BOOK OF LOSS, ONE YEAR

by Shirley J. Brewer

In remembrance of December 14, 2012

Make the manual severe
in appearance: the cover dark,
a title deeply engraved.

Select paper that weighs
down the hand, every page
suffering between its peers

clothed in black type. Allow
an abundance of question marks,
the agony of white space.

Words confound. Include
birdsong, tulips in bloom,
strawberries, vanilla mist.

Call this book Newtown.
Say it softly. Families still weep.
Craters pock their hearts.

Wait, start over. Change the cover.
Choose pinks, blues, soft greens, yellows
for the children, their teachers.

Add pictures of the dead,
each in a favorite shirt or dress—
not the ones with bullet holes.

Let sweet memories repeat. Let grief
bleed into ink. Write one chapter at a time.
You will never reach the end.


Shirley J. Brewer is a poet, educator, and workshop facilitator. In addition to previous poems in The New Verse News, her poetry has appeared in The Cortland Review, Comstock Review, Passager, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and other publications. Her poetry chapbook, A Little Breast Music, was published in 2008 by Passager Books. A second book of poems, After Words, was published in 2013 by Apprentice House/Loyola University.

RAPE INSURANCE

by Tricia Knoll





     Both chambers of the Michigan legislature have passed a measure banning insurance coverage for abortion in private health plans unless women purchase a separate rider. In a charged hearing Wednesday, Michigan Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer told the story of her own rape and called the legislation “one of the most misogynistic proposals I’ve ever seen in the Michigan Legislature,” according to the Detroit Free Press. The fact that women are required to plan in advance to have an abortion, Whitmer said, “tells women who are raped … that they should have thought ahead and bought special insurance for it.”
     “The fact that rape insurance is even being discussed by this body is repulsive,” she added.”
      --MSNBC, December 11, 2013


I avoid dark places, those parks where willows
hang over the sluggish river, you know the ones, where
many a young couple has hung out in the summer
time listening to the river flow

but in winter, fall, even hot summer nights there’s
sometimes anger afoot and maybe bad men too. I don’t
open the door to my house unless I can see the person
on the stoop, but then sometimes I do if he is in
uniform or a man with a clipboard who may want
my signature to end war.

I’m old so maybe I don’t need
rape insurance. Oh, that’s right I had a hysterectomy
twenty years ago so even if I were raped, I wouldn’t
need an abortion. Just kindness. The insurance
wouldn't pay for pain and suffering.

Daughters, nieces. The girl next door. I don’t know
what deductibles they carry for theft,
collision, fire. What is the rape deductible?
Self-confidence? Trust? Esteem?
The premium?

Would they sign up for rape insurance
or assume that avoiding lonely places
under overhangs, locking car doors,
looking backwards over cloaked shoulders,
was enough?


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.

ESCAPEE

by Laura Rodley

Image source: “StarLink Corn: What Happened”

It was only a kernel of corn
that dropped from a bag
that someone bought at the market
but the kernel of corn
grew and kissed the rest
of the corn silks rustling
on stalks to its right, its left
so they become the genetically
engineered corn just like
the seed that was dropped
changing the 10,000 year old
Mexican corn, changing what
they thought was pure
into a genetically modified crop,
and not just one plot
it was all of them,
the cast of the wind
the kiss of a bee,
the hop of a katydid,
all them bringing pollen
from across the boundary
that corn cannot see,
it only bears the fruit;
three ears of corn on one leaf,
dried out stalks, the corn
that the farmer’s wife
pats into tortillas
something he did not bargain for
or even want.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” 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 WAR ON HAPPY HOLIDAYS

by Chris O’Carroll 

Editorial cartoon by Richard Crowson, The Wichita Eagle, December 8, 2013

We do not wish you happy holidays.
O’Reilly warns against that  liberal plot.
How dare you celebrate in diverse ways?
Just one gets our OK; the rest do not.

Our “Merry Christmas!” is not a benign
Warm wish.  It is an icy battle cry.
Inclusive salutations we decline
To utter.  Limbaugh we have heard on high.

A manger scene at every City Hall
Is ours by right.  And children of the poor
Deserve no government food aid at all.
Tax funds for welfare?  No!  For holy war!

