COOKIE BLAZE'S QUESTION

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Cookie Blaze is a persona created by the poet, but 89-year-old Penny Starr (above) stripped on America's Got Talent two years ago.

I’m 81, and I want to ask you

if that’s too old for me to return

to the excellent career I’ve had,

the career that made me happiest.

See, I was a stripper. I stripped

in Lou’s bar there in upstate New York,

and sometimes I sang, and sometimes

I stripped and sang all at the same time.

When you’re 81, you need affirmation—you know,

an assurance that you didn’t live in vain,

that you still have the moves, Cookie,

that your crowds still love you

and want to see your new acts,

that they deny anything’s happened

to your skin and your voice.

Oh, maybe I’m a little off-key at times,

and forget a word here and there.

If the crowds were to notice

these trivial changes, they wouldn’t care.

Tell me, is 81 too old for me

to get back up on the stage at Lou’s?

I feel good when you watch me.

Yeah, watch me.

I’m fine for just a few more years,

maybe four. What do you say?

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of an 8th book of poetry Gender: Two Novellas in Verse and of a 5th chapbook The Spare Parts Saga which looks at the USPS from the perspective of her trying to mail her 2008 book Spare Parts to a friend in Ireland.

NEW ORLEANS MARDI GRAS

WEIRD WORLD OF JOY AND PAIN

by Mostofa Sarwar

AI-generated graphic for The New Verse News by Shutterstock

I rode the Captain’s Float in Endymion

I saw the frolicking crowd

I enjoyed the rainbow of merriment

undulating its mesmerizing wings,

sprinkling its magical potions

over the revelers

The scintillating curves of human flesh

under the thin veneer of fabrics

The vile sound of the Second Amendment

flashing snippets of life

The dead crawling the crowded streets

I saw the specter of Paul Verlaine

over Saint Charles Avenue

He was catching beads

Was he happy?

He was wearing an MP3 player

Was he listening to Debussy’s incarnation

of his ‘Claire du Lune’?

Or was eternal pain eating his flesh

Like a deadly virus

I saw

Under the veil of merriment

New Orleans, like Bergamo,

hiding

the suffering, 

and poverty, violence, injustice

Let me have a jug of absinthe

And forget this weird world of pain and joy

 

Dr. Mostofa Sarwar is professor emeritus and former associate provost at the University of New Orleans, dean and ex-vice-chancellor and provost of Delgado Community College. His opinion essays were published in The Daily Star and Bdnews24.com of Bangladesh, The Strait Times of Singapore, The Statesman of India, Phuket News of Thailand, The Times Picayune of New Orleans, The Advocate of Baton Rouge, The Acadiana Advocate of Lafayette, The Daily Advent and The Opera News of New York. Recently, his English poems were published in Sangam Literary Magazine and The Seattle Star Magazine. Sarwar published three books of Bengali poems. He frequently appears in Bengali talk shows at cable TV channels (broadcast out of New York, Washington, DC, and Dhaka).

TO MY GRANDSONS IN THE FUTURE

by Cathryn Shea

You benefit today from your innocent
enthusiasm for worms, grasshoppers,
and anthills. You study foxtails
and poppies, wade in the Yuba River.

When you read this in high school,
my hope is that you are in a public one.
Well-funded, or at least with an adequate budget
for the arts. I hope your summer is still
not breaking heat records
and in winter the Yuba does not flood
causing mudslides.

I hope you do not suffer premature neck strain
from bending over your cell phones.
If you have cell phones or know of cell phones.
Perhaps you wear a device attached to your eyes.
Perhaps you wear an embedded chip.

Does anyone mention climate change anywhere?
(That was a euphemism anyway.)
Is capitalism still running rampant?
Does your vocabulary even include such words?
Have robots taken over the classroom?

I ask you too many questions
and I apologize. By the way,
did you know apologia is the root
of apologize? Such a beautiful word

of remorse. I can’t imagine your vernacular.
I digress. (Oh, I can just hear you chiding.
Grandma uses too many strange words.)

I do hope there is still a Nature you can escape to.
Where the din of machinery can’t be heard.
Where artificial radiance
does not vie with the night sky.

Cathryn Shea is the author of four chapbooks including Backpack Full of Leaves (Cyberwit, 2019) and Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree (dancing girl press, 2019). Her first full-length poetry collection Genealogy Lesson for the Laity is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in September 2020. Cathryn’s poetry appears in New Orleans Review, Tar River Poetry, Typehouse, and elsewhere. See @cathy_shea on Twitter.

RINSE AND REPEAT

by Rene Mears

Family members embrace following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Feb. 14, 2018, in Parkland, Fla. “Deadliest School Shootings in Modern US History” —VOA, February 14, 2018

Snow falls
Summer calls
                  Crying out for what can not be.
Winter’s chill
Sparrow’s trill
                  Darkness reigns, I can not see.
Many fools
Always cruel
                  The soul, all that remains
Only pawn
Myself gone
                  Invisible, are the chains
Your woe
Strikes the blow
                 So many lying still, asleep
Another gun
Better run
                 I’m left alone, to weep.
Never ends
These trends
                 Infinity. Infinity.  No way to decease
Winter’s chill
Sparrow’s trill
                 Funeral. Funeral. Forget the peace.

Rene Mears lives in Castle Rock, Colorado.  Nurse by day, aspiring writer by night.  This is her first published poem.