WHITE PHOSPHORUS

by Paul Stevens


Blind windows glare unlight
reflected from their murdered god,
their palace tower looms, erect
pale concrete with its dome of steel

teeth. And from its gape a burp
of white phosphorus eructates, to hover
over the bound land, over our occupied
mother: where I may step only the path

which they have signed and arrowed; not
wander to her spirit-haunted folds;
may not embrace her, whom their mines
strip, whom their power-lines strap down.

White phosphorus honeycombs my head,
white-ants eat my song-cycle, shred my tongue.


Paul Stevens was born in England but lives in Australia. He has an Honours degree in English and teaches Literature. He has published poems in print and pixel, most recently or imminently in Shakespeare's Monkey Revue, The Literary Bohemian, Soundzine, Mannequin Envy, qarrtsiluni, The Barefoot Muse, London Poetry Review, Abyss and Apex and Umbrella. He edits The Chimaera and The Shit Creek Review.
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DIGGING UP GALILEO

by Mary A. Turzillo


Forensic physician Watson
and historian Galluci
want to dig up Galileo.

They want to go to Florence,
open his crypt in San Croce Basilica,
disturb the hero-heretic's ghost.

They want to interrogate his dead eyeballs,
to inquisition his DNA. They question
why he said Saturn had ears.

Saturn has rings, they say, rings!
How could you think ears?
It must be -- well they have their theories.

Unilateral myopia maybe.
Inflamed middle eye. Or, get this:
creeping angle closure glaucoma.

Poor Galileo! Where the hell were they
when he was squinting at blurred images?
Or, as for that, when the Inquisitors shut him up?

And, get this: they need the Vatican's fiat
to bless their resurrectionist scheme.
Ah, Galileo! Is it poetic injustice

the Church has charge of your dead eyes?
Or will you have the last laugh
knowing the Pope might say no?


Mary Turzillo's “Mars Is no Place for Children” won the 1999 Nebula, and An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, her first novel, appeared in Analog. Among other magazines, Asimov's, F& SF, Cat Tales, Interzone, SF Age, Weird Tales, Oceans of the Mind, Electric Velocipede, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet have published her fiction and poetry. Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, her poetry collection, will appear from vanZeno press this year. An Emeritus Professor at Kent State University, she founded Cajun Sushi Hamsters and has taught in NASA's Science through Arts. Her favorite people include her son, Jack Brizzi, Jr., and her husband, writer-scientist Geoffrey A. Landis.
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BLAGO

by Andrew Hilbert


He sees himself
like Gandhi
or MLK, Jr

He sees himself
as a martyr
for the people

He's innocent
he says
he speaks

He's the reverse
of Nixon
he says

To be a savior
like Jesus
with no disciples

Messiah
Martyr
Crusader

All these things
in his head
but not Governor

Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
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GAZA GUILT

by David Radavich


I confess: I didn’t really see
the grief-stricken girl
by the seashore.

I didn’t know her suffering.
I’ve only seen pictures.

That’s why it
didn’t seem real.

But I felt for her
genuine pain.

And images came
to me—

just as they are
not now

unlocking their shapes,
their unforgettable
colors.

You will please
forgive me.

Honesty is best.

Even dull honesty
with no ripped-off heads
bloody and toy-like

that only have
been imagined by

the privileged
who in their silence

collude
and oppress.

I am safe and warm.
I have food. And money.
I don’t see bodies

torn by war
for breakfast.

The blind can
never do justice.


David Radavich's poetry publications include Slain Species (Court Poetry Press, London), By the Way (Buttonwood Press, 1998), and Great Hits (Pudding House Press, 2000), as well as individual poems in anthologies and magazines. His plays have been performed across the U.S. and abroad, including five Off-Off-Broadway productions. He also enjoys writing essays on poetry, drama, and contemporary issues. His latest book is America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (Plain View Press, 2007).
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A TASTE OF HOME: HOMAGE TO JOHN UPDIKE

by Earl J. Wilcox


A famous fiction writer sits elbow to elbow by me
behind a garish banquet table on an over-lit stage.

