NEAR YEAR'S END

by Pete Mackey


Come here pretty boy she says to our dog
The latest pictures done on the screen
With lingerie and “Love Sick” sung (mumbling
Along to it I stand to let the other dog in)

By Bob Dylan himself. And there’s a war,
A pretty war, with the Best Pictures of 2005
Making it clear in today’s paper, on. The dog
(The other one) rushes in with the cold and I

Close the door. The song is done. Turn it off.
Turn it all off. The cold that came in is gone
Even if I still hear the melody. Let’s go to bed.
Yes, there’s a war on. Look in the morning.


Pete Mackey has published essays, stories, speeches, and a book on James Joyce's Ulysses and chaos physics.

WATCHING NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 2005

by Ed Webb


Dispatches from the picket lines,
Latest outrage from the boardroom suits,
Echoes of the monastery--
Master-apprentice, chains of authority
Feudal, unfruitful
And bells tolling.


Ed Webb is a Brit who lives in Philadelphia. His checkered career includes diplomacy on behalf of a faded imperial power, a soon-to-be-finished (no, really) doctorate in politics, and the odd bit of union activism.

SNOWMEN

by Karl Williams


In the rain just after a snow-white Christmas
Caught in mid-limp, Frosty and the Mrs.
Lean to one side, stick-arms doomed to droop.
Just days ago these happy-go-lucky dupes
Waved to a faceless friend above parked cars,
A flag stuck in his noggin for the war
That's nearer now the holidays are through:
If an enemy's evasive, kill another one in view.


During the 1970s Karl Williams worked with children with cognitive disabilities. His prose and poems have been published in magazines and books; songs from his five CDs have been aired on television and radio around the world. Williams' first play is now being made into a film.

RAIN CHECK ON THAT CUP OF COFFEE

by Holly Day


It had been so long since I’d had a dream about Christ
That it kind of took me by surprise when He
Appeared at the foot of my bed, floating
A couple of feet above the shag carpet in that way
He used to when He used to be a regular
Guest in my college dorm apartment.

He used to talk to me a lot, back then. This time, though
He just stared at me from across the length of my Amish-made quilt
His eyes so sad and sorrowful that I honestly felt
That I had done something wrong. “Can I get you something?” I asked
Because even if I am some sort of sinner, whatever, I don’t really know what kind
I am always polite to houseguests.

Jesus, He used to talk to me, and maybe
He would still, if I didn’t have a man asleep in bed next to me
But Jesus is just so damned polite I think
He was afraid of waking my husband up.


Holly Day’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have most recently appeared in Canadian Woman Studies, Skyway News, and Ruah. She currently works as a reporter and a writing instructor in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and lives with her two children and husband.

THE GOSPEL TRUTH

by Louie Crew


Well, you remember how at Christmas
last year the two fairies down our street
wrote "Bah, Humbug!" on their front door,
using rhinestones in Olde English script
(You know how they are!)?
Well, I just learned that last week
the one who teaches art at the college
told a group of students at a Christmas party
that Jesus was born
without benefit of heterosexuality
and less than nine months
after Mary and Joseph were married!
There really ought to be a law
against such scandal!
If we don't stop them soon,
they'll probably claim
Jesus loves them!


Louie Crew has edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has written four poetry volumes Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987) Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake! (Dragon Disks, 2004). The University of Michigan collects all his papers. Editors have published 1,692 of his works.

NeoGNOMICS

by Bill Costley


CHENEY CH@INS

Cheney isssss The Dick.
Cheney re-equals Dick NiXXXon.
Cheney runs Bush; Bush runs scared; Scared runs rampant.
How many Cheneys does it take 2eXch@nge our life-bulb? (None.)

E@TING disORDER

Mince the rich.
B@tter the middle.
Gre@se the poor.
The rich fe@st;
the middle f@sts;
the poor st@rf on rood.*

footnote:

L’Envoy of Chaucer

O moral Gower! this book I direct
To thee, and to the philosophical Strode,
To vouchesafe, where need is, to correct,
Of your benignities and zeales good.
And to that soothfast Christ that *starf on rood
With all my heart, of mercy ever I pray,
And to the Lord right thus I speak and say:

“Thou One, and Two, and Three, etern on live,
That reignest ay in Three, and Two, and One,
Uncircumscrib’d, and all may’st circumscrive,
From visible and invisible fone
Defend us in thy mercy ev’ry one;
So make us, Jesus, for thy mercy dign,
For love of Maid and Mother thine benign!”

