TEMPORARY BLINDNESS

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

I went to the ophthalmologist. She shone the light in my right eye and said, "Do you have a pet? I see an animal hair. And some lint." She lowered the light and looked at me sternly. “I’m going to wash your eyes.”  She found cigarette butts, bristles from street sweepers, an old bike chain, and child’s flip flop. The left eye closest to the yards had dandelion fluff, a flea, and the tip of a Jart. She washed my eyes,  and when I opened them, a pile of scraps was between us. I blinked and said, “There’s still an irritant.”  She followed the light back in and pulled out Mitt Romney. Ah! I could see again. I mean, I could stand to look.

Her opthamalogist has cleared Elizabeth Kerlikowske to drive her car to teach.

AFTER THE ELECTION

by Joan Mazza

Watercolor by Suzanne Mays-Wentzell

The sun should be out, beaming cheer
in celebration of a win for equal rights
and a president who tells the truth,
but today is gray and dreary, forecast
for wind and rain, maybe snow.

I didn’t stay up all night like some, tired
of the angry words, too angry, too,
at those who vote against their interests
for a man who lied and lied. I went to bed,
resigned to cope with heat or cold,

no matter how the winds of voting blew.
I rose to learn the winners, and asked
again what shelters we might find
when I still worry about the safety
of our vegetables and drinks, the air

we breathe. Taught to pray for happy
outcomes, for wisdom in our leaders,
recovery from illness, grief, addiction,
I know no one’s listening to wishes
no matter how cold and dark life seems.

Through weak morning light, the ground
is littered with this year’s leaves. Signal
to go inward, grateful for this home, space
where darkness means silence, warmth,
and no one shouting what god wants from me.


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

A SIGH OF RELIEF

by Barbara A Taylor


a sigh of relief
big bird takes off
back to the same


Barbara A Taylor’s Japanese short form poems appear in international journals and anthologies on line and in print, including Haigaonline, Eucalypt, Atlas Poetica, The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Kokako, Simply Haiku. She lives in the Rainbow Region, Northern NSW, Australia.

Image source: Chris Piascik based on a tweet by Dan Cedarholm

FIRST LINE OF A LIMERICK FOLLOWED BY FOUR LINES OF SILENCE

by J.R. Solonche

There once was a Willard Mitt Romney
(silence)
(silence)
(silence)
(silence).

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.

SUPER TUESDAY

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

$UPERCILIOU$

Oily gutter politricks sunken rainbows
Warped arc reflection scared straight
Contending with scorched soil tactics
Flying Saucer Tea Party crash-landing

$UPERPHONY

If Obama walked on water
Rancid Foxy creatures that inhabit
Polluted foggy bottomless DCeption
Would ask: “Can’t he swim?”

$UPERCHARLATAN

Barely afloat back from brink
Contrarian House craven maven power-mongers
Relentlessly diminishing disrespecting unwilling to
Act in common good-better-best faith

$UPEROPPORTUNI$T

Obstructionist Congress lobbying corporate sponsors
Casino crapshoot rolling loaded dice
Greedy unprincipled hypocrites institutionalizing avarice
Judeo-Christian-Zionist unholy crusader war
 
$UPER$CHMOOZER

Barack is who he is
Fundamentally principled reversing Bush catastrophes
Despite monumental Republican’t  naysayers bucking
Broncobama No-OK Corral rodeo champ
 
$UPERPANDERER

Left is right bipolarized chill-out
As good as it’s gonna
Get for next four years
Probably better than we deserve

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

NOVEMBER 5, 2012. THE DAY BEFORE.

