SYRIA

by Janice Lynch Schuster

I cannot find it on a map
other than the one the human
heart inscribes. The widows'
basement, full of sorrow,
the bereft mother huddled
over the lifeless child.
The days-long bombardment
and our blind eye cast
on a world so foreign.
On no map but my heart,
I circle it.


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.
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UN PEUPLE, UN BUT, UN FOI

by Timothy Baker

                                Senegal elections: President Abdoulaye Wade 
                                fails to secure outright win
                                             --Associated Press 1 March 2012

Source: Africa Review

Again in tropics deadly, still
With whispers that batter and boil
Berber’s silence to submission,

In flowing garb and Lite-Brite colors
a white skullcap's tip breaks
blowing sociopathy on the laws of the land.

The skin between his wrinkles is smooth
splatters from the fountain of youth
itching to be cut by soldier’s hands in
the coup that was always someone else's.


Timothy Baker is based in New York where he has been working since attending Hunter College for undergraduate studies in Media.  His work has appeared in The Monarch Review, as well as in  online publications such as dearind.com and 6mix.com.  He has work forthcoming in Saveur Magazine.
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PREVENTS CONCEPTION / BY HER VERY OWN CHOICE

by Mary Krane Derr


If pregnancy is two lifebodies, what does this make of the woman who through her very own means of choice aspires to prevent that innermost doubling off, its sundering through abortion?

She is no feckless snapping open that shears off all man and child flesh and bone: no vagina dentata, no “hostile endometrium.”

Nor is she a crushed in caved in carton that leaks its nothing, just kick it to the curb.

Nor is she is a symphony score whose patrons should rustle with disgruntlement because in their clueless notation system, she follows clef sign after clef sign with whole-rest measures, and they itch for her to produce the "real" music, they cannot revere her otherwise.

No, she is always her own singular lush orchestration, her own spacetime curvature of fall and rise of fullness unto herself.

Whose bright glad unbankrupt default option is so modern a wonder of the world, it has not arrived into its real name yet.

How to condense it into one word or phrase: Prefers the swish and boom of an added baby heartbeat: under her own only sparingly: if ever:
and yet does not go raging or empty or lifelessly silent: unless any man/church/state shears off the very flesh and bone of her right to this very sovereignty over *her own* person.


Mary Krane Derr does not understand why some people who profess to oppose abortion are so out to sabotage voluntary family planning rights, when expanded contraceptive coverage is essential to reducing abortion. She is a poet, writer, and musician from the South Side of Chicago. She read her work at India's 2011 Kritya International Poetry Festival. Her poems "Rubble Dream"  and "At This Address"  previously appeared in The New Verse News.
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SCARLET LYRICS

by Sandra Sidman Larson



                                                                          Yalla Erhal Ya, Bashar,
                                                                          Yalla Erhal Ya, Bashar
       
                                                        Come on, it’s time to leave, Bashar
                                                        Bashar al-Assad, it’s time to go.

                                                             --the chorus of a new Syrian protest song

You cut out the throat of a singer, Bashar,
who was singing a song of freedom.
Bashar, you cut out the voice of a singer
and threw him into the river.

His neck was wrapped in ribbons of red.
The ribbons were formed from the skin of his neck.
The blood created the color that day
you cut out the throat of this singer.

The singer crafted this song for his people.
They sang it into the mouths of your guns.
Come on, it’s time to go, Bashar
Come on, it’s time to go.

But you can not cut out the words
of a song, or the song from its singing.
A song that breathes is still living
and doesn’t depend on the body

it doesn’t depend on the vocal cords, and all
the people keep singing out loud,
the verses and the chorus,
Come on, it’s time to leave, Bashar.

Bashar al-Assad your singing is done.
Come on, it’s time to leave, Bashar.
Bashar, they’ve cut you out of their song,
You’re gone, Bashar al-Assad, you’re gone.


Author’s note:  It is not confirmed that Ibrahim Kashoush, the man brutally murdered on July 4, 2011 was the writer of the song, but he was certainly one of its singers.  Some sources credit the writing of the song to Abdel-Rahman who was, as far as we know, still living at the time this poem was written on November 11, 2011.

A native of New Jersey, Sandra Sidman Larson is a retired manager and leader from the nonprofit world in the Twin Cities of Minnesota who has lived and traveled coast to coast and across the seven continents for work and for adventure. She’s been writing poetry for a quarter century and most recently she was selected for the Foreword Program at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, a program established to assist promising writers produce a manuscript for publication. Along the way she has seen her poems appear in magazines and journals and she also has three published chapbooks.  In 1996 poet Naomi Shihab Nye nominated her for a Pushcart Prize.
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BOROUGH SIDEWALKS IN DISARRAY

by J.D. Smith

http://www.shutdownthecorporations.org/

News Item:

Few dare note, on our aging village maps,
The walkways paved primarily with gaps

As concrete once poured out to smooth foot travel
Is turned, by time, tree root and ice, to gravel

Upon which one who saunters, strolls or marches
Imperils ankles, knees, hips, shins and arches.

