SOMEBODY SHUT OFF THE WATER IN DETROIT

by Steve LaVigne

Image source: US Uncut

Thousands of Detroit residents are facing a reality rarely seen around the Great Lakes: Life without water. But a Canadian group is leading the charge against a controversial plan to stop water service on delinquent accounts. The bankrupt city is shutting off water at a rate of 3,000 residents per week. It also recently increased water rates by nine per cent. Nearly half of the 329,000 accounts are in arrears and the average cost of a Detroit water bill is double the national average. Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, flagged Detroit's plan to deal with delinquent accounts to the United Nations earlier this year. The UN calls the plan to shut off water a clear violation of human rights. "I've seen this in the poorest countries in the world," Barlow said. "This is what we call failed states, but to see this in North America, it's a disgrace." --CBC News, July 3, 2014


City of Philip Levine’s brother
waiting in the unemployment line
all who can are leaving now

Somebody blew up America
Amiri said
it’s just happening in slow motion

I want to say in history it was religion
than the state and now corporations
oligopoly trickling down but that just wouldn’t be
poetic

Somebody shut off the water in Detroit
and there’s no recourse now
It’s not the man / It’s not the machine no
more
Somebody blew up America in slow motion
run duck and cover
like the good ol days
when all we had
to fear
not fear not ruskies
just the good old days
when the bomb started ticking

and now the best jobs in Detroit are
scavenging old buildings for copper
wiring to sell to salvage to sell
to chinese dealers the last best
investors in America’s infrastructure

Somebody turned off the water in Detroit
and not just to the 40,000 abandoned homes
and feral packs
of dogs running the streets
all those good ol pooches let loose
and alone
by those who could fleeing/fled/gone from
the rotting

Somebody turned off the water in
DE - TRoiT   mo town blues
Blazing Blurry Bleary cry
foreshadowing they call it
when I want to say morning in america
But they knew it was really sunset
you know (that whole shtick) darkest before
the you know the rest

Can’t we all just agree water is
a basic communal good
Somebody call the U.N.
Somebody’s blowing up America in
slow motion
and hey it’s happening to everyone now
not just the browns the blacks and the reds


Author’s note: The works referenced in the poem are: "What Work Is" by Philip Levine, "Somebody blew up America" by Amiri Baraka, and "Vice Scrap or Die - Metal thieves are tearing Cleveland apart piece by piece."


Steve LaVigne runs a local poetry group in Champaign Illinois. We meet weekly to discuss, create and share poetry in order to build community through the power and practice of poetry. 

JUSTICE IS REVENGE

by Charles Frederickson

Mohamed Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped and murdered on Wednesday in a suspected revenge killing by Israeli extremists, was burned alive after suffering a head injury, the Palestinian attorney general has claimed. --The Guardian, Jul. 5, 2014

Beaten Palestinian youth is U.S. citizen, cousin of murdered kidnap victim. Video shows the boy being beaten by three policemen; U.S. State Department calls for a 'credible investigation and full accountability for any excessive use of force.' State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki named the youth as Tariq Khdeir, 15. He was a cousin of Muhammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian whose burned body was found Wednesday in the Jerusalem Forest. Khdeir was visited by a U.S. consulate official, the statement said. --Nir Hasson and Haaretz, Jul. 6, 2014

A group of Israelis was arrested in what one official described as a revenge killing. Pledging that the perpetrators would “face the full weight of the law,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We do not differentiate between terrorists.” --NY Times, July 6, 2014 

Taught baseless Avarice Animosity Animus
3 R’s: Revenge Retaliation Retribution
Rather than Respectful Reasonable Restraint
Tender mercy compassionate kindness love

Forced abduction burning humiliating torture
Barbaric heinous murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir
Innocent young Jerusalem victim warped
Mindset degrading extrajudicial avenging vigilantes

Hate crimes against humanity carried
Out by right-wing settler extremists
a.k.a. “price tag” repayments 400+
Conducted in 2013 largely un-prosecuted