All non-sectarian good will we shun.
God bless us.  But just some, not every one.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous New Verse News appearances, he has published poems in BigCityLit, the Kansas City Star, Lighten Up Online, Umbrella, and the Washington Post, among other print and online journals, and also in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

by David Chorlton

Image source: still from The End of Violence by Wim Wenders

The neighbor who wants to know everything
has a way of asking, even though
it’s none of his business. But he seems harmless
so you tell him where you’re going, why
the next house along has been empty for a week,
and put it down to friendly conversation.
You’re aware that he’s watching

you leave and come home, not that it matters
any more than being recorded
wherever you go, by a camera that sees
each withdrawal and deposit, by one
placed in the stairway where you work
and one above the swing
in the playground at the park.
Why should you care?
If you’ve done nothing wrong
there’s no need to worry.
It’s all to keep you safe,

even if safety is a state of mind
when the camera doesn’t stop
bad things from happening
but just records them when they do.
Where can you go to snuggle in peace,

let alone have a discreet affair?
How wrong is wrong enough for consequences?
The cameras never sleep. Do you? Do you know
who the four thousand in Lower Manhattan
are focused on? You get facial recognition
thrown in for no charge.
How far apart are your eyes?
How broad is your nose?
Who does the measuring?
If you need to feel secure

install your own system
with a dummy for only fifteen bucks
positioned to intimidate.
If you’ve done nothing wrong
there’s no need to worry.

China installed ten million cameras in a single year.
London has one for every thirty-two people.
Chicago has ten thousand recording
the income gap between the rich and the poor.
These cameras announce a place is safe for investment,
a nice place to shop
and buy more than you need.
Even if someone is watching, keeping count,

nobody will stop you
before you spend too much
and when the man next door asks
how much your purchase cost
you can never be sure whether he knows already.

David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978, and still sees his surroundings with an outsider's eye. This helps his writing projects, which include a new poetry collection,"The Devil's Sonata," from FutureCycle Press.

THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE SUMMARIZES HIS PARTY'S TAKE-AWAYS FROM THE SENSITIVITY TO GENDER DIFFERENCES SEMINAR

by Michael Brockley

Cartoon by Paul Szep

I think I speak for my colleagues when I say we’ve profited from today’s session. Most of us have friends, even family members, who are proud Vagina-Americans. So let’s agree to put the finer points about consensual and legitimate rape in the round file cabinet. Let’s pledge to redouble our efforts to create a society where our feminist friends and other unattractive women can access the mainstream success stories we take for granted. By starting small businesses, for instance, making gingerbread cookies or doilies and then expanding until they’re competing with Famous Amos and Walmart. I foresee a time when dozens of our members have mommy parts. Free market women with empty nests and a knack for memorizing the Good Book will stand beside us against minimum wage socialism, interspecies marriage and bans on the private ownership of drones. No doubt Code Pink has neutered American men, so we’re going to have to mothball bills requiring rape insurance until the deep pockets put our fat boy in the White House. And let’s not muddy the waters with any off-the-cuff remarks about rape being a gift from God. We can mend some fences by giving teachers merit pay. A hundred bucks. My better half always warns me against bringing gifts that come with electrical cords and surprises that run on batteries. Maybe the NRA can discount those pink snub noses I saw advertised last Christmas. I don’t think a dollop of estrogen poses any danger to our objectives. But I was surprised to discover 54% of voters prefer to leave the toilet seat down so they don’t fall in. Almost half. Who knew?


Michael Brockley works as a school psychologist in rural northeast Indiana. Several of his poems have previously appeared in The New Verse News. In 2013, he had poems accepted by the Indiana Humanities' tribute to National Poetry Month, the Borderlands Project: Eastern Poems and the Vonnegut Library Literary Magazine.

HIDDEN

by Beth McKim

The double-story mansion on a tree-lined boulevard still holds our secret:  I drove you, that sunny autumn afternoon, to its fortressed walls, then hid on the floorboard of the '67 Mustang floorboard to pretend you had come alone.

Don't talk, just drive, you said, returning, before your soft moans turned to shrieks, and you leaked bright red, bled for days. Your boyfriend Joe would not answer calls.

