HELIUM LEAKAGE

by Kristina England

Image source: Chasing Davies

I take my nephew to Sesame Street Live.
Sick, I would rather inchworm under
a comforter, so I buy him a juice box,
let him sit an aisle away, the show far
from sold out, convince myself it will
give him some freedom and space.

At intermission, there are Elmo balloons.
JoJo begs for Cookie Monster blue.  I tell
him they're double-sided, the back is fire
red, because everything has two faces.
He clenches his hands, won’t give up,

keeps stammering, I want it. I want it.
I say there's a difference between want
and need, reject his appeals. He contorts
his three-year-old face into a tantrum
that's acceptable at his age, later uses
his empty fist to rub away tears as
we head for the car, hand in hand.

Three days pass. Brussels is bombed.
Terrorists say the worst is yet to come.
And, sure enough, the comb-over man
climbs on dead bodies to point at polls,
tantrums his way into too many minds,
terror his decor for the Presidential bed.

I can hear Mick Jagger singing what
I've already seen back at the theater
when a girl lost her newly purchased
balloon. My nephew and me, necks
craned, watched a bag full of gas
float to the arched, heaving ceiling.

I wonder if the balloon stayed there
long after we left, long after the girl
cried out all her snot.  I want to go
back, not to retrieve a present for
my nephew, but rather to see if that
tinfoil face has popped or if it is still
clinging to an ounce of substance.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her writing has been published in several magazines, including Gargoyle, Silver Birch Press, and Story Shack Magazine.

SEARCHING WORDS FOR IT

by Cally Conan-Davies

Getty image via DW.

English. It isn’t all Greek. But a lot of it is,
maybe 60%, or more in the sciences.
But let’s not put a figure on it. Today
I’m thinking about the word ‘ecology’.
Basically, it’s your house, oikos. Unfortunately,
if that gets bombed, and you have to move away,

and there may not be a mother or a father or a door
about which a mother or father might say
‘were you born in a tent?’
to shame you every time you forget to shut it,
you must strive, especially when your new tongue is unstable,
to explain how your life is a ‘very high degree of miserable’
now that you shave the hair of your child for nits,
the child by the wire fence too tired to cry,
now that you wait and live in mud and shit
and the cold, quiet child is innocent,
and the settled world you seek is unsettling.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

AFTER READING JOSEPH ROTH'S THE HOTEL YEARS

by Alan Catlin

Pencil sketch by Michael D'Antuono.

Germany between world wars
Residue of failure and hate
diminished self-worth
Blame it on the minorities
Our country could be great again if
            there were no more:
                                                Jews
                                                Gypsies
                                                Homos
                                                Deformed
                                                Infirm
                                                Feeble minded
                                                Sick
                                                Non-Aryan
                                                                        people
Pander to the insecurities
The unemployed
Underemployed victims
of runaway inflation
worthless currencies
Hatred is the most powerful
the most effective motivator
Pander pander pander pander
Work the crowds until they are mobs
Then shout Kill Them All


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.

AMERICAN STANDARD

by A.S. Coomer

The pisser in the bar was branded:
American Standard.
I shook and moped back out
into the dim, dingy dive,
the air cool and somehow overly wet,
and ordered a double.
Donny Trump was up on the tv,
looking all jack-o’-lantern orange,
mouth pursed then streaming,
          pursed then streaming
          like an anus.
The bourbon came and I downed it.
I told the barkeep that the pisser was right,
that this was the new American Standard.
She turned to the tv and I shook my head.
“Wrong one,” I told her.
She gave me that look,
the one all wary barkeeps give,
the one that says,
            “Tread easy, mister.”
I ordered another, paid my tab and left.
The streets were overly wet,
shining in the first rays of a burgeoning day,
a sickly yellow sheen covering it all,
humidity already
            making everything
                        stale
                        piss sticky;
American Standard all the way.


A.S. Coomer is a writer. He likes cats, tacos, books & comics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in issues of Red Fez, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Literary Orphans Journal, The Quill, Blotterature, GFT Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oxford Magazine, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Heater, The Broadkill Review, Degenerate Literature, The Merida Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Thirteen Myna Birds, 101 Words, Intrinsick Magazine and Serving House Journal.  He also runs a “record label” for poetry.

