IFFY FUTURE FORECAST

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

Topsy-turvy third planet from Sun
Upside-down silk lining turned inside-out
Biofuel technological solutions replacing geological
Asteroid mining commercial solar power

Oceans cannot absorb greenhouse emissions
Cataclysmic climate effects current adrift
Digital radar storm tracking surveillance
Arctic shrinkage meltdown icebergs overturned

Handle With Care survival issues
Over-consumption splurge space tourism colonies
Funny business as usual until
Endangered resource depletion runs out

Nanotech manipulating nothing’s the matter
On quantum atomic molecular scale
Biosphere demands exceeding global biocapacity
Supply chain profit margins unlinked

Systematic holistic challenges about-face turnabout
Equitable sustainable cosmos needs different
Set of values bankrupting nature
Contaminated eco-environment next generation’s legacy

Regenerative telemedicine cloning dinosaur egg
Autonomous robots emotionless artificial intelligence
Discovering fast-forward ways toward happier
More contented resilient co-existence habitation

 No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

THE FACTORY

by David Chorlton

"Richmond Hill" by LS Lowry

I
When they laid the first brick they said
This is progress,
and then they laid another, promising to carry on
until there was a wall
where previously the wind had blown without obstruction
across the grass. The wall
was high and strong, with just one row of narrow
windows for light to pass through.
Look at what is possible, they said
as they drew up plans for the second wall.
These will stand through any storms, they claimed,
and storms came to test them
and the walls remained.
Foxes came to sniff. They didn’t understand
what was happening. Swallows
flew above and in between the walls
until the third and fourth sides of a mighty rectangle
were complete. Sometimes a swallow
would go in through a window and fly playfully
out of the open space held aloft
by the walls. This is the future, they said,
this is the place
where darkness will turn to money.
So they covered the space with a roof
which blocked out light
except for the long, dusty shafts
that streamed in when the sun
was on the window side, and the valley appeared
to sit deeper in the earth
because of the weight
pushing down. Only a circling hawk
remained of the sky. They raised a tall chimney
and fed it with coal. This is the power, they said,
that nature forgot, and as they bowed their heads
in prayer a viper
slithered by and spat a hiss.

II
Many came to see it. Many more
entered by the door and stayed inside until each day
was over. Those who praised it
never went inside, but said to those who did,
You’re fortunate, be grateful. So the line formed
every morning, and each man
bowed his head as he moved to his assigned position
while outside, the deer
on their way to the river ran by
until water no longer ran there
because it had been redirected
and after it had been used
it became a kind of poison
so the decision was made
to have it soak into the ground and disappear,
but it was still there,
like fire just beneath the surface of the earth.

III
We need another one just like it,
they said, and they marked the ground
for the new one to stand on. We must cut down
these trees, they said, and lay a new foundation
that will seal the earth.
It looked just like the one before it
and those who entered looked
just like the ones who entered the first one.
Two were not enough.
However many they built
they kept on finding people to feed into them
and the many chimneys
poured waste into the sky
as if to make an offering to whichever gods
survived in the smoke.

IV
So it continued, each one followed by the next
until no trace remained
of the grass in the valley and the trees on the hills,
and nobody who came to see
what had replaced them
could ever imagine the way it used to be
when the air was clear enough
for the sparrows to be seen
with their feathers turning gold
as they flocked in early sun.
Don’t think about the past,
they said, your memories will not feed you.
And they kept on building,
beating down the earth
to make it level for another floor,
creating enclosures where once had been space,
and when they were sure
nobody could remember what they had replaced
a man old enough to have been dead several times
stood up to speak about what had been lost
but he could not be heard
above the growling of machines.

V
More, they said, we need more.
And it did not matter how many,
they were too few. Some sparrows appeared,
and a lost fox, but no matter
how few were the animals
they said, They are too many.


David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in England, and spent several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in1978. He pursued his visual art and had several shows as well as writing and publishing his poetry in magazines and collections, the latest of which is The Devil’s Sonata from FutureCycle Press. Although he became ever more interested in the desert and its wildlife, the shadow side of Vienna emerges in his fiction and The Taste of Fog, which was published by Rain Mountain Press.

DIRE WARNINGS

by Linda Lerner

Image source: Linda Lerner

we were warned to keep away from strangers
to be suspicious of anyone not like us

people of other races and of different religions from ours
atheists and all free spirits especially artists

we were warned about sleeping in other people’s homes
eating food we weren’t familiar with

getting overexcited and too emotional about things
of danger lurking in sleep away camp and open road clubs

discouraged from swimming, bike riding getting too much sun
we were warned about touching ourselves and

of men who only wanted one thing
about drugs and sex and how “the more you get the more you want”

we were warned about many things
but nobody warned us about the trees

we played ring around the rosy under
that kept the sun from burning us

trees whose leaves dazzled us with color every autumn
infested with fungus or mold and dying of root rot

environmentalists sent out alarms with  predictions
we dismissed along with climate change as nonsense

nobody warned us that the trees would become killers
and uproot lifting up slabs of concrete from under us

break thru iron gates into homes flattening cars 
killing anyone in their way

nobody warned us…


Linda Lerner's Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (New & Selected Poems) is published by New York Quarterly Press.

PEACE BROKERS

by Angie Trudell Vasquez

Peace Brokers dance
even when there’s no chance
of winning, they move to
their own beat path
plan for the best and worst
and recant all previous positions
if necessary – they are not
too proud to say they were wrong
or misguided; and listen to the hand
extended in warmth, gripping
close with their own heart
all that they hold dear; and
perchance a day of reckoning comes near
and the dead rise from their graves
find their tongue and debate
with heat about the success
of so many years spent lying beneath the grass;
the peace brokers listen, take tea,
nod when they agree,
hold up a pen
when they do not
indicating they’d like time
at the podium of truth
when the others are done speaking;
peace brokers take notes, ask questions,
and resolve not to leave the table
until all has been said, heard and agreed
until an action plan is set for the next meet
and they do not give up ever or admit defeat
because what is to gain is so sweet.


Angie Trudell Vasquez is a poet and writer currently living in Milwaukee, WI. She's been published by Verse Wisconsin, Burdock, Raven Chronicles, Real Change and was the featured poet for the Latina Monologues from 2009 to 2011. In 2003 she was a featured poet at Bumbershoot, Seattle's Music and Art Festival. Her first book The Force Your Face Carries has been published under her own label, Art Night Books.

THE FRAGONARDS PLAY A HOME GAME

by M. A. Schaffner

Image source: Pébéo

Through all my life I’ve grown up just enough
to step back through the looking glass and sing
nonsense songs while shaving.  You know the tunes.
Context has everything to do with death,
and that changes constantly, so today
I’ll settle for a six pack and a game
of football or Scrabble.  Let small dogs watch
as we wrestle with ambition and win
one more time, because we know its weak points.
Last night there was a moon.  There will be again
long after we uncork our last bottle.
We solved the world’s problems.  It will have more,
but I don’t need to work them any more
than will finches nesting over the grill,
or their neighbors, the squirrels, or the cats
hunting stupidly, garden to garden.


M. A. Schaffner has work recently published or forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Magma, Tulane Review, Gargoyle, and Skirmish Magazine.  Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys.  Schaffner used to work as a civil servant, but now serves civil pugs.

YPRES

by Howie Good                            
                                      
                                            for Sarah M. & Tom C.

Tyne Cot cemetery on the Ypres Salient, Belgium.

Despite
a cold
misty rain

poplars
stand
at attention

as

we wander
jet-lagged

down rows
& rows
of gravestones

40,000
stubby
white teeth

bared


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.

ELECTION CANVASSING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, 2012

by Mary Dingee Fillmore

Illustration by Christiane Engel

The woman who never votes
cracks the door.  Her grimy trailer stinks
of smoke and despair.  She says no,
the election’s nothing to do with her,
as she shoves her kids behind her, swats
at the dog.  I can’t persuade her.

Walking down her rotting steps, I go on
driving the streets, knocking on doors, not
for him, the President, likeable and whole
but for her, her young face already sagging.
I have to stop a white man burdened
with too many Cadillacs, whose every meal
is cooked by a woman, who hasn’t ironed
a shirt for decades. To stop him now
from clawing away the last of her few
rights, the right to whatever’s left
of her beautiful, human body
so like mine.


