HOW PENNY SPENDS HER TIME

by Earl J. Wilcox


Penny, not Penelope, waits for Otis,
not Odysseus, who has been away
now for sixteen months in Iraq. Before
his current deployment, he was in
Afghanistan more than a year. Three
years ago he was sent to Turkey.
Before that, to Jordan as a Seal. Penny
waits today, not with suitors pleading
for her treasure. Her treasure is in
the Middle East, where Otis pursues
snipers, hoping his armor will be
sufficient, not seeking safe passage
through Muslim, Greek, or even
a Christian God. Only the sun
by day, the moon by night brings
Penny and Otis together when they
agree to pray each day and night as
they go to sleep and when they arise.
Most days it seems twenty years since
Otis spent time with Penny.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he has contributed some 45 poems to New Verse News.
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NOW ENTERING CRAWFORD, POP. 789

by Andrew Rihn


These whitewalls howl
as ghosts
along the nighttime asphalt

and my
brake pads feel like sponges.
The rear view

mirror, slick with paranoia,
waits
for the inevitable flashing

lights,
red and blue, behind me.
Static

cracks the radio silence like
a whip
and I am no longer riding on

Jack
Kerouac's dream –
because

this
is no longer

America,
1946.


Andrew Rihn is a student at Kent State University, where he is also a peer writing tutor. His poetry has appeared online in in journals such as the NeoAmericanist, Poetic Injustice, Dissident Voice, and Poets Against the War. He has had articles published in MR Zine as well as Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. Most recently, he won first place in Kent State's Wick Poetry Scholarship for undergraduates.
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SMALL TOWN CHECK-UP

by Terry Brix


Checked out Belcherville, TX trash embedded
In the weeds, plastic bags shredded by wind & sand
Like a reputation torn with foul words, cleaver lies.
Beer cans, Burma Shave signs, old store fronts
Sprouting fractured broken glass & tired dreams,
Red River in the distance--memories of the old West.

Glasgow, MT Air Force left the base two decades ago,
Only thing landing & taking off are tumbleweeds.
Base a ghost town, Glasgow town drying up so fast
Mud cracks, cakes & curls mute lips to utter silent
Words that end in leave, gone, bye, lost, dead.
These can be heard by people that have died or left.

Vici, OK near the Oklahoma panhandle
The only life being drawn from two miles down.
Brine 200 million year old seawater with a pinch
Of iodine that drives the town economy so poor
Otherwise streets & ramshackle buildings leaning
On each other like dying soldiers after battle.

Blue River, OR a former gold & old growth timber
Town plus the Cougar Dam reservoir in the 1930s.
Last café closed, liquor store gone, acres of old mill
Barracks burned & bankrupted. Local school,
Highway 126 skirts past the town
Like a jugular artery bypassing the brain.

Small rural town diagnosis—terminal.


Terry Brix travels worldwide for his business as a “green” chemical engineer. A collection of his poetry Chiseled from the Heart was published in 2000 by Vigeland Museum, Norway. His poetry has appeared in The Evansville Review, Fireweed, Exit 13, Curbside Review, Small Brushes, Blueline, Bellowing Ark, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Main Channel Voices, and The Antioch Review.
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DRIVING AMERICA

by Linda Lerner

a large white convertible cruises
into late December, turning heads,
a few rub their eyes, “wow, neat car,”
someone yells, another gives a thumbs up
to the white haired man behind the wheel;
          he nods back,
just taking his baby out for a spin,
not wired to twenty first century sound bytes
no seat belts to strap him in
                    It's 1959. His first car.
“aint nothin’ but a hound dog” rocks;
just out of college and ready to make news
he’s burning rubber in Brooklyn
the country still riding I love Ike
prosperity, victory in not
just one but future wars;

what would have paid
kids’college tuition, bought a nice home
keeps his engine running, heart beating:
50 years and good as new,
but every creak in the car’s struggle
to push open its top echoes in his bones
means it’s back to finding a mechanic
knows how to fix classic cars
won’t rip him off;
price doesn’t matter: in this car
he’s lost nothing

driving down Flatbush Avenue toward
a sign that reads Atlantic
crosses another avenue back to
the mom & pop owned Brooklyn
of small grocery stores, drugstore counters
he sat at sipping egg creams, feeling
like he was standing in the outfield
at Ebbets Field ready to pitch into greatness,
back on that old route 66, reaching
skyward across the American imagination,
down streets barber shop poles twirl
red white and blue’s possibilities;

people stop walking, stare
or peer out small car windows
from cost of gas, high rent & job worries
their own era’s annihilation threats
roaring overhead to where
the Armageddon didn’t happen
bomb the Russians never dropped,
stare at this shiny new-looking Ford
James Dean or Elvis might have driven
top pulled down waving to the crowd,
stare in wonderment; almost prayer...

