THE SMOKING OF ANOTHER SHARPSHOOTER

by Tricia Knoll

Joshua Mitchell wore the soccer jersey of younger brother Emilio Hoffman during graduation who was shot and killed by fellow student Jared Michael Padgett, 15, just two days ago in the school locker room in Troutdale. Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian, June 12, 2014

There was smoke, a girl crouching in a locker room
saw smoke, smelled it, heard the rattle of shells
and ammo in a flack jacket filled with fumbling fingers
looking to reload.

There was smoke in the mind of the boy
who carried the guns from home.

The deadly smoke of anger,
a soul burning
with wrongs

all wrongs
done to him
he’d do unto others.

He died in his poison smoke,
our confusion of fog
hanging in the trees
the morning of graduation
like a death sentence.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet -- who taught high school English for eight years not far from Reynolds High School. 

A HOPE IN PERILOUS TIMES

by Buff Whitman-Bradley







"Woman With Child & Calla Lilies" (oil) 24" by 30" by Renee Thompson.





On my way to the grocery store
Brooding about famine and endless war
Environmental catastrophe and economic collapse
I notice a young pregnant woman
Her head held high
Striding up the block like the whole brass band
Following her big beautiful drum majorette of a belly
Toward a future that I hope will be there
To embrace her child

Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.  He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective).  He lives in northern California.

HOLY MACARENA MAJOR WORLD RELIGION

by Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

Only sport played in every
Country around rotating spherical globe
Defeatist loser mentality thinking squad
Shoulda coulda woulda might’ve didn’t

Team sport sense of togetherness
Combining experience balanced with youth
Requiring gritty perseverance sacrifice dedication
Practice practice more committed practice

It’s not the will to
Win but willful positive mindset
Being ever-prepared to win finding
Different insights to achieve goals

Best teams often are eliminated
Not believing they can hard
Enough regretfully upsetting compromised expectations
Deflating swelled ego nationalistic pride

Anything can happen probably will
Nothing simulated playing for real
Uniting uneven odds enthusiastic motivation
Catching fever pass it on

Passion evolves in 4-year cycles
2018 Olympics World Cup bids
The future isn’t something we
Enter it’s something we create

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

UNLOCKING THE LOVE LOCKS

by Tricia Knoll





When is it time to unlock the love locks?

When the love of the gleam of chrome was for glory
rather than health, longevity, strength and beauty?

When wild animals under lock and key
find the sanctuary of space and fresh air?

When the unfair imprisoned reach for the bar
and ask for a hand hold?

When the bridge of love falls under its weight
of promises?

When the artist says I’ll find a way for you to show
the world what you love, how you love, and when,
how to keep love locks from becoming dread locks.


Tricia Knoll's chapbook Urban Wild is now available from Finishing Line Press.

CLEANING UP DETROIT

by Iris Litt

A hedge fund manager’s plan to help clean up Detroit by letting baby goats graze on public land has come to an abrupt end — or so it seems. Mark Spitznagel, the founder of the $6 billion hedge fund Universa Investments, brought 18 goats to the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit last Thursday to graze on public lots as part of a campaign to promote urban farming. The goats were not well received by some city officials, who said local laws prohibited having animals graze on city property. So after a whirlwind 48 hours, Mr. Spitznagel’s baby goats were back on a truck on Saturday heading out of the neighborhood, destined to be sold to butchers. --Alexandra Stevenson, NY Times, June 9, 2014 (Image source: Housers at Idyll Farm)

Don’t depend on Man
To clean up Detroit.
But goats can.

Will they get any thanks?
No, all they’re going to get
is Eaten.
Yes, when their work is done
they’ll be sent to the final farm.

In reward for their gesture
they should be given a pasture
strewn with cigarette butts
and other yummy stuff.

The goat
should get our vote.

Iris Litt’s most recent book of poetry is What I Wanted to Say from Shivastan Publishing. An earlier book of poetry, Word Love,  was published by Cosmic Trend Publications.  She has had poems in many literary magazines including Onthebus, Confrontation, Hiram Poetry Review, The  New Renaissance, Asphodel, Poetry Now, Central Park, Icarus, The Rambunctious Review, Pearl, The Ledge, Earth's Daughters, Poet Lore, Scholastic, and Atlantic Monthly (special college edition).  She has had short stories in Travellers Tales, Prima Materia, Out Of The Catskills,  and The Second Word Thursdays Anthology; and articles in Pacific Coast Journal, Writer's Digest, and The Writer.  She teaches writing workshops in Woodstock, NY, and has taught creative writing at Bard College,  SUNY/Ulster, Arts Society of Kingston, Writers in the Mountains, Educational Alliance, New York Public Library, and Marble Collegiate Church. She lives in Woodstock and in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

LIKE CUTTING OFF ONE EAR

by Lynnie Gobeille

The Harvest

On Winning 3rd Place in the National Exphrasis Contest

I open the email – not quite sure what to expect –
to find that I have won 3rd place in the National Exphrasis Contest.
They have found my piece – written to Van Gogh’s “The Harvest” to their liking -

So much so –  it will be include in the art exhibit
and placed in their three year anniversary anthology.
No prize money – of course – that is understood – but OH! the Joy I feel.

