SUMMER 2010: GOD'S PLENTY, SAVE ONE

by Earl J. Wilcox


Today I poke around in my garden,
hover over plants suffering August
angst. My cucumbers—early bloomers,
fast growing veggies, pickles practically
on the vines before Easter each spring---
are holding back this summer. I have
watered and watched, mulched their
fuzzy vines, waited for mother plants
to give me baby pickles. Under shade
of large leaves, tiny gherkins peer up
at me sweetly, watch patiently as I
move on, snip yellow squash, pick purple
eggplant, gather more tomatoes than
Adam’s extended family could eat.


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. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
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GIVEN THE CHOICE OF BARBIE

by Aaron Gillego

a poem in response to CNN's special: "Kids on Race: Doll Study Revisited"

Julia turned six today
and she celebrated the American
way--hot dogs, pizza, french
fries--at a bowling alley
with friends her own size.
Dressed in ruffled pink
like Tinkerbell, she was poised
to play and win: to roll
a ball and knock things down
and score points--training
for real life, I suppose--
as Pheona and Abby chanted
her name, she beat them
at their own game without
even realizing it, without a care
in the world. None of them
could count past twenty
and they're too young
to keep score.

When the party was over
Julia opened her gifts:
one was a Barbie doll
with turquoise eyes
long brown hair and un-
fair skin, a mermaid
though I don't recall a brown
mermaid in the movie.
Julia loved the toy, she
brushed its hair and didn't care
about its soy-colored skin--
akin to each of us there
around her. It appalled
my sister: who had given
the doll, she wondered,
then gave us a question
to ponder: given a choice of color
Barbie--white, black or brown--
which would we choose?
The answer is a matter
of what you're willing
to win or lose.


Aaron Gillego resides in Miami, FL, where he teaches high school English. He pursued his MFA in Poetry at the University of Miami. He has been published by The Advocate and has contributed four poems previously to The New Verse News.
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CALL AND RESPONSE

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


My teacher wrote to me:

Appreciated the take on the beer murders.
Suddenly it's all about race again, though i suspect it never went away.
Again translation.
How do we communicate the rage that has become synonymous with living here?

I tried to answer his question but fell ass-over backwards into a poem (oops)

My reply:

Disguise, disguise, disguise

One mask for when we sit on the hill, eating lunch as we watch the war rage

One mask for this and that

All the time insisting that it's bad but it could be a lot, lot worse

And now the spectacle of the victimized white person

The fat, ugly, screaming, censorious white

The angry grasping fainting clawing white

Crying because he knows that there are millions out there who would happily see his war and his lunch taken away


Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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DORSIMBRA FOR TONY HAYWARD

by Diane Elayne Dees


The oil-covered birds that wash up dead,
the turtles that you've burned alive, the marsh
that's turned to brown, the callous things you've said--
all make your fate a good deal less than harsh.

Lies, abandonment, blaming victims--
you used Katrina as your template:
Who cares about inhabitants
whose boundaries are eaten away?

What happens to you now is not important.
What matters are the toxins in the air,
the vanished incomes, poisons in the water--
the families who buried the eleven.


Editor’s Link: Dorsimbra.
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Diane Elayne Dees's political poetry has appeared in several publications. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women's professional tennis.
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JUST LIKE LADY MACBETH

by Michael Monroe


I wash my hands incessantly.
I don’t think it’s OCD.
I don’t count the times
I let the water fall through my fingers,
rub the soap through my skin
until my palms bleed;

I just wash them
thoroughly,
and then wash them again.

I think I’m trying to remove
the grime of this world,
the germs of swine flu,
the oil spills
of Capitalism gone awry,
the blood of war
drenching faraway streets

like stains I can’t remove
from my clean hands.
No matter how hard I rub,
no matter how many times
I wash and wash,
the cleanliness
is merely illusion.


Michael Monroe's work has been published in the Loch Raven Review, Manorborn, and Poet's Ink. He also has poems due to be published in upcoming issues of Gargoyle Magazine and Lyric Poetry Magazine. Two of his poems were recorded on the Words on War CD produced by Birdhouse Studios and he often does poetry readings with Gimme Shelter Productions to raise money for the homeless in Baltimore.
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THE DOWNFALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

by Andrew Hilbert


we were two costco employees
bullshitting about nothing to pass the time
to drown out the buzzing beeping
of the machines we worked that drowned
down the sound of our own minds

and of course we talked about videogames
bragging of our virtual slaughterhouses
on our murder simulators
we were proud of our kill/death ratio

an older lady glared at us
she had patches of hair on her chin
and she says
"videogames are the downfall of western
civilization"
she felt righteous and walked herself out

she didn't say goodbye

i didn't say have a nice day

i became silent and thought about
the downfall of western civilzation
i thought about hiroshima
i thought about nagasaki
i thought about auschwitz
and buchenwald, gulags, abu ghraib
and napalm

i couldn't put a beginning to the end
of western civilization
and every day was potentially a new
end


Andrew Hilbert lives and works in Orange County. He also edits Beggars & Cheeseburgers magazine.
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VICTORY

by George Held

    A sequel to “Defeat,” which struck some readers as too pessimistic.

Forget your troubles, come on, get happy—
It’s the American way

We shall overcome, some da-ay-ay-ay-ay—
It’s the American way

America, America, God shed His grace on thee—
It’s the American way

Let not the oil contamination in the Gulf
The abomination in Afghanistan
The deflation of our economy

Dim that good ol’ tried ’n’ true American
Optimism, for we shall overcome—
Don’t ask how or when—

We shall overcome, we shall overcome:
Say it, sing it, love it—

It’s the all-American way!