A town hall without pity will not pave
(And may yet send a runner to his grave)

While burghers charged by law with patching cracks
Instead would have us break our mothers’ backs.

Estranged from neighbor, property and State,
Look down—or take a header to your fate.



J.D. Smith’s third collection, Labor Day at Venice Beach, will be published later this year, as will his first humor collection, Notes of a Tourist on Planet Earth. His poems have appeared in journals and sites including 99 Poems for the 99 Percent, Nimrod, Tar River Poetry and Texas Review.
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ONE IN FOUR

by Karen Neuberg

http://www.shutdownthecorporations.org/

Eye sore watching an American dream escaping the reach of that child there, and that one, and that; until the shame of it hangs and flings in no hurry to exit. The rest of us fed on bread and circuses, spectacle, illusion, sports, war, and porn. Except, there is no bread. No cake. No cups. What overflows goes to the few who are amassing well beyond their greed. While that child there, and there, and there, is hungry, is growing hungrier.

empty pots
lines of hungry people
soup kitchens

emptied shelves
lines of hungry people
food pantries


Karen Neuberg lives in Brooklyn, NY and West Hurley, NY. Her chapbook Detailed Still was published by Poets Wear Prada Press. She has previously published at The New Verse News.
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OBAMA'S DE-APOTHEOSIS

by Captain Barefoot

http://www.shutdownthecorporations.org/

Ain’t easy keeping the Elites from plotting
elimination. Accumulation. Spaghettification

Dense wealth stretches approaching nations
like noodles. Rolling pins it out of ‘em

like a hillbilly wrings a chicken’s neck
or a banker breaks a rancher’s back

Wall St.’s black hole, stringing us out on
 the meth of cheap mortgages. Cheap oil

Walmarts & mutually deterred nuclear voodoo
Thank competitive gravity. Market cabals

& Brahmin capital cliques. Wiping out whole
economies. On line. B y drone. One shop

stupid cupid strategies of Empire, aggregated
in Alpha males. Corporate sales. The climate?

Just details … We live in an America inured
to mass Tell-a-Vision. Armed beyond reason

& our furthest shore. With a spook Pentagon
lock, load & pointed at the Planet’s head

Captain Barefoot identifies himself among the Union of Street Poets, Vincent St. John Local, Colorado Plateau, Aztlan Kuksu Brigade (Ret.), Cloud House, San Francisco, Shasta Nation, Pacific Rim.
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IT'S A MUDDLE

by Kim Doyle

http://www.shutdownthecorporations.org/

I want a "sofa sized" painting;
my sofa is seven foot long and three foot wide.

I want to glide with in-line skates
and modify my predatory home loan with Quicken.

I want to get a better sleep with Advil PM
and appreciate the efficacy of next day blinds.

I want to keep unloaded guns in my gym locker
and make eleven million dollars playing ball.

And that's not all.  I would like to be a celebrity
something: houseguest, hair stylist, White House crasher.

There must be something wrong with my life,
with just a wife and two kids and scissored credit cards,
and lard accumulating too fast around my middle.


Kim Doyle lives in a mud puddle and writes Op/Ed Poetry for The Brunswick Citizen in Brunswick, Maryland.
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ME AND MY HUMMER

by George Held

General Motors has said it will close down Hummer.

I’d love to have a Hummer
and bully Priuses and Minis,

blaring machismo as it rumbles
over bridges and through tunnels,

making them crumble, then gobbles
extra parking space in town.

I’d love to have a Hummer
that guzzles gas at 9 per gallon

and give the finger to enviros
who wag their index fingers

and say “tsk, tsk” at me and my Hummer.
I’d force drilling in the Arctic

Wildlife Preserve and opening
the U.S. gasoline reserve.

How I’d love my Hummer,
black and polished, chrome

gleaming all over its body.
But now that I’m laid off

and gas costs over 3 bucks per gallon,
I’ll have to drive a hybrid.

What a bummer!


George Held, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News, has received six Pushcart Prize nominations. His latest books are After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets and the children's book Neighbors, with drawings by Joung Un Kim.
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EVIL LITTLE THING

by Ann Neuser Lederer

                                         "I’m defending their Constitution, too." --Jessica Ahlquist

The Evil Little Thing (he named her)
dares to speak and speak the truth.
The Evil Thing has won.
The Evil Little Thing gets death threats.
She's given an escort to school: the police.
She's interviewed on TV.
She's sad, surprised to hear the stream of meanness.
Her message is skywrit huge and bright and white against the blue.
Still, the hate letters come.
We need to make walls of our arms,
old animals circling in against the wolves.
This is just to say: a praise note, a pride note, a non-hate note
To Our Strong One, our young hope.


