SMOKE 911

by Ellen Kombiyil


On this particular Tuesday – flawless sky
Cornflower blue, the same color
As the miniature flowers hand-painted
On my porcelain teapot from which
I poured bancha – I warmed up leftovers
In the microwave, set teacups
On starched linen. If only
Steamed dumplings in sweet broth could have
Returned me to Sunday, to dim sum
On Pell Street, the fish tank near the register,
Black goldfish, gold goldfish, red carnations
On tables. But they couldn’t. And after
The running, the walking: all morning
Thousands past my window and into
The afternoon. In the dusty air
The smell of metal. Memory of dessert
Was twin-pronged, the after and before:
Bean-paste buns, sunshine, autumn wind.


Born and raised in Syracuse, New York, and a graduate of the University of Chicago, Ellen Kombiyil’s poetry has recently appeared in 2river, Beloit Poetry Journal, Juked, and MiPOesias, among others. She currently lives in India with her husband and two children.
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JOEY WILSON'S WAR

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


You lie!
When you say They're just as good as us
You lie!
When you say There's a one of 'em a man can trust
You lie!
When you say It's okay for black to marry white
You lie!
When you say The South gave up the fight
You lie!
When you say This country ain't a Christian one
You lie!
When you say It's all over but the shoutin', son
You lie!
When you say I'll ever march to a tune sung by Obama
You lie!
When you say This ain't no Selma, Alabama


Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady County in upstate NY. A regular contributor to New Verse News, Swartz has also been featured in Best Poem, switched-on gutenberg, and The Kennesaw Review. A two-time Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, Swartz is also a filmmaker. Never Leave Nevada, which he wrote and directed and in which he co-starred, opened at The US Sundance Film Festival in 1990.
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WITCH HUNT

by Spiel


this time
you hold the sway
at the click of your mouse

this time
you strike the match
that ravages trust

this time
you write
the blacklist

that imprisons tongues
of those who would speak
to free you


There is no NEA nor MFA influence in diverse writings of personal conflict and social consciousness by the poet Spiel, published frequently, internationally, online and in independent press journals. His latest books are: she: insinuations of flesh brooding (March Street Press) and once upon a farmboy (MadmanInk)
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TRUANT DISPOSITION: A HAIKU

by Barbara A. Taylor


don’t go to school
today you might hear
your president speak


Barbara A. Taylor's poems appear in international journals and anthologies: Landfall, Atlas Poetica, Modern English Tanka, Haiku Scotland. Canadian Zen Haiku,, Ginyu, Riverbed, Lynx, Presence, Sketchbook , qaartisiluni, Ribbons, Frogpond, Wisteria, 3lightsgallery, Shamrock, Eucalypt, Lynx, Simply Haiku, Kokako, Moonset, Magnapoets, Poetic Diversity, and elsewhere. Poetry with audio is at http://batsword.tripod.com.
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WRONG: THE SUMMER OF 2009

by William Aarnes

“But suddenly you’re half a lifetime old.” Kevin Hart, “The Ship”

Suddenly Jack is seven-eighths a lifetime old—or even older. In the passenger’s seat, he insists to Claire,
“Something’s wrong.”
                                        When Jack steps off the treadmill,
the cardiologist looks at him as if he is dead. “Angiograph,”
the man insists. Then “pecutaneous”—as if that word
could reassure.

                              In the ambulance that hurries Jack
the forty miles to the hospital with the costly equipment,
the attendant explains that Jack should take heart
from how one of his arteries has already performed
its own bypass.

                              A confident cardiologist
shakes Jack’s hand. “Balloon,” the young man beams,
“carotid.”
                      With no rooms left in Cardiac Care,
Jack’s rolled into ICU. And Claire, with disbelief,
lets a Lutheran chaplain comfort her with prayer.

Fox News attends the patient on the other side
of the curtain: Strident griping that the President
wants to betray the American way of life.

                                                                                A nurse
wakes Jack to remove the catheter. For half an hour
she has to press a folded towel against Jack’s groin
to staunch any bleeding. She seems to sleep.
Jack lies awake but unaroused.

                                                            At five a.m.
Fox News comes on loud: a glee club of complaint,
excited by the rumor of government death panels.

Then Claire’s in a chair, holding Jack’s hand, saying breakfast
will come soon, smiling as if something’s wrong.


William Aarnes has recently had poems in The Vocabula Review, Forge, and The Dirty Napkin.
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AFGHANISTAN

by Howie Good


flops on
its back

wants you
to rub
its belly

don’t


Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, has just had his first full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick, published by Press Americana.
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LETTER TO KEITH WILSON

by Edward Dougherty


Ink coated
the nib, black
droplets on gold—

I thought of all
your pens there
in the desert.

At the reading
against the war
I offered yours

from Graves
Registry, telling
historians

of the future
how much we love
war, shape lives

and families,
policies
and businesses

for it—a book
of vision, Keith,
remarkable and true.

Despite our poems,
they shocked, they awed.
Your work helped vets

haul what they witnessed
and what they did but later
understand into some

healing sunshine,
Now, though, nightmares,
Keith, we’re fashioning

nightmares again.
I know because your poems
are urgent, fierce

animal growls, warnings
to heed since they issue
from our own mirrored faces.


After finishing his MFA in Bowling Green, Ohio, Edward Dougherty and his spouse volunteered at a peace center in Hiroshima for two and a half years. They now live and work in Corning, New York, and are active in their Quaker Meeting. Dougherty is the author of Pilgrimage to a Gingko Tree (2008 WordTech Communications) and Part Darkness, Part Breath (2008 Plain View Press) as well as four chapbooks of poetry, the most recent of which is The Luminous House (2007 Finishing Line Press). His textbook, Exercises for Poets: Double Bloom, co-authored with Scott Minar, is available from Prentice-Hall. In 2007, he received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. "Letter to Keith Wilson" was written to/for the poet and Korean war vet, Keith Wilson, on behalf of all the men and women engaged in the "war on terror."
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UNEXPECTED OFF-SITE

by Michele F. Cooper


Mahogany and velvet,
two dozen sedations
for Sunday brunch,
personal comments like burrs
on the dark wool,
spring mix
with a navy napkin,
china waiting
for the quiche and soup,
chairman entering
during dessert,
taking the podium,
smiling the bad news,
the red line up,
stocks in mothballs,
pink slips in the office,
he knows the numbers
will improve, and then
his plan for the short term,
plan for the long haul,
tightening of belts,
discipline and loyalty,
salaries only in half
till the third quarter,
having no doubts,
they will rise again,
and thank you all.


Michele F. Cooper is the first-place winner in Poetry Canada's Rhymed Poetry Competition and the TallGrass Poetry Competition, second-place winner in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition, author of two books and numerous published poems, founding editor of the Newport Review and Crone's Nest literary magazines, and of a chapbook series, Premier Poets. She recently won honorable mentions in the Emily Dickinson and New Millennium Poetry Competitions. Her book Posting the Watch has just been published by Turning Point, the narrative poetry imprint at WordTech. She is listed in Who's Who in America, Contemporary Authors, and the Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, among others. She recently moved from the edge of a small horse farm (not hers) to Providence, RI, and now to the Cleveland area, where she writes and works as a book editor.

WARM-UP EXERCISE

(Obstacles To Health Care Reform #2)
by Scot Siegel


raise your hand if Health Insurance Premiums
Rise by Double-Digits

makes you resent North Dakota
Unemployment Rate Lowest In The Nation

and raise both hands if Ocean Temperatures
Rise Across The Globe
For The Fifth Straight Year

feels oddly familiar

like Galveston Floods Again
or Polar Bears Left Stranded
or Thousands Flee
California Wildfires

and stand up
if Youngest Of Nuremburg
                    Prosecutors
Dies In His Home

makes you long for a time

before Twenty Die
Outside Mosque
In Roadside Blast
Detonated By
A Woman

and take a seat
when [we interrupt to bring you…]

Solar Prominences Active
But Sunspots Conspicuously Absent
According To Scientists
=0 A
At Lowell Observatory

Recession Nearly Over––


Scot Siegel's recent books include Some Weather (Plain View Press 2008) and the chapbook, Untitled Country (Pudding House Publications 2009). He serves on the board for the Friends of William Stafford.
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STANDING OVATION

by Karen Greenbaum-Maya


Pale orange light carved by leaves
makes pumpkin eyes on the sidewalk.
Cream-sicle orange, then bright orange crush.
More smoke billows up, soft and dirty,
a standing ovation you can see from Vegas.
L.A. : every live act gets a standing ovation.

