PRESIDENTS' DAY 2025

a villanelle

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

 

I sit, eyes wide-open, blank gaze,
Slow-panting dog at my back,
Ssh, ssh, soft breeze brushes hair.

 

Newsprint on the breakfast table,

Flaming pain bleeds white-and-black,

I sit, eyes wide-open, blank gaze.

WWII 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯 revival, a font label,                           

Brutal as “heil,” a trigger pull’s whack,

Ssh, ssh, soft breeze brushes hair.

 

Dog paw pastiches toes, under table,

Brings heart into mind’s teared track,

I sit, eyes wide-open, blank gaze.

Incomers, like me, toes under tables,

No papers safeguarding their backs,

Ssh, ssh, soft breeze brushes hair.

 

Blitzkrieg anew, focus: all of our vulnerable,

Let strong voices rise, we need to roar back,

I sit, eyes wide-open, blank gaze,

Ssh, ssh, soft breeze brushes hair.

Susan J. Wurtzburg has won or placed in several poetry competitions. She is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Poets Reading the News. Her book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas will appear in spring, 2025.

TAMIR

by Diane Vogel Ferri

Every time an unarmed black man
falls to our videoed fears and white failures

I see Tamir’s face, so many times, too many times,
the face that I saw in my classroom one year.

Yes he was tall, yes he liked attention,
neither are reasons to be given two seconds

to respond to an adult, neither are reasons
to be on a list of martyrs to America’s shame,

neither are reasons for his twelve year-old
face to be frozen in time on tv, the news,

on the never-ending list of lost black men,
not a reason to be famous or dead.


Author’s Note: Tamir Rice was my student in 2012.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Cleveland Christmas Memories, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications include Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). A former special education teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2020

by Susan Vespoli





Lines of voters came in throngs, moved swift
in crayon box of skin hues, multi-pack,
to sing and chant, hold hands, cause seismic shift—
a tidal wave to take their country back.

Predictions flopped, the race not close in least,
‘cause Gallup erred, forgot the massive group
who came to speak in global tongue of peace
to rid the world of meanness, fear, and dupe.

When all was tallied, good prevailed. Love won.
Red ball caps flew off heads like birds unchained
and clattered crimson into sky toward sun.
Then buckets fell from clouds: baptismal rain

like water dousing evil witch in Oz.
T***p melted, disappeared, like he never was.


Susan Vespoli writes poems, essays, and dreams about the disappearance of Trump. Her work has been published in spots such as Rattle, Nailed Magazine, MER, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.

REPRIEVE

by Emily Jo Scalzo

months will bleed by
when gunshots don’t echo
down school hallways
in classrooms or lecture halls
a reprieve from hero-teenagers
called to sacrifice themselves
jump on the grenade
clot the flow of bullets
to buy seconds
for their classmates

red rivulets dammed
not due to prevention
or common sense
but because summer
darkens these venues
empty of fear for now
the halls lie waiting
for fall and more
blood shed

Emily Jo Scalzo holds an MFA in fiction from California State University-Fresno and is currently an assistant teaching professor teaching research and creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Her work has appeared in various magazines including Midwestern Gothic, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Blue Collar Review, and others. Her first chapbook, The Politics of Division, was published in 2017 and awarded honorable mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards in 2018.

USA?

child


























                                                mother


Harold Oberman lives in Charleston, S.C.

DRIVEN THRU

by Deirdre Fagan

When you are 13 and poor,
even Taco Bell has an allure.

The Monte Carlo that held us

had a sheepskin bench seat.


Its soft cover like a fitted sheet
curving its corners like a cloud.

Seatbelts weren’t worn in 1983;

no need for slits to let safety peer in.



“Come closer and you can steer,” you said.


Nearly half my current size, no breasts,
thighs the width of my current calves—

I leaned full-bodied into the drive

eyes on the road, mouth watering,

drive-thru beckoning.

(What is there to taking a young girl?)

Deirdre Fagan is a widow, wife, and mother of two who has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in Amaryllis, Eunoia Review, and Poetry Breakfast, among others.  She is also the author of Critical Companion to Robert Frost and has published a number of critical essays. Fagan teaches literature and writing at Ferris State University where she is also the Coordinator of Creative Writing.  

LET OBAMACARE FAIL

by Jeremy Thelbert Bryant

“Let Obamacare fail,” he says
like “Let them eat cake”
like privilege is universal
like old folks don’t get older, sicker
like men don’t have prostates
like women don’t have breasts
like cancer is fake news
like kids don’t break
like everyone stays in a tower
like all inherit their daddies’ money
like no lives matter
like the leader of a country doesn’t care

Jeremy Thelbert Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. When he is not teaching English, he is burning incense, listening to music, drinking coffee, and writing. His work may be found in Pikeville Review and Prism. He finds inspiration in the red of cardinals, in the honesty of Frida Kahlo’s artwork, and in the frankness of Tori Amos’ lyrics.

THE GERMAN LESSON

by George Salamon

Politico

“'The Germans are bad, really bad,' Donald Trump tells EU officials.”

          —The Telegraph, May 26, 2017

"What Germany can teach the US about democracy.”

          —Financial Times, February 8, 2017

Say it ain't so
About our old foe:
While in the home of the brave
We've gone from sweet liberty
To Donald T***p's entropy
In his limitless calamity.
But the Germans, baby,
Have come a long way
From the Kaiser's aristocracy
Via Hitler's atrocity
To celebrate democracy.

Ain't history grand?

For two decades George Salamon taught German language and literature at several East Coast colleges. This German lesson was not on the syllabus of his courses.

THE VERSATILITY OF BLUE

by Tracey Gratch

The world’s newest shade of blue, a brilliantly bright, durable pigment called YInMn blue, has been licensed for commercial use and is already in the hands of some artists. The pigment was discovered in 2009 by chemist Mas Subramanian and his team at Oregon State University while they were conducting experiments connected to electronics. For one series of tests, the scientists mixed black manganese oxide with a variety of chemicals and heated them to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (The name comes from the pigment’s elemental makeup, which includes Yttrium, Indium and Manganese.) —artnet news, June 20, 2016

Blue is sapphire when on fire
blue is indigo in the night sky
Blue is cobalt, elemental,
YInMn's bright – blue's latest dye

Blue is navy when it’s strong
blue is sadness in a song
Blue is the diver drown in the lake
blue's the baby miscarried for heaven's sake

Blue is turquoise tile in the bath
blue's the jay to cross my path
Blood, spent, returns through sky-blue veins –
to the heart to be renewed again.


Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four children. Several of her poems have appeared at TheNewVerse.News.