WATER'S MIRROR

by Becky Harblin


The quiet morning,
holds her
hands out to birds
just fledged,
gently calming
the air,
readying for first
flight.
The water’s mirror
reflecting the world,
a mirror broken
by rising steam,
the heat that takes
us to our angry place,
our lowly spots,
our greed for singularity,
wanting to own the rights
to God and oil.
The mirror
broken, nothing but
bad luck now.


Becky Harblin, a sculptor who works in concrete and soapstone also writes daily haiku and senryu. Each morning starts with these meditative short "in-the-moment' poems. Becky lives on a farm with sheep in a rural county in upstate New York. After years of working in Manhatten, she moved to the more pastoral setting where life is no less demanding but offers different observations and opportunities. Her poetry has been published on New Verse News, and North Country Literary Journal.

THIS TASTELESS, FECKLESS LIFE

by Earl J. Wilcox

Researchers say people with the inability to smell or taste some spices and certain fruit show signs of early onset of Alzheimer’s.

--Charlotte Observer, July 2007

Granulated sugar mixed with cinnamon sprinkled
freely on lavishly buttered piece of plain white bread---

One tiny yellow lemon, grown on grandmother’s back-
yard tree, juice enough to flood deep-fried calamari---

Slowly eaten morsels of thin-sliced banana, as if this
were the last meal before dying, before taste disappears---

Yesterday the toast, today the lemon, tomorrow bananas---
gone like recollections from this moment’s metaphors.


Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

DEMONCRAZY

by Charles Frederickson


Haunted off-White House dispelling gee-wizardry
        Spooky diabolic spirits plaguing never-neverland
                Hairy plotter secret horror chamber
                        Wronged uncivil rights defying passage

Extraordinary privileged claims just-ice meltdown
        Warlocks’ brewed concoctions shackling freedoms
                Preferring fake-believe to wondrous true-lies
                        Unflinching faith in self-indulgent fantasies

Grasp what really is pragmatism
        Rather than persisting in delusion
                However satisfying and reassuring distinguishing
                        Easy speculation from hard fact

Fundamental insights delve within anima
        Challenging whatever is purportedly unchangeable
                Grateful for brief magnificent lifespan
                        Maximizing wisdom seeing the light

Prophetic skeptics fiendish wannabe deities
        Spinning rigged wheel of misfortune
                In Gold Wet Rust hypocrisy
                        Private hotline to God disconnected


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.

A WAR FOR GOLDILOCKS

by Robert M. Chute


Can a war be just the right size?
You need intermediate numbers:
X killed, Y wounded ( —Z enemies).
Not too many in any one town
so every casualty will have their
time on TV, their newspaper story,
not just a name on a boring list
down the side of a page. Family, friends,
grieve of course, others imagine
combat's hot adrenalin rush or
celebrate vicarious virtual sacrifice.
Baseball scores scroll the screen
while we watch the latest reality show:
this war that is just the right size.


Robert M. Chute’s book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, poetry based on scientific articles, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. He is presently preparing a new chapbook, Settling In, about the settling of what is now Windham, Maine, where his ancestor, Thomas Chute, was the first settler in 1738.

IRAQ: DANIEL NEVER CAME BACK

by Hanoch Guy


I

Yesterday I shot a pine tree
A rolling rock on the road.
My hand on the trigger day and night
Since I flew off my humvee in Mansura.
My eyes arrow
Every veil and kaffiya.
I volunteered to go on night patrol
So I would find and kill.

I sleep with my M-16
Another gun under my pillow.
May tremble but I am fit.
Behind any corner shadows lurk insurgents
Even at Fourth and Indiana.
I drive alert for threats.
Kids of ten are a menace to our force.
Wailing women masked gunmen
Even beggars, cripples ambush us.
Miss my platoon.
We would hunt together with infrared scopes
Find them spray them with gunfire.

Here at Fourth and Indiana I fortify my house
With sand bags, guns and piles of ammo
Lest they would come behead me.

Yesterday I shot a pine tree
Today a rolling rock.


II

You are absent 13 and one-half times
Submitted only 50% exercises on time.
I know, Professor, and I can prove to you
That statistics are in my blood.
Some I left in Mansura.
70% of the trees scorched.
77% of the water contaminated.
For every one employed seven shot.
The graph of casualties climbs up steeply
With every passing day.
I can project the graph tearing the page and disappearing.
The maimed and damaged are ten fold the dead.

Professor, I know I missed half the sessions
And 40 % of the assignments.
Consider that I am incoherent, foggy and delirious 21 hours a day.

Huge rats in rotting alleys chasing me
Into indiscrete bars.

