FACING IGNORANCE

by Erle Kelly

“We reserve the right not to serve
anyone and I’m not serving you.”
The burly restaurant owner
points his finger at Aaron.
Three of us get belligerent,
stand up but Aaron quickly
steps in between us and the owner:
“Hey guys, let’s go; he’s just ignorant.”

In early 1963 I’m on a two-day military
pass in Mobile---a night-on-the-town---
with a group of cadet buddies.
We need a bathroom call
and find one in a public building.
“Hey Kelly, not that one, it’s Colored.”
I glance up: Men, Women and Colored
marked boldly over the bathrooms.

In the mid-Sixties, while off duty
on flight patrol, a crew member
lends me To Kill A Mockingbird.
Reading it, I can’t help but recall
what Aaron endured a few years before.

Over fifty years have passed.
I’ve lost contact with Aaron.
I wonder what he’s thinking now?
I turn the TV on to a split screen.
On one President Obama pleads
for calm and peaceful demonstrations.
On the other, Ferguson is burning.


Erle Kelly lives in Long Beach California and graduated from CSU Long Beach. He has been published in The New Verse News, Chiron Review and Silver Birch Press.  For several years he has been in a local poetry workshop conducted by Donna Hilbert, noted writer and poet in the Southern California area.

INSTRUCTING INGENIOUS INDIGENES

by Sultana Raza

‘Noble Juveniles’ 2014 Sultana Raza Mixed Media

Cocooned in comfortable zones
will the well-heeled ‘educate’

starving millions
forced to beg for work,

borrow permanently,
steal sympathy in grim daylight?

Billions of babies aching to learn
the basics of how to melt glaciers,

cause virgin forests to shrink,
help economy spurt/stutter

after earning enough to consume
as mindlessly as those ensconced

in miles of matching carpet
wall-paper, curtains, trivialbilia,

with too many bulbs,
burning too brightly too late at night.

They’d have a better shot
of being treated nobly

royally, exaltingly
if somehow they got out word

of how they suffered
at the hands of an enemy

that necessitates
the creation, maintenance, and sustenance

of the ‘defense’ industry.
Defending the rights of kids

to stale mouthfuls, rags,
a semblance of childhood

under the highest roof in the world
would be so much more justified

highlighted, applauded,
if only they’d dramatically denounce

popular enemies
of nations who actually possess

rational weapons of mass destruction
who ‘helped’ create

said empty-headed adversaries
in the first place.


Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza has an MA in English Literature. Her short stories and poems have been published in Ancient Heart Magazine (Australia), India Currents (USA), Szirine (USA), Kindred Spirit (UK), Cygnus Review (UK), Arabesque Review, London Grip (UK), Literary Gazette (USA), All Things Girls (UK), and Caduceus (Ed. Yale University, USA), Beyond Bree, (an American MENSA newsletter), the Peter Roe Series, (Tolkien Society UK), The Whirlwind Review (USA), Writer’s Asylum (India), and Silver Leaves Journal #5 (Canada). An awarded artist, Sultana Raza has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in the USA and Europe. She has also participated in international art shows, such as the Nightshow at Riccione, Italy, B.AGL Postbanhof during the Berlin Art Week, the Biennale of Chianciano, Italy in 2013; and ArtExpo New York (alongside Andy Warhol), and Art Monaco in 2014.

BUKOWSKI'S GHOST

by Robert Halleck

November 29, 2014

California Chrome raced at Del Mar

A San Diego day

clear, 70 degrees

perfect track conditions.

By the 8th race I was

down $14 using my

winning jockey technique.

I was thinking safety first

as I walked to the window.

I saw him

leaning on a pillar

cigarette in a lowered 

right hand, racing form in his left.

Bukowski's ghost.

I went toward him.

Looking up he froze me

in my tracks.

"Chrome's a sucker bet

don't be an asshole."

At the window I bet

Sawyer's Hill to show

and lost another $2.

Leaving Del Mar I saw him again

counting his money and smiling.

Robert Halleck is a hospice volunteer and retired banker. His poems have appeared in The San Diego Poetry Annual, The Camel Saloon, The Rainbow Journal.

CIRCLES

by Jenna Le

Image source: CP4

Once, I was so young

that, like a raw onion,

my concentric circles reluctant

to relax their grip on

one another’s whiteness,

a whiff of me could make you cry.

I had so much power,

but all I wanted

was to see people smile

when I walked into a room.

So I kept mum about

my real opinions

so that people would like me.

