by Bill Costley
“So what if he threw shoes?”
says cheekily defiant Dubya,
missing the symbolism after
a Cairo TV-reporter threw
his shoes at Dubya during
a Baghdad press-conference,
one shoe forcing Dubya
to lame-duck, the other sailing
over Dubya’s head & slamming
into the wall behind him. Throwing
shoes at someone is the worst
insult possible in the Arab world:
shoes cover the body's lowest part,
tread on animal dung, are removed
on entering a house or mosque.
What’s lower? Just the dung itself.
Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
________________________________________
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
THESE SHOES ARE MADE FOR THROWIN'
by Earl J. Wilcox
You say you’ve done something for us
Something we can’t seem to see is true.
You been messin’ where you ought not to be messin'
Now I’ve got something here for only Y O U.
These shoes are made for throwin’
And throwin’ is what I’ll do
I take both of ‘em off right here today
And throw them both at Y O U.
You keep lyin' when you ought to be truthin’
We’re losing and you know it’s true
But I got a pair of number tens on today
That I’m throwin' right at Y O U.
These shoes are made for throwin’
And throwin’s what I’ll do
I’m takin’ both of em’ off right here today
And throwin’ them both at Y O U.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.
_______________________________
after Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra
You say you’ve done something for us
Something we can’t seem to see is true.
You been messin’ where you ought not to be messin'
Now I’ve got something here for only Y O U.
These shoes are made for throwin’
And throwin’ is what I’ll do
I take both of ‘em off right here today
And throw them both at Y O U.
You keep lyin' when you ought to be truthin’
We’re losing and you know it’s true
But I got a pair of number tens on today
That I’m throwin' right at Y O U.
These shoes are made for throwin’
And throwin’s what I’ll do
I’m takin’ both of em’ off right here today
And throwin’ them both at Y O U.
Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.
_______________________________
BIRTHRIGHT
by Scott Simpson
Jacob stole his birthright,
being clever and tricky
and gets the bad rap
on account of greed,
but what about the sin of Esau
who sold his birthright for a single
bowl of soup?
And sure, at the time
it seemed reasonable
Esau seeing nothing but his hunger
—gut wrenching hunger
but emptiness doesn’t always
render us clear of sight—
sometimes it shapes desperate eyes
and snatching hands.
I imagine Esau there at table,
hunger sated, realizing now
the emptiness of the bowl
the emptiness—
what he’d given up…
or maybe not,
maybe Esau simply belched
and excused himself, because
satiation doesn’t always
render us mindful
of consequence.
Keep brother stuffed;
he’ll never know he’s being taken.
And sometimes my own hunger
is the voice I hear telling me to short-sell
for a few immediate spoonfuls…
I have seen the children
of stolen birthrights,
stolen, in the end, by their feeders--
by those who have something
to sell them… and something to gain
from the selling.
And I’m a teacher
for Heaven’s sake,
with a bowl of soup
and some hungry students
willing to eat
what I’m dishing up--
indiscriminately--
filling the pits of swollen bellies
with what’s been mandated
with what the research says
will surely fill them.
And I could spend days
feeding them data soup
chock-full of standards
in a warm broth of best practice
and we could raise the bar
make AYP
incentivize the path
till no one’s left behind.
But what if something
has been squandered
while I was ladling—
what if they’ve traded
some blood-right,
some unique mark…
What if we educators
have helped them trade
a birthright
for a bowl of
compliance soup?
Scott Simpson is a former high school teacher, college professor, camp director and lay-minister who attempts to live a contemplative lifestyle on a planet that views quietness and stillness as destructive ideas that could potentially undermine the fabric of society. He, indeed, hopes to undermine the fabric of that society with quietness and stillness. Scott lives on a planet called Earth. Scott's poems have appeared in Switched-On Gutenburg, BigCityLit, and New Verse News, and anthologized in In Praise of Pedagogy (2000, Calendar Press). You can listen to some of Scott's music and poetry on MySpace.
