I HAVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT MELTING GLACIERS

by John Paul Calavitta


floating face up on the sea of this poem

in the house of sleep a bear swimming away
with an axe stuck in it

you can restore melted snow


John Paul Calavitta received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington , Seattle , where he is currently finishing his PhD in Eco-criticism.
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MEMORIAL DAY

by James Gage


Hanging clothes, Memorial Day.
Three hours since the procession
threaded through the depot
and now the summer screams
from the Little League field behind Blue Market.
Billy plays the line behind third base,
and I can hear his own hoarse mantra apart from the rest:
HeyyyybatterbatterbatterSwwing!
His hands are fast like mine,
and when he throws to first
his wristbands flash like battle flags.

When I finish pinning his clothes,
I’ll stand at the sidelines with other parents,
some cooler-fed, some quiet. Black flies
will be biting, but no mosquitoes--not yet.

At the parade this morning I couldn’t answer
Billy’s questions about combat. Instead I lied
about the beauty of medals and marching in formation,
about differences between places but not between people.
How to explain that tools become weapons, that fear becomes hate?
How to explain that I don’t know why, that I will die not knowing.

Billy showers after the game, then calls his mother.
Propped on the couch with a magazine open
I listen for a voice I can’t understand
although I still try.
Every few minutes I flip a new page
to let Billy believe I’m just reading.


James Gage is a freelance writer and editor who has published poems in Main Street Rag, Inkwell, Mountain Gazette, Powhatan Review, The Iconoclast, and Out of Line. A native Vermonter, he is increasingly interested in the Vermont Independence movement.
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FRAME GAME: THE STRANGE LOGIC OF AMERICAN POLITICS

by Jon Wesick


Bailout, bailout, bo-ale out
Banana-fana, too big to fail out
Fee-fi-mo- mail out
Bailout!

Crack down, smack down. Don’t back down!
Banana-fana, fo-fact down
Fee-fi-mo- mack down
Crack down!

Congress, Congress, bo-bongress
Lobby, lobby, bo-bobby
Fee-fi-mo-mobby
Lobby!

Spin it, spin it, bo-bin it
Banana fana, fo-fin it
Fee-fi-mo-minute
Spin it!

Consumer, consumer, bo-boomer
Protection, protection, bo-brection
Banana-fana-fo-frection
Fee-fi-mo-rection
Deception!

Taxes, taxes, bo-baxes
Banana-fana, fo-faxes
Fee-fi-mo
Maxes taxes!

Crack down, smack dow, bo-back down!
Banana-fana, fo-fact down
Fee-fi-mo- mack down
Back down!

Winner, winner, who’s the winner
Bankers, bankers, bo-ankers
Banana-fana-fo-fankers
Fee-fi-mo-minner
The bankers are the winners!


Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as the The New Verse News, New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
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WAKE & RISE!

by Bill Costley

Packing up their kit-bags of invisible tools, 

Patriotic Actors have renewed their vows
to pursue terrorists of all stripes, bands,

colors & color-combinations. Libertarian
Rand Paul (R-KY) & the ACLU object,
among others, making political bedfellows
of strict-constitutional insomniacs. Or is
everybody else comatose? Wake & Rise!

Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA.
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TECHNOTOPIA

by Howie Good


It’s no longer 4 a.m.
Our children
cross the street
without waking.
The song sparrow
remains silent
and well hidden.
Hearts designed
for another purpose
pump darkness
into the air.


Howie Good's latest chapbook is Threatening Weather from Whale Sounds.
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AN AFRICAN REFUGEE

by Bill Costley

A barrel, a box, a basket, a bag.
What will to take to carry all
of my belongings? I need help.
to carry just the containers.
How far am I taking them?


Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA.
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SECRET POLLING PLACES

by Martha Deed


It is the morning of the special election in the 26th district
the world is holding its breath
the robo calls declare its importance
and no notice of polling places its secrecy

odd to feel so important in this backwater
of rust-belt cities and rain-drenched fields
unfit for plowing – a pair of catbirds hop
under the elderberry bush and sing stolen songs

the e-bird count may be off as well
House Wrens singing or Catbird mimics?
so now we will restrict ourselves
to what we see, not what we hear

the republican in this house informs the survey taker
he is an independent – he is not
he is merely shamed by his party
his vote no secret in this house

no secret to survey-takers
no secret to his friends and family
his embarrassment equal to his rage
he will find the secret polling place – and vote


Editor's Note: Democrats are claiming victory in New York's 26th District special election.

Martha Deed lives in the 26th district in North Tonawanda, NY.  Recent publications include The November 2010 Project,  The Lost Shoe (Naissance) and City Bird: Selected Poems (1991-2009) by Millie Niss, edited by Martha Deed. She has previously published at The New Verse News.
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A LAST

by Daniel Wilcox



Alas, grieving sorrow, tribulating
Don’t ask from where—
Yes, Shenandoah; “Across the Wide Missouri”



Welted eyes, shadowed tears,
Wind-cuffed face with ‘fulled’ lashings

Of more less and less,
Wiping away
With wept wetness
In a downward swirling wet sweep,
The torn sky in
A multiple series of weeping losses



The fall of all welling reveries
In the wreck--aging.



How long, how many tomorrow’s tomorrow
This a las—ting loss lostness?