I am living apart from my town.
My ten thousand mates and me did not come back
Are still in Kabla, Mansura Jabaliya patrolling dusty roads
Blown up by IEDS 55% of the time.
Professor, can you understand?
It’s not the course I flunked.
I am the dark logic
That cannot fit me into
Correlations, probability, or causation.


Hanoch Guy, a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English, was borm in Israel. His poems have been published in Poetica, The International Journal of Genocide Studies, TM poetry, Visions International and other magazines,He is an Emeritus Professor of literature in Temple University. His Iraq poem is from his working collection: Poems of the Middle East.

PLUS ULTRA

by Esther Greenleaf Murer


The results came back from the hospital tests:
"Collapsed bladder grossly unremarkable."
Well excuse me, Mr. Hospital, for having
such an insufferably boring bladder.
Sorry it grossed you out, but these things
do happen. Whole cultures collapse unheeded,
eclipsed by the glare of golden arches.
Species become extinct and nobody notices.
The polar ice caps fragment into the sea
and the President declares it a non-event.
Our civil liberties crash before our eyes
and we yawn and switch channels.
So I guess I can (sigh) expect the HMO
to deny my claim: "We are not amused."


Esther Greenleaf Murer lives in Philadelphia. At 72, she considers herself an emerging poet. Her poems have appeared most recently in Types & Shadows, Light, and New Verse News, and more are forthcoming on The Ghazal Page.

SHADOWS OF THE EVENING

by Nancy Kenney Connolly


Kurtz multiplies like maggots---

how bituminous the sky
that stokes the stars' outcry

                    seven hundred thirty-seven bases
                    not counting
                    installations in Etcetera

Crowned in plastic wreaths---

how odorous the offal
of fabricated laurel

                    in one hundred thirty-two countries
                    not counting
                    failed Etceteras

and, even as the darkness crawls,
who or what writes on the walls---


Nancy Kenney Connolly lives in Austin TX, though she will soon move to the Chapel Hill area of NC. Her poetry has been published in such journals as Asheville Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Concho River Review, The Lyric, Sycamore Review, and many others. She has three books, most recently Second Wind, and a chapbook, I Take This World, winner of the Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest.

RECLINER SAVES MAN WHO WAS SHOT IN HEAD

by Rochelle Ratner

You never got to recline
in the maternal tradition,
I never let you.

--James Tate, "For Mother on Father's Day"

When they first met, it was the only comfortable place to sit in his apartment. The sofa with its springs popping out. A single typing chair. The bed with a hotel mattress twenty years old before it came to him. His apartment with the one blood-orange wall everyone assumed would make it cheerful. The recliner had been his parents' gift, the desk chair came from his brother. She was an only child. And those first nights they'd curl up in the recliner, tv on as a background excuse for them cuddling there. Then over time the tv began taking over. They watched the space shuttle crash and the start of the Gulf War. They watched OJ's Ford Explorer driving alone on the highway. She complained of his fat stomach and he retorted that it certainly wasn't from her cooking. They bought a new sofa. She stocked Halloween treats for the neighbor children which he dug his grubby hands into. He made a tv dinner for himself the one night she was out with a friend and he put it in the oven upside down, on purpose. Grudgingly, he lifted the recliner back so she could vacuum under it. He watched football. He drank Heineken. He burped. She went into the kitchen which still had the smell of burnt plastic, opened the drawer, then stood behind him. The safety was halfway down the field with an interception. He ran to a neighbor's.


Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Leads (Otoliths Press, 2007), 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.

CAREFREE

by Barbara Eknoian


The boys, first and second graders,
play in the pool.
The six-year-old has to stand
on tiptoes to keep the water
below his mouth.
They place Styrofoam noodles
between their legs and pretend
they’re riding horses.
Jordan floats on his back
dreaming up a game.
“Let’s play you can be anyone
you want to be in the world.”
Then he whispers in Tai’s ear.
They both laugh.
I overhear “Tony Hawk,”
“Cat Woman.”
Jordan says,
“Cat Woman isn’t real.”
Fate allowed them to be born
in mild, sunny California .
No need to alarm them
that the world beyond
their backyard is unstable.
The war in Iraq ,
children just killed
in Afghanistan .
They don’t know the word,
hunger, as the children do
in Darfur or Malawi .
They row across the pool
on large tire floats,
splashing and laughing.
For now,
their juice and cookies
are set on the table
in the shade of the gazebo.


Barbara Eknoian is the first recipient of the 2002 Jane Buel Bradley Chapbook Award for her chapbook, Jerkumstances. She attends Donna Hilbert’s poetry workshops in Long Beach, CA.