Jacob stole his birthright,
being clever and tricky
and gets the bad rap
on account of greed,
but what about the sin of Esau
who sold his birthright for a single
bowl of soup?
And sure, at the time
it seemed reasonable
Esau seeing nothing but his hunger
—gut wrenching hunger
but emptiness doesn’t always
render us clear of sight—
sometimes it shapes desperate eyes
and snatching hands.
I imagine Esau there at table,
hunger sated, realizing now
the emptiness of the bowl
the emptiness—
what he’d given up…
or maybe not,
maybe Esau simply belched
and excused himself, because
satiation doesn’t always
render us mindful
of consequence.
Keep brother stuffed;
he’ll never know he’s being taken.
And sometimes my own hunger
is the voice I hear telling me to short-sell
for a few immediate spoonfuls…
I have seen the children
of stolen birthrights,
stolen, in the end, by their feeders--
by those who have something
to sell them… and something to gain
from the selling.
And I’m a teacher
for Heaven’s sake,
with a bowl of soup
and some hungry students
willing to eat
what I’m dishing up--
indiscriminately--
filling the pits of swollen bellies
with what’s been mandated
with what the research says
will surely fill them.
And I could spend days
feeding them data soup
chock-full of standards
in a warm broth of best practice
and we could raise the bar
make AYP
incentivize the path
till no one’s left behind.
But what if something
has been squandered
while I was ladling—
what if they’ve traded
some blood-right,
some unique mark…
What if we educators
have helped them trade
a birthright
for a bowl of
compliance soup?
Scott Simpson is a former high school teacher, college professor, camp director and lay-minister who attempts to live a contemplative lifestyle on a planet that views quietness and stillness as destructive ideas that could potentially undermine the fabric of society. He, indeed, hopes to undermine the fabric of that society with quietness and stillness. Scott lives on a planet called Earth. Scott's poems have appeared in Switched-On Gutenburg, BigCityLit, and New Verse News, and anthologized in In Praise of Pedagogy (2000, Calendar Press). You can listen to some of Scott's music and poetry on MySpace.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
CAPPUCCINO SMILE
by Peter Branson
Young Costa girl
with fashionable dreadlocks
and early morning eyes
sits down, no customers
about, asks what
you write: a poem
on 'Tolpuddle',
at least you're trying to.
"They pay the minimum,
this lot. No unions here;"
melt-water over stone.
The coffee bar warms up
so she must leave,
missing your mulled
apology by miles.
Robbed of their common wealth,
farm workers starve
on seven bob a week.
These fields were hedged with greed.
No combination laws,
the charge is fixed and primed:
transported seven years,
but not for what's been done
and said, grapeshot across
the bows. "The Safety of
the country is at stake,"
the Judge points out.
In 1984,
"The enemy within,"
life imitated art.
Peter Branson is a creative writing tutor. Until recently he was Writer-in-residence for "All Write" run by Stoke-on-Trent Library Services. He began writing poetry seriously about five years ago and has had work published by many mainstream poetry journals, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Iota, 14, Fire, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Nottingham, Red Ink and Other Poetry. In the last two years he has had success in several competitions including a first prize in The Envoi International, a second place in The Writing Magazine Open and a highly-commended in The Petra Kenney. His first collection, The Accidental Tourist, was published in May 2008.
__________________________________________________
"The opinion that art should have nothing to
do with politics is itself a political attitude."
--George Orwell, “Why I Write.”
do with politics is itself a political attitude."
--George Orwell, “Why I Write.”
Young Costa girl
with fashionable dreadlocks
and early morning eyes
sits down, no customers
about, asks what
you write: a poem
on 'Tolpuddle',
at least you're trying to.
"They pay the minimum,
this lot. No unions here;"
melt-water over stone.
The coffee bar warms up
so she must leave,
missing your mulled
apology by miles.
Robbed of their common wealth,
farm workers starve
on seven bob a week.
These fields were hedged with greed.
