MAD DOGS

A Sonnet
by Barbara Lightner


Foaming-at-the-mouth rabid,
the Blue Dog Democrats are running in packs
on the outskirts of town, uninterested in the center.

Slouched, crawling toward innocent bystanders,
eyes in a vacant stare, snarling
at those who have fed them, vicious mongrels;

gulping the offal left by Limbaugh malingerers;
greeding down campaign contributions left in the gutters
by insurance industry moguls.

What to do? These mad dogs have gold-plated health care
offered to the elected deserving and undeserving alike
(while denying the basics to others).

Have they become too mad dog to use it?
There is no rabies exclusion.


Barbara Lightner is a 70-year old shameless agitator, retired. After a career of community organizing and teaching at university, she turned her hand to poetry. As a bookshop owner, she sponsored poetry readings, and published chapbooks of local poets in Milwaukee, WI. Her poetry will appear or is forthcoming in the Table Rock Review, Poesia, Zocalo Press and New Verse News; as well as in Letters to the World, an anthology of women’s poetry.
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GRIM CASUALTY IN THE STRUGGLE

by J. D. Mackenzie


Skip, an exceptional student
remembers the walls of his junior high
filled with images of inspiration
glossy photos of the Mercury program
and President Kennedy

The party line throughout his youth:
we live in a world without limits
caused him to wonder why that line
was sometimes dotted
sometimes jagged?

Codes to break
hoops to jump through
barriers wanting linguistic gymnastics
at high school, Yale, Cornell, Harvard
the world without limits still had plenty

But once in a while
meritocracies actually deliver
allowing for a colonial in Cambridge
a grateful audience for his great books
recognition in Time

So just how does a revered scholar
in the land of the free
in a “post-racial” society
get arrested for breaking in
to his own home?

And if you only stop
to consider the possibility
of this ever happening to you
what does that say
about each of us?


J. D. Mackenzie has written poetry and prose for Rogue River Echoes, the Moment, the Eugene Weekly and several other publications. He lives in western Oregon and spends his free time on rivers.
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R@NDOM REPERTORY

by James Penha

After Merce Cunningh@m (1919-2009)

Progr@m:      Cross Currents     Inlets     Ch@nging Steps

EVENT NO. 1: in current steps
EVENT NO. 2: lets cross steps
EVENT NO. 3: currents r ch@nging

Progr@m:      C@nfield

EVENT NO. 4: lets fiel ch@nging currents
EVENT NO. 5: c@n steps cross currents
EVENT NO. 6: steps c@n cross currents
EVENT NO. 7: currents c@n cross steps
EVENT NO. 8: i fiel u i c@nfiel ur currents ur ch@nging steps
EVENT NO. 9: steps r ch@nging u r ch@nging

Progr@m:      Squ@regame     Fr@ctions

EVENT NO. 10: i am ch@nging in @ctions n in steps i @m current
                              let me in

Progr@m:      Winterbr@nch

EVENT NO. 11: winter tions me i c@n step @ cross winter
                              i @m ch@nging i @m current let me in

Progr@m:      Rune

EVENT NO. 12: rune lets me in steps currents fr@ctions ions
                              can rune me fie run fie

Progr@m:      Westbeth

EVENT NO. 13: i @m h@nging on @ cross in @ field i @m rent
                              let me be inter me

EVENT NO. 14: cross currents i bet i win i run i @m ch@nging
                              @ctions @re ch@nging winter ch@nging g@me
                              ch@nging
                              ch@nging steps


James Penha edits The New Verse News.
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GRACE

by David Chorlton


At this the time of year the shadows
of clouds fall lightly on the mountains
and sit for a while on the slopes
whose rock pales and brightens
according to the sky as it threatens a storm
and promises rain. When it falls

it falls fast and it runs
over earth too hard for it to soak in,
runs like a river with no banks,
no name, no papers
to prove it belongs
on the map. But it’s real. It’s free flowing
fast moving water. When the afternoon

is dark the lights go on
in the house across the river
where a man believes in the integrity
of borders and in God. He keeps watch
for the disheveled wanderers
who sometimes stop
to ask for work, just enough to earn

a meal. Enough to prepare
to say Grace. So he lets them clean a barn
or do some chore to show
he is charitable. He gives them exactly
the time it takes for the truck
with patrolmen to arrive

then he sits down alone to begin
Our father . . .


