DEBT CEILING

by Martha Deed


Smoke is coming out of my ears
I am close to falling flat on my angst
Paragraphs from old history texts
give me vertigo of the pickle
I have fireflies in my stomach
and I long to sink into a swamp of bigotry
where my biases could calm me
or join a sect that disbelieves in debt
My constitution is frozen
sharp as a trout Reality is too much for me
and I am too awake
for the sleep of the doomed
Cable TV is a form of harassment
My budget is weeping
and the finches have rejected
my 2-for-1 birdseed
Truly this is a time
to test men's biceps


Martha Deed lives in North Tonawanda, NY.  Recent publications include The November 2010 Project,  The Lost Shoe (Naissance) and City Bird: Selected Poems (1991-2009) by Millie Niss, edited by Martha Deed. She has previously published at The New Verse News.  Her blog: http://sporkworld.tumblr.com/

CONGRESS, OR THE FOOLISH VIRGINS

by Ed Shacklee


The newest crop of innocents denied
That virtue could beget the sin of pride.
When they proved too slow to waken,
Many liberties were taken,
Enslaving them to vices they’d defied.
In brothels, let a madam be your guide.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 14 by 14, the Flea, the Raintown Review and Shot Glass Journal, among other places.
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TEA FOR US, PEE FOR YOU

by George Good


Now watch John Boehner balance on his dome
The Federal Budget weighing at least a ton.
Applause erupts from over on the right:
"We made him do it!  We have won the fight!"

Can you say Pyhrric victory?  This bill
In which you've slipped a poison pill
Is going down the drain untasted by
The Democrats who rather would go dry

Than drink the fermented piss you forced on them.
The prospects for a deal are looking grim--
Exactly what you hoped for as you call:
"We'll get our way though stocks and Heaven fall."


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NOM DE GUERRE

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


The National Organization for Marriage held a rally at the New York State Capitol
in Albany on Sunday

So there they were and there was me

An unwelcome ant a-scurrying, seeing what he could see

On my way downtown, I passed some of the bums and knaves and glory grabs of history

I passed some of the more famous nom de guerres of recently

Iosev Jughashvili aka Joe Stalin
Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov aka Lenin
Josip Brodz aka Tito
Adolf Schiklgruber aka Hitler
Ernesto Guevara aka Che

It was a hot and breezy summer day

The National Organization for Marriage had set up a little table staffed by smiling women and hard-nosed men
The National Organization was handing out bumper stickers and redwhiteandblue pens

I took an informal poll and discovered, to my dismay. that a majority of the people protesting gay marriage were divorced or single, so for them at least the solid union thing has not been such a hit
On my NOM pen (the one I used to write this poem) their slogan reads:
Protecting Marriage and the Faith Communities That Sustain It

I walked around some more and took some pics with my Fuji one-time use
I posed for a snap with a lesbian couple and a church lady heaped me with abuse
Funny, cuz just a minute before when I'd told her I'd been married for 17 years she'd blessed me to Kingdom Come
But when she saw me with the lesbians she screamed that I was done
She asked me how many kids I had and I being an Honest kinda Abe admitted to my beautiful one
Then she shrieked some more, and as her God is my witness, she tiraded about my gonads,
my GONADS!, how weak and withered they must be (which wasn't fun, least not for me)

I milled about some more and discovered that the good folks of NOM share their very own NOM DE
GUERRE -
Mr and Mrs John Doe
Anonymously villifying anyone and anything that don't toe the line they toe
Mrs and Mr Doe, first name John
Peevish, Pessimistic, Pissed-Off Cons
Gaming, being gamed, up on almost nothing, dour, done for, sat upon


Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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PAC-MAN

by Lauren Schmidt


“[Prosecutor Erik Hasselman] said the two, who shared a nearby apartment, apparently found Bishop sleeping beneath a tree, then kicked and beat him so severely that Bishop suffered twenty-three separate rib fractures and bleeding in his brain. His nose and an eye socket were also broken, and his ears were torn and bleeding, the prosecutor said.” --The Register Guard, December 23, 2009


The next morning, a group of Blues bent over me,
flashed light into my eyes, held two rubbered fingers to my neck.
It was morning when they found me in the park.
Sure don’t know what I could’ve looked like laying there—
blood glued to my lips and eyes, my face black from soot
and scab, smashed so I’m a mess that don’t look like me no more:
Pac-Man, a man nobody ever knew before.

