OBAMA NATION

by Earl J. Wilcox


Presidential candidate, Senator Obama, arrived
in town today, an entourage of media twerps
tagging along to swell the crowd, catch a glimpse
of a major voice in this next election cycle.
Obama spoke at the Freedom Center, now an
African-American church but decades ago a
center of activities in the Civil Rights Movement.
In those days, the Freedom Center housed the First
Baptist Church---lily white, angst-driven Old South
folks who did their fair share you can bet to prevent
Obama’s predecessors from eating at the Woolworth
lunch counter just down the street, about a block away.
The First Baptist Church moved to the suburbs.
Freedom Center remains near its roots.


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.

SOME WOMEN JUST GIVE UP

by Diane Kendig

Some women just give up—they refuse to wear makeup or color their hair and end up looking more like a grandmother than a mother. That’s just not me! --Lynda, 52 in “Good Looks: Beauty, Fitness, News, Deals, Trends," Good Housekeeping, May 2007.

Some women just give up—they refuse to bleach their skin or straighten their hair and end up looking so African-American. That’s just not me.

--Fiona, age 37

Some women just give up—they refuse rhinoplasty or highlighting and end up looking so Jewish. That’s just not me.

-- Rachel, age 43

I know. Like some girls I know just give up. They refuse to give up meals and embrace their anorexia and like, they end up looking so fat, like my sister, who’s 107 pounds now.

--Ana, age 19

Well some women just give up and refuse to have children. They end up looking more like a godmother than a grandmother. That’s just not me.

--Glynda, age 87

Some women just give up—they refuse to curl their hair or streak it and end up looking more like a Native American than a real American. That’s just not me!

--Marilyn, age 60

Some women just live up—they refuse to look hard enough for a man and end up looking like a Lesbian. That’s just not me!

--Nicole—call me Nick, age 24

Some women just give up—they refuse electrolysis of facial hair and end up looking more like Frida Kahlo than Diego Rivera. That’s just not me!

--Lillian, age 72

Some women just give up—they refuse facelifts and botox and end up revealing their emotions. That’s just not me!

--Oriana, age 34

Some editors just give up. They refuse to separate advertising from content and end up looking more like a pimp than a publisher. That’s not for me!

--Diane, age 57

Diane Kendig, a poet, writer, and translator, is author of three chapbooks, most recently Greatest Hits, 1978-2000 (Pudding House). Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in the journals Colere, Ekphrasis, Minnesota Review, Mid-America, U.S. 1 and Slant, among others, as well as the anthologies Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn and Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and their Working-Class Parents. A recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships in Poetry, a Fulbright lectureship in translation, and a Yaddo Fellowship, she currently lives in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her website is at http://dianekendig.com/.

HEADLINERS & LEGENDS

by Aaron O. Gillego


O J Simpson gets arrested as Hillary Clinton unveils her universal health care plan. It’s 1994 and my father sits there with his dialysis machine, watching Peter Jennings on World News Tonight. On the dining table, I work on Ms. DiLeo’s world map contest for the 8th grade Social Studies class. There are new nations to color in like Namibia, the Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and old ones that I don’t know how to label: Myanmar or Burma, the CIS or the USSR. Nations that had once been there have disappeared as if wiped out by a nuclear bomb or as if their existence didn’t matter. The U.S.A is still red, white and blue….and the Philippines just yellow traces on the corner of a map, next to the legend that’s supposed to make things easily understood: that an international border is a solid line, a provincial border is a dotted line…That’s how I viewed the map in front of me, as my father soaked in the news of the world.

Now in 2007, I watch the news anchored by a woman: OJ Simpson gets arrested as Hillary Clinton unveils her universal health care plan. The news doesn’t get old as I do. They show a provincial map of Iraq where war rages on—and there’s a legend that draws the lines in the desert sand, lines that are blurred by blood.


Aaron O. Gillego, 27, graduated summa cum laude (B.A. in English) from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, where he was a recipient of the Corazon C. Aquino Scholarship. He received a fellowship to finish his M.F.A. in Creative Writing (May 2007) at the University of Miami. He resides in Miami Beach, FL and teaches high school English at Toras Emes Academy, where he has worked for four years.