WE BOMBED IRAQ SIX DAYS AFTER PARIS FASHION WEEK

by Clara B. Jones

New photographs show the Unites States Air Force preparing for strikes on ISIS targets at a secret military base in the Persian Gulf. Daily Mail, Feb. 26, 2016. Getty Images Photo via Daily Mail.

Climate crescented when Anthropocene
overwhelmed Antarctica, displacing
penguins whose food no longer swelled

the ocean, each year of our lives displayed
in glass cases cleaned every day, reflecting
a day-glow billboard sign selling scale

models of maps more detailed than the
landscapes they defined, so finely drawn
that cities looked like flies fixed in pixels.

The secret to my cat's success is her element
of surprise—clowns jumping out of bomber
jets, boreal birds barreling into bathrooms,

babies speaking sentences. In 2003, we
bombed Iraq six days after Paris Fashion Week.
Now we have drones to keep runways safe.


Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Asheville, NC. She is a staff writer for the poetry journal, Yellow Chair Review. As a woman of color, she writes about the “performance” of identity and power and conducts research on experimental poetry. Her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous venues.

I HEAR YA, ED ABBEY

by David Feela

For Edward Abbey, January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989

Blowing out of the southwest,
the wind this evening gusts,
slaps against the house like
a rafter’s oar skimming
instead of digging deep.

I am sitting in my chair,
re-reading Desert Solitaire
while miles from here the wind
whips the Colorado into a froth
of roiling red mud mixed with thought.

A river’s sediment crossbred
with its sentiment, as if an artery
hemorrhaged in the West
and a tourniquet of common sense
could not contain it.


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.

LOADED QUESTIONS

by Richard Schnap

Presidential Poster by Edward Steed, The New Yorker, March 3, 2016

When did America
Grow so full of hate
It embraced a cold
Bloodthirsty man?

And when did the purchase
Of guns grow as common
As buying a card
For a sweetheart?

And when did it start
To despise anyone
Whose face didn’t
Mirror its own?

The answer is that
It was only sleeping
In a coffin we
Foolishly thought sealed


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

DOUBLE CROSS STITCHES

by James Penha

'The Discovery of King Tut,’ an exhibition that recreates the discover of King Tut's tomb in 1922 with over 1,000 reproductions of the tomb's original artifacts 'The Discovery of King Tut,' opened May 16, 2015, at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

In the burial vault Carter unearthed embroidery
as bright after 3000 years as Tutankhamen’s gold
displayed last Spring in Grand Rapids only
two hours from a Flint entombed in lead
by pipes buried and buried again to hide
the hands that corrode the threads of civility
and undo woven black braids beaded brown
with more warp than weft and very petit point.




James Penha edits The New Verse News.

FASHIONABLE FOOTWEAR

by Jacqueline Jules

'Escolta de una gran senora en Barcelona' by Christoph Weiditz, Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, Germany.

Demonstrating
dominance
over the working class,
the wealthy
once wore chopines,
platform heels so high,
canes or servants
were needed to walk
a cobbled 16th century street.

In every generation,
there are those
who never question
the crippling cost
of standing higher
off the ground,
as long as they feel
tall enough to totter
over someone else.


Jacqueline Jules is an elementary school librarian who left public education when the testing environment became ridiculous. As a reader, she devours every genre—biography, poetry, essays, science fiction, mystery, etc. As a writer, she doesn’t restrict herself to one genre, either.  Her work has been published in over 100 journals and she is the author of 30 books for young readers on a wide variety of topics. She is also the author of two poetry books, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press) and Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications).