He wrestles with lettuce, picks at his peas, deftly digs
into an overcooked lamb chop. Between bites, we chat

amiably. He gazes toward an adoring audience as if
searching for a friend to rescue him from this show.

The common folk stare back at us, sip their wine,
wonder what he and I are discussing. They imagine

we mix our peas and chops with talk of unpalatable
words from feminist critics whose slaughter of his

body of work has left a bitter taste in his mouth.
We clear our palates, rise for his reading, after he

has signed my copy of his latest novel with a note
claiming to savor our gab for thirty minutes about

favorite foods, growing up in rural America,
----and speaking harshly to grandchildren.


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.
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WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY

by Gary Lehmann


Until Andrew Wyeth was 15, his father gave him no artistic training at all.
He sensed that his son could only learn from his own intuition,
but there came a day when Andy reached the limit of his own methods.

NC unexpectedly taught his son to sketch a skeleton, a still life, a human body.
One day NC entered the studio and stared awhile at a watercolor.
Andrew was completing a tree. “Andy, you’ve got to free yourself.”

“Then, he took a brush and filled it with paint and made this sweeping
brushstroke. I learned more then from a few minutes of watching what
he did than I’ve ever learned from anything since.”


Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Gary Lehmann’s essays, poetry and short stories are widely published. Books include The Span I Will Cross [Process Press, 2004] and Public Lives and Private Secrets [Foothills Publishing, 2005]. His most recent book is American Sponsored Torture [FootHills Publishing, 2007].
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AMERICA!

by Robert Riche


America, you arrogant brutal simmering pot
of financial crooks, screwed workers,
homeless mothers, you pungent stew
of torturers, imperial self-righteous vulgarians,
despoilers of all that's beautiful,
you potluck hodgepodge of horrors --

God bless you!

For the grace to pass the toque blanche
to one familiar with the unpalatable stink,
who brings a lost recipe to the table,
the flavor and nourishment
long promised, cherished,
remembered now.


Robert Riche: Two chapbooks, Eternity and Other Mundane Matters (Foothills Publishing 2007), On the Line (Pudding House 2008). Other poems accepted by Cape Rock, Clark Street Review, Pudding, Confrontation, Hawk & Whippoorwill, Shakespeare's Monkey, Pilgrimage, Passager, Aurorean, River Oak Review. National Endowment for the Arts grant, Connecticut Foundation for the Arts grant, Advanced Drama Research grant; winner Stanley Drama Award, Breadloaf Writers Conference scholar. Plays performed in numerous LORT regional theaters and in Bristol, England. Published by Samuel French.
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HINTS

by Scot Siegel


an erasure newspoem
based on the story "Hints from the President" by David Cesarani, guardian.co.uk
(Jan 24, 2009)


Over Obama-themed flea market
with a coach park, a street party, an
armed camp. Once the humvees out,
yesterday's ephemera today's garbage,
the city slowly back to normal. Inevitably,
a question hanging pundits and columnists

Obama's inauguration speech America's journey
a repudiation that momentous oration black but
dot.com in a way that Tony Blair never was.
co-opting and disarming adversaries.

How long he will manage to play remains
more radical than his centrist election ever hinted
abuse of human and civil rights
rippled off him. The way he disparaged
the bullying foreign
policy of the past eight years
(he) hunched the smiles, the gifts the tributes
the hapless anger on the Mall to boo and to jeer
Cheney in a wheelchair.

When the retirement lifted off
and flew over joyous shouts
"Bye Bye Bush". Sadly, the crowd control.
The jams, crushes, and frustration threatened
a cheerful throng into
a stampeding herd of selfish summons
to enter "a new era of responsibility"
duty, service, and sacrifice.

No less ironic the stretch limos, shiny speeding
inauguration balls. A lot of gas, canapes and
alcohol

guzzled(,) Michelle and Barack, plainly from the fray
this festival of bling the last gasp of an outgoing regime
typified by greed and excess?
People will be people
Obama is a motivational organizer of
306 million people. So the instruments of democratic
fight and kick quietly into the night. The rich
surrender the gun-toting, truck-driving section
to love hybrids, wind
and solar.

