DREAM SONGS FOR THE GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN

by Ned Balbo

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is accusing his staffers of lying to him about lead and other contaminants in Flint’s drinking water supply. Snyder has long accused state environmental and health regulators of giving him incorrect information about the safety of the Michigan city's water after its switch to using the Flint River in April 2014 until late last year. But on Monday, he accused employees at the state agencies of lying to him. —The Hill, April 11, 2016

1.

Why is our boiled water brown?

Our bottled water’s running out. 

Will it be safe to drink again?

Why shouldn’t water touch our skin?

The water mains still underground

belong to a forgotten age—

The records we’ve retrieved so far

don’t always point to where they are,

and, yes, we have a deficit—

which means we can’t repair them yet.

But rest assured: your water’s safe.

True, there are problems with its taste,

color, and smell, but samples show

lead levels are extremely low.

We hear you. We’ve conducted tests.

The wheels of government are slow.

2.

When water from the tap won’t clear—

When families forced to cook with it

get sicker, do we share their rage?

Or do we share in their defeat

when hydrants flush the streets metallic

orange—one more tainted purge?

When residents desperate to sell

are turned away by realtors?  

Water, once thought a public good,

is now one more commodity:

expendable, like those who live

in devastated neighborhoods.

3.

Why change a city’s water source

to one inarguably worse?

You know why: it was cheaper. Summer

days, pools fill with teenage swimmers,

laughter, lead. How soon will daughters,

showering, watch hair fall out

in clumps that catch in rusted drains?

How will the elderly, the poor

assured it’s safe, protect themselves?

Stop washing when their rashes burn?

Or let caregivers sponge their flesh—

the toxic river’s toxic touch.

We know this water’s poisonous.

Who’ll stop or redirect its course?

We’re told we have to wait. How long?

Who’s listening, if anyone?

4.

Hair white, startled from sleep, a man

who should have known pads down the stairs,

thirsty. What does he see at night?

Iced-over windows, mandalas

of frost on glass. He pours and drinks—

fresh water from the faucet, cool

and clear: the least that he deserves.

What do the least of Michigan

deserve from those responsible?

If citizens are customers

and nothing more, then, yes, they’re lost.

What should they ask this Governor,

and others like him? Shouldn’t water

wash us clean and nourish life?

Who sent this poison to our homes,

as if to kill or scatter us?

Don’t turn your back in disbelief.

Ned Balbo's The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems received the Poets' Prize and the Donald Justice Prize. His previous books are Lives of the Sleepers (Ernest Sandeen Prize; ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal), and Galileo's Banquet (Towson University Prize). A new book, Upcycling Paumanok, is due out soon from Measure Press. He currently teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.

HANDING DOWN TRADITIONS

by Rebecca Evans

Image source: Olde Colony Bakery

Olde Colony Bakery, “home of the original Charleston
benne wafer,” boasts a website where you can buy
benne wafers online. “Our 3oz Benne Wafer
Standup Pack is our medium-sized gift option!”
                    Early 18th century slaves brought benne seeds
                    from Africa to the Carolina sea islands,
                    cultivated them in hidden, forbidden gardens,
                    a staple food seed for rice cookery.
                    Their rice was the bread of life.

At Charleston City Market and Edisto Island
beautiful, costly sweetgrass baskets are sold.
“Our baskets bring African flair into your home!”
Works of art crafted by gifted black hands, a skill
handed down from Sierra Leone slave ancestors.
                    Large, flat, utilitarian marsh grass baskets were
                    coiled tight enough to hold water, fanners woven
                    by slaves to winnow the rice they harvested
                    on swampy, low country plantations.

Mother Emanuel church stands less than a mile
from the Old Slave Mart, where, around the corner
the old Huguenot Church honors my ancestor
on a bronze plaque, his dates, 1720 – 1774.
                    Rev. Francis Pelot, Baptist minister, was very rich,
                    owner of three islands, thousands of mainland
                    Carolina acres, plantations, “a great number
                    of slaves and stock in abundance.” Owned
                    a valuable library, devoted time to books.

What kind of wealthy master he was, we’ll never know,
A Baptist intimate friend deemed him “a worthy man,”
“in his family, a bright example of true piety.” But
Frederick Douglass writes that religious slaveholders
“are the worst,” describes the cruelty of an evangelical Methodist.
my ancestor in Maryland, the Rev. Rigby Hopkins
                    who boasted of his whipping slaves "with
                    what wonderful ease . . . to alarm their fears.
                    And yet there was not a man any where round . . .
                    that prayed earlier, later, louder
                    than this same reverend slave-driver."

When television broke the news from Charleston
last June, I joined the nation’s shocked mourners,
grieved the loss of the massacred nine, cut down
while heavenward bound in forgiving prayer, and
pitied the white boy dreaming a race war dream
to spread conflict sown by slaveholders like my ancestors
and handed down the line to sons, along with their slaves
and slave gifts of benne seeds and beautiful basketry.

Rebecca Evans, a retired journalist and editor who helped aspiring writers get published, has taken up poetry reading and writing and finds inspiration in Peggy Rozga’s class at UW-Waukesha. Rebecca now hosts a regular gathering of poet friends to share their writing at her dining table in Greenfield, Wisconsin.

FOODIES ABROAD AND DOWN THE STREET

by Lee Ann Pingel

Image source: China Highlights

            On Calvin Trillin’s “Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?”
            Published in The New Yorker, April 4, 2016


Maybe “province bagging” is a thing, foodies
like tourists collecting cathedrals.
No wonder the ancient countries
and their children
take offense at our forgetting
these places are sacred,
these dishes are mothers.
May we all—all, no matter
our birth, our skin, our standing—
remember to open our souls,
let them expand with each site or bite.
Let us be pilgrims,
let us repent of devouring,
learn to savor.

Lee Ann Pingel has lived in Athens, Georgia, since 1994 and works as a freelance editor and writer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from UC San Diego and holds graduate degrees in political science and religion from the University of Georgia. Her work has been published in the anthologies Motif 2: Come What May from Motes Books and Crossing Lines from Main Street Rag, as well as in The Fib Review, Plainsongs, TheNewVerse.News, Contemporary Haibun Online, and other journals.

MS. D AND THE FINAL THREE

by Lee Patton

She’s alone as usual at the far table in the teachers’ lunch room--
I stall, holding my tray, wondering if today will be the day
I join Ms. D, but Cheryl Sitkow groans at the rain-snow mix
through the staff room window, hoping to lure me into her tale.
“Reminds me of this time last year, Spring break, when we took
our kids to Poland.  Mist and fog and chilly rain every day.
We could barely tell the cathedrals of Krakow from the barracks
at Auschwitz, honestly.  All a gray blur. The kids were so bored.
My sisters kept asking if we could abandon the tour
and catch a  southbound train to the Riviera beaches.”

“What you get, Sitkow, trying to have an educational vacation,”
says Gary Schmidt, brown-bagging it with the other guys from PE.
“Geez, you’re such a history nerd.”  Gary turns to suffer
over his brackets, ratcheting down his hopes for the Final Four.
“If Kentucky doesn’t do any better next time, I’m personally flying
over there to kick their bluegrass asses.  That goes double
for my brother, who’s got double the money on the semi-finals.”

Fawn Lopez, the new Spanish teacher, joins Cheryl, despondent
at the window.  “My grandma says all this moisture means one thing.
Lawns to mow. Weeds to pluck.  Mud.  Can we put a stop to spring?”

Que lastima, I mutter, moving past. I bring my lunch tray to Ms. D’s
vicinity.  She smiles her slow, sad smile, nodding toward a chair.
 “I know why you avoid us, Ms. D,” I say, “all we do is kvetch.”

“It’s not so bad,” she says. “We’re all just stressed, blowing steam.
What about you?  Do you have grand plans for Spring Break?”

“Family stuff,” I sigh. “My cousins and I are driving my godmother
to Palm Springs to escape the rain.  Not real exciting, I’m afraid.”

“Sounds nice,” says Ms. D.  “Maybe you and your cousins can party
while she’s asleep.  And the desert sun is going to be heavenly.”
I warm up, dreaming about the margaritas we plan to blend
the minute we get there.  Then I ask her what she’d be up to.
“I’ll just stay close by my folks, as usual.”  I ask why, stunned
when she opens up to me at last.  She didn’t really have any one
besides her parents. No siblings, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles.
No grandparents.  “Just we three.”  Her folks, she says, were still babies
when they were hatched in separate camps, the only survivors
hung on each family tree. “A relief program brought them
to the States.  All they had were each other, and then me.”  