Daniel Wilcox ages. His writing has appeared in many magazines including The Danforth Review, Counterexample Poetics, The Recusant, The Copperfield Review, Word Riot, P.S.H., and The Write Room. His first book of poetry, Dark Energy, was published by Diminuendo Press. Before that he hiked through Cal State University Long Beach (Creative Writing), Montana, Europe, Palestine/Israel, worked in a mental institution, and taught literature to teenagers. He lives with his wife on the central coast of California.
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ON TAKING DOWN MY FACEBOOK PAGE

by Lynnie Gobeille
 

after reading Sherman Alexie's “The Facebook Sonnet,”
The New Yorker, May 16, 2011, p. 81.

Sometimes
 facebook
was a blessing.
Sometimes
i felt "as if"
i was back in 7th grade,
seated on a metal chair....
during
"social dancing lessons"
sweating,
waiting
praying
to be picked
to dance
before
the teacher
could / would
pair me up
with the
OTHER
fat girl
in my class.


Lynnie Gobeille has published in The Sow's Ear Review, Crone’s Nest, The Avatar, The Prairie Home Companion, This I Believe (NPR), New Verse News, The Providence Journal (Poetic License) and The Naugatuck River Review.  Editor of The Providence Journal Poetry Corner (South County Edition), her essays can be heard on NPR public radio. She is the co-founder of The Origami Poems Project, a state wide “free poetry event” based in Rhode Island. Her “micro chapbooks” can be found on their website: www.origamipoems.com.
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AFTER THE RAPTURE

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Blue soldiers on small aircraft that turned into snowmobiles dropped from the sky in triangular formation. Silver cross-bows on their backs and peaked hats. Not good. They supervised the hundreds of us women now working in the fields. Hourly a blue soldier marched another man through on his way to, we didn’t know. It was not good for the men because where their faces should be, there was nothing but a big hole, a tunnel three inches in diameter running through their bodies. Breath hole. Food hole. Shit hole. As if they were worms marching. Hard to say how, but I could tell the man just passing had learned to see. Since he could see, it wouldn’t be too long before he would  learn to talk. I followed him.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske drives to teach and listens to NPR.
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THE DAY BEFORE JUDGMENT DAY

by Wayne Scheer


I'm not saying I believe the folks who claim the world will end
May 21, 2011,
But I'm not waiting until tomorrow to write this poem.

My prophet is Woody Allen.
He said he doesn't believe in the afterlife,
But he's packing a change of underwear
Just in case.

So what's supposed to happen tomorrow?

If I'm properly repentant
I go to Never Never Land
Where I attend a meet-and greet with
God Almighty;
Otherwise,
I spend eternity repeating, "Hot enough for ya" to
Hitler and bin Laden.

But one of the believers,
Who claims he's absolutely certain of the date,
Also says if he's still here on May 22,
"That means I wasn't saved."

Hey, no fair hedging your bet.
It's Heaven or Hell, buster.

But wait.  Hedging your bet
Is what Woody Allen believes.
And I believe in Woody.

So I'm going to stop writing silly poems
And do my laundry.


Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net.
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FEAR IS A FUNNY THING

by Rob Spiegel


We turn to you now, Obama, more.
Something fraying in the thread, the fiber
popping in the tension, You were trying

to answer a question about Sarah Palin.
The threads of the cloth tearing. It’s
awful hot this month. The concrete hurts.

Fear is a funny thing. It starts with
a lost job and builds when the water
goes bad. Mr. President, allow yourself

a moment or two to test the ground
where we live and breathe and have our
lives. Something larger than an enemy.

Because you can see, because you can speak,
we turn to you with our thin and lonesome hope.


Rob Spiegel is a strong Obama supporter who is waiting patiently for the president to address environmental challenges. Meanwhile, Spiegel is getting poems, fiction and drama placed in numerous non-paper pubs.
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THE MOMENT ECHO SAW

after Ted Hughes after Ovid

The moment Echo saw
Buff’s poem below me here
she fell
in love
with verse
or endless war
unaware that like a reflux
it could burn
or that she would be cut down
with the barb of a delete button.


Editor's Note: We apologize for the gremlin that thrice repeated the text of “America Now” until author Buff Whitman-Bradley alerted us at the same time as reader Clint Darch cleverly commented to us that at The New Verse News “History repeats itself.”
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AMERICA NOW

by Buff Whitman-Bradley


A man walks out of his house and greets the surveillance cameras
But wait! He has forgotten his autographed copy of Leaves of Grass
He turns to go back inside and discovers
That his home is no longer there

Neighbors grow suspicious and call Homeland Security
Who surround him and demand to know his whereabouts forever
And the locations of all ticking time bombs
But he invokes his right to invoke his rights

Interrogators beat him to a pulp
And place him in custody for further consideration
As joblessness and foreclosures keep rising
He is rendered to Uzbekistan to atone for everything

Apocalyptic drones fill the sky over Afghanistan
As video jockeys in Las Vegas hunt for wedding parties
Children scatter willy-nilly all over the ground like crazed beetles
And explode cinematically in slow motion when bombed

The President goes on television to declare endless war
The holiness of The Cause the futility of resistance
While Walt Whitman’s shade wanders lost in America
And does not hear America singing


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals.  With his wife Cynthia he is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, Outside In,  and co-editor of the forthcoming book About Face: GI Resisters Turn Against War (PM Press, 2011).  He is also co-producer/director of the documentary Por Que Venimos.
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