ODE TO LEAP DAY

by Earl J. Wilcox


Here we are again,
stumbling upon you,
most of us not
remembering you
in the shadows waiting
to come out
every four years---
myth-mixing with
factotum—
just a simple
24-hour day,
hardly a myth
at all to us
who were born
on this day.

Some say he’s seventy-four.
In leap years, he’s     a teenager.
Who’s counting.


Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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AFTER ONE HUNDRED YEARS

by Susanna Lang


No one remembered snow falling in Baghdad.
We didn’t even have a word for this whiteness:
we called it a kind of rain, and used our phones to take pictures
so our grandchildren would know it really happened.
But the pictures did not show how this rain clung to the edges of things,
blurring one with the other, until the house we’d never entered
could have been our house; but only for a moment, like in the old stories
where if you spoke of the magic it would vanish.
There was even a rumor—who knows? it could be true—
that a snowman had been made in Balad, fifty miles north.
I do not know whether this is a lesson from God, said our neighbor.
Maybe snow is the language God speaks in,
when we have forgotten how to speak except in fire.


A collection of Susanna Lang’s poems has been accepted for publication next spring by The Backwaters Press. She has published original poems and essays, and translations from the French, in such journals as The Baltimore Review, Kalliope, Southern Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Chicago Review, New Directions, Green Mountains Review, Jubilat, and Rhino. Book publications include translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. She won a 1999 Illinois Arts Council award for a poem published in The Spoon River Poetry Review. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she teaches at a Chicago Public School.
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WATER QUESTIONNAIRE

by David Chorlton


Would you pay more for water than for oil?
When you buy a bottle of water
can you read the ingredients clearly on the label?
Do you know the location of the country
from which it was drawn?
What nationality were the clouds
from which it fell?
How much water does a president drink
to rinse down a speech?
If air from the Himalayas
could be packaged and shipped
how much would you pay for it?
How could you tell it was cleaner than air
you breathe without charge?
How many bottles of water fit
on a board room table?
Is slaking thirst a right or a privilege?
How many hundred years does it take
for the bottle in which your water was delivered
to degrade?
Would you support a law that makes you wait
until one bottle has degraded
before you buy another?
Do you support the use of battleships
in taking control of water sources?
How much water does it take to float one?
Have you ever seen a ship in a bottle?
Was it a plastic bottle?
Is it fair for bottled water to be given away
at conferences?
Would you answer differently if the conferences
were arranged to discuss the lack
of drinking water in Darfur?
Do you think Darfur without water
would crumble faster than Chad?


David Chorlton has two new chapbooks posted online, The Dreaming House and Dry Heat. Both draw on life in Arizona.
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WAKE

New Orleans Revisited


by Alan King


here you are – two years
later – on South Claiborne Avenue
among Walgreens, a tire shop and
gutted-out homes whose water marks
are the only signs of Katrina

it's just you and Joe, the driver,
in a YMCA van heading downtown

imagine ten-foot waves coming atcha',
clearing three blocks in five seconds, he says

and goes on about the Y's residents
retreating the flooded first floor to upper
levels where you and five other young
reporters from D.C. crash for the week

you watch the mile markers, and try
holding your breath between them before
you'd desperately gasp for air

like that time at the beach when
you, 10 yrs. old, jumped too soon
and the current snatched you
under the wave's wide body

like those who drowned here –
a fate you would've shared
if your dad wasn't close enough
to lift you above towering water

when you ride past the Superdome,
Joe says the stench inside
was so thick he swore he could see
its musty apparitions


A Cave Canem fellow and Vona Alum, Alan King's fiction and poems have appeared in the Arabesques Review, Warpland, Black Renaissance Noire, The Amistad, and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS, among others. His work was also part of Anacostia Exposed, a collaborative exhibit with Irish photographer Mervyn Smyth that showcases the life and energy of Anacostia.
_______________________________________________________

QUESTIONS FOR A LOCAL BOY

by Anna-Elise Price


If you go to kill the infidel, the evildoing towel-headed agents of terror, will you finally be all you can be, an army of one, standing alone the hero of that video game you play for hours; will your mother weep tears of pride at the transformed slacker no longer cluttering her couch; will all those yellow magnets be supporting you; will your home town hang your name on a lamp-post with a yellow ribbon, and will that ribbon turn black

Or worse

Will you return without an arm, missing half your brain

But no, you are young and youth is better armor than what the army may not give you

And when they finally let you go, with new dead eyes and secrets you will not tell, will you be ready for the peace of the second-shift job your father can get you because he knows a guy, the job you are willing to join the army to avoid?


