MOTHERS WILL MAKE PEACE

by Mary Saracino


"Mothers will make peace, so sons will not die."

--Huda, a Palestinian journalist living in Jordan,
as quoted in “Women's Gathering Gives Peace a Chance,”
Women’s E-News, April 13, 2006

Will it come to this, then? The mothers rising
like Furies unleashed, banishing war
from the souls of men, their fierce wombs
howling with the memory of seedling sons —
how they quickened and grew,
ripening into beautiful babies, brimming with
hope, their futures overflowing with laughter,
love, the kisses of grateful mothers — not bombs,
not bloodshed, not rage.

Will the mothers unite, dressed in saris of apricot
& nectarine, African headdresses of fuchsia, green,
& yellow, American blue jeans and T-shirts, Italian
leather jackets? Will they defy the edicts, the lies,
the clarion calls to violence everywhere — the battlefield,
the bedroom, the boardroom, the brothel?

Mothers with dark faces heed their sons’ cries,
their daughters’ anguish; mothers with blue eyes
or black, mothers with Arab hearts or Israeli, inner-city moms
or moms in mini-vans, farm wives and nuns, scholars
and poets, Asian or Mexican, white-skinned or brown,
young or old. Can they re-tether the war-weary
world to their ruptured umbilical cords? Mend every tattered soul?

Can peace prevail if fathers fail
to join their holy efforts? Or must mothers shoulder
the grief alone, bearing the world’s sorrows,
as they bear the pains of labor,
giving birth to justice that hungers for compassion,
transformation that conjures a different kind of world?


Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet who lives in Denver, CO. Her newest novel, The Singing of Swans, is to be published by Pearlsong Press in October 2006.

NUESTRO HIMNO

NEW CLASSIC VERSE NEWS
After Francis Scott Key


Verse 1
Oh say can you see, a la luz de la aurora?
Lo que tanto aclamamos la noche al caer?
Sus estrellas, sus franjas flotaban ayer
En el fiero combate en señal de victoria,
Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertad,
Por la noche decían: "¡Se va defendiendo!"

Coro:
¡Oh, decid! ¿Despliega aún su hermosura estrellada,
Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?

Verse 2
Sus estrellas, sus franjas, la libertad, somos iguales
Somos hermanos, es nuestro himno.
En el fiero combate en señal de victoria,
Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertad,
Por la noche decían: "¡Se va defendiendo!"

Coro:
¡Oh, decid! ¿Despliega aún su hermosura estrellada,
Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?

OPENING DAY

by Rochelle Ratner


1. The Bar-Mitzvah Boy

He's never been much of a baseball fan, but Cincinnati's
right across the river and the President's supposed to
throw out the opening pitch next week, so he's been
reading up. He's an avid reader and a quick learner, can
tell you what Bush ate for dinner the night he was
married, who he dated in high school, where he bought his
dope, and a lot of other things. Already he envisions the
President going into an exaggerated windup, then lobbing
the ball toward home plate. Except it's not a ball it's a
grenade, like they throw in Israel.


2. Bush's first pitch -- 'kind of a slow ball'

And the crowd in Cincinnati cheers, waving their little
American flags, drowning out the people booing, jeering,
and cursing. He and his father always loved baseball.
Meanwhile, in a nearby suburb, Wandering Wanda the
wild turkey is still on the loose. People have tried to hunt
her down themselves, running around like headless
chickens with nets and blankets, only causing more chaos.
One woman claims she was late for work because two
turkeys were blocking her doorway, making threatening
noises every time she tried to get out. So it's possible
there's more than one turkey on the loose out there.


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.

CHOMSKY GRILLING LINGUICA (PART 3)

by Rochelle Owens

To read Part 1 of “Chomsky Grilling Linguica” click here.

To read Part 2 of "Chomsky Grilling Linguica" click here.

In the floor      of the mouth      of the mouth of Chomsky
the linguist      the moving organ articulates
the Chomsky tongue      grilling grilling grilling
linguica      articulating articulating articulating
a secret tribal language
in the house of      Chomsky      in the house
on ocean side      on Cape Cod      the Chomsky sphincter
tightening      in the Führer-mouth      the Führer-mouth
taste buds of Chomsky tongue      germinating germinating
spores of      pathological fury      of a

                              famous linguist and anarchist too
                              Israelphobic pious progressive Jew

The moving organ      swelling      the organ      in the floor
of the mouth      of Chomsky      the Führer of      Judeophobes
the moving organ      the tongue of Chomsky      swelling
a hundred times its size      craving      licking burning chunks
rupturing flesh of      arms legs brains      blistering
black grapes blistering      lungs kidneys liquifying
melting      under a vanguard      of Jew hatred
a black-belt of martyrdom      of a homicide bomber
a black-belt of holiness      a black-belt of dynamite
a black-belt of sacred text      twisting into ideology
“Israel has no right to exist”      a homicide bomber’s vision
of purity      rupturing flesh blistering      black grapes
blistering      under the white skull      of the Jerusalem sun