No combination laws,
the charge is fixed and primed:
transported seven years,
but not for what's been done
and said, grapeshot across
the bows. "The Safety of
the country is at stake,"
the Judge points out.
In 1984,
"The enemy within,"
life imitated art.
Peter Branson is a creative writing tutor. Until recently he was Writer-in-residence for "All Write" run by Stoke-on-Trent Library Services. He began writing poetry seriously about five years ago and has had work published by many mainstream poetry journals, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Iota, 14, Fire, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Nottingham, Red Ink and Other Poetry. In the last two years he has had success in several competitions including a first prize in The Envoi International, a second place in The Writing Magazine Open and a highly-commended in The Petra Kenney. His first collection, The Accidental Tourist, was published in May 2008.
__________________________________________________
Friday, December 12, 2008
DEEP IN PINEY WOODS
by Garland Strother
Forty years ago my friend
Henry chained himself
to the courthouse stairs
in the timber town
of Bogalusa chanting
freedom now in the key
of Dixie, getting himself
whipped across the poor
white skin of his burnt
bald head all the way
down the justice steps
of Washington Parish.
Forty miles south of here
last month deep in piney
woods, the Klan killed
a woman who wanted
to join them, but then
changed her mind. The
Klan said no with a gun,
killing her to keep her.
A native of Tensas Parish in north Louisiana and a retired librarian, Garland Strother currently lives in River Ridge near New Orleans with his wife, Liz, also a librarian. Strother’s poems have appeared in Louisiana Review, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Texas Review, Common Ground Review, Big Muddy, and others.
_______________________________
Forty years ago my friend
Henry chained himself
to the courthouse stairs
in the timber town
of Bogalusa chanting
freedom now in the key
of Dixie, getting himself
whipped across the poor
white skin of his burnt
bald head all the way
down the justice steps
of Washington Parish.
Forty miles south of here
last month deep in piney
woods, the Klan killed
a woman who wanted
to join them, but then
changed her mind. The
Klan said no with a gun,
killing her to keep her.
A native of Tensas Parish in north Louisiana and a retired librarian, Garland Strother currently lives in River Ridge near New Orleans with his wife, Liz, also a librarian. Strother’s poems have appeared in Louisiana Review, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Texas Review, Common Ground Review, Big Muddy, and others.
_______________________________
Thursday, December 11, 2008
PAPER TIGER
by Bill Costley
In Silicon Valley's Cupertino,
a dutiful grandson eagerly awaits
an annual U.S. Savings Bond
from his indulgent grandfather,
a manufacturer in Shanghai
who shuffles yuans, reading
his falling quarterly orders
report on the United States.
This year his indulgence
will bear the 2-tongued-E
of a Eurobond instead.
Facing the Chinese in Beijing,
Paulson involuntarily shudders
at a hint of chill across the table.
Something’s morphing. Paper’s
no longer just promissory scrip.
Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
________________________________________
In Silicon Valley's Cupertino,
a dutiful grandson eagerly awaits
an annual U.S. Savings Bond
from his indulgent grandfather,
a manufacturer in Shanghai
who shuffles yuans, reading
his falling quarterly orders
report on the United States.
This year his indulgence
will bear the 2-tongued-E
of a Eurobond instead.
Facing the Chinese in Beijing,
Paulson involuntarily shudders
at a hint of chill across the table.
Something’s morphing. Paper’s
no longer just promissory scrip.
Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
________________________________________
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
DOWNTURN
by Howie Good
Everywhere I go, it’s the same thing,
pockets filling up with dirt, with tears,
with small, gray feathers of smoke,
crowds in the background murmuring
a familiar prayer, a powerful name,
impatient for the century to at last begin,
or at least for this dry season to end,
and as I stare out across the page,
I wish I could remember a time
when shadows were merely shadows
and our skin was blue and gold
like the gorgeous raiment of sacred kings.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, including most recently Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology.