by Sarah Kay

Today, the day before the election, I spent the day at an all-girls school
in Nashville, Tennessee. After the day’s events were finished, they held
a reception in the Headmaster’s home, and I found myself alone in a
room with three girls from the high school. Someone had a sticker that
said, “I voted!” And I asked about it, confused, because of her age.
She told me they had held a mock election earlier that day. I asked
about the results, trying to keep my tone even, not wanting my own
politics to creep into my voice. She said, 43 Obama, 54 Romney.
I couldn’t keep a wow from slipping out. That’s actually better than
I would have expected, she said. It was clear, based on the way she
said it, what “better” meant, and I started to ask more about it, now
feeling safe that we were on the same team. The Headmaster re-entered
the room with other faculty members. The girls shifted in their seats.
We raised our chins, our eyes, crossed our knees. I answered questions
about poetry, about travel, about my family back home, and their recovery
from the hurricane. I did not mention the election. Neither did the girls.
We thanked our hosts, and shuffled into our coats, bracing against the
winds of the newly minted winter air. Once outside, with a safe distance
from the house, I quietly asked what the preparation for the election had been.
Some shaking heads made it clear there hadn’t been any. A junior named Cat,
looked squarely at me. We are in the reddest of red down here. Nobody bothers
trying to explain platforms or sway votes, because it’s not going to make
a difference. All the girls in this school, we all come from conservative parents.
Conservative administration. It’s amazing Obama even got as many as he did.
We swayed in the parking lot, and the ropes in my stomach wound tighter
and tighter.  I felt like I had failed them. I shouldn’t have wasted time
on poems about peacocks and love. I should have been teaching them
about what it means to be a woman. About burden and responsibility and pain,
about how hard it was to get to where we are, how easily it slips away.
The three girls in the parking lot walked me to my car.  They were smart
and outspoken, the way girls at these schools often out-rank their peers
from co-ed schools. They left me in my car, their green and white plaid skirts
brushing their knees as they walked.  Have a good night, they said.
We’ll see you tomorrow for the middle school assembly.
Good luck, they said.  I knew they were talking about the assembly.
Good luck to you too, I said.  Good luck to us all.


Sarah Kay began performing her spoken word poetry when she was fourteen years old. In 2004, she founded the organization Project V.O.I.C.E. to encourage creative self-expression through spoken word poetry. She now performs and teaches spoken word poetry in venues and classrooms all over the world. In 2011, Sarah was a featured speaker at the TED Conference, where she received two standing ovations for her performance and speech on the “Rediscovery of Wonder.” Sarah’s first book, “B” was released in November 2011 by the Domino Project and has been the #1 top ranked poetry book on Amazon.

ARE YOU BEING SERFED?

by James Cronin

Image source: Occupy Sandy Relief

Power lines await the squall.
Climate, hotter and wetter,
plays its part. Which is better,
trim the trees or let them fall?

The boss, moneyed, payday sees,
(too many workers will rile
the market) and so with guile
says trim the costs not the trees.

Oil barons who led BP,
joining moguls making mints,
put profits first then repent,
cutting corners kills at sea.

Shadow bankers weave and bob,
sales of swindles yet unpriced
making millions, what a heist!
Who’d suspect an inside job?

One party’s solons, knowing
nothing, pitch to rustic fools:
lower taxes, skewer rules,
keep the fracking oil flowing.

Damn teachers and their unions,
cops, firemen too; who needs them?
Workers should find their bottom,
picking grapes or green onions.

Health care lies can work once more.
Use some fibs and bull feces,
let the old die in pieces.
Stuck with vouchers? Don’t get sore.

Who knows best? The top percent.
Laid off workers need not frown,
Swiss bank wealth will trickle down.
The homeless can save on rent.

Pledge all to that man Grover;
backed by billions, he can grin.
Gut the country? It’s no sin,
“starve the beast” ‘til it’s over.

Like lemmings attempting flight,
or dogs in sad distemper,
folks fall free, not a whimper.
The day’s sold, who’ll price the night?


