EYES ON THE PRIZE

by Jon Wesick

after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision

Finally corporations stand up for their rights!
Segregated in industrial parks no more!
Inspired by the Wall Street Renaissance,
that flowering of creative financial instruments,
freedom riders in sleek limousines
double park at Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven
to remind us how oppressed they are.

Throughout the nation executives slap
company credit cards on lunch counters, CEOs hang
placards stating, “I am a man,” in boardrooms,
and National Guard troops escort ads into high schools.

The march on Washington
fills the halls of Congress with a million lobbyists
but justice delayed is justice denied.
How long must we wait
before a corporation is elected president?


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.
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LIVING ON FOODSTAMPS AND THE $150 THEY GET FROM NIELSEN

by Catherine McGuire


A prolapsed couch, some blankets,
a punched-down pillow, makes a nest
to watch tv from; the tinker-toy tower of gadgets
piled black and silver in one crowded corner —
topped by the Nielsen box. Here are your prime
viewers: unemployed, living on foodstamps
and an equal mite from their willing exposure
to Nielsen's counters. The furniture's hocked
except for that big-screen altar they sacrifice
their lives to. After a year, unemployment
ran out — the queues for jobs still impossibly long.
The day is full of bacon sandwiches,
cup o' soup and prayer. They light
their HD candle, let the glow flood the room
flood their hours with Judge Judy,
with their peephole into rooms of other lives
more fraught than theirs; praying, rapt,
for rich teens marooned on islands
who are surviving on their wits.


Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with more than 120 poems published in venues such as The New Verse News, The Cape Rock, Green Fuse, The Quizzical Chair Anthology, The Smoking Poet, Portland Lights Anthology, Folio, Tapjoe and Adagio. She is currently assistant director at CALYX Press in Corvallis and will be co-leading a community college workshop, “Ready, Set, Submit!" in April.
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J.D., WE HARDLY KNEW YE

by Earl J. Wilcox

J. D. Salinger, 1919-2010

Dear Phoebe,

You don’t want to know all the ways
I’ve tried, so I have got to tell you, Phebes,
What a sorry sack of shit I am.
After all these years I’ve not been able
To rub out all the fucks on all the walls in the world.

God knows, I’ve tried. Graffiti painters
Rappers, comedians, politicians, poets,
Even Presidents and would be kings
Keep saying fuck like it was a secret
Code or something. You and I know
They’re being lazy. It’s got so bad
I just don’t want to talk about it any more.

See you in the funny papers,

Holden


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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SPIRIT AT TROY

by Mary A. Turzillo


On Tuesday, January 27, 2010, NASA said that the robotic explorer Spirit will stay permanently trapped in the deep Martian sand that snared it in the red planet's southern hemisphere in May 2009. --Space.com


Two able rovers, one called Opportunity, the other Spirit,
launched as the Achaeans did to conquer Troy.
Their scientist masters said follow the water.
They landed, trundled through Mars dunes and dust.
Their quest for truth must not be abandoned.
They moved with energy drunk from the sun.

The rover first to spread light-leaves in the sun
was the one who had launched first, robotic Spirit,
true to the earthly life she'd abandoned,
hailing each new rock as if it were legended Troy,
until her sun-wings were defiled with dust,
no cleansing by little green men's feather duster or rainwater.

How can you clean a solar cell without water?
How can it gather energy from the sun?
Both rovers were dirty, hazed with Martian dust.
It seemed the end of both body and spirit.
It seemed they were headed for Hades, not Troy.
After their triumphs, their task must too soon be abandoned.

But the caprice of nature had not utterly abandoned
the rovers. For we found that wind, and not water,
was the secret that cleansed, like Helen bathing in Troy.
Dust devils whisked their solar cells clean in the sun
and their bodies were willing as were their spirits.
The winds blew them free of the crippling dust.

Yet worse ills arose, engendered by gritty dust:
Spirit's wheel jammed. Yet she wasn't abandoned.
The Earth scientists didn't lose spirit,
didn't give up their "follow the water."
The rover named Spirit still charged her engines with sun.
She limped till she stopped, stuck, at the rock named Troy.

Utterly stuck. But nothing could entirely destroy
her mission though now trapped unmoving in dust,
as long as her cells are tipped to the sun.
But forward driving has now been abandoned.
She must measure Mars' cycle as she once followed the water.
The rover is weak, but there's strength left in Spirit.

The rover called Spirit sits sand-locked at Troy
Searching for water, it finds only dust.
It sleeps abandoned, awaiting the sun.


Mary Turzillo's Nebula winner, "Mars Is No Place for Children," and her novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, serialized in Analog, have been selected as recreational reading on the International Space Station. Her fiction has recently appeared in Analog, Year's Best Lesbian Fiction 2008, George Scithers' Cat Tales, Space and Time, and Otto Penzler's The Vampire Archives. Her story "The Sugar" just appeared in Vera Nazarian's Sky Whales and Other Wonders, and her 2008 Nebula nominee, "Pride," will appear in Ellen Datlow's Tails of Wonder and Mystery. Her poetry collection, Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, was a Pushcart nominee, as was her New Verse News poem "Sculpture, Ohio, Spring 1970."
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THE STATE OF THINGS

by Andrew Hilbert


O American children
with panhandle halos

the swollen eyed angels
of Candy Land dreams


Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
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IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT

by Kim Doyle


He dealt with the thin ice of expectations.
The must haves, the wannabees, the sweet
smell of failure dressed as success.
Like a sailor on the great wide sea saying
there is a lee shore that we must avoid,
but all the riches there are ours to share.

He skated over all the silly objections.
The can-nots, the ought-nots, the wanting
to table things, or to make a study; to hire
a consultant; a trillion, trea-cly, whining caveats
that dripped down like melting icicles on his
and everybody else’s head.

But then a skate broke through the ice;
he was exposed, and the sharks were up to their dorsal
fins in his flesh. His wife moved to their beach home,
and he was all alone. What happens next is your guess.

It is the age of overexposure; of Just Say No, sir.
But he was so, so accustomed to the big Yes.


Kim Doyle notes: "Sometimes I am pleased to have what some consider to be a woman's first name."
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WAR-MART

by Lizz Bronson


Johnny skips (tra la la) to War-mart cuz its tomahawk Tuesday
The red alert special
In the store, red lights go winding and sirens blare while customers run and dive
For prices, like its bombs or something
Johnny skips cuz its tomahawk Tuesday:
Buy ten atomic twinkies for two dollars cuz
America’s foreclosed and war never
Tasted so good especially when it’s undeclared.
Johnny skips to buy atomic twinkies ---ones he likes even though
They are dangerous but that’s all
Grenadey the cartoon character sells on TV
Despite the sonic boom when opened and the flares going off like red strobes
Grenadey says its good for you
Everybody races to the war store
It’s the only store there is
Instead of atomic twinkies he comes out with a blunt, a forty, and three hand grenades---back
Home all he knows is sirens and chalk outlines
The psychiatrist says he’s out of his mind.
Johnny skips (tra la la) to War-Mart
Everyone wonders why five year old Johnny can fire a gun
But he can’t read.


Lizz Bronson’s work has appeared in The Daily Planet, Diablo Valley College's Magnum Opus, and The Oakland Tribune. She was a prose editor for Milvia Street Journal in Berkeley, and has been featured at several poetry readings throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
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SUNDAY TIMES

by Margaret S. Mullins


scattered remnants of snow
melting
hurried by the steady gray rain
falling
a dark and quiet day to read
wondering
if the editor of the times was
choking
as he placed pictures of haitians
starving
next to advertisements of tiffany's
selling
fifteen-hundred dollar celebration
rings


Margaret S. Mullins splits her time between the quiet of rural Maryland and the rumpus of downtown Baltimore. Her work has appeared in Prairie Poetry, Loch Raven Review, Welter, New Voice News, Manorborn 2008, Sun, Chesapeake Reader, Gunpowder Review, Long Story Short, and Persimmon Tree. She is the editor of Manorborn 2009 (Abecedarian Press).
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OBITUARY

by Jon Wesick


Affordable Healthcare lost his battle with cancer this week. Friends say he passed peacefully after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disconnected his ventilator. Doctors had been optimistic about his recovery until the Massachusetts Insurance Company refused to pay for standard chemotherapy labeling it an “experimental treatment.”

Best known for arranging free clinics that treated thousands of uninsured, Affordable Healthcare was a graduate of the Toronto School of Public Health. Inspired by a government that actually cared more for its citizens than its corporations, he tried unsuccessfully to adapt the Canadian insurance model to the United States. He is survived by his ailing wife, Hope. They have no children.

Republicans will mark Affordable Healthcare’s passing with a seven-course dinner at L’Auberge Chez Marcel.

In lieu of flowers mourners are requested to help pay Affordable Healthcare’s outstanding hospital bill.


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.
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LUNCHTIME

by David Chorlton


When you stop for lunch in a landscape
three parts light to one of earth
with vegetation struggling to hold on
to the open space with mountains
pressing up from each horizon
the wind blows cold across the table
next to yours as fragments
from the conversation drift: You know
there was never an armistice so legally
we’re still at war with Germany,
a point which hasn’t occurred to you
during the drive on dirt and asphalt,
but local politics can take a vicious turn
especially when it comes to a candidate
for Sheriff who, in the event of Washington
calling for a gun grab, won’t obey
but deputise everyone in Cochise County
which, I’m reminded looking back
to the TV shows of years ago in England,
is Wyatt Earp country. Black hat, frock coat,
dark moustache, the farthest shooting gun
in the territory, the reluctant lawman
with a cause to justify every bullet fired
as if frontier justice were a blueprint
for foreign policy. Your sandwich is served
as a side dish to eavesdropping
on more complaints about all
the radical extremists out there.


David Chorlton lives with his wife, four cats, a dog, and some birds in central Phoenix, where he also organises a monthly poetry series at The Great Arizona Puppet Theater. After thirty-one years in the USA he continues to appreciate being an outsider, which sharpens vision and makes otherwise mundane observations meaningful. His new chapbook, From the Age of Miracles, appeared in 2009 from Slipstream Press as the winner of its latest competition.
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8 SHOT DEAD IN VIRGINIA

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


What with all the news from Haiti and Massachusetts
It’s understandable that the story of the man who killed eight people
Near the Appomattox Court House
Where the Civil War came to an end
Might get lost
After all, what is 8 dead when you look at Haiti?
8 dead, all adults except for one male teenager, is
Nothing
Health Care Dead
The headline read
A pretty woman said
It looks like the Dems are out of luck
Scott Brown has a nice, shiny truck
His daughter was like fourteenth on American Idol
She’s tall and pretty and plays basketball for Boston College
Did you know they’re called the Eagles?
Did you know that
Virginia is known to have quite lax gun laws.
          Despite the murders at Virginia Tech, the gun laws in the state
          are still some of the most lenient in the nation.
Scott Brown is the kind of guy I’d like to have a beer with
Naked or not
Scott Brown voted for health care for all in his home state
Last year a fella killed 8 folks at a nursing home in North Carolina
Same number dead, different date
There was another aftershock in Haiti today
A big one, 6.1
The Virginia shooter killed seven adults and one male teenager
The male teenager might or might not be his son
8 people shot dead is not Columbine
It’s not Killeen (Luby’s or Fort Hood)
For the Republicans, yesterday’s news from the Bay State is pretty good
The 8 shot dead is no Virgina Tech
Or Charles Whitman in the Texas Tower
Scott Brown assures us
He’s gonna speak truth to power


Steve Hellyard Swartz, a regular contributor to New Verse News, has piles and piles of poems ready to be published. He has won Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg, Mary C. Mohr, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. In 2009, poems of his were published in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, which he wrote and directed, opened at The U.S. Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. He was recently selected Poet Laureate of Schenectady County in upstate New York.
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PENTAGONIA

by Larry Litt


We have always lived in Pentagonia
City on The Hill with open pit mining
Claiming the high ground for modern progress.
Workers making metals for weapons of war
Next to factories owned by godly profiteers
Collecting art and culture to assuage their guilt.
Where scientists and inventors create new death
And new ways to save mute, damaged lives.
The holy talk of just wars, wars of the just
That fight evil with collateral damage
To families of evildoers hating our
Gaudy lives as we hate their honor killings.
We kill for good, they kill for good,
Who said two goods don’t make a
Big bad wolf Red Riding Hood?
I expected change but
Got more of the same.
Can we change?
Is change possible?
Do we really want to change?
Change into what?
I am tired of spoken, broken promises.
I want peace like an artist
who wants a museum show
in his lifetime
sadly, drunkenly aware
only Collectors on The Hill
can make it happen.
He cries for change knowing
he has always lived in Pentagonia.


Larry Litt is a writer and performer who can't decide if he’s a 'dirty old man, 'smart olfart' or 'recently bathed geezer.’The NY Times has called his work "Wryly conceived, politically provocative."
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OUR LADY OF THE FALLEN CATHEDRAL

by Jennifer Fenn


Beams of morning sun
Shine through the shattered stained glass
Of the destroyed Haitian cathedral
Onto the people
Gathered outside
For the first mass
Since the earthquake.

They shine on a lone woman
In pale blue
With a bright red and yellow turban
As prayer lines
Her toughened, brown leather face.

Amid the shouts of starving mobs
Clamoring for the food
Held up at the ports,
The wailing grandparents
Lying outside the crumbled nursing home
And the smoking stench
Of mass cremation,
Her lines deepen
As she wrings her hands harder,
Like Mary
In determined intercession.


Jennifer Fenn’s poems have been published in The New Verse News, Time of Singing, Nomad's Choir and Write On Poetry Magazette.
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HOW MUCH SEMEN

by Jon Wesick


Cum, jizm, jungle juice
How much
          is forced into sex slaves each year?

If half the 27 million slaves worldwide
engage in prostitution,
the result would fill a supertanker.*
55 million gallons! 1.3 million barrels!

What about this ship,
long as a football field
no doubt flying a flag of convenience?
Where does it load its cargo?
Who signs the bill of lading?
What are its ports of call?
Who pockets the profits?
Who is kept awake at night
by rough seas?

Friends, what if this ship foundered offshore
coating our beaches with thick, opalescent goo
and infecting pelicans and sea lions
with syphilis, Chlamydia, and AIDS?
Would we don rubber boots and gloves
to bathe sick otters in plastic buckets?
Would we question the sea trade
or simply make an example of the captain
and pass a law mandating double hulls?

* Assuming 5 mL per ejaculation and each prostitute services 10 clients per day.

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.
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