Mary Dingee Fillmore is a poet and novelist who writes about the Holocaust and Resistance in the Netherlands among other subjects.  Her work has been published here, the Atlanta Review, Slant, Upstreet, Pearl, Diner, Westview, Main Street Rag, Pinyon and Blueline.  In her spare time, she helps nonprofit organizations decide what to do and why, and has had her own business, Changing Work, since 1982. 

TEMPORARY BLINDNESS

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

I went to the ophthalmologist. She shone the light in my right eye and said, "Do you have a pet? I see an animal hair. And some lint." She lowered the light and looked at me sternly. “I’m going to wash your eyes.”  She found cigarette butts, bristles from street sweepers, an old bike chain, and child’s flip flop. The left eye closest to the yards had dandelion fluff, a flea, and the tip of a Jart. She washed my eyes,  and when I opened them, a pile of scraps was between us. I blinked and said, “There’s still an irritant.”  She followed the light back in and pulled out Mitt Romney. Ah! I could see again. I mean, I could stand to look.

Her opthamalogist has cleared Elizabeth Kerlikowske to drive her car to teach.

AFTER THE ELECTION

by Joan Mazza

Watercolor by Suzanne Mays-Wentzell

The sun should be out, beaming cheer
in celebration of a win for equal rights
and a president who tells the truth,
but today is gray and dreary, forecast
for wind and rain, maybe snow.

I didn’t stay up all night like some, tired
of the angry words, too angry, too,
at those who vote against their interests
for a man who lied and lied. I went to bed,
resigned to cope with heat or cold,

no matter how the winds of voting blew.
I rose to learn the winners, and asked
again what shelters we might find
when I still worry about the safety
of our vegetables and drinks, the air

we breathe. Taught to pray for happy
outcomes, for wisdom in our leaders,
recovery from illness, grief, addiction,
I know no one’s listening to wishes
no matter how cold and dark life seems.

Through weak morning light, the ground
is littered with this year’s leaves. Signal
to go inward, grateful for this home, space
where darkness means silence, warmth,
and no one shouting what god wants from me.


Joan Mazza has worked as a psychotherapist, writing coach, certified sex therapist, and medical microbiologist, has appeared on radio and TV as a dream specialist. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Kestrel, Stone’s Throw, Rattle, Writer's Digest, Playgirl, and Writer's Journal. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia.

A SIGH OF RELIEF

by Barbara A Taylor


a sigh of relief
big bird takes off
back to the same


Barbara A Taylor’s Japanese short form poems appear in international journals and anthologies on line and in print, including Haigaonline, Eucalypt, Atlas Poetica, The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Kokako, Simply Haiku. She lives in the Rainbow Region, Northern NSW, Australia.

Image source: Chris Piascik based on a tweet by Dan Cedarholm

FIRST LINE OF A LIMERICK FOLLOWED BY FOUR LINES OF SILENCE

by J.R. Solonche

There once was a Willard Mitt Romney
(silence)
(silence)
(silence)
(silence).

J.R. Solonche is co-author (with wife Joan Siegel) of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). His poems have appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies since the 1970s. He teaches at SUNY Orange in Middletown, New York.

SUPER TUESDAY

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

$UPERCILIOU$

Oily gutter politricks sunken rainbows
Warped arc reflection scared straight
Contending with scorched soil tactics
Flying Saucer Tea Party crash-landing

$UPERPHONY

If Obama walked on water
Rancid Foxy creatures that inhabit
Polluted foggy bottomless DCeption
Would ask: “Can’t he swim?”

$UPERCHARLATAN

Barely afloat back from brink
Contrarian House craven maven power-mongers
Relentlessly diminishing disrespecting unwilling to
Act in common good-better-best faith

$UPEROPPORTUNI$T

Obstructionist Congress lobbying corporate sponsors
Casino crapshoot rolling loaded dice
Greedy unprincipled hypocrites institutionalizing avarice
Judeo-Christian-Zionist unholy crusader war
 
$UPER$CHMOOZER

Barack is who he is
Fundamentally principled reversing Bush catastrophes
Despite monumental Republican’t  naysayers bucking
Broncobama No-OK Corral rodeo champ
 
$UPERPANDERER

Left is right bipolarized chill-out
As good as it’s gonna
Get for next four years
Probably better than we deserve

