VENN DIAGRAM

by Karen Warinsky

Intersected by a hundred forces

we stand, affected energy 

over laps of spirit, sport, seduction,

a hundred tugs

and we try to

integrate

pull what’s useful to us,

cling to what might matter

as matter pummels 

our very bones

and signs tell us:

 

You Are Here.

 

You Are Here

where spirit meets 

grace meets love,

where democracy

collides with fascism

where the Earth sits

in its designated spot

amid endless planets and moons

stardust and expanding space,

where interesting cultures

mingle with manufactured conflicts,

where real conflicts clash

with solutions and greed

where apathy aligns with sorrow

where rage rests against response,

reaction, resolution.

 

You Are Here.

What will you decide to do?

Karen Warinsky has published poetry in numerous anthologies, journals and online sites since 2011. She is the author of three collections: Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby (2022), and Dining with War (2023). She is a 2023 Best of the Net nominee and a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest. Warinsky coordinates Poets at Large, a group that performs spoken word in MA and CT. Her new book Beauty and Ashes will be released later this year from Kelsay Books.

I IMAGINE FIRST LEAVING THE HOSPITAL

by Ying Wu

A wounded 6-year-old girl arrived at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday. Her mother wept outside the ambulance. Her father was at her side, covered in blood. The family was at a supermarket on the outskirts of the southeastern port city when Russian shelling started, according to the Associated Press. Now, a medical team was racing to save the young girl's life. "Take her out! Take her out! We can make it!" a hospital worker shouted. They placed her onto a gurney and wheeled her inside, where doctors and nurses fought to revive her. But she could not be saved. A doctor who was pumping oxygen into her looked into the camera of an Associated Press videojournalist in the room. "Show this to Putin," he said. "The eyes of this child, and crying doctors." Photo credit: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP —CNN, February 28, 2022

You step on the sidewalk.

 

Life breaks into pieces.

 

There are segments and thresholds.

 

Your child collapsed

when the missile exploded.

 

Your heel strikes the pavement.

 

Her body is there at the hospital, still—

but now, you’re outside.

 

Life crosses thresholds.

 

When your child was born,

you tasted forever.

 

But the sidewalk is sectioned.

Today, all the sections seem smaller.

 

Life is unknown.

It breaks into pieces—

 

and the space between heel strikes

can swallow you whole.

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art San Diego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, Poetry Pacific, and The New Verse News.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay. 

SPOTTED FROM SPACE

by Martin Elster

In recent satellite imagery captured by Planet, which operates the world's largest pack of Earth-observing satellites, large groups of walruses can be seen crowding Earth's coastlines, all the way from space. The image shows ambiguous, "distinctive red-brown" blobs decorating the Alaskan coastline. Previously, walruses would gather in groups of up to many thousands, called "haulouts," on Arctic sea ice far from the shore. But with sea ice melting at rapid speeds due to climate change, they have no choice but to gather on land. —Space.com, November 5, 2021

Thousands of walruses (called “haulouts”) gather

along Alaskan shores, spotted from space.

They’re resting ample bodies, but they’d rather

veg out on sea ice. Yet there’s not a trace

of frozen H2O. A satellite 

has taken photographs. How can they eat

or sleep now? Humans may create a fright.

Many will perish in their mad retreat,

tumbling en mass to the safety of the ocean.

Monitoring their populations might

show how, through climate change, they may persist.

Yet when at last they’re gone, will they be missed?

These mammals know this world is not all right.

These mammals know there is no magic potion.

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra (now retired). He finds contentment in long woodland walks and writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019.

EMPTY PLACES

Illusion painting by Daniel Siering and Mario Shu.

Frederick Charles Melancon lives in Mississippi with his wife and daughter.  He is vaccinated and wears a mask.

UP UP AND AWAY

by  Judy Juanita

Billionaires space race published July 12, 2021 by Dave Whamond.

Billionaires millionaires the amerikkkan dream

Up, up and away onto the edge of space

Horatio Alger wins again

Rags-to-riches

Poor boy sandwiches

Raggedy Ann dolls

Immigrants in shacks 

Children in cages

We love it all, eh?

