BURKAS FOR SALE

by Joan Mazza


In Somalia, a small girl sits on a dirt floor,
curls her body, knees to chin under her skirt
to make herself smaller, invisible. Her eyes
are squeezed shut against footsteps coming.
Will it never stop?

A girl in Kenya waits to be called.
Anticipating, her body trembles against
rough cut of the blade that will tear away
the pleasure parts that make women stray.
She will endure, like all the women she knows.
Nothing for pain. Infection guaranteed.

Inside her home, a girl in India can hide
her scarred face. Her mother was whipped
for teaching her daughter to read, sending
her to school. She will never read again.
No one will marry her because she isn’t
beautiful. The acid blinded her.

And you, American girl, slim Virginia girl?
You think you’ve come a long way, baby?
The birth control you use was outlawed today.
Fertilized eggs are persons of greater value
than you. You were raped by a date?
a stranger? your father? Too bad for you.
What were you wearing?

You will have that baby. In the future,
all unwanted, neglected children will have
food and housing. In prisons. Start building.

Virginia women? Your husband’s taking
Viagra and won’t use a condom? You’re
pregnant again? Too bad. You’ll have
an ultrasound, internal probe if necessary.
You can’t refuse. It’s the law. Don’t call it rape.

Worried about terrorists? Look at your House
of Delegates. They work hard to keep you
from loving your life. Forget liberty, the pursuit
of happiness. They call it God’s Will.


Joan Mazza is an author, poet, and speaker. She has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, writing coach, certified sex therapist, and medical microbiologist, has appeared on radio and TV as a dream specialist and led personal growth workshops. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in many publications, including Kestrel, Slipstream, Stone’s Throw, Writer's Digest, Playgirl, and Writer's Journal. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia.
_____________________________________________________

NEWT STEPS

by Bill Costley

Newt steps into a revolving door &
spins it expertly-R. “I’m in!” He’s in
when he’s not abutting Santorum,
but he always R-abuts Romney. He
bats R, swings L, catches L/R, like
Ron Paul. He’s a switch-hitter. He
has no directional shame. He goes
where Opportunity presents Itself:
to the Moon, talking dreamily. His
3rd wife joins him, a chilly moonlilly.


Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA. The latest volume ( Number Eleven)  of Costley's  New Verse News epic The Chen@id can be accessed by clicking here.
_____________________________________________________

HOMELESS IN STARBUCKS

by Laura L. Snyder


Tall mocha in hand, she contemplates
the homeless man asleep
in a cushy chair. Between muddy shoes

is a lumpy black plastic bag.
She looks outside the rainy windows,
February in Seattle is cold and damp.

He’s young, younger than her kids, brown-skinned
and clean-shaven. What of the family

he left behind? He laid
the newspaper sports section
over his knees, but didn’t hide

layers of worn clothes
or the absence of a coffee cup.

Walking out, she sets a half full mug
by his elbow, buying time.


Laura L. Snyder writes in hard-bound journals from rainy Seattle. Find her latest writing in Labletter, The Ravens Chronicles, and in anthologies: Poets of the American West, Classified: Prose Poems and hell stung and crooked. Laura was nominated for a Pushcart by Quill and Parchment, and nominated for Dzanc’s “Best of the Web 2010.” Look for her chapbook Winged coming out this year from Flutter Press.
_____________________________________________________

BE YOUR OWN VALENTINE

Poem by Charles Frederickson; Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote

EVERYTHING HAS UNIQUE PESSIMISTIC DOWNBEAT
MEASURED AGAINST UNACCENTED UPBEAT OPTIMISM
RHYTHMIC REASONS CONVINCING PREDESTINED JUSTIFICATIONS
IN HARMONIC CONCERT WITH NATURE

IMPRISONED FATE WORSE THAN DEATH
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT SUSPENDED LIFE SENTENCE
PRESUMED GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT
FALSEHOODS TRUE CONFESSIONS SWORN CONVICTIONS

MY GOAL IS SIMPLY BEING
SOULFUL ANIMA SELF-CONFIDENTLY TAKING CONTROL
ENDING UP WHEREVER ERRATIC HEARTBEAT
LEADS FOLLOWING NEED TO MUSTS

LISTEN TO DEEPSET INNERMOST VOICES
BASS BELOW SOPRANO ABOVE COUNTERPOINT
MAJOR DIATONIC SCALE SAME-SAME BUT
DIFFERENT MINOR ATONAL HALF-STEP INTERVALS

FREELANCELOT SPIRIT HUMMING ORIGINAL TUNE
FEARLESSLY VENTURING BEYOND NEXT CURVES
REARVIEW MIRROR HINDSIGHT DRIVING DESIRE
DANGLING STYROFOAM DICE WISHING CUBES

TUNING FORK PRONGS STABBING DISSONANCE
PREDETERMINED FUTURE SERENDIPITOUS UNFINISHED SYMPHONY
UNJUST VERDICT SCALES TIPPING BALANCE
DETERMINED CHOICE OVERPOWERING IFFY CHANCE
CODA 
No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .
___________________________________________

LOVE DURING THE GREAT RECESSION

by Howie Good


Everybody I know says the same thing,
We don’t make anything in this country anymore.
They say our politics are broken.
They say the Dream is finished, it’s dead.
I requested you in lieu of flowers.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love Dagger from Right Hand Pointing, To Shadowy Blue from Gold Wake Press and Love in a Time of Paranoia from Diamond Point Press.
_____________________________________________________

ON THE DEATH OF WHITNEY HOUSTON

by David Feela



The news of her death arrives
in a paper cup, bitter and dark,
barely enough to cover the bottom,
its sediment like a fine powder,
and though you know it’s fresh,
you’ve tasted this cup before.

