a new year's resolution
by Scot Siegel
Is there such a thing?
Can it happen more than once?
What if it happens every day?
and has nothing to do with lust,
or envy
or democracy
or god
forsake
our country…
This is how I might strike-up a new conversation
with the world
If we can do it all over again
but differently…
Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
_______________________________
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
NEW YEAR'S EVE, 2008
by Earl J. Wilcox
For once, then, let’s not toast
those arcane resolutions. OK,
maybe one or two, say something
like we hope for the best in the
new year for the young family
down the street, who had to put
their house up for sale, move
away without telling us where
they went because the dad lost
his job, the mom couldn’t find one,
and their little guy that we loved
watching play catch with his dad
is gone, too, God knows where,
and we’re left holding empty
cups nobody’s going to fill up,
no matter how much toasting
a new year we do.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
_______________________________
For once, then, let’s not toast
those arcane resolutions. OK,
maybe one or two, say something
like we hope for the best in the
new year for the young family
down the street, who had to put
their house up for sale, move
away without telling us where
they went because the dad lost
his job, the mom couldn’t find one,
and their little guy that we loved
watching play catch with his dad
is gone, too, God knows where,
and we’re left holding empty
cups nobody’s going to fill up,
no matter how much toasting
a new year we do.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
_______________________________
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
BODY COUNT
by David Plumb
Each day he cuts out
the New York Times Dead in Iraq
and places them in a green metal dish
to rest with the rest
of the silence in between.
David Plumb’s latest fiction book is A Slight Change in the Weather. He has worked as a paramedic, a cab driver, a, cook and tour guide. A long time San Francisco writer, he now lives in South Florida . Will Rogers said, “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” Plumb says, “It depends on the parrot.”
________________________________________
New Year 2009
Each day he cuts out
the New York Times Dead in Iraq
and places them in a green metal dish
to rest with the rest
of the silence in between.
David Plumb’s latest fiction book is A Slight Change in the Weather. He has worked as a paramedic, a cab driver, a, cook and tour guide. A long time San Francisco writer, he now lives in South Florida . Will Rogers said, “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” Plumb says, “It depends on the parrot.”
________________________________________
APPROACHING DECEMBER 31
by Phyllis Wax
The old year’s got
plenty of testosterone left,
enough for a surge
of violence in Gaza ,
in Sri Lanka, in Pakistan ,
and God knows
where else and
what’s He going to do about it,
just send the new lad in
to continue the job— and where
will it all end?
Phyllis Wax keeps up with the news from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Most recently, she has been published in Out of Line, Free Verse, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar and The New Verse News.
__________________________________________________
The old year’s got
plenty of testosterone left,
enough for a surge
of violence in Gaza ,
in Sri Lanka, in Pakistan ,
and God knows
where else and
what’s He going to do about it,
just send the new lad in
to continue the job— and where
will it all end?
Phyllis Wax keeps up with the news from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Most recently, she has been published in Out of Line, Free Verse, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar and The New Verse News.
__________________________________________________
Monday, December 29, 2008
THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY
by Jon Wesick
actually a rusty dumpster
behind the Smithsonian
Soggy newspapers, broken glass,
black banana peel on its lid
The last deposit
a dripping garbage bag
coffee grounds, apple cores,
the Taliban
Before that
a broken comb tangled
with Karl Marx’s unruly hair
When the lights go out
dumpster divers crawl inside
searching for anything they can sell:
thumbscrews, Spanish boots,
Hitler’s old razor blades,
dead sparrows, backyard blast furnaces,
Herbert Hoover’s musty economics text,
vials of phlogiston, the recipe
Typhoid Mary used for ice cream,
McNamara’s board games,
Stalin’s toenail clippings,
Pol Pot’s busted stereo
Bad ideas get a quick rinse
in the waters of forgetfulness
and a fresh coat of PR.
