HALLOWEEN 2011

by Earl J Wilcox


Like when it’s dark and rainy
and you’ve driven
a long way
in rain and fog
and you think
you know where
you’re going
but discover
with some heaviness
you have no clue
on a road
freshly paved
in black asphalt
without white lines
to keep you
from falling off
the side into
dark gullies
and the road signs
have no incandescence
to illuminate
your way
and falling leaves
paste your windshield
clog your wipers
and the road
narrows
into a lane
barely bigger
than a pig path
and is ending
imminently
when you decide
to pick up a jogger
who might know
where he’s going
as we clearly do not.
In our backseat
he huffs
and drips
rain on us
but soon points
to a bleary street sign
where the house we want
with a warm fire inside
stands in stark silence.


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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ALL HALLOWS EVE

by Roxanne Hoffman

arched

            black

                        cats

                   darken

                   entranceways;

                               fire-eyed

                     gargoyles

hiss;

incisors

jutting,

kissed

lips

moan;

nervous

ogres

prance;

quaffs

raised,

skeletons

two-step

under

veils

whilst

X-Philes¹,

youngsters

zigzag ...
 

1.  X-Phile -noun (plural X-Philes) a fan of the television series The X-Files; etymology: punningly from X-Files and –phile; usage: a term used in the title of the book by  Ngaire Genge, The Unofficial X-Files Companion: An X-Phile's Guide to the Mysteries, Conspiracies, and Really Strange Truths Behind the Show (Three Rivers Press, 1995) — Wiktionary

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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FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

Directed by Cut Cartel & Our Lady Peace

MOTORCYCLE ROAD TRIP THROUGH SIX STATES

by Susan Vespoli


Riding in the wake of his confidence
sheltered by shoulders and back
contained in a capsule of body slapping
wind, rain pellets and unexpected air.

Sheltered by shoulders and back
roads, tires grab streets that
wind.  Rain pellets and unexpected air
bombs nose with aftershave, barbecue, trails of pot.

Roads, tires grab streets that
cut mountains, towns on map gone ghost,
bombed.  No more aftershave, barbecue. Trails of pot
holes, weeds, and dark windows boarded up.

Cut mountains, towns on map gone ghost,
waitresses and desk clerks without teeth smile through
holes, weeds and dark windows boarded up.
Shrubbery and crabgrass push through asphalt.

Waitresses and desk clerks without teeth, smile through
poverty; paint praying Jesus murals on hotel stucco,
Shrubbery and crabgrass push through asphalt,
optimistic signs, still readable and hanging.

Poverty paints praying Jesus. Murals on hotel stucco,
customers, hotel guests, gas pumps pried up.
Optimistic signs still readable and hanging
“We’re here for you” and “winner.”

Customers, gas pumps, hotel guests pried up,
washed away by economic tide, presidents
“We’re here for you” and “winner.”
Red against blue, black against white, political snits leave victims.

Motorcycle slices view of a country
contained in a capsule of body slapping
holding on to what works: lovers, politicos or Jesus.
Riding in the wake of his confidence


Susan Vespoli lives in a tiny cabin in the Prescott National Forest.  She received her MFA in poetry from Antioch University L.A. in December 2010.  Her work has been published online and in print at Monsoon Voices, The Artists’ Page of Naturally Speaking, Threshold, Merge - Phx Poetry Series Anthology, Verse Wisconsin  and OVS Magazine.  Her poem “He Lusts after Librarians” was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize.
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PSYCHOTICS ARE EMOTIONALLY DEAF

by Frank Eannarino


They hear the sounds of weeping
but cannot see the weeper—
their eyes are deaf but not the ears.

To see sadness and not perceive it,
touching naked skin with all of the warmth
of wearing mittens, and the husband

hears his wife crying like a portrait
of a woman crying, and she hears him
shredding on the fret board of his

neglected guitar, and the sounds
are like notations of sounds rather than
music. They are visitors

in each other’s art galleries, passive
viewers of historical catastrophes
unexploded bombs housed within

a war museum, paintings of detonations
where people that they do not recognize
as people suffer in a kind of

second-hand silence and the therapist
becomes the medium of sensory
integration—didn’t you hear that?

someone just made a terrible sound,
an earth-rending retort—my God
didn’t you hear that?


Author’s note: This poem came from an NPR piece  but went elsewhere.