All day her songs will play
on the radio, on the television,
in the short term memory
of the heart, and by the time
you tip your head back to weep,
the news will already be cold.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches (Footnotes from the Four Corners), has just been released through Raven's Eye Press.
__________________________________________

RECIPE FOR MIDDLE EAST DISASTER

by Earl J. Wilcox


Take two hot-headed nations.
Combine with large doses
Of Israeli freight in your face
Mixed with Iranian insult
In your eyes. Simmer briefly
In hot Judean and Dasht-e-Kavit
Deserts. For worst results: heat
Thoroughly in Russian and American
Politics.  Serve during an Arab Spring.


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.
_____________________________________________________

AT THE BREAK

by Vincent F. A. Golphin


It’s America, half time,
split between two determined tribes
vie for the hearts and minds of the crowd, 
in a widely watched  game
half-time America
phrase born in a bid for profit
praise for a dream gone wild
seized by prophesy
best described in dreary terms
a fight, struggle, challenge
between the US we’ve seen
and the US that’s yet to be
half-time America
crowds shudder in the pull
towards the desires that haunt
dreams - prosperity and peace -
and a past where the few
possessed the Dream in comfort
anxious from the first half
America in half time wonders
at what can happen next
hopes the next  round
has quarterbacks who lead
not team players who
fumble and falter through plans
maybe there is no such thing as
someone who can lead US
down time’s rich green carpet
as individuals merge into a body,
team, for an advance into the unseen
inch by yard, year by year
players fall and sacrifice
to push toward victory
the prize that bends all efforts
out of the morass
of despair, greed and violence
down the way toward
the end that seems so far,
yet looms beyond reach,
every game’s goal, an end
America pushes
into the second half
faces the fate of inevitable choices
renewal or repeat.


Vincent F. A. Golphin writes and lives in Western, New York. His latest work is 10 Stories Down (FootHills Press), poems inspired by two, six-month stays in China. His poetry, fiction and essays have also appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Washington Living, Upstate New Yorker, The Southern Quarterly, Reporter Magazine, Drylongso, Fyah, MentalSatin, Pinnacle Hill Review, Invisible Universe, Bridges, Ishmael Reed's Konch Magazine, New Verse News, and  UpandComing Magazine.
_____________________________________________________

THE LAST GREAT DEPRESSION (OCCUPY THIS)

by Lynnie Gobeille


They say his last conversation took place two hours before.
Seated in a comfy leather chair
 he leaned forward and told his shrink
 “life was going well.”
His kids were both in college, not Ivy League…
but good enough to impress.
His wife liked her new Audi, but was a tad upset;
was not the Beamer she had coveted.

He was, however, pleased with his medical practice…
the number of patients growing.
In fact,
or so his psychiatrist has begun to tell everyone,
You know they do this;
think eavesdropping on a conversation at a party:
“The man seemed perfectly fine to me.”

They say it must have taken great courage
to climb over the railing on the bridge.
They whisper that his last act was a mortal sin.
Wonder if he hesitated.
Debated.
Pondered.
Or simply shook his head.
Leaned forward.
arms spread wide
as he executed
one last perfect dive.

Lynnie Gobeille has  published in The Sow's Ear Review, Crone’s Nest, The Avatar, The Prairie Home Companion, This I Believe (NPR), The New Verse News, The Providence Journal (Poetic License) and The Naugatuck River Review. Editor of the Providence Journal Poetry Corner (South County Edition ), her essays can be heard on NPR public radio. She is the co-founder of The Origami Poems Project, a state wide “free poetry event” based in Rhode Island . Her “micro chapbooks” can be found on their website: www.origamipoems.com .
_____________________________________________________

NEWT WANTS US ON THE MOON

by Amy Eisner


and the moon wants us too. It tugs at us, liquid and solid, morning
     and night,
its pulse slow as evening, interminable even if you never got as close

as Ronald Evans on the last Apollo, parked in orbit for four hours and
     six days—
leaning out to take pictures, keeping the Command Module in command

while others scratched at the surface. After that he pursued a career
in coal. In one of his photos, white marks scatter the midnight
     moonground

like dishwater spots on a wineglass, and in the center of one smudge
is the lunar lander, so high in the frame it looks like the head of a man—

and there’s the body, and the arms and legs: a primitive clockwork robot
laid against a tremendous velvet cushion, and if the robot’s head were only

square I’d say, that’s Newt! He is rising from the surface. He’s not leaving
us behind. His hand is for your shoulder. For all that is buried

will come into light. All that’s forgotten, repeal! and we will rise
and live forever, traveling far and enough and away.


