REPORT FROM THE NEW COMMON ERA

by Scot Siegel


If you are reading this from earth
the storm was busy while we worked

They let the dikes go you know
there was no one guarding the gates

The weather was self-effacing
but stubborn; the globe went into a funk

Some were lucky and found arable land
in the unlikeliest places

The last of the freshwater lakes
made excellent farms

We learned to digest salt grass
& lived on reverse osmosis

Everything below forty degrees
was our battery

Solar worked well for a while;
then the wind grew to hurricane pitch

Dust blew over us like a cape
and hovered for centuries –

We had to go off-grid; learned to live
with no economy

The whole race went underground
while the earth yearned to recover
The process was slow; entire tribes
disappeared while we waited

The consumers were the first to go
(we gave them proper burials)

Some said g-d,
after her three thousand year sabbatical

had returned in a flourish
to save us

But we knew better; prayer was a luxury
like books

in the beginning our skeletons
did all the work


Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
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WHY ISN'T OBAMA?

by Bill Costley


Whenever I explain my life
to my European friends,
I say: I fought in no war,
but against war & lies
& deceptions & they nod,
instantly realizing: Yes,
we’re all anti-American,
but why isn’t Obama?


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
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A DIMINISHING VERSE ON DIMINISHING RETURNS

by Janice D. Soderling


My banker said, "We've millions we can spare,
And you should buy, and sell, and hedge a pair.
To back your CDOs, you just list air."

"Why work?" he said, "Invest and watch them grow,
Those fattish figures on the bottom row.
Just buy, buy, buy. It's stupid not to owe."

He spoke of "seed costs" and "returns to scale"
And how a clever girl could harvest kale
And drink champagne instead of common ale.

He oozed experience and boyish charm.
I thought a little debt would do no harm.
A little fling, then came the law's long arm.

My eyes grew glazed; my visage, wan and bleak.
I thought my jugular had sprung a leak.
The loans fell due, I stammered Urk and Eek.

Nothing helped, although I damned and prayed.
Cruel debt collectors swooped down in a raid.
No angel fluttered nimbly to my aid.

Oh, empty purse! Oh, empty glass and plate.
Oh afterthought, too little and too late.
The ball I stand behind is numbered eight.

The sweetest talk comes from a sly loan shark.
Share not my fate, oh sister, list and hark:
Flooded markets float no saving ark.

Don't fall for talk of funds and multi-blend
From oily bankers desperate to lend.
That's how a poor girl comes to a bad end.


Janice D. Soderling has previous work at New Verse News and at many print and online publications such as Glimmer Train Stories, Nthposition, Mezzo Cammin, The Chimaera, 14 x 14, Shakespeare's Monkey Revue. Forthcoming in an Other Stories anthology and at Boston Literary Magazine.
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BALLAD FOR SARAH PALIN'S BABYMOMMADRAMA

by Judy Juanita


before anybody
says one word of defense
for this sweet young pale pregnant
pretty girl, can we hear an official
disclaimer? goes like this:

we regret demonizing whole generations of young black unwed females [neither pale nor pretty by white ethnocentric standards.] we regret stereotyping them as immoral dregs on public welfare rolls. we apologize for not recognizing that sexuality is a human trait not a racial trait and that teen pregnancy happened in the "best of homes" back in the day as well, before we did away with welfare & forced mothers into minimum wage jobs two and three bus rides away from their little not-pale children [I believe you called them bastards but we invented better terms- babymomma, babydaddy- that I know all about because I’m a babydaddymomma] kids left all day to watch tv and play video games unsupervised--what we call the bootiful clinton legacy. that's why some very stoopid people mistook bill for a black prez.

but that's so 80s/90s.
let’s return to late 2008
when fair virgins of the
almost-no-longer-majority
race get impregnated mysteriously
and became upright political footballs.

let's let bygones be bygones and
remember the golden-white rule:
when people of color do it, it's evil;
when whites do it, it's a badge of honor.


Judy Juanita's poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Obsidian II, Painted Bride Quarterly, LIPS, Paterson Review, Croton Review and 13th Moon. She is a playwright and teaches writing in Oakland, Calif.
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SCULPTURE, OHIO, SPRING 1970

by Mary Turzillo


March 23rd, late enough to be the 24th,
a mile away, I heard the boom,
called the cops to find out what happened.
It was the Thinker
in front of Cleveland Art Museum,
blown all to hell,
legs blasted.
Who set the dynamite?
Weathermen? or wacko kids?
Bronze doesn’t talk.

May 4, same year, I was forty miles away,
grading my Kent student’s themes.
It took only 13 seconds.
But it took a lifetime, too:
people maimed and dead, bullets through car windows,
through a young living girl,
bullets punching,
neat as the hole in binder paper,
a Don Drumm sculpture.
Who did it? Bullets tell tales
and it was ruled, months later,
a righteous shooting.
The mute witness, that tall steel Drumm,
isn’t talking, makes no judgments.
Steel doesn’t talk.

The dead are silent, too,
and in my coward’s way,
I’m a witness.
I wasn’t on campus.
I only recoiled.
As to the sculptures,
Rodin, and Drumm,
a thinking man, an abstract tower.
Bronze doesn’t breathe
And steel is mute.

It was the spring
of another American revolution;
alumni bear scars nobody sees.
We look daily on the remnants,
because we can see, we breath, we mourn.
And the sculptures are a record.
Bronze weeps verdigris,
And steel bleeds rust.


Mary Turzillo is a Kent State University Emeritus Professor. She won a 1999 Nebula for her novelette, "Mars Is no Place for Children."
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SIZE MATTER

TWO POEMS
by Buff Whitman-Bradley


In grateful acknowledgment of Bill Holm
who first shone the light of poetry on
the humble box elder bug

i

On the arm of my lawn chair two box elder bugs
Have backed into each other for sex
I try to imagine what it would be like
If they were the size of aircraft carriers --
What thunderous coupling!

ii

In a better world aircraft carriers
Would be the size of box elder bugs
Think how minute
The jet fighters they carry would be
Think of miniscule pilots
Scrambling from below decks
To climb into microscopic cockpits
And take off on a bombing raid
Over an enemy city where
Even if their precision missiles and bombs
Go astray as they so often seem to do
And strike a wedding party or a school
The explosions are so infinitesimally small
That no one even notices
And the celebration goes on and on
Deep into the night
And classes continue until the final bell
Parents welcome their children home
After school
Families sit down to supper together
There are no empty chairs
And meanwhile the fighters have landed
Back on the U.S.S. Box Elder Bug
And after debriefing and a few beers
The wee little pilots take off
Their flight suits
Crawl into their wee little bunks
And drift off to sleep
And visiting them in their untroubled slumber
Come tiny dreams of victory


Buff Whitman-Bradley is a peace and social justice activist in Northern California. In addition to writing, he produces documentary videos and audios. With his wife Cynthia, he is co-producer/director of the award winning video Outside In, about people who visit prisoners on San Quentin's death row.
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LOOSE, LIKE DR. SEUSS

by Kim Doyle


Lesbian, lispian, anti-Thisbe-ian lovers,
like no others. Loved their Mothers
in a peculiar tit lickin' way. That is to
say, with a fidelity that reflects ominously
on you and me, who can take ‘em or leave ‘em.

Prior poorly paisley gaylie lazy guys
kissed their fathers. It was a bother
with no tongue, they were well hung,
but all played on the other team.
What a scream; a narcissusian, nightmare dream.

Am I bein’ mean to make such reams
of mortifyin’ rhyme? The times are changin’,
marriages re-arrangin’ themselves. Let’s all bask
in a homoerotic sun that says at last, free, at last
free to be you and me.


