NEWFANEGLED

by Robert Emmett

Last winter the town of Newfane, Vermont became one the first in the country to pass a resolution against the un-American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Still standing up for principles in which they believe, residents of Newfane and other Vermont towns recently passed a resolution urging impeachment of the President.

A Boston paper quoted angry tourists threatening to take their money elsewhere.

maybe they got their wires crossed
the air sizzling with words
down here below
just so much static
bouncing off those landlocked peaks

maybe they’re too few and scattered
no critical mass of uncritical thinking
just do-it-yourself small-towners
and some old farmers
still mucking out stalls by hand
blowing steam across the rims of their
coffee mugs in the town hall
prob’ly still in their overalls

why can’t they be like us reg’lar folks
and go along to get along
follow all the orders from headquarters
don’t go running anything up the flagpole
just salute salute salute
then go shopping or something
and quit asking so damn many questions

tell you what
we’ll use the power of the penny
to bend their fancy talk to our will
their fine whitewashed fences
and pretty steeples can all go to hell
our by-god megaphones of glory
will show you how a 30% dis-
count really works

so watch us carefully now
nothing up our sleeve
we can do this even
steeped in self-induced sleep
minds closed to within a fare-thee-well
of a pig’s pucker hole
unfurl that
for what we say
the republic now stands


Robert Emmett tries to fathom the mind of the 30% and how they hold so much sway so uncritically from the frontwoods of Michigan where March is roaring.

THE DENTIST

by Rochelle Ratner


A dentist from East Sussex has been erased from the Dentists Register after he pulled out an 87-year-old grandmother's teeth without anaesthetic "to teach her a lesson."

--BBC News, January 12, 2007.

The mother clips this article from the paper and has it blown up
and frames it in a bright pink frame and puts it on the wall in her
younger daughter's room. And she says this is what happens to
little girls who fake sore throats when they're supposed to go to the
dentist, who rest their tongues on their braces and break them then
tell the dentist to go ahead and pull them off, they don't care if
their teeth are straight or not and they never want to get married.
But the little girl, ten and small for her age, knows this is one more
fairy tale. From the Bright Pink Fairy Book, probably.


Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Balancing Acts (Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.

HOMELESSMESS

by Charles Frederickson


Two million Iraqis have already
     Fled their once proud nativity
          Another two million internally displaced
               Rejects needing acceptance anywhere else

Affordable options no longer are
     Bloody loan sharks nest eggs
          Sucked dry safes cracked open
               Orphaned chicks gone to seed

Beheaded dysfunctional family heritage devalued
     Slit throats bullet-ridden neighborhoodlum skullduggery
          Humanure garbage dump ghosts dispossessed
               Tortured cadavers rotten trash stench

Rusty padlocked doorjambs coming unhinged
     Barbed promise Watergates outpouring restraint
          Unwanted posters live wire dead-ends
               Borderline hypocritical double-crossing No Entry

Labeled condemnable axes of we-evil
     Syria Iran Jordan absorbing drain-off
          Steely sieve leaking spaghetti western
               Good bad ugly un-American immorality

US versus everybody else myopia
     Not in my Pleasantville backyard
          Weedy grassroots welcome mat yanked
               Unsettling Lady Liberty’s torch snuffed

Innocent alien survivors plead guilty
     In search of freedom happier
          Future for reunited ever-loving family
               Nowhere should be off limits


Dr. Charles Frederickson is a Swedish-American-Thai pragmatic optimist, idealistic visionary and heretical believer who has wandered intrepidly through 206 countries, an original sketch and poem for each presented on http://www.imagesof.8k.com/. This maverick e-gadfly is a member of World Poets Society, based in Greece, with 200+ poetry publication credits on 6 continents, such as: angelfire, Ascent Aspirations, Auckland Poetry, bc supernet, Blind Man’s Rainbow, Both Sides Now, Caveat Lector, Cordite Poetry Review, Dance to Death, Decanto, Eclipse, Flutter Magazine, Greatworks, Green Dove, Indite Circle, International Poet, Listen & Be Heard, Living Poets, Madpoetry, Melange, Newtopia, Planet Authority, Poetisphere, Poetry Canada, Poetry of Scotland, Poetry Stop, Poets for Peace, Poetry Superhighway, Pyramid, Sage of Consciousness, Stellar Showcase, Subtle Tea, Sz, The Smoking Poet, T-zero, Ya’Sou! Ygdrasil, Zafusy.