Amy Eisner teaches creative writing and literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, The Louisville Review, Madison Review, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Washington Square, and other journals.
_____________________________________________________

WHILE YOU WATCHED THE SUPER BOWL

by Ngoma


At 4:00pm
the line to Trader Joe's was down the street and around the corner
the tax office in Cairo was set on fire to protest football violence
Mitt Romney proclaimed he didn't give a damn about the poor
the lines in soup kitchens were not one bit shorter
Israel stood on the brink of attacking Iran
Union contracts were under attack
the 1% still bought box seats
while the 99% Occupied everything else
Tim Tebow was not playing
the commercials cost $3.5 million dollars per 30 seconds
Mumia Abu Jamaal still lingered in a prison cell
The U.S. still had the largest prison population
in the so-called free world
Canada suffered a Katrina moment
birthers still debated whether or not Obama is a U.S Citizen
we were not one step closer to eliminating world hunger
Even with a progressive attitude, watching the Super Bowl,
which seems to float on rivers of oil - think car ads - and beer, is not exactly like holding an
Occupy Wall Street-style general assembly in the red zone
Flava Flave in a Pepsi ad
didn't insure drinkable water in third world countries
James Brown isn't around to collect his royalties for the Volkswagon commercial
No Black performers have performed at a Super Bowl half time since Janet
There was no tribute to Don Cornelius and Soul Train
2/3rds of the worlds population with aids live in Africa
70 percent of people in the world suffer from food insecurity
in the U.S. alone a woman is beaten every seven minutes
a woman is raped every eleven minutes
but overall, there are more people in the world who do not own a TV than those who do
so who wins the super bowl in the real scheme of things
is just not so damn important - is it?


Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka's Spirit House Movers and Players and of the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry and songs that raise contradictions and search for a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review, Bum Rush The Page/Def Jam Anthology, Poems On The Road To Peace (Yale Press) and Let Loose On The World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. Family Festival of Environmental and Social Justice (Yale University, New Haven, CT) since 1996. He was a selected participant in the Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Cape Town, South Africa in fall of 2009. In December of 2011 he was initiated as an Obatala Priest in Ibadan, Nigeria.
_____________________________________________________

BEULAH LAND BLUES

by Earl J Wilcox

Gunshot kills woman sitting at home

( Headline in The Herald, Rock Hill, SC, Feb. 2, 2012)

She was up before Monday’s sunrise, putting the sheets
in the washer, sweeping the little back porch, swatting
mid-winter flies away from the kitchen sink where

she’d left a small plate with tuna crumbs from last night’s meal.
Before her grand baby, Chloe, should arrive, she’d have
everything tidied and cleaned and stored, leaving plenty

of time for her to watch Curious George with Chloe
who always came galloping into the tiny house when
her momma dropped the toddler off around eight o’clock.

When 7:15 rolled around, Alma sat in her rocker, tilted
her head back for a brief nap, awoke when St. Peter
called her name, asked her to step lively as the morning

dew was almost gone from the deep back yard grasses
where she was hanging out her fresh wash on a peaceful
mid-winter Monday.


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.
_____________________________________________________

SIX MORE WEEKS

by Roxanne Hoffman

on Groundhog Day

Awake anxious burrowed below
curious critter doubtful dutiful emerges
eyes furtively facing greyness groundside
harbinger hunched instinctively intuits
jowly judges kingdom keenly

Legendary Litmus:
maybe? maybe? 
no... not...
oh! oh!

Prognosticator’s  Proclamation:
quivering quixotic
regards  retreats
sunshine’s shadow seen
tanking temperatures unrelenting

Underground:
vernal vibrancy waits
wintering yogi yawns
Zzzz-zoned


Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline for a New York home healthcare provider. Her words can be found on and off the net in such journals as Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, The Fib Review, Hospital Drive, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, and Shaking Like A Mountain; the indie flick Love And The Vampire; and the anthologies The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70 (Wising Up Press), and  It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). She and her husband own the small press, Poets Wear Prada. 
_____________________________________________________

SMALL GOVERNMENT

by E. F. Schraeder


A shadow operation manages
to paint itself minuscule.
It solves problems

by shrinking beneath doorways,
into bedrooms
to stop lovers from wedding;

into doctor offices
to peek beneath the paper sheets,
and block reproductive services.

Small enough to fit into wires,
listen to protestors plan permitted
events in gated public spaces.

Small enough to build walls
between countries
and boost border brutality.

Small enough to fit into dictionaries,
rename activists as terrorists,
liberals as radicals, radicals as socialists.

Small enough to shrink corporate dollars
into unlimited campaign funnels
in a public court

and small enough to fit
neatly, like a concealed carry
law, in a small space,

offering a perfect fit
for closed
minds.


E.F. Schraeder's work has appeared in Haz Mat Review, Blue Collar Review, Hiram Poetry Review, and elsewhere.  She is currently working on a new manuscript of poems.
_____________________________________________________