Having proved her liberal credentials by serving three years as a public defender for juveniles, and then a further three at legal aid doing education law, Anna-Elise Price is now studying writing at Eastern Illinois University.
______________________________________________________________________________

THEY WANT IT

by Dale Goodson


we don’t

in the bow
drifting through silver slippers

not involved in totals
not in subtotals

our fingertips
busy
leaving trails in the lake

we drum on the sides
with heels and palms
that other sound
that violent pounding

not ours

a duck feather drifts by
like a ticket
we take our seats fore and aft

the sky explodes

some of it theirs
some of it the melting sun

we look at each other

the water smells great
someone could take a big gulp and down we’d go

but
not right now

right now
we kiss each other’s foot
right now
two flies beat it around our heads

hey bombardment
hey wooden boat

we float and swat and sing
who wouldn’t
in the pink rooster tail
of day


Dale Goodson is a writer from Seattle currently living in New York City and working as a homeless outreach worker in Times Square. He recently created his own website.
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AIRPORT SECURITY ALERT FOR TOYS WITH REMOTES

by Rochelle Ratner


He sits beside her on the couch, hugging the remote to his hip, switching to the baseball or football game at every commercial. This drives her crazy. But her feet are in his lap and he's also massaging them. He rubs the remote over her arch, then thinks better of that. It's been a long day. Then again, the days are getting shorter. Soon they'll have to make plans for Christmas travel. She recalls the year they sat up in bed at four a.m., looking at a guidebook to Disney World for adults. Another year they missed the plane when the limo driver, two days on the job, got lost at the airport. Two years ago her computer came crashing off the belt with a thud and the plane was already boarding, and it was over an hour before, fighting for leg room, she could get it out of its case to make sure it would boot. By that time she wanted nothing to do with him or his family.


Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Leads (Otoliths Press, 2007), Balancing Acts (Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.
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HEROES SHOW UP FOR WORK TOO

by Earl J. Wilcox


She came to our modest southern town
almost ten years ago, brought her two
children, her husband was already here
from somewhere in Mexico. We never know
exactly where. She washed dishes, swept
floors, sewed on buttons at Kim’s laundry,
sent her kids to school, loved her husband.

Three years ago---her improved English
obvious—she went to work at Salt Water Seafood
down on East Main Street. Every day
the same hard work---cleaning shrimp,
carp, cod, cat fish, learning to meet
and greet customers.

When the masked gunman dashed
into the store, she stood still,
having learned from Capt. Breen exactly
what to do if someone is going to rob you:
give the money, don’t be brave, don’t try
to figure out who is robbing you. Above all,
don’t call a cop while the robbery is in progress.
She did as the robber said: put the money
from that drawer in this plastic bag.”
He took the money, turned toward
the door, returned and shot her in the face.
Bleeding, she fell down. He stood over her,
shot her twice again. He was a bad shot.
Her husband, children, friends, and
community are glad she’s alive.
Capt. Breen says she’s a hero.


Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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TWICE UPON A LIE

by Sue Turner


transparent as vellum
the elected reminisce
from memory disjointed

moss-clad cells conceal
frail connections to truth
history varies day by day

distorted as bad fiction
reality takes hindquarter
in words pocked by rubble


Sue Turner's left brain turned right about a decade ago when writing and painting replaced gainful employment.

TIGER'S TRAIL

by Karl Kadie

Outside the tiger pen, young men wave and shout.
As the sun dims, the restaurant and gift shop
glow like a warm, Christmas beacon.
Titiana intends to stay on her side,
but today meat odors cloud the zoo air
and the vision of a man climbing her fence
shakes her memory like a dumb monkey of temptation.
But if it was just a monkey, it would be easy:
Catch, claw, and kill. But this is man
man who keeps her walled in,
man who feeds her meat late, long dead,
man, many men, who never let her eat alone.
Where, then, will the tiger's trail lead?