Kim Doyle is on the other, other team. Just like having "stars on thars." What frees others frees him; a lesson from Civil Rights activity.
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GLOBALIZATION

by Robert M. Chute


Reading any newsprint from Boston
to Bombay, tuning in the leading
story on any TV news, it’s easy
to see why globalization is
the catch-word of the day as
brutality and violence seem
as common as opportunity,
the means as universal as
paving stones and bricks (bullets
by the handful for the well-to-do),
with a little petrol added to the mix
of fractious politics to prove, if fueled
by impulse, anything will burn, be turned
to the global coin of ash and smoke.


Robert M. Chute's book of poetry based on scientific articles, Reading Nature, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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HEALTH CARE

by Tyrone Nagai


Add 12 months of paid leave for new mothers,
so both baby and mommy stay healthy.
Insurance that actually covers
this need exists in all modern countries.
Of course that’s assuming we fix health care,
granting insurance to all, forever.
It’s no burden for taxpayers to bare;
we all benefit from this endeavor.

Just think of young Diamante Driver.
The 12-year-old died from an abscessed tooth.
Eighty bucks to make him a survivor,
the price to extract and clean his nerve root.
Our health care system needs a redesign.
That’s what I’m talking about for ’09.


Tyrone Nagai is pursuing his MFA at San Diego State University. He is also associate editor of Fiction International.
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THE SUTURES

by Jennifer Fenn


The sutures still seen
Across Armenia's face,
She stares through veined eyes
At the latest U.S. president
To leave out the word "genocide".

"Never forget! 1.5 million Armenians killed!"
She cries
As crowds with placards emerge
All over the country
Like drops of blood
Trickling
From the stitched wound.

Obama urges
The most important thing now
Is to focus on the future
After these "great atrocities",
Comments like Band-Aids
Now soaked with scarlet.


Jennifer Fenn’s poetry has appeared previously in The New Verse News, National Catholic Reporter, Samsara, Black Book Press, Amaze: the Cinquain Journal and is scheduled to appear in Nomad's Choir.
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DE-CATTATION

by Bill Costley


“Cat out of bag.”

John Yoo sweats
casuistical bullets
formulating it:

If a bag collapses
& the cat gets out,
the bag

(he legalizes it:)

suffers de-cattation
& the cat’s deprived
of its bag, the bag, its cat.

(he codifies it:)

No such deprivation must occur.
The cat may retain its bag
without impunity.


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
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SHORTENED SCHOOL YEAR

by Scot Siegel


Due to the budget shortfall
(which is projected to continue
well into the next biennium,
and beyond…)

They’ve retired all the used books
(and our favorite senior teachers)
Replaced them with new myths
(no one is learning)

There’s no time left for knowledge
in the information age


Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
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KILLER ROBOTS

by Andrew Hilbert


"Killer robots and a revolution in warfare"
the headline read
accompanied by a photograph of a female's
hand bristling the metal fingers of a
killer robot.

(destruction, yes, may breed creation
but the hope for destruction funds creation.)

it looked a lot like God and Adam
touching from Heaven to Earth.
i wonder what God had in mind
when he created humans;
what did the headlines read?


Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
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SEE, I TOLD YOU

by Linda Lerner


fear leapt off roofs in 1930’s flashback
leaving her homeless, alone to raise two kids
when my father’s rage at his boss, a job he hated
exploded and sent her running for cover,
this housewife camouflaged a soldier whose quiet street
sudden noise turned into a combat zone:

fear rising from boiling water
kept her shutting off lights after us,
scraping crumbs off plates to seal for reuse
watering down milk and juice:

It was war---war without discharge,
no one could convince her the depression ended
decades ago, that it wasn’t an illusion
and any moment banks wouldn’t start closing
century old businesses fail, the market start plunging
and news of some bankrupt family men jumping
into death’s insurance safety net--

when something’s over doesn’t mean it’s finished;
the years were bread lines she stood on
waiting patiently for that vindication
I wish in an absurd crazy kind of way
she were here now to finally get:

see, I told you, she can’t say,
but I still hear


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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