Then grocery carts bulging
with Lysenko science,
crusades, jihads, and Thirty Years Wars
the shadowy junkmen scurry
to the marketplace
or political convention
to start a new round
of famine, disease, and war
Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
____________________________________________
actually a rusty dumpster
behind the Smithsonian
Soggy newspapers, broken glass,
black banana peel on its lid
The last deposit
a dripping garbage bag
coffee grounds, apple cores,
the Taliban
Before that
a broken comb tangled
with Karl Marx’s unruly hair
When the lights go out
dumpster divers crawl inside
searching for anything they can sell:
thumbscrews, Spanish boots,
Hitler’s old razor blades,
dead sparrows, backyard blast furnaces,
Herbert Hoover’s musty economics text,
vials of phlogiston, the recipe
Typhoid Mary used for ice cream,
McNamara’s board games,
Stalin’s toenail clippings,
Pol Pot’s busted stereo
Bad ideas get a quick rinse
in the waters of forgetfulness
and a fresh coat of PR.
Then grocery carts bulging
with Lysenko science,
crusades, jihads, and Thirty Years Wars
the shadowy junkmen scurry
to the marketplace
or political convention
to start a new round
of famine, disease, and war
Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
____________________________________________
Saturday, December 27, 2008
SNEAKERS
by Earl J. Wilcox
When I see white sneakers swinging
from low hanging wires, I like to
think some kid grew tired of wearing
them and heaved them high, or was
celebrating a first kiss, maybe the
baseball coach named him the team’s
catcher. You must have seen these
shoes here and there in the hood, even
in unlikely places. But a boy with only
one pair of shoes summer and winter
holds on to them, would never throw
away his sneakers just when he got
them broke in. Gangs do that, I am told—
toss shoes up on wires---signaling a
nearby hangout, where members do
whatever. But I was going to say
before reality broke in that I wish
instead the shoes were a boy’s whose
graffiti scuffed soles, smudged tongue,
prayed for someone to draw his name
from an office pool ---size, color,
brand don’t matter—and would send
new sneakers to that boy who tossed
the old, paper thin pair up high, a new
ornament dangling from a wire, a
burnished, bright star at Christmas.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.
_______________________________
after Robert Frost
When I see white sneakers swinging
from low hanging wires, I like to
think some kid grew tired of wearing
them and heaved them high, or was
celebrating a first kiss, maybe the
baseball coach named him the team’s
catcher. You must have seen these
shoes here and there in the hood, even
in unlikely places. But a boy with only
one pair of shoes summer and winter
holds on to them, would never throw
away his sneakers just when he got
them broke in. Gangs do that, I am told—
toss shoes up on wires---signaling a
nearby hangout, where members do
whatever. But I was going to say
before reality broke in that I wish
instead the shoes were a boy’s whose
graffiti scuffed soles, smudged tongue,
prayed for someone to draw his name
from an office pool ---size, color,
brand don’t matter—and would send
new sneakers to that boy who tossed
the old, paper thin pair up high, a new
ornament dangling from a wire, a
burnished, bright star at Christmas.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.
_______________________________
Friday, December 26, 2008
THE FAREWELL LEGACY TOUR
by Earl J. Wilcox
He takes to the road like a fading pop singer,
A farewell tour for the fans, for the faithful
Who long for just one more tune from his
Masterful mouth, one more round of tales
Of his adventures in eight years of singing
The same tunes. He laughs, he jests, he
Fibs, he smirks, he tells jokes, he swaggers
Onto the stage as his minions scribble
New lines for the new songs he will sing
In the Presidential Library, the Auto-
Biography, redefining, rewriting his story.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.
_______________________________
He takes to the road like a fading pop singer,
A farewell tour for the fans, for the faithful
Who long for just one more tune from his
Masterful mouth, one more round of tales
Of his adventures in eight years of singing
The same tunes. He laughs, he jests, he
Fibs, he smirks, he tells jokes, he swaggers
Onto the stage as his minions scribble
New lines for the new songs he will sing
In the Presidential Library, the Auto-
Biography, redefining, rewriting his story.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.
_______________________________
Thursday, December 25, 2008
25TH OF DECEMBER
by Joseph Dorazio
No cardboard skeletons
gleefully dance the Charleston now.
No pumpkins grimace.
No cackling witches stir the heated broth.