After a four decade career in the law, both as a lawyer and as a juvenile court judge, James Cronin is enjoying his retirement pursuing literary studies and creative writing.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Image source: Connect the Dots

Don’t tell me there isn’t any pattern.
It can be seen over and over. Here
It is: divide  and conquer, us and them,
Left and right. An agenda based on fear
Of who the others are, could be, might do...
Creating dread that everything could crash
If its own system is not stretched -- here to
There -- to shield the modern world from the rash
Interests of that post-modern other (which
Has no interest in the universal,
Does not like the status quo, is not rich
From global loans, and does not care, at all,
About you). The pattern’s clear: it connects
Those dots of doubts it makes while it protects.

 
Juleigh Howard-Hobson has simultaneously written literary fiction, formalist poetry and genre work, along with non-fiction essays and articles, purposely blunting the modern ‘brandable’ concept of artistic obligation to any single form or movement. Her work has appeared in such venues as The Lyric, Trinacria, The Flea, The Raintown Review, The Best of the Barefoot Muse (Barefoot Pub) and Caduceus (Yale University). She is the Assistant Poetry Editor of Able Muse.

FIRST RIGHT OF REFUSAL

by Laura Rodley

Don’t pray for me anymore
say the grey whales
birthing calves
off the Pacific coast.
Don’t pray for me anymore
say the right whales
siphoning plankton and krill
off the Atlantic coast.
Don’t pray for me
squawk the seagulls
pedaling pizza
on the beach in Ocean Park,
their beaks full of crust.
Don’t pray for me
say the dying in their beds,
sheets cool and soft.
Don’t pray for me
mewed the tiny black and white
kitten under the stairwell
at the Econo Lodge in Columbus,
it is not your pieces of chicken
that saved me, nor your water
though I was dying of thirst.
I can make it on my own.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

THE MAN WHO WANTED IT TOO MUCH

by David Spicer 

        From the age of five the man’s ambition was to be President of the most powerful nation on earth. This desire burned so intensely he acquired a swarthy, handsome demeanor that attracted beautiful women. He chose the loveliest and they worked together to fulfill his dream. He graduated from the top business school and felt that since government was the biggest business, he was uniquely qualified. His successes mounted and his family of five sons thrived. He craved leadership like a man desperate in a desert. He sweated desire and ambition. When he mounted his campaign for President after serving as savior of the Olympics and governor of a small state, the people did not trust him. They called him a liar and a fraud. His party renounced him and then slowly accepted him without passion. His opponent grinned and charmed people, his eloquent intellect a coin that dazzled. One pundit branded the man whose lifelong ambition dangled within reach a clumsy buffoon who wanted it too much. Voters agreed. On election day they chose the stunning intellectual by the slimmest margin, and the handsome businessman flew into the desert and disappeared.

Author of one collection, Everybody Has a Story, four chapbooks, and six unpublished poetry manuscripts, David Spicer has previously published in The New Verse News and also has work in Alcatraz, Nitty Gritty, Aura, Brown God, Hinchas de Poesia, Crack the Spine, Dirtflask, Spudgun, Mad Rush, Used Furniture Review, Fur-Lined Ghettos, Spudgun, Bop Dead City, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Resurgo, and elsewhere.

MAYBE SANDY IS ANOTHER NAME FOR KARMA

by Ngoma

some say they should have
named her karma
i'm not sure
if she was a conspiracy theory,
or an act of god
bible thumpers called her
a revelation
a halloween trick or treat
a politician's opportunity disguised as disaster
some claim it was punishment for sin
but churches were flooded too
steeples and oak trees in the wind
proof that global warming deniers can't ignore
we could say I told you so
and maybe this is a wake up call
as roller coaster rides are buried in the flood
and marathoners take up hotel space
while many victims have no food
or a place to lay their heads
bodies still being found
in flooded burnt out homes
with no escape by subways
filled with water like underground cesspools
as Jamie Curtis talks about survival kits on Jay Leno
and tells us to donate money to the Red Cross
yet to show up in Mount Vernon
with gas lines around the block
for gas stations that are empty
meanwhile the major news media
act as though disaster only happens in america
as the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba
are ignored by major media
and there is no FEMA to guarantee votes for Obama on election day
suddenly we see what it may be like to live in a 3rd world country
where lack of gas and electricity is an everyday experience
and half the world is a disaster area
waiting for a relief concert to raise funds
that would not be needed if the wealth was redistributed
and warnings of global warming had been heeded


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.