IN THE SANCTUARY

by Lillian Baker Kennedy


For July Fourth, 2007
From Cook Street, Auburn, State of Maine, USA


The lime-green swatch of light over the boundary patch, reflects off Geoffrey,
our muted statuary, an otter in a tuxedo, standing erect, hands on hips. He peers

over his pince-nez staring down the empty chaise beneath the apple tree’s branch.
A Willie Nelson Sunday, the radio volume lowered, to let the birds sing louder.

One darkened gray alights on the maple, its immature limb leaving space
for a pause pitched (in just the right angle) - to frame a profile.

What’s wrong with this
that I should pause to sing

the cotton candy roses leaning lax, reaching out over mint to suburban streets,
the foliage-dense surround, the Great White Pine nestled in its needled bed?

The dog’s half-hare lies abandoned on the back porch deck,
remnant of a frisky tug of war. Should I ask for more

than a faint cat-call or the unseen chirp,
tree-tops rustling like Civil War skirts?

The forecast uncertain, the clouds mass up, but bright cerulean
breaks through - smudge in the overhang.

A sudden, furious barking backs off an intruder. A midnight-blue stalker
saunters its reply receding down the long dirt drive. All is still

but for the creaking limbs, the warbling wind. How full the garden,
strained at the seams by Queen Anne’s Lace nudging the roses’ knees.
And should I be thankful

for French toast, the energy to make breakfast after a night of dreams
tossed off, rolling over to sleep in the softness of sheets,
to dream again? Let there be a name

for duty to give thanks
however the din is dimmed.

I take this pen as my taper,
the backyard pursed in my coffers.

The wooden couplet swings,
pews for America’s shades.

I eat
and give thanks.

And yes, the evening bursts fireworks sounding death-knells
and shadowy flags seemingly remnants of better selves,

but not today.
Now, beholden

to those who are dying in their own sweet nectar’s
clotted throats, I salute them

and tell them, without judgment
of the good or evil of men’s ways,

the sun broke through on the white, almost funereal, blossoms
and lifted a spray of nostalgia.

For youth, I won’t be afraid
to go there.

Oh flag of thirteen stars, I see your circle. I hear your snare drum,
the strap crossed over the puffed, immature chest of fear and bravery.

And what youth might be lost if I don’t do my duty
coming of age in the churchyard of my bounty?

On Cook Street, America, not on her knees,
but straight - up the thorniest stalks,

one of yours reaps what you sowed,
a dream not always awake.

A promise falters, stumbles
and gets back up –

like here, in the garden, one of yours
(perhaps an apostate) deposits her courage.

Lit wick – spark saying grace.


Lillian Baker Kennedy, a 2005 Pushcart nominee, author of Tomorrow After Night (Bay River Press, 2003) and Notions (Pudding House, 2004), lives next to wild roses in Auburn, Maine.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

by Mary Saracino


Declare your independence from iniquitous

leaders who commute jail time

into a loyal good-ole-boy slap on the wrist,

who circumvent truth to reign un-reined,

who muddy facts to perpetrate power,

instill fear, control the future,

who close their ears to the beating of their own hearts,

avert their eyes from the human suffering that ensues,

who deny global warming and endanger life on Earth,

who brandish independent thought as unpatriotic,

and misinterpret democracy as the rule of the few

no matter what the voices of the many proclaim.

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet and memoir writer who lives in Denver, CO. Her most recent novel, The Singing of Swans, was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards finalist. For more information visit www.pearlsong.com or www.marysaracino.com.

SCOOTER SKATES

by Chris Vierck


If you ever commit a crime
don't worry, you'll never pay
        not a penny,
        not a nickel,
nary so much as a solitary dime;
here's how you budding cowboys
can break the law and still go free...free...free.

First, get yourself a conservative badge
and then we'll do the rest: we'll nail a pair of scooter skates
               directly
        to the souls of your feet.

You must know we're always happy to go to prison....
        and throw open the doors!
Hooray, hooray, hooray! Oh, how you'll fly!
Hooray, hooray, hooray! Oh, how you'll soar!
(And step all over everybody else screaming
FREEZE MOTHERFUCKER, FACE TO THE FLOOR!)

Oh, the laws you can break with scooter skates!
Come on now y'all, you should give them a try!

Oh the heavens you'll grace with scooter skates,
Places like the White House where US laws... never apply.

Hey, I know something we can do while we're there!
Let's rape the constitution, and burn the Geneva convention!
Who needs those uselss things? Those hideous inventions!
Now I don't want to alarm anybody, that's clearly not my intent.
Laws, my dear friend are deathly important! Yes sir, YES SIR!!!!
We're conservatives, true believers in law and order---
                for degenerates
        like those dirty
                rotten
        wall scaling lepers

who hail from south of the border!