All that's left are winter's bare bones,
stark and hard and black.
And St. Nick's alchemical tricks:
earth turned to iron
water to stone.
The solemnity of another year's end
with its concentric loneliness.
The sun stands still at solstice
while the distant songs of carolers
move past in Doppler Effect
leaving you,
standing alone,
in the silent night
suspended—
like Lot's wife.
Joseph Dorazio studied anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and served as a docent at Penn's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. His poetry has appeared in a number of regional reviews.
__________________________________________________
No cardboard skeletons
gleefully dance the Charleston now.
No pumpkins grimace.
No cackling witches stir the heated broth.
All that's left are winter's bare bones,
stark and hard and black.
And St. Nick's alchemical tricks:
earth turned to iron
water to stone.
The solemnity of another year's end
with its concentric loneliness.
The sun stands still at solstice
while the distant songs of carolers
move past in Doppler Effect
leaving you,
standing alone,
in the silent night
suspended—
like Lot's wife.
Joseph Dorazio studied anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and served as a docent at Penn's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. His poetry has appeared in a number of regional reviews.
__________________________________________________
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
WOMAN FROM TIBET
by Rochelle Owens
I
There was once a woman from Tibet
who paid the rent and electric bill
flaying carcasses in the Market Place
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
The pants she wore
were made of burlap and silk
and the edges were frayed
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Watching the woman from Tibet
earn her living was as good as any
blood sport
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Hidden in the pockets of her pants
were four lapis lazuli rings
tied together with a string
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Work is a binding obligation—
You must flay carcasses
in the Market Place
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Living in the fiction of her glass eye
the gouged out one of the past
the woman from Tibet flays carcasses
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
II
Words from bones the woman from Tibet
her hard skeleton her animal soul
pouring into your blood
Tibetan words words moving up and down
felt in your spine your fibrous substance
Moving her lips
the woman from Tibet
standing in front of a camera
in the fiction of its glass eye
living in the fiction
the gouged out one of the past
Work is a binding
obligation—
You must flay carcasses
in the Market Place
as good as any blood sport
rows of birds rows of knives
FLESH becomes WORD through your teeth
your eyebrows through your skull
your brain your nasal bones
in your muscles
Moving her lips
words in Tibetan spiraling etching
onto your corneas
turquoise glass lapis lazuli words
embedded into the knives
the blades vibrating
circling white lights circling
through your auditory canal
felt on the palms of your hands
soles of your feet
through your heart
The woman from Tibet
standing in front of a camera
in the fiction of its glass eye
living in the fiction
the gouged out one of the past
Work is a binding
obligation—
You must flay carcasses
in the Market Place
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.
_________________________________________________
I
There was once a woman from Tibet
who paid the rent and electric bill
flaying carcasses in the Market Place
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
The pants she wore
were made of burlap and silk
and the edges were frayed
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Watching the woman from Tibet
earn her living was as good as any
blood sport
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Hidden in the pockets of her pants
were four lapis lazuli rings
tied together with a string
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Work is a binding obligation—
You must flay carcasses
in the Market Place
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
Living in the fiction of her glass eye
the gouged out one of the past
the woman from Tibet flays carcasses
Bones of a bird’s wing
hinged together
II
Words from bones the woman from Tibet
her hard skeleton her animal soul
pouring into your blood
Tibetan words words moving up and down
felt in your spine your fibrous substance
Moving her lips
the woman from Tibet
standing in front of a camera
in the fiction of its glass eye
living in the fiction
the gouged out one of the past
Work is a binding
obligation—
You must flay carcasses
in the Market Place
as good as any blood sport
rows of birds rows of knives
FLESH becomes WORD through your teeth
your eyebrows through your skull
your brain your nasal bones
in your muscles
Moving her lips
words in Tibetan spiraling etching
onto your corneas
turquoise glass lapis lazuli words
embedded into the knives
the blades vibrating
circling white lights circling
through your auditory canal
felt on the palms of your hands
soles of your feet
through your heart
The woman from Tibet
standing in front of a camera
in the fiction of its glass eye
living in the fiction
the gouged out one of the past
Work is a binding
obligation—
You must flay carcasses
in the Market Place
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.
