five copies each. All other funds will be donated to the Orange City Library to protect the freedom of thought and information. —Orange City LGBT Library Fund gofundme page. To donate, click here.

dearest pop & sizzle
     under an arsonist’s touch
          I came alight

shelf by shelf licked at hinges
     unleashed ills
          art & prayer combat

ignorance must devour
     tuck heat
          within each hateful act

carbon’s signature extinction
     what’s past is prologue
          most forget

Sarah E. Colona lives and teaches in her home state of New Jersey. She is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012), and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016).

COMPLICIT: WORD OF THE YEAR 2017

by Jacqueline Jules

“As we look at the cultural and political landscape, we ask:

‘What does it mean to be complicit in 2017?’” —Dictionary.com

A word with soft syllables,
like a snake slithering in the grass.
Silent but deadly.

Who gets bitten if I step away?
If I wait for someone else to speak?

The president’s daughter
said she didn’t know
what the word meant,
denied wrongdoing.

We can’t be guilty
if we do nothing.

Right?

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum, Stronger Than Cleopatra, and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, The Rising Phoenix Review, What Rough Beast, Public Pool, and Gargoyle.

HELLO, DAD? . . .

by Rick Mullin

Image source: Dylan Vermeul Art


with no apologies to Warren Zevon the sad loser

I sat down with the Russians,
despite the repercussions,
so could you now, perchance,
send lawyers, guns and money,
Manafort, Covfefe,
Wikileaks and Pepe,
Spice the Easter Bunny,  
Fox News sycophants
and . . . HOW WAS I TO KNOW?! . . . oh,
a change of underpants.


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Transom.

SHORT DAYS

Widely-published writer Lewis Gardner blogs here.

THE PRESUMPTIVE G.O.P. NOMINEE

by Sandra Eisdorfer 

Image source: DonkeyHotey

One wonders how it comes to be
that his first insight about a person
invents a flaw, which he embraces
and coddles until it becomes
the bane by which his
sense of mastery flourishes
when he speaks it into the microphone,
publishes it instantly--"crooked,"
"little," "lyin'"--so that
instead of defining the object,
it names the speaker as a surfer
who always rides on fetid water,
the one-word loser who fouls
the language not only by ignorance
but by cruelty.

Sandra Eisdorfer was a university press editor (Duke, University of North Carolina Press, Oxford), a writing teacher at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke University, and now a teacher in literacy programs in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her "Haiku in the Modern Era" appeared in TheNewVerse.News on February 10, 2013.

VETERANS’ DAY

by Howard Winn

Above: The New Yorker Daily Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz, November 11, 2015

Honor their sacrifice and commitment
say all the politicians who have ducked
out of the room when the recruiters
appear with open arms to welcome
the children to their old men’s war
but they have appealed to some daddy
to get them out of it or into some
safe and cushy assignment that may
look legit but is as much a fake as they
are pretending that the National Guard
assignment in the states or a military
prep school where their harried parents
have put the undisciplined little bastard
out of their home and hair and some
tough drill sergeant is the one to shape
up the hulking darlings with too much money
and those who have actually served know
the game which often ends in maiming
or painful dismemberment or death
while each year at the time of  WWI
Armistice banks and the Post Office close
and in some schools at eleven o’clock
on the eleventh day of the eleventh
month there is a moment of silence
for children who have no idea why
this is happening to them until
they grow into the next inevitable war.


Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Descant.  Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. His B. A. is from Vassar College. his M. A. from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. He is an Air Force veteran who served overseas during war time.

FACING IGNORANCE

by Erle Kelly

“We reserve the right not to serve
anyone and I’m not serving you.”
The burly restaurant owner
points his finger at Aaron.
Three of us get belligerent,
stand up but Aaron quickly
steps in between us and the owner:
“Hey guys, let’s go; he’s just ignorant.”

In early 1963 I’m on a two-day military
pass in Mobile---a night-on-the-town---
with a group of cadet buddies.
We need a bathroom call
and find one in a public building.
“Hey Kelly, not that one, it’s Colored.”
I glance up: Men, Women and Colored
marked boldly over the bathrooms.

In the mid-Sixties, while off duty
on flight patrol, a crew member
lends me To Kill A Mockingbird.
Reading it, I can’t help but recall
what Aaron endured a few years before.

Over fifty years have passed.
I’ve lost contact with Aaron.
I wonder what he’s thinking now?
I turn the TV on to a split screen.
On one President Obama pleads
for calm and peaceful demonstrations.
On the other, Ferguson is burning.


Erle Kelly lives in Long Beach California and graduated from CSU Long Beach. He has been published in The New Verse News, Chiron Review and Silver Birch Press.  For several years he has been in a local poetry workshop conducted by Donna Hilbert, noted writer and poet in the Southern California area.

FORENSICS

by Tony Brown

Milky Way Clock by Henrik Amberla. Image source: I New Idea Homepage

We have exhausted all leads

as the clock runs out.

People died. Who and what

we should blame is not clear.

If there’s a connecting thread

or line to explain what led to…this,

it remains unseen. It’s not a conspiracy thing;

shit’s just complicated.  Maybe some of it

is about malice, but mostly

it’s about acceptance

of unintended consequences

and ignorance of how to stop

thinking we are so damn omniscient.

We’re not, of course; that’s obvious.

We’re blind little beggars or huge deaf kings.
No one is paying attention,

or paying for us to pay attention.

We’re broke and we’re out of time.

If we want to know who did what,

if we are ever to learn that,

we are going to have to start time again.

Build a world differently — more windows and doors,

fewer walls.  And most of all

we’re going to have to build a better clock.

Something with longer hours, days, years.

Something based on the Mayan model, perhaps,

with lots

of resets.


Tony Brown,  a three time Pushcart Prize nominee,  lives in Worcester, MA, and is one half of the poetry and music duo The Duende Project.

SOCRATES AND CASEY ANTHONY, A DIALOGUE

by Jan Keough

The poet's photoshopped image of Casey Anthony with Socrates and a young student in Raphael’s "School  of Athens".

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Florida sheriff's office that investigated the disappearance of Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter overlooked evidence that someone in their home did a Google search for "fool-proof" suffocation methods on the day the girl was last seen alive. . . . WKMG reports that sheriff's investigators pulled 17 vague entries only from the computer's Internet Explorer browser, not the Mozilla Firefox browser commonly used by Casey Anthony. --Huffington Post

The wily fox, as some called Socrates,
spoke with Casey Anthony the other day
at an unknown cellular location.

Casey, in hiding after the trial, and Socrates,
freed from bodily inconvenience after his trial,
converged to resolve a thorny dilemma.

“Which is best,” she texted, “to escape punishment and live to regret?
Or to face the punishing side-effects of actions
made from a selfish and immature attitude?”

Socrates, reclining on his metaphysical marble couch,
lifted the Droid close to his eyes.
Texting was not his favorite method of communication.

He preferred to gaze directly at those
who wished to be freed
from the burning disgrace of ignorance.

“Tell me,” he began,
“which Browser is best to use,
Internet Explorer or Firefox?”


Jan Keough lives in RI and the internet.  She is co-founder of The Origami Poems Project which aspires to free the poet by promoting micro-chapbooks of original poetry.