FORTUNE OBIT NO. 3: REACTIONARY COURAGE

by Patricia Barone


“A good time to keep your mouth shut
is when you're in deep water,” This advice
seemed crazy to me at first, me treading
water as fast as my legs could peddle against
the current, trying to stay in the same place
away from the undertow, the hydro-
electric powered dam, but some kind soul
dropped this fortune from the bridge,
like a message from God or even
Glenn Beck the famous political evangelist,
and I swallowed my frantic cries for a life preserver, cries
that might have brought a park ranger, fireman, police
man, or even a life guard from the nearby beach—
to reach me before I died for liberty, safe
from government interference.


Patricia Barone has published a book of poetry, Handmade Paper, and a novella, The Wind, with New Rivers Press. Her work most recently appeared in The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks, Poems of Loss and Renewal from Nodin Press and in View From the Bed, View From the Bedside, Wising Up Press. She has received a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in poetry.
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A U.S. MINE RESCUE

by Jen Hinton


Sixty-nine days of hope.
Fifteen minutes of capsule.
Welcome back Topside!

But there’s a price tag
for rescue now as with
everything humane.

If you paid your
capsule rescue premiums
you can stay;

but if you’re delinquent,

back down that chute
you go!


Jen Hinton lives in Schaumburg, IL and has participated in performance poetry and literary readings in the Chicago area. She has three previously published poems in The New Verse News and is working on a collection of poetry and short stories.
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THE LABORS OF DOMESTICITY

by David Feela


Nobody imagines the gods anymore,
that vast nomenclature of kin
tossing lightning bolts or kicking
mythological butt so mere mortals
can explain what defies explanation. 

Now we blame each other, partisan
politics in the temples, pundits for oracles,
elections in the place of edicts. 
It may be that Poseidon is still
at the bottom of the underwater

mortgage, or that Griffins run the banks
but the gods can’t see all -- it’s the drones,
satellites, and security cameras monitoring
our digital labyrinth where the minotaur
invites us in and closes the door.


David Feela's work has appeared in regional and national publications. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas, is now available.
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THE PATRIOT

by Jeffrey McDonald


The old man sat
at the coffee shop counter.

One night a young man joined him
and said he hates this country,
and he can’t trust the politicians
and the military
and the media,
and why WHY do people wave their flags and sing their songs?

And the old man said,
screw the politicians,
let the military do their job
and damn the media.
That’s not your country.
Your country is your friends,
your family,
your favorite basketball team,
Halloween,
Central Park,
Yellowstone Park,
your favorite High School teacher,
your home town.
Wave your flag and sing your song for those things.
Stop worrying about the big ugly things you’ve heard exist.
Your country is a people, and the people are you, me
and that guy back there making the coffee.

Another night another young man joined him
And said he hates these damn Russians
Taking over the neighborhood,
and the blacks in Bed Stuy
and the Jews in Midwood
and the Polish in Greenpoint
and the Puerto Ricans in Sunset Park
and why WHY don’t these people go
back from where they came
and quit taking our jobs?

And the old man said,
imagine your country as a hotel.
This city is the main lobby
and the people mill about
waiting for their rooms
and the wait time is measured in generations.
Some are shown their rooms first, in one generation.
Some take longer.
Your parents, grandparents, or maybe before that,
were shown their rooms, as were mine.
Some are still waiting.
The important part is to keep working hard,
contributing
and never block the path of another.
And the people you mention
are some of the hardest working this city has,
including that guy back there making the coffee.

On a third night the old man was joined by another old man,
who said he didn’t understand the kids today.
They either hated their country and freedom,
a freedom he fought for.
Or they didn’t want to work,
after he worked his whole life to make ends meet.
Or they were a bunch of hooligans,
beating on each other over skin color,
when he’d live side by side with any man of medal.
And why WHY don’t they take some responsibility and stop running
this country into the ground?

And the old man said,
I’m not a politician.
A professor.
A police officer.
A guidance counselor.
A movie star.
Or even just a parent,
but
you’d be amazed at how much you can help
by sitting
at this one coffee shop counter,
if you stay long enough.
And the man making the coffee turned to him and smiled.