Maybe the papers’ll say I was a good man, maybe even wise.
Maybe the papers’ll say everybody liked me.
The papers’ll tell the world I didn’t fight
back which only made them hit me harder.
I could feel my face change shape, like the Willamette riverbed.

I wish those boys’d cleaned me up before morning came.
Their hands were wet and clean when they came back
to take my things. One pinched my wrist and I shook
and twitched, but they didn’t stay. Such a shame to be left
like that—left a bloody mess like that—the way not having
a home feels like a shame till it doesn’t anymore.


Editor’s Note: This poem is part of a full-length collection of poetry based on the poet’s experience volunteering at a homeless kitchen, The Dining Room, in Eugene, Oregon, where several hate crimes occur each year against homeless men. The collection, Psalms of The Dining Room, is due out next year. The collection draws attention to an otherwise silenced problem: hate crimes against homeless victims.

Lauren Schmidt’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Progressive, Alaska Quarterly Review, New York Quarterly, Rattle, Nimrod, Fifth Wednesday Journal,  Ekphrasis Journal, Wicked Alice and other journals. Her poems have been selected as finalists for the 2008 and 2009 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Dancing Girl Press Chapbook Contest. Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize and the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor. In 2011, she was nominated for the Best New Poets Anthology. Her chapbook, The Voodoo Doll Parade (Main Street Rag), was selected as part of the 2011 Author’s Choice Chapbooks Series. Her second chapbook, Because Big Boobies Are Necessary (Amsterdam Press), and her first full-length collection, Psalms of The Dining Room (Wipf & Stock) are both forthcoming. Lauren Schmidt teaches writing at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey.
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ZOMBIE-MASTER

by Bill Costley


“With no heart & no brain,
you will now run faster…”

Norquist hypnotizes
his zombies eviscerating
the ex-Republican Party:

“Only my will animates you!”


Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA.
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PAINTING THE DEBT CEILING

by David Feela


A compressor would be the quickest,
though the scaffolding required
to touch the ceiling
might make the Tower of Babel
look like a stairwell.

Give me one politician
with the vision of Michelangelo
and I will lie on my back
through the next election depicting
a brilliant fresco of the future.

Or left on my own, pass me
a roller and I’ll paint
the politician a face,
not just a position, one finger
in the face of heaven.

If nothing else, let me get started
with my brush, which takes forever
but surely not any longer
than finding this fabled
and convoluted compromise.


David Feela's work has appeared in hundreds of regional and national publications. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas, is now available.
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DEBT-CRISIS ADMONITION TO PLEDGE SIGNERS

by William Aarnes


We thrive when regulations are relaxed;
Ventures with few loopholes are overtaxed.

Wealth’s purpose is to keep the wealthy wealthy;
To question that is fiscally unhealthy.

So paying debts by raising revenue
Is not the thing right thinking people do.

The only obligation we must honor
Is to ourselves.  Quibble and you’re a goner.


William Aarnes' poems have appeared previously at The New Verse News.  Other recent work has appeared in Red River Review, Curbside Quotidian, Prime Number, and Ascent.
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REPUBLICAN PLEDGES

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper


I pledge allegiance to Grover Norquist;  I promise not to turn or twist, but keep my rigid stance despite circumstance, and to all Republicans for whom he stands be true, one party, under God, divisible, without thought to me or you. Why should the rich pay a higher tax, when those on food stamps are lazy and lax?

I pledge allegiance to the Family Leader, that I will be a mother and breeder, oppose Sharia law, and same-sex marriage, I’ll abhor.  I will stand for each civil right, as they once had in perfect sight, when parents in slavery weren’t sold, and their children and families together grew old.  Why should I suffer with a terrible migraine, when others can suffer in much more pain?

I pledge allegiance to Susan B. Anthony and the unborn, incest or rape’s not as bad as porn, a woman’s body is mine to control, just don’t put her on my dole; my religion and my faith come before any governmental lore, or law already on the books, why shouldn’t the Robert’s  Court take second looks?

I pledge allegiance to Obama’s defeat, to forget the hungry, the cop on the beat. I pledge allegiance to Tea Party banter, debt ceiling lip syncs by Ryan, Walsh, and Cantor. I pledge allegiance to America’s default. “The sun will come up tomorrow” our proposed assault.


The work of Lucille Gang Shulklapper, an author of poetry and fiction, appears in many journals and four chapbooks.  Recent work will appear in Main Street Rag's anthology "Altered States.” A picture book has been accepted for publication.
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MY FELLOW AMERICAN

Editor's Note: In light of the events in Norway where, we know now, the Oslo Suspect Wrote of Fear of Islam and Plan for War, it seems appropriate to highlight this video from the Web site My Fellow American, whose spokesperson Elizabeth Potter explains, "America has always been a melting pot, but in the post-9/11 world the environment can be downright hostile. Recent mosque protests and congressional hearings on American Muslims are all unfortunate examples of a rising tide of fear. This climate of suspicion towards our fellow Americans compromises the great values that our country was founded upon."
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WHAT COMES

by David Chorlton

               When you live close to nature, you take what comes.
                              Tom Beatty, Miller Canyon, Arizona

It might be a Lucifer hummingbird
whose gorget shines magenta
against apples ripening
on trees in August’s orchard
that you see, or else

a family from Oaxaca
who made it this far and chose the wild
canyon after crossing over
and who stop
when you encounter them,
frightened as the ocelot

a dog treed here in spring.
If you look the other way
to let them pass
you’ll notice how the cliff wall
seems to hang
between the sky and the oaks

while at the saddle
between two peaks
aspens are absorbed by clouds
one day and by smoke
on another. When what comes

is fire, it is never in the forecast.
It just begins
and strips
a mountain to the bone.
When you live where the border
between good weather and bad

is harder to cross
than the one between countries,
it might be the black flood you hear
washing away the thrush’s call
and taking back
everything the golden days

delivered. What comes is yours
to keep; as much a part of you
as the shiver in the blade
is of the axe.


David Chorlton has lived in Arizona since 1978, when he moved from Vienna, Austria. While much of his poetry is about the Southwestern landscape, his newest publication, and first work of fiction, is The Taste of Fog from Rain Mountain Press, reflecting a darker side of Vienna.
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A FREUD OF THE FLESH

by James Penha

Lucian Freud dies aged 88 --The Guardian

No one painted
flesh
like Lucien Freud:

I  work
up an impasto
rich
with assurance
mold it to forms—
I do it urgently;
I do it
boldly—
I do
make the body
mine
as once you gave
grandfather
a piece of your mind.

Dreams beg for interpretation;
I want
sinew.

I wish portraits
of people
not like people;

the people
is paint.


James Penha edits The New Verse News. 
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BATS

by Bill Costley


Obama flexes his
soft verbal nerf bat,
Boehner polishes his
dented aluminum bat,
Cantor shoulders his
Adirondack ash bat
& walks. The crowd
groans in the stands.
Who's willing to kick
cans down the road?
The Gang of Six swings wide.


Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA.
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POPE ACCEPTS ARCHBISHOP OF PHILADELPHIA'S RESIGNATION

or 
A SLIGHT MISREADING OF MARK 10:14
by Ed Shacklee


The Lord suffered children to come to him,
but his priest made the boy give his bum to him;
and the Pope was his shield and his buffer
as he came so the children would suffer.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 14 by 14, the Flea, the Raintown Review and Shot Glass Journal, among other places.
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