Black eye for jaundiced eye
Makes myopic whole world blind
Don’t repay evil for evil
Abscessed tooth for infected truth

Tit-for-tat violence almost everyday occurrence
Wronged Muslim families brutalized villages
Feeling wrath of cruel power-mongers
Who’ll eventually face own karma

The best revenge is proving
Your can do/will do determination accomplishing
What naysayers declare you can’t
Doing it in superior manner


No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson proudly presents YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

FIREWORKS AT WHETSTONE PARK

by Marjorie Maddox

                                    Columbus, Ohio


This is a poem I didn't write
but caught, on the fly,
fumbled, words sputtering
like an exhausted firefly overcome
by the pyrotechnics of the Fourth.
The smell of words lingers.

At Whetstone Park fire
works almost as well
as words ignited in near-
dusk by families on folding chairs
waiting for something,
a drive-in theatre of lights
with no screen.

And these relatives I'm just beginning to know
because my father died,
and this man I just married,
all write the poem, spark
the concatenations that rise
into my ahhh!

The sharpest among us forgets
whole sentences, remembers
the lives gone
out—in our group of five:
three fathers, two mothers, one brother.  Her old words swell,
minute explosions, articulate
across our graying sky.

This is the telling of time,
tickings both loud and soft
we forget we are listening
for what we've lost:
the blank peaceful black
before and after
griefs, joys:  the definitions of when
to begin.

"Fireworks," someone says, "determines the time
of dusk."  Someone else argues,
"It's mosquitoes."  Our watching
makes the sky crackle.  In our small circle
of chairs, we slap and smile;
we listen.


Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published nine collections of poetry, most recently Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013) and a 2013 ebook of Perpendicular As I ( Kindle; Kobo; 1994 Sandstone Book Award).

POTLUCK WARS

by Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

There are no innocent victims

Pure humble simple childhood wonderment

Started off believing everything’s possible

Borrowed time eventually catching up

Church basement abuse sinful shame

Masking guilty evil lurking within

Everyone bringing favorite trademark dish

Leftover peace scrambling for crumbs

Vulnerable decalcified bone marrow transplants

Refusing to betray innermost voices

Illegal immoral hollow echo challenges

Courage to resist declaring NO

Perilous potluck newfound old world

Starved slaughtered terrorized tortured traumatized

Conscientious objectors demoralized degraded dehumanized

Shrieking demons disquieted switching sides

Blessed meek claiming pristine inheritance

Greedily squandered by sexploitive adulterers

Natural habitat sabotaged suffering neglect

Conservation eco-environmental awareness recycling past

There are no innocent dead

Passing from presence to absence

In-limbo dissonant heartbeats throbbing oblivion

Willing to look behind beyond

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

DUCIPER OF INK-MOLINE

by Esther Greenleaf Murer

When in the cost of harbored escallops,
it becomes natant for one phoenix
to decollate the perflewed barbs
which have caboshed them with argent,
and to arch among the pythons of the embattled
the sinister and erased spread eagle
to which the lindworms of nebuly
and of nebuly's gunshot endorse them,
a debruised rapier to the ogress of milkrind
retorts that they should dovetail
the carbuncles which incense them
to the salamander.

We harbor these truncheons to be subverted,
that all mounts are confronté erect,
and that they are engrailed by their cockatrice
with crampant impartible rouelles,
that among these are lures, liver-birds
and the panache of hippogriffs.

That to spancel these rouelles,
gauntlets are inflamed among mounts,
decollating their jacent pythons
from the carbuncle of the gorged, –
that whenever any fluke of gauntlet
becomes diapered of these ermines,
it is the rouelle of the phoenix
to accost or to asperse it,
and to inflame a new gauntlet,
lodging its fasces on such popinjays                        
and oppressing its pythons in such fluke,
as to them shall soar most latticed
to embow their shakefork and hippogriffs.


Author’s note: Oulipo: Translexical translation - replace significant words with specialized vocabulary from another discipline. In this case, the Glossary of Heraldic Terms.