TAP DANCERS REQUIRED

Visual by Jeff Crouch
Text by Christopher Woods


Christopher Woods is the author of a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a collection of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His play, Moonbirds, about doomed census-takers at work in an uninhabited desert country, received its New York City premiere at Personal Space Theatrics. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill , Texas .

Jeff Crouch is an internet artist; he lives in Grand Prairie, Texas . Google “Jeff Crouch” to see what he currently has on the internet or go to: http://www.blueprintreview.de/6jeff_crouch.htm.

PLAGUE YEARS

by George Held

And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof
and goodness thereof; but when ye entered ye defiled my land
and made mine heritage an abomination —Jeremiah 2.7

And verily I say unto you that a nation
Brings a curse upon itself
That allows an outlaw leader
To waste its treasure and its warriors’ lives
And limbs on distant wars spawned of lies
And negligence and that visits death
And destruction on innocents; a nation
Whose merchants hawk sugary food and drink
So its people suffer the plagues of obesity
And diabetes; that fails to offer medical care
To its citizens so that they suffer the plague
Of rotting teeth and all manner of disease;
That lets its citizens fall homeless to live
In cars and on streets and suffer soaking rain
In fall and spring, bitter cold in winter,
And broiling sun in summer; that turns its mad
Out of asylums and into the streets,
That curses its poor, its deviant, its non-
Believers; that fails to rebuild where its negligence
Has caused devastation; that expects its courts
To uphold government fiats, and that violates
Treaties signed with allies; a nation that turns
A blind eye on abuses by polluters of air
And water, that lets its leader undermine
Fair elections and invite malfeasance
By cronies with no qualifications
But closeness to the leader. And verily I say
That the plagues the gods heaped on the House
Of Atreus for its hubris and that God unleashed
Upon the Israelites for breaking the covenant
Shall be no strangers to the land that has favored
Personal pleasure and gain over the health
Of the commonweal, shredding the social contract:
That nation not only will suffer such plagues
And worse but will suffer that which it has caused
Its victims—a return to life
That is violent, nasty, brutish, and short.


George Held has previously contributed to The New Verse News. His new collection of poems, The Art of Writing and Others, is available at www.finishinglinepress.com.

WHAT THE MOON SAID

by R.L. Greenfield


diana of wales died ten yrs ago.
she predicted she’d die young in a crash.
she felt her impending disappearance
from the radiant earth-----she was radiant
& attracted to the grand opposite.
she & dodi al-fayed departed together
in a sleek mercedes-benz.
i sat up all night watching cnn
as news & propaganda trickled in.
what does it mean?
‘nothing’ happened:
the car crashed & the watch began.
nobody entered the mercedes-benz
to lift diana out of the car.
the cops & photographers were transfixed.
they stared & stared & stared:
diana was alive alone & traumatized.
the world stood still at the end of the tunnel
in paris, france 31 august 1997.
the world watched diana pass over the border
into the great void.
& then everyone came out of the houses
to celebrate with songs & flowers & paintings
& graffiti: there was no stopping them.
the masses thundered over the lawns
& parking lots out into the streets of great britain.
they waved banners & pounded guitars
they drank bottled water or snorted coke
they sang love songs & read poems & kissed.
it was open mike time in the house of commons
the lords & ladies wept for their sins.
there was a mighty hurricane of guilt unleashed
as pupils prepared to go back to school
for the first day of classes of the fall term.
every student would be assigned to write
an essay: What The Moon Said The Night
Diana Of Wales Died.


R.L. Greenfield's poems have been published in many U.S. reviews & journals. A few of them are The Wallace Stevens Journal, The New York Quarterly, The Minnesota Review, The Wormwood Review & Poetry/LA. He received an NEA fellowship in literature in 1995 for a manuscript of poems. That year he founded a television series in Santa Barbara called The Greenfield Code devoted to literature & the creative act. A few of the program's guests have been the poets Eavan Boland, Wanda Coleman, & Shirley Lim-Geok. R.L. Greenfield often reads his poems in L.A. & thereabouts.