Up, up and away

The bigger the better

The farther from the crime scene 

The better. And the edge of space is

The Mall of America.

Opportunity our national anthem

Except except Tulsa in 1920-when? 1921

Black people black dynasties

Black millionaires buying and flying

Their own airplanes

Black businesses black prosperity

And we prostrate ourselves

For a black face on the $20 bill

   Eh?

Ask the black Okies

About the grand downtown they built

Especially for the bombs

Dropped especially on Tulsa

Listen to the sound of bombs

The bombs bursting in air

That Francis Scott Keys conjured

Ask the black Oakies

Then forward to Philly in 1990-what? 

1990-when? 1990-why?

Because a black mayor dropped bombs

On wild haired Ramona Africa 

An American millionaire, no?

Rags to riches, no?

Horatio Alger, no?

MOVE the antithesis of progress

Cleanliness

We, the clean, deodorant-rich country

Watching  televised spectacles 

Little blue-and-white suited people

Blast past the boundary of space as

The richest man in the world

Thanks his wage slaves and customers

For paying for it all

And all is forgiven because why? Because

When the land ran into the Pacific Ocean

Manifest destiny shot into space

Judy Juanita's latest book is Manhattan My Ass, You’re In Oakland,  a collection of poetry. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul chronicled a black female coming of age in the 60s who joins the Black Panther Party. Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland examines the intersectionality of race, gender, politics, economics and spirituality as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." The collection was a distinguished finalist in Ohio State University's 2016 Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Her seventeenth play, “Theodicy,” about two black men who accidentally fall into the river of death, won first runner-up of 186 plays in the Eileen Heckart 2008 Senior Drama Competition at Ohio State University.

A SATURDAY MATINEE OF SELECTED SHORT SUBJECTS

BILLIONAIRE SPACE(KU) DEUX

by Scott C. Kaestner

Cartoon by Marian Kamensky Tweeted by Advaid അദ്വൈത് @Advaidism, July 14, 2021. 

(1)

Shoot them into space

And redistribute their wealth

To heal our planet

(2)

Orbit the greedy

To build a brighter future 

For all of us here

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and forgetful mind magician who can’t find the rabbit or his hat. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

In a Nutshell

by Melissa Balmain

Detail of a cartoon tweeted by Jim Carrey @JimCarrey, November 10, 2018.

“Big Jake, the World’s Tallest Horse, Dies in Wisconsin” 

—USA Today, July 6, 2021.

“Untethered to reality, T***p lies over and over about the 2020 election at CPAC” 

—CNN, July 12, 2021.

The biggest horse is sadly dead and gone.

And yet, the biggest horse’s ass lives on.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic poetry. Her newest book of verse is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books).

Ohtani of Oz

by Earl J. Wilcox

 

No hidden  smoke screens

No sticky stuff  in his glove

He pitches. Then hits. Bam!

 

 

Earl Wilcox—amazed at Ohtani’s wizardry—lives in South Carolina.

PONDERING SPACE TRAVEL 2021

by Mary K O’Melveny

Jeff Bezos will soon soar out to deep space.

Someone with thirty million to spare

will join him in that endless place

we all struggle to comprehend, stare

at as if we could know it, trace

its contours, fix its borders. Where

does it end, this endless cash some chase?

 

As workers sweat and toil in nightmare

warehouses, such wealth will outpace

most whose dreams must rest elsewhere,

whose week’s small paycheck is embraced,

then quickly dispersed. Some might declare

the super-rich have every right to showcase

their successes. Others will despair

our grave inequities—just in case

one missed them—say it is quite unfair

to celebrate when most of the human race

struggles, starves, resides in threadbare

dwellings with no breathing space,

much less leisure time or medical care.

 

For most, three jobs won’t outpace

the bills. Yet, our daily news fare

carries front page tales without a trace

of irony about travels of billionaires,

as if their exploits might displace

raw fears, needs, demands, the wear

and tear of days grounded in place.

 

Still, our imaginations can take us there

even without cash for shuttle fares to space.

We can visit vast black holes that appear

to consume all light, marvel at defaced

meteorites, search long dead stars where

memories lie fallow waiting to be traced.