I remember all the times I’d seen Ms. D staring out, days
like this, to these chilly drizzles that follow blitzkrieg blizzards,
when March cedes to April’s peace, days the earth seems to yearn
for a treaty. She barely touches the Tuna Surprise on her cafeteria tray.
Granting her abashed smiles and polite hellos to us, drifted
to the farthest corner, Ms. D always abides the nearby noise,
this endless griping about all of our gifts.

Lee Patton, a Denverite, writes fiction, poetry, drama and commentary.   Quarterlies that have published his work include Best New Writing 2012, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The California Quarterly,  Poetry Quarterly, Ellipsis, Hawaii-Pacific Review, Adirondack Review and Memoir Journal. His third novel, My Aim Is True, was launched in 2015 from Dreamspinner Press.

CALL AND RESPONSE

by Michelle Marie

Say radical.
Say feminism.
Say Qur'an.
And confuse the fuck out of Americans
Who forget that
Christian values
Inspired both the slave driver
And the abolitionist.
A religion can be more
Than one thing
At once.

Michelle Marie was a blog correspondent for Stop Street Harassment and is currently a reader columnist for The News Tribune.

TO PHIL OCHS

by Bill Dixon

on the 40th anniversary of the death of Phil Ochs

It's open mic night at The Sacred Mushroom.
   Phil Ochs tramps
onto the red stage,
and glares at me, some punk kid.

He has a Gibson acoustic guitar under his arm
   and confidence under
his battered leather coat.
He turns toward the crowd in folding metal chairs.

And a jittery 10th grade kid awaiting his turn next.
   That's me in the back row
Wishing that I'd sat closer
to the spotlighted red stage by then.

Walking's the hardest part, up to the stage.
   Then climbing on to it,
carrying my beat-up old Kay 6-string
clenched in my left hand, stepping unsteady steps.

Phil finishes his last protest song,
   with a flourish I still can't do,
and he nods unsmilingly
at the audience of old Beatniks.

They applaud and then pause, as I creep,
   onto the red stage
as slowly as a snail. It seems
the crowd's faces are as old as my father's.

I sing my three songs, sweating under the lights,
   in the January-cold coffee house.
I had done what I could do.
I nodded at the faces, and stepped off stage.

I was not Phil Ochs, but there was applause.
   I thanked the listeners.
I am now a Folk Singer,
and I am now a man. Thanks again, I said.

Author’s note: These events took place at the Sacred Mushroom Coffee House, in Columbus, Ohio in 1960.

Bill Dixon worked his way through the Ohio State University, got an M.A., taught school, did iron work, worked at the Columbus Zoo, tended bar, and worked his way into a CEO position at a Columbus bank. He has written two books, Disorderly Conduct (1960's at OSU) and Guitar Collecting. He writes a regular column "From The Edge" for ragazine.cc. Dixon lives in Florida and Maine.

IN THE LAND OF THE STUCK

by James M. Croteau

Poke London's website Global Rich List allows individuals to compare their wealth with the rest of world. Their hope is that seeing privilege will inspire those with wealth to share more of it.

I glance up to the fifty-inch screen, Brussels, the bombings,
pictures of three men with carts in the airport. While CNN
ticks ISIS #2 killed in U.S. operation, then Cruz blames Trump

for tabloid story. I can't tell what that’s about, Cruz's head is now
talking but the TV's muted for the theme to Dawson’s Creek. How American
this song, Dunkin' Donuts, me, my laptop screen split between Word and

Facebook, my table with coffee and muffin. There's a new post on
my home feed with a word too frequent among friends as I age:
metastasized, before I can think I click like. That's not right. No bombs

are bursting in my middle class air, and my news ticker's streaming that
my yard needs a mow, my dog's shots are now due, and in Track Changes
21 comments still need my attention. My life's full of small needs--this

I can see. The music seems mocking: I don’t want to wait for our lives
to be over. Am I waiting? I can see what I've got, there's a website
for that-- entered $60,000 a year, didn't add benefits or assets, and still

only one tenth of a percent of the world is wealthier than me. Then I pretend
my life as I know it will last, but twilight's last gleaming's becoming hard
to ignore. O'er my ramparts, I see folks missing-- mom, dad, a whole generation,

a cousin, three friends. My fingers password Caring Bridge faster than
Facebook. I sigh and glance down to my edits, my muffin, my coffee.


James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 31 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the U.S. south in the 60’s and 70’s and his writing often reflects that experience. His poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Right Hand Pointing, Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South and Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry among others. His first chapbook will be published by Redbird Chapbooks in 2016.

