THE DOORBELL

by ayaz daryl nielsen

ayaz daryl nielsen is a poet/father/husband/veteran/x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/x-hospice nurse (and still a nurse)/editor of the print pub bear creek haiku. His poetry has appeared in many fine publications including Yellow Mama, Lilliput Review and Christian Science Monitor.
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FARM NEWS TODAY

by John Palen

Image source: millslegacy

X percent of farm houses
stand empty. Or don’t stand
at all. Algorithms of corn
stretch to the horizon.

Nights stay hot,
and moon-shadows
slip like coyotes
across the fields

to drink and smoke joints
in cool, dry cisterns
that they have cleaned out
for clubhouses.

Only nighthawks
monitor the white puffs
of gross domestic product
rising into the stars.


John Palen has recent work in Poydras Review Blog, The Cossack, The New Poet, Citron Review, and Lingerpost. He lives and writes in Central Illinois.
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POLITICAL SCIENCE

by Tamara Madison

Liberals flop around in sandals with their tits
hanging out.  They smell of patchouli
and smoke pot.  They have had lots of lovers
and lots of abortions and plan to have more.
They drive bashed-up foreign cars and eat food
that looks like hair.  They give money
to the creeps with the cardboard signs
at freeway exits.  They majored in psych
and work for government or non-profits.
Liberals are always women because
when they’re men, they look and act like women.

Conservatives wear clean shirts tucked in
and slacks, never jeans (unless they’re pressed).
They listen to the Kingston Trio
and the Everly Brothers when they’re driving
their big American cars.  They go to church
with their wives and children every Sunday
and have a huge secret stash of porn.  They favor
the all-American right of business to screw

customers if they can get away with it.
Conservatives are always men except when
they’re women, and then they’re zombies.


Tamara Madison is the author of the collection Wild Domestic (Pearl Editions; July, 2011) and the chapbook The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions, 2004).  She was the featured poet in Pearl 43, and Moontide Press’s Poet of the Month in February, 2010.  Her work has appeared in numerous small press journals, including Chiron Review, Spot Lit, Hobble Street Review, Tears in the Fence.  Two of her poems were also recently featured on the Writers Almanac. Tamara has two grown children and teaches French and English in a high school in Los Angeles.
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EUGENE IONESCO INTERVIEWS MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD

by Judith Terzi

Eugène:        Why do you question the Holocaust?

Mahmoud:    Rabbits are hiding under lounge chairs.
                      Hares under chairs. Pears in pairs. Pears

                      in pairs.

Eugène:        You had doubts before. Do you still have
                      doubts, Mr. President?

Mahmoud:    Snow has just fallen in Telluride. I mean
                      Teheran. Bears hiding under stares. Bare
                      facts. Four and four are more. Or less.
                      There's a parasol in Paraguay. Onions
in Ontario. A parka in Parchin. A home
                      in Homs.

Eugène:        What should happen in Syria, Mr. President?

Mahmoud:    Snowflakes on women's eyelashes are beautiful.


Eugène:        Why is Faezeh Rafsanjani in prison?

Mahmoud:    Desperate housewives are lonely. This is not art.
                      This is a pipe. This is a schoolboy's project.
Bar codes glued to a canvas. Yellowy newspapers.
                      A faded blue hydrangea growing in the distance.
                      The distance may be a close-up option. Two plus
                      two under Assad's shoe. I like flowers. Les fleurs?

Eugène:        Have you read my play, Rhinoceros?

Mahmoud:    Mrs. Martin's tomatoes are rotten. Mrs. Smith's
                      mouth is dry. Fermez la bouche. We have no bald 

sopranos in Iran. We must educate against this. 

My lips are licked. Bugs under rugs. Tornadoes 

                      in Toledo. Gazelles in Gaza. Pachyderms left 

                      to die in zoos. Peace be with you. Vive la France!
 

