BERKELEY AND MYTH FEBRUARY 2008

by Carol Dorf


1) February 13

In the park outside my classroom, flags --
Twenty foot by thirty foot stars and stripes
Patriotic music blares from speakers.
They want us to be nice to the military recruiters.

Police in riot helmets, face plates lifted stand
watching 30 or 40 people.But this is Berkeley,
so there are bike cops in bike helmets,
and bareheaded community service officers.

Across the street pink signs, more flags, some stars
and stripes, some with peace signs; maybe 75 people.
In between, there are television trucks with their cranes,
reporters waiting for something interesting to happen.

Every 60 minutes, a new group of students, jams
to the windows to watch the action, and then I hustle
them back to their seats. "Find the vertex," "If a rocket is shot
directly upward with an initial velocity...," not the best example for today.

At lunch someone gives kids orange bandanas
and they walk around the park to protest the war.
The skateboarders watch at the edges, pissed off
that their playground has been given over to the big picture.

People come from all over the country to blast
patriotic rock and scold us into loving the war.
They imagine us in a myth of the sixties -- the houses
and apartments of our day-to-day lives invisible.

2) February 14

Valentine's Day, and the school fills
with balloons and stuffed animals.
Tomorrow is Lincoln's Birthday observed.
Gulls pick through the trash on the out-of-towners
side of the demo: coffee cups, bags of chips, napkins,
wrappers. Did they try any of our ethnic restaurants,
or Chez Pannisse alumni coffee shops? Berkeley's
industrious poor have already sorted
through the recycling leaving the rest of the trash
for the city to deal with. Next week, I'll teach factoring.
Today teenagers devour candy hearts.


Carol Dorf's poems have appeared in New Verse News, Fringe, The Midway, Poemeleon, Babelfish, Edgz, Runes, Feminist Studies, Heresies, Poetica, Responsa, The NeoVictorian, Caprice and elsewhere. She is a former editor of Five Fingers Review. She's taught in a variety of venues including a science museum, and as a California Poet in the Schools. She now teaches at Berkeley High School.
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WHAT IT USED TO BE LIKE AROUND HERE

by John Grey


They razed the green meadow
to build "Green Meadow" housing estate.
" Blue Lake " was drained
for the Blue Lake apartments.
Since " Cardinal Crescent " was laid,
we haven't seen a red-winged bird.
Couples are moving in,
boasting, "This will be our love nest."
And the day that it is,
the last nest will be smashed down.


John Grey has been published recently in Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review, and The Pedestal. He has work upcoming in Poetry East and REAL.
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STAND-OFF AT GATE 927

by Bruce Taub


It is a beautiful sunny morning
At apartheid gate 927
The Israeli soldiers are listening to rock music
They are in their 20s
They have automatic weapons
Uniforms, walkie talkies
Humvees, tanks
F16 fighter jets, a nuclear arsenal
We are Palestinian farmers
With donkeys and tractors
With seed
Fertilizer
And lunch in plastic bags
We are four Americans over fifty
With cameras, cell phones, and bottled water
We are Bedouin with sheep and goats and identity cards
We dismount from our donkeys and tractors
And wait
Wait long enough to see the falcon hunting
To see the wild dog with the stolen chicken
Wait to be admitted through the small gate
To the turnstile
Then into the concrete bunker
To wait at the counter
To show our passes
To be released into a holding area
To go back through the sliding gate
To get back on our donkeys and tractors
To pass through the big gate
Opened only certain hours
Of certain days
To get onto our land
Our own land
On the other side of this abominable fence
That separates us from our fields
From our trees and fruit
From our grass, our rocks, our graves
On the other side of this fence
That separates us from our brothers and sisters
We stand in the sun two hours
On the side of this fence
That separates us from our livelihoods
On the side of the fence
That separates us


Bruce Taub is an American attorney and peace activist. He has been to Palestine four times in the last two years helping with the olive harvest and olive tree planting on Palestinian village lands captured by Israel during the construction of the apartheid barrier wall.
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HOMEFRONT

by Howie Good


Better stay on your meds. Or get some.
Otherwise how will you ignore
the pile of hacked-off limbs on the hospital lawn,
the amputees limping or crawling away,
as disability permits,
their sacrifice worse than forgotten – misremembered?
You’ll end up scribbling on napkins
and the last remaining walls, and the scribbles,
presuming they’re discovered,
will sound when pieced together
like a suicide note left to mislead investigators.
Christ, you’ll end up like me,
driving slowly over a bridge of bones,
your face gray with exhaustion,
while along the slatternly, post-industrial river,
morning birds sing in the cadaverous trees.