TRUMP IN TRIUMPH

by Ned Balbo

Piñata by Dalton Javier Ramirez, Piñateria Ramirez.

"He knew human folly like the back of his hand . . . "

—Auden

He said the things we didn’t know we felt—
hard truths that showed us what we really feared,
and whom. We listened as he lifted guilt
from our collective conscience. What we heard
reached to the core, though each of us heard something
different that convinced us he was right.
We heard, beyond our borders, rumbling;
within our borders, reason taking flight—
It felt like freedom. In our neighbors’ eyes
we saw a common light, or signs of doubt
that marked the enemies he’d brutalize,
the former friends we’d learn to live without…
His jokes amused us, booming from the stage—
We dreaded—and looked forward to—his rage.

Author’s note: “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies” (Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal, 1987).

Ned Balbo's The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems received the Poets' Prize and the Donald Justice Prize. His previous books are Lives of the Sleepers (Ernest Sandeen Prize; ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal), and Galileo's Banquet (Towson University Prize). A new book, Upcycling Paumanok, is due out soon from Measure Press. He currently teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.

SALLY SELLS WHAT SHE SELLS OFFSHORE

by Paul Smith






Sally sold seashells by the seashore
Now Sally sells tax shelters offshore
To shills
From Iceland to Russia to Singapore
To anyone who wants to get their foot
Out the door
Of wherever they are
Into an Octopus’s Garden
As snug and quiet as the ocean floor
Sally’s Pa’s from Panama
Sally’s Ma’s from Panama
Sally’s Pa and Ma from Panama
Showed Sally how she could
Dodge the law
And make an easy dollar
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Maritime bunco
Where the trade winds blow
But one unhappy sailor
Who was sore at Sally’s sharpies
Blew the whistle on her
I swear it’s true
Your Honor!
Now
Sally’s seeking shelter
She’s swimming helter-skelter
From the law of every country
With a seashore and a lawyer

Paul Smith lives near Chicago.  He writes fiction & poetry. He likes Hemingway, really likes Bukowski, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks and Slim Harpo. He can play James Jamerson's bass solo for 'Home Cookin' by Junior Walker & the Allstars.

TERROR IN ATHENS

by Howard Winn

ATHENS, Ohio — A Hocking County gun shop owner may have prevented a mass shooting at Ohio University in Athens, authorities said. John Downs, owner of a Logan gun shop, refused to sell a gun to 25-year-old James Howard. Howard passed a background check, but he made statements that indicated he may want to harm himself or others. “There was a red flag for me," Downs told ABC 6. "I won't allow that; I don't want that to be on me." Howard left the store angry after Downs refused to sell him a long gun. When Howard returned to the store more than an hour later, Downs hid his customers in a backroom, locked the store, and called 911. Police later arrested Howard at a nearby Walmart. He was buying camouflage clothing, gloves, and ammunition. Police found a .22-caliber rifle and mental health paperwork inside Howard's car. Authorities said Howard had purchased another weapon at an Athens gun store. "Apparently he was frustrated about something that happened at OU in Athens," Hocking County Sheriff Lanny North told ABC 6. "I believe [Downs] did prevent a mass shooting that was probably going to occur at Ohio University in Athens." . . . Howard is a former Ohio University student and hockey player. —Cleveland.com, March 27, 2016. Image source: WBNS-TV.

No, not Greece, although it has
its share of terror both literal
and economic as Europe runs
amuck with collapsing economies
and murderers hiding in the
crowds of pathetic refugees
from war and other horrors.
It is actually domestic again
this time berserk athletic
response to humiliation of
a college hockey player whose
notion of self-worth depends
on the macho role of male
games which are not played
for fun but for fame and bucks
so the terror is part of Ohio
in the middle of America where
sports serve for our religion as
does the demoniac god of the
middle east some place with
no compassion outside of the
fearsome faith retrieved from
selected images out of the past
but in Ohio one can purchase
the tools of revenge at your
local big box store where
everything is for sale including
human conscience and scruples
and the necessity to kill can be
satisfied with just the swipe
of the modern credit card.

Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Descant.  Antigonish Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, The Main Street Rag, Wisconsin Review, Harbinger Asylum, The 3288 Review, Stand, and Blueline. He has a novel being published in July 2016 by Propertius Press. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M. A. is from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program and his doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

EASTER SUNDAY, 2016, LAHORE, PAKISTAN

by Janet Leahy

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and six-year-old Zainab Jamshed could not wait to spend the day at the park with her family. The young girl - the only one in her family - had already arrived in Lahore's Gulshan-i-Iqbal park when a massive suicide bomb went off a few metres from a children's play area, killing her and at least 69 other people. Hundreds were also wounded, and most of the victims were women and children.The attack, which was claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, was aimed at killing members of Pakistan's Christian minority gathered at the park to celebrate Easter Sunday. However, most of those killed were Muslims - like Zainab. —Aljazeera, March 28, 2016. Photo: Forensic officers look for evidence at the site of a blast that happened outside a public park on Sunday, in Lahore, Pakistan, March 28, 2016. Credit: REUTERS/MOHSIN RAZA

   

After Church on Easter Sunday
families go to the park
children play at the blue fountain,
on the hilly gilly, on the train.

Families at the park
in Lahore Pakistan, children
ride the hilly gilly
parents keep watch.

In Lahore Pakistan
Christian and Muslim children play
parents keep watch, but do not see
the young man padded with explosives.

Christian and Muslim children
wait for a train to ride
explosives detonate
the park runs with blood.

There will be no more trains to ride
the blue fountain
runs red with blood
after church on Easter Sunday.

Janet Leahy lives in New Berlin Wi, she is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her work has been published in The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendars, in journals, anthologies, at TheNewVerse.News and other poetry web sites.  She has published two collections of poetry.

REFLECTING THE WORLD

by Richard Schnap

When he learned that
To lose was to
Be spit upon
He wore a Superman outfit

And when he discovered that
Hate was becoming
More fashionable than love
He wore a swastika armband

And when he found that
The future was looking
More like the past
He wore a watch that ran backwards

And when he saw that
To be different was
The worst of all
He wore a mask made of mirrors

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.

BIOPIC

by Rae Leone Allen



Zoe Saldana faces criticism over dark makeup in Nina Simone film trailer. The actor’s casting as the legendary singer is in the spotlight again after the trailer and poster show a darkened skin tone and prosthetic nose. —The Guardian, March 2, 2016. The film is scheduled to open April 22.

                  
"Cause I see the face of things to come."

                                                          -Nina Simone, “Revolution” 1969

hollywood goddam.
blackfacing, caste
making muthafuckas.
consistent, blasphemous, boardroom,
behemoth muthafuckas. yall sholl got yall
ways. assaulting. can’t sing that blue black goddess no praise.

goddam: fatally, fundamentally flawed—blatantly missed
understanding. violence
in re-imagining.
herstory. hollywood, goddam. lifting
the leg, pissing. legacy dismissing. narrow lip-
servicing. herstory. them blackfacing,
castemaking, ofay muthafuckas want the glory. goddam,
zoe. a prosthetic nose.
really?

out of formation. chosen token
actress darkening. ignorance, arrogance
obscene. tweeting.

negro nostrils flarin’. pickaninny eyes rollin’. these muthafuckas
always stealin’. always a nigga lost, in the big
house. willin’. oh sinnin’ land: hollywood,
america: goddam. where
you gonna run to on that day,
blackfacing, castemaking muthafuckas?

not hearin. the word
she sang.
god

damned.

Rae Leone Allen is a child of Nina, Malcolm, Octavia, Jimmy and Audre living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

ON THE DEATH OF GARY SHANDLING

by Jim Gustafson

                         
   With thanks to Mikhail Iossel.

One by one, Mikhail says,
they are leaving through the door
permanently left ajar.
The party goes on without them.
Conversations and feigned laughter
roll into the hall. Ice cubes toll
the glasses. I will have one more.

They are not old.  Some younger
than I have left. The funny ones
see jokes that I just walk by.
They have left their drinks
on the table. Small napkins soak
the sweat. Carrying laughter,
they vanish down the stairs,
through the doors, out
onto the dark lamp avenue.

Others will follow. The songs
will replay. People will ask
did we hear that a while ago,
or is a while ago now?
The music is never forgotten.

Along the damp streets, heel taps
echo against the brownstones.
The funny ones hear and wonder
if they are alone. They stop and listen
then go on, thinking, have you heard
the one about the guy who was alone
and heard footsteps?

Jim Gustafson holds a Master of Divinity from Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Tampa. His chapbook, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013. He teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida Southwestern State College. His work has most recently appeared in Prick of the Spindle and The Tishman Review. Jim lives in Fort Myers, Florida where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.