Until I read a little further – to the part where they mention
We would like you to consider removing the first stanza.
Our judge, who is an esteemed professor from a local University,
feels it would be a stronger piece if you would just let that haystack reference go.

While pondering this suggestion I wonder if they would have asked Van Gogh
to paint out the haystack on the left.
Weighing in the cost of removing just two lines . . .
I wonder if they will still consider me ‘a winner’ if I decline.


Lynnie Gobeille is one of the editors of The Origami Poems Project, a world wide “free poetry event” based in Rhode Island. Her poetry has been published on line and in numerous journals. Her work has also been read on NPR and, in England, on ELFIN radio. Her chapbook Life not quite Understood is now available through Finishing Line Press.

ELEGY FOR THE FRENCHMAN

by M.F. Nagel   

The Butte. Good Friday.

The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head.
Say a prayer.

The Frenchman is dead.

Hopped a train -- age eight.
Joined the carney,
Challenged
The wall of death.

The Frenchman is dead, bow your heads, say a prayer.

                               Went to sea
Became a sailor
Seller of moonshine
Turned creator of gold-plated contraptions
Lost on the moon.

The Frenchman is dead.
                                        Bow your head. Say a prayer.

Married.
Moved his wife to a gravedigger shack
Near the Butte
Next to the Queen of the Angels
Cemetery,
Eying
Rivers and mountains and glaciered filled skies.

The Frenchman is dead.
-- Self-proclaimed:
Proprietor of
Boot Hill Auto Salvation.
(Antique and classic)
                                        His life’s ambition
Read and written
In the Holy Grail of
Abandoned car parts
                     -- A creaking
Harrisville Ferris wheel reaching to heaven,
And
Trunks and hoods -- and
Tires
And horns, and headlights.
Twisted skeletons of wasted steel.
Junkyard dreams.
Waiting . . .
All waiting in the weeds
For the salvage of judgment day.

The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head. Say a prayer.

“Brother of The Third Wheel,”
He was
Iron crossed.
Road a pan head
223-pieces of gold.

The Frenchman is dead.
Today.
Took his last custom-made ride
On the wild Matanuska winds --

The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head. Say a prayer.

M.F. Nagel was born in anchorage Alaska. Her Athabaskan and Eyak heritage gave her a love of poetry. M.F. now lives and writes near the banks of the Matanuska river in the Palmer Butte, Alaska, where the moose, wild dog-roses and salmonberries provide unending joy and inspiration. 

WHAT MATTERS MOST

by Gil Hoy

'The OJ Simpson murder trial became a symbol of all that was wrong with America: a legal system that could be manipulated and bought; allegations of police racism and planted evidence, dividing the nation by colour. Simpson become an unlikely folk hero to many and the "Trial of the Century" became a media circus. When the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, Kim [Goldman, victim Ron Goldman's sister] recalls: "I couldn't breathe. I couldn't hold myself up.”'  --The Express (UK) June 7, 2014

Ideology aside, in
the real world of
touch and feel---
being OJ matters,

while innocence and
guilt mean something,
OJ ish ness closes
the deal--- whether                    
he did it or not.

As a neuron-wired
knee jerk fancy
ad sells you a
crappy product,

a sweet-talking
harmonica mouthpiece
more than suffices.

May take eleven months
of attorney bills, but
better that than the two
short weeks it takes the
Court to send those

other poor jokers off for
death by injection of sour
drugs---no choking or
squirming for 25 minutes.

So when the glove don't
fit, you must acquit

I'm so sick and tired of
seeing that disgusting
smile on re-runs after
the jury came back

I could spit my guts out.

But every poor slob
should have one of those
silver-tongued bought
lying serpents---we'd save
a lot in prison costs.

Hell, the almighty dollar
even sells you a pet
rock---a pet what?
imagine that, a pet rock.

you don't have to
feed, clothe or
bathe it,

but you can't even
take the silly furless
little thing to work
with you for any
meaningful company,

not exactly prototypical
Aristotelian natural wealth.