CASA HILDA

by David Chorlton


Welcome to San Jose. Breakfast
is at seven. Papaya. Coffee. Conversation
in the language of your choice:
                                                            German
to describe the turtles on the coast
or faltering Spanish for us
to make a friendly gesture and sidestep
talking politics.
                                        There are books
for the visitor to read beside the chairs
downstairs:
                                        an Austrian novel too long
for short stays, some elegant French, Time
magazine, and the first ever guide to the birds
of Costa Rica, compiled by an American
thirty years ago when reproducing photographs
turned them misty
                                        but the author’s dedication
to the flowerpiercer and euphonia
survives in letterpress. Touch the page
and feel the wells made by the type
before Americans felt the need to apologise
for what their president is doing.


David Chorlton lives in Phoenix, writes and paints and keeps track of local wildlife. His newest book, The Porous Desert, was published this summer by FutureCycle Press, and testifies to his having internalised the desert during the past twenty-nine years. Some of his art work can be seen at http://www.davidchorlton.mysite.com/.

THE PUNCHING BAG

by Rochelle Ratner


As a four-year-old he had a Superman punching bag. Then, when he turned seven, he pleaded for a Wonder Woman bag but his parents refused him. He wanted to punch his parents. When he was nine they gave him a heavy, professional, leather TKO punching bag. TKO: Technical Knock Out. Not one of those hanging bags that you see in gyms, but a floor model as tall as he was. A real man's bag, his father called it. And for the next month he beat up on it, then joined the Little League and lost interest. His father and older brother carried the bag to the basement. Then he took advanced science in seventh grade and decided to measure the effect water which sometimes drained into the basement had on the sand or pellets inside the punching bag. He unzipped the back. Bras, panties, thongs, and stockings tumbled out. He ran upstairs, choking with the smell. He stared at his mother.


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.

AN I FOR AN I

by Charles Frederickson


I wanted to serve my
     Country but not like this
          Both first and last mission
               Impossible dreams loathsome nightmarish fears

I hoped to somehow make
     A difference true values markdown
          Immoral ethics dishonorable unbecoming conduct
               Good-for-nothing bad blood spilt regrets

I never thought – not really
     Daily life stifling dead-end impasse
          Stench of decaying human garbage
               Misdirected one-way alleys U-turns forbidden

I didn’t give my life
     Lost struggle to keep it
          Lame excuses leaning on crutches
               Uprightness kicked out from under


Dr. Charles Frederickson is a Swedish/American/Thai No Holds Bard who may be described as a Wired Weirdo, Independent Outsider or Wonkish Ex-spurt. This e-gadfly has wandered intrepidly through 206 countries, an original sketch and poem for each presented on http://www.imagesof.8k.com. A member of World Poets Society, based in Greece, his unique poetic style has been featured in more than 200 publications on 6 continents. A gallery of his artwork can be viewed at Ascent Aspirations and his “PoeArtry” word and image combos appear regularly as Planet Authority's Poem of the Day @ listenandbeheard.net.

THE STRATEGIST: KARL ROVE

by Nancy Hansen

Rove chokes up on final day at White House. --CNN.com headline, 31 August 2007

Discreetly standing to one side
A cherub sizes up the scene
Like Satan viewing Paradise.
He lifts his fine-carved bow unseen
And carefully draws back the string.

With baby-blue tied round his neck
To complement his steely eyes,
And with method jovially opaque,
He smiles and sways to mesmerize
Believers who deny the snake.

In soft pink flesh his reptile part,
Unseen by mortals, shoots the dart —
Then lightening-quick re-coils to hurl
In rapid sequence bile-tipped smears,
Wildfiery whispers kindling fears,
And epithets to burn the ears.
The slurs drawn from his arsenal
Incriminate or just suggest,
Delivered with cherubic smile —
“Immoral,” “traitor,” “atheist,”
And “homosexual pedophile” —
Bring down his quarry to provide
For hunger never satisfied.

He rested then and planned his next attack
But thought he heard, as he was settling back,
        An investigative sleuthing sound
Toward where the gentle media kept him hid,
A clouded land most consciences forbid.
        Instinctively he turned around,
To ask his legal counsel for advice:
A friend at court could kill, thought Babyface,
        Indictments that are overdue.
“What crime?” “A little mischief!” “Wit, at play!”
In mists of pleasantries, he slunk away
        As he declined an interview.