David Chorlton watches the world from central Phoenix where he lives and writes. His new chapbook, From the Age of Miracles, appears this summer from Slipstream Press as the winner of its latest competition.
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ECLIPSING A COOL JULY DAY

by Earl J. Wilcox


Days like ours recently when July weather
has turned cool as May we’re told global
warming is at work, though Apocalyptic
preachers use the drop in temps to parade
the Rapture around like a kid with a toy
he got last Christmas but only today decides
to show it to us. Moon watchers add other
layers to drama by linking chilly days
in Carolina to the moon walk of four decades ago
or to the total eclipse seen by millions in China
and India . I do admit my marigolds are looking
like someone gave them an infusion of gold
overnight, and my limp verbenas suddenly
seem like freckled-face wonders. Instead
of mowing my grass today, I pretend it’s on
hiatus from growing, walk across its lushness,
revel in my own theory of weather change:
summertime and the livin’ is easy.



Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
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IN FAR OFF ROME

by Kim Doyle


Cato pronounced their doom.
Concluding most of his speeches
with a Thor, son of Odin phrase;
like “Cathago delenda est.”
Carthage must be destroyed,
and in due course it was razed.

Politicians of today speak out
in the same way as Cato.
Their hammer like phrases,
however, always seem to start
with dependent clauses like “In no way,”
or “Can’t be done.”

Before, when it could be done
it was “not the right time.”
People are dying, denied succor
because they are poor.

I’m waiting for some thunder
from someone who starts out:
“It can be done,” or “We have the will.”
Where there is will there is way.

Easy for me to say. Each must lead the way
like Cato the Elder of Rome in its hay day.
It fell shorty thereafter; all dynasties pass away.


Kim Doyle says: "A little more fire and brimstone from the currrent administration may be called for. And let's get Dick Cheney in Federal Prison; I volunteer to strip search him."
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SLICES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

by Scot Siegel


When I reach for a basket of oranges,
why does my shadow conjure a face
bloodied by bees?

Sitting up in the dark, why do I see
a fleet of submarines burning,
bladeless helicopters falling from the sky?

What signal from the moon turns
the blue back of the damselfly
purple in the fire?

When human-kind
is pushed to the precipice,
will the crows keep going about their business?

If our mother cries out,
how long can our callused hands steady
the siren-flames that pour from her mouth?

Why do these bits of cantaloupe
burn like wasps deep in my throat?


Scot Siegel's recent books include Some Weather (Plain View Press 2008) and the chapbook, Untitled Country (Pudding House Publications 2009). He serves on the board for the Friends of William Stafford.
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CALL TO PRAYER

by Susanna Lang


At nightfall the roofs
in Tehran
cry out to God

and candles whisper
in the windows—
Where

have they hidden
the bodies of our children?
Their portraits

hang on apartment
walls, draped
in green scarves.

By day
the roofs are silent
but they watch

from behind their veils.
Tonight
they will call out

what they have seen.


Susanna Lang's poem, “After One Hundred Years,” previously appeared in The New Verse News. Her collection of poems, Even Now, was published in 2008 by The Backwaters Press. More recently, her poem “Condemned” won the Inkwell competition, judged by Major Jackson. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including New Letters, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Baltimore Review, Kalliope, Green Mountains Review, Jubilat, and Rhino. Translations include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. A poem published in The Spoon River Poetry Review won a 1999 Illinois Arts Council award. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches in a Chicago Public School.
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IS THIS WHAT TURNING FIFTY BRINGS

by David W. Rushing


Is this what turning fifty brings—

rage, madness, and the realization
that much of one’s life has been squandered
in the half-fog of barely discernible reality,

and that with the arrival of yet more terrible layers of emotional hell
and physical pain comes the understanding that the once dreaded fear
of dying “too soon” has been replaced with a desire for death

before insanity reigns supreme?


David W. Rushing's articles and poems have appeared in over 100 magazines. His two chapbooks are Unrequited Love, Unfinished Lives. He is is now completing a non-fiction prose book on art.
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THE HEALTH INSURANCE QUESTION AT BOUNTIFUL BREAD

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


Over there’s the old man who presides as if he were the host
He gets all his opinions in the pages of the Post

His wife sits to his right
She pretends not to hear when he asks for a light

The fellow who joins them says Are smiles still for free?
He’s busy grabbing brass rings in a down economy

The guy in the suit is talking about straight salary over commission
The woman he’s with says Starting Monday I’m a woman on a mission

A woman on her cell says They’ll tell you there’s no formula/There is a formula
Her baby in his high chair stares and thinks There’s so much I can learn from her

The redhead sits down and plays with her hair as if she knows she’ll end up in a poem
The man who can’t believe that the sacrifice of his coffee will afford him the luxury of
health insurance

Throws himself a bone


Steve Hellyard Swartz is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. His poems have also appeared in best poem, switched-on gutenberg, Haggard and Halloo, and The Kennesaw Review. He has won honorable mention in The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (2007 and 2008), The Mary C. Mohr and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards. In 1990, his film, Never Leave Nevada opened at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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IN TODAY'S NEWS CYCLE

by Lylanne Musselman


There's no taming
a ventriloquist moon.
Mother Earth's little sidekick
seeks to shine
in headline news
eclipsing celebrities, dead or alive,
hiding the dark side,
always eager to dangle
full bright face
unfazed by a starless sky –
on path to wax fame
waning since landing center stage
July 20, 1969.
One moment of lunar magic
launched
hoax believers –
No Neil Armstrong on the Moon.
Skeptics
don't pull strings.
They know puppets
can't talk, never gaze
at the man (or woman)
in the moon,
dismiss silly nursery rhymes –
cats can't play fiddle,
cows don't jump,
and wouldn't a fork run away
with the spoon?


Lylanne Musselman resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. She's an Associate Professor of Writing at IUPUI and she teaches creative writing classes at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and at the University of Indianapolis' School of Adult Learning. Her story feature, L WordS, is aired live monthly on BloomingOUT, a weekly broadcast on WFHB radio. An award winning poet, Lylanne's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK Magazine, Flying Island, New Verse News, Ichabod's Sketchbook, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry Motel, among others. Lylanne's chapbook, A Charm Bracelet for Cruising, is forthcoming from Winged City Press.
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LIP SERVICE

by Andrew Hilbert


Today
the biased,
celebrity media
hounds
bow to Cronkite
as he goes down.

Still,
there is news
about the state of things
between Brangelina,

And
there is news
about Janet Jackson
dumping her boyfriend
nobody knew she had.

To the most trusted man in America,
that's the way it is.


Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
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CONFIRMATION HEARINGS

by Helen Padway


The gentlemen in dark suits
and conservative ties,
red, blue, striped or checked,
keep throwing stones
into a deep pool of calm water.
The stones splash, sink and leave
concentric conversational circles
that soon fade, the stones
disappear and the pool is unchanged.


Helen Padway writes or thinks about writing most of the time. She lives in Milwaukee, WI and her work has appeared in both printed and ejournals.
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ROBERT MCNAMARA IN HELL

by Jon Wesick


Wire-rimmed glasses               brilliantine hair
map on an S-shaped country
Strange whiz kid
taming the yellow-eyed wolf of war
with punch cards and slide rules

Bomb pattern analysis               statistics of enemy dead
game theory     think tanks      Mutual Assured Destruction
Numbers don’t lie
Victory’s just around the corner

But the wolf slipped the chains of cool reason
for a sweaty jungle
Behind yellow eyes the enemy measures
calculates with alien mathematics
jagged steel                         napalm smell
morphine               MEDEVAC               58,000 dead
Numbers don’t lie

In an air conditioned office
tired eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses
checking and rechecking equations
for an algebraic error   a dropped minus sign
Unable to turn away
Not resting until he finds the reason
Still staring at that S-shaped country


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.
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