MAN CONFRONTS POLICE WITH POTATO PEELER

by Rochelle Ratner


It came in the mail last week, pre-thanking him for his
donation to some charity or other. He threw out the
brochure but shoved the gadget in a drawer that held rusty
spatulas and soup ladles picked up at garage sales. He
remembers peeling carrots when he was eight or nine,
forced to help his mother make dinner. And his mother
showed him to always slide the blade away from himself,
then pointed out if he was standing at a low table he'd get
better leverage, and helped him put a band-aid on his
finger. You'll be cooking for yourself before you know it, his
mother said. You'll make some woman very, very happy.
More of a threat than a promise.


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.

THREE FOUND STANZAS

1. TO KNOW

We know
what a disarmed regime looks like. We know
what it means to disarm. There's no
negotiations.

--George W. Bush, Bush-Blair Press Conference, 31 January 2003

2. TO COMPREHEND

It's important to recall
how we got there
and take stock
on how far we've come
over the last three years. The violence and bloodshed in Iraq
has been difficult
for the civilized world
to comprehend.

--George W. Bush, Bush-Blair Press Conference, 25 May 2006

3. TO MAKE SENSE

What makes the deaths of Paul Douglas and James Brolan
and the dreadful wounds suffered by Kimberly Dozier worthy
of more than a mention
is not merely that they were colleagues,
companions and friends, but that they died
and were hurt
trying to make sense
of all the other deaths and maimings
which have no names,
no stories about which we care,
even if we ought to do so.

--Alan Pizzey, CBS News, 29 May 2006

HOME RUN SCIENCE

by Suzanne Gullotto

For Robert

This is science,
faithless ones will tell you,
using technical terms,
citing complicated physics
to describe the way a hardball
interacts with air,
clears the confines of a baseball field,
inherently dependent on what is soulless:
bat speed, horizontal velocity,
density of the atmosphere,
the upward angle,
gravity.

From the bleachers, #12,
it's a whole other ballgame,
a spontaneous wonder, contingent
upon the strength of your wish,
welling up from the deep fount
of your faith, lifted by fanfare,
carried by cheers, ascending
on the wing of a Little Leaguer's
Fenway stadium dream.

Technically, science, to those
who would use equations to tally
height, width, depth of glory,
to extract, examine the essence
of pure, undiluted joy, to measure
the immeasurable: the grand
in a grand slam.

To you, to me,
it's the time, the place
where God says, "Here,"
tosses you a dream
round, seamed,
equal in size to your
out-of-the-park belief.


Suzanne Gullotto is a new participant at poetry workshops led by poet and friend, Donna Hilbert. "Home Run Science" was written for Suzanne's son, Robert, who recently hit his first grand slam at Continental Little League, near their home in Cypress, California.

JAVA MORNING

by James Penha


This island will eat me alive
absorb me
and I will learn its dance
from nerves to blood
hand to hand
eye to eye
among the millions
open and closed and if the quaking
earth doesn't . . . if the smoking
mountain doesn't . . . the ocean
wave will overwhelm
the gongs and harmonize them:

lullaby, love song,
epic
rhapsody.


James Penha edits The New Verse News. He lives in Jakarta, on the island of Java, Indonesia.

WE MUST LEARN TELEPATHY

by Phyllis Wax


They want DNA,
fingerprint, retinal scan
for a driver's license
or passport, to get on a plane
or train, enter
a public building, go
to a dentist or through
a supermarket checkout.

They read our emails,
listen to our phone calls.

I am afraid to whisper
nothings in your ear.


Phyllis Wax’s work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including Thema, Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine, California Quarterly, Free Verse, Wisconsin Academy Review, and she co-edited the 2002 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar. Wax lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.

LIE-L@G M@NTR@S

by Bill Costley

for Slavoj Zizek

Whenever They say it,
it’s no-longer still-True;
They rely on lie-l@gs
& they s@p you w/them:

You f@ll for mantras:

Jobs will B technic@l;
Jobs will B @bund@nt.
Jobs will B find@ble:
M@ny jobs in Indi@!
More jobs in Chin@!
Job-boom: cyborgs!
Job-boom: n@nobots!

W@r will B victorious.
W@r will B glorious.
W@r will B cert@in.
W@r begins 2morrow.
W@r m@y B ongoing.
W@r m@y never end.
W@r’s @lw@ys On.

De@th's (just) inevit@ble.
De@th will B conquered.
De@th will B postponed.
De@th will B endur@ble
De@th will B be@r@ble.
De@th wasn’t so b@d.
De@th’s inevit@ble.


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 begins Volume Two here.

FATHER AND SON 2003

by Robert M. Chute


On March eighteenth the son,
our President then, delivered
his ultimatum. The war
would soon begin. That night
I dreamed of his father--
the father had also been President.
Working together the father and I
were busily burning a building.
With face masks and air tanks
we began at the top, worked
our way down, starting fires
on each floor with crumpled paper,
book matches that frequently failed
to light. I woke not knowing,
not dreaming it could come true.