Jeffrey McDonald talks to old men in coffee shops.  He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and two sons.
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PILLOW TALK AT THE THOMAS HOUSE

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


“I apologize if you really think I shouldn’t have called Anita.”
“The court finds undeniably to be in favor of ya.”
“Oh, Clare, why is it that life is just so darn unfair?”
“You mean, as in: Coke Can v. Pubic Hair?”
“That darn Anita! She just didn’t need to–you know–go where she went.”
“Baby, some folks just don’t know the meaning of repent.”
“Maybe, though, this wasn’t the time for unwanted attention.”
“Is my baby girl frettin’ about her Tea Party connection?"
“Heck, Clare, is it so wrong for a gal to be in love with liberty?"
“Golly no – just as long as liberty runs a distant second to little me.”
“You know, when I heard the cockiness on her voice mail, Clare, 
          I lost any notion I had of flinchin'.”
“Yeah, well, what’s done is done. Now who here is in the mood 
          for a little low-tech lynchin’?”
“Oh, Clare, I do declare!”
“What’s fair is fair.”
“Oh, do go there! Do go there!”

(At this point, we lost our audio outright
So apologies to all, and to all a good night!)


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 OTHER 25

by George Held

  For Sergeant Jeff

75 percent of American teenagers aren’t eligible for the Army because they are overweight or have other physical disabilities, can’t pass the entrance exam, or they have a criminal record.
                            —Politics Daily, 17 October 2010


DuBois could draw on The Talented Tenth
to pull his people up by the boot straps,
and those folks were able to pull their boots on,

while we now have the unfit three quarters,
who are ineligible for military service
so the other 25 must deploy and redeploy

In Afghanland till they are drug addled
or go crazy or kill themselves.

Wait till the other 25 decide it’s not worth
it to serve in battle while the misfits
gorge themselves on burgers and smoothies;

wait till they reject the brass and the pols
who say the war must continue, like
a perpetual-motion machine, that chimera

no one ever has ever perfected, just models
that eventually tick-tock till they stop;

wait till they abandon the hilltop outpost
on the frigid peak near the border of Pakiland—
no “stan” to glamorize the hostile lands

where they fight and die or are maimed
for a slack obese tea-potted criminal
civilization that once bred the heroes

of Iwo Jima and the Bulge—wait till they make
a separate peace and they file orderly

back to face the other three quarters
of their craven, negligent cohort,
for whom they finally refuse to die.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick . . .


George Held’s poetry chapbook Phased is available in a print-on-demand version at amazon.com.
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ONLINE APPEAL

by David Chorlton


The subject line reads: Man to be executed in AZ next Tuesday,
you can help stop it. It’s Wednesday.
Six days to go
and thirteen
until the gubernatorial election.
Please take a moment to call
the governor’s office.
I begin counting down and dial the number.
Six days is a short time to wait
for the famous last meal
after twenty years have passed since the trial.
I don’t know who was guilty
or whether the DNA
is proof of innocence, but nobody
comes back from the dead
to tell us they were framed. On Sunday
there will be prayers
going wherever they go and returning
with good news or bad. The governor
will pray for her election;
somebody will pray
for a soul that is to be released
while the body must accept its sentence.
The telephone rings, and a recording says
If you’re calling about immigration
press one, for other concerns press two.
While I wait a few seconds, I wonder
what waiting really means
when it's Monday
with one day to live. Somebody answers;
she sounds to be chewing gum. I say
what I called to say,
and she replies with all the time in the world,
You hadda email, huh?


David Chorlton has lived in Arizona for more than thirty years and loves the landscape, but laments that the state legislature has more thorns than the cactus.
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THE CANDIDATE

by Martha Deed


The first from Buffalo since James Mead in 1946
declares his opponent’s prowess in a non-political arena
shoves his trigger-fingered fist into a reporter’s face and offers to take him out
declares the state assembly speaker a criminal
his campaign guests pay good money to stay in his hotel
rent cars from his car agency
park in his parking lots
and his parking garages
watch commercials made by his employees
read handbills printed by companies that lease space from him
he puts his money in a bank that pays him rent
of the money spent so far – $3.8 million –
more than half has come back to companies
he owns or controls
his accountant charts it all.

It’s the good old days in the Old First Ward
we may never have another person from this area
running for governor one man says
as even the democrats gather round their millionaire
neighbor to share Jimmy Griffin stories
and swell with the pride of reflected glory
from a guy who’s making it
proud for Buffalo
with sixth grade threats and innuendo
giving disrespectful downstate cousins
a dose of their own medicine
something to laugh about
or maybe not
it’s an election, baby.           

References:
Michael Barbaro.  Paladino Campaign Blames Reporter for Taped Confrontation.  September 30, 2010. Robert McCarthy.  Paladino steamrolls to stunning upset. September 15, 2010.
Harold McNeil. In Paladino Country, Democrats Rally. October 7, 2010.
David Halbfinger.  As Paladino Spends on Campaign, He Often Earns, Too.  October 6, 2010.
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Martha Deed's chapbooks, The Lost Shoe and This is Visual Poetry, were published recently by Dan Waber's chapbookpublisher.com and Naissance (2010).  She edited and designed City Bird: Selected Poems (1991-2009) by Millie Niss (BlazeVox, 2010). 
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TESTAMENT

by Jon Wesick


I, the baby boomer generation,
being of sound mind and body
do hereby declare this
my last will and testament.