And it worked. I began to

feel smug about my popularity.

When I saw a rabble-rouser

hoisted on the gallows,

I sneered,

thinking he would not

be hanging there

if, like me, he knew

the secret to being liked.

When I saw a man

with six circular gunshots

in his face and chest

sprawled on crimson cement,

I did not say, “There but for the grace…”

I did not believe

in favors. I believed

I had carved my own niche

in the world using

my smarts, my likability.

I had a vivid memory

of myself with a penknife

in my hand, carving,

never thinking to ask

how that bloody knife

ended up in my hand,

or whose blood it was.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), which was a Small Press Poetry Bestseller. Her poems have appeared in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review.

OUR REBEL, YOUR REBEL

by Norman Ball

"The U.S. military will subject Syrian rebels taking part in a new training program to psychological evaluations, biometrics checks and stress tests under a screening plan...as it expands support for armed groups in Syria." --The Washington Post, November 28, 2014. Image source: Vice.

Our rebels are tested, well-rested and true.

Your rebels seem murderous, antsy and blue.

Rebellion breeds hellions. So take proper care.

Adjusted jihadists don't fall from the air.

Beheadings solve nothing, head doctors report.

Try shrinking your head as a final resort.

Yes, off with your quest for our heads and our necks!

We need them to think about where to bomb next.

Norman Ball is a poet, author and songwriter whose work has appeared in Counterpunch, Asia Times, Pop Matters, The Foreign Policy Journal. His poetry book Serpentrope is available from White Violet Press.

THANKSGIVING

by Joan Colby

 

A window centered over the kitchen sink

Looks out upon the birdbath, the feeder,

All the way past the chicken coop to the

Red barn behind which trees feather the horizon.

 

Today the birdbath bears a lid of snow,

A few chickadees address the feeder.

The cherry trees that line the dry lot fence

Are bare armed, bleak as gun metal sky.

 

My hands delve deep in soapy water.

China and silver clinking a weary hymn.

The scrub of cookie sheets or skillets

Grates like November lurking out the window.

 

The window frames each season. That’s

The reason farmwives demanded placement

To gaze upon the bridal wreath in bloom

Or hollyhocks upholding the old wellhouse.

 

Dishwashing invites contemplation. When

The hands are occupied the mind escapes

Its practical routines and lounges out

Into a landscape frozen as today’s

Promised grace of one more Thanksgiving.

 

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

SNOW BEFORE THANKSGIVING

by Laura Rodley

Is the snow that hovers in these low slung clouds
particles of glaciers evaporated, waiting
to fall, mirrors of penguins and polar bears,
sluggish fish, even the midnight sky
that beam upon the mirror, blue on blue white ice
where the edges creak, broken sky,
broken mirrors of the ocean’s depths,
whales in fact that breach
searching for air, ready to go home.

If so, glaciers melting, ready to fall,
arrest drivers surging home for Thanksgiving,
how thousands of years of solidness
is now a lake, one too cold to swim in
but close to our hearts, this affinity
for holding on, for letting go, for forgiveness.
Will the glaciers forgive warmer waters?
Will the glaciers forgive their melting?
They have no hands to cover themselves,
to swim somewhere else; their solidity,
calm steadiness is what we seek,
and tomorrow it will snow, glaciers
letting go, freeing themselves as crystals fall
heavy on the grounds, seeking saviors.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

THIS AMERICAN LIFE

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

A protester after being treated for tear gas exposure in Ferguson. Image source: ADREES LATIF / REUTERS / LANDOV via People.com

A young unarmed
African-American man
Was shot to death
By a white police officer
Stop me
If you’ve heard this one . . .

Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.  He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective).  He lives in northern California.

FERGUSON 2014

by Alan Catlin

CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP via People.com

Beneath Seasons Greetings banner/
sign spanning Ferguson Missouri
street, armored cars, police behind
plastic shields, slow marching into
unruly crowds doused by tear gas
blasts, bean bag volleys, protestors
carrying Stop the Killing signs, street
fires burning, small arms fire,
no indictment tonight.


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose, the latest of which, from March Street Press, is Alien Nation.

