WHAT I LEARNED IN VIETNAM

by Phyllis Wax

29 Apr 75 - Last American soldier killed in Vietnam (the first was 8 Jul 59).

The official American presence in Saigon ends when the last Americans are 

evacuated by helicopter from the US Embassy roof.

Planes flew out to spray and defoliate
the forest canopy hiding the enemy,
to destroy the crops—their food.
More than 20,000 sorties,
multiple missions to mist each area.
Spills from vats where the chemicals
were mixed saturated the ground,
seeped into the water.  Still in the water
people drink today.

Villagers replanted forests, farmed fields,
ate what they raised, ate toxic chickens,
toxic pigs, fish and shrimp from tainted rivers
and lakes.  Cancers and skin diseases
in those the fog descended on,
in those today who fish those rivers,
who work that land.

Children
marked at birth: spina bifida,
grotesquely twisted arms and legs,
babies with two faces, three ears,
no eyes or eyes without lenses,
babies without arms, without legs,
babies whose legs each have two knees,
arms with two elbows.

More than forty years later it
continues.
Even into the third generation. Perhaps beyond.


Editor's Notes:
Agent Orange: Birth defects plague Vietnam; U.S. slow to help 
Agent Orange & Birth Defects  

Phyllis Wax muses on the news and history from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI.  Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Your Daily Poem, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Ars Medica, Out of Line, Verse Wisconsin, Seeding the Snow, A Prairie Journal, The New Verse Newsand many other journals and anthologies.  She can be reached at poetwax(at)yahoo.com.
_____________________________________________________

URGENT POST FOR KATE

by J. D. Mackenzie


I don’t really know you
and we won’t likely meet
but I’ve seen you round
mostly at the check-out counter
and you seem nice enough

So I just want to tell you
you’re making a huge mistake
start walking
and don’t look back

This life you’ve chosen
is filled with perfidious people
who want to dress you up then undress you
make you over then drive you mad
chase you round in motor cars
as if it’s all a game
shoot your picture
until there’s nothing left to shoot

You’ve still got time to leave
to find someone less needy
who doesn’t want a statuary
who’s not an answer on a history test

Why not find an internist
or a nice boy from the club?

A girl like you has options
and needn’t rush these things

So keep walking, Kate
you seem nice enough
and you deserve a life of your own


J. D. Mackenzie is a 2011 Pushcart nominee for poetry whose recent work has appeared in The New Verse News, The Ekphrasis Project, Four and Twenty, and Poets for Living Waters. Now writing furiously for National Poetry Writing Month, he is fast acquiring the temperament of an obedient Golden Retriever.  He lives with his family in the foothills of Oregon’s Coast Range.
_____________________________________________________

TO A PRINCESS-IN-WAITING

by Quinton Hallett


You’ll enter and leave, like snowflakes,
quickly, primed from birth for cameo.
When subjects bruise or blight your startled mirror
in violation of genuflect and royal perk,
run fast or that old hyperbole,
prefabricated awe,
will snag your purple hem on its rush
down the ravenous royal drain.


Quinton Hallett writes and edits from Noti, Oregon. She is the author of three chapbooks, founder of Fern Rock Falls Press, and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including: Windfall, hipfish, Writing our Way out of the Dark, la fovea, Four and Twenty, Tiger's Eye, The Medulla Review, and Original Weather, a Collection of Art and Poems. Active in the Oregon State Poetry Association, she coordinates poet visits to a rural high school. Her most recent collection is Refuge from Flux (Finishing Line Press, 2010).
_____________________________________________________

AND THE LAST GRAND WAR

by Matthew Rodgers


I listened to the sky, the howling romance of the breeze,
coming and going, into the blue, which is black.
I lived the life of caterpillars, where limbless bodies,
and impassioned minds are eaten by towers of tall eyes.
I cried out, to reason, to happiness, and silence pervaded the sky.
Where is the blind mole, where are the blown off petals, victims to time?
It’s very serious when the crowd of ants invade the scenery of the heart.
And into the clouds I saw shapes of butterflies pinned to rainbows,
but the sky was blue and gave no impression to characterize
the extent to which the void had deepened, because it is black.