ANTIWAR MARCH, MANHATTAN, 18 MARCH 2007

by George Held


My wife sleeps on the couch,
Fagged out from late nights at work all week
And entertaining out-of-town friends
Last night and marching in the antiwar
Demo this afternoon on a sunny winter’s
Day. We showed up because we knew
We’d never be as tired as our troops
In Iraq , and because we want them out
Of there. We showed up out of habit
Because we marched in the winter
Of ’03 to try to prevent the war
And in ’05 and ’06 to try to stop the war
And yesterday we showed up, like sheep,
To try again to end the war. We joined aging
Veterans of protest against Vietnam
And the first Gulf War, peacenik
Teachers and students, old Trots
And Socialists, even members
Of the Revolutionary Communist Party,
USA —all of us smelling of must or mothballs,
Needing a haircut or shave, bundled
Up against the late-winter chill,
Barely able to keep the antiwar chants
Going a full minute, hoisting our placards
At a thread of spectators, a few clapping
But most gawking like out-of-towners
At this ragtag spectacle of druids
Performing their vernal rites long
After their religion had obsolesced.
Four years after Shock and Awe
Slammed Baghdad and shook our faith,
Six years after our war leaders were sworn
In, and three months after the Dems took over
Congress and changed not a thing,
We showed up again, our hope as threadbare
As the clothes of the oldest Lefties on parade.



George Held's chapbook W Is for War (Cervena Barva Press, 2006) contains two poems nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

by Victoria Day


The US Government reminds me a lot of my ex-husband.
        This is not a compliment to either.

Violence is their shared language.
        The desire to control everything, everyone around them invades every fiber of their personalities.
Force, the weapon of the weak, is their weapon of first choice.

Both are Bullies.

Saturated with dangerous power
        and damaged by paranoia.
Acting in ways that they can defend as rational
        but disconnected from the real-life consequences
of their actions,
        they reap unacknowledged tragedies
                and leave their devastations
                        like slug-trails
behind them,
        messes for others to clean up and live with and somehow, survive.

They are men that have no idea
        that compromise, as a concept, requires a movement,
                                a risk,
                                        a sacrifice
from
all
sides.

Nor do they understand that their risk,
        their sacrifice, must
really matter,
must be an honest offering,
        a giving up of something valuable.
Without this knowledge, their gestures of peace, are by their very nature, hollow
                of any truth.

My ex-husband
        And the men who run my government
both seem to live in a mindset, a black or white duality,
        where it is imperative to create the
desperately desired
                 illusion of rightness.
And to balance their world view, they create

                a monster

one who carries the weight
of the responsibility for all
that is wrong
in their world.

Addicted,
        obsessed with their insatiable need for satisfaction,
        willfully forcing themselves into other’s lives,
        irresponsibly consuming the life blood of others,
        over bloated, pompous, selfish and dangerous
        commanding, demanding order and perfection from others
        while willfully failing to take care of their own.

My ex-husband behaves a lot like my government,
        and this morning I wake
        feeling very connected to the people of Iraq.


Victoria Day is a priestess, mother, dancer, creatrix and activist doing her best to work and play in a spot of purple-tinted blue in the middle of a very red state. All that she does is connected with, inspired by and a homage to her deep belief in the Divine and the necessity for peace in our lives.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

by David Chorlton


A tree fell while you were sleeping
and it was the last of its kind
in the last plot in which
such a tree can grow. Some birds flew away from it
without knowing where to land
and have not been seen
since the sun cast the tree’s last shadow
like an arm reaching
to grip the earth. And unbeknownst to you
in the night, warships
gathered at the coast of a country
regarded as an ally yesterday and an enemy
today as the first attack begins
in the name of a cause
which seems not to concern you and even
if it did you have been forbidden to object
due to a law that passed at midnight
when you thought you were dreaming.
While you were sleeping
your house was condemned, your assets
were seized, and your clothes were taken away
as evidence of a crime
yet to be identified. The forecast for today
is cool at first, then warmer. No measurable wind.
Good morning.


David Chorlton plans to take poetry to local nature festivals this springtime and hopes to find a way to an audience unused to poetry but aware of the beauty in wildlife. He goes into the Arizona landscape to be refreshed after too much exposure to bad news in the city and teaches a weekly writing class for seniors of all ages in Scottsdale.

A SCANDAL HERE, A SCANDAL THERE

by Chris Vierck


I.

Joe said there's no uranium:
you're talking out your ass.
Dick got wind of it and said,
"Boys we got us a job to do;
go stab that man's
woman
in the back!"

A scandal here, a scandal there,
we've got more scandals
than grandma's got cats!

Tell me, how does feel, Mr. Fibby?
tell me how does it feel, when Dick
buries the the blade in fast,
gives it a turn,
and makes you dance,
a puppet on a stick?

II.

Ohhhh, tell me now, tell me true,
we've gotta support our troops:
shut your mouth you lovers
of Iraq!

We love our boys,
we adore our girls, we love them through and through...
just...never mind, the toxic mold
or the scurrying of fury little
rats.

A scandal here, a scandal there,
we've got more scandals
than Tony Snow's got facts!

III.

Halliburton got our bucks
the US attorneys got the axe,
the whole country's got a wheel
stuck in the track...

Quick, somebody find the wizard!
Dick needs a heart that actually ticks;
Karl needs a soul, not oily black;
Scooter needs more memory
than yer average fish! And W,
our boy W, needs more
fodder boys to curtain
his bloody act.


Chris Vierck is a poet who lives and writes in North Carolina.

AFTER ST. PATRICK’S DAY

by Lee Patton


The green dye's already cast
among plastic beer cups, trashed.
Steel wind lacerates, a lenten
knife slicing all pleasures.
Crows chase robins off branches
barren as paper accords unsigned,
dropped on hungover lovers in the park
who rend remnants of loyalty and regard:
"You've become a vulture, Patrick."
"And you, Megan? A parasite."

The two played Irish last night, lucky,
shamrocked, plucked from contention
into Guinness and joshing and sentiment.
The bar hummed with dancing lephrechauns
and shameless tries at broad brogues
from those Kevins, Mollys, and Seans
whose only Emerald Isle is a green-crepe
aisle at Safeway pitching dyed daisies.
Swilling from the passing pitchers,
innocent of Bloody Sunday, Falls Road, Brit
bombardment, fungal famine, indentures--
they raised mugs and pinched the greenless,
then bore homeward real Irish drunkenness.

Every holiday breeds its afterbirth,
sterile tomorrows--say, March eighteenth.
Like a fertile island waking to hunger,
the day's vector’s lost, its tide out,
its pantries empty, its final treaties sunk.
Pat and Megan prowl the park, ache-headed,
locked in civil combat, when--begorra!--
where clouds abate over the foothills,
skeins of snow sift like trigger fingers
unclenched to sprinkle sugar over the bliss
of a union too sweet for rancor. Across
a border long wired and mined,
they reach to risk a kiss.


Among several sites and quarterlies that have published Lee Patton's work: Country Mouse, Innisfree, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The California Quarterly, and Hawaii-Pacific Review. Among many anthologies: Hawaii-Pacific Review’s Best of Decade, XY-Files, including the title poem in What’s Become of Eden: Poems of Family at Century’s End. Among other literary activities and awards: Finalist the 2001 Lambda Awards for best novel (Nothing Gold Can Stay), 2006 Colorado Authors League short fiction award, The Borderlands Playwrights Prize in 1993 (The Houseguest) and the 1996 Ashland New Playwrights (Orwell in Orlando).

COMMUNITY SERVICE

by Jan C. Snow


In no way sought, the knowledge that
Anna Nicole Smith was buried in a pink gown
from a pink church in the Bahamas
is slathered on the surface of my brain like margarine.
I did not want or need to but DO know these things.
Standing at my kitchen window
scanning the dirty snow outside

I pour a cup of coffee and wonder how it is
I know about the pink church, I know about
the pink dress and do not as effortlessly know
how many were killed today, how many
bombed, maimed, burned, how many
kidnapped and murdered last week,
how many this month, this year, this war?

I check the front page for a box score
and find the weather. I flick a switch
and stock quotes crawl across the screen
where names of the forever young should be.
I turn a knob and hear the horrible cost - of
Paul McCartney’s divorce -


If this were a charity drive, there would be
a sign on the lawn of city hall with
figures updated every day,
a bar graph, a shaded pie chart or red
rising in a giant thermometer,
red rising as we all give
so generously to the campaign.