THE CANDIDATE TAKES A DAY OFF AFTER WRESTLING THE ARCHANGEL OF TRUTH

by Michael Brockley

The candidate is plucking the creases of his stone-washed jeans after his wife has crossed the hall to iron a pair of Neiman-Marcus socks when the archangel of truth trumpets his battle cry behind him. He turns to this challenge against his honesty to find feathers fluttering above the floor around a vanity table. The grim creature is naked as a G. I. Joe doll. Fragrant as brown sugar. It crouches in a sumo stance while the nominee rolls the sleeves of his white oxford and snugs an Ayn Rand cravat against his Adam’s apple. He circles the archangel, calculating angles until the vanity is behind him and he can grope for the bayonet in the miscellany drawer. A fusion of fog and fury attacks the candidate who stabs at the bald dimple of its crotch. The beautiful mouth. The monstrous, hallelujah eyes. A chandelier crashes around them as the politician flails at wisps of feathers. A whirlwind ransacks the room, shattering windows and mirrors. The daemon materializes behind the standard bearer to slam him to the floor in a half-Nelson. Vipers breed in the contender’s brain. In triumph, the archangel seeds a halt in the candidate’s hip, vanishing at the click of the wife opening the door to investigate the commotion. She helps her husband with his socks. Asks how he stubbed his toe. When she knots the laces of his Italian shoes, he retrieves a paper from his pocket with the day’s lies erased.

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 Brockley has lately placed work in Indiana publications such as Maize, Country Feedback, Flying Island, The Tipton Poetry Journal and Facing Poverty. A video of Brockley 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 Asked 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.

THE BEGINNING (WITH NO END)

by David Feela

Image Source: Freeology

In the beginning some man said
“Let there be rape”
and he saw that if it wasn’t divinely intended
it might not be legitimate,
so he made certain enough men
held positions of power
to keep an eye on the women
who claimed it had happened to them.
And there was whimpering
on the 1st day in November.

Then another man said,
“Let there be pregnancy”
and the men charged with
upholding God’s mind
knew it wouldn’t happen to them,
so there was much relief
on the 2nd of November.

And the Constitution said,
“Let there be elections”
so the men who had wives
pushed them in front of the cameras
to claim no matter what their husbands said
they were good men.
Infants were cuddled and kissed
all during the 3rd and 4th days.

Then the doctors said,
“Let there be amniocentesis”
and a window into life opened,
(though many pulled their shades)
which accounts on the 5th of November 
for the heat in Roe v. Wade.

By November’s election day a woman said,
“Let me make up my own mind”
but so many things had been said
the chance to lay the issue to rest
on the 7th day was pretty much dead.

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  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY

by Mark Zimmermann

                           
I’m an ordinary millionaire.
I don’t need a media elite
to remind me I made money.
Morality demanded I earn it
and I did. I made a dream my own.

In my world, one will earn a dollar
or one will want an entitlement.
Indeed, I’d tell any needy, amoral
idler: Don’t lean on a millionaire. Learn
to toil—or win ten million in a lottery!

We need a new national order—now—
or we’ll all drown in a money drain!
A Ryan-Rand leader, I didn’t let
any tweedy elite meddler order me
to reward an addled, idle dream

in Detroit. No—I rallied any and all:
don’t wait on an entitlement! I rallied
any and all: earn a real and moral dollar!
I did it and I’m an ordinary man.
I married my dear, dear Ann. We earned
one dream and made it into two.


Author’s Note: The poem above is a lipogram that uses only letters appearing in Romney’s full name: a-e-i-o  d-l-m-n-r-t-w-y.

Mark Zimmermann lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he teaches humanities and writing classes at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Recently, work of his has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, the 2013 Wisconsin Poets Calendar, and a variety of other venues.