__________________________________________________
Everywhere I go, it’s the same thing,
pockets filling up with dirt, with tears,
with small, gray feathers of smoke,
crowds in the background murmuring
a familiar prayer, a powerful name,
impatient for the century to at last begin,
or at least for this dry season to end,
and as I stare out across the page,
I wish I could remember a time
when shadows were merely shadows
and our skin was blue and gold
like the gorgeous raiment of sacred kings.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, including most recently Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology.
__________________________________________________
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
SETTLERS
by Mary Dingee Fillmore
The chainsaw rips the air
of this quiet quarter where trees
are already scarce.
When the lumberman ropes
a locust tree's concentric layers,
I'm sure I've seen him before.
Asked why cut, he replies
"We're cleanin' up the land -
it belongs to the owner."
Defeated, I walk home under
maples whose crowns
can't be seen overhead -
survivors of woods men cleared
a century ago to make the garden
I love and live by.
They cut even more in the vanishing
Vermont forest: cedar to shingle my house,
spruce to frame it, and golden pine
and birch for floors -
yes, birch, its snowy bark peeling
in the darkened woods -
I live in this calamity of cutting, and now
I remember the lumberman's name
It's carved on my great great great
grandfather's gravestone he's the man
whose hard-swung axe hewed out
the place we savages know
as Canada.
Mary Dingee Fillmore earned her M.F.A. at Vermont College after a twenty-five year career in organizational development and a hidden life as a writer. Her poetry about the Holocaust in the Netherlands and other subjects has appeared in Upstreet, Pearl, Diner, Westview, Main Street Rag, Pinyon and Blueline among other venues. She won the Poetry Grand Prize in the 2007 Tallgrass Writers' Guild Contest, and is a winner of the 2006 Iowa Source contest.
_______________________________
The chainsaw rips the air
of this quiet quarter where trees
are already scarce.
When the lumberman ropes
a locust tree's concentric layers,
I'm sure I've seen him before.
Asked why cut, he replies
"We're cleanin' up the land -
it belongs to the owner."
Defeated, I walk home under
maples whose crowns
can't be seen overhead -
survivors of woods men cleared
a century ago to make the garden
I love and live by.
They cut even more in the vanishing
Vermont forest: cedar to shingle my house,
spruce to frame it, and golden pine
and birch for floors -
yes, birch, its snowy bark peeling
in the darkened woods -
I live in this calamity of cutting, and now
I remember the lumberman's name
It's carved on my great great great
grandfather's gravestone he's the man
whose hard-swung axe hewed out
the place we savages know
as Canada.
Mary Dingee Fillmore earned her M.F.A. at Vermont College after a twenty-five year career in organizational development and a hidden life as a writer. Her poetry about the Holocaust in the Netherlands and other subjects has appeared in Upstreet, Pearl, Diner, Westview, Main Street Rag, Pinyon and Blueline among other venues. She won the Poetry Grand Prize in the 2007 Tallgrass Writers' Guild Contest, and is a winner of the 2006 Iowa Source contest.
_______________________________
Monday, December 08, 2008
SOCIALIST POKER
by Bill Garvey
The sweet sound of an Obama speech –
words soothingly spoken, the weight he gives each
syllable as if articulation can reach
into our souls, as if reaching into our souls
matters to him – eases my fear about losing my job
or every dollar I’ve saved in my 401K…
which reminds me of a guy named Mike
who won three hands in a row at our Friday night game.
Stacking red, white and green poker chips,
he averted his eyes from the glare of his friends
and then, as if uncomfortable with sudden prosperity,
tossed chips to the poorest among us
as if he were Obama spreading the wealth –
and how I love to utter Obama! Maybe I
voted for the sound of it, knocked on doors
for it, called voters, like Margaret, who raged
into the phone Obama and Biden! Osama bin Laden!
I shouted Change! Argued against for more
years of pasty-faced men who don’t care
about syllables, I actually said, and then
I tossed to Margaret the O in Hope!
Bill Garvey lives in New Hampshire with his wife. Their grown children live in Toronto. Garvey’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in several journals including Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, The Worcester Review, 5AM, Slant, Diner, Concho River Review, and New York Quarterly. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook The Burden of Angels in 2007. Garvey received his MFA from New England College.
_______________________________
The sweet sound of an Obama speech –
words soothingly spoken, the weight he gives each
syllable as if articulation can reach
into our souls, as if reaching into our souls
matters to him – eases my fear about losing my job
or every dollar I’ve saved in my 401K…
which reminds me of a guy named Mike
who won three hands in a row at our Friday night game.
Stacking red, white and green poker chips,
he averted his eyes from the glare of his friends
and then, as if uncomfortable with sudden prosperity,
tossed chips to the poorest among us
as if he were Obama spreading the wealth –
and how I love to utter Obama! Maybe I
voted for the sound of it, knocked on doors
for it, called voters, like Margaret, who raged
into the phone Obama and Biden! Osama bin Laden!
I shouted Change! Argued against for more
years of pasty-faced men who don’t care
about syllables, I actually said, and then
I tossed to Margaret the O in Hope!
Bill Garvey lives in New Hampshire with his wife. Their grown children live in Toronto. Garvey’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in several journals including Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, The Worcester Review, 5AM, Slant, Diner, Concho River Review, and New York Quarterly. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook The Burden of Angels in 2007. Garvey received his MFA from New England College.
_______________________________
Saturday, December 06, 2008
CRY
by N.C. Haiduck
Around and around the world it goes
to Africa, China , England , Malaysia ,
a hole in its pocket, sitting in hard polished shadows,
a cry for peace.
We are people, unemployed, in peril,
trying to master rents, insurance,
our lives interrupted by a televised glimpse,
crying for peace.
Oily gloves count all of the signs
in all of the streets, worth trillions of dollars,
on every continent,
a cry for peace.
We want jobs, clean air, water,
to teach our children,
to answer each, in the unprecedented cathedral,
with a cry for peace.
It staggers through Serbia , Korea , Russia ,
careens, through Turkey , Arabia , America ,
black shoes scuffed by the cold, white Artic Circle ,
a cry for peace.
Ignoring the voices of nuclear dust,
newspapers tease us a bit,
Hiroshima unravels, Nagasaki falls and we all
cry for peace.
N.C. Haiduck teaches writing at The City College of New York, where she won the English Department’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 2007. Her poetry can be found in the Paterson Literary Review, New York City Streets in Poetry, Main Street Rag, BigCityLit, Anderbo.com, and other online and print journals.
__________________________________________________
Around and around the world it goes
to Africa, China , England , Malaysia ,
a hole in its pocket, sitting in hard polished shadows,
a cry for peace.
We are people, unemployed, in peril,
trying to master rents, insurance,
our lives interrupted by a televised glimpse,
crying for peace.
Oily gloves count all of the signs
in all of the streets, worth trillions of dollars,
on every continent,
a cry for peace.
We want jobs, clean air, water,
to teach our children,
to answer each, in the unprecedented cathedral,
with a cry for peace.
It staggers through Serbia , Korea , Russia ,
careens, through Turkey , Arabia , America ,
black shoes scuffed by the cold, white Artic Circle ,
a cry for peace.
Ignoring the voices of nuclear dust,
newspapers tease us a bit,
Hiroshima unravels, Nagasaki falls and we all
cry for peace.
N.C. Haiduck teaches writing at The City College of New York, where she won the English Department’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 2007. Her poetry can be found in the Paterson Literary Review, New York City Streets in Poetry, Main Street Rag, BigCityLit, Anderbo.com, and other online and print journals.
__________________________________________________
Friday, December 05, 2008
LETTERS FOR JUSTINE MASIKA BIHAMBA IN THE DRC
by Kaci Elder
Was this the man who laid himself upon your little girl,
He, whose belt nearly unbuckled itself in a feverish haste to get something,
Something onto her, into her, through and around and between her
Tightening tightening thighs?
Was this the man who locked eyes with you when you'd suddenly
RUN into the room?