The air smells—ashtrays, old fireplaces.
Ash sifts down, fine grit lays down a rash.
You find it all over everything’s skin, like cursed dander.
The sun has turned into a cut pink guava,
this year's false harvest moon.
The moon pretends to be in eclipse

Neighbors thought they didn’t have to run,
rashly thought they could face off the fire,
somehow it would leave them standing,
thought we’d return with their standing ovation.
Nothing alive still standing. The dirt is charred,
the trees ashen from the fire-storm, stripped pillars.

Running shoes melted, dishwasher skeletons,
orange trees made coals piled for barbecue.
Hills gone to hot orange heaps that smolder by night:
live coverage from Melrose, Hollywood, Vegas,
all sifted over with ash-fine grit.
The sun is an over-ripe guava.
Burnt hills are a standing ovation.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Claremont , California . In another life, she majored in German Lit so she could read poetry for credit, before making the seamless segue into psychology. Her poems and photos have appeared in O Tempora!, Superficial Flesh, Still Crazy, NewVerseNews, The Dirty Napkin, Umbrella Journal and Lilliput Review. A poem of hers was nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize.
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SLICE OF THE PIE

by Phyllis Wax


Health care for all—
In America ?
Pie in the sky

Some get pecan, pumpkin, coconut cream
Peach, cherry, lemon meringue
Strawberry, blueberry, key lime

A mud pie for others—
Or maybe a cow pie
Pie in the face
If they can’t pay

Eat humble pie, swallow the bile
Die out of sight As American as
Apple pie

Demagogues stir up mobs
To protest change
With rhubarbs and
Raucous tea parties

Know-nothings don’t believe
There can be so many places
Where people live longer
Everyone gets care
Fewer babies die

Get pie-eyed or
Open your mouth for
Sweet Eskimo Pie
To help you forget

You won’t get a slice
Of American pie


Phyllis Wax lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she seeks to understand history and the world. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News before, as well as in numerous other on-line and print journals and anthologies.
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CASH FOR BUNKERS

by David Feela


In Afghanistan where the Taliban
have dug in for the duration
of the next army’s occupation,
an old woman with an afghan

draped across her shoulders
suspects the streets are busy
because so many are trading in
their bunkers from the last war.

When the election is over
they’ll dig some more
but for now they need cash
for food, which explains

why her thumb is so dark,
her indelible right to
stick it in the place where
it does her the most good.


David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, and book collector.. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including the High Country News' "Writers 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 Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas, is now available.
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OBSTACLES TO HEALTH CARE REFORM #1

by Scot Siegel

                         ...and speaking of the pre-apocalyptic age
               can we please rewind to a time
when unicycling

                                             down a mountainside
                              rock-hopping & slaloming
               among the fragrant pines
on a snowy day

was considered
          an acceptable,
                     even heroic,
                        form of
                      extremist
                    recreation?

                  ...and rewind to the days of Clinton

in the age
     of sexy surplus,
          luscious transfats,
               and campaign sax riffs...

               a much younger
       and more innocent

though much more robust

time

in American life


Scot Siegel's recent books include Some Weather (Plain View Press 2008) and the chapbook, Untitled Country (Pudding House Publications 2009). He serves on the board for the Friends of William Stafford.
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MALTA DREAM

by Anca Vlasopolos


this is how it will be
and only for those who can pay
the way it is here and now
half a million souls on a rock
farming water from seas ever hotter
shallower
each saint day with its gay banners and papier-mâché debris choked in fumes
each trip taking
a little longer
each boat bobbing in other’s wake

at large no more
squared like terraced earth
only
fish hemmed into aquaculture
only
birdsong from balcony cage
then
ever more
reading
lights
water
interrupted
breath
even holding hands
kissing
in unbearable violent
heat

Anca Vlasopolos has published a detective novel, a memoir, various short stories, over 200 poems, the poetry collection Penguins in a Warming World, and the non-fiction novel The New Bedford Samurai. She was born in 1948 in Bucharest, Rumania. Her father, a political prisoner of the Communist regime in Rumania, died when Anca was eight. After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the United States with her mother, a prominent Rumanian intellectual and a survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is married to Anthony Ambrogio, a writer and editor; they have two daughters: Olivia Vlasopolos Ambrogio and Beatriz Rosa Jimenez Ambrogio.
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