Energy scurries up her tail, twitches into her paws.
She sees and feels her claws extend, contract, extend.
I love you, I love you not: the tension of a proud spirit.
Then it happens: the memory of everything
abandoned in an instant – the bored annoyance,
the tightening leash of tiny territory,
the unmet needs of higher hunger –
all gone, cast onto the tiger's trail.

From The News:
"A spokesman for the zoo corrects the facts:
the wall is twelve and a half feet high,
several less than regulation"

Tatiana scrambles across the dry moat,
Hearing and feeling her body's music,
claws scratching stone like hiphop turntable riffs.
Once at the wall, she crouches and leaps, scaling the wall easily.

From The News:
"Authorities were at a loss Wednesday to explain
how a 250-pound tiger escaped from its enclosure"

The San Francisco Zoo checks on Tony, the other tiger,
and considers a tranquilizer gun for stopping Tatiana.
When gift store and café employees learn a tiger is loose,
they lock themselves in the gift shop,
refusing to respond to the wildness,
to shouts and shrieks along the tiger's trail.

911 record:
From the Request: "Get me some towels…My brother's about to die out there."
Answer: "We have 16 different police units …We have to make
sure that the tiger doesn't hurt any of the emergency units."

Titiana bounds onto the first man just outside the wall.
She bites and claws him, red mayhem rushing from his neck.
Then two other men shout and wave, distracting her from the kill.
With no barrier between them, Tatiana trails and takes them easily,
attacking one, then the other.

When police arrive, Tatiana lays beside one man,
her heart as calm as the hurricane's eye.
Police drive their patrol cars over, red lights whirling
like dervishes, and Tatiana jumps
back onto the man, re-staking her claim.

Experts Claim:
1) Captive tigers aren't nearly in the kind of
shape that wild tigers have to be.
2) Scaling the moat and wall is virtually impossible."

Then she looks up, rises with Sphinx-like grace,
and pads into the new winds of commotion.
The police shout a warning: "Halt! Come no further!"
English not being her first language, she continues unabated.
The police open fire. Tatiana drops.

The Final Count:
For the Tiger = 1 man dead, 2 wounded
For the Police = 1 tiger dead.

Experts Claim:
"Wild tigers in India or Russia prefer not to attack and eat people.
Typically, older tigers attack man in advanced age, when they are
no longer able to kill larger or faster prey."

Tatiana was only four years of age, far from old,
making her home with the keepers and the kept
until the final moments when she broke a new trail
for herself at the San Francisco Zoo,
changing the balance of tiger and man. Forever.

Karl Kadie holds an MA in English from San Francisco State University and is a native Californian. He has been writing poetry for over thirty years, and published poems in Haiku Headlines, The New Verse News, Santa Clara Review, and on poetry blogs. His poems reflect a powerful concern about the contemporary events of the new century. Karl earns his living by providing marketing for global high technology companies.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE STATE

by Frank Potvin

After the first eleven days in that cell
before the shadows there became his
only witness, before he knew his time was up,
when he could still hold a cogent thought,
before the onslaught of blow after blow,
before the world became seamless and hell,
he thought she came to him, performed her
healing arts and laid with him, the days and weeks
flying by, as if in her reasonableness and care
he was free to falter, and in letting go, become
almost heroic, but, fearless in his bellowing.

Frank Potvin writes from the remaining woods of New Hampshire where he works as a Mental Health Counselor. Published poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Ellipsis, YAWP, and anthologized in The Maple Leaf Rag. He is a member of the River Voices Poetry Collective in Walpole, NH.

