SALVATION RINGS ON FIFTH

by Roxanne Hoffman

Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline for a New York home healthcare provider. Her words can be found on and off the net in such journals as Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, The Fib Review, Hospital Drive, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, and Shaking Like A Mountain; the indie flick Love And The Vampire; and the anthologies The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70 (Wising Up Press), and  It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). She and her husband own the small press, Poets Wear Prada. 
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TERZANELLE: CHOLERA COLLIDES WITH VOTERS IN HAITI

by Bonnie Naradzay


This is a story of heaped-up corpses, bagged in sacks.
Masked workers spray everything with a bleach solution.
Bodies, marked with cardboard tags, are piled up in stacks.

A bulldozer covers them, make a mounded earth cushion.
In Port au Prince, candidates woo voters with music and floats.
Masked workers spray everything with a bleach solution.

The streets throng with supporters singing jingles for votes
Political rallies may end with gunfire, voodoo and fights.
In Port au Prince, candidates woo voters with music and floats.

Cholera patrols the streets at night under sporadic electric lights.
Death accompanies earthquakes, cholera, and torrential rain.
Political rallies may end with gunfire, voodoo and fights.

UN troops patrol in trucks, their half-hearted greetings in vain.
Half-naked men from the slums wade into sewage to clean it.
Death accompanies earthquakes, cholera, and torrential rain.

Candidates dance, shout jingles, collide near mounded graves.
This is a story of heaped-up corpses, bagged in sacks.
Half-naked men from the slums wade into sewage to clean it.
Bodies, marked with cardboard tags, are piled up in stacks.


Bonnie Naradzay lives in the Washington DC area, earned her MFA in poetry from Stonecoast, University of Southern Maine, and has published in many print and online journals.
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BRING THEM HOME

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SCANNING

by Judith Terzi

                        ––starting with a line by Jean de Sponde

Give me a place to stand, Archimedes said...
The x-ray tango begins. We all stand,
lift our arms to Lords of the shadow standard.
They call out, "Show more." It's a one-night stand.
Anaphores of poets are unveiled to standing ovations,
jealousies notwithstanding. And cellulite of pundits,
scars from rebuilt parts withstand the invention.
The nipple rings of history stand out in the gaze.
Sartre stood for "L'enfer, c'est les autres."
Will shadows spot the misunderstood, or know
who has stood with philosophers at Café de Flore,
who has inhaled Gauloises, exhaled upstanding isms?
Stand-in starlets, their implants revealed, cry,
and children stand who have tried and failed to fly.


Judith Terzi is the author of two chapbooks, The Road to Oxnard (Pudding House contest finalist, 2010) and Sharing Tabouli (Finishing Line, 2011). Her poetry has appeared widely in print and online and has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best of the Web anthologies. She taught high school French for many years in Pasadena, CA where she currently lives and writes.
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NEW GUIDELINES FOR AIRPORT SECURITY!

by Iris Litt

    “That little wire in some bra cups might…set off security buzzers.”

They think my boobs are booby-trapped!
The metal-detector thinks I should be zapped.
They say I should not wear my underwire.
True, each of mine could hide a good-size bomb.
A 38D bomb!
My clothes are regulation sleek, my hair appropriately matted down
but if I defy this new one, I’ll get patted down.
I refuse to apologize for their size
but I’ll comply.  I need to fly.
I’ll convince the screener of their purity.
I’ll wear my wireless bra,
at least until I’m through security.


Iris Litt’s most recent book of poetry is What I Wanted to Say from Shivastan Publishing. An earlier book of poetry, Word Love,  was published by Cosmic Trend Publications.  She has had poems in many literary magazines including Onthebus, Confrontation, Hiram Poetry Review, The  New Renaissance, Asphodel, Poetry Now, Central Park, Icarus, The Rambunctious Review, Pearl, The Ledge, Earth's Daughters, Poet Lore, Scholastic, and Atlantic Monthly (special college edition).  She has had short stories in Travellers Tales, Prima Materia, Out Of The Catskills,  and The Second Word Thursdays Anthology; and articles in Pacific Coast Journal, Writer's Digest, and The Writer.  She teaches writing workshops in Woodstock, NY, and has taught creative writing at Bard College,  SUNY/Ulster, Arts Society of Kingston, Writers in the Mountains, Educational Alliance, New York Public Library, and Marble Collegiate Church. She lives in Woodstock and in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
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GIVING THANKS

by Earl J. Wilcox


Maker of all things, we thank you
For free balloons and cookies at the supermarket
For good pitchers who win the Cy Young award
For the Mormon Tabernacle choir
For leaf blowers replacing rakes
For pecan and pumpkin pies
For apples green and red
For write-in candidates
For Chevrolet trucks
For pinot grigio
For poetry.


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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THANKS GIVING

With deep appreciation and regard for the hundreds of poets whose work has appeared here this year, The New Verse News is proud to announce that it has nominated the following poems from its pages:

1. For the Sundress Publications Best of the Net 2010 Awards:

RUBBLE DREAM by Mary Krane Derr
JIHADJANE by Anne Harding Woodworth
STICKS AND STONES WILL MAKE A WAR. . . by Rasma Haidri
FIFTY FOOT OAK by Laura Rodley

2. For the Dzanc Books Best of the Web 2011 Awards:

PETER KINLOCH TO HIS FIANCÉE by Molly Meacham
TRACKING THE HURRICANE by W.F. Lantry
ABRACADABRA by James Penha

3. For The Pushcart Prize 2011:

DIEGO RIVERA’S DEEP WATER HORIZON by Alan Catlin
SOMETHING FOR HARVEY by Jen Hinton
BREAKING OF BREAD: ANDREI VOZNESENSKY by Richard Ilnicki
LABOR DAY 2010 by Lillian Baker Kennedy
RESCUE FROM THE DEPTHS by J. D. Mackenzie
LEEWARD by Elizabeth Swados

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Editor's Note: Mary K. Derr hopes her nominated poem will encourage readers to remember that Haitians still need help. She suggests donations to  Food for the Poor  and Médecins Sans Frontières.

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BLACK QUENCH

by Len Kuntz

The girl at the river scoops up

handfuls of

warm soup,

brewed black by the beaten

Sudan sun.

She knows how lucky she is, this thirsty child.

Her mother told her there was no water to drink anywhere,

that it had all gone bad.

Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State with his wife, son, an eagle and three pesky beavers.  His short fiction appears widely in print and online at such places as Vis A Tergo, Clutching At Straws, and Amphibi.Us.

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DELIVERY ROUTE

by David Chorlton

Join Amnesty International's Write for Rights - December 4-12, 2010

First stop Missouri, USA, to give Reggie Clemons
some hope sealed into envelopes
from people he doesn’t know
who can’t envision
the bed in which he sleeps to dream
each night of the execution
chamber. Then it’s off to a town in Romania
with a bundle for the mayor
intended to persuade him that the Roma
are human and need houses with doors
to close behind them
even when they sing at open windows. After that,
Iraq, with a sack full of questions
as to why a certain Mr. Ahmad
has been alone in a cell for ten years
without anyone telling
anyone else
why this should happen to anyone
anywhere. There’s never time to rest;
not with the letters addressed
to Pasteur Street in Teheran, all beginning
Your Excellency, but signed with angry pens
at the end of the appeal
to release a student leader
and turn off the machines by which
he is tortured. There’s a sick man in Ghana
with months yet to serve
in a prison only compassion can open,
Mr. Karma, incarcerated in Indonesia,
who raised a flag in peaceful protest,
and a Guatemalan lady in fear for her life
yet nobody investigates. Always so far to go,
and so many locks
but the letters are folded
thin as knife blades, slim enough
to fit through what little space there is
between the doorframe and the door.


David Chorlton lives in Phoenix, likes to shop at the Supermercado and has his alarm clock-radio set to a Mexican station to wake him up with a reminder that Arizona benefits from its recent immigrants. His poems have appeared recently online at Stride Magazine (UK), The Blue Guitar (Arizona), and Pemmican. Chiron Review, Poem, and Pembroke Review will feature more in print soon.
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HANOVER COUNTY JAIL, COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

by Bonnie Naradzay           


Lunch today for the inmates means white bread
and a slice of baloney.  Dinner is more of the same.
The limit now – two meals a day to stay in budget.
The jail’s run by a profit-making corporation.
Vending machines hold other selections,
like undated Twinkies and cinnamon buns.
Immigration rents beds here
for young, married Chinese women
without papers, only fake passports they bought in haste.
Fearing reprisals, they fled the provinces, their homes and families.
For one bore a child after marrying too young, at twenty,
and another had a second child, a girl.
One has an abscessed tooth. 
As a volunteer, I write down her plight,
mainly that she cannot pay a Chinese-speaking lawyer
in New York City, her only hope, or even call long distance,
collect.  I read her confession, search for gestures.
The budget does not fund dental work, I’m told.
What’s more, they charge for aspirin.
The next one, wearing the same ink-blue pajamas
and plastic shower shoes,
holds her stomach, speaks of constant pain.
The doctor comes once a month
and sees only those who signed up long before.
The system weeds out malingerers, the female warden says,
handing me a sheaf of small-print regulations.


Bonnie Naradzay lives in the Washington D.C. area, earned her MFA in poetry from Stonecoast (University of Southern Maine), and has published in numerous print and online journals.
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HOW TO TELL THE CHILDREN

by Jon Wesick


After a dinner at Chuck E Cheese the Transportation Security Agency and Right to Privacy sat the American Public on the couch.

“You know we’ll always love you no matter what happens. Well,” TSA swallowed, “we’ve been going through some hard times lately and think it would be best if your mother moved out. It has nothing to do with you. She just needs a little space right now.”

“What your father’s trying to say is that he no longer finds me attractive.”

“Please, we promised not to discuss this here.”

“Oh now you want your privacy, Mister Let’s Get a Backscatter X-ray to Spice Things Up in the Bedroom! If it was supposed to be so good for our marriage, how come you’re putting them in every airport in the country? Huh?”

“I’m doing it for you. When you’re sitting at home eating goat-cheese bonbons, I’m busting my ass trying to keep you safe. Oh, I’ve seen it all: explosive g strings, sarin-laced suppositories, tampons that can fire .22 caliber bullets.” TSA fondled the images on his hard drive. “Flat-chested Victoria’s Secret models wearing Semtex falsies, even eunuch jihadists with artificial C-4 testicles.”

“Margaret said you groped her and Stan in the airport security line and called it an ‘enhanced pat down.’ Really? Men too? You never told me you swung that way.”

While the Right to Privacy packed what remained of her dignity, the American Public belched stomach acid that tasted of half-digested, bacon-jalapeño pizza. Despite the vague promises of a trip to Disney World during the holidays, he wondered if he’d ever see the Right to Privacy again.


Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as the The New Verse News, New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
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IT'S A DOG'S LIFE: POST-ELECTION SYNDROME SONNET

by Earl J. Wilcox


It is raining here in Middle America .
Shall I elect to stay indoors today?
There seems little to do on a rainy day
except slosh up and down the driveway,
sip from a puddle now and then, fluff
my beautiful, long hair, slough off
heavy water trickling down my back.
Weighty issues of the day well up before me,

Shall I ask my master for a treat?
Shall I bark feebly at the mottled pooch?
Should I crap in the back yard?
Autumn has come. Winter beckons.
I shall need a long winter’s nap.
Here in Middle America it is raining.


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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MAIN STREET MONEY TRAIL

by David S. Pointer


Americans bumped from all upward mobility
flights for the foreseeable retro future ram

Americans left behind like Abe Lincoln’s
first, second and third string law partners

unformed fraud squads watch over us? No!
unformed fraud squads watch our vaults

open and agape and ajar and airy and
reopened to restock and reopen to deplete

unformed fraud squads eventually strangle
big bankerism with their own spermatic cords

micro flogging permits escalate exponentially
macro fleecing financial crimes curb themselves

plasma bags and bone bending pliers refuse to
condone anymore intergenerational indifference


David S. Pointer lives in Murfreesboro, TN. Recent publications include "The Baseball Chronicle," "The American Dissident," and "J Journal: New Writings on Justice." David is a sociologist and has a recent surgical technology diploma.
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ANTI-SONNET

by James Penha


For physicists, a bit of antimatter is a precious gift indeed. . . . Now a research collaboration at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, has managed, 38 times, to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap for more than 170 milliseconds. The group reported the result in Nature online on 17 November. --NatureNews 17 November 2010


We have just confined an anti-sonnet
actually trapped a bit of quatrain
in trochaic rather than iambic
pentameter: DEATH be NOT proud THOUGH--


James Penha edits The New Verse News.
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