THE PAINTED FACES

by Vidya Panicker

It was business as usual at brothel 59 in Delhi's GB Road, which houses more than 4,000 sex workers. What was unusual on the night of June 23 was the deliberate gait of Sameer Tyagi, a regular client of this brothel. Sameer appeared a bit jaded, busy on the phone, scanning the faces of about 20 odd garishly painted faces of women as they waited around for the next deal. It was 10pm, humid and a Bollywood number was playing loudly. —Anasuya Basu, Daily O, July 3, 2015; Image: Oil painting of a prostitute from Lahore's Red Light District, by Iqbal Hussain. Source: The Express Tribune (Pakistan) Blogs.

Here, and there,
the women behind the curtains
do not strip for you.

Through the folds of their
saree, and the pinched
fabric of their blouse
you occasionally catch a glimpse
of a sagging breast
or a tummy with overlapping stretch marks.

Foreplay:
you ask the one you choose.

She smirks at you
with her betel red lips
which she wipes with her palm,
pinches out two condoms from a tray,
lifts her saree and skirt up in a swift motion
and spread her tired legs on you.

Your desperate self is ready
needing no foreplay, apparently.
You lay back, relax
imagine the shudders
are a jolly lorry ride to Ladakh
or something better
while she works on you.

In about two minutes, or less
you zip up your pants
and walk out of the door.
Someone else quickly moves in
for his turn.

The painted face smirks again.

There is a daily quota;
a number signified
by the missing condoms on the tray
and later, she would run
like the rest of them—

Run home
to a sleeping child or a drunk husband
or a pimp who smacks his lips
but more often,
just to pee, and to cry out loud when the warm salty
liquid touches the bruises
that are never left to heal.


Based in the God's own country of Kerala, Vidya Panicker’s poems have appeared in The Feminist Review, So to Speak, Shot Glass Journal, One sentence Poetry, Three Line poetry, Aberration Labyrinth, Bangalore Review, and 4and20 Poetry.

FORMALITY

by Peleg Held

Upon a bench one long sought June
a court has crawled from its cocoon
in a winged deliberation

if water should despise the dam,
if wool should curl out from the lamb,
if wood should burn against the cold,
if youth should pulse beneath the old,
if push should starving come to shove
if those that simply do may love.


Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. He writes poetry, does woodworking and lately, dreams of the summer. pelegheld(at)gmail.com

AUTUMN LEAVES

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Image source: It's okay, to be a flaming homosexual

Like the rainbow, seasons to speak
Like the sun, seasons to tell
Like the moon, tides and seasons to speak
Like the bear, seasons to tell

Like the heart, seasons to dream
Like dreams, colors to wish.


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.

AFTER THE ESCAPE FROM PRISON IN DANNEMORA

by Alejandro Escudé

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin hold a news conference in front of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y. Shumlin said his state is ready if the escaped prisoners are found hiding there. —SETH WENIG/AP via NY Daily News, June 10, 2015

Raw world,  animal transfiguration,

Governor         at a podium,
acetone square,  enforcement, 

his word,         forest of 
microphones, gulps of blood, 

mere prey, pair of stags 
stalked for weeks,

footprints

pride, mystery,  a wall a god, 

law, scripture,         a man like deer 

sprints  for the treeline.


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.

MY FLAG

by Marilyn Peretti

At the mic on the sidewalk
some kids say justice
is the meaning of the Fourth,
some say fireworks, some
some say cookouts,
but some say justice.

Did they mean fairness,
decency, moral rightness,
equity, abiding by law?
Is this taught to children now?
Fourth of July means justice?

Maybe these wise children know
that the Fourth does not mean
burning churches of black folks,
battering a man in a police van,
giving up on finding prison escapees,
denying the poor health insurance,
or shooting pray-ers inside a church.

I wave my American flag
for what the children have learned.


Marilyn Peretti, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is published by The New Verse News and by various journals; nominated for Pushcart Prize; and publishes poetry books on www.blurb.com/bookstore. She writes with fellow poets in Chicago's western suburbs. 

BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR

by Jean L. Kreiling






You gasp and smile at bright chrysanthemums
that bloom for just a moment in the sky,
and hardly give a thought to what becomes
of them, the black ash falling as they die.
But sometimes, buffeted by mighty booms
that follow flares of patriotic pride,
you think of patriots who met their dooms
amid such noise—red-white-and-blue’s dark side.
Why do we want to watch bombs burst in air?
Did Mr. Key imagine that we would?
That we’d perpetuate the din and glare
of combat?  Maybe we’ve misunderstood.
His anthem hailed a hard-won victory;
we’ve prettified the fires of tragedy.


