THE CONVENIENT WIFE

by Elisabeth Frischauf

cartoon by Bill Bramhill

Pockets strife

Shoulders the blame

Picks up the stain

For anyone

Fanning the flame

Against husband’s fame

Deep in her bosom

Buries misdeeds

Twitter poison feed

Lucky this man

Justice of our land

Whose wife

With bravura and passion

Hangs

Our stripes and stars

Upside down

Elisabeth Frischauf is a psychiatrist, grandmother, and visual artist in many media: ceramics, collage, mobiles. Poetry is intimately bound up with her art.  Being multilingual and anchored in two cultures—the family homeland in Austria and New York City— enriches all her work. Her epic narrative memoir poem, They Clasp My Hand, short-listed for the Austria Literary Prize, was published in April 2022 by the Theodor Kramer Verlag, Vienna, Austria. This book is in process for on demand, English only, by She Writes Press.  Two more memoir verse books are in the publication pipeline.  She publishes poems in various on-line magazines. She lives with her husband, playwright Richard France by a lake in Putnam County, New York.

DREAM

by Tricia Knoll

“Our biggest dream is to just be able to stand by the windows.” —Saleem Aburas, a relief coordinator with the Red Crescent near Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, quoted in “Two Hospitals in Southern Gaza Are Left Barely Functioning," The New York Times, February 19, 2024

 
To stand by a window. To see my neighbors water their geraniums 
on the stoop. To watch traffic, the old blue cars and the new cars
going off to work. The children waiting at the front doors for
a mother to walk them off to school. To watch my wife in the
garden. At night to watch moths flutter at the street lights. 
 
Of course it’s holidays with family. Feasting foods after fasts. 
The hug from my cousin who owes me money. My hug to him.
A first drink of cold water after sleep. It’s all these things,
 
plus those moths fluttering at the street lights who think
dreams come true. 

Tricia Knoll welcomes the arrival of her new book of poetry Wild Apples from Fernwood Press this week—poems that tell stories of downsizing, moving 3000 miles from Oregon to Vermont, running into Covid and welcoming two grandsons.

WHEN I DIE IN THE NEXT MASS SHOOTING, HERE'S WHAT I LOOK FORWARD TO

by William McCarthy

"American Exceptionalism" by Nick Anderson.

“We never thought it would happen here,” my neighbor Sheila says.

Flags fly at half-staff; the governor holds me in his thoughts and prayers.

Another surge in the sale of assault weapons.

My senator reiterates that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

 

My senator holds me in his thoughts and prayers.

More dollars promised to help the mentally ill.

Flags fly at half-staff; my governor reiterates that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Congress proposes another bill, weakens it, lets it die in committee.

 

Even more dollars promised to help the mentally ill.

On the six o’clock news, my children leave the church with my coffin.

Congress proposes another bill, weakens it, lets it die in committee.

The surgeons release my wife from the ICU.

 

On the six o’clock news, my children leave the church with my coffin.

Newspapers savor the irony: I survived a mass shooting a month ago, only to die in this one.

The surgeons release my wife from the ICU.

My thirteen-year-old daughter tells Anderson Cooper how much she will miss me.

 

Newspapers savor the irony: I survived a mass shooting a month ago, only to die in this one.

Another surge in the sale of assault weapons.

My governor’s wife holds my two-month-old son in her arms.

“We never thought it would happen here.”

Thirty years ago William McCarthy joined the Connecticut Writing Project and hasn’t recovered yet. “Since then," he writes, "I've tendered my drafts almost monthly in a writing group of other recovering CWP teachers. There’s a closeness among us we get nowhere else, as we share bits and pieces of our lives—our trials with truculent pianos, unpredictable children, and failing parents. Part is honing our craft, part is shaping our experiences, part is understanding who we are.”

HANDS

by Ruth Lehrer

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny makes a heart gesture with his hands while in a cage in the Moscow City Court on Tuesday. His suspended sentence from his 2014 criminal conviction was ultimately converted to a prison term. (Press Service of Simonovsky District Court/Handout/Reuters via CBC)

He’s in a glass box right now they call it the aquarium we can’t hear him 

    can he hear us

the judge pretends to read judgment the news already knows already 

    prints her words

before they exit her mouth leave her tongue like a corrupt mind meld 

    two years eight

months in a prison colony with his silent hands he flashes a heart to his wife 

    who takes

off her mask and waves.

Ruth Lehrer is a writer and sign language interpreter living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the novel Being Fishkill and the poetry chapbook Tiger Laughs When You Push.

THERE'S NEVER ONLY ONE

by Joan Mazza 

“Justice Blindsided: Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser comes forward” by Pia Guerra, TheNib, September 17th, 2018

A wife wants to believe her husband
when he swears, after he’s arrested,
he has never picked up a hooker before.
That the affair on a business trip was

nothing, didn’t have anything to do
with his love for his wife, his daughters.
The altar boy feels chosen by the priest,
special child, loved and petted, blessed

by God to be special. The only one.
He won’t tell the other children because
they might covet his blessings, but never
will be chosen. One assault, the one time

he groped a co-worker, demanded sex.
Just once. A moment of recklessness,
like the therapist who hugs a patient,
lies down for comfort on his leather couch.

