VAINGLORIOUS

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 

 

 

 

In a word

 

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and author living in metropolitan Washington, DC. Her books include City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons. Many of her poems have appeared in The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD IN THE DICTIONARY

by Arlene Weiner

“Tariff,” Donald Trump has said many times, “is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” —The Guardian

Tariff?
More beautiful than cerulean? 
Than mother? Than home?
 
Something Arabian
about tariff: a perfume. 
Something elaborate: a fringe. 
 
Certainly more beautiful
than beautiful, bee-yoo-tiffle.
Related to giraffe? To sheriff?
 
A herd of tariffs, say, gathers
high-hanging fruit. A tariff
with a posse protects. 
 
And yes, Arabian: Wikipedia: 
The English term tariff
derives from the French: tarif…
 
a descendant of the Italian: tariffa,
from Medieval Latin: tariffe…  
from the Ottoman Turkish…
 
borrowed from the Persian…
The Persian term derives from Arabic:
 تعريف, ta rif.
 
To riff on tariff: What if 
the English, the French, the Italians, 
the Turks, the Persians
 
had taxed foreign tongues,
policed the borders of language,
put up walls?
We’d have no tariff, no beautiful tariff.

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh. She has been a copy editor, a den mother, a Shakespeare scholar, and a member of a group developing computer-based instruction. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry: Escape Velocity, City Bird, and More. She also writes plays.

DROUGHT’S HIGH DESERT HOWL OF THE WOLF

by Dick Altman

“Megadrought in the American south-west: a climate disaster unseen in 1,200 years.” -The Guardian,  September 12, 2022

D-r-o-u-g-h-t
Whenever I see the word—
I want to dismantle it                                
D—the letter—is easy—
delete and destroy
the most unforgiving letter—to me—
letter O—like a wolf’s maw—
whose mandible blades the heart—
as I watch high desert’s drought
wolf whatever’s in reach
of its insatiable jaws… 
                       
            Golden seas of shimmering
cow-pen daisies
Billowing swarms of insects
that sustain night hawk and bat
Purple Russian Sage beloved
of bees
Acequias—historic hand-dug
streams—feeding pasture
and crop
Rio Grande turned
into a waterless highway
of sand
Weakened pine—long needle
and short—decimated
by bark beetle
Every dead tree a depleted
trove of oxygen
                         
If drought were a song—I’d hear  
a one-note elegy of unyielding spareness—
a flameless fire unfurling in three-quarter
time—a waterless flood whose silent
music swallows all it touches—insistent
waltz whose slow cadences fool hope—
clouds swollen with broken melodies—
cisterns hollow with minor-key emptiness—
Aspen’s metallic yellow of fall chorusing
a month too soon
 
Call me a fool to plant a small forest
of trees—when I build here at seven-
thousand feet in Indian Country—half
of these children—if I may call them that—
fail to survive—no defense against a force
ghostly—merciless in its fury to gorge
on blood from leaf/petal/earth—flame
never seen—flood never felt—rapacious
lupine shadow hidden in the dark of light

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

THE WORD WAR

by Ralph La Rosa

Remembering Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

 

He wrote in verse about this word

on a blank page as pale as death.

Though silent, it is mindfully heard.

He wrote in verse a word of the absurd

sweet lie: pro patria mori earns a reward

of decorous honors for one’s last breath.

He wrote in verse about this word

on a pale page—on repetitive death.

Ralph La Rosa’s most recent book is My Miscellaneous Muse.

THE SWEETEST WORD

 by Gil Hoy

The sweetest word

I've ever heard

Rhymes with:

Scene, Queen

and Tangerine

Rebellious Teen

and Jimmy Dean.

Lean, Mean

and so Obscene

Gulping down 

some more Caffeine.

Gene, Spleen

and Submarine

Very few 

and far Between.

Keen, Glean

and coffee Bean

Riding in

a Limousine.

The sweetest word

I've ever heard?

Vaccine.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy's poetry has previously appeared in Rat’s Ass Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Ariel Chart, Right Hand Pointing, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change,  The Penmen Review, Misfit Magazine, Chiron Review, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for 12 years and is a semi-retired trial lawyer.

KEEP

by Janet Shainheit

We keep our eyes peeled, our chins up, our fingers crossed. Feet
planted firmly on the ground.  We keep our heads.  Keep noses
to their respective grindstones.

We earn our keep.  Keep it safe.  Keep body and soul together.
Keep busy.  Keep up the pace.  Try to keep ourselves and those we
love from harm.  We keep at it.  Keep going.
Keep our upper lips stiff.
Keep on truckin’.

We keep secrets, memories, friends.  We keep in touch.
Keep watch on the world, up with the news.  Keep tabs on
what’s what and who’s who.
Keep score.

We keep our word.  We keep strong in troubled seas.
We struggle to keep the flame of truth
on an altar of honor.


Janet Shainheit lives and writes in Worcester, MA. She is a happily retired school librarian, and the grateful friend of poetry and poets.

FACE MASKS

by Ed Goodell 

When I stare at your masked mouth
I think of the girls
I’d speak with on the phone
That hung from the dining-room wall
of my parents’ home.

I’m fifteen, maybe sixteen,
Pacing the herringbone floor,
Tangled up in that short coiled cord
Of youth. Not seeing mouths,
I can barely hear their words.

You have to see it to believe it,
And words without tongues
To heaven never go. Maybe
They mean it, maybe they don’t  
When they whisper, “Eddy, my baby.”

This I’ve learned: Something of the lips  
Lends substance to utterance
And unmouthed words lack teeth.
Then and now, in these viral times,
We must see the words we speak.

Day is done. Let us slip inside
Our tender quarantine.
We’ll wash our hands, remove our masks
—Don’t touch! One meter apart!—
Words, mouth, love are all I ask.

Ed Goodell is a teacher of English and journalism at Jakarta Intercultural School in Indonesia. He is sheltered at home with his son, Yohanes, and wife, Irma D. Peña, to whom this poem is dedicated.