George Held has collected many of his New Verse News poems in The News Today.
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AUGUST 6, 1945

by Howie Good


Birds igniting
in midair.

Women
whose skin

hangs
from them

like a kimono.
Would it not

be wondrous
for this whole

nation to be
destroyed

like a beautiful
flower?


Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 18 print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009).
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PAUL TIBBETS

by Mark Zimmermann


It appalls—as bullets appall.
Battle built it;
labs test it,
label it: U.S.A.

I use it.
Plate, bat, ball:
a blast leaps.

Put up a slate tablet? Salute
Paul Tibbets?     Bull.
Let all applause pass. I'll sleep—
a late, pale blip.


Author’s Note: This poem is a lipogram. A lipogram is a writing in which one or more letters of the alphabet are deliberately excluded. In this case, the constraint is determined by using only letters that appear in the title/subject's name, Paul Tibbets = a-b-e-i-l-p-s-t-u.
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Since 2004 Mark Zimmermann has lived in Milwaukee with his wife and two cats, teaching writing and literature courses at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Previously (1993-2004) he did the same work in Japan, Hungary and Poland. He has had poems published in New Letters, Verse Wisconsin, The Writer, and many other publications.
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DIEGO RIVERA'S DEEP WATER HORIZON

by Alan Catlin


Muscular workers with hard hats,
stained short-sleeved shorts and filthy
jeans, men hunched in corners of
a view of the Gulf, bracketing discolored
ultramarine water slick with residues of
oil, deserted and working rigs, large
metal protrusions thrust upward
into early morning fog, objects from
a nightmare of exploitation and greed.
Vivid streaks of unnatural color, fireball
red, orange, yellow, create new horizons;
even the water burning.


Alan Catlin's latest chapbook is a long poem, Thou Shalt Not Kill, an updating of Rexroth's seminal poem of the same name. Whereas Rexroth riffs on the abuses of the Eisenhower adminstration, the update observes abuses of power in the previous administration with particular attention to the cynical, criminal behavior towards the Katrina hurricane victims.
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DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


I’m fine reading reports like the one coming through right now about the man who killed 8 at the beer distributors in Connecticut, then killed himself  I’m fine reading about the cluster bombs dropped on Serbia and the Serbian snipers who picked off Bosnian Muslims as they waited in line to buy bread I’m fine reading about the Jews of Hungary who were rounded up late in the war, in mid- ’44, after everyone knew the war was lost

This guy I know - Dmitry – tells me he’s proud of me for reading what I read  He says that if people chose to remain uninformed the insanity will never stop  He says that it’s hard stuff to process, but he’s making darn sure that his kids know about the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda and Darfur  Dmitry takes his kids to documentaries at The Film Forum  Dmitry is positive that for change to happen we must remove our blinders

He’s probably right  Don’t you think?

And, as I said, during daylight hours I am fine with all of this

At three in the morning, though, and I’m not sure why, I turn into something else  My reflection in the oven door isn’t me It’s scary, actually At three in the morning, I sometimes fall to my knees  Dmitry would laugh, but at three in the morning I even sometimes pray to God

It scares me, this change, this middle of the night change This middle of the night change into the man I saw on the news today, leaving the scene of the shooting,  the man who   “…did not want to be identified, (who) … quickly got into his car” At three in the morning me becoming the man who did not, could not, would not  Save The Day  The man who only wants to get into his car and find where daylight went, saying, as he drives away: “It was a sad day I was in there”


Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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THE DAILY BLAB

by Earl J. Wilcox


Last week, our family planned a trip out west.
Fate intervened in the form of medical news
For one of us. Best not travel at this time.
But mail and papers have already been stopped,
We implored one above, some postal or daily
Newspaper deity aware of our fixation on reading
The same news, getting the same bills and flyers daily.
Four days later---mail and papers still on hold---
Our lives seem improved. We talk at breakfast,
Take walks during time we once pored over
Ho-hum editorials, classic comic strips, lousy
News that our baseball team has once again lost.
We’re considering faking our demise so that mail
And papers are forever on hold till our return.


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. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
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HAVE YOU HEARD?

by Larry Jones


spread the word,
the oil in the gulf has disappeared.
it's some kind of
mystical
magical
miracle.
                 
really it's all gone,
vanished.

thank you jesus
thank you mr. obama
thank you wolf blitzer


Larry Jones lives in Beaver, Utah. His poetry appears in The Camel Saloon, Haggard & Halloo, Amphibi.us and others.
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FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

by Gretchen Fletcher

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed...”

All the energy of the sun's fusion
of hydrogen into helium – the bright burst
we feel and see as heat and light
makes possible photosynthesis.

Lumbering creatures once ingested that energy
in the form of ferns or the flesh of fern-eaters.
Trapped under what was once dry land
and the pressure of eons, the energy

has now been released
like a genie from a bottle
with an inexorable rushing whooshing gush.
No longer recognizable as life forms,

the creatures have become great globs
of potential power, slick slime riding the waves to shore
in the form of a rainbow of broken promises.
Like ills from Pandora's box, this energy cannot be put back.


Gretchen Fletcher was a winner in the Poetry Society of America’s Bright Lights, Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron as she read her poem in Times Square. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including upstreet, Chattahoochee Review, Inkwell, The Mid-American Poetry Review, and Poetry as Spiritual Practice edited by Robert McDowell. She leads writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbook That Severed Cord was published by Finishing Line Press.
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