Was this the gun he used to break into your home
Into the safe and protected space you'd set aside from the world you usually roam,
With the risks you take to defend we whose cunts are called shame
Who are still scrubbing down the walls inside ourselves to feel clean again?
Was this the gun he held to your children's heads, your six trembling babes
NOW fearing death?
Was this the uniform he wore on the night he stormed inside,
His matching buddies by his side as he shouted "Where did Justine go!"
They wanted you, yes, you know, because you work to stop rape, you work against the pain thickly slapped against women in the democratic republic of this congo.
Was this the uniform he wore when he knew the military men would look
AWAY from punishment?
Well,
I've taken his gun and I've taken his clothes and I've taken this man
Without taking his life.
I've done nothing more than bring him to you,
Cuffed inside of this courtroom.
I wrote my thoughts to your dear president, a simple thing,
But there were thousands of us, so many thousands of us that he was forced to relent
And now here you are, and here is that man and I'm with you still, Justine,
As black marks on a white page
Tucked in an envelope, telling the world your story.
An actor and poet, Kaci Elder is learning the long, slow lesson that black lines--magically assembled into letters then words then indented messages on the page--can subtly shift consciousness and the way we see each other. Can even lead to freedom. She manages a hostel in Redwood National Park with her muses, Ryan her husband and Rory her son.
__________________________________________________
Was this the man who laid himself upon your little girl,
He, whose belt nearly unbuckled itself in a feverish haste to get something,
Something onto her, into her, through and around and between her
Tightening tightening thighs?
Was this the man who locked eyes with you when you'd suddenly
RUN into the room?
Was this the gun he used to break into your home
Into the safe and protected space you'd set aside from the world you usually roam,
With the risks you take to defend we whose cunts are called shame
Who are still scrubbing down the walls inside ourselves to feel clean again?
Was this the gun he held to your children's heads, your six trembling babes
NOW fearing death?
Was this the uniform he wore on the night he stormed inside,
His matching buddies by his side as he shouted "Where did Justine go!"
They wanted you, yes, you know, because you work to stop rape, you work against the pain thickly slapped against women in the democratic republic of this congo.
Was this the uniform he wore when he knew the military men would look
AWAY from punishment?
Well,
I've taken his gun and I've taken his clothes and I've taken this man
Without taking his life.
I've done nothing more than bring him to you,
Cuffed inside of this courtroom.
I wrote my thoughts to your dear president, a simple thing,
But there were thousands of us, so many thousands of us that he was forced to relent
And now here you are, and here is that man and I'm with you still, Justine,
As black marks on a white page
Tucked in an envelope, telling the world your story.
An actor and poet, Kaci Elder is learning the long, slow lesson that black lines--magically assembled into letters then words then indented messages on the page--can subtly shift consciousness and the way we see each other. Can even lead to freedom. She manages a hostel in Redwood National Park with her muses, Ryan her husband and Rory her son.
__________________________________________________
Thursday, December 04, 2008
TWINKLE
by Lori Desrosiers
Mystics and Krishna won’t cure you
Halleluiah child of bleeding pores
child of India, mother holds your hand
in blue and fuscia striped pajamas
waiting for another transfusion
another doctor to say he doesn’t know
ask the Sufi saints
who sing and dance for you
al hamdu’l ‘illah but nothing happens
your face is lovely I see why they
called you Twinkle and the red stain
runs down your cheek like a teardrop
that won’t come off, but at the same time
you smile for cameras hoping someone will
bring the right medicine, poor little star
so the children will play with you again
so the saints will go sing for someone else
Lori Desrosiers' chapbook Three Vanities is being published by Pudding House Press in 2009. Her poems have appeared in Common Ground Review, Big City Lit, The Equinox, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, November 3rd Club, Blue Fifth Review, Gold Wake Press' mini-chapbook series and others. She is the managing editor/publisher of Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry. She lives in Westfield, Massachusetts and is a member of Florence Poets Society.