The ordered rule of Mount Olympus
Was breaking down, until at last
Affronted Principles took notice:
   “That little god is going somewhere fast.”
His charioteer, whose name is Avarice,
Charged and contemptuously galloped past
Who watched him driving toward the precipice.


Nancy Hansen has been a professional artist for decades and have been studying poetry for the last 5 years. Her anti-war play Glory Glory was produced in 2000 at the Providence Atheneum and a new version with musical arrangements is now under consideration.

GONZALES PUNTS

by Anne G. Davies


Gonzales treats civil rights with insouciance
As though they were a public nuis-i-ance.
After shredding the Justice Department to bits
Alberto's decided to call it quits
Before Congressmen have scrutinized
The illegalities he routinized.
He leaves a vital agency in tatters
Unfit to grapple with critical matters.

This little man showed great tenacity
Keeping Guantanamo filled to capacity.
Abu Ghraib did not his soul encumber,
Ruffle his feathers, or disturb his slumber.
He pushed for wiretaps sans warrant
Despite fears of excesses abhorrent.
He advocated any kind of violence
That might break a detainee's silence.

Oiling his way like Uriah Heep
He woke a sick man from his sleep:
"To keep the homeland safe," he said
As he badgered Ashcroft in his bed.
His "I don't recalls" and constant denials
Have generated a roomful of files.
As for the eight D.A.s he fired:
"No, Senator, I never conspired;
That was just a routine decision'
Too minor to require my supervision."

We're rid, at last, of this pandering poodle
Destined to lobby and earn buckets of boodle.
Alas, he's unlikely to pay for his sins
Like his boss before him, the worst man wins.


Anne G. Davies is a fund-raising writer by profession and a writer and versifier by avocation. Her work has been published in local and regional papers. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

THE TOWERS OF BABEL

by David Feela


If I were a Muslim
I’d try not to speak
in this poem, on this
day, when ideology
crashed into steel.
What could I say
if I were a Muslim.
What could I do
except go to the mosque
and pray, pray to Allah
that Jesus Christ
won’t be angry
for six more years,
seeking blood for blood,
praying to Jesus Christ
that Allah won’t
be vilified forever.
Not forever
but on this day
when all it takes
is the wrong word
to start the twin tears
falling again, as if
I ever intended to do
anything today except
go to the mosque
and pray, pray that
Allah won’t leave me
here in a land of fear
and reproach for being
a Muslim man, unpacking
these words from my heart
and leaving them
beside my shoes
at the door.


David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including High Country News’s "Writers’s on the Range," Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. His web page can be viewed at www.geocities.com/feelasophy.

THE END BEGINS AGAIN

by Becky Harblin


The ancients came down
or up holding scrolls, or tablets,
or nothing but the wind.
They never lied.
All they say is true, all they said is true.

And we mortals pick our noses,
our fleas, our friends. and our right religious
ways. And they are all true, all right, all ours
to pick or not. All we say is true, all we said is true.

The ancients came down
or up holding their hands upon their hearts
or holding their hands on genitals
so large as to be fantastic.
But, they showed their true selves, they show their true selves.

And we mortals pick our mates,
and multiply. And train our children
in our ways. And each way is true, all ways
right, all ours, because all we say is true, all we said is true.

The ancients came down
or up holding sacks of seeds, and cages of fowl,
and simple tools to garden or farm.
Some liked grapes, others wanted guinea, but they
shared their knowings, All they said is true, all they say is true.

And we mortals took up
the sacks and tools and raised
the plants and farmed the fowls. And we trained
our children in our ways. All we say is true, and all we said is true.

The ancients came down
or up holding weapons and raised fists into the bloody
air. Until their gargantuan anger lay the earth bare.
They never lied. They showed their true selves, they show their true selves.

And we mortals took up
the shouts and raised our weapons into the bloody
air. Until our righteous anger lay the earth bare.
But, we showed our true selves and all we say is true
and all we said is true. And now the end begins again.


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.

A WOMAN SIGHED

by Robert M. Chute


In the doctor's waiting room
a woman sighed, said
to a friend, "Tommy's teacher
wants all the children
to wear something patriotic
tomorrow — the anniversary
of nine-eleven, you know."
That was when I knew
the terrorists were winning.


Robert M. Chute’s book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, poetry based on scientific articles, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.