Esther Greenleaf Murer, a relic of the 20th century, finds the news pretty surreal these days. She is June featured poet in KIN Poetry Journal.  Her first collection, Unglobed Fruit, appeared in 2011. 

THE PRISONS

by Howard Winn

Image source: Credit Family Caregiver Alliance via WVTF

are full of old men serving time.
What to do about them
has become a penitent issue.
The punishment of young men,
or middle-aged men
has become
what do the frail and sick
criminals deserve as they age.
Eternal puritan punishment,
handcuffed to hospital beds,
tied to oxygen tubes to the nose
until death do them part?
Was that the original decision
of judge and jury?
Give them walkers for the exercise yard?
Attach them to dialysis until dead?

Most recently Howard Winn had poems and fiction published in The Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Cactus Heart, Main Street Rag, Caduceus, Burning Word,  Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Southern Humanities Review, Cutting Edgz andBorderlands. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His graduate degree is from the Writing Program at Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at New York University. He is a State University of New York faculty member.

WHERE THE WHITE PEOPLE ARE: WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

by J. Bradley

Image source: Daily Kos

Feed yourself until you are thick,
as a strip mall. Tattoo your Tax ID
on your forearm, your neck.

Answer quickly when asked about
your EBITDA. Answer quickly
when asked about what was gained
from what was written off.

When you purchase your first Congressman,
we might begin to listen.


J. Bradley is the author of the graphic poetry collection, The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014), with art by Adam Scott Mazer.

TIME TO PLAY OUR GAME

by Stephanie Sesic

Image source: Daily Kos

     (with apologies to Joe Raposo)

one of these things is not like the others
     the proud owners of glorious cocks
     beloved collections of parasitic cells
     corporations closely held as a clandestine lover
     cunts and the sluts who hoard them
one of these things just doesn’t belong
     you see men are only human
     the justice they invented embryonic
     while the money eats what it needs to grow
     from the body that belongs to anything but her


Author's note: Italicized lines are from theSesame Street song, "One of These Things," by Joe Raposo. 

Stephanie Sesic teaches English at Kent State University. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications, and her chapbook The Intimate Verge was published by Pudding House in 2008.

THE RULE OF LAW

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

I am woman, where are men ?

On the Supreme Court, inside 100 foot buffer zones,

 in states where they enforce vaginal probes,

in Congress where they love my fetus,

but starve my child when she is born?

I am woman.  Where are men?

Here are black men who stand in long lines to vote ,

poor men who hunger on minimum wage,

lawless men who start wars with lies,

Congressmen who tie our president’s hands,

rap a gavel every three days, say the Senate

is at work, deny climate change, control

my body to let others counsel me,

but not counsel them.

Here are men,

In the Supreme Court,

ruling corporations are people

ruling women’s health rights

are not buffered in the

Divided States of America.

  

 I am woman.  Where are men?

I am woman.   Where is mankind?

Lucille Gang Shulklapper is a widely-published poet and fiction writer with work appearing in Slant, Consequence, Main Street Rag, and New Verse News among others, as well as four poetry chapbooks.  A new poetry chapbook and a picture book are forthcoming in 2014.

REFUGEES

by Marietta Calvanico

I always called them yard cats,
Their numbers increased
after the fire at Randy’s—
Refugees,
The self-imagined puma
who lives in my house
never goes outside
but outside belongs to her,
and she wants them off
Her Territory,
tail switching back and forth
with great agitation until
she turns her back to erase
their existence.

The calico one, the black one,
the tabbies, orange and gray,
the one with half a tail,
Refugees,
I watch them move through
my garden,
sometimes pausing,
looking up, maybe to see me
at my window
and my knee-jerk reaction is
to give them the food
my own won’t eat
But I’ve been sagely warned—
Don’t do it.

Don’t feed them,
If you feed them,
they will never leave.


Marietta Calvanico lives in Staten Island, NY.  After spending a bit more than two decades in advertising/marketing, she now works with her architect husband and has been able to devote more time to writing and music.  Her poetry has appeared in The Bare Root Review, the damselfly press, Poem2day, Word Salad Poetry Magazine, River Poets, The Driftwood Review, and OccuPoetry; her short fiction in Joyful; and her non-fiction in Still Crazy and Avalon Literary Review.