Explicit Liber Troili et Cresseidis. [1385 CE]


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco chapter of the National Writers Union.

EXCLUSION SOUP

by Ed Webb

Thursday December 22, 02:13 PM
NICE, France (Reuters) - An extreme-right French group has found a way to distribute Christmas cheer only to a chosen few by offering homeless people free hot soup containing pork, which observant Jews and Muslims do not eat.

Oh, land of my fathers!
Whence this brown tide?
Did Charles Martel turn back their ancestors in vain?
See them flowing up from the ports
Spreading like rats, like plague.

We will meet them,
We too will be a brown tide
Bring out grandfather's shirt from the attic,
Recall the days before this debased Republic which begs for its own rape,
Drink only Vichy water.
We must be our own leaders now:
Even the Holy Church does not dare to defend our sacred patrie –
Offers vegetable soup.
Ours will be a patriotic soup,
And even this Arab-loving Republic cannot make our soup illegal.
'Tis the Season of Good Will to our own;
Let the others eat cake.


Ed Webb is angry.

TWO DRUNKEN MOOSE WANDER INTO HOME FOR THE ELDERLY

by Rochelle Ratner


And here she thought she was through with the drunken
bastards. One husband, buried with a full bottle at his side,
and two estranged sons. Why else would she move to a
retirement home when she's only in her early 70s, and
healthy? She'd mostly wanted a place she could turn her
lights out at midnight and not be awakened by frantic calls
or neighbors shouting. Those apple trees right outside her
window were an added attraction. Most years the apples
lasted well into December, some baked into pies, residents
picking others up from the ground and savoring them. But
the weather's been so bad this year – very hot to very cold,
almost overnight. And all that rain and wind. The apples
fell and just lay there, fermenting. It wasn't so bad, she
thought, that the moose came to enjoy those rotten apples,
not once but twice, sticking her head in an open window,
eyes glazed with that drunken stupor she knows only too
well. No, she wouldn't have even bothered reporting the
cow moose, it's just that the second time she brought her
calf along.


Rochelle Ratner's books include two novels: Bobby's Girl (Coffee House Press, 1986) and The Lion's Share (Coffee House Press, 1991) and sixteen poetry books, including House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003) and Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, October 2005). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage: www.rochelleratner.com.

NO. 102

by Thomas D. Reynolds


A flood faces from memory
once high water disappears,
slinking out the front door
and down the muddy road.

This last was no worse
than the others I've endured,
for my foundation is strong,
could last another eighty years.

How easily they dismiss you,
avoid you like a cancer.
Toss hedge-apples at windows,
drive slowly just to stare.

Even the man with red paint
whistled as he approached,
soaked his brush in the can,
and slashed numbers on the door.

When the old lady returned
to retrieve her last belongings,
she scurried back to the car
and didn't even close my door.

I apologize for the odor,
bitter mold that burns the nose.
Thick carpet of river sludge,
rotting carpet circling the tub.

But I never turned anyone out
for any bad habit or bent.
The old lady barely kept house,
so she should be used to dirt.

I thought she might understand
what rejection feels like.
No visitors came for months.
Her best friend was daylight.

But no, I'm a grim reminder
of a great human catastrophe,
and so must be expunged,
the sooner the better.

There are still a few items
she needs to retrieve,
a photograph of a child
in stark black and white.

A thin silver necklace
buried in the closet.
She could still find it
with a little luck.


Thomas D. Reynolds received an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University, currently teaches at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and has published poems in various print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon-The Journal of Sport Literature, Flint Hills Review, The MacGuffin, The Cape Rock, The Pedestal Magazine, Eclectica, Strange Horizons, Combat, 3rd Muse Poetry Journal, and Ash Canyon Review.

AFTER KATRINA,

THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON CALLED FOR A REVIVAL
OF THE SPIRIT OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

by Jennifer Rose


In 1968--before Martin Luther King was murdered,
the same year he Marched for an economic bill of rights,
I knew I was beautiful. We All said Black is Beautiful.
We All said Black is Powerful. Quietly, our hearts told us
that Black Beauty and Black Power could save us All,
because it would be the last truth told.

Now, I am ready to say what I know. I know
Black People are the conscience and soul of our nation. We all know
how we treat our own soul.

Shackled in chains, we’d Drag it half way around the world
to see if we could get any money for it. Make it stand naked
in the public square to show it who is in charge. Run it ragged
to feed bosses who are already fat. Hang it by its neck
if it gets too full of itself. Let it starve,
then ask it to tell of its value, and Pretend we can’t hear its voice.