two women in jeans, stiletto heals
rings in their noses, lips,
bring the troops home buttons on
jackets point to the car,
“it rocks” one shouts, he looks out,
abruptly rear ended by 2008;
“hey mister,” the woman cries,
“if you’re going to Williamsburg,
can you give us a lift?”


Linda Lerner is the author of twelve poetry collections, the most recent being Living in Dangerous Times (Pressa Press) and City Woman (March Street Press). Recent poems appear in Tribes, Onthebus, The Paterson Literary Review, The New York Quarterly, Home Planet News, and Van Gogh’s Ear. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 1995 Andrew Gettler and she began Poets on the Line, the first poetry anthology on the Net for which she received two grants for the Nam Vet Poets issue. Its anthology remains on line although new publication ceased in 2000.
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WHAT IF THEY'D HAD

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


Email in Lincoln's day
Instant Messaging in Alexander the Great's
Video games in Jefferson's
Credit cards in Emily Dickinson's
Keno in Descartes's
GPS in Bret Harte's
Drive-Thrus in Walt Whitman's
Hallmarks in Harriet Tubman's
What if
George Bush
High from the rush and the black spewing gush
Of a Midland/Odessa hardon
Kissed the pre-Jihadist Osama Bin Laden
What if hippies really had stopped the war
And Bush, with his heart turned to mush,
Whispered (in his real voice, the voice which derives
from his Connecticut core)
What on earth
Are we fighting for?


Steve Hellyard Swartz's poetry has appeared in New Verse News, Best Poem, switched-on guttenberg, levelpoetry, and The Kennesaw Review. An Honorable Mention winner in The Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Competition, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, and the Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award, Swartz will be published in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review in 2008. In 1990, his film Never Leave Nevada opened in Dramatic Competition at the U.S. Sundance Film Festival.
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AFTERTHOUGHT

by David Chorlton


As long as there is one
call still among the trees
we listen. It is the cuckoo

and we remember the notes
to repeat them when even
it has gone, the way

the mockingbirds
learned to imitate
the many ways our cell phones rang.


David Chorlton has two new chapbooks posted online, The Dreaming House and Dry Heat. Both draw on life in Arizona.
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CHEER ON OUR NATIONAL GUARDERS

by HL


Those brave
Boys with the Stars
Marched up to the shrine of demonocracy.
While they did the lying,
We did the crying.

You leaders,
Tell our boys, “No more death!”
We got no time for suffering
& dying,
Let the unwashed
& unknowing
Do it for us.

Clear our memories of deep freeze
Wars,
Use the oil on our highways.
Sheikhs?
Dress them up like Philistines.
Keep us safe from Khyber
Spying,
Paint their faces with grotesque
Stories,
Make them murderers
That got no cool.

Help us win
This climate conquest.
Keep us on the airways
Flying.
Melt the snow on highest
Mountains,
Blame it all on

Chinese coal.
Demand
Blood money at our gates,
More credit!
Save our sorry
Mortgaged asses.
We shall be last to face our fates.


HL is a computer-nerd bicyclist who cranks out poetry as he rides along prairie grass and gravel roads. He says, "War is not the Answer / Ride a Bicycle," and more at his HL link here and in the left column of The New Verse News.
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HOW SACRED IS SACRED?

by Barbara A. Taylor


We are devout victims
of a Church which misinterprets,
expounds God’s word to mean
there is no love, no respect
for those less powerful, like cute
choir boys or orphans in their care
We are devout victims of a Church
which misinterprets, expounds God’s word
to mean there is no love, no respect
for those among us, one in three
deemed deviants. We are devout victims
of a Church which misinterprets, expounds
God’s word to mean the bishop cannot be gay.
Nuns and professors don’t do that, never did,
and homosexuals do not pray, nor ever
should they marry. But I have sung His glory
in cathedral choirs, taught catechism
at the Sunday School, learned not to kill
or steal or hate. In middle-age I still rejoice
each day I give my daily bread to beasts and man.
Let no one hunger, starve from want of
human love, compassion.
Everywhere every life is sacred:
The girl, the boy, the woman, the man
The flashing lights of fireflies
The trees in bud, the hanging fruits
The baby in her crib, gurgling, calling for her mother’s breast
Bird songs, exotic insects, sexual scents--
The Lord was My Shepherd
I’ve studied science, thrown away
intelligent design, threats of religious zealots
And I shall not want.


Barbara A. Taylor is a regular reader at poetry nights. Her poems appear in literary journals including Triplopia, The Salt River Review, Tattoo Highway, Kaleidowhirl, Poemeleon, The Blue Fifth Review. Short form verse is at Lynx, Sketchbook Journal, Stylus, Simply Haiku, Contemporary Haibun On Line, Modern English Tanka, haiku and tanka anthologies, and elsewhere. Poetry with audio is at http://batsword.tripod.com.
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TUESDAY, A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

by Wayne Crawford


Ten minute walk west of Abraham Lincoln’s tomb.
4:20 p.m., April 17, 2007. Springfield, Illinois.
An elderly man in long-sleeves steps off
his front porch slab, walks to his flagpole
near the street, drops

the U.S. flag to half-mast.
Blacksburg, Virginia. Same day.
The campus of Virginia Tech. Police identify
the 23-year old student/killer of 30 students and
faculty. Flags drop to half-mast across the country.

The same Tuesday. Washington D.C. The govern-
ment reports 3,300
U.S. service personel killed
                    so far in the war in Iraq.
Among the most recent: Male, 32, Texas. Male,
25, Indiana. Male, 29, Illinois. Male, 20, Ohio.
Male, 19, Idaho.

Same Tuesday. Geneva, Switzerland. Representatives
of Jordon and Syria ask the international community
to help meet the needs of nearly two million
Iraqi civilians
          driven from their homes by war.

Wednesday. Campus of New Mexico State University.
Flags fly at half-mast for Virginia Tech. Earlier
this year. NMSU athletic director and
his lieutenants replace the school
mascot, Lasso

Larry, afraid
he won’t rope in the manly fans they propose
to sell beer to during football games. They rally
around Pistol Pete, probably don’t discuss the obvious

motto: If you can’t beat ‘em , shoot ‘em. Probably
won’t take responsibility for 8,000
sports fans, both barrels
loaded

at the end of a losing game.
Pistol Petes in administration.
Pistol Petes among the regents.
Pistol Petes in the legislature.
          Pistol Petes in the Whitehouse.
Pistol Petes nowhere held
accountable.


Wayne Crawford manages the online literary journal, Lunarosity, and is co-managing editor of Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, an annual anthology of New Mexico writers and others in that region. His work has appeared in New Verse News before, as well as in Mannequin Envy, Shampoo, Motherbird, and many others. His latest publication, a book-length collection of poetry, Sugar Trail, was released in September 2007. Sugar Trail can be purchased (and excerpts read) at www.zianet.com/lunarosity/crawford.html.
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BEYOND BLACKSBURG

by Yolanda Coulaz

on the anniversary

Two days before,
I scratched the earth
beneath the columbine
in my garden.
Pulled weeds
that overwintered there,
ripped up their roots,
thought nothing
of their sweat and sap.

Columbine
sprouts from sand and soil,
cuts through cracks
in the asphalt path.

Columbine—
stuck in my mind;
a different meaning now
since ’99.
The columbine
she spits her seeds;
like weeds they multiply.
Her vibrant blooms
less beautiful
for her name.

Today—
Virginia,
violence multiplied.
Virginia,
her name
shall never be the same.
Virgin rage,
virgin blood,
virgin tears,
Virginia.


Yolanda Coulaz is a poet, photographer, editor, and founder of Purple Sage Press. She teaches poetry workshops to middle and high school students throughout Long Island and coordinates and hosts the Farmingdale Library Reading Series. Coulaz edited and published the anthology For Loving Precious Beast to help benefit Loving Touch Animal Rescue. Her first book of poetry Spirits and Oxygen is being used in an advanced course in poetry at SUNY Stony Brook.
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THE BRIDE

by Ed Webb


Dawn found her calm, but unslept.