We can follow spurts of sunspots, the flare

of celestial meteor showers. There’s grace

in that truth. Almost like an answered prayer.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

SHE BLEW IN ON LENTEN WINGS

a quarantine poem in four parts
by Jill Crainshaw

Painting M004351 from Life? or Theatre? by Charlotte Salomon at the Jewish Historical Museum.

I

she blew in on lenten winds
i think i’ll stay awhile
be your muse until this thing ends
her left eye winked a suspicious smile

you plan to stay awhile?
she tossed an ancient tweed jacket on a chair
looked at me with a smile
pushed back her fedora, twirled her hair

i eyed the tweed lounging careless on the chair
her costume convinced me—well, almost
the faded fedora, the uncontained wisps of hair
who are you? i smiled—a suspicious host

though her costume convinced me—almost
that she harbored dubious ends
who are you? i smiled—a guarded host
when strangers blow in on lenten winds

II

today i harvest the tomatoes i prayed for yesterday
she’s still here—says she’s a poet but i am unsure
no pen or paper, not much to say
she just watches me, smiles--a quaint saboteur

she’s still here--insists she’s a poet but i am unsure
what are you writing? i’d like to know
she just watches me, smiles—a quaint saboteur
who arrived uninvited, interrupting my flow

tell me again, what are you writing? i am eager to know
it’s not everyday a poet moves into my space
arrives uninvited, interrupts my flow
wearing a faded fedora and a dubious smile on her face

no, i’ve never had a poet move into my space
tell me—how can i rhyme your presence away?
because you are here uninvited, interrupting my flow
while i harvest summer tomatoes i prayed for yesterday

III

the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
she waxed eloquent when i queried her work
i don’t know what she meant—she’s a shroud of mystery
and her presence here? a self-satisfied smirk

as she waxes eloquent when i query her work
which, if you must know, lacks reason and rhyme
and undermines her presence here, her self-satisfied smirk
what? is writing poetry considered a crime?

well, no—unless it lacks reason and rhyme
okay then—look at your hands, the lines in your face
i’m writing poetry right there and that can’t be a crime
we need to mark the moment—we need to leave a trace

she’s right—i see my hands, the lines in my face
a poem is emerging in the body of me
she’s writing it down; is that such a crime
when we know that the apple falls close to the tree?

IV

she blew in on lenten winds
brought with her a threadbare refrain
i never meant for us to be forever friends
but telling her to go has been in vain

she just keeps repeating her threadbare refrain
“you are dust; to dust you shall return”
and asking her to go has been in vain
her tweed’s still in the chair—no end to her sojourn

“we are dust; to dust we shall return”
she keeps saying—her eyes full of hope
just let me stay—expand my poetic sojourn
let’s rhyme our way together out of this weary worn out trope

she says it again—her eyes bright with hope
shining from beneath her fedora—her hope never ends
let’s rhyme ourselves away from this hackneyed hopeless trope
and see where we can travel if we follow different winds


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

SPILLED WATERCOLORS

by Diane Elayne Dees

Tweeted by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir from the International Space Station.

From space, the aqua, cream, azure, and cerulean
appear as if blended by a master painter
with an eye for serenity and expansion. I imagine
a second painting, this one bright, yet soft,
with puffs of spoonbill pink and splashes
of sea turtle green streaked across a peaceful
background of bunting indigo. From space,
the Louisiana delta is an impressionist’s dream
of water and feathers and the reflections
of a stippled sky. Up close, the picture tears
at the edges as the coastline rapidly recedes.
The Rusty Blackbird, black bear and Great Blue
fade behind a foreground of erosion and loss.
From space, the watercolors spill a dream-like
beauty onto a canvas teeming with life,
while the landscape shifts precariously,
altering the perspective forever.

Diane Elayne Dees has two chapbooks forthcoming. Her microchap Beach Days is available for download and folding from Origami Poems Project. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

LAIKA (1954 - NOVEMBER 3, 1957)

by Martin Elster

Laika statue outside a research facility in Moscow
(AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky)
via Universe Today.

The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog. —Oleg Gazenko























We pulled you off the windy streets,
crammed you in a windless room,
stuck electrodes to your skin,
then hurled you to your doom.