Judith Terzi is a poet living in Southern California where she taught high school French for many years. Her poetry has received nominations for Best of the Net and Web and awards and recognition from journals such as dotdotdash, Mad Hatters', and Newport Review. Poems are forthcoming in American Society: What Poets See (FutureCycle Press), Poetry Project Erotic Poem Anthology (Tupelo Press), and elsewhere. Sharing Tabouli was published by Finishing Line in 2011.
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DEPARTED

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

On a cold clear night
A thousand years from now
An amateur astronomer
Somewhere in our galaxy
Scans the star-splashed blackness
Through her powerful telescope
And focuses on a vivid blue dot she has
Not seen before
She types its coordinates into her computer
And reads the entry:

K129XX73PSI: A small planet in the R472  region of our galaxy.  The planet has great topographical diversity, including mountain ranges, vast plains and large bodies of water. Its atmosphere contains heavy concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. Weather patterns are turbulent and chaotic.  Of interest due to evidence suggesting it once supported a highly complex and thriving community of living organisms, including, for a brief time, a species capable of building cities and roads.  Currently there are no signs of life of any kind.

The amateur astronomer
Goes to the kitchen to make a cup of tea
And as she sips
She wonders what happened on K129XX73PSI
Was it a single apocalyptic event
That destroyed all life in a flash
Or a gradual deterioration
Preceding total collapse
She pictures final agonies
But has to turn away

Back at her telescope
She takes another look at the blue dot
But she has no heart now
For exploring the cosmos
She raises her cup to the night sky
To wish a peaceful rest
For the spirits of K129XX73PSI’s departed
And to bid all beings Godspeed
On their journey through the glittering dark


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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STRANGE FURNITURE

by Jen Hinton

At least two recent incidents in which empty chairs were hung from trees by rope have critics decrying what they say are racially offensive displays meant to symbolize the “lynching” of President Barack Obama. --NBC News

When I see an empty chair dangling

from a tree, makes me wonder,

Who ruined the Feng Shui?

Perhaps a rampaging tornado

or a vile hurricane blew it up there,

whipped up on the fury of rhetoric?

Likely also, a duty-bound sheriff

at the behest of a ravaging investment broker, 

upchucked that post-eviction relic?

Or heck, maybe the chair himself

had enough of these petty people’s

buttocks down here on Terra Firma

and crawled up there on his own?

Tree limbs and tree bark, beckoned

his wooden legs, “Come back brother,

you were once one of us.”

Chair with the good sense to know.

 

Now up on high, he’s acquired the

vantage point of the birds and squirrels

who are also brainless;

 

he's up there now,

looking down at the asses of Earth.

Jen Hinton is a writer and college administrator living in Schaumburg, IL. Her previous NVN poem, Something for Harvey, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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WHAT WE'RE REDUCED TO

by Judy Kronenfeld

after the national political conventions

 
An early September Monday: we drove on impulse
to a beach in Orange County, away from the viscous,
sulfurous air of our inland valley, smelling of rotten fish—
it turned out—churned up by a storm system
sweeping over the Salton Sea. We tossed into our ’97
mini-van (dents, chipped paint, tattered Obama stickers)
a beach umbrella inherited from my parents
(its two poles still bearing the scotch-tape
of my father’s useless fix) and a couple of new
easy-fold canvas chairs. When we arrived,
thin cloud wisps seemed to stretch
their arms out, respiring; the blue air
was a gift again.  

On one of many streets filled with well-kept
houses, neck-on-neck, that didn’t shout
their hefty worth, a lucky parking spot,
steps from the steep path to the sand
blessed our impetuous decision. The shine
of breeze-swept light recalled the luxe gloss
of the blond college students it had seemed
to blend with, decades before,
when I’d taught, temporarily,
at an O.C. school—a privileged opposite-
of-slumming.

But there were people of color in the surf,
some older folks like ourselves in street clothes,
slipping off outer shirts and shoes, as well
as young girls in bikinis—fat and thin.

We read with the concentration of time out
from time for a few hours in the rigged
umbrella’s shade, were soothed by the rhythmic chords
and melodic backwash of the sea, freed a little,
until the sun grew fierce and we plodded
up the slope—then—uh-oh—plucked a note
that had been stuck under our windshield wiper:
GO TAKE YOUR OBAMA AND DIE.

I felt a chill, as if I were a suddenly
feverish child with sunburn she didn’t know
she had, after a morning of careless play.
I looked up at the nearest house and this time
saw infinity pool, wine cellar, subterranean
seven-car garage.

And—Ph.D. or not—I was—my immigrant
parents, shlepping a vinyl hamper of salami
on rye and hard-boiled eggs on a day trip
to Bronx-on-the-sea Far Rockaway—
only this was more like they’d taken
a wrong turn to the Hamptons; I belonged again
to people for whom a “beach house”
meant two rented rooms in a ramschackle Victorian
the summers they could afford them,
and grey-faced Daddy taking the train out
Fridays after work for a weekend of luft.

My husband, furious, undoubtedly thinking
bitter white guy, rich, or even poor,
scrambled for a pen, and scrawled
under the block letters, nearly breaking its tip:
YOU FIRST, RACIST IDIOT.

Now what? Run to a Xerox
and pamphlet the neighborhood?
We stood with the helpless paper
in his hands. He folded it up
and pushed it into a crevice
on the sidewalk. And we drove
away. 

Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent collections of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of  Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, winner of The Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize for 2007 (Antrim House, 2012). Recent anthology appearances include Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012) and Love over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals such as Adanna, Calyx, Cimarron Review, The American Poetry Journal, Fox Chase Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, Natural Bridge, New Verse News, The Pedestal, Poetry International, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and The Women’s Review of Books.
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WHAT JESUS'S WIFE DID

While He Roamed Around Preaching

by Earl J. Wilcox

She could have washed his long robes
preparing them for his next excursion

into the hills, the Jewish temples, near
caves and grape vineyards where he preached.

She could have repaired his sandals
the ones he must have worn out many times

from walking and preaching, his favorite
methods of spreading his Gospel. She could

have kept the home fires burning during
the many long nights, days, and years

while her husband was gone from their humble
dwelling place most of his life. She might have

wept with her mother-in-law on a craggy hill
called Golgotha where he was crucified.


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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THE SOLUTION

by Brigitte Goetze

Photo source: The Telegraph

It's now confirmed that virtually all the tar balls that washed ashore on the Alabama  Gulf Coast since hurricane Isaac last month are linked to the 2010 BP oil spill. BP says it hasn't seen the study, and they're working to remove the tar balls that are on the beaches. (NBC News)


Bound like witches, their feathers tarred,
trailing wings useless as limbs wrecked on a rack,
all cold, none able to hold anything
with beaks glued shut by crude,
weighed down, like medieval wise women sentenced to drown,
saved only if they can float.
Even the rookeries gooed, fouled
with vomit spewed forth by a far-off explosion:

Blow out! Fast! Fast! Shut the valves—
they are stuck! Top the well—
it’s gunked up! Kill the top—
it won’t stop! Tube the beast—
it still leaks! Pipe the oil, flare the gas—
it’s not enough! Spool and stack—
plugged at last.     But

currents schlepping toxic burdens, spreading
sludge and balls of tar, sliming marshes, soiling beaches.
Volunteers aid ailing turtles, otters, pelicans.
And slicks and plumes escaping booms
get hunted, sprayed, forced to disperse—
yet, dodgers settle, undetained, suffocating bottom life.
Creatures suffer out of sight.
Great the oceans, deep and wide, still—
don't believe this grave delusion:
the solution to pollution is dilution.



Brigitte Goetze, biologist, goat farmer, writer, lives in the foothills of Oregon 's Coast Range . Her most recent poems can be found in Four and Twenty, Outwardlink, and The River.
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THE CANDIDATE SAYS HE HAS A PLAN

by Michael Brockley

He’s among friends in Arizona. Slim white men who jog every day. Men whose wives wear yellow dresses. He has fond memories of yellow, like the Dandelion and Canary crayons he used to eat in art class. And the gormless expression he aroused when he squirted mustard on that sophomore’s bowling shirt in high school. He looks at the faces of success gathered around the tables before him, his necktie knotted in a goiter knot. He sips from a glass of Tasmanian Rainwater. Someone in the audience coughs and he begins to share his ideas for separating welfare cheats from the most dangerous men in America. An aside about wearing sidearms to the State Fair, like Rooster Cogburn, earns a standing ovation. He has sweatshops that are shovel-ready in Laos. Another drink. The eyes of his constituents hunger for a lucre beyond wealth, beyond the sculpted and pliant thighs of their clients’ daughters. Behind him tower charts with yellow arrows. Testimonials from toad-like men who hint at oil wells in the San Mariana Trench. He introduces a chain letter to the world for which only the most profligate donors may purchase introductory shares. The Tasmanian water is almost empty. Behind him the slide show pauses on a photograph of the candidate playing polo. He is leaning over his pony’s flank with the mallet in follow through. He is staring toward a distant goal, the pony foaming and slobbering at the bit.

Michael Brockley is a 63-year old school psychologist who has worked in special education in rural northeast Indiana for 25 years. He has poetry publications in Wind, The Windless Orchard, Spitball, The Indiana Review, The Indiannual, The Spoon River Quarterly, The River City Review and The Ball State Literary Forum. Tom Koontz' Barnwood Press published his chapbook Second Chance in 1990, and he has lately placed work in Indiana publications such as Maize, Country Feedback, Flying Island, The TIpton Poetry Journal and Facing Poverty.  A video of Mike reading his "Hollywood's Poem" which was published in Facing Poverty can be found on YouTube. His poem "When the Woman in the White Sweater at the Cancelled Charles Simic Reading Asked If I Was David Shumate" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Barry Harris of the Tipton Poetry Journal.

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ZABADANI WOMEN

by Jude Cowan Montague


Pouring beans into plastic bottle to shake
make noise, to accompany a poet of Syria
calling for Freedom. Sssssh, that’s for the dark.
In daylight the activist has to buy
these threads in different shops so no one
finds out what she is sewing.


Jude Cowan Montague is a writer, artist and composer who lives in London. She works as an archivist for Reuters Television. Her first collection of poetry, For the Messengers, was published by Donut Press in 2011. Her second, The Groodoyals of Terre Rouge, will be published by Dark Windows Press in 2012. She makes musical improvisations on Reuters stories and these are available on the Parisian-based netlabel Three Legs Duck.
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NO MATTER WHAT

by David Feela

The ten percent in the center, Mitt,
will remember in November

before they exit the polling booth
to choose their votes

more carefully than your
less elegant words,

and they won’t be voting off the cuff,
and the point they’ll be making

will leave no chad hanging,
and the hole they leave behind

will be no bigger
than the eye of a needle.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.
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THE CANDIDATE WHO CAN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT

by Jean L. Kreiling

Image source: Smith's World

Although he now claims that it’s not what he meant,
he did say it—in words he deems “inelegant”—
so some folks who had each paid a cool fifty grand
heard him press his agenda and outline his stand
on who’s “thoughtful,” who’s not; and share views (a bit blurry)
on what government’s for; and say he wouldn’t worry
about people who couldn’t have managed the fee
to come and enjoy his well-heeled homily.

Then again, who among the dismissed forty-seven
percent could have stomached this high-rollers’ heaven
or would want to be part of this candidate’s crowd?
(And would non-millionaires even have been allowed?)
Well, his backers might have their own worries today—
is it time to withdraw your support, NRA?
His candidacy may not be quite kaput,
but once again, Mitt’s shot himself in the foot.


Jean L. Kreiling's poetry has appeared widely in print and online journals and in anthologies. She was the winner of the 2011 Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry, and has been a finalist for the Dogwood Poetry Prize, the Frost Farm Prize, and the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award.
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IMPERSONATOR

by Ed Shacklee

I have squared my uncaring behavior

With a prayer to my personal savior

 

And ensured my couture remains proper

By retaining a personal shopper.

 

Now and then, untitled blue collar

Everymen are entitled to holler

 

If I sack them while looting their pensions,

Which no one who’s courteous mentions:

 

It’s abhorrent, though, if the poor riot,

As I meant nothing personal by it.

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia.  His poems have appeared in Angle, Contra, The Flea, Shot Glass Journal and Tilt-a-Whirl, among other places.

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