To corporations who can buy a hundred lobbyists
I leave the American democracy.

To the CIA, NSA, and FBI
I leave our personal freedoms.

To bullies and book burners
I leave the offices of government.

To religious and political fanatics
I leave the Constitution in your hands.

To voters needing accurate information
I leave Fox News.

To Generation X
I leave the naïve belief
that an education guarantees a good job.

To Generation Y
I leave a lifetime of waiting tables
and repaying student loans.

The dream of a better world
I leave to no one.


Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as the The New Verse News, New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
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ODE TO A GILA MONSTER

by Rochelle Owens


There goes a Gila monster
in the beginning
of the triumphant twenty-first century
there goes a Gila reptile
following soundlessly
soundlessly following
is a Gila monster a mute animal
a monster of brilliant color
there goes a Gila reptile
studded with yellow and black
beadlike tubercules
there goes a beautiful reptile
with lidless eyes
devoid of dread and shame
in harmony with the microscopic algae
in harmony with a zygote in a moist habitat
in harmony with a basil plant
in harmony with fern and poison mushroom
there goes a cold-blooded Gila monster
a cold-blooded messenger
an ingenious reptile
seeking and smelling insects fruit rodents
the aromatic plants
in harmony with hibiscus and sand dunes
in harmony with chemical molecules
with amphibians and their larvae
with layers of water
in harmony with jellyfish corals and seaworms
with giant redwood trees
in harmony with mammals scorpions fish
crustaceans and turtles
in harmony with layers of water
in harmony with symmetry with layers of water
in harmony with Alpha and Omega
in harmony with the rays of the sun 

Click here for Part 2 of "Ode to a Gila Monster"

Rochelle Owens is the author of eighteen books of poetry and plays, the most recent of which are Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000) and Luca, Discourse on Life and Death (Junction Press, 2001). A pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement and an internationally known innovative poet, she has received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her play Futz, which is considered a classic of the American avant-garde theatre, was produced by Ellen Stewart at LaMama, directed by Tom O’Horgan and performed by the LaMama Troupe in 1967, and was made into a film in 1969. A French language production of Three Front was produced by France-Culture and broadcast on Radio France. She has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan’s novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Oklahoma and held residencies at Brown and Southwestern Louisiana State. "Ode to a Gila Monster" is Rochelle Owens' fifteenth New Verse News poem.

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ONE OF THE TRAPPED CHILEAN MINERS WAS A POET

by J.R. Solonche


Do not send down for me.
Instead send down the food and the drink.
Send down the clean bed-pans.
Send down the pencils and the paper.
Send down the wooden flute.
My eyes are used to the dark.
I’m staying here.

Do not send down for me.
Instead send down the clean bed-pans.
Send down the food and the drink.
Send down the pencils and the paper.
Send down the wooden flute.
My ears are used to my heartbeat.
I’m staying here.

Do not send down for me.
Instead send down the pencils and the paper.
Send down the food and the drink.
Send down the clean bed-pans.
Send down the wooden flute.
My mouth is used to my voice.
I’m staying here.

Do not send down for me.
Instead send down the wooden flute.
Send down the food and the drink.
Send down the clean bed-pans.
Send down the pencils and the paper.
My soul is used to my body.
I’m staying here.

Do not send down for me.
I’m staying here.
The earth is used to me.


J.R. Solonche is co-author (with wife Joan Siegel) of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). His poems have appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies since the 1970s. He teaches at SUNY Orange in Middletown, New York.
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PATTI SMITH LIGHTS UP MY LIFE

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FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

by Kim Doyle


It's good to know that the biggest
political party is the non-voting block.

I mean, we wouldn't want to go off
half-cocked, now would we?

Selecting the representatives of the people
demands a lot of thought like,

what hath man wrought and stuff like that.
I'll get my yoga mat and rest on it.

I am blinking thinking about it,
don't rush me.

Oh, what was that you say?
The election was yesterday.


Kim Doyle votes at every election in which he is eligible but is generally on the losing side.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

by Howie Good


Why call it fog on the lake?

Why not honeybee venom?
Why not the numeral five?

All things are moving
toward becoming one thing

like European foreign secretaries
on their way to a conference

to sell out some small
and unsuspecting nation.


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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