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

MR. WANNING’S FIELD: DECLARATIONS & OBSERVANCES

(the Seconds of July, 2006-2007)


by Patricia Ranzoni

There were other expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, particularly that which called the King tyrant. I thought this too personal, for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his courtiers on both sides of the Atlantic, and in his official capacity, only, cruel.

--John Adams
on the writing of the Declaration of Independence

On the morning news, Cokie Roberts wears red, white and blue
to remind us today’s the actual anniversary of the Declaration
it took to the 4th to get quilled, roughed up, argued and scratched out.
The “talking heads” argue how the founders stood fast for Amendment One:
no more fear of publishing against a king, no more king! Even daring
to debate how our Supreme Court, after crowning a hard-to-believe one
after that failed election a few hard-to-believe years ago, pulled him up short
the other day saying we didn’t mean that. No blank check (hunting partners
and faith brethren dissenting).

In noon steam we pull on cotton, heading for Blue Hill
where the berries (picnic cooks are fixing with red ones
and whipped cream stripes on cakes) are swelling not with pride
but their pure nature up the mountain overlooking the pretty white life
along the bay, cemeteries along Penobscot waving new Old Glories
for the vets among the flowers. Fields at Horsepower Farm standing ground,
and piles of next year’s wood and choppers of next year’s wood,
hard at it all along the road, splitting what they believe in.

Rufus Wanning’s field worth a fortune left alone like this
smack on the road down to town. What some would give...
he gives to something hard to name for the sake of names.

White bandage sized flags ripple by the thousands in the harbor wind
more like miniature linens on the miniature clotheslines
of the miniature women seen, say, from heaven, who take in
miniature laundries every summer, than sails of the miniature privileged
navigating off shore right through this war.

Windrows not of hay but of holy ghosts, numbered and called out loud.
Thousands of relations cried, stuttered, whispered over the miniature pasture.

Miniature angry, reverent people leave off chores to tend it, mowing
in shifts. Other miniature angry, reverent people abhor it. Some,
who may never have known unelected hunger, fast on the town lawn
to stop it. Some, knowing only what they know, grill hot dogs downwind
to stop it. All with miniature breaking hearts doing their best.
Miniature Democrats and Republicans. Miniature Liberals and Conservatives.
Miniature Nothings and Nobodies. Miniature Revolutionaries and Loyalists.
Miniature Patriots and Disciples not stopping it.

All believing. All beloved. All looking alike, from heaven or hell,
to the killed in action and maybe God.


Patricia Smith Ranzoni writes from one of the subsistence farms of her youth in the heart of American Revoluton land. A mixed-blood Yankee, her unschooled poetry has been published across the United States and abroad, is used by Colby College's "Many Maines" course, and is drawn from by the University of Maine Orono's departments of English and history. Puckerbrush Press published Claiming (1995) and Settling (2000) which are included in the summer exhibit, "Turning the Page, Writing Castine" in Castine, Maine, her maternal ancestral ground. Sheltering Pines Press published Only Human ~ Poems from the Atlantic Flyway in 2005. She has poems in The Other Side of Sorrow: Poets Speak Out about Conflict, War, and Peace (Poetry Society of New Hampshire, 2006) and participates as she can with regional efforts toward peace and justice.

iPHONE HYSTERIA

or BELLS PALSY,
or CAN WE TALK?

by Ken Fisher


Alexander Graham must be convulsing in his grave
As you show me what technology has sold you
Thinner than a baseball card, not much bigger than a sponge
All that one could want, packed into microscopic circuits
It organizes every detail of your overwhelming life
It talks you through your panic when you’re lost
It schedules the maintenance for your SUV
And downloads every i tune at your whim
You can watch a movie, squinting at your two inch screen
You can piss your life away playing mindless games
You can surf for endless porn (a hand-held miracle!)
And take a quick snapshot beneath some unsuspecting skirt
The one thing that you can’t do, is place a clear, crisp call
That people might be capable of understanding
And that is why you stand before me now, for yesterday
I couldn’t comprehend one word of your garbled message
So though you’re proud to text “your five” with boring, endless drivel
You paced the sidewalk searching for a spot with good reception
Me- I’d rather use two cans stretched taut along a string
For the answer to Joan Rivers’ question, now, is “No, we can’t”
But only I seem bothered by the static


Ken Fisher has been writing poetry for over thirty years. Some of his recent publishing credits include The Well Tempered Sonnet, The Performance Poets Association Literary Review, Poetic Hours, Westward Quarterly, and For Loving Precious Beast, an anthology of pet poems by Purple Sage Press.