Black ears alert, brown eyes alarmed,
you fought against the fearsome thrust,
heart overheating, wildly beating,
hanging on to trust.

What was this floating-feather-lightness?
Where was the man whose gentle hand
had stroked you after every test?
When will this bubble land?

Our plan was, after a week in orbit
you’d polish off the poisoned kibble.
(Your air was running out, dear friend,
but you weren’t one to quibble.)

Because of you, men gained the moon,
touched a comet, launched the Hubble.
Yet building a craft that could have brought
you back was too much trouble.

There stands a statue of a rocket,
you atop it, proud and regal.
Small Moscow stray, could you have dreamed
you’d die a wingless eagle?

Martin Elster is a composer and serves as percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Chimaera, and The Road Not Taken, among others, and in anthologies such as Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 and 2015 Rhysling Anthologies, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, and Poems for a Liminal Age.

THE VATICAN'S NEW DECREE ON CREMATION

a sonnet
by Richard Hacken 

The Bios Urn is a fully biodegradable urn designed to convert you into a tree after life. But is it okay with Pope Frances?

New guidelines came out this past Tuesday from Vatican City
Regarding burnt human remains, whether powdery or gritty:

Set them neatly in places that are sacred and Catholic-approved;
They should never be scattered or otherwise randomly moved.
They should not be compressed into dice or shot deep into space:
They were once a live human, so show them the requisite grace.

Don't partition your loved ones (who've suddenly gone caput)
Between Mantua, Aspen and waters just off of Beirut:
Resurrection makes difficult repatriation of soot.

It's more pious to plunk our deceased into boxes beneath
The terrain and to add a memorial ribbon or wreath!

So rather than storing your mom in a crate on the shelf,
Understand the subtext into which such theologies delve:
"If you claim to be faithful, then don't make an ash of yourself."


Richard Hacken has published in TheNewVerse.News a few times. He has also translated into English seven poetry collections of Galsan Tschinag, a Tuvan shaman from Mongolia who writes in German.

DEPARTURE

by Gail White

They have paid all they have
to enter this cramped space.
They no more know
when they will sleep again
or where, than the blind
mole knows if it will escape
the cat outside its hole.
Universe, be kind.


Gail White's new book Asperity Street is available on Amazon or from Able Muse Press.

NO WAY BACK

by David Chorlton

Image source: Mars One

            "To me, when someone asks, 'why would you want to go?'

            all I can think of is, why wouldn't you want to go?" she added.

                                    -Leila Zucker, one of the 100 Mars One finalists

                                    selected to train for a mission to Mars

A room is waiting

in a place where the wind

has nothing to hold on to,

where it’s colder than Fargo

at Christmas and the atmosphere

is so thin there’s never any rain,

just an occasional shower of snowflakes

that turn into illusions

before they can touch ground.

It has a bunk that rocks on thunder,

windows so small they reveal

only specks of the surroundings,

and furnishings in a gray

that chills the eye. This

                                      could be home

for anyone seeking answers

to questions a monk once asked

in his medieval cell. Voices

marinated in persuasion

offer invitations to be a part

of history . . . to inspire people

around the world and make

isolation as attractive

as embarking on a tour with all

meals provided, time to relax

and read, play games, write, paint

 work out in the gym, watch TV,

use the Internet, contact friends at home

as life becomes more and more

like fingering a tiny device with a screen

to busy your hands while sitting

on a bus you can never get off.

Who has what it takes

                                never to return?

Who will seek claustrophobia

in the midst of boundless

space? Who has what it takes . . .

Who believes our future

cannot be confined

we must explore and look up
court death by radiation

                                        or life

so deep in boredom

the only consolation

is that . . . . the future

belongs to those who believe

in the beauty of their dreams

                                              even

if the dreams come quietly

and turn into a nightmare

at the moment

of the ultimate goodbye,

in realizing a particular tree is the last

you’ll ever see; the mailman

won’t stop at your house again;

you’ll never hold money, hear

sparrows, go out

to a restaurant meal. Rivers

will finally have flowed off the edge

of the Earth, we’ll be back

to the first of all questions: where

are we from? As if the answer

could be found by going

where nobody belongs.


David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.