THAT THING SHE SAID

by Lisa Shulman

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

when our hand clap games

were shuffled off sidewalks by boys on bikes

 

when classrooms became cages

we stammered behind

 

when our ideas were ignored

when our dreams were stolen

 

when the male gaze followed us unbidden

down dark streets, into sunny parks

 

when we said no

when we said stop

 

when we no longer said

anything

 

she said it for us

put voice back in our mouths

 

in the face of all the world

has tried to silence—

 

We are speaking now.

Lisa Shulman is a writer, children’s book author, and teacher. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Poetry Breakfast, Catamaran, Minnow Literary Magazine, California Quarterly, The Best Small Fictions, and a number of other magazines and anthologies. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Lisa’s poetry has been performed by Off the Page Readers Theater. Her chapbook Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Lisa lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools. 

WORD

by James Gage

 

Word is the best

four-letter word

of them all—

the most effective

and least obscene.

 

I prefer the sound

of human voices speaking

with one another

with the gift of our forebears:

the bilabial smacks

and glottal stops,

the carefully wrought thoughts

in place of haste

or wind-drift spasms.

 

Our words are aural evidence

of true evolution

beyond the harnessing of fire

or the hammer-ready thumb.

And the silencing of words

is a recipe for ruin.

James Gage is a poet whose work has been published in Main Street Rag, Inkwell, Oyster River Pages, The New Verse News, and others. Finishing Line Press published his first book of poems True If Destroyed (2015).

AT THE LECTERN

by Alan Elyshevitz

Photograph by Al Drago / NYT / Redux via The New Yorker

you need to articulate and oppose. And timing,
you need that, and enough blank space. Expel
the breath in prorated bursts like x-rays dosing
the bones. Advisers weigh in on the controversy
of whether to use the emphatic body—forearm
offensive, fingers poised in their swiveling
launcher—or hold the body still, allowing
ejections to speak for themselves. You need
not shout. The interior of any room is a multiplier—
its walls and angles—the right words both vicious
and acoustic when they undergo a truculent
bounce. The aim, of course, is not to persuade
but to level. The aim is disquiet. To impel
the president of Russia to send a lacquer box.

Alan Elyshevitz is the author of a collection of stories, The Widows and Orphans Fund (SFA Press), and three poetry chapbooks, most recently Imaginary Planet (Cervena Barva). His poems have appeared in River Styx, Nimrod International Journal, and Water~Stone Review, among many others. Winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, he is also a two-time recipient of a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.