PARTIAL CLEARING

by Judith Terzi

Oscar Alfaro embraces his wife Enriquta Juarez and his daughter Gelin Alfaro after Obama’s televised immigration speech. Photograph: Jose Luis Magana/AP via The Guardian

after President Obama's speech of 11/20/14

and Woody Guthrie's "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos"

Jesús and María,
step out of the shadows,
look up at the mountain,
the cedar, the pine.
Refresh in the streams
that line your palm,
your brow. Don't stoop
in the furrows, the rows.
Rise up in the orchards,
the vineyards, the fields.
The fruit, it is sweet,
the lettuce not rotting.
Crawl out of the caverns
that nurture tristeza,
despair. The skies
are clearing, relinquish
your fear at least for now.
Gather carnations
from earth that you've
plowed, from gardens
in cities you've loved
then left. The laughter
of children, it scatters
like petals, like leaves.
Oh Jesús y María,
Rosalita and Juan,
you are not deportees.


Judith Terzi is the author of Sharing Tabouli and Ghazal for a Chambermaid (Finishing Line). Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BorderSenses, The Raintown Review, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes), TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque), and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Web. 

GROUND RULE

by Esther Greenleaf Murer






The common or garden good is a weed
strayed from a Communist plot.
Don’t believe those who loudly proclaim that we need
the common or garden good; it’s a weed
that threatens to crowd out the flowers of greed
by claiming our gains are ill-got.
So root out that noisome and noxious weed—
send it back to its commie plot.


Esther Greenleaf Murer is a relic of the 20th century. She lives in Philadelphia.

WE ARE THE FLAMES

by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

A demonstration to demand authorities find 43 missing college students, in Mexico City, this week. Mexico officially lists more than 22 thousand people as having gone missing since the start of the country's drug war in 2006, and the search for the missing students has turned up other, unrelated mass graves.

Hear us strike our match,
our voices glowing
over this capital—
our lower case demands
will only grow louder,
nuestras voces ponderosas
hear us from your palace,
so much fuel in our voices
your quiet fuels to inspire us—
our marching bellow.
The world welcomes
our fire united we, students
as sisters and brothers,
together— you will hear
our loudest uprising.
Somos la llama de Mexico.
Wrapped in our flags
colors of green, white
and red; spirit of águila’s—
We Are The Flames.
El cielo can feel us—
our spirits uniting?
Your silence
will never divide this city,
our country—
Presidente, you will
remember our names.


Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is an L.A. poet whose work appears in the new True Romance Poems collection, 1000 Tankas for Michael Brown, The Lake Poetry, Edgar Allen Poet Journal # 2, Fukushima Poetry Anthology, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Spilt Ink Poetry, Luna Luna Magazine’s Latino Poetry Project, Love Poetry Lovers, ZO Magazine, Oddball Magazine, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Men's Heartbreak Anthology and in the soon to be released publications: Purrfect Poetry Anthology and Poetry in Motion’s collection Poems to Fuck To. He is currently enrolled in the MFA Graduate program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

DEATH RETREATS

by Paul Smith

“Those who have been watching the clashes in Kobani and the coalition’s airstrikes minute by minute insist that the military balance has decidedly turned against IS. Particularly after IS withdrew from the Mishtanur hill that dominates Kobani from the east, and the People's Protection Units (YPG) advanced to control the road that IS used as its main supply line coming from Raqqa, it became apparent that the military balance was in favor of the defenders of Kobani.” --Cengiz Çandar, “Watching Kobani,” Al-Monitor, November 18, 2014. Image: A Kurdish man uses binoculars to watch fighting in Kobani, from the village of Mursitpinar, on October 6, 2014. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

Death is retreating
You can hear his footsteps
In the market
The rubble at Asayesh
In the hospital
Shrapnel
Flying out of a corpse
In the souk
Tents and rugs torn
Into shreds of fuzz
Death is on the run
His footprints craters
Fleeing across Tel Shair Hill


Paul Smith writes fiction and poetry.  He belongs to the Rockford Writers' Guild.  He likes to read about news from all over the world.

STUD MUFFIN

by James Penha

“A bull branded gay, has been saved from the slaughterhouse by charity donations, including £5,000 from Sam Simon, co-creator of the Simpsons. . . . Benjy, from County Mayo, Ireland, was destined for the abattoir after showing more interest in breeding with other bulls than cows." --BBC News, November 18, 2014. Photo by Joanna McNicholas accompanying the BBC story.

The great white bull is no Moby Dick:
no taste for violence, no hunger
for limbs, no desire to judge black
from his own white, no passion
for bovine of the opposite sex; just
a yen for grass and peace
and an eye for the other studs.
The farmer called it queer, raised
his arms to slaughter this beast
that knows nothing of appetites.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.