WHAT IN THE WORLD

by Howard Winn

Image source: ReverbPress

Is wrong with Arkansas
that cannot decide if it
is Texas or Kansas
where they elect to the Senate
the wise-ass kid everyone
rolls the eyeballs over as
he speaks in class without
raising his hand but just
butts into the middle of
serious conversations as
if only he and his opinions
matter while his elders
and the rest of the group
attend to serious learning
we have all known such
egotists who won’t shut
up and no one will cotton
to as the cliché has it
while he oblivious to
the hidden contempt
goes on and on as if
everyone shared his
own self love posturing
as if he were the rebirth
of Alexander Hamilton
that bastard of history

Howard Winn's poetry and fiction has been published recently in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Taj Mahal Review, Descant (Canada), Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. He has a B. A. from Vassar College and an M. A. from the Stanford University Writing Program.

DROUGHT RELIEF

by Jim Gustafson

I have sent California
an 8oz, thin plastic recyclable
bottle filled with water.
The label calls it “Purified.”
I imagine it poured
upon a terracotta potted plant,
the mistress saving the last sip
to savor for herself, while waiting
for the bud to unwrap its face
and seek rain.


Jim Gustafson’s most recent book, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013 and is a 2013 Pushcart Prize Nominee. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa and a M. Div., from Garrett Theological Seminary. He teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida Southwestern State College.  His work has most recently appeared in Prick of the Spindle, Foliate Oak, Poetry Quarterly. He lives in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.

DRIVE-BYS AND OTHER DARK TRAGEDIES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Back in 2008, NPR reported about a 10-year-old fireball pitcher from Connecticut named Jericho Scott. His 40 mile an hour pitches were so good that one youth league decided he shouldn't be allowed to pitch. The story went flying around the Internet faster than Jericho's fastball. Last month, the 16-year old was killed in a drive-by shooting in New Haven. —NPR, May 6, 2015

1 injured in Greenfield (CA) drive-by shooting. 

—KSBW, May 6, 2015

Man wounded in North Oakland drive-by shooting. 

—Contra Costa Times, May 6, 2015

A man is recovering after he was shot in the leg during a drive-by shooting Tuesday in Jacksonville. 

—The Florida Times-Union, May 6, 2015

Two Men Arrested In Suspected Drive-By Shooting. 

—CBS7 (West Texas), May 6, 2015

Police arrested a man Tuesday night suspected of a drive-by shooting last week in Tacoma.  

—News Tribune, May 5, 2015

The father of a toddler who was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting in Kent says he’s not a gang member, despite the contention of police that the shooting was related to a feud between gangs. 

—The Seattle Times, May 4, 2015 

Two men were wounded in a drive-by shooting in North Hollywood Saturday night, police said. 

—ABC7 (Los Angeles), May 3, 2015

what words of tenderness
for the young mother who heard the window shatter
and the bullet stain her five year old daughter’s black skin
what words of solace
for the grandmother who still mourns a teenager
pimped till she died
what will we say to the single mom family on welfare
who watches and watches story after story on tv
river after river called rage and riot
theirs, too, is the massive ache for justice
and it trickles down dark faces
for their child, their children
for every child
because the ghosts of all children
walk among the flames of another city of rage
                             
                             
Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem to be published in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin.  Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, will be released in the fall.

BALLS

by Douglas G. Brown

In the home of the bean and the cod,

The footballs were some deflated;

Coach Belichick sits at the right hand of God,

And the Patriots fans are elated.

Douglas G. Brown is a former geologist and chemical worker. His light verse has been published in Light, Lightenup Online, The Spectator, and Trinacria. Brown is a lukewarm Red Sox and Bruins fan, but only has an interest in football whan a scandal erupts (or, deflates).

FIELD BOX 54

by Alejandro Escudé



Its come down to this: empty
major league baseball stands
while the game goes on below,


except for the one skeleton
sitting in Field Box 54, wolfing
down a hot dog whole, tossing peanuts
into its open jaw.


The hot dog bun perfectly preserved
and the pristine peanut shells
scattering past the skeleton’s severed
spinal chord.


The lonely announcer
can’t believe his eyes. “It appears
to be enjoying the game!” he says.


And why not? The whole stadium
to itself, Orioles against
the White Sox, nothing to worry about,


though it still remembers
the gelid badge pressed to its ear

and the godforsaken fear.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

AMEN YEMEN

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

Editor’s note: Key infrastructure in war-torn Yemen, including water supplies, health services and telecommunications, are on the verge of breaking down due to a major fuel shortage, a United Nations humanitarian official has warned. "The services still available in the country in terms of health, water, food are quickly disappearing because fuel is no longer being brought into the country," Johannes van der Klaauw told AFP news agency on Saturday. "Without fuel hospitals can't work, ambulances can't go out. You can't have the water system working because water has to be pumped. The telecommunication network risks shutting down. "If something is not done in the next few days in terms of bringing fuel and food into the country, Yemen is going to come to a complete stand-still," he warned. —AlJazeera, May 2, 2015



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

ON WATCHING THE LOCAL EVENING NEWS IN A BAR WITH A WHITE, FORMER COMMUNITY POLICE OFFICER, COMMENTING ON A YOUNG COP’S RESTRAINT DURING AN ARMED CONFRONTATION WITH A BLACK SUSPECT

by Alan Catlin






Red-faced, standing as close
to TV as possible, shaking his
clenched fist at the screen,
former police sergeant screams
at images of young black suspect
in handcuffs, arresting officer
nearby, escorting him to squad
car, “What’s wrong with him?
Is he sick or something?
They should take his gun away
from him now. Suspend his ass
but good.  No, they should have
his badge!  Protocol, my ass.
The only protocol there is, is:
the only good nigger, is a dead
nigger. If I were still on the force,
me and my boys would know what
to do. Hell, there are probably
enough of us left still in the ranks
they’ll take care of business but
good. We should be talking about:
Man killed in armed confrontation,
not some 'exercised remarkable
restraint' bullshit. That asshole
will be out in a couple of years and
he’ll get another gun and someone
else will get killed. Happens all the time.
That’s why we shoot them when we can.
That cop better get his ass to the range
and remember what his weapon is for.”


Author’s note: I wrote this poem in response to recent incidents across the country involving white police officers and black “suspects”.  The actual incident in my poem occurred a few years ago, and I had let it slide thinking, who would want to hear about just another racist cop? The monologue is not an exact transcription of  the former police sergeant’s speech but it comes as close as I can recall. Believe me, though, the substance is the same. In the city of the poem, the police force operated for decades as the private army of the mayor, almost totally without restraint. Of note: There has been one party in charge of the city since the 19th century, and it was only after the death of the longest serving mayor in the history of the state that some restraints were applied to the police force. That was in the middle seventies. This particular officer began his career under the auspices of ”the mayor” so his attitude dies hard. I don’t believe all officers are like that. Maybe not even a lot of them are like that.  I remain grateful to all the cops who saved my butt when I worked in more than one rough tavern, when I really needed help. Some of them are still counted as friends of mine. Still the fact remains: they Do exist, have always existed, and need to be stopped from existing now, and in the future.


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose, the latest of which, from March Street Press, is Alien Nation.

WILL: THE

by Gil Hoy

At Freddie Gray's funeral. Image source: CNN



Raw naked truth of
Cell phone videos,

Funeral, funeral,
Police brutality: The
Police murders: The
Play of unjust death,

Rioting in the streets: The
Wrath of young black thugs
Raining down, in reckless disregard,
For authority: The

RapidRingingRagingGunfire: The


Collapsing broken
     Bodies: The
News ritual: The
Speed of the internet: The

Red of blood,

  Pain cries
      At:  The resiliency
         Of Prejudice,

  CHANGE: The

Way things are: The
Way things have always been: The
Way things might otherwise be?


Gil Hoy is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.  He is a Boston trial lawyer and studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction a year ago.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in Third Wednesday, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Potomac and The Zodiac Review.

BALTIMORE CARGO

by Patricia Jakovich VanAmburg

Image source:  A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland (The Maryland State Archives, Annapolis MD and the University of Maryland College Park, MD)

Why did we not see cargo arriving
with the first slave ship whose
rotten timber roiled the harbor
leaving tobacco in our pockets…

cargo of manumission’s
low skilled “quasi-freedmen”
filling local factories for
twenty percent cheaper wages
and a city of transient pockets…

cargo of professional
“blood tub” rioters and
Know Nothing fraud
dividing a city until
free Blacks were pocketed
into segregated education…

cargo from World War II
steel Liberty Ships promising
jobs for thousands of poor
white southerners while
expanding corporate pockets…

cargo from decades
of racial blockbusting
depreciating neighborhoods
building heroin ghettos
bulging pockets of crime…

We should keep in mind
what we put in our pockets.


Patricia Jakovich VanAmburg teaches literature at Howard Community College in Columbia Maryland where she is also affiliated with The Little Patuxent Review. Her most recent chapbook is titled Watching for Birds.

FUGITIVES

by Philip C. Kolin

Drawing of fugitives running from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Image source:  A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland (The Maryland State Archives, Annapolis MD and the University of Maryland College Park, MD)

Black blood rushes from city
after city; running is now a crime,
guilty or not, the verdict is the same
and so is the punishment; backs
broken, heads smashed,
necks choked, chests exploded,
organs silenced; hope ended.
There is no escape, no plea, no trial.

Every black man is now afraid he wears an invisible
target only dashboard cameras can capture.
Hanging-noose ropes are strung around
the killing scene; black sons set in  buckled asphalt.
The community  fears that American history has
reversed itself, the  Fugitive Slave Acts
reenacted.


Philip C. Kolin, University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi, is the editor of The Southern Quarterly and has published more than 30 scholarly books on African American playwrights, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. Also a poet, Kolin has published five books of poems, the most recent being Reading God's Handwriting: Poems (Kaufmann, 2012), as well as hundreds of poems in such journals as the Michigan Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, Christian Century, Spiritus, Seminary Ridge Review, America, and has co-edited Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita (Southwest Missouri UP, 2006) with Susan Swartwout.

MEANWHILE

by Earl J. Wilcox

Everth Cabrera bats against the White Sox in the eighth inning of the Orioles' 8-2 win at Camden Yards. The game was closed to the public. It was the first time a major league game had been played without a paying crowd, according to MLB historian John Thorn.  (Kenneth K. Lam / Baltimore Sun April 29, 2015)

The gulls from the nearby harbor start the wave.
The cotton candy droops, hot dogs cold, no beer today.
The organ player plays and sings Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
The bull pen players scratch where and when they please.
Rain or shine, the teams play on as if thousands were in the stands.
Abner Doubleday smiles, the Babe is baffled, Gehrig speaks to no one.

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.

COOKIES AND CRACKERS

by Dennis Mahagin

People walk past burning cars near the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and North Avenue Monday in Baltimore. Violence erupted following the funeral service for Freddie Gray, who died a week after being arrested by Baltimore police. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) via the Baltimore Sun, April 28, 2015

That cop, you just knew he was
drawing a bead on the small of the
whatever, and I pointed my flicker
at a plasma screen, watched
as a black guy caught his slugs; that makes
fourteen this spring, what does it mean,
a word, a deed, if anything? That cop
who dropped him in his tracks,
you just knew he’s a freak, a dick, squeezed
off each, in his freshly-pressed pleats. Jesus
why not come back, Lord, diminishing
admonishing, return? I pointed my flicker
at a screen, guts burned with nausea,
too much acid, what we learned,
later, that they'd snapped his neck
like a pork rind, the Galaxy vibrated
for my location, and sirens knew:
they whined. So I booted up
Facebook instead, time
enough the little box said Sign In !
-- to hear a litany of audio malware
in the head, the come-ons, for Liberty
Mutual, left Twix, white Twix,
the matrix, that runs, so subliminal
while one tries to get away. I pointed
my flicker, only to see he’s about to be
gunned down today, again:
Oh Zimmerman, CNN cuts to the bad
ad for Goldfish, breakfast granola bricks;
And we know a cop can be Garanimal,
maleficent nitwit acting out the script,
Zzzzzzt, Zzzzzzzzzt, a script, embedded
schemata, and no volition, as civil war;
hate is seeded there, from before.
Stars you see at night, no different
from day, burned through,
fossilized, and mostly light lives
in the eyes officer
inevitable, as the suspect tumbled
down, I did not realize it was still
running, had in fact been placed there
without knowledge, no warning,
audio files assembled on a hard drive,
tracking code, and slogans: they said
“meanwhile in the nation ... fifteen minutes
can save you,” -- so I pointed that flicker,
and it shook, yet I could not stay away
from CNN, the Galaxy, or Facebook.
“Fuck your breath,” said a cop, freak
we all know, Jesus Christ, come back;
toss the clicker to the fishes, lie, in
time, say we have learned, return.
At the Korean store, that linchpin
(or suspect) bought a sack
of Oreos, Big Gulp,
Triscuits.


Dennis Mahagin’s poems have appeared in magazines such as Juked, elimae, Evergreen Review, Everyday Genius, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, and Night Train. His  latest book, Longshot & Ghazal, is available for purchase now, from Mojave River Media.

KALI YUGA

by Susan Roney-O’Brien

A Buddha statue is surrounded by debris from a collapsed temple in the UNESCO world heritage site of Bhaktapur on April 26, 2015 in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Photograph: Omar Havana/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Blood screams, floods rice fields,
dyes water red. A woman shrieks,
cries out in an unfamiliar language.
From behind the wall
a man growls
deep in his throat.

Outside a dog barks, a child wails
as though there is no country
beyond sorrow.
Over the balustrade
potted roses bear dark thorns.
It is just past dawn.

The Kathmandu Kumari,
red-gowned, is now five-years old.
She twists her naga necklace,
conceals the rash spreading
over her chest, pulls
at her tight black topknot

and between the capital and Pokhara
near Bandipur, the earth
cracks open. A small hill temple
rattles and falls. The world
shudders as the epicenter
sends tremors roiling.

Shiva strides through Kathmandu,
levels Narayanhti, topples buildings
smashes bricks, bodies to the ground.
All over Nepal, red blood flows,
a color we all know and recognize
in this epoch of violence.


Susan Roney-O'Brien lives in Princeton, MA, has won the William and Kingman Page Poetry Book Award, been nominated for 5 Pushcart Prizes, been selected NEATE's Poet-of-the-Year, works with young writers to publish their books, and has published widely in literary magazines. She returned from a trip to Nepal last week.

SING LIKE A PLANET

by Rose Mary Boehm





Our earth is humming.
Enormous, swirling loops of sound.
Very low key. Not for our ears.

The water churns against stone,
rocks move against rock. A potpourri
of vibrations--not concerned with the golden rules
of tonal phrasing--are echoed between mountains,
are bowled across oceans and penetrate tectonic plates.

Male humpback whales, the ‘inveterate composers’
of songs 'strikingly similar to human musical traditions’.
They sing only on calving grounds.
Very low key. Not for our ears.

We have organized sound and called it music.
Made it less daunting; ‘civilized’ what would otherwise
overwhelm. Millions of years of the planet's pulse
corseted into meter and tempo, pitch, melody,
harmony… an attempt to control our apprehensions.

Still, I turn my stereo to full volume. Vivaldi's concerto
for mandolin, strings and basso continuo
in C major will soon bring the neighbor
to my door complaining about that awful noise.


A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) published in 2011 in the UK, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.