_________________________________________________
Monday, December 22, 2008
WHEREHOW
by Karla Linn Merrifield
Going upstream
testing our limits
canoe & paddles
on Rio Grande
Santa Elena
fatigues us with silt
no Border Patrol
no fence nearby
we edge exhaustion
grow thirsty
with nothing illegal
in our slow thoughts
just making a bend
surely as turtles do
nationality or species
unimportant
more shade desired
more water necessary
but canyon walls
mock us like ravens
we lumber along
elementally
between two countries
belonging only
to tiring muscles
our wasting pink skin
we trespass the silence
without clear borders
in this hot, sere land
accompanied by
thunder—clear warning
to go downstream now
strokes before heat strokes
we must go homeward
but where, how?
A Pushcart Prize nominee and 2009 Everglades National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had poetry appear in publications such as CALYX, Earth’s Daughters, Poetica, The Kerf, Negative Capability, Paper Street and Blueline; on line in The Centrifugal Eye, Terrain.org, Elsewhere: A Journal of the Literature of Place, and Elegant Thorn Review, and in several anthologies. In 2006, she edited The Dire Elegies: 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North America, from FootHills Publishing; in 2007, FootHills issued her Godwit: Poems of Canada. She is poetry editor of Sea Stories and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. She teaches writing part-time at SUNY College at Brockport.
__________________________________________________
Going upstream
testing our limits
canoe & paddles
on Rio Grande
Santa Elena
fatigues us with silt
no Border Patrol
no fence nearby
we edge exhaustion
grow thirsty
with nothing illegal
in our slow thoughts
just making a bend
surely as turtles do
nationality or species
unimportant
more shade desired
more water necessary
but canyon walls
mock us like ravens
we lumber along
elementally
between two countries
belonging only
to tiring muscles
our wasting pink skin
we trespass the silence
without clear borders
in this hot, sere land
accompanied by
thunder—clear warning
to go downstream now
strokes before heat strokes
we must go homeward
but where, how?
A Pushcart Prize nominee and 2009 Everglades National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had poetry appear in publications such as CALYX, Earth’s Daughters, Poetica, The Kerf, Negative Capability, Paper Street and Blueline; on line in The Centrifugal Eye, Terrain.org, Elsewhere: A Journal of the Literature of Place, and Elegant Thorn Review, and in several anthologies. In 2006, she edited The Dire Elegies: 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North America, from FootHills Publishing; in 2007, FootHills issued her Godwit: Poems of Canada. She is poetry editor of Sea Stories and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. She teaches writing part-time at SUNY College at Brockport.
__________________________________________________
Sunday, December 21, 2008
GLOBAL UNITY PRAYER
PoeArtry by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote
Praying to whatever God listens
Keep the faith universal salvation
Chanukkah Christmas Kwanzaa Ramadan Solstice
Offering compassionate kindness merciful forgiveness
Prickly holly sneaky mistletoe kisses
‘Elf conscious North Pole meltdown
Yuletide carols harmonized Silent Night
Birch logs rekindling hearthstone glow
Still believing in wondrous miracles
Temple flame burned eight days
On oil just for one
Menorah candles votive lamp remembrances
Kwanzaa Swahili for First Fruits
African harvest bountiful taproot blessings
Uplifting spirit marching ever onward
Kinara candles red black green
Fasting from dawn to sunset
Obligation demands appetite denial continence
Eid-ul-Fitre feast shared willful charity
Thanking Allah for blessed mercy
Celebrating Tree of Life diversity
Evergreen bodhi cedar baobab pine
All children indiscriminately presented greatest
Gift Peace on Earth TLC
Dr. Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote are co-editors of AvantGardeTimes.com.