Jan C. Snow writes in Lakewood, Ohio, one city west of Cleveland on the Great Lake Erie. She has published widely in a variety of venues and is heard regularly on “Weekend Radio.” Among her recent honors are a Pushcart Prize nomination and an Ohio Poetry Day award.

HIGH TIDES AND MISDEMEANORS

by Jon Wesick


On the jetty waves thunder by, while I search
for an image to hang my understanding on. Awareness
floats with glittering ice crystals in the stratosphere.
Each a unique hexagon frozen from the contrail
of a bomber pregnant with a cargo of ruined bridges,
severed limbs, and bawling orphans. Only the safely dead
escape the rumble of Katyusha rockets and 500-lb bombs.

Who assigns good and evil? And according to whose interests?
The president plays liar’s poker with the Washington press corps,
while minions dispatch cans of brutal aid. “Want Jesus with that?”
Business paints the rainbow gray. If you don’t like it, join the hungry
watching Paris Hilton stub out a cigarette in uneaten cheesecake.

Back in the courtyard of hurt feelings, poet’s words limp in iambs –
drag, step, drag, step, drag, step. How hard it is to sing,
when I must sing of terror. Yet I light candles in sacred dances
cursing the raven to come forward. Eyes soaked in the blood of tears,
I will print no line before its time.


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.

LIBBY IS CANNED

by Robert Emmett


libby is canned!
the crass boot of swift
retribution deflected for a
velvet-slippered toe nudge
expertly applied to his pensionless
butt off-shore account all lawyered-
up con job certified cell-free
libby is canned!
talking head sampled
lip-sync bullshit flushed
out the pipeline fully vetted
spun in the echo chamber
with just enough reverb
to air brush dry side up
libby is canned!
packed tight vacuum
sucked heat treated
steel-processed enclosed
labeled and dosed
for longer shelf life light-
less nutrient content
libby is canned
‘cause nobody said he can’t


Robert Emmett paws through the dry goods and waits for the coming of a better greenery in the melting woods of Michigan.

YOUTH BEFORE DUTY

by Norman Ball


For casting death as something swell,
an elder statesman serves quite well
As for their part, the young excel
at marching headlong into Hell.


Norman Ball is a Virginia-based musician and writer.

DELTA FORCE

by George Held


The Delta Zeta newsletter wants to “put an end
to the media circus that is undermining
the educational experience, and causing
undo emotional stress and damage for all parties.”

That must be the educational experience
that caused the misspelling of “undue”
and the use of “for” for “to” after “damage.”
No, let’s not let the cliché “media circus” do

more damage to the education of Delta Zetes,
who claim they were mistreated when the Times
reported the National had forced the Local
to purge itself of its diversity—the Oriental,

the fat, the black, the ugly, and the drudge
who spends her time studying instead
of putting on makeup and putting out
for the Dekes and Betas. Hey, don’t misjudge

these gals—they just want to be proud of their House.
Who wants to be seen on campus with a loser
instead of a blonde beauty or a bouncy brunette?
Oh, excuse the stereotypes. It’s just the Greeks

have a way of molding frat men in the image
of Adonis and sorority girls as Helen of Troy.
Oh boy! And don’t we pick our friends by the way
they look and dress and walk and talk—as much

like us as possible? And how can diversity
compete with all those hand-in-hand Greek
couples who look like real brothers and sisters?
Now, that’s what I call campus harmony.


George Held publishes widely online and in print. His tenth collection of poems, The Art of Writing and Others, will appear from Finishing Line Press this year. He lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, Cheryl.

PI FANS TO MEET MARCH 14

by Rochelle Ratner


3.14.The sun, the globe, the full moon, the tire, the mandala. It's a world of circles. She learned this in Colonel Clymie's geometry class, her sophomore year of high school, before she felt abandoned by the other students, outcast, weird. She quit school at fifteen. Now she reads of a fifteen year-old girl who can rattle off the first fifty digits, half of what her father can recite, and her father's proud of her. A man recites Pi, 1000 numbers at a time, into a tape recorder, then gives it high and low notes, the rhythms of a Mozart composition. A poet mixes in numbers with lines from Prufrock or The Raven. 3.1415. Just making it from today to tomorrow.


Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Balancing Acts (Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.