Pet rocks even
make that glittering
fools' gold look good
by comparison---

the emperor's new
clothes on stilts,

just the best wool
wig pulled over
the peepers that's
out there.


Gil Hoy received a B.A in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Gil also is an elected member of the Brookline, MA Democratic Town Committee, and served as a Brookline, MA Selectman for 12 years. Gil studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. His first poem “When Doctor Death Calls” was published in Volume #47 of Soul Fountain. “An Unjust Law” and “When Gandhi Lay Dying” were published in April and May, respectively, in The New Verse News. Gil is married, with three children, and lives in Brookline, MA.

MANIFEST DESTINY

by George Salamon

'President Obama’s plan to remove all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 “is not a zero option . . . not a withdrawal plan,” the commander of U.S. and international forces there said Wednesday. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. said the plan he expects to implement, following Obama’s announcement last week, is a “transition” that bears no resemblance to the 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Under the plan, nearly 14,000 U.S., NATO and other international troops will remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of combat forces at the end of this year.' --Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, June 4, 2014     Image source: Paul Shinkman, US News & World Report

When American forces
leave the rubble of a country
we shake off the experience
and say:
Never Again.

Just not straightaway.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News.

OUTSIDE THE CAMPUS COMFORT ZONE

by Chris O’Carroll

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans. -- New York Times, 5/17/14

It should be noted that none of the schools cited in the Times article have actually implemented a policy that would mandate trigger warnings, and that college classrooms have often served as testing grounds for vital policies that might at first have seemed apocalyptic or Pollyannaish. Trigger warnings could eventually become part of academic environments, as unobtrusive and beneficial as wheelchair ramps and kosher toaster ovens. --Jay Caspian Kang, “Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind,” The New Yorker, May 22, 2014


Our syllabi have warning labels now.
We fear that certain stuff in history
And literature classrooms could somehow
Become a “trigger” for PTSD.

Slaveowners, Nazis, and the KKK --
These are a few rogues from the gallery
Of sadists calculated to dismay
Students with special sensitivity.

The cross, the rack, the bullwhip, and the stake;
Rape, warfare, genocidal tyranny --
There’s only so much college kids can take
Of painful truth about humanity.

We warn them and invite them to avert
Their eyes from education that might hurt.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous appearances in The New Verse News, he has published poems in First Things, Folly, Measure, The Oldie, and Snakeskin, among other print and online journals, and in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.

WATCH VS. WARNING

by Marjorie Maddox

                                                                                        “Female-named hurricanes kill more

                                                                                          than male hurricanes because people

                                                                                          don’t respect them, study finds.”

                                                                                                            —Jason Samenow, 
                                                                                                   Washington Post,  June 2, 2014

Surely the whirling of this world

into some wind-gone-wild transport to Oz-

    opposite names the same tree-thrashing terror

or should, a double-edged Saffir-Simpson scale

of nurture/nature of respect in respect to

whose wrath shakes our quaking spirit

more, which also is just breath gone haywire,

this life built in the lungs and expired

into air as turbulent as any cascading

into climate-crashing crescendo

off the coast of somewhere.

Dorothy/Don, this isn’t

Kansas anymore.

      Each day

               the breeze

                 and we

                       pick up

                       more

                         vio-

                        lent-

                  ly

                brok-

          en.

Director of Creative Writing and professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox’s book,  Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013), focuses on living in an unsafe world. In addition, she has a new ebook, Perpendicular As I ( Kindle version, Nook version, Kobo version).

METASTASIS

by Tracey Gratch

As oncology has become the hottest space within pharmaceuticals and biotech, the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is pretty much now the Super Bowl for companies in this space. Meetings like ASCO [May 30 - June 3, 2014] certainly do lead to companies releasing important data on pipeline candidates, as well as often hosting meetings/presentation to explain their pipelines and development strategies in more details. It's worth remembering, though, that a lot of what is presented is early stage, includes limited number of patients, and often focuses on metrics like response rate that are ultimately less significant than metrics like overall survival. -- Stephen D., Simpson, The Motley Fool, May 16, 2014. Image source: ASCO.

I attend the morning session
hopeful, there might be
a trial, maybe something;
she'll fit the thing they need.

Poker-faced, the lead guy says
the endpoints went unmet in this phase three,
but in some subset, it looks promising.

Back home, things would deteriorate;
she'll go back in this week,

as I'll wander the exhibit hall, endless
and commercialized, in ways nearly obscene.
The start-ups and the biotechs, lure attendees
in with chocolate crepes and fresh coffee.

At 2 PM, another friend will text:
she's made it through,
and on her brain, some pressure's been relieved.

There, staring dazed and vacantly, (after all,
it is day three) through the haze of late-stage entities,
through the fleeting, spit-shined pipeline dreams --

the posters offer palpably: the best
the best can offer here can offer only
two to three, and maybe improve quality;
and none of it comes free.


Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four children. Her poems have appeared in journals and  publications including Mezzo Cammin, The Literary Bohemian, The Flea, Annals of Internal Medicine, Boston Literary Magazine,  The New Verse News and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. Her poem, "Strong Woman" is included in the American College of Physicians, On Being A Doctor, Volume 4, published in April, 2014.

THE PRESS SECRETARY FORGETS HIS LINES

by Judith Terzi

President Obama said Friday that White House press secretary Jay Carney will be stepping down from his job and be replaced by deputy Josh Earnest. ‘It's been an amazing experience,’ Carney said after Obama's announcement. ‘Just so fulfilling’.”  --USA Today, May 30, 2014

Yes, Michelle and B went out for pizza. Yes,
macaroni. They're in Baltimore. That's

where my mother was born. Well, really,
she was born in Annapolis; her father

worried sick she'd marry a sailor. We're
fundamentally all from Baltimore,

aren't we? We are all on the same page. Even
Vlad. He flew in last night. Staying

in the spare closet. I mean closest bedroom
to the rest of the O's. Yes, he can.

He can recite couplets from the Rubaiyat. He's
a real gadabout from Siberia to the gulf

stream waters, from D.C. to Donetsk. Yes,
I believe he believes that this land

is his land, folks. Yes, two-thirds of Americans
fundamentally believe in didactic melting.

Yes, I believe that at the end of the day, we're all
on the same page at the end of the day.

No, man, I don't believe we've ever met
a Talisman close up in Baltimore. No,

no, I don't believe in direct talk with anyone.
I've lost my water bottle. Does anyone

happen to have a jug of bread, a loaf of wine?
A bow-wow? My water bottle walked off

with Joe. Slipped down the neck of a crane.
My keychain has disappeared, too. If you

see one with rhinestones and an owl and a million
keys, bend down and pick it up. No, no,

no, no pussy cat. Yes, I believe there's a recent
recall on carbon emissions. Yes, over

a million first-time visitors to the website over
the weekend. Now that's a real rhinestone.


Judith Terzi is a poet living in Pasadena, California. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Centrifugal Eye, Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo), Pacific Coast Poetry Series' Los Angeles Poetry Anthology (Beyond Baroque), TheRaintown Review, and elsewhere. Her latest chapbook from Finishing Line is Ghazal for a Chambermaid. A former high school French teacher, she also taught English at California State University, Los Angeles, as well as in Algiers, Algeria.

PASSION SKY

by Martha Landman

This is the incredible moment when a huge volcano erupted in Indonesia sending ash spewing an estimated 12 miles into the sky. The powerful explosion took place at Mount Sangeang Api in the Lesser Sunda Islands - an area that plays host to 129 active volcanoes - and sent a distinctive spaceship-shaped ring of pyroclastic smoke high into the air.  The photographs were taken by professional photographer Sofyan Efendi during a commercial flight from Bali to the fishing town of Labuan Bajo in West Nusa Tenggara province. Scores of farmers who work but do not live on the island were ordered to leave and not return until the volcano has finished erupting, said Muhammad Hendrasto, head of Indonesia's National Volcanology Agency. There are not believed to have been any deaths or injuries as a result of the eruption. Authorities have had Mount Sangiang Api - which means 'Mountain of Spirits' in Balinese - on high alert for almost a year, he told China's Xinhua news agency.  The volcano sits in Indonesia's notorious 'Ring of Fire' - an area where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. It has 452 volcanoes - 75 per cent of the world's total. --Daily Mail (UK), May 30, 2014

The sky is a passion tower
A vertical breath from the bosom of a fire God
Voluptuous love-plumes bellow like a death sentence
An inferno of justice

Where are the birds, the planes?
Entranced by elemental fury, farmers hover in the shade and
offer incense and a thousand goats to the gods
who enrich their soil

The sky is a love sculpture
Tangled clouds of fairy floss assault the atmosphere
Rivers flow in lava, arisen from the mountain floor —
Tomorrow’s saucers fly —
The sky is passion.


Martha Landman writes in North Queensland, Australia. Her most recent work has appeared in Jellyfish Whispers.