Howie Good’s latest chapbooks are Last Words, available online from Gold Wake Press and Police & Questions, available online from Right Hand Pointing.
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OUR HAMMERS

by Dale Goodson


no nail
no wood

so why the pounding

I’m not made of metal
neither are you
not oak
not stone

but look at the damage
as if we were

instead of a box
or a fence
or a chair
we swing the things at each other

and it’s not just us
strangers’ll do it too
take a brute mallet
and let fly

everyone knows we don’t hold up well –
about like paper

but still
hammers, clubs
harpoons
anything to deliver a blow

LESS FORCE MORE CARE

what about effort in that direction
should be something there for everybody

something that
could start in the kitchen over tea
or out in the hallway
where nothing ever happens

something gentle
something molecular
like
the fine ether that surrounds
this planet of neighbors

could be we do that-
make that effort

then start again
hands free



Dale Goodson is a writer from Seattle currently living in New York City.
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THE GREAT DEBATE

by Jon Wesick


Mac: Hi, I’m a Mac.

PC: And I’m a PC.

Both: We’re running for president.

PC: If you elect me, I’ll exploit my interoperability with the business community.

Mac: At the expense of ordinary, hard-working Americans. After your predecessor rebated RAM to gamers, most families were left with only 512 MB. If anything goes wrong, they could never afford tech support.

PC: At least I won’t raise taxes to spend on expensive peripherals. And I won’t appoint Linux-based judges either!

Mac: Let’s hope you don’t nominate another FEMA director with a 4.7 MHz processor. What are you taping to your head, PC?

PC: A web cam. It lets me video conference with my wealthy donors.

Mac: But the NSA already has covert video surveillance integrated with illegal wiretapping.

PC: There you go again, getting soft on national security. With my spreadsheets and pie charts I’m the perfect platform to control the nation’s nuclear arsenal. What do you have? Home movies?

Mac: That’s right. Check out this video of you visiting a DC prostitute. I made it with iMovie.


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.
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14 MIL FOR PHOTOS OF THE BRANGELINA BABIES

by Earl J. Wilcox


Not even a five billion year-old glimpse of Casper and Pollux
Nor prints of Romulus and Remus
Nor Chinese birth certificates of Chang and Eng
Nor God’s order to begin night and day
Nor tit for tat’s origins
Nor A to Zed’s remote beginnings
Nor Heaven and Hell’s first battle cry
Nor Dizzy and Daffy’s womb snaps
Nor Sturm und Drang’s Germanic links
Nor Romeo & Juliet’s wedding certificate
Nor Hansel & Gretel’s map through the woods.

Well, we get the picture. Nothing we can name
will be worth the price a tawdry journal paid for
photos of two movie celebs’ babies. Picture that.


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 38 poems to the New Verse News.
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STUTTER NONSENSE

PoeArtry by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote


Few mortals reach Olympus summit
     Walt Whitman shouted Vivas for
          All those who have failed
               But done so with dignity

               Mental gymnastics uplifting weighty burden
          Keeping track tripping over hurdles
     Hop-skip-jumping to conclusions
High bar leaps of faith

Dashed chance bruised ego stumbles
     Secondhand excuses up for grabs
          Relay team blaming each other
               Dropped baton scapegoats butted off

               Triumphant past never repeats itself
          Once upon probably never was
     Broken records pieced back together
Promise stuck in vinyl crack

Failed courage coming up short
     Unjeweled crown bleeding thorny sweat
          Ploughshares dragged across furrowed brow
               Phantom spirit letdown unsung anthem

               Disneyworld moments regurgitated umpteen times
          Hero worship glorifies nationalistic pride
     Surpassing expectations bettering personal bests
Smiling adverts hoped for hype