Jean L. Kreiling is the author of the recently published collection, The Truth in Dissonance (Kelsay Books, 2014). Her work has appeared widely in print and online journals, including American Arts Quarterly, Angle, The Evansville Review, Measure, and Mezzo Cammin, and in several anthologies.  Kreiling is a past winner of the String Poet Prize and the Able Muse Write Prize, and she has been a finalist for the Frost Farm Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award.

WHAT THE 4TH OF JULY MEANS TO ME

by George Salamon

Myths chain our minds.
Shibboleths cull our words.
Cynicism corrodes our expectations.
Lassitude lulls our vigilance.

A free people surrendered to lobbyists,
To hucksters of Wall Street,
To gurus of management,
To an elite empowered by degrees from institutions
Worshipping the con of the market and
Bowing to the mandate from Return On Investment.

Freedom's choices confined to
The aisles of Walmart and Target,
We make do with civic life as theater, its
Message acted out by pompous poseurs
Talking of "folks" and "freedoms"
Abandoned in the sewers of D.C.

"The system works," they proclaim periodically,
Insisting that a blind pig's stumbling upon a truffle
Reveals democracy at work.

And we continue to fool ourselves.


George Salamon taught German language and literature at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter on the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor on Defense Systems Review. He published a reader in German history and a study of Arnold Zweig's novels on World War I. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

KLANSMEN

by William Ruleman

The self-proclaimed largest Ku Klux Klan group in America plans to rally outside the South Carolina statehouse next month, state officials confirmed. --The Washington Post, June 30, 2015

Good Christian men in white
Ride into the night
To keep their women pure
And families secure.

Good Christian men in white
Know that they are right
But tend to wait till dark
Before they will embark

(Good Christian men in white),
For their own brand of might
Tends not to thrive by day
On what mild judges say.

Good Christian men in white
Wake to see dawn light,
Their white robes stained in mud,
Stallions’ foam, and blood.


William Ruleman’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Galway Review, The New English Review, The New Verse News, The Pennsylvania Review, The Recusant, The Road Not Taken, Rubies in the Darkness, The Sonnet Scroll, and Trinacria. His books include two collections of his own poems (A Palpable Presence and Sacred and Profane Loves, both from Feather Books), as well as translations of poems from Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (WillHall Books, 2003), of Stefan Zweig’s fiction in Vienna Spring: Early Novellas and Stories (Ariadne Press, 2010), of prose and poems by Zweig in A Girl and the Weather (Cedar Springs Books, 2014), and of poems by the German Romantics in Verse for the Journey: Poems on the Wandering Life (also from Cedar Springs Books). He is Professor of English at Tennessee Wesleyan College.

TRANS PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

by F.I. Goldhaber

Image source: The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness

First Abraham Lincoln let them live longer than people.
Then the U.S. Supremes gave them personhood and freedom.
Privileges of citizenship -- free speech and the pretense of religion
-- to gain tax reductions and eliminate workers' rights.

The president wants to allow their interests to supersede
sovereign nations' ability to serve their people.
Laws protecting safety, clean air, public health, will be waived
if it's possible they'll inhibit corporate profits.

Protection of corporate revenue will usurp all
individual rights to free expression, privacy,
due process, and the ability to afford housing,
food, medical care, education, transit, internet.

Forget about human rights. Only corporate power
carries any weight. They bought the U.S. government and
many of the world's leaders, jailing any who speak out.
They negotiate in secret to take away more rights.


As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now, her poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies.  Her latest book of poetry, Subversive Verse, collects poems about corporate cruelty, gender grievances, supreme shambles, political perversion, and race relations.

BY ANY STANDARD

by Kenneth Salzmann

The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said. In an interview with the News-Leader on Monday, she said the flag represents faith, family and freedom — not slavery, racism or white supremacy. On Thursday, the News-Leader was alerted by readers that Robb’s husband Nathan, co-owner of the store, once tried to adopt a highway in Arkansas on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Nathan Robb’s father is Thomas Robb, the national director of the KKK. (Photo: Valerie Mosley/News-Leader) —Springfield News-Leader, June 26, 2015

Far be it from me to rag on
the beloved flag that yet waves
not (as some say) to celebrate
the keeping of slaves but (as you
assure me) to pay all due tribute
to your valorous ancestors
who waged brave war against
the relentless arc of history even as
they carved your glorious home
land out of stubborn red
clay and soft lacerated flesh.

All praise be to those
who came before you bearing
whips and shackles ax handles
at the doors of shabby
roadside restaurants christly
crosses fierce fires
of redemption and the proud
blood that even now
flows freely in your veins.


Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies, including The New Verse News, Rattle, Comstock Review, Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents (Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises), Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press), The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press).

DEAR GOD:

by Gil Hoy

Take down
the stars and bars,

the Confederate
battle flag that flies,

over the Capitol
in Charleston.

And take down
the Confederate

veterans' monument
and the statue of the white

supremacist who was once
governor and senator

that stand nearby.
Then take down all

the vestiges of slavery,
every fiber and every stone,

every hair-thin remnant
of that terrible time

until not a rootlet remains
in any city or town.

But when the symbols of racism
are all cleared away, taken down

carried off and finally
gone:  How to remove

the lingering hatred
from a grown man’s heart?


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, magna cum laude, and won a silver medal in the New England University Wrestling Championship at 177 lbs. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as an elected Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Gil’s poems have been published recently in The New Verse News, Clark Street Review, The Penman Review, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, The Zodiac Review and To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology.

A CLASP

by George Held





So as I left the hygienist’s chair, white-clad Reesha
Said she’d taken a cruise to Turks and Bermuda
And, despite sunscreen, her tawny skin had turned
Black as the Nigerian queen Amina’s,

And I said, “Look at my sad white skin,”
Reddened and pebbled by actinic keratoses
(and smeared with cream to spare it from cancer)
And then I said what was on my mind about

Charleston, the city of Charles (whose name isn’t even
In the Bible), where white-racist hatred had burst
From a gun barrel and killed Pastor Pinckney
And his prayer-meeting sisters and brethren,

And I thought of all the black forbearance, the black
Sympathy, the black nobility that has steadied
A course that might have burst into whirlwind, war
And more deaths of worthy men and women,

And we two, Reesha and I, standing face to face
In the cramped space between high-tech dentistry
And the human race, the only race, clasped hands
And said to each other that in our own history

We at least are friends as I hoped that I was not
Just a superannuated white man
Deluded that he was without the taint
Of racial prejudice.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

THE GREAT GOD

by Howard Winn

Image source: The Holy Prepuce

The Great God
gun speaks in its own language
and that is considered scripture
by the lovers of shotguns and pistols
even assault rifles which also
talk in the tongues of the
holy disciples congregated
in the church of the Association
that puts the fear of that god
into the souls of anxious politicians
who care more for re-election
than for economic justice or
saving the life of church goers
or innocent school children
as they continually bow their
heads in meek obeisance
to the power of that great
God gun the all powerful
ultimate Deity and icon of
their single minded faith


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

IMAGINING ETHEL LANCE

by Carl Boon 

Najee Washington holds a photo of her grandmother Ethel Lance, one of the nine people killed in Wednesday's shooting at Emanuel AME Church, as she stands outside her home Friday, June 19, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. "She cared for everyone. She took care of people. She would give her last to anyone," said Washington. "That's what she was and that's what she'll always be." David Goldman / AP via NBC News

Tonight and removed from bullets,
she'd be swinging her great-grandson
in Wannamaker Park
in North Charleston,
happy for the chance
to see him smile--this kid
of unruly teeth and Jurassic World
pyjamas. Because Saturday nights
while her daughter waited tables
at the Olde Harbor Restaurant,
she had him. They ate
her famous lasagna, did puzzles,
imagined steamships. It made her
alive--past the dusty pews
of the church and the gracious oaks
of West Ashley. I don't care tonight
that bullets brought her down;
I care that this boy,
who knew Mahalia Jackson's name,
and Jesse Owens's stance,
and Dr. King's speeches,
brought her up
on so many Saturday nights.


Carl Boon lives in Istanbul, where he directs the English prep school and teaches courses in literature at Yeni Yuzyil University. Recent ot forthcoming poems appear in The Tulane Review, The Blue Bonnet Review, Posit, and other magazines.