Frank Eannarino has an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His poems have been published in AGNI on-line, American Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Denver Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, North American Review.
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LOST AND FOUND

by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

A part of me died
when I saw Libyans
weep for their missing relatives
in a land where I had found laughter.

Power and politics evicted bees,
demolished homes with hands of protest.
The sand dunes that caressed my feet
witnessed shapes that didn't belong there.

How can a parent kill
knowing the dead child won’t come back?
The wind changed direction,
camels drowned in the water they stored.

The journey looks lost,
I gasp at the time that’s gone by.
Eyes don’t keep written evidence,
seeing the revolving doors, memory suffers most.


Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an award-winning writer, Pushcart Prize nominated-poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, blogger, wife, yoga-devotee, dancer, and oenophile whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, a nonfiction book of prose and poems (upcoming in 2012), and appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and online publications. A graduate of Columbia University, Sweta lives and writes in New York City with her husband. Sweta also teaches creative writing workshops across the globe. Follow her: On Twitter (@ssvik) or Facebook.
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COLD PEACE

 Poem by Charles Frederickson; Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

Sending shivers up spineless backbones

Taproot vertebrate will power won’t

Capsized fake-believe Promised Land sunken

Once upon certainties currently aren’t

Water cycle solar energy powered

Evaporation condensation precipitation infiltration runoff

Cooling oceans trickle causing cracks

Eroded sediment clogging peace-pipe calumets

Plate tectonics nudging cosmic lithosphere

Seismic abysmal fault lines drawn

Hateful dynamic breeding fearsome distrust

Tug of peaceful coexistence frayed

What lies beneath monolithic icebergs

Flaky cover-up hidden from view

Enigmatic sphinx rainbow halo refraction

Inverted pyramid winged oracle grounded

One-ninth of volume above surface

Compressed air bubble fizz trapped

Stark naked tip-off justifications exposed

Skinny dipper appendages frozen stiff

Bipolar slow unsure glacial meltdown

Split personality wedges aimless adrift

Liquid vapor solid cubes gas

Lunatic phases no-man’s floating island

Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present 3 YouTube mini-movies depicting Glad Thaidings at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZcKQ4xMqQU and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXR-0-0EIZ0&feature=related and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgPmNP8Gsh4&feature=related .
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OCCUPY POETRY

by Howie Good


If nobody tells anybody,
how would anybody ever know?
My words long to be as bees
making honey in a lion’s head.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love Dagger from Right Hand Pointing, To Shadowy Blue from Gold Wake Press and Love in a Time of Paranoia from Diamond Point Press.
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JUBILATION

by Judith Terzi

            The Nafusa Mountains form the boundary between the Libyan
            coastal plain to the north and the Tripolitanian Plateau to the south.

These mountains greet the children, back for good,
and fathers, brothers home to rugged terrain.
The warriors' blood has dried, their battles won.
Shepherds carry staffs again, no guns,
their flocks no longer roam in solitude.
The storks fly overhead, no drones, no planes,
and cooks decry a soldier's fare of beans
and rice, prepare the feasts for weddings now.
And birth. The orchards, olive trees bear gifts
of victory fruits. And youyous echo, a show
across the valleys, from minaret to cliff.
All trace of fear has disappeared, no seams
of solemn earth in sight. The opened door
excites the freed, no future need for war. 


For many years a high school French teacher in Pasadena, California, Judith Terzi has also taught English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. Her poetry has been recognized and received prizes from numerous journals in addition to nominations for Best of the Net and Web. Her books include The Road to Oxnard and Sharing Tabouli. Poems are forthcoming in Raintown Review and Spillway.
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WAR (CASUALTIES OF)

by Alan Catlin


The desert is a  dream
with soldiers in it,
warriors stripped down
to their shorts and boots
as each layer of sand
becomes a cloud of dust
blown by invisible wings
from above.  In black,
tortured sky, smart bombs
are flying, choppers are
dissolving, liquid metal
falls from tentative
frames like the skin of
troopers hurtling to
the ground; a phantom
noise follows them as
they go, weightless as birds
who have lost their wings.


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Pygmy Forest Press is publishing the collected "Deep Water Horizon" poems.
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

by Wayne Scheer


It can be confirmed:
Both Muammar Gadaffi
And summer are dead.
While it requires gruesome photos
And verification from varied sources
To certify the end of the evil colonel,
Summer's demise is easier to ascertain—
My turtle has stopped eating.