The first 100 days head-on,
while it is weakened,
or slice it up
neutralise it bit by bit. Lincoln, after all,
fought a war to preserve
Washington was a revolutionary
singularly American
bold move. Obama('s) evocation
of winter at Valley Forge
when nothing but "hope and virtue"
"brave once more the icy currents"
Was the devastating surprise attack on
Unlikely.


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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MY BOOK BY GEORGE W. BUSH

by Earl J. Wilcox


I am elected.
I leave Texas.
I go to DC.
I stay eight years.
I go back to Texas.
The End.


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.
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ON ICE

by Verandah Porche


Light through the needle's eye: solstice
Poem for a blunt wound: poultice

Soft rime on branches, crystal lattice
The drift of white dry statice

Love sought in the underworld: Eurydice
Crevice too close for touch: interstice

Sacrifice draws a budding novice
A toddler adores her mother's bodice

Kid goats are given to caprice
Kickbacks are offered to police

Milk of human kindness, juice of malice
sluice together in a pewter chalice

Avarice, the caviar of vice
Paradise Lost with a pair of dice

Leaflets flutter from the precipice:
A kiss. No lip service. An armistice.

Take office in the wilderness, our choice
Blind Justice, entice us to rejoice


Based in rural Vermont since 1968, Verandah Porche has published The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books) and has pursued an alternative literary career. She has written poems and songs to accompany her community through a generation of moments and milestones. As a teacher and facilitator, she has created collaborative writing projects in schools and nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Her work has been featured on NPR’s “Artbeat,” on public radio stations around New England and in the Vermont State House. The Vermont Arts Council awarded her a Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the state’s cultural life in 1998, and a recent grant to support the preparation of poetry for publication and performance.
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POETRY READING, INAUGURATION NIGHT, NEW YORK CITY

by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz


There was a guy in the open mike who said, I don’t
have any poems about black presidents. I’m sorry.
I know it’s important, but I just don’t have any.
And I wanted to say, I know what you mean. I only
have one such poem, which isn’t bad, until you take
into consideration that I have two poems about giraffes
which have been trained to rape. Then, the percentages
aren’t so flattering. In my defense, these giraffes actually
existed in Ancient Rome – where else? – and they were
used to punish political criminals. And the idea of them
is so jarring bizarre that they have worked their way
into two – well, now, I suppose, three – poems.

But our new minted president? Only one. What does that
say about me, the girl who balled empty fists to her chest
and wept when they announced his victory. 11pm in NYC,
and I was so sure it wasn’t going to happen I stayed at home.
I couldn’t believe such a good thing could happen to such
a profoundly flawed country. What kind of poet has
such a limited imagination. What kind of poet can accept
the concept of a giraffes trained to rape, but cannot accept

that we might have a leader who flashes his intellect
like an ID – standard, there. A leader who has my dad,
a man who voted for Bush twice, nodding at his laptop,
watching his speeches five, ten, fifteen times, annoying
my mother, a McCain holdout til the end. A leader who
brought back patriotism from bumper stickers and irony,
who makes my heart glitter, makes my spine straighter,
makes me flex my hope muscle, unbreak my faith bone.

This afternoon, everyone is my office stood around a radio
in the conference room just to listen. I stayed at my desk,
feeling like hearing him speech in front of my HR person
and the lecherous accounting guy would make me feel
oddly naked. I join the parade of people who flinch daily
worrying about an assassin’s bullet. I join the party
of awe and gratitude. I join the tender line of poets still
stuttering at the news, still disbelief, still rubbing eyes,
still clinging to doubt and shock like we might need them,
like they are weapons we should still keep in our tool belts.

But this poem is a shedding, is an opening, is a gambit,
is a stripping, is a doorway, is a keyhole, is a push.
This poem is a poem in which I admit today is a new day,
that I am beginning to believe in our blushing hard-won future.
A poem where I say thank you, a poem where I say thank you,
A poem where I say thank you to whoever is responsible.
A poem where I say thank you to whoever will listen.


Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is a New York City-based poet and author. She is the author four books of poetry and has performed throughout the U.S. and Australia. Her fourth book of poetry, Oh Terrible Youth, was published by The Wordsmith Press in June 2007 and her first book of nonfiction, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, was published in 2008 by Soft Skull Press.
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THE INTERIOR

by Judith Terzi


He's signed the papers;
the house is theirs.
Cartons line rooms.
The lamps are finally lit.
The girls are running down halls
in Hannah Montana pajamas.
Grandma and Michelle have changed
into red flannel robes.
They're fussing with the pillowcases,
arranging, rearranging
the girls' comforters.
Barack is brushing his perfect teeth;
he'll floss tomorrow.

It's the year of the ox.
He's pulling eight loads
of endangered country
from midnight to dawn.


Judith Terzi spent most of her life teaching high school French language and literature. Her poetry has recently appeared in Broken Bridge Review, Eucalypt, Ginosko, Picayune, The Pedestal Magazine and Raving Dove. She lives in Pasadena, CA.
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THE POEM IS MISSING IN GAZA

by Buff Whitman-Bradley


The poem is missing in Gaza although
There have been fleeting glimpses and
Unconfirmed sightings someone says
She saw it floating down a gutter in a
Foaming river of blood another one
Reports hearing its cries from under
A building bombed to rubble and dust

The poem is missing in Gaza it may
Have been at an open-air morgue
Among the bodies of children killed
From the sky while waiting for a bus
A doctor believes he may have
Amputated the poem’s shredded legs
And tossed them on a pile of other limbs

The poem is missing in Gaza some say
They saw it run into a school to escape
The bombs just before the bombs
Obliterated the place the flesh of its
Hands and arms may have been fried
From the bones as it tried to rub white
Phosphorous off a burning infant

The poem is missing in Gaza have the
Explosions melted its eyes shattered
Its eardrums is it being pursued through
The convulsing streets by the people with
Gunmetal grins whose breath smells
Like ammunition whose microprocessor
Eyes see everywhere but into the heart

The poem is missing in Gaza the Gunmetal
Grins have big plans they will build a
A wall around the poem and imprison
The poem and torture the poem and steal
Its land and cut down its olive trees and
Slowly starve the poem and its children
Until there is nothing left of them but

The poem eludes the Gunmetal Grins
Armless legless deaf and blind it has
Made its way to the same beach where
Artillery fire killed a family on a picnic
It cannot hear the waves or see the sky
Grow pale but it feels the warm sand and
Smells the perfumed hands of evening

And the poem can remember it can
Remember murdered children back to life
And disappeared villages out of the earth
Holding their arms open to welcome
Refugees home it can remember shy winds
Blowing through olive groves and what
The poem remembers becomes a song

A song that gets up and walks away
From the beach into the smoking ruins
Of villages and towns the Gunmetal Grins
Cannot hear the song with explosions
In their heads and blood in their ears but
The people can hear they begin singing softly
We will not be erased and we will not die


Buff Whitman-Bradley is a peace and social justice activist in Northern California. In addition to writing, he produces documentary videos and audios. With his wife Cynthia, he is co-producer/director of the award winning video Outside In, about people who visit prisoners on San Quentin's death row.
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20 JANUARY 2009

by Matthew Quinn


Let the devils
burned by the brushing wings
of history
gather with the throng:

Fastidious Booth
and wild haired Calhoun,
Nathan Bedford Forrest,
a rogue's gallery of slave masters.
All are elbowed and jostled,
buried beneath a sea
of small American flags
waving, saluting
through the length and breadth
of the mall.

Let an angel hover, also.
From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
Dr. King looks forward
through the Washington Monument,
through Selma's bloody streets,
through the balcony of the Lorraine Motel
to the Capitol steps,
to a hand resting
on Lincoln's Bible.

With the last word
of the inaugural address
Dr. King looks down,
takes the hand of Emmett Till.
Silent, they walk down
the memorial steps
and dissolve into the crowd,

one dream,
at least,
no longer deferred.


Matthew Quinn is a freelance writer, editor and researcher. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri, with his muse and a menagerie of disembodied voices.
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