DELICIOUSLY DECIDUOUS SKY POEM TO REPLACE ALL POLITICS FOR 26 MINUTES

by Dennis Mahagin

Believe it or not, there once
was a sky, and construing itself
as de rigeur, congressman, it cradled
us all, mostly over
indigo,
with whipped cream
shots and espresso poured
on the moon at night, at night, this sky
whispered,
keep the spirits up, alright?
Then the wind
blew as March flew into super Tuesday,
and on, through May, ions
up there laughing
like icons
at sepia's stomp and dust affair,
low-lying
fluffy white ones where they met
and vanquished a Trump
in an August
sun dance.
Hard to forget, alderman, that sky, the happy,
happy contrails in air, creamy inchworm lariats
likened to smoke rings from Dunhill
cigarettes, they stayed
up there, aka "streams" -- -- -- -
and wouldn't let
a single jet
fall. Now I pray
to all expanses, with not a little fear
at the turning away, paparazzi bandolier, whir
of gears, arrows and lances
and ever narrow
slings and hot air and bullets and
drones and hot air, broken
wings and drones, and wings and
drones, moreover, in rotation, in stark
repetition mister
honorable mayor, fly-byes, a sky
up there, leaving nothing to chances
nowadays indifferent at best
and maybe neither
does she care?
Certainly
she's up there still, and will, --
this is where I invite
you all, earnest chaplains shepherding
the campaign in the ass,
only to consider
the reach of the grasp of the stately
previously unmentioned
Tree,
an aspen, peach, willow,
say, larch or
even weeping cottonwood,
while he ( the tree) glances
up, and nods yes, yes, affirmative,
yes, quite reassured
to every branch,
to the very rings,
a sky has got
your back,
says he (the tree), and which
one has ever willfully
been mistaken? Nor had occasion
to worry, to hasten
unto centuries? They are constituents,
with roots in the community.
She’s not going to
fall, despite
cries from the
left ( right? )
oh, she might send a
squall or two, tough love running
with thunder across
the sun, until the general
is done. Unlike a politician and natural
lies aside, lonely guys
( such as I )
must surmise, in order to decide:
and so I vote to try
to simply seize my slice
of sky. Look up,
one time, there’s the blessing
on the heels
of a peppermint sneeze,
let’s make it a quorum, see?
that it lasts:
it's lemon
merengue, senator
and dissolves
pretty

fast.


Dennis Mahagin is a poet from the Pacific Northwest, currently living in Montana. His collections of verse can be found, here, and there: And well, worth it. Maybe.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

by Joseph Powell

Let’s have a moment of silence,
for the end of civility
as we know it;
maybe even,
for the end of civilization;
let the trumpet sound, ‘Taps’
for all this talk about progress;
about how we’ve come so far,
only to turn it around,
and retreat backwards
into oblivion,
into, what was it all about, Alfie?
I hear blood crying from the ground;
I hear the rumble of bodies
turning over in their graves;
the screams of
“This is not what we died for!”
too loud for me to think.
I know they can’t rest in peace,
because we haven’t learned
to live in peace.
And the rain continues to fall
on the just,
while the unjust live in denial,
believing that they alone,
own the sun.
And God cries,
Damn it!
over the U.S. of A.
because
how can He bless
this mess?

It’s too much to take,
sensory overload and such;
I simply want to close my eyes
and ears,
and rest in peace;
but there will be no peace,
while chaos is the order of the day,
and the inmates are running the asylum.

All I can do,
is keep eyes wide open;
with pen in right hand,
and left fist,
held defiantly in air;
say a prayer,
as I march into battle,
clothed with little more
than the truth,
to fight
yet another day.


Joseph Powell is a poet and writer and the author of three collections of poetry: Joby, Uninterrupted: Bittersweet Symphonies and Bohemian Rhapsodies (1989-2009), Poetry Man, and The Writing’s On The Wall.  He is also the creator and author of the blog The Joby Chronicle. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, he relocated last year to Nashville, Tennessee from Burbank, California. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Greenville College in Illinois. He has performed at a number of venues around the country including the Austin International Poetry Festival and, most recently, the Tucson Festival of Books. His work has been featured in a variety of print and online journals, including the Nashville-based Calliope magazine. He cites James Baldwin and Maya Angelou as his primary influences and credits his girlfriend, Cindi, and stepdaughter, Santi, as his motivating forces.

ADULT COLORING BOOKS

by Joan Colby

“Indiana University Press will release the first five titles in a series of adult coloring books, titled Color Your Campus this summer. The five campuses featured are Indiana University, Harvard University, Louisiana State University, Stanford University, and the University of Notre Dame. In a surprising move for a university press, Indiana University Press joins the adult coloring trend to the early delight of college students, parents, fans, and alumni alike. Hobbyists will take pleasure in transforming artists’ black and white masterpieces into colorful flagship campuses while indulging in the comfort of a childhood stress reliever.” —Indiana University Press blog, March 4, 2016. Image source: Global News.

This is what we’ve come to in our dread.
Thumbs fed up with texting.
Vibration in the pocket
Like an IED. Someone’s head
Cut off on TV with a sword.
Red hands of history. So many dead
Of casual bullets. We are consumed
With terror, Sharia law in the hymnals,
Shoe bombs under the bed
And the demand for specialized knowledge,
Who to vote for,
What to buy next.
The world is dishonest. The wiring
In the house not up to code.
Floods on the coast and the caldera
Of Yellowstone that might explode.
We pick up the crayons
Carefully staying within the lines.
Making sure the colors are right.
Blue skies. Green grass.
The sun a peculiar yellow . . .


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

ODE TO JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA

by Jay Sizemore

A majority of Americans disapprove of Senate Republicans' refusal to consider President Barack Obama's pick to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows. —NBC, March 9, 2016. Image source: K Waghorn.

Words no longer have meaning,
nothing but interpretive jiggery-pokery
that makes flagpole sitting a fundamental right,
so get over it. Pure applesauce.

It’s a pro-abortion novelty
to uphold Second Amendment rights,
deciding it’s acceptable to execute the retarded,
the enduring Constitution of the adopted dead.

It’s a reduction to the absurd
to not harbor moral feelings against homosexuality,
much like murder. I’m not a scientist.
To my critics, I say, “Vaffanculo.”

Let 60,000 consenting adults
display their genitals to one another,
have them erect a conglomerate of the cross,
the star of David, and a Muslim half-moon.

Refuse jobs to haters of the Chicago Cubs,
to snail eaters and adulterers,
the gays don’t have special rights.
It’s fundamentally illogical to have gay sex.

States may permit abortion on demand. It’s easy.
We can’t cast a cloud on the legitimacy
of George Bush’s election.
I would hide my head in a bag.

This Supreme Court has descended
to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.
It’s attributable to racial entitlement.
Jesus Christ believed in the Devil. Case closed.


Jay Sizemore hates when you call writing a hobby. His work has appeared here or there, mostly there. He lives in Nashville, TN, though he often wonders if he really exists. This poem, written in reaction to Antonin Scalia's death, is constructed from actual phrases Scalia used in his legal writings.

BIN LADEN’S PORN STASH

by Michael Shorb

The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit Monday, demanding that the Central Intelligence Agency comply with a Freedom of Information Act request submitted last year for pornographic materials recovered during the May 2011 U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. —Politico, March 8, 2016. Comic strip by Matt Bors, Daily Kos, May 20, 2011.

midnight behind the razor wire,
after the dreary paper work
plotting the deaths
of millions, the grunt
work of recruiting a second
and third tide of brainwashed
suicide attackers, even an icon
steeped in the dark
needs to kick back,
close the door on prying
wives or sons or underlings,
stick the thumb drive in—

no pasha, nor hated
solomon himself boasted
such a harem: breasts pillowing,
thighs glowing gold in
a sinking sherbet sun,
arms embracing him,
sockets wet and waiting,
passionate sighs and secret
whisperings --

now the hard drive’s gone,
every keystroke and synapse
etched in ether, you and
your thirst for mayhem’s
washed clean and dumped
into the sea, only
the hoarse and bloody
schoolboys remain,
mumbling your name
as they search, lost
in the rubble of paradise.


Michael Shorb was a poet, fiction writer, editor, and children's book author. As an international poet, his poetry has been published in more than 100 magazines and anthologies, including TheNewVerse.News, Michigan Quarterly, The Nation, The Sun, Salzburg Poetry Review, and Kyoto Journal. He was the recipient of a PEN AWARD, won a Merit Award for the Franklin-Christoph Poetry Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lived in and loved San Francisco. Michael succumbed to GIST, a rare form of cancer in 2012.

Editor’s Note: Michael’s widow Judith Grogan-Shorb sent TheNewVerse.News this eerily timely poem which Michael wrote soon after the death of Bin Laden and the subsequent Reuters story of x-rated videos found in the Abbottabad compound.