Once, he tells the professional licensing
board, his wife, his adult children.
It happened once. The judge says,
It will never happen again.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has twice been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, and The Nation.

MIKE PENCE, I AM NOT TRYING TO SEDUCE YOU

by Melissa Fite Johnson

Tweet by Quinn Sutherland‏ @ReelQuinn, March 30, 2017:  “Yes, I’m here for my meeting with Mike Pence.”

No need to pluck the napkin from your lap,
Mike, I’ll only stay a moment. I have
a table already, over there by that window.
See my husband, speaking with the waitress
in a way that doesn’t make me uncomfortable?
Yes, I agree—the waitress is beautiful!
There’s something about a natural redhead,
you’re so right. It looks like he’s ordered us
a bottle of wine. That’s nice. Anyway,
Mike, if you could put down your fork
for a moment, I wanted to talk to you about
Planned Parenthood. Oh, stop, I understand
this is a fancy place, but surely some people
are talking shop. What about that booth?
Four white men, all in suits. You don’t think
that’s a business meeting? Please.
I’ve seen photos of your business meetings.
As I was saying—hey, could I sit for a minute?
I feel a bit awkward hovering over you
like some genie. Wait, are you blushing?
Do you have a thing for I Dream of Jeannie?
Heh, should I call you Major? No need to
flag down a waiter, Mike, I’m kidding.
So my friend went to Planned Parenthood
two years ago, and it ended up saving her—
Hello? Mike? Oh, is that your wife over there?
Talking to my husband? He probably
called out to her as she left the restroom.
She looks fine to me, Mike. Oh, my God,
did you really just ask about my intentions?
I intend to tell you how Planned Parenthood—
Jesus, I’ll explain my intentions as soon as
she comes over here. For now, she’s laughing
pretty hard. Yeah, my husband’s hilarious.
You know, it wouldn’t kill you to crack a joke
now and then. You’ve got one?  Let’s hear it!
Christ, Mike, a blonde joke? That’s the kind of
sexist thinking I’m concerned about. Sure,
take a moment, try again. Yes, I can see
your wife’s still laughing. Mike, seriously.
I’m not worried; you don’t need to be worried.

Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015),won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas. 

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

Editor's Note: We are pleased to repost this poem, originally published in TheNewVerse.News on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. It is one of our 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees.


THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE
by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently. 

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently. 

THE CANDIDATE MAKES A PUBLIC STATEMENT ON A PRIVATE MATTER, HIS WIFE AT HIS SIDE

by Michael Cantor





There’s something in the rules, I guess, to make
them brave the scene, dead pale, beside the jerk,
because they all endure it; none will shirk
the role, not one has said, Give me a break,
you asshole, can’t you tell how much I ache –
you’re on your own  – instead, she takes her place
and stands there, shaking,  life drained from her face
as hubby asks the world for time and space.  

There is no way, José, I am forewarned,
you’d ever see me shame myself like that.

I change the channel, give her knee a pat, 

suppress a little joke on women scorned.

I'd like to think she’d stand by me, but still, 

I’ve never run for office, never will.


Michael Cantor’s full-length collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry. A chapbook, The Performer, was published in 2007; and his work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Measure, New Verse News, Raintown Review, SCR, Chimaera, The Flea, and numerous other journals and anthologies.  He was also a finalist for the Nemerov (twice), Richard Wilbur and Robert Penn Warren poetry competitions; and has won the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford prizes.  A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe, and presently resides on Plum Island, north of Boston on the Massachusetts coast.

WIFE SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING IN BLAZE

by Darlene Pagan

Image credit: defokes / 123RF Stock Photo

She never imagined the sheet she lit
would curl him in its hot tongue, never
believed he wouldn’t wake in those flames,
throw back the covers, and wash his feet like
she’d been asking him every night before bed. 

The air buzzed with a lightning storm.
The chickens refused to lay and no matter
how long or hard she kneaded the dough,
all morning, the loaves cooked up
dense and hard as baseball bats. 
At least, no child again this month. 

A photo of them as newlyweds, so young
they look like children playing dress up,
hangs in the hallway.  Too stubborn to quit
a decade later and now look where it’s got them. 

Black petals fall.  Bits of sheet, newly caught
rise like cardinals.  A door opens, the wind
roars, timbers spit and splinter until she finds
herself outside in the grass watching

lightning split a sycamore.  She looks from
the tree to the body they’re pulling too late
from the burning house.  She believes it
when she tells them she has no idea who he is.


Darlene Pagan teaches at Pacific University in Oregon, where she lives with her husband and sons.  A book of poems, Blue Ghosts, was published with Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and essays have most recently appeared in journals such as Calyx, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Madison Review, Poet Lore, Hiram Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Memoir(and), Brevity, and Literal Latté, among others. Pagan recently completed a full-length poetry project tentatively titled, Setting the Fire. She loves to bike, hike, dig at the beach, walk in the rain, sing, and ride roller coasters now that her boys are just tall enough to ride.