In the house of      Chomsky      on ocean side      on ocean side
in colonial Wellfleet Wellfleet      on Cape Cod
in charming Chomsky house      in the house of      a princess
a cherished daughter of a

                                                      famous linguist and anarchist too
                                                      Israelphobic pious progressive Jew

In the house      of Chomsky      during summer nights
in charming Chomsky house      the cicadas droning droning
during summer nights      in colonial Wellfleet Wellfleet
cooling breezes blowing      Cape Cod country curtains
blowing blowing lyrically      in the cherished Chomsky
house      cooling breezes blowing      cooling all the bedrooms
breezes cooling      all the bedrooms      of the Chomsky
family home      on ocean side      on Cape Cod      in colonial
Wellfleet Wellfleet      pristine art galleries
classical revival churches      where no blacks sing

In the house of      an ideologue      living high on the linguica
the huge bulk      of the tongue      of Chomsky
a maxi-publishing industry      anarchism      imperialism
the huge bulk      of the tongue      of the Mengele
of linguistics      segmenting segmenting segmenting
goose-stepping goose-stepping goose-stepping
the Jewish Judeophobe      the huge bulk      of the tongue
of Chomsky      the pornographic vision      of Otto Weininger
Intelligentsia of Academia      the huge bulk      of the tongue
of Chomsky      the huge bulk      of Chomsky tongue      a veritable
maxi-publishing industry      anarchism      imperialism
grilling grilling grilling linguica      chomping chomping
chomping      the huge bulk      of the tongue      of Chomsky
germinating guinea worms      from out of      the dark bulk
of the tongue of a

                                                      famous linguist and anarchist too
                                                      Israelphobic pious progressive Jew

Guinea worms streaming out      of the taste buds
of Chomsky tongue      the efficient Chomsky tongue
the dark bulk      of the tongue      of the linguist
segmenting      pieces segmenting      “Israel’s intransigence
Israel a pariah”      grilling grilling grilling
“Zionism equals Nazism”      the sphincter tightening
tightening      the lowest part      of the Chomsky body
an ideologue      living high on the linguica
the efficient Chomsky tongue      pregnant with guinea worms
the dark bulk      a masterpiece of      capitalist enterprise
the huge bulk      of the tongue of Chomsky      set in the
lowest part      the lowest part      of the skull      of Chomsky
the Chomsky jawbone      the chosen jawbone      the Chomsky jawbone
the chosen jawbone      unhinging hinging      unhinging hinging
the chosen jawbone of a

                              famous linguist and anarchist too
                              Israelphobic pious progressive Jew

Rochelle Owens is the author of eighteen books of poetry and plays, the most recent of which are Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000) and Luca, Discourse on Life and Death (Junction Press, 2001). A pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement and an internationally known innovative poet, she has received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her play Futz, which is considered a classic of the American avant-garde theatre, was produced by Ellen Stewart at LaMama, directed by Tom O’Horgan and performed by the LaMama Troupe in 1967, and was made into a film in 1969. A French language production of Three Front was produced by France-Culture and broadcast on Radio France. She has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan’s novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Oklahoma and held residencies at Brown and Southwestern Louisiana State.

PERSEPHONE ELOPES

by Verandah Porch


Watch her steps
on any ancient frieze:

He’s a terrorist; she’s his
mission: the country he’ll kill
for. He say’s he’ll blow apart
her home if she doesn’t come
now shielding him and
she does beautifully—

The girl as cigarette
igniting when he draws
on her. Feline: nine lives
spoken for.

He is her fiancé.
His stolen gold in her bedroom
she alone can handle.

She likes his foreign taunt:
“I claim responsibility.”

Don’t ask. She won’t snap
out of it or straddle
his shadow.
He wants to take her
underground.


Based in rural Vermont since 1968, Verandah Porche has published The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books) and has pursued an alternative literary career. She has written poems and songs to accompany her community through a generation of moments and milestones. As a teacher and facilitator, she has created collaborative writing projects in schools and nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Her work has been featured on NPR’s “Artbeat,” on public radio stations around New England and in the Vermont State House. The Vermont Arts Council awarded her a Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the state’s cultural life in 1998, and a recent grant to support the preparation of poetry for publication and performance.

DOGMEAT

by Barbara Schweitzer


Lions are not lustful
when they lunge
They are hungry same
as you and me
reaching for the BLT's
or tuna melts.
We love to metaphorize
what our eyes be-
hold, but it is a dangerous
sport, excusing
everything human
as meaningful to dogs
when dogs would
make dogmeat of half
the dogma we're
mesmerized by.
To their one icon
alone -- meat --
they bark hallelujah.