 No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

NOVEMBER 5, 2012. THE DAY BEFORE.

by Sarah Kay

Today, the day before the election, I spent the day at an all-girls school
in Nashville, Tennessee. After the day’s events were finished, they held
a reception in the Headmaster’s home, and I found myself alone in a
room with three girls from the high school. Someone had a sticker that
said, “I voted!” And I asked about it, confused, because of her age.
She told me they had held a mock election earlier that day. I asked
about the results, trying to keep my tone even, not wanting my own
politics to creep into my voice. She said, 43 Obama, 54 Romney.
I couldn’t keep a wow from slipping out. That’s actually better than
I would have expected, she said. It was clear, based on the way she
said it, what “better” meant, and I started to ask more about it, now
feeling safe that we were on the same team. The Headmaster re-entered
the room with other faculty members. The girls shifted in their seats.
We raised our chins, our eyes, crossed our knees. I answered questions
about poetry, about travel, about my family back home, and their recovery
from the hurricane. I did not mention the election. Neither did the girls.
We thanked our hosts, and shuffled into our coats, bracing against the
winds of the newly minted winter air. Once outside, with a safe distance
from the house, I quietly asked what the preparation for the election had been.
Some shaking heads made it clear there hadn’t been any. A junior named Cat,
looked squarely at me. We are in the reddest of red down here. Nobody bothers
trying to explain platforms or sway votes, because it’s not going to make
a difference. All the girls in this school, we all come from conservative parents.
Conservative administration. It’s amazing Obama even got as many as he did.
We swayed in the parking lot, and the ropes in my stomach wound tighter
and tighter.  I felt like I had failed them. I shouldn’t have wasted time
on poems about peacocks and love. I should have been teaching them
about what it means to be a woman. About burden and responsibility and pain,
about how hard it was to get to where we are, how easily it slips away.
The three girls in the parking lot walked me to my car.  They were smart
and outspoken, the way girls at these schools often out-rank their peers
from co-ed schools. They left me in my car, their green and white plaid skirts
brushing their knees as they walked.  Have a good night, they said.
We’ll see you tomorrow for the middle school assembly.
Good luck, they said.  I knew they were talking about the assembly.
Good luck to you too, I said.  Good luck to us all.


Sarah Kay began performing her spoken word poetry when she was fourteen years old. In 2004, she founded the organization Project V.O.I.C.E. to encourage creative self-expression through spoken word poetry. She now performs and teaches spoken word poetry in venues and classrooms all over the world. In 2011, Sarah was a featured speaker at the TED Conference, where she received two standing ovations for her performance and speech on the “Rediscovery of Wonder.” Sarah’s first book, “B” was released in November 2011 by the Domino Project and has been the #1 top ranked poetry book on Amazon.

ARE YOU BEING SERFED?

by James Cronin

Image source: Occupy Sandy Relief

Power lines await the squall.
Climate, hotter and wetter,
plays its part. Which is better,
trim the trees or let them fall?

The boss, moneyed, payday sees,
(too many workers will rile
the market) and so with guile
says trim the costs not the trees.

Oil barons who led BP,
joining moguls making mints,
put profits first then repent,
cutting corners kills at sea.

Shadow bankers weave and bob,
sales of swindles yet unpriced
making millions, what a heist!
Who’d suspect an inside job?

One party’s solons, knowing
nothing, pitch to rustic fools:
lower taxes, skewer rules,
keep the fracking oil flowing.

Damn teachers and their unions,
cops, firemen too; who needs them?
Workers should find their bottom,
picking grapes or green onions.

Health care lies can work once more.
Use some fibs and bull feces,
let the old die in pieces.
Stuck with vouchers? Don’t get sore.

Who knows best? The top percent.
Laid off workers need not frown,
Swiss bank wealth will trickle down.
The homeless can save on rent.

Pledge all to that man Grover;
backed by billions, he can grin.
Gut the country? It’s no sin,
“starve the beast” ‘til it’s over.

Like lemmings attempting flight,
or dogs in sad distemper,
folks fall free, not a whimper.
The day’s sold, who’ll price the night?


After a four decade career in the law, both as a lawyer and as a juvenile court judge, James Cronin is enjoying his retirement pursuing literary studies and creative writing.