When we meet these days, forty years later, we fondly chat---the old days, college drama classes, dancing, beaches, family, friends--but never mention the scary white house, the pseudo doctor inside, who for five hundred dollars, butchered your body, your soul, and any future chance for children you would have loved.


Beth McKim is a freelance writer and actress living in Houston, Texas.  Her eclectic poems, essays, and short stories appear in anthologies and diverse publications.

BETWEEN THE HEADLINES

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Image source: Q99FM

Snow and deeper snow,
all day it snows. Over sixteen
inches. On the news, I hear about a mystery man

dining across America leaving $5,000 tips
for $500 meals. It is, he reportedly says,
the work of the Lord, one tip at a time.

So much snow I cannot walk
across the street. The median
is a wall of white.

Of course I could walk
across the street. But
it would be wet. And deep. And cold.

Suzan tells me about the other news,
how all around the country young men
have taken to approaching strangers

and punching them to make them drop.
They don’t steal or mock. The point
is to make the stranger fall and run away.

Five inches of new snow falls on my car
while I speak to my teacher this morning.
She tells me, “Say yes to every experience.”

I wonder what I would do if someone
punched me. Or my husband. Or my dad.
I wonder what Jesus or Rumi would do.

There is no way to know what we might do.
It is all just perhaps until it actually happens,
like a weather report that calls for 16 inches of snow.

Today it is easy to say yes to the weather.
Yes as I scrape it from the windshield.
Yes as I trundle across the street through

the paths made by other trundlers. Yes
as I slip and bring myself down. Yes
as the snow itself makes the fall so soft. And cold.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband and two children. She is a parent educator for Parents as Teachers. Favorite four-word mantra: I am still learning. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

95 YEARS

by David Feela





Shadows of the first days lengthen
like steel bars across the floor.
Parallel lines take the mind

down its railroad track,
a freight train that won’t stop
for more than 10,000 days.

It doesn’t matter
if you stand or sit.
Life.  You stop counting.


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.

AWOL

by Rick Gray

Kabul sunrise. Image source: Panoramio

In a locked-down house of disconnection,
this is the hidden room of yellow exclamation.
Outside its mirrored windows dawn explodes the targeted capital
And strikes a starving boy on the corner waving a smoking tin can
Begging for a fragment of fresh luck.

Deserting an endless war of circling thought
I walk away from the blue face of my frozen screen
and step AWOL passed dreaming guards cuddling Kalashnikovs.
Digging down into the animal heat of my thigh
I grip metal jangling against a shriveled coma on antidepressants.

Oh, it’s so nice to stroll in the Kabul Sunrise!
“Give me muddy!” the boy on the corner orders me,
his English broken as my abandoned laptop.
I release my fist and watch Afghan coins drop 
Flaming into the yellow cracks of a hungry human hand.


Rick Gray teaches in Kabul. He has work forthcoming in Salamander and the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock.

TWENTY QUESTIONS: THE AMAZON DRONE

by Earl J. Wilcox

Is it bigger than a bread box?
Animal, mineral, or vegetable?
Does it leap over tall buildings?
Will rain or sleet or gloom of night stop it?
Can I get two with egg rolls?
Is there an extra shipping charge?
Does it know I live in Mom’s basement?
Can I still have my copy of Playboy delivered here?
Will it bring me ice cream in July?
Can it find me in North Dakota—or Timbuktu?
How much should I tip it?
Where will it sleep at night after a hard day?
Can it ring my door bell?
Will a flock of birds threaten it?
Will it scare my cat?
Can I kill it with my BB gun?
What will happen to my UPS guy?
Does it have gender?
Will there be a graveyard for defunct drones?
Is this the way the world ends?


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 TheNew Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.

BASTARD GHAZAL FOR THE DEATH OF SNAP

by Lauren Schmidt

Photo by James Mollison, via NPR,  from his book Where Children Sleep: Portraits From Around The World. Alyssa, an only child, lives with her parents in Kentucky, in Appalachia — a beautiful, mountainous region that is also one of the poorest parts of America. Their small, shabby house, heated only by a wooden stove, is falling apart. Alyssa's grandmother, uncle and orphaned cousin live close by.