_______________________________
Praying to whatever God listens
Keep the faith universal salvation
Chanukkah Christmas Kwanzaa Ramadan Solstice
Offering compassionate kindness merciful forgiveness
Prickly holly sneaky mistletoe kisses
‘Elf conscious North Pole meltdown
Yuletide carols harmonized Silent Night
Birch logs rekindling hearthstone glow
Still believing in wondrous miracles
Temple flame burned eight days
On oil just for one
Menorah candles votive lamp remembrances
Kwanzaa Swahili for First Fruits
African harvest bountiful taproot blessings
Uplifting spirit marching ever onward
Kinara candles red black green
Fasting from dawn to sunset
Obligation demands appetite denial continence
Eid-ul-Fitre feast shared willful charity
Thanking Allah for blessed mercy
Celebrating Tree of Life diversity
Evergreen bodhi cedar baobab pine
All children indiscriminately presented greatest
Gift Peace on Earth TLC
Dr. Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote are co-editors of AvantGardeTimes.com.
_______________________________
Friday, December 19, 2008
FASHION STATEMENT
by Matthew Quinn
If I were Bush
and ducked a 10 inch shoe
but the Secret Service crew
didn't rush
till after loafer number two,
I would note this
and never shop at Payless.
Matthew Quinn is a freelance writer, editor and researcher. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri, with his muse and a menagerie of disembodied voices.
__________________________________________________
If I were Bush
and ducked a 10 inch shoe
but the Secret Service crew
didn't rush
till after loafer number two,
I would note this
and never shop at Payless.
Matthew Quinn is a freelance writer, editor and researcher. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri, with his muse and a menagerie of disembodied voices.
__________________________________________________
Thursday, December 18, 2008
:COLON: OSCOPY:
by David Feela
So it’s true that it’s not true
that 90% of all colon procedures
identify cancerous growths.
So it’s also true that being 50
gives you only a 50% chance
of finding polyps in the tract
where men (mostly) suffer
the indignities of being
probed for alien life.
Nothing, it seems, is conclusive
except that final breath
where all the fiber you ate
makes no difference
and the trouble you’ve feared
sneaks up from behind.
David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including the High Country News "Writers’s on the Range," Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. A new poetry book, The Home Atlas, will be released in 2009.
__________________________________________________
So it’s true that it’s not true
that 90% of all colon procedures
identify cancerous growths.
So it’s also true that being 50
gives you only a 50% chance
of finding polyps in the tract
where men (mostly) suffer
the indignities of being
probed for alien life.
Nothing, it seems, is conclusive
except that final breath
where all the fiber you ate
makes no difference
and the trouble you’ve feared
sneaks up from behind.
David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including the High Country News "Writers’s on the Range," Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. A new poetry book, The Home Atlas, will be released in 2009.
__________________________________________________
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
SOMETHING BETTER ABOUT TO HAPPEN
by Scot Siegel
hard to believe an entire generation
of American children
have grown up in a foreign country
where the anti-war poets, feeling nostalgic
& pathetic, thud our sooty windows
like finches drunk on toxic hedge funds
while the unemployed, mentally ill, and others
incarcerated in upside-down mortgages
wipe the daily grime away and drink from
a cracked urn called the-American-Dream-
on-Trickle-Down-Lies-Ambush-Economics
& other toxic drivel too disturbing to name here . . .
hard to believe so many still get up and go to
school or college or what's left of the jobs
most mornings believing something
better is about to happen . . .
O these days, what I would give
for a new administration, my grandfather's generation
O what I would give for a few rogue epiphanies!
an early inauguration; the next WPA
Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
_______________________________
hard to believe an entire generation
of American children
have grown up in a foreign country
where the anti-war poets, feeling nostalgic
& pathetic, thud our sooty windows
like finches drunk on toxic hedge funds
while the unemployed, mentally ill, and others
incarcerated in upside-down mortgages
wipe the daily grime away and drink from
a cracked urn called the-American-Dream-
on-Trickle-Down-Lies-Ambush-Economics
& other toxic drivel too disturbing to name here . . .
hard to believe so many still get up and go to
school or college or what's left of the jobs
most mornings believing something
better is about to happen . . .
O these days, what I would give
for a new administration, my grandfather's generation
O what I would give for a few rogue epiphanies!
an early inauguration; the next WPA
Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
_______________________________
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