Barbara Schweitzer's poetry has received numerous prizes including an NEA Merit Fellowship in RI and the Galway Kinnell Poetry Prize. Her work appears in various literary and online journals and in anthologies Sundays at Sarah's, and upcoming Regrets Only and In the Eye. Her first collection of poetry 33 1/3, a semi-finalist for the Bakeless Prize, will be published in 2006.

OUT-OF-STATE

by Lisa Suhair Majaj


The guy says, “I need to see some ID.”
She shrugs, starts digging
through her scuffed brown leather bag.

She’s got wiry hair, olive skin,
eyes glinting dark and intense--
in his eyes, clearly not local.

She hands over a passport:
picture inside, family name,
all the particulars

that would pull her out of line
in another place.
He peers at strange stamps,

fluid text, reads out loud:
“Place of birth – Palestine.”
A land with no borders, too many maps.

He’s turning pages, brow furrowed.
She's waiting, white-knuckled,
face a studious mask.

Finally he glances up,
shakes his head. “Sorry,
no out-of-state passports

accepted here.”
No out-of-state passports!
She's got too much dignity to argue,

or even laugh. But as I watch her
walk out, head held high.
I think of that state, still dream

and desire, on a land green with olives --
those trees standing patient and unyielding
as memories of earth.


Lisa Suhair Majaj is the author of two poetry chapbooks and co-editor of three collections of critical essays on international women writers. She lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.

AQUIFER

by Carol Dorf


In the marrow of the world
stygobites retreat
from light to live protected,
translucent lives.

At a lab in Bethesda,
the Radiation Casualty
Management Team
researches blood boosting drugs
in event of nuclear attack.

Mr. Sumiteru Taniguchi
stood 1.8 kilometers away
from impact at Hiroshima,
an old man now, he takes off tie,
shirt, to reveal distorted flesh
burned away in childhood.

When geologists lower
the water for mining,
or pump it out to transform
green, partched earth,
every creature that has evolved
in the isolated aquifer dies.


Carol Dorf's work has been published in Runes, Coracle, Five Fingers Review, Transfer, Socialist Review (the issue Ron Silliman edited,) and Feminist Studies. She have taught in various venues including as a California Poet-in-the-Schools, at Vista College, at Lawrence Hall of Science, and in a large urban high school.

WEPT; SMILED/S

by Bill Costley


Hitler wept; Stalin smiled.*
Stalin wept; Khruschev smiled.
Khruschev wept; Gorbachev smiles.

Agnew wept; Nixon smiled.
Nixon wept; Kissinger smiled;
Kissinger wept; Kissenger smiles.

Bill Clinton wept; Hill Clinton smiles.

Dubya wept; Cheney smiled.
Cheney wept; Cheney grimaces,
Dubya grimaces; Cheney smiles.

*The shortest novel of WW2.

Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco chapter of the National Writers Union. The first twelve books of his epic-in progress The Cheni@d appear here in The New Verse News. Book XIII and XIV begin Volume Two here.

DEATH ON ASPHALT

by Michele F. Cooper


City crows skirt the Volvos and taxis, train
their satin thoughts on the body of a woman
draped across a boulder of brick and mortar,

last piece of the bulldozed tenement
where St. Xavier’s meets the freeway.
That morning, she was drowning in a sea

of particulars, minutes and presentations,
concepts of operations weighting her shoulders,
phone, fax, and e-mails blasting demands

and directions would make a quill bristle.
She’s wearing a twill suit and patent shoes,
purse still hanging on her shoulder,

lips resigned in a pool of crusty blood,
curls still dressing her golden mane,
blush on the cheek that’s showing.

Look at that! scruffy kid tells his little brother.
She's dead, Tony. That's what dead is, as she lies,
peaceful, on the dirty newspaper, proving it.


Michele F. Cooper is the first-place winner in the 2002 TallGrass Poetry Competition, second-place winner in the 1999 Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition, a finalist in the 2004 War Poetry Competition; she has won honorable mentions in the 2003 Emily Dickinson Poetry Competition, the 2003 New Millennium Awards, and the 1999 Sacramento Poetry Competition. Her poetry and poetic prose have appeared in many journals including Larcom, Fiction International, Paumanok Review, Pedestal Magazine, R.I. Women Speak American Writing, Nedge, CQ, Faultline, Online Poetry and Story, and in a chapbook, Women on Women. She is the author of two books, founding editor of the Newport Review and Crone’s Nest, and of a chapbook series. She lives on a horse farm (not hers) in Portsmouth, RI.

RADIO BROADCAST

by Lynne Burnett


Snowflakes feathering the trail
below the highway. A young
fellow, toqued and sweatered,
strides out of the woods
where he has been camping
for some time. Now on a search
for empty cans and bottles,
he asks me what I think
of last night’s news (which I,
watching American Idol, missed).