_______________________________
Doctors in India are baffled as to why a young girl spontaneously bleeds through her pores without being cut or scratched, the Telegraph reported Tuesday. Twinkle Dwivedi, 13, sometimes wakes up in the morning covered in dried blood that has seeped through her eyes, nose, hairline, neck and the soles of her feet. She has undergone several transfusions. --AOL Health News, 1 October 2008
Mystics and Krishna won’t cure you
Halleluiah child of bleeding pores
child of India, mother holds your hand
in blue and fuscia striped pajamas
waiting for another transfusion
another doctor to say he doesn’t know
ask the Sufi saints
who sing and dance for you
al hamdu’l ‘illah but nothing happens
your face is lovely I see why they
called you Twinkle and the red stain
runs down your cheek like a teardrop
that won’t come off, but at the same time
you smile for cameras hoping someone will
bring the right medicine, poor little star
so the children will play with you again
so the saints will go sing for someone else
Lori Desrosiers' chapbook Three Vanities is being published by Pudding House Press in 2009. Her poems have appeared in Common Ground Review, Big City Lit, The Equinox, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, November 3rd Club, Blue Fifth Review, Gold Wake Press' mini-chapbook series and others. She is the managing editor/publisher of Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry. She lives in Westfield, Massachusetts and is a member of Florence Poets Society.
_______________________________
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
OF COURSE THIS NEVER HAPPENED
by George Spencer
2 black cops come to check a suspicious white guy
at the country club
he's armed with a driver, a 5 iron
starts to pull something out of his golf bag
hard to see white guys in the bright sun
100 bullets
fifty from each gun
George Spencer lives in Ecuador half the year where he started its first poetry slam. Recently, he had poems in CLWN WR, Stained Sheets, Rain Tiger, 63 Channels and Poetry MidWest. PWP is publishing his chapbook Obscene Richness of Our Times in '09.
__________________________________________________
2 black cops come to check a suspicious white guy
at the country club
he's armed with a driver, a 5 iron
starts to pull something out of his golf bag
hard to see white guys in the bright sun
100 bullets
fifty from each gun
George Spencer lives in Ecuador half the year where he started its first poetry slam. Recently, he had poems in CLWN WR, Stained Sheets, Rain Tiger, 63 Channels and Poetry MidWest. PWP is publishing his chapbook Obscene Richness of Our Times in '09.
__________________________________________________
Monday, December 01, 2008
EARTHSHINE
a found newspoem by Scot Siegel
based on "Doorstep Astronomy: Venus Shines Bright" by Joe Rao at Space.com
These days, there is much ado
about Venus & Jupiter hovering
aligned in the near sky. Never mind
that planetary spectacle.
Monday night, shift your lens
to the right and you might spot
the full globe of the darkened moon
gloating, its shadowy portion
Glowing with a blueish-gray
hue interposed between sunlit
crescent & the not much
darker sky
This vision,
some call "the old moon
in the young moon's arms"
Scot Siegel is an urban planner and poet from Lake Oswego, Oregon where he serves on the Lake Oswego City Planning Commission and the Board of Trustees for The Friends of William Stafford. His first full-length poetry collection Some Weather is forthcoming in 2009 from Plain View Press.
_______________________________
based on "Doorstep Astronomy: Venus Shines Bright" by Joe Rao at Space.com
These days, there is much ado
about Venus & Jupiter hovering
aligned in the near sky. Never mind
that planetary spectacle.
Monday night, shift your lens
to the right and you might spot
the full globe of the darkened moon
gloating, its shadowy portion
Glowing with a blueish-gray
hue interposed between sunlit
crescent & the not much
darker sky
This vision,
some call "the old moon
in the young moon's arms"
Scot Siegel is an urban planner and poet from Lake Oswego, Oregon where he serves on the Lake Oswego City Planning Commission and the Board of Trustees for The Friends of William Stafford. His first full-length poetry collection Some Weather is forthcoming in 2009 from Plain View Press.
_______________________________
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)