DEMONCRAZY DERBY

Poeartry by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote


Hoarse race strep deep throat
     Putrefactive septic grating sore loser
          Badverteasement messages aloe massaging egos
               Off-track bettor or worse tri(per)fecta

               Hallohaha Obamama surf’s up Dude
          Also-ran soaking defeat sucking lozenges
     Now I lei me downhearted
Hillary grass skirting hip-hop hula-ti-da

Lone Star Wacko Taxes AlaMode
     Oil’s unwell high nonoonon NO-OK
          Filly versus stud final stretch
               Unbranded maverick bucking broncobuster odds

               Rodeohio courting unconventional stupor delegates
          Cracked Liberty Bellwether sheepish cashtration
     IndiePenndense declaring John McCaine Mutiny
Republigun bullets shooting ballot blanks

This Thaidings of Joy PoeArtry visualization was rendered in black & white by Dr. Charles Frederickson, with computer-generated coloration by Saknarin Chinayote. Their website features more than 500 original images and impressions, sketched and scribbled during travels to 206 countries on our fave planet.

SOVEREIGNTY

by Rochelle Owens

Ever on the surface appears a story
of Iberian days a state of mind
white sand from end to end
explaining the surface of the skin
a naked martyr standing pigeon-toed
opens her right hand pale yellow
the sand in the hollow of    her palm
the shade expanding more than
half-way organizing the lines between
atmosphere following the course
a space between words    etoile    horseshoe
evil-eye    taliswoman
And power a conjurer and truth a fissure
darkening yellowing on the bottom
   of her   left foot

Away from the traffic and pointing at
a hypothetical male a woman says a word
with a smile while her key ring slips off
slips off an index finger and before
another theft another theft in Calcutta    gaps
in the sequence of events
sequence of events a marriage between
pauper and wealthy woman from Delhi
and naught but sovereignty says a word
a word that you know    on the earth’s surface
seven continents rivers and deserts
the flexible long neck of a woman stretches
and an index finger waves    spiraling bands
of wind and rain and strong little legs
of    a pauper run little legs of a pauper run

Escape to spring from one continent    to
another and a sign says “keep out” those
who will not dance to a tune of their misery
to a tune of their pain their pain as perfect
as tubular bells tam tam gongs and sitars
to be no more of this story cut out of the
middle this story of Iberian days and naught
but sovereignty says a word a word that you
know dividing itself into head inchoate eyes
and ears that grind up sound for the word:    theft
is sound ground up becoming a gift and it is
a gift of a red stone red stone in a bean-shape
and the size of a fist and beauty is the arch
beauty is the arch of the foot of a pauper

The operating room and lights that beam
scan across the screen are the eyes and eyes
are organs of wonder wondrous organs and
the two eyeballs set in bony sockets Behold
the gift the gift of a red stone in a bean- shape
precious the intact skeleton    precious the skull
spine bones joints the form of the human body
and naught but sovereignty is the matchmaker
naught but sovereignty says a body is its parts
knowing which side his bread is buttered
as a surgeon on a safari or a trip around the
world    Behold the bread of kali!- –an abundance
of paupers paupers of inchoate eyes rattling
spiral seashells jingling bracelets    They are called
the bread of Kali because Kali devours them
and they are deaf from birth they are the deaf
paupers deaf to the flutes deaf to the sitars deaf
   to the tam tam gongs deaf to the tubular bells

Rochelle Owens is the author of eighteen books of poetry and plays, the most recent of which are Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000) and Luca, Discourse on Life and Death (Junction Press, 2001). A pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement and an internationally known innovative poet, she has received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her play Futz, which is considered a classic of the American avant-garde theatre, was produced by Ellen Stewart at LaMama, directed by Tom O’Horgan and performed by the LaMama Troupe in 1967, and was made into a film in 1969. A French language production of Three Front was produced by France-Culture and broadcast on Radio France. She has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan’s novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Oklahoma and held residencies at Brown and Southwestern Louisiana State.

STOPPING BY WOODS WITH A SNOWY VANDAL

by Marcus Bales


Whose house is this? Don’t care, don’t know,
Some institution owns it, though,
And no authority is near
To salt the roads or shovel snow
This last half mile, and we’ve got beer;
So we will party hearty here
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
I give the door a half-assed shake
And kick the frame before I break
A window, reach around, unlock
The door, and hey, come on, let’s shake
This joint! Burn a chair and hock
A loogie! Poetry’s a crock.
Drink up! We’ll make this party rock!
Drink up! We’ll make this party rock!


Not much is known about Marcus Bales except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry.