ON MEMORIAL DAY

by Gil Hoy

In the 1960s and 70s, DC Comics added a slug with the legend "Make War No More" to its war-story comic books. Source: Lady, That's My Skull

  Remember Tens
 of Thousands with
    fervent   frightened
prayers to
Pray       Ringing morning
bells to ring,  remember
Hundreds
    of Thousands with
  tender Flowers to
grow and
    nurture and
       Place on dry
   white bones
at the bottom
   of the Sky blue
watery Sea, remember
   Millions more souls
their Deaths finally
     justified
Heroic Happy
      dead   the
  Deathofdeath on
abandoned brutal
 Battlefields,
remember Memorial
Day
as America’s
    no more
 wars day


Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in Philosophy and Political Science, and received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Gil started writing his own poetry in February last year. His poems have been published most recently in The New Verse News, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, and The Zodiac Review.

MEMORIAL DAY MUSINGS

by George Salamon

This April 1865 photo shows the graves of Union soldiers who died at the Race Course prison camp in Charleston, which would later become Hampton Park. On May 1 of that year, former slaves gave the fallen a daylong funeral. Source: The Library of Congress via The Post and Courier

"Thus, the men and women we honor this Memorial Day are all those who have served this nation from its founding 239 years ago--since the Revolutionary War, we have lost 1,010,485 men and women in combat--as well as all those who defend us now against the threat of global terrorism." --Robert L. Dilenschneider, The Huffington Post, May 19, 2015

Once it was a  day of memory  to celebrate
The valiant art of war for just cause.
Today we march to bad music,
Civilization's enlightenment a puny seed
As the strong wipe out the weak and
The tyrants of the earth annihilate
Human work and sweat.
From desert in Africa to wheat field in Ukraine
The victors are not liberators
But bitter fear, hunger, fire and death.
         
On Memorial Days past did wise men speak to us?
Today we hear small men with big voices.
Men who know not what they are
And will not become what we know.


George Salamon taught German at several East Coast colleges, served as reporter on the St. Louis Business Journal and Sr. Editor for Defense Systems Review. He contributes regularly to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News.

AND SO IT GOES

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer 

Dating back 40,000 years to the Denisovan species of early humans, new pictures show beauty and craftsmanship of prehistoric jewellery. It is intricately made with polished green stone and is thought to have adorned a very important woman or child on only special occasions. Yet this is no modern-day fashion accessory and is instead believed to be the oldest stone bracelet in the world, dating to as long ago as 40,000 years. Unearthed in the Altai region of Siberia in 2008, after detailed analysis Russian experts now accept its remarkable age as correct.  New pictures show this ancient piece of jewellery in its full glory with scientists concluding it was made by our prehistoric human ancestors, the Denisovans, and shows them to have been far more advanced than ever realised. 'The bracelet is stunning - in bright sunlight it reflects the sun rays, at night by the fire it casts a deep shade of green,' said Anatoly Derevyanko, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. —Anna Liesowska, The Siberian Times, May 7, 2015. Photo: Vera Salnitskaya

Thirty thousand years before the Stone Age,
someone made a bracelet of chlorite.
In the sun, the same sun that we know,
the bracelet glittered and reflected the rays.
In the night, just as dark and steep
as our night, the bracelet cast a deep shade
of green. Green, even then, was the color
of growth and new life. And the bracelet,
say the scientists, would have been worn
as protection from evil spirits. Not much has changed,
really, though the Denisovan people are long,
long gone from the caves in Siberia, gone
from the planet forever. But I think of how they,
like the homo sapiens, were moved
to make beauty. How they, too, perhaps stood
outside on a clear spring night
and felt the wind, the bright slap of the stars,
the possibility that art might save us.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado. Her poems have appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, in back alleys and on river rocks. One-word mantra: Adjust. 

BAN ON MILITARY GEAR . . .

by Marjorie Maddox

except here? Last call
for chain-gangs-
in-training at this chain
bar and grill where each chain-
clad cult sparks shootouts
in a city of brotherly bonds
($1 million and counting),
as bloody as that 90’s Waco,
or trying, nine dead but riding
too fast toward that other road
block, those blasted
and blasting seventy-six bodies
in the siege that inspired
McVeigh, another chain-
reaction of cult-carnage.

History is heavy
on our backs
as are tire tread on a biker’s foot,
muscle-imposed taxes,
rival-enforced respect;
knives, ammo;
as are Bandidos and Cossacks lighting up
the ticking bombs of their lives,
revving up revenge in this parking lot
of smashed-in faces,
bashed-up corpses;
this past of bloody sorrow
and linked pain, ongoing narrative
of chains, chains, chains.


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).

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently. 

AS THE HEAVY JAGGED

by Gil Hoy

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, right, with his attorney William Fick. Credit: AP via Boston Herald

As the heavy jagged
wheels of justice grind on in macabre
cadence an impenitent brutal man awaits
execution which will come in years if ever after
appeals repeating grotesque images lawyers
news stories while young parents of youngest
killed relive the explosions of pressure cookers
shrapnel the ripping flesh the shrill screams
caked blood on sidewalks the police sirens
burning smoke to awaken each night
in a cold sweat for the memory

Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy, where he won a silver medal in the New England University Wrestling Championships at 177 pounds. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction in February last year.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in The New Verse News, The Antarctica Journal, ThirdWednesday, The Potomac and The Zodiac Review.

THE PEDICURE CUSTOMER'S DILEMMA

by Catherine Wald

Across the country, countless workers in the nail salon industry, mainly immigrant women, toil in misery and ill health for meager pay, usually with no overtime, abused by employers who show little or no consideration for their safety and well-being. It is a world of long days and toxic chemicals, where the usual protections of government have failed, at all levels. —NY Times, May 11, 2015; Photo: A pedicure at a salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times. 

Time to choose: should I deprive you of your
livelihood or your unborn children?

Do your lungs need air as badly as my toes need to be
decked out in glorious colors that never existed in nature?

Is it frivolous to pay another human being to caress the
arches and balls of my feet in a way no lover ever will?

In your hands, oh modest Korean or Chinese or Thai woman,
shy, unsightly appendages, emboldened, grab the spotlight.

For two dollars apiece, you give me ten hand-crafted
oriental miniatures, perfect and miniscule as gemstones,

sparkling harbingers of summer, delightful butterflies
birthed in a cloud of formaldehyde, ethanol and XX.

Pedicurists, like most winged creatures, enjoy a short
lifespan: but we all know beauty demands sacrifice.

In this world where gainful employment is hard to come by,
where aesthetic pleasure is so desperately needed, is it

time to turn off the tap?


Catherine Wald's books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.

ALL CREATED EQUAL EXCEPT

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

Rohingya migrants with airdropped food. A boat carrying them and scores of others, including young children, was found floating in Thai waters; passengers said several people had died. Credit Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via NY Times, May 15, 2015

Pitiful bane of subhuman existence
Despised by masses spewing contempt
Rohingya without nationality precarious allegiance
Leaky boats sunken nightmares capsized

No destined port of call
No place to be somebody
Homeless hapless hopeless leper outcasts
Unwelcome turned away nobody cares

Bedraggled bastards barely hanging on
Dysfunctional once upon family angst
Bony ghosts haunted by skeletons
Wronged inhuman rights constantly betrayed

Blind justice labeling terrorized victims
Raped pillaged occupation unanswered queries
Haunted by Islamophobia anti-Moslem bashing
Hateful demons lacking compassionate kindness

Unanchored adrift dead man’s float
Bloated corpses buried at sea
Long-festering festering wound abscessed
Help beyond intensive care horizon


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

M-MOMENTS

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Around 1,600 refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh were rescued off the coast of Indonesia on Sunday and detained in Malaysia on Monday. Malaysian officials said Monday that 1,081 Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees landed on the country’s Langkawi Island. On Sunday, 600 “sad, tired and distressed” migrants were stranded off the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh. On Monday, another 400 were found aboard a ship, the BBC reports. Hundreds of those people are believed to be Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim minority in Myanmar who for decades have faced discrimination and persecution in the majority-Buddhist country. The government of Myanmar considers the country’s approximately 1.33 million Rohingya illegal settlers, and the United Nations classifies them as one of the most persecuted refugee groups in the world. —Newsweek, May 11, 2015

With silvery hair, bones thinned in-out, of life the silver screen speaks.
The letter M, embossed in audacious colors. It had begun long before her time,

time when clay pots were sanded out to shimmer. She had seen it and felt it.
It starts by falling- falling in love. Minute carts tenderly packed,
full of moments, full of memories delicately put together.

It moves with fantasies of prized certificates, a desire for a stamp-the majestic seal of approval.
It flows to the stage of self- journey through dark subways, tunnels to the unfamiliar,
untested promise lands. She heard some had swam bellied-up in wavy pools,
Chillin’ to the historic tempest.

Others swim to “bien venue”  cat-calls, to honeymoons filled with French kisses,
flowers and fresh caresses, beauty and beautiful feet planted on cozy carpets,
romance lasting into wintery and the hurricane hugging days.

On strange lands were some feet planted. They kissed strangers
and slept with enemies -red juices pressed against their lips,
with the firm force of a heavy weight boxer’s strength, kissing Judas’ doppelgänger
to the sweet sound of the language from Babel, spoken with a lover’s passion.

Faint memories show M in the alphabet song, is for Migration, for marriage.


Lind Grant-Oyeye is an Irish-Nigerian poet and has work published in several countries. Her work discusses issues related to culture, social justice and equality.

DECONSTRUCTING TEXAS

by James Penha

Jim Love’s homage to Texas, “Area Code” (1962) steel, cast iron and lead,
presently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX.

“The Texas takeover is like Obamacare death panels, or Sharia law coming to a court near you, or fluoride in the water supply. It doesn’t matter if the particular charge is proven to be completely false. Just getting the larger idea (don’t trust Obama’s feds, they want to un-cling you from your guns and religion) into the mainstream media is a victory. It validates the paranoia.” —Leslie Savan, The Nation, May 8, 2015

"Nearly every Republican in the Texas House is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit state and local officials from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples." —AP, May 13, 2015 

The every-which-wayness of tomahawking
oil drills, like Fred Astaire twerking against gravity
on walls and ceiling, does not surprise: Pan pipes after all
and the broad ten-gallon of a new Hermes
wings just above a bookend pedestal. Nor does a
chain-saw tumbleweed, nest of baby crankcases, wild
pig, arrowhead, milk bottle, longhorns and loblolly.
And at center stage a lone Rainmaker curries favor from his Lizzie;
it’s 110 in the shade on a stage a Broadway baby understands.

But that dour visage next to the lug wrench monstrance?
(Paul Frank’s simian Julius would worship a monkey wrench,
and snow monkeys swayed only briefly on Texas branches;
Iron Eyes Cody cried crocodiles for this land much later.)

No, within that overseeing mien
a Vitruvian wannabe struggles to set
his face and place the star on which
the whole of this sorry state depends.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.

RUN-UP

by Rachael Stanley






little girls in
communion dresses
Dublin city awash
with marriage -
equality posters


Rachael Stanley's poems have been published in various print and online publications. She also has an interest in shorter form poetry such as Haiku, Haibun and Tanka. She is from Dublin, Ireland where she currently lives.

PILING ON

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

Proud heritage pitiful anti-natural disaster

Architectonic rumbling

Daily bread no longer given

Magical dragons entrapped snowbound lairs

Looking down from isolated heights

Precarious existence smothered by ash

Votive lamps churned buttery meltdown

Trackless Sherpa trails left behind

Empty void filled with tenacity

No vacancy guest houses demolished

Children used to nothing strangely

Making do with even less

Thankless volunteers sifting contaminated rubble

Bloodhounds sniffing vital heartbeat signs

Humanitarian relief anonymous god sent

Colorful life savers myriad flavors


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

WHERE WOULD THE KARDASHIANS BE WITHOUT KRIS JENNER?*

by Ron Riekki

'I will never replace his beloved mom': Kris Jenner promises to 'always love' Kanye West like her own son in touching note for Mother's Day —Justin Enriquez and George Stark, Daily Mail, May 11, 2015

When newspapers died,
their son
took over
the business
and he liked boobs,
so he’d write
obituaries
about boobs
and show boobs playing
golf
and he made the weather report
a boob weather report.

The boobs
appreciated the fame.

In the old days,
boobs couldn’t be
involved in politics,
but now boobs
run for President
every year.

When the newspaper industry
died,
it was from all of those years
of smoking,
or,
excuse me,
sucking,
all of those years
of sucking
all of the air
out of the room
to make room
for the boobs.

Here’s a news
flash.

Here’s a news
peep show.

Here’s a noose.


*NY Times Magazine headline, May 8, 2015

Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (MSU Press).

DREAMING NEPAL

by Valerie Sonnenthal

Saili, 25, from Selang, said that her 2-year-old son died in the earthquake and that her home was destroyed. She and her two surviving children are now living in a shelter with four other families. Credit: Gardiner Harris/The New York Times, May 9, 2015

silencing her words
lips moving
wordless breeze
swallowing syllables
caught like a tumor
growing slowly
her throat aching
hands twisting
body somewhere
dust thickened
eyes blink
between dreams
days
like yesterday
calm carrying on
errands at the market
life a dream
she once was living
thankful
now thick
in the thick
slow stuck time
floating in wait
weighted
by a city
she once knew


Valerie Sonnenthal joined the Cleaveland House Poets when she moved to Martha's Vineyard in 2006. She writes the Chilmark Town Column plus arts and lifestyle stories for the MV Times, Arts & Ideas magazine, and  publishes Errata Editions' Books on Books series.