OBAMA’S FIRST STAND

by Gershon Hepner



Though his blah-blah made him a blockbuster;
as debater he seemed most lackluster,
by Romney so flustered,
he turned into custard,
while making his stand against Custer.


Gershon Hepner was born in Leipzig in 1938, came to England one day before the Second World War, became a doctor in 1963, emigrated to the US in 1968, and has been living in Los Angeles since 1976. He has four children and nine grandchildren, and a wife who is a talented poetess. He has been writing an average of five poems a day since 1992.

OBAMA: I WAS TOO POLITE

by J.R. Solonche

Okay, my bad, oh well.
I gave him heck instead of hell.

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.

ON A REPORTER'S ASSERTION THAT A RECENT PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE WAS POETRY

by Josette Torres

I am willing
to hear you out.
Cadences of talking
points. Bobbing
and weaving in
rebuttal. Smooth,
long trouser lines.
White space between
answers. Images
of two politicians
in conflict. Every word
a candidate’s mouth
forms infused
with deeper meaning.
 
Literature written
in a hurry streams
from uniform rows
of filing center tables.
Heads bow over
laptops. Journalist
minds sink deep
in composition.
You tell me through
your Blackberry
of blood pooling,
congealing on the stage,
pushing beloved
political metaphors
at me—
I tilt my head
and think, Maybe.

Josette Torres received her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech in 2010. She also holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Purdue University. Her work has previously appeared in Big River Poetry Review, 16 Blocks, and Pens on Fire and is forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal and Eunoia Review. She is the Writer in Residence at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, Virginia.

I SCREAM ICE CREAM

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote

I scream for bananana republican
Split topped with mixed nuts
Gooey fudged prom-ices whipping cr่eme-de-la-creme
Never on Sundae vanilla supremacy

Nit-Mitt Willard Romoney suffering truthache
Re-born sterling silver spoonfed mouthpiece
Tiffany barefoot stumbles transcendental flip-flops
Shooting self in NRA flatfoot

Whatever Flavor of the Month
You want neo-politicians to be
Palin-praline rocky-rogue flaky cones
Half-baked cookie dough mint deflation

Freddie Macadamia Maalox bagel Prozac
Black Russian holy mosque cow
Norange sorbet spumoney matters meltdown
Tutti-frutti gaydar below parfait

Let`s pretend tea-witched party fake-believe
Uncorked champagne campaign bubbles burst
Overgrown tykes entertaining imaginary friends
Lost their sparkle sauterne whines

Legacy of slavery segregation racism
Blurry rearview mirror distorted reflections
Dark Ages revisited taken aback
Pro-rich anti-taxes pro-war anti-Sharia lawlessness

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

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AMONG THE HOMELESS

by ayaz daryl nielsen

ayaz daryl nielsen is a poet/father/husband/veteran/x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/x-hospice nurse (and still a nurse)/editor of the print pub bear creek haiku. His poetry has appeared in many fine publications including Yellow Mama, Lilliput Review and Christian Science Monitor.

SCALIA

by Max Gutmann

After Scott Brown, in debate with Elizabeth Warren, named Antonin Scalia as his model Supreme Court justice, then, in reaction to crowd booing, added Kennedy, Roberts, and finally liberal Sotomayor.

                                                                       (to the tune of "Maria" from West Side Story)


The conservative justice Scott Brown praised:
Scalia, Scalia, Scalia, Scalia.
Leaving all who were watching a bit amazed:
Scalia, Scalia, Scalia, Scalia,
Scalia, Scalia.

Scalia.
The first judge he named was Scalia.
He couldn't quite resist,
But everybody hissed the name.
Scalia,
He saw, was a real bad idea
So, though it sounded glib,
He countered with that lib'ral dame.

"Scalia,"
Say it loud and there's trouble brewing.
Say it soft to avoid all that booing.
"Scalia."
Scott Brown is now ruing Scalia.

Scalia, Scalia etc.

"Scalia,"
Has a ring but it's just no use, it's
Not too popular in Massachusetts.
Scalia.
Like some fat robed moose sits Scalia.


Max Gutmann has contributed to LightenUp Online and other publications.