Robert M. Chute’s new book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, poetry based on scientific articles, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

LESBIAN MARRIAGE

by Mary Saracino


no bands of gold, no tiered cake, no training veils
of lacy white, no engraved invitations, no roses entwined

in hair, short or long, no gifts wrapped in silver paper
no bells ringing, no mother or father to smile and beam

no certificate inked with official signatures
no baby’s breath bouquets, no minister or priest

no Jordan almonds to decorate china plates
no champagne toasts, no tears of joy, no eloquent speeches

no colorful streamers kissing the edges of chrome bumpers
no honking horns, no waving well-wishers

No way

merely two women in love, defying the No of laws
subverting the notion of matrimony, two souls

eye to eye, under the starry sky or the cloudless morning
daring Yes, making a marriage where none is perceived

forging a union where one is forbidden, enacting
a lifelong commitment where one is denounced

vowing to have and to hold, from this day forward
‘til death do they part, despite what the naysayers say


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.

from WHITE NOISE

by Robert Emmett


during the war
buddhist monks
set themselves on fire
in the streets of saigon
in their silence
far away static crackles
lifts
in the shimmer
this infinite plane melts
forever
did they shine
an offering
to rectify the carnage to come
not for them
but for us

what tethers us here
our great riches
and powers
squandered again
for the whole suffering world to see
the conflagration crowning
each atrocity imprints
the image of another shadow
on the ground

who are the quiet givers now
what reparations will suffice
with wires cut
dark circuits blown beyond understanding
how can we possibly atone
awash in white noise…
the resonance
of reconciliation
unheard


Robert Emmett practices wordcraft somewhere in the woods of Michigan. Printed above is the final section of a longer poem.

ALIBI LULLABY

by Verandah Porche

1.

Click on the cross
to enlarge this image—

Black gold,
a nice chunk of change.

W
arrogance makes you see
W snicker, swagger,
jog with Judas
over Jesus.
Cover a prairie with lies.

W
back in the day
your dad wined and dined
Saddam.
We didn’t know him
from Adam or Satan.
Now the Evil One’s
sprung from his Armageddon-
subsistence on Mars bars
and Spam.

2.

Posture to the pastor,
lick your lips and fib:

axe, bamboozle, connive, doctor, erase,
flimflam, grandstand, hyperventilate,
impinge, jinx, kink, lisp, misspeak, nullify,
obscure, prevaricate, quash, rehash,
slander, trash, undermine, vandalize,
warp, x-ray, yammer, zap

Lies: white collar, red-handed,
blue-in-the-face, apple pie,
pants-on-fire, wool-pulled-over,
Bible-libel.

That way madness lies.
Love-lies-bleeding in the garden.
Lie down with the dog, rise with the fleas.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Mendacity, mendacity—
Mend a city
or there’s no sky left behind.


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.

McDONALD'S FRIES MADE GIRL

VERY SICK


WOMAN SUES McDONALD'S OVER
BLOOD IN FRIES


WOMAN SUES GEORGETOWN
McDONALD'S RESTAURANT -
CLAIMS BLOOD IN HOT FUDGE
SUNDAE


McDONALD'S FACING FOOD ALLERGY
LEGAL BACKLASH


And her father didn't think the places in Chinatown or
Little Italy looked clean enough, so they ate instead at
McDonald's.


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.

AMERICA SLASHED HER WRISTS AGAIN

by Jon Wesick


I found her naked and unconscious in the bathroom on election night.
Her lost blood pooled on the linoleum. One red handprint on the door –
did she change her mind before passing out?
I wrapped towels around the gashes and called 911.

I didn’t follow her to the emergency room like the last time
and the time before that. Instead I stayed behind with a sponge
and can of cleanser. Let her deal with her own medical bills for a change!

The next day I tossed a change of clothes and a pair of stiletto
heels into a plastic bag and grabbed her fur coat out of the closet.
A nurse buzzed me through the reinforced glass door into the locked ward,
where patients drugged listless wandered. I found America sitting up in her bed.
White media noise cushioned her self-inflicted wounds.
She wore a thin hospital gown, and her stringy blonde hair needed washing.
I set the bag down and noticed the moth in her hands.

“I’ll be out of here tomorrow. Carl, I mean Dr. Rowan,
says I need to be more assertive.” America pulled a wing off the moth.
“I’m thinking of buying a gun.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“You’re so negative!” America pulled the other wing off
and flicked the moth to the ground. “You know,
you could use a little therapy, yourself.”

I returned to the home we shared and looked
out the picture window at the plum tree. Its bare skeletal
branches raked the cold Wehrmacht-gray sky. How different
from the warm spring day we planted it thirty years ago. The long war
had finally ended, and the tree’s blossoms scented the air
with the perfume of hope.


Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.

OLD PENNY

by Mark Jackley


Dropped, perhaps, by a soldier
marching to his fate
in 1943, and landing
in the pocket of
a hobo in Fort Wayne,
before escaping to St. Cloud,
where a thin boy found it
shining in the mist,
it is smooth and brown
as the graves of all who had
the copper-bright luck
to be in currency.


Mark Jackley is a business writer by day in the Washington, DC area. His work has appeared in numerous print and online magazines. His chapbook, Brevities, will appear later this year from Ginninderra Press.

RUMINATIONS OF AN AGING FEMINIST

by Doris Henderson


Maybe you’re thinking about your lost love
or looking at that spot on the wall where you meant
to hang a picture, and suddenly you realize
you forgot to turn the page on your calendar ---
another collection of wildebeests sent to you
by those conservation people.

Whatever happened to all those other calendars?
What year did you look at a new suffragette every month?
What about Georgia O’Keeffe and her suggestive flower petals?
The ancient goddess images, the dancing wiccans,
photos of the ERA march you did in '81?

* * * * *

The lady on the TV screen is grim:
Men are being marginalized in the colleges.
Androphobic women are taking over the system.
Lady professors are forcing students to watch
The Vagina Monologues and other scary things on stage.
Conservatives everywhere are horrified
at what’s happening in higher education.
And it’s all your fault.

Isn’t that refreshing?


Doris Henderson has a graduate degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, has taught, edited, facilitated, currently runs a writing workshop in Danbury, Connecticut. Her poems have been published in Slant, Comstock Review, Parting Gifts, Connecticut River Review and others, have won various awards and a Pushcart nomination. Her feminist activism spans several lifetimes.