Her mother made tea, and stroked her hair,
Took no breakfast help nor comfort.
Was the single tear proud or sad? Asking was out of reach.

She washed carefully, dressed carefully, offered confident prayers for
This house abandoned,
her mother's remaining years,
the day's deeds.
Stepped forth proudly from this house with no men
Into a world of strangers,
Holding at her breast her secret joy.

At the checkpoint, the explosion.


Ed Webb studies and teaches Middle East politics. It can be depressing.
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WHAT PROMETHEUS COULDN'T HAVE KNOWN

by Barbara Schweitzer


And what if we had never known of fire –
if Prometheus had kept it to himself,
saved his liver and left us cold – and why
did we expect otherwise? This great gelt
of his mind gelded him, after all,
while we have gone blissfully along,
erecting not one Prometheus Mall,
no monument, not an airport or song,
not a holiday, nor any way, thanking
him for his sacrifice of warm embrace.
Poor Meethy. He couldn’t have known of our rank
ingratitude, our superior race
for arms and other ilks of fire, or our sweet
stupid skill of shooting ourselves in the feet.


Barbara Schweitzer is a poet and playwright and author of 33 1/3.
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DISCOVERY OF ZINNIUM

by Terry Brix


Scientists search for years looking for Zinnium,*
Thought to be able to reduce anxiety like lithium
Yet be as valuable and useful as gold/platinum.
At first they looked for it in the nuclear reactors, particle accelerators
Science never found it. Asked industry
Best brains didn't get cold fusion, cheap hydrogen, helium-3
Got non-stick aluminum foil, strips for teeth whitening
Not even close. Looked to the wealthy, their troves,
Off-shore accounts, gold deposits. Not a trace
Zurich, Tokyo, Fort Knox, even in Bill's basement.
Spirituality was tried, Vatican gave up in a week,
Mormons and Moslems hung out for two.
First found in Acoma Indian Reservation in New Mexico,
A land twice stolen, then used as a tribe dump.
Then veins in walls of ghettos in Chicago, the Bronx,
Ozarks, Hell's Kitchen, Havre, Watts wherever
Poverty rampant, which is about everywhere--Zinnium.
Industry tried to buy it, merge it, acquire it, steal,
Anti-trust, intellectual property theft it, but couldn't,
Eminent Domain failed couldn't even class it under
Homeland Security, trumped up terrorism shenanigans
As unused as IRS tax laws for the wealthy.
Zinnium--a kind of memory metal that remembers
Real shape of the past. A metal that detects lies,
Reflects truth like polished aluminum, but the mirror
Can't be broken with media spins, false attacks.
Alloys with propaganda feeds back direct opposite
Like a photo negative complete with real x-ray motives.

*A cross between lithium and platinum

Terry Brix travels worldwide for his business as a “green” chemical engineer. A collection of his poetry Chiseled from the Heart was published in 2000 by Vigeland Museum, Norway. His poetry has appeared in The Evansville Review, Fireweed, Exit 13, Curbside Review, Small Brushes, Blueline, Bellowing Ark, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Main Channel Voices, and The Antioch Review.
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MYOPIA

by Diane Elayne Dees

"It wasn't women as a gender that were taken against their will, shackled...and put in slavery." --Clarence Jones, former MLK advisor, What Martin Would Say.

The women of Salem, swaying from wood beams
on Gallows Hill, cannot speak. The women banished
to Indian reservations, sent because they dared to speak,
are silent now. The women shackled and force-fed,
gut-broken for the rest of their lives, because they were brazen
enough to believe they should vote--can no longer talk to us.
The girls sold as prostitutes do not dare say a word.
The women who did speak up, and were locked into
assylums, were never heard from again. The women
whose genitals were mutilated to cure them of loving
too many men, or loving even one woman--
they, too, are silent. The women fighting in Iraq--who fear rape
as they fear the enemy--try to speak, but our ears are stuffed
with American flags, and we do not hear. Women taken
against their will and shackled...that, too, is America.


Diane Elayne Dees is a writer in Louisiana. Her poetry about social issues has been published in Out of Line, HazMat Review, The New Verse News, Mobius, Umbrella, Poetry Super Highway, and the anthology, Hurricane Blues: How Katrina and Rita Ravaged a Nation.
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