SYRIA

by David Chorlton

Image source: NY Times

The sculptor of tombstones
cannot work quickly enough
to accommodate the war
going on around him
while the boy
discovered in a house’s rubble
is white as powdered marble
and crumbles in the arms
that try to raise him.
There aren’t a thousand words
to trade for the picture
of a man who lays his head
upon a dead friend’s chest,
or for that of the light
passing through a hole in the ceiling
the way a believer might imagine
a signal from God, but the floor
is broken plaster and the sky
keeps exploding. Against a wall of fire,
a man tries to run
faster than the bullets following him.
Two sections of a hospital room bed
have folded from their springs
at ninety degree angles
as if a patient heard again
the shots that had killed him
and suddenly sat up
to find his body vanished.


David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in England, and spent several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in1978. He pursued his visual art and had several shows as well as writing and publishing his poetry in magazines and collections, the latest of which is The Devil’s Sonata from FutureCycle Press.
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BASEBALL LAMENTATION

by Earl J Wilcox

Image source: bluebirdbanter

Something there is that loves a baseball game:
its happy crowd---the hot dogs, cold beer,
the heat or cold.  Yet when my team’s behind
and the arcane infield fly rule pops into view,
we then hate the insane umps, the other team,
our cold dogs and warm beer but most of all
the chill of losing.


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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OF A SATURDAY

by J.D. Smith

Image source: ebay

A man of a certain age, declining
with an empire at whose height he was born,
idles at a coffee shop in the capital.
On laptops of ambition
younger patrons tap out theses,
filter spreadsheets.
They could pose a threat,
or they could be scaling other ladders.
or they stand far enough below
that there’s no need to kick out
or grease the rungs they must climb.
Then again, they may be hunting the big game
that is going extinct in their fields.
These days, though, call for foraging.
Holding fast the bird in the hand,       
the man of a certain age returns                      
to browsing a book on great dinosaurs
and mammals that moved underfoot.


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. He has work forthcoming in Dark Mountain 3.
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DIRTY PEOPLE IN BUSINESS DRESS

by Martha Deed


NACO, Ariz., Oct 3, 2012 - Investigators were scouring a rugged area near the U.S.-Mexico line looking for evidence in the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent. Nicholas Ivie and a colleague were on patrol in the desert near Naco, about 100 miles from Tucson, when gunfire broke out shortly before 2 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Border Patrol.
. . . The last Border Patrol agent fatally shot on duty was Brian Terry, who died in a shootout with bandits near the border in December 2010. The Border Patrol station in Naco, where the two agents shot Tuesday were stationed, was recently named after Terry. --Newsday/AP


a border patrol officer
a father’s son
rides one-lane dirt park paths
lights out on cliff edges
500-ft drops at midnight –
darkest nights the best
for finding backpacks,
shoes, human “sign” –
the moonlit nights the worst
for border hopping
in the high mountain desert
the worst for getting home alive

When you study medicine
every runny nose
is a sign of this week’s disease
and if a Border Patrol officer
patrolling a national park,
bird songs, butterflies,
and flowers are no longer
noticed or enjoyed, replaced by
surveilling –
each unauthorized path
each piece of litter
in the national forest:
suggests a possible crime

the legal tourists come
they are warned against
scorpions, rattlesnakes
lightning, floods and bears
and dirty people in business dress
crossing the mountains
only the latter need be reported

Montezuma Pass, elev. 6575,
Near Naco, Arizona


Author’s note: One of my stepsons was a Border Patrol Agent in 2008. He was stationed at Naco, AZ where both Brian Terry and now Nick Ivie were killed.  And -- he worked with both men.  Step-son resigned from the Border Patrol several years ago when a promise to move him to a less dangerous post did not happen. His father and I visited him in Naco, and I wrote a poem about it at the time.

Martha Deed lives in North Tonawanda, NY.  Her most recent book is The Last Collaboration, originally published online (Furtherfield, 2012), and now available in book form.  The Last Collaboration is a mixed-genre story of her daughter Millie Niss's encounters with health care in the final year of her life, presented as Millie would have wanted it to be done.  Companion piece to City Bird: Selected Poems (1991-2009) (BlazeVox, 2010) by Millie Niss, edited by Martha Deed. Martha Deed has previously published at The New Verse News.
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NOSTALGIE DE LA BOUE

by Ed Shacklee



To show his foggy visions clearer,
Mitt Romney hogs the rearview mirror

and puts the “my” back in myopia
by looking backwards at utopia.

Perhaps the reverse gear is needed,
but every year that dream’s receded

and as the future nears it worsens
for awfully tense, past perfect persons.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia.  His poems have appeared in The Flea, Light Quarterly, Shot Glass Journal and Tilt-a-Whirl, among other places.
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HOOKED ON DEBATE

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote

Pollute-ions denominated lost cause devoted
Keynote speech denoted liars debarred
Unconventional promises delighted AC/DC defused
Bullyrag jeer smear fear demeaned

Tripping over two-too right defeat
Luxury yacht sinking thickset defog
Anything but de tooth decay
Gravy train arriving before departing

Rednecks decapitated ballooning egos deflated
47% detox IRS taxes defiled
One% exposing themselves nakedness debriefed
Hostile polemics fake smiles decried

Mass-media censorship journalists feel depressed
Fiction writers described facts decomposed
Softball players debased flunkies degraded
10S pros defaulted wannabes defamed

Able bodied cruising semen debunked
Stealthy wealthy organ donors delivered
Dirty laundry decreased depressed depleted
Models deposed lonesome cowboys deranged

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

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LOOPHOLES

by Max Gutmann





Mr. Ryan will cut all our taxes
And not add to our deficit strain.
How's that possible? Well,
He is not gonna tell;
It would take him too long to explain.

If we voters, says Ryan, knew Romney
And his plans, he would easily gain
In the polls, where he's low.
As to what we should know:
It would take him too long to explain.

Among all of our vague politicians,
Mr. Ryan's the serious, sane
Mr. Budgeting Guy.
He's well known for it. Why?
That's increasingly hard to explain.


Max Gutmann has contributed to Per Contra and other publications.
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THE CANDIDATE WHO DOESN'T WANT THE PUBLIC TO KNOW HE READS PROSE POEMS

by Michael Brockley

When he welcomed me into his home I was stunned with how handsome he is. His face like those of the leading men in the westerns my father watched. One daughter read Charlotte’s Web while sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa. The son who wants to be an astronaut flipped through a Watchmen novel while repeating the word freedom to his girlfriend on his Bluetooth. A citrus fragrance soothed the sunlit great hall. His wife dusted an autographed photograph of the bare-chested Russian prime minister riding a quarter horse in the woods surrounding Kyzyl. Around the pool, unsmiling maids sipped cocktails and snacked on a dish of walnuts, grapes and cheeses. He offered the grand tour. In the master bedroom, a worn Book of Mormon and The Qu’ran tented on a chair by a writing desk. A Bible opened to Isaiah atop a dresser. He carried the latest issue of Forbes with his picture on the cover. The one with the articles about complexity horizons and the paradox of exporting jobs for the poor. He’s kept in touch with the people he fired. Every year, a secretary sends them Christmas cards the weekend after Thanksgiving. His wife joined us on the patio after the maids left, having prepared a pitcher of lemonade and a tray of madeleines. She swept the deck around the chaise where he had spilled crumbs. After she left, he rummaged under the cushion until he found The Book of Orgasms. Let’s just keep my prose poem collection a secret between two entrepreneurs, he said, as he pulled The Rooster’s Wife from his shorts.

Michael Brockley is a 63-year old school psychologist who has worked in special education in rural northeast Indiana for 25 years. He has poetry publications in Wind, The Windless Orchard, Spitball, The Indiana Review, The Indiannual, The Spoon River Quarterly, The River City Review and The Ball State Literary Forum. Tom Koontz' Barnwood Press published his chapbook Second Chance in 1990, and he has lately placed work in Indiana publications such as Maize, Country Feedback, Flying Island, The TIpton Poetry Journal and Facing Poverty.  A video of Mike reading his "Hollywood's Poem" which was published in Facing Poverty can be found on YouTube. His poem "When the Woman in the White Sweater at the Cancelled Charles Simic Reading Asked If I Was David Shumate" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Barry Harris of the Tipton Poetry Journal.

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