The dynamic duo of always toptimistic upstARTs, Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote edit AvantGardeTimes.com, an eclectic cosmopolitan poeartry quarterly EZine. Check out Dr. Chazz’s No Holds Bard website: PoetryArtCombo.com, and Saknarin’s new Glad Thaidings exhibition: http://www.poeartrygallery.th.gs/.
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29-YEAR-OLD MARÍA ANSWERS A REPORTER'S QUESTION

by Robert Anbian


Let me tell you a little bit
about my life.
I have always lived in this neighborhood
and always will, god willing.
That’s my son playing fútbol
down by the river, near the bridge.
A new bridge, and ugly,
built for the heavy trucks that come and go.
It stands where people used to ford the river,
on foot or in cars, even the buses crossed,
though the passengers had to get out and walk.
The women hiked up their skirts, the men rolled up their pants,
and everyone carried their shoes.
Everyone complained and everyone laughed.
My family has always lived here,
and the river has always been here.
When I was a kid the water was clean.
I used to bathe in it, everybody did.
In summer, families camped on the shore,
lanterns were strung along the river’s edge,
and we kids went swimming at night.
Later, when the factories came,
occupying the hillsides where goats used to graze,
I saw the water changing colors, green, yellow, red.
When I got a bit older, I started working in the factories
and my nose began to bleed.
I started having kidney problems and trouble breathing.
My daughter developed brown spots.
My son itches all over.
When I come home, walking over that bridge,
my clothes reek of burnt plastic.
And when I look at the river, I feel sadder than the saddest song I ever heard.


Samples from Robert Anbian's new spoken word CD, I NOT I, can be heard on MySpace and is available from Edgetone Records as well as major download services. This is Anbian's fourth appearance on New Verse News.
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AUGUST 6, 1945

by Robert M. Chute


     As I came out of the matinee, squinting
into the afternoon sun, the sidewalks
glittered with silvery chips I hadn't noticed
     when I went in —

     The Jacksonville evening paper headlined
a new kind of bomb we'd dropped on a city
they called Hiroshima. The Greyhound bus
took all night to cross north Florida
to the air base. With a day's leave left
     I hung out in town.

     I remember the sea of dark faces parting
to let me join the flow of whites out
into a glittering afternoon, into a world
where everything had changed and yet
     nothing had changed.


Robert M. Chute has a book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, of poetry based on scientific articles, that is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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ECONOMICS

by David Feela


With every pleasure comes a little pain,
which explains why the jellyfish
are lounging at the beaches.

The tourists don’t understand.
They huddle with their children
under an umbrella

which appears itself like
a giant jellyfish
preempting their vacation plans.

Scientists shake their fingers,
how we’ve over-fished the fish
that feed on the jellyfish,

how fertilizers from our lawns
running into the oceans
green more than just the land.

Stay flexible, the jellyfish say,
and what feels like pain
will be pleasure one day.


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. A new poetry book, The Home Atlas, will be released in 2009.
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THAT CARD

by Dale Goodson


looming

like Mt. Everest
in the backyard

but forget pigment
it could be anything

the guy in the oddly shaped hat
the one who smells of garlic
the skinny one
the fat one
(a woman!)

we grow suspicious
and small
experience
a loss of flexibility
it takes so little to alarm

you can play it that way

but there are rules
and they don’t begin with the toss of coin

ignore that
and everything is fair game


Dale Goodson is a writer from Seattle currently living in New York City.
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HUSH LITTLE BABY, DON'T YOU CRY

by Earl J. Wilcox


Sudden summer thunderstorm cadences
march in like invading armies, push
aside resistance from ballgames, equestrians
jumping over latticed fences, placid
summer scenes forced to become quixotic.
Threatening, dark clouds overwhelm
skies, dominate landscapes, send crushing,
cascading lightening, hail, and rain.

Summertime living is not always easy,
despite jumping catfish, high cotton,
rich daddies and good looking mamas.


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 36 poems to the New Verse News.
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OF POETRY & COMMERCE

by Mary Saracino


Sucked into cyber-space
orbiting planet commerce
poetry vampires
leach cosmic marrow
from my bones

The stolen, rhythmic essence
oozes from the fetid fangs
of web text & sales prose
written in blood-homage
to the gods of business

A tattered price tag dangles
from the tongues
of profiteers who punch
my meal ticket
CEOs cough up
cash for market-driven lingo
sign no paychecks for poems

Somewhere, Erato sits
a wry smile upon her elegiac face,
scribbling sonnets onto
the underbellies of plump clouds
penning audacious odes
to all things essential
ephemeral, true

The Muse knows
poetry is manna
soul-mantra, sustenance
to the human heart
needed more than air
more than food
more than greenbacks
to stay alive, alive
to thrive


Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet and memoir-writer who lives in Denver , CO . Her most recent novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Her short story, "Vicky's Secret" earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.
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