He tells me Iran warned the United
States it would feel the pain
if tough measures were imposed
against the Islamic Republic
for its nuclear program,
and ponders aloud the grave
possibility of a third world war
before drifting away,
back into his solitary life
which, like mine, lives
inside a bigger story
that is always ripe for change.

He knows the Earth he wants
to inherit, having made his
living room into a grove
of trees meadowed with stars,
stars loved more than priests
for their enduring benediction
of light, their twinkling
testaments of hope.
Trees whose raised roots
rope roughly into pews.
The ground that knows
no names, but keeps
a footprint. Wind
that is a window.

The darkness humming
with a billion unheard voices
when a different congregation
is invited in.


Lynne Burnett lives on the west coast of Canada with her husband and son. She comes late to the party, and has only recently begun circulating her work.

THE REVOLT OF THE GENERALS

by Anne G. Davies


Retired generals aren't all so chummy
As once they seemed to be with Rummy.
There was wrath amid the upper ranks
At overruling Tommy Franks
In favor of strategic decisions
That looked good on American televisions.

Rummy, to his credit, seems quite unfazed
By the harsh criticisms being raised
About the ongoing Iraqi disaster
That he oversees as the Pentagon's master.

They can vent their spleen. That's democracy in action.
But these generals are just a tiny faction
Who regard my super-management style
As driven by arrogance and guile.

These guys made sure they got their pensions
Before they went public with their dissensions.
Now they're all over the media panning
The quality of my strategic planning.

A few of them were always complaining
About scarce troops or armor or lack of training.
I was willing to hear their perspectives
(As long as they suited Bush/Cheney directives.)

And they want me to resign. I'll never surrenda;
I'm in perfect accord with the White House agenda.
Attacks like this would make a lesser man queasy
But being Important has never been easy.
Staying in my job is my highest priority
And I have total support from the Dual Authority.


Anne G. Davies is a fund-raising writer by profession and a writer and versifier by avocation. Her work has been published on local and regional papers. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

SCIMITAR MOON

by Robert Emmett


two maybe three cats
near the compost pile
quarter past three in the morning
winding their unholy sirens
like demented kids
pretending to rescue their own
lost minds
sometimes it’s a chorus of
abandoned ghost babies
yowling as if to curdle the milk
in their guilty mothers’ breasts
a kind of zombie cry
from the pit
a frost heave of dreadful aching
splits the sleeping heart
from dreams with a start
that would crack open
the still frozen early april ground
and leave your ears ringing
under the distant white fire
of a scimitar moon

how do living creatures
mimic the undead so convincingly
do they mock real dead children
the eight and a half year old girl
sniper-shot on the way to her palestinian doctor
or the ten year old baghdad boy
arm blown off in his grandfather’s car
because they misunderstood the hand signal
their mouths so silent now
their screaming eyes
fading in the dirt
maybe the scuffle of heavy boots
the last sound they hear
that and a muttered “fuckin-a”


Robert Emmett is not a practicing writer. He's just taken to putting this stuff in words in the middle of the night. He remains in cognito somewhere in the woods of Michigan.

A WOMAN IS WAITING

by Tara L. Masih


Black roads turn white with salt.
Ice shingles slide down the roof
startling her to a nocturnal alertness.
She sees him buried,
smothered under yellow sand
after he burrowed his way
into the earth
so that he could rise again.
In the day she suffers pictures of bleak anxiety
a constant barrage of pale-torn images
invading her breakfast of guilt
and pink grapefruit
flown from Florida groves.
Afternoons are not as bad--
there is blessed puritan work,
a seamless brocade of tasks
to cover that place in her mind
obsessed with repeating a name
she is trying not to remember
but is afraid to forget.
And at night again
the ice on the roof seems to be bearing down
as the pictures of war projected onto her bedroom ceiling
wage a winning battle of what is left
of her composure.
Yet still the cold, frosty moon
frames itself in her window
and it is the same dusty moon
that she imagines he has just cleaned and shined
before shooting it over to
her side
of the world.


Tara L. Masih received an MA in Professional Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. She has published fiction, poetry, and essays in numerous anthologies and literary magazines (such as Confrontation, Hayden's Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Red River Review, and The Caribbean Writer), and her essays have been read on NPR. Two black-and-white illustrated pamphlets featuring her flash fiction are forthcoming from The Feral Press. Awards for her work include the Lou P. Bunce Creative Writing Award, first place in The Ledge Magazine's 1995 fiction contest, a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Ms. Masih was the assistant editor for STORIES, a national literary magazine, for three years. She now works as a freelance book editor and writer in Andover, Massachusetts. She was a regular contributor to The Indian-American and Masala magazines.