AMERICAN KGB

by Phyllis Wax

We who are under surveillance
in more ways than we know
tonight notice the stealthy moon      
as it slips behind the trees.

Hiding is useless.  That moon
could be an eye.  In these woods our whispers
might be seized by murmurous leaves.
Only handwritten notes are safe
if burned or swallowed after they are read.

One is not paranoid
if one is really being followed.


Phyllis Wax muses on the news and politics from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI.  She's been widely published, recently in The Widows' Handbook:  Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival from Kent State University Press.  When she's not writing you might find her escorting at a local women's clinic.

CUPCAKE ATTACK

by Johanna Evenson

"After hacking into the Islamic Jihadist Magazine 'Inspire' British intelligence agents changed the direction for making a home made bomb to a recipe for making cupcakes" --Huff Post Food, June 3, 2014

Cup-cakes raining over the infidels.
Four star chefs planning counter attacks
involving whole pies with whipped cream
and cherries.
High fat bombs clogging arteries
victims covered in pink and blue icing.
Sniffing dogs hunting down the muffin makers
flower and egg prices rising
like yeast in underground bakeries.
Candy-land on high alert
men carrying gum-ball machines
in this sweetest of wars.


Johanna Evenson is a professional musician as well as a professional cognitive therapist living and working in Charleston, SC where she is a member of the Long Table Poets.  Her work has appeared in Cactus Heart and The Milo Review.

CALL IT DENIAL

by Gil Hoy

“The rainfall numbers are staggering. But the bigger picture scope and human perspective on the summer flood of 2014 is even more gripping.” --Minnesota Public Radio, June 25, 2014. Image source: CBS

The exhaust from a car can kill you.

I saw a giddy fly knocked for
a loop the other day when it
got too close to a tail pipe,

Just dropped to the ground
like a stone and didn't
move anymore.

And I thought flies were
supposed to be tough

don't they like to eat
rotting garbage?

can’t they lift
a hundred times their weight?

Those carbon emissions
must really be toxic

good thing that most of it
just floats up into the air.

But I did see some
of the world’s glaciers
and a lot of our sea ice

melting as temps rise,

and the weather seems
really strange as of late---

with all those tornados, grapefruit
hail, 100-year floods and all.

Heard that the penguins in
Antarctica aren't breeding as much,

that more snow and rain
are getting other animals
to move from their homes,

and that more insects on
the earth are getting those
spruce trees all chewed up.

And look what’s coming:

sea levels rising---watch out
beach homes---stronger hurricanes
and storms, more floods and

drought, some diseases will
spread, ecosystems will disappear---

But what really caught my eye
yesterday was the dejected look

on the sun's frowning face

when someone mentioned global warming.

It reminded me of the proud
American Indian on his horse

in that commercial from a while back---

he was weeping and looking
at our trash blowing around,

remembering his world as it used to be.


Gil Hoy received a B.A in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Gil also is an elected member of the Brookline, MA Democratic Town Committee, and served as a Brookline Selectman for 12 years. Gil studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. His poems have since been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, and Eye On Life Magazine. Gil is married, with three children, and lives in Brookline, MA.

GAME OF DRONES

by George Salamon (with a bow to Tom Lehrer)

GNAT

The USA has the most,
And that is good
Because we're for freedom and motherhood.

Our allies have them too,
And that's all right
Because they'll join us in a fight.

They're called UAVs, unmanned
Aerial vehicles, and you
Must get to know them:

Hunter and Reaper,
Predator and Gnat,
For our security they'll go to bat.

Eleven countries have them today,
But that's not the way
It's going to stay.

"Every country will have armed drones
Within ten years," oh my.
But that's no cause to worry.

They'll only be used for "targeted
Killings, terrorism and government
Suppression of civil unrest."

So good night, baby,
Sleep tight and don't fret,
Drones will be watching over you.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and contributes to Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News.