Ann Neuser Lederer's poems and creative nonfiction appear in journals such as Diagram, XConnect and Brevity, anthologies Bedside Guide and Best of the Net, and in her chapbooks Approaching Freeze, The Undifferentiated, and Weaning the Babies. She was born in the Black Swamp region of Ohio, and is employed as a nurse in Kentucky.
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STICK FIGURES

by Ed Shacklee

Source: http://www.childmodelmagazine.com/

"It’s all the rage," the DJ said:
teen models slink across the stage,
chic but always underfed.
It’s all the rage

that living dolls be underage;
that bones display how well they’re bred.
These hawk-eyed buyers can’t assuage
their hungers with a loom or thread,

and babies strutting in their stead
will not look look out and won’t engage.
Are they stuck up?  Don’t be misled:
it’s all the rage.

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia.
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NEVER HAVING SEEN A WAVE

by Rochelle Owens 

Source: www.englishrussia.com

                                        for Stavros Deligiorgis

Never having seen a wave
frozen in mid-air the glassblower

manifold images in his brain
the rays of the sun

amorphous the forms boiling forming
a floating toothed leaved plant

floating Acanthus
a Black Hole a crucible a bubble glowing

one millionth one millionth of a second
an episode

a ferocious s c a t t e r I n g
white ovals glassy crystals orbiting
never having seen a wave
 frozen in mid-air the glassblower

turning spinning blowing hail-stones
shaping winds oceans storms

storms eddying
layers of ice cracking piling lifting

molten glass swelling lifting arching
never having seen a wave

frozen in mid-air the glassblower
dipping into the furnace

around and around rolling and shaping
around and around

a gob of molten glass
melting shards spiraling flaring
glittering hot glass
amorphous dazzling light frozen

in the glassblower’s brain
hot glass spiraling around and around

amorphous the glass
never having seen a wave frozen in mid-air

cooling scattering flowing
s u s p e n d e d

molten the ice the winds circling
a billion suns

the breath of the glassblower
the brain of the glassblower

moisture and nutrients flowing
the glassblower’s skull
the skull the color of snow
ferocious the heat pouring melting

melting and freezing the seas
spiraling arms

out of the crucible the glassblower
gathering gathering

never having seen a wave frozen in mid-air
rolling lifting arching

the layers of glass surging surging


Rochelle Owens is the author of twenty books of poetry, plays, and fiction, the most recent of which are Solitary Workwoman, (Junction Press, 2011), Journey to Purity (Texture Press, 2009), and Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000). 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. This is Rochelle Owens' twenty-sixth New Verse News poem.
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THE LITTLE WE KNOW

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
 
                              People take the little
                              They know to make a marvelous stew  --David St. John

Once science was dead, the little we knew was leeks,
celery, potatoes, onions, turnips, peppers, carrots,
had only a small portion of  the old substantial meat,
then easily cut up and struck dumb by hot water.  What

we boiled from that exuded its constituent scents,
lost firmness, gained a gummy consistency,
a weightiness we poured out for family and friends,
to satisfy our empty appetites, the greed of visitors.

A stew like this ignores all previous kitchen physics,
may be thick as blood or as thin as a second cousin,
only suggests sweetness when Paul Revere’s horse
is tossed in or when we add ethanol, call it a bisque.

The stew we make then simmers the tag ends of wise potage,
heats to rot the iron fact, boils gospel to compost.


Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books of poetry and two chapbooks.
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AT RHETORIC'S BODY SHOP

by Susannah Palmer Loiselle


Arriving on industrial flatbed trucks,
huge words that fell from liars’ lips,
‘democracy,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘liberty,’
scarred, twisted; suffering so much bad luck.
It took ten men to unload and appraise
the damage. Triage. Could any survive
the tearing, wrack and abuse? Cracked on all sides,
so deep in those words they might not be saved.
Yet, if each worker handling them treats
each letter with care, to strengthen and repair
restoring them to their former luster and flair,
then hang them high, each to each;
and if better leaders could be found
this banner will never touch the ground.


Susannah Palmer Loiselle lives with her family near rural Locke, NY. She is a retired school librarian and has taken many writing and art classes at Wells College. She has been a part of the Fiction section of Syracuse’s YMCA Downtown Writer’s Program for the past  two years. She has published poems in several literary journals and anthologies. In 2004, her chapbook, God Speaks to Me at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, was published. Her photography has been published in The Healing Muse and in Central New York Magazine. Recently, three of her photographs were on display at the Delavan Gallery in Syracuse. She concerns herself with matters of nature, mysticism, politics,  spirituality, individuality, and history in her writing and photography.
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