Matthew Rodgers writes only from those impulses that nag at the mind until they are out. He has been published in local university and private presses in the San Francisco Bay Area.
_____________________________________________________

ENDLESS WAR

by Michael Shorb


This must be what grover
norquist meant by drowning
the baby of government
in a bathtub of course
we want police and military
let’s not get carried away
a few clerks and congressmen
to ratify useful measures
but government’ll hafta
sell its children down
the mississippi
no more nurse and midwife
generous uncle launching
second chances
welcome to a world
illuminated by darwin’s lightning
you slip on the jungle floor
you die right there
in the shade of endless war
where your competitors,
ants and millionaires, await.


Michael Shorb's work reflects an abiding interest in myth, history, and the lyrical form, as well as a satirical focus on present day trends and events. His poems have appeared in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including The Nation, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Queen's Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Commonweal, Religious Humanism, Shoofly, Rattle, and European Judaism, as well as such anthologies as A Bell Ringing in an Empty Sky (Mho and Mho Works), To Be a Man (Tarcher Press) and Names in a Jar: 100 American Poets (Hood Press).
__________________________________________________

APRIL APOCALYPSE: SPRING HAIL STORM

by Earl J. Wilcox


Something about hail fixes us like
nothing else that falls from the sky.

Rain drops the size of sand---
or big as cats and dogs---after all,

are still only water, while trillions
of unique snowflakes falling fast

enough to cover the state of Texas
in seconds do not master us like hail.

Yesterday: lightning, thunder, rain,
wind, threats of fire storms, tornadoes,

hurricane warnings, blackouts, auto
accidents from driving winds, water-

logged streets, sewer stoppage.
Yet just at night fall hail grips

us with fear. In all sizes from peas
and pellets to golf balls and bigger

it pelted us, pelted  us hard, pocking
a teenager’s car, ruining an old man’s

young lettuce, demolishing Aunt Mary’s
dogwood blossoms, stripping

Johnny Jacob’s early corn, and smashing
windows at the car wash. Some may say

the world will end in fire, while others think
ice. If ice, then hail is spring’s apocalypse.


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.
_____________________________________________________

RESURRECTION

by Laura Rodley


Never again will a tsunami
come silently out of the unknown,
it will be tracked by radar
so there will be just enough
time to run.
Never again
will people walk unaided
by the spirits of those
drowned by the tsunami;
smell this rose for me
they will say, dipping
their head closer as
if for a kiss,
taste this smoked eel
for me, as they lean
by your cheek
to hear you chew,
touch this they will say
willing you to lean towards
the magnolia bud
ripe with the wish to burst,
but not yet the pink halo erupts.
Carry this, they ask,
carry this load of bamboo
tied with rope upon my back
take this load to my mother,
tell her I got lost upon the way
and now in deep waters of the ocean
I have not forgotten.
Untie the bundle for her,
her hands knotted with age,
lay the bamboo in a neat pile
for her to use as she wishes.
She had so admired the way
I cut the stalks without
bruising their ends;
it takes a clean, sharp knife.
Tell her I am calling her name,
speak it for me,
Mamasan, my little Rebecca,
speak it for me
so she can dry her tears.
And for my brother,
pull his hands away
from the damp soil
tell him I am not here,
he will never find my bones,
but you have found me,
oh kind stranger,
walking beside you
and you will tell him
what I say; I beg you,
and I am not ashamed of that.

And take these slippers
for my sister, red with
embroidered flowers, beaded.
They were for her birthday,
tell her I have not forgotten;
I was just looking for a way
back in to bring them to her,
a way back in.


Laura Rodley’s chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose has been nominated for a PEN New England L.L. Winship Award and a Mass Book Award.
_____________________________________________________

CONVERSATIONS WITH BUMBLE BEES ON EARTH DAY

by Ngoma

the latest buzz is
u can call it a crucifixion if u want to
but real talk says it was a straight up lynching
it's up for grabs
whether or not it's fiction
but judas was the snitch
we still be trying to figure out
what was good about good friday
moon of blood in the sky
ocean beds black with oil
gaia in need of triage
vomiting tsunami
the stench of retribution
karmic debt
the yin and yang of it
universe
out of balance
with itself
from nuclear disaster
we seek someone to twitter
to find the answer
for survival on the planet
why the bees are disappearing
pointing fingers
passing blame
naming names
for fifteen minutes of fame
like it's a game
looking down the rabbit hole
as they level mountaintops
for coal
acting as if there's no need for water
defying nature's order
proselytizing 10 Commandments
ignoring Thou Shalt Not Kill
trying to comprehend
life's cycles
Badu singing
"where's my 42 Laws"


Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter, who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought.Poetry  published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review and 'bum Rush The Page/Def Poetry Jam Anthology& Poems On The Road To Peace and Let Loose On the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary, "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has hosted the slam at the Dr. Martin Luther King Festival of Social and Environmental Justice at Yale University for the past 14 years.  His latest C.D. State of Emergency: The Essential Ngoma is a 2 Disc "best of" compilation available on CDBaby.com and iTunes.
_____________________________________________________

THE TOLL OF UNCONSCIOUS INDUSTRIAL PROGRESSION ON THE ENVIRONMENT: EXAMINING SILICON'S GROWING VALUE AND OUR CONTINUED OIL DEPENDENCY

by Sophia Boettcher

I
Lo! I watched a chrome-hue smog
Engulf the skies, burning as a torch;
The skies, which were His Pacific blue throne,
Became as fire and hyacinth and brimstone.
Indeed, it seemed a new epoch
Inherited the earth.

And as it were a wildfire kindled
By wind and thirsty trees -- this new,
Chrome-hue epoch blew
Across all things, consuming the tender grass censer
Arrayed with dew.

II
The watchful contrived picket signs, aiming spear pens
At stuffed suits,
Mustering
Courage blossoms on street-corners
And behind marked lines,
While lightning among gloaming cloudbursts and great hail
Lit their eyes as candles,
Whose flames were puffed in shadows.
Old oaks fell to shivers;
We took their flesh for doors.
When the lions ceased to roar
And the eagles did not soar,
The watchful hung their heads,
With clamped hands uttering:
The earth shall be avenged.

But, enraptured by the dusk
That overtook the air --
The intrepid carried forth
Their plans,
Holding firm for evermore.
They thrust in-
To the earth with blades,
Whose hilts were girt with starry sparks.
The blades burnished rims of clouds
That looked like unto golden shrouds.

 III
Sand piles leapt in a furnace
Burning coke and ashes.
Alight as if by magic,
They rendered something new, tinged
With blue and full of crystalline faces --
Twinkling and chrome-hue.

Oil came up thru wells
On land and ocean floors,
Dark as sack-cloth of goat hair.
We tore our robes in despair,
Because the intrepid
Could care less about
The suffering whales, cranes
And polar bears.
Woe! And Behemoth found no grass to eat;
Rivers grew too shallow and unclean
For It to drink.

IV
Unrelenting, the intrepid raised their towers,
Chanting, Hosanna, It is come.
It is coming.
Silicon had they for bricks
And oil -- for mortar.

Behold! the dead animals
Looked as if to say. Silicon and oil
Have voices like unto trumpets
And teeth as fearsome teeth of Leviathan.
...hosanna, It is coming.


Sophia Boettcher is a 20-year-old undergraduate Engineering Physics major at Santa Clara University. In her free time, she writes science fiction and informative articles under the pseudonym "Alice Snark." Despite dyslexia, she holds roughly eight years of online freelancing experience under a number of pen names. She hopes to someday become a published author, as well as a professor of physics.
_____________________________________________________

SING WITH THE TREES

by Mary Saracino

Author’s note: As part of her Earth Day-Sing for the Trees campaign, Susan Hale invites people from around the world to sing to their special trees to help raise awareness about deforestation.

If you listen you can hear
the trees singing

boababs & kauri
sugi & sugar maples

their voices
rise in harmony

Norway spruce & sequoia
ginkos & elms

across the wide round world

yews & oolines
Persian mulberries & pomegranates

one steady stream

magnolia amazonica & aspen
wattle trees & oaks

one impassioned aria

crab apple & peach
olive & fig

singing, singing, singing

almond & apricot
wild cashew & carapa

to us

black walnut & cedrela odorata
mahogany & beni kawa

of peace & love
joy & justice

Divi-divi & wabito
amla & okagami

of sorrow & solace
laughter & lullabies

Chinese catalpa
Buddha coconuts

reminding us to

balsam & fur
cedar & chestnut

sing with them

pawpaw & persimmon
leatherwood & larch

breathe in
breathe out

kapok & karri
willows & birch

sigh
dance

ghost gum & guava
maiden’s blush & mangosteen

play
cry

avacado & acacia
banana & buckeye

save our lives

sumac & satsuma
sassafras & silverberry

save our planet.


Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet and memoir-writer who lives in Lafayette, CO . Her most recent novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Her short story, "Vicky's Secret" earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.
___________________________________________

CONQUERED NATURE

Poem by Charles Frederickson; Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote

Every morning Earth Day dawns
Celebrating shared commonplace caretaker responsibility
Belonging to nobody in particular
Private property ownership greed condemned

Good old bad old planet
Interred with hollow crossbones skullduggery
Cremation pyre glowing ember ashes
Piled stones pyramid shedding teardrops

Equatorial waistline bulge stuffed full
Last scarecrow straws poking through
Stalking stubble lumpy humanure turds
Don’t fall into compost heap

Going out involves coming within
Our own vulnerable nature exposed
Blessed depressed no less deserving
Of misbegotten loans interest withheld

Emptiness overflowing jagged edge void
As the world turns unhinged
Sun inexorably rises shines sets
Tomorrows fostering ordinary rainbow renewal

Loud silence overheard listen attentively
Wretched refuse unable to whisper
Eating everyday sameness each meal
Crusty loaves of half-baked nothingness

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote together comprise PoeArtry. Flutter Press has just published Charles’ new chapbook fanTHAIsies.
___________________________________________

DROUGHT

by Martin Marcus

A glacier in a hoary epoch
dug some holes in its retreat,
filled them like bowls with crystal water,
where the pines migrated to drink.
Pristine was the word the humans thought of
for this lake, the glacier's bounty.
Men who'd walked from Asia found it,
spirits from their minds infused it.
Then a blue and green cathedral,
saintly fishes, god as eagle.
So for centuries it languished
far from rationalization,
moving up and down in cycles
at the wishes of the spirits.

A modern man makes his assessment
now the lake is shrinking badly,
year by year its shore expanding,
day by day its water drying
by the will of mystic forces?
But his head is full of science,
god of global, god of warming.
Native people know the omens,
slowly pound the drums of mourning.
Modern fellow shuffles homeward,
shoulders down in awful guilt
Glaciers melting, seas arising,
shallowing lakes his dismal doing.


Martin Marcus claims to be the oldest poet in the room.
_____________________________________________________

TREMORS

by Emily Keller


It is the slow burn collapse we know so well,
the rise of shimmering oil wealth through the Gulf of Mexico,
the pile of burning steel and futures in lower Manhattan
that takes months to settle,

the mold and drowned treble clefs
scattered through the Big Easy,
washing up on shores like seaweed,

the broken homes in Thailand, snapped like bone and brick
by tidal wave drowning the only reality that was ever known,

a radioactive demise in Japan,
the slow pulse of monitor swaying from bad to worse,
panic to ignore, inhale to forget.

We have pulled destruction from beneath the earth’s crust
and toppled it from cloud cover.
We recognize the taste of tragedy that begins when a disaster ends,
that starts the first time we ignore imminent warning for luck,

the complicated quilt of human and nature caused,
the implosion of pride-filled towers and high technology from sky to ocean,
the rise of high winds over wood-framed steeples
shaking in the earth’s dust for decades.

There is a sound of a town sinking,
it is a silent siren of evacuation, more mud than gloss,
pushing coastlines inches lower, shortening the day by milliseconds,
a plume like weather cloud reminding us we are all connected,

that we flee in so many directions we eventually run into each other,
realize we are running not from city or ocean but intention and fate.

There is a cloud of radioactive regret hovering outside Tokyo,
where fifty martyred workers could not stem the tide of shame and fear
escaping through metal fuel rods.

We cannot fan the flames to any other direction but us,
to absorb what we found here,
to suffer what we have built on top of it,
to embrace what we have left.


Emily Keller is a poet, journalist and creative nonfiction writer whose work mixes personal stories with social commentary. She writes about relationships, New York City, social issues, news and skateboarding. She has been the featured poet at the Cornelia Street Café, the Jujomukti Tea Lounge, Sonic Verse and Poets on White. Her poem “Fly Before Breaking” was published in First Literary Review-East. She released her first chapbook, Shadow Puppets, in April 2011.
_____________________________________________________

ON THE ROAD TO FUKUSHIMA

by Alan Catlin


earthquake buckled roads
that will never be repaired,
power lines down, second floor
high water marks after the great
wave on houses coded with half-
lives; the only living presence
here: toxic crops, stray dogs,
infected cattle.  The future is
now in this unoccupied zone,
there will be no reclamation,
no restorations.  Near the plant,
radiation readings too high to
calculate; just beyond the melting
down reactors, a dead sea glows,
a surrealist painter’s sunset.


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Pygmy Forest Press is publishing the collected "Deep Water Horizon" poems.
_____________________________________________________