So to what poetic heights
Or depths
Will I take the end of an evil era
And the start of a new season?
You got me, bud.

While dictators topple
And nature cycles
I'm left at a loss to express what it means
Beyond change happens and we adjust
Our politics and response to nature accordingly.

I wore a jacket over a sweatshirt on my walk this morning
Although I hiked the woods near naked this past weekend.
The people of Libya will rejoice in the downfall of a tyrant
And then settle into the realization that it probably
Won't change what they'll eat for dinner tonight.

We humans have about as much insight into what it means
As my turtle has about why he's lost his appetite.
Still, we go on,
Wearing jackets, and then coats with fleece-lined gloves
As the citizens of Libya cheer change
Before returning to the routine of their lives.


Wayne Scheer has locked himself in a room with his computer and turtle since his retirement. (Wayne's, not the turtle's.)  To keep from going back to work, he's published hundreds of short stories, essays and poems, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories. He's been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net.
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SIRI

by Andrew Hilbert


What is Siri's opinion
of occupy wall street
or Herman Cain's
9-9-9 plan
or its opinion of the champagne-
drinking-let-them-eat-the-crumbs-
of-my-lobster-cake-investment-
banker-crowd-
after all, shouldn't New York's
Senators recognize these fools
as the ones they serve? their true
constituents?
These are important questions
but every news reporter
on every channel
is asking Siri the important
questions like,
"where is the nearest Apple store?"


Andrew Hilbert lives and works in San Antonio, TX.
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WHETHER

by Daniel Wilcox

 

Of the Arab Spring

Spiritual or Natural,
Theological and political;

Whether Egypt’s

Of two natures

An ancient debate

Related to their 'Origen'

Whether

Coptic
And
Muslim?

And which Brotherhood?

Or
Truly
One--
We the people…

Or

Once
Again
One’s
Chosen
By militant power,
Not
Nazarene
Nor
Meccan,
But
Strong
Nasserite,
Another
Indigenous
Napoleanite

Daniel Wilcox’s writing has appeared in many magazines including The Danforth Review, The Write Room, and The Copperfield Review. His book Dark Energy was published by Diminuendo Press. Before that he hiked through Cal State University Long Beach (Creative Writing), Montana, Pennsylvania, Europe, Palestine/Israel, and Arizona. He lives with his wife on the central coast of California.
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WOMAN OF JESUS

by Rochelle Owens


It is about skin
and hair of the yoga mistress
from Rosario Portugal
remember how I said her hair
was a long hanging rope
winding down
her collarbone
under her armpits
hanging down
her breastbone
ravenous the skin pulling apart
the skin like
the petals of flowers
ravenous the knives of Portugal
repetitive rhythmical
monotonous hacking off bones
slicing off rotting flesh
remember how I said
the hard horny skin and hair
shedding dead cells
transforming becoming a bud
becoming a bud
a flower a pale green lily
emerging from the mud
a place where oysters breed
from the mud of Rosario Portugal
remember how I said

unearthly pale and red light

her skin and hair
remember how I said magnetic
metal striking clashing
her voice saying
“les Portugais sont de grand voyageurs”
remember how I said
she had washed the bodies
of amputees
 winding the bandages
how she had clothed and fed
the  maimed
of automobile accidents  of train wrecks
of war
attaching their prosthetic limbs
 humming and singing in Portuguese
seeing them come back to life
rising up like Lazarus
like Lazarus rising from the grave
her kindness banishing evil
from the world

unearthly pale and red light

remember how I said
she dreamed of a black bull
of Portugal
amputated at the knees
she dreamed of a laughing dwarf
with a virginal face

unearthly pale and red light

it is about how she stood before
a hive of bees listening—
Barbara De Jesus of Rosario Portugal

unearthly pale and red light
the yoga mistress breathing
the long rows of students breathing
bending their hands backwards
like Balinese dancers
skin and hair shedding dead cells
remember how I said
she sat on the heel  of one foot
chanting chanting chanting
lingam yoni natal cleft  vida morte
vida morte lingam  yoni natal cleft
vida morte vida morte

unearthly pale and red light


Rochelle Owens is the author of twenty books of poetry, plays, and fiction, the most recent of which are Solitary Workwoman, (Junction Press, 2011), Journey to Purity (Texture Press, 2009), and Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000). 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. This is Rochelle Owens' twenty-second New Verse News poem.
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