At the start of [November 2013], low income recipients of SNAP throughout the country experienced a reduction in their SNAP benefits due to the expiration of a temporary increase provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to help families through a difficult economic period. A family of four saw their SNAP benefits fall by $36 a month, or 5 percent, as a result of this change. All SNAP recipients were affected, including nearly 22 million children (10 million of whom live in “deep poverty,” with family incomes below half of the poverty line) and 9 million people who are elderly or have a disability. Additionally, nearly 900,000 veterans and 5,000 active duty service members experienced benefit reductions, according to estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities. --- White House Report, November 2013

Without the Recovery Act’s boost, SNAP benefits will average less than $1.40 per person per meal in 2014.”
                                                —Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 2, 2013


The sound a whip makes on the hide of a steed—SNAP!—
to keep the needy in need, enough to believe: SNAP.

They just changed the name, “Food Stamps” to “Assistance.”
An Act renamed to stay the same. The “reconceived” SNAP.

Not Recover as in restore, but cover again.
Not Act as in action, but as in make-believe: SNAP.

To remove all the shame, the stigma of need.
To say no blood in bleeding when skin has been cleaved: SNAP.

Instead of stamps, plastic cards, what the public sees,
but separate bundles at the checkout, the public is peeved: SNAP.

Because EBTs don’t cover diapers or cleaners,
or soaps or toilet paper or Christmas Eve: SNAP.

In 2014, only $1.40 per mouth per meal.
A heavy burden for young mothers to heave: SNAP.

This is a poet’s plea to Senator Reid.
Benefits will bleed.  It’s time we all grieve the SNAP.


Lauren Schmidt is the author of three collections of poetry: Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing; The Voodoo Doll Parade, selected for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; and Psalms of The Dining Room, a sequence of poems about her volunteer experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, Nimrod, Fifth Wednesday Journal, New York Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Review and The Progressive.  Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, and the Bellevue Literary Review’s Vilcek Prize for Poetry. Schmidt is an Instructor of Development Reading and Writing at Passaic County Community College and she volunteer teaches creative writing at a transitional house for homeless mothers.

REMNANTS OF THE CRASH

by Kristina England

            Headline: "Actor Paul Walker dies in car crash,"
            the blaze making his beautiful face unidentifiable.


All I can think is "I hope he died on impact"
because that wasn't the case for you -
no seatbelt, ejected at high speeds,
thrown under your own wheels,
those once vibrant eyes dulling
under the red and white flash of disaster,
your son, stuck in the backseat,
begging for "momma" to soothe
his temporary and long-term boo-boos
as you shuddered out the last breaths
of mother, wife, friend on your graveled grave.

Maybe the driving laws were never meant for the driver.
Maybe they are there for the ones left behind
with the gut-wrenching task of identifying
a once beautiful face.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Extract(s), Gargoyle, The Story Shack, Tipton Poetry Journal.

READING THE TEA LEAVES

by Kit Zak 

Since our first report, the massive campaign against climate science – and action on climate, funded by oil barons the Koch Brothers has come to light. And while fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, whose very products are causing global warming, continue to fund think tanks driving the campaigns, much of the foundation funding has now been driven underground, masked by a funding front-group called the Donors Trust – and its associate Donors Capital Fund, two “donor-advised” funds created to hide the real givers and thus shield them from negative exposure of their support for these campaigns. Funding to the organizations that comprise the denial machine has risen during the Obama presidency, just as the urgency of climate solutions and promise of policy advances also rose. --Greenpeace, September, 2013

three falls later
traces of Sandy's wrath linger
losses top 50 billion
in a swath from Norfolk to Maine

Tacloban's cyclone
bodies line roadsides
the unnamed dumped in mass graves
thirst  hunger  disease stalk
the half-dead search for Mom and Son
among shack-splintered debris

tornadoes blight Illinois
tearing through twelve states
the highest winds ever
telephone poles stuck in trees
cars flipped upside down, found two lots away
500 homes in one town rubbled

fossil fuel moguls sigh
calculate their rising costs.


Kit Zak lives with her husband in Lewes,  DE. She has most recently had poems published in an anthology about motherhood as well as in the following journals: Avocet: A Nature Journal, The Blue Collar  Review,  and A Time of Singing.