And when it is standing on the roof waving its arms, water rising all
around; when there simply is no more ignoring it; Call it the source of
our fear.
Don’t let it vote. Don’t let it weigh down the economy. Keep it silent.

But See

How We Can Not Put Out That Light


Jennifer Rose is a writer, editor and teacher. Her poetry has been published in the Cooper Point Journal, Rhetoric, and Bloody Wommyn.

FOR CABERNET HOMES TAKE THE 1ST SOLEDAD EXIT

by Fran Davis


That would be past the broccoli fields
where sprinklers throw blue mist
a blue repeated in the eucalyptus
planted to stall the valley wind

In the Salinas
the wind blows always
funneling from the cool wide mouth
of Monterey
to scour the warm flanks
of the Santa Lucias

There’s no reason for these houses
after Chualar
Amigo’s market – carnitas –
after the correctional facility
with its cyclone fence and razor wire
flying banners of thin plastic
like skin pulled from a sunburn

Front Street the exit calls
the homes named after wine
form a sullen cluster
roofs like sharp gray scabs
patch unbending hills
that couldn’t love a vine or grape
what long-distance people
wished these houses here
to squat at the talon feet
of the Gabilans?


Fran Davis’s stories, essays and poems have appeared in Calyx, The Chattahoochee Review, The Vincent Brothers Review, Reed Magazine, Passager, Quercus Review and several anthologies. She is a winner of the Lamar York prize for non-fiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

CONCEPT

by Robert M. Chute


The possibility, perhaps inevitability
               of life came with a big bang;
the actuality of living things
               after a billion years or so.
Eventually the possibility of you came
               but with a somewhat smaller bang.
The probability of you as an actuality
               remained quite low.
Despite the odds some self, some you came
               and could be, or was, conceived.
When that was precisely
               is still in contention,
depending on which conception
               of conception we conceive
since life clearly is continuous.


Born near the Chute River, Naples, Maine in 1926, Robert M. Chute taught and conducted research at Middlebury College, San Fernando State (CA), and Lincoln University (PA) before returning to Maine as Chair of Biology at Bates College. Now Professor Emeritus of Biology, Bates College, Chute has a record of scientific publication in Parasitology, Hibernation Physiology, General Biology, and Environmental Studies. His poetry and collage poems appear in many journals including Ascent, Beloit Poetry Journal, BOMB, The Cape Rock, Cafe Review, The Literary Review, Texas Review. His poetry books include a three language reissue of Thirteen Moons in English, French, and Passamaquoddy (2002), and most recently, a three chapbook boxed set, Bent Offerings, from Sheltering Pines Press (2003). He is currently working on a series of poems based on reading scientific journals such as Nature and Science.

DÉJÀ VU

by Carolyn Howard-Johnson


After that morning of terror
I silenced the radio, shopped

for heritage tomatoes and romaine.
Civilized decades, distant wars,

strip centers scaped with potted
palms. We forget too easily. Nothing

has changed. Really. I reteach

myself (my young), to be alert
as a badger snouting out moles, to still

affect the serenity of a resolute monk. Peril
is not new. My ancestors beat down a scourge

of crickets with brooms and bonnets, farther back
they carried torches to fend off carnivores

that watched, waited, attacked. Frightened
as they were they sowed, milked, hunted ,

laughed around homefires. They knew
that beasts are everywhere.


Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered are both award-winners. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems have appeared in national magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on culture, tolerance, writing and promotion and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations nationwide. Her how-to book, The Frugal Book Promoter won USA Book News' Best Professional Book 2004 and her chapbook of poetry, Tracings, is now available from Finishing Line Press. Carolyn is the founder of Authors' Coalition and editor of the newsletter for that organization as well as a blog that helps authors turn a dull book fair booth into a sizzling success. Her website is: http://carolynhowardjohnson.com.

KILLER KISSES

by Deborah P. Kolodji


Butterflies in her stomach,
she kisses him after snack,
inhaling his peanut butter breath.

Unaware she was allergic
to his tongue seeking hers,
fresh euphoric teenage love
fading to anaphylactic shock.

Not yet sweet sixteen,
but kissed one time too many.


Deborah P. Kolodji's first chapbook, Seaside Moon by Saki Press, is a winner of the Virgil Hutton Haiku Memorial Chapbook Award. She is one of 16 haiku poets selected by Red Moon Press to appear in The New Resonance 4: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku.