AND THEN THERE WERE LAWYERS

by Alejandro Escudé




A garden of lawyers planted with the utmost care,
            petunia lawyers, and rose lawyers, daisy and sunflower lawyers,
as the sun sprinkles its salty light over the plots; at night,
            the moon rises like a white crow flying in eternal circles,
the stars spit old blue mucus—lawyers blooming among lawyers,
            suited in pink, lilacs, oranges, the soil healthy, dark, biblical
beneath their lawyer root-feet. They dig deep down into the earth,
            so far down their defenses are solid as stone. The judge
presides over the seasons. He of the morning cloth, he of the pit
            and tractor. Green and motorized. His honor the plough,
his honor the keeper of the books. One lawyer reflects more
            expressions than ripples in a water trough. His head a skull,
his mind an exactitude of inexactitudes. “Truth isn’t truth,”
            he would often be heard whispering to the beetles that punctuated
the documents of creation. Indeed, the rain excised no tax
            on him, this silly, ill-begotten snake who swore only to protect
the politicians politicking from stump to stump like magpies.
            When the day comes pure, cold against the volcanic solitude,
think of the low road that sinks beneath the river. No flies
            near the dead-spaces. Let’s not forget, justice isn’t human.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

SWEAT IS NO LONGER THE COIN OF THE LAND

by George Salamon

"Of all the days celebrated for one cause or another, there is not one which stands so conspicuously for the social advancement of the common people as the first Monday in September," Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, The New York Times, September 4, 1910


"While you're planning that Labor Day weekend family cookout or a last minute getaway to one of the world's best food cities, we're gearing up for some serious savings in the form of Labor Day 2018 sales," in "All Of the Labor Day 2018 Sales You Need To Know About," The Huffington Post, August 24, 2018


Who still loves ya, underpaid
Working stiffs of America?
Laboring on  assembly lines,
In the streets and sewers of cities,
In fields on farms, scrubbing
Hospital floors and cleaning
Offices in the towers of wealth.
You've been abandoned and deceived,
Promises were broken, leaving your
Hopes and expectations unrealized.
Sweat is no longer the coin of the land.
Fat cats who control the price at which
Your labor is bought and sold
Turned you into losers in
The marketplace they own.
Once celebrated as the backbone of
America, as heirs to Rosie the Riveter
And Joe Lunchpail, you've been
Dehumanized and deplored.
The bargain you made for that
Shot at the American Dream
Was shredded, equal opportunity for all
Became an unmentionable in the
Corridors of power and at the
Spectacle theater of the ballot box.
Things could be different, but you
Struggle to imagine a future that is
Different from what is.
Let's enlist in the task of
Building a people's democracy,
Inspired by a many-splendored Dream
Bigger than the one for the self and the few.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. once a strong union city.

PENNY ARCADE

by Phyllis Wax




Side        to        side                     
he     bounces
a shiny pinball
                ricocheting
bumper        to        bumper

We can’t take our eyes away

Around him they frantically
work the flippers                     
try to discreetly jiggle the table             
nudge      bump       nudge
but in the end he glances off
one surface        angles
onto another   I’m the best,
believe me   as he bounces from                 
a red bumper           the best
              as he hits a wall                                         
not in control, but neither is                           
anyone else

They keep trying                                       

hoping not to set off                         
a flashing TILT  TILT                                                   
GAME OVER
with yet another insider                   
bounced 
so sad

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Among the anthologies and journals in which her poetry has appeared are: The Widows’ Handbook, Birdsong, Spillway, Peacock Journal, Surreal Poetics, Naugatuck River Review, TheNewVerse.News, Portside, Star 82 Review. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, she has read in coffee houses, bars, libraries and on the radio. Her work has been exhibited with art quilts and weavings in a variety of venues around the state of Wisconsin as part of four poet/fiber artist collaborations. 

FOX NEWS REMEMBERS ARETHA FRANKLIN WITH PHOTO OF PATTI LABELLE

by Crystal Stone

like my summer school algebra students in the delta told me
I remind them of a brunette white girl in a Lifetime movie
that gets murdered. But she—the movie character—is dead
and I’m still in the classroom being somebody’s teacher
and ArethaPatti lives on if Patti inherits Aretha’s soul.
And that’s what everyone wants—like the ex-boyfriend
I literally forgot I fucked, or maybe loved, until he showed up
at my roller derby game a year after we stopped talking—
he learned Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” daydreamed I’d remember him
when I looked in the face of someone new. Fox News wanted that, too.
ArethaPatti isn’t dead. ArethaPatti can sing the National Anthem
at the next superbowl. ArethaPatti can Memphis the country
blues. ArethaPatti can steal the banjo from my tone-deaf dad and union
the coal miners fans. The drunk man who played checkers with me
on the corner of Main and Kellogg won’t ask if I’d like to stop
the game because I’m losing. Of course I don’t. We’re all losing,
even the winners. The ex-boyfriend is gone. I never notice
his face in the new faces. I just see the new man, his blue eyes, always
equally memorable when he leaves. And we don’t see young Aretha
in the corner, but Patti, and the subject of the headline is not about either of them,
anyway, like this poem isn’t about Fox News, or Aretha, or ArethaPatti,
or the summer school students in the delta, or the ex-boyfriends I forgot
despite how much I thought I loved them, or Tracy Chapman’s fast car,
or the man I played checkers with, or the fact that I lost to a man
who believed in love, but isn’t it funny how much they all have in common?

Crystal Stone writes most of her poetry roller skating at the park. Her favorite tea is jasmine or medicinal throat-coat; she's unsure. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, but she's most proud of her TEDx talk, "The Transformative Power of Poetry." Her first collection of poetry Knock-off Monarch is forthcoming from Dawn Valley Press this fall.

THE BEARS KNOW

by Linda Lerner

what the politicians & others don’t who

haven’t heard them scratching at their doors,

                         screamed when they looked out and

kept screaming after the bears, who’ve

come to warn them, are gone. 

And  isn’t it pretty to think so?

The bears don’t mean us harm when they come

into our backyards, dig in trash cans,

peer into open car windows looking for food,

the bears aren’t thinking about us at all;

If they  could create emojis we’d see

the sun filtered through dust particles,

small fires  starting up,  teary eyed

bewilderment at the browning grass, lack of berries,

and bugs, a hotter, dryer climate

We’d see a human face through a bear’s,

now one, then the other

Source: EarthJustice

Linda Lerner's A Dance Around the Cauldron, Lummox Press, 2017 is her most recent collection. She is the author of Yes, the Ducks Were Real and Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (NYQ Books) and a chapbook of poems inspired by nursery rhymes, Ding Dong the Bell Pussy in the Well. She previously published thirteen collections of poetry and twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her next collection, tentatively called, Taking the F Train, will be published by NYQ books in late 2018 or early 2019.

TRUTHS AND LEPIDOPTERA

by David Chorlton

Andrus Nichols in The Saintliness of Margery Kempe directed by Austin Pendleton at The Duke on 42nd Street. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

A hawk against the dawning clouds
moves high and dark
as the city underneath him
awakens. On this day the news
breaks with a louder
crack than usual, and even
the quail who spill out
from the neighbor’s bougainvillea
walk a nervous line.
The television screen lights up
with happiness and Earthly delights
before names
start to be named
and analysts dissect the crimes
they are suspected of. But it’s early
and the shadows of the palm trees
lie wet across the ground. It’s hard to believe
in such joy as advertisements show
while subterfuge and scheming are the order
of the day: also a day
in which lizards flash
across the back yard wall, hummingbirds
fly constantly
from bush to bush, and a Funereal Duskywing
trembles at  the Coral Bells
that silently ring the hours
rolling along the wash and up
the mountain to the ridge
where they rub their cheeks against
the timeless moon.

—

Another day: another cog
clicks in the universe. The sun rolls
into place. It’s hard to tell so early
whether that’s a Cabbage White or Southern
Dogface, but the nascent flowers on the milkweed
are a marker on the winged way
to truth.

—

The jasmine draws its power from the rain
recently fallen
and the air feels as though
it were smiling as we breathe it,
even in this tainted world
where sin remains popular
centuries past the age when heretics
were burned, although
defining it depends on which
side you’re on, and being accused
just generates more mystics
like Margery Kempe, who the more she was mocked
the more she believed she was right.
Some people believe
the sulfur floating on the scents just now
is someone’s soul; a proposition
kind enough to merit acceptance.
When in doubt
take beauty’s side, even
when the hawk marks its path
with a talon drawn across the midday sky.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications online and in print, and often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. A recent collection of poems is Bird on a Wire from Presa Press. The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, his translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavant. A new book Reading T. S. Eliot to a Bird is due from Hoot ‘n Waddle, based in Phoenix.

PRIORITIES

by Mary K O'Melveny

“Nabisco announced this week that it had redesigned  its Animal Crackers box. Responding to demands by PETA and other activists, the company’s new design features an uncaged, unbarred zebra, elephant, lion, giraffe and gorilla. PETA’s 2016 letter to the company stated, in part, ‘Circuses tear baby animals away from their mothers, lock animals in cages and chains and cart them from city to city.’ Nabisco’s CEO announced the design change as part of the company’s effort ‘to make the brand relevant for years to come.’”  The New York Times, August 22, 2018.

More than 2,000 children were separated from their parents at the border. After a judge ordered the U.S. government to promptly reunite the families, the government claimed it would be nearly impossible to do so. —“The Chaos of Reunification,” a podcast from “The Daily” at The New York Times, August 24, 2018. A month after a court-mandated deadline, 528 families are still separated. —Boston Mail, August 24, 2018.

At last, the bars are gone.
We can step out, the world
waiting to greet us.  Long
frowns turned to smiles, tears hurled
back to where they belong –
some other’s countenance swirled
with sadness.  We go headlong,
no longer imperiled,

toward open spaces,
no longer on display,
shoved into cramped spaces
waiting for someone to say
we have rights too!  Our faces
fill with joy, no longer prey
for bigots who disgrace us,
who would keep us away

from happier lives, freed
of anguish, hatreds, pain
of separations, filled with need
for kindness.  A campaign
of outraged voices agreed,
pursuit of justice was plain
(though not all would concede).
We are no more detained!

So, congratulations all
who fought for us so long.
Victories can come, large or small,
to those who remain strong,
fists raised, knees down.  Recall
each one who fought along
with us for enlightened protocols.
At last, the bars are gone!

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals.  Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age will be published by Finishing Line Press in September, 2018.

EXHALATION

by Pepper Trail

"The T***p administration has hailed its overhaul of federal pollution restrictions on coal-burning power plants as creating new jobs, eliminating burdensome government regulations and ending what President T***p has long described as a 'war on coal.' The administration’s own analysis, however, revealed on Tuesday that the new rules could also lead to as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030 from an increase in the extremely fine particulate matter that is linked to heart and lung disease, up to 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory problems, a rise in bronchitis, and tens of thousands of missed school days. "—The New York Times, August 21, 2018

Edenton, North Carolina


Mother, your breath shallow and slow, almost gone
Barely moving the sheet on your hospice bed

You are reluctant, now, to inhale
To bring in the world, its noise and its pain

So much easier to breathe out, to gentle
And at the end of that emptying, to stop

But the stubborn body kicks, the heart turns over
Begins again, will not yet let you go

Mother, it’s all right.  You are strong
Nothing, in the end, will stop your dying


Ashland, Oregon


The world, the west, is on fire
Vancouver to Yosemite, all tinder, alight

Halfway between, we must breathe
What air there is, what we are given

When we speak, smoke is what we say
And so we have stopped speaking

The mountains are gone, the valley
Through the windows, everything

The smoke is where we live now
What we breathe in, and then out


Washington, DC


He does not mind the world, the President
Thoughtless, he inhales its floods and its flames

Exhales this atmosphere in which we live
Gives us, this week, the “Affordable Clean Energy Plan”

Not Affordable, or Clean, or Energy, or a Plan
Simply another act in a lifelong history of harm

Power plants, cars, planes, you all and me
Together, we contribute: 408 parts per million

We are told there is nothing to be done
We are told there is no choice.  Just breathe

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. In his spare time, he leads natural history tours around the world.

IN THE DENISOVA CAVE

by T R Poulson

Once upon a time, two early humans of different ancestry met at a cave in Russia. Some 50,000 years later, scientists have confirmed that they had a daughter together. DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The discovery, reported in Nature, gives a rare insight into the lives of our closest ancient human relatives.Neanderthals and Denisovans were humans like us, but belonged to different species. —BBC, August 22, 2018

This at last is bone of my bones

—Genesis 2:23

The wind blows, brittle as a bird bone needle
in this cave where skeletons dance in layers,
time folds in eons, and we seek the seed, dull
as the Beginning, a stone bracelet our prayer
to grandfathers unknown. It must have begun
with fire, the flames that made flesh tender,
laid bare the bones of beasts, broken, undone,
crying. The flames that twisted up like slender
ribbons, teasing, heating. Here, a strange man
enters, here a woman’s bones turn away a suitor
like her, here bone meets bone. Here, the clan—

Genes spiral, twist, through bones, as computers
tell of fire, of seed. We see an orphan long bone
splinter. We see ourselves, unmixed, alone.

T R Poulson, a University of Nevada, Reno alum, lives in San Carlos, California. Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, The Meadow, Trajectory, J Journal, and others.

THE PRIEST BELIEVES

by Joan Colby

Pope Francis with Cardinal McCarrick. File photo by Jonathan Newton-Pool/Getty Images.

“I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” [Pope] Francis said. “The failure of ecclesiastical authorities – bishops, religious superiors, priests and others – adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments.” —The Guardian, August 25, 2018

The host in the ciborium is transfigured

By words into Christ’s body,

The wine to blood.

He drinks ceremonially,

Offers the communicants

The chalice of redemption.

He believes in vocation,

In the holy calling

Of the spirit. He reads

His breviary, recites the

Apostles' Creed.

The sacristy where he dons

The vestments. The boys in lace

Surplices, their voices

Not yet deep as echoing wells.

Christ forgives all sins, even these.

He thinks of the thieves on the crosses.

The promise of paradise.

Of John the beloved disciple

And Leonardo who knew so well

How to paint that yearning.

“Suffer the little children,” Jesus said.

All who repent will be absolved

The priest thinks of Augustine

Who grappled with midnight angels

And prayed “Lord make me chaste,

But not yet.”

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 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), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

ALTAR BOY

by Catherine Chandler




how I would shake
confessing venial sin

in that dark space
behind that sliding door

to Father
Father Son and Holy Ghost—

an apple pilfered
from the cellar bin

a cuss word slip-up
a neglected chore

a schoolyard scuffle or a lie 
a boast—

while he who consecrated
water   wine

who baptized babies
visited the sick

was fucking me           though they
would reassign

him      allegations never seemed
to stick

because whose word was sacred
his or mine

my lexicon too simple             tongue
and dick

the bishop kicked the reverend
upstairs

before he died            but sent
his thoughts and prayers

Catherine Chandler is the author of four collections of poetry, including Lines of Flight, shortlisted for the Poets' Prize, and The Frangible Hour, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Currently living in Saint-Lazare-de-Vaudreuil, Quebec, she was reared in Wilkes-Barre, PA, in the Diocese of Scranton.

ON DUTY

by Pam Davenport

Celeste Ayala: “Police officer who breastfed ‘smelly and dirty’ malnourished baby is PROMOTED for incredible gesture” —The Mirror (UK) 23 August 2018

Headline says dirty
though I don’t see dirty,
I see baby,
I see lines in Celeste’s brow
between her dark eyes above shadows––
for she is a mother.
Baby is dark and pure,
latched fast onto a policewoman’s
creamy bursting breast.
Hungry and malnourished,
we grasp this picture.
We lie in filth,
cockroaches burrow into our ears,
rats gnaw our limp arms,
none of our mothers want this.
A TV station displays the wrong
soul singer, may think all babies
are the same if unclean.
All babies are the same.
All babies are exactly different.
It is hard to latch onto anything,
so much we cannot grasp,
yet this baby knows what to do.
Celeste knows what to do.



Pam Davenport dreams of being a cowboy. Or cowgirl. Luckily, she lives in Arizona. Sadly, she is too old. Her poems have been published in Nimrod, Tinderbox, Poetry of the American Southwest, Chiron, Snapdragon, Rougarou, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Four Chambers and Bared: An Anthology of Bras and Breasts.

THE WITCHES

by Tricia Knoll

Cartoon source: Cagle

Some brandish torches to burn
rotting cabins in their narrow path.
Some stir pots out of curiosity

rather than rancor.
Some fly the wood winds
and hear songs in cloud bustle.
Some pray over their dinners.
Others feed on unicorn mushrooms.
Some wear fairytale pink
and giggle like droughted streams
over mossy rocks.
Some live in the mouths
of the foxglove or of liars.
Whatever witch you chase,
know that not all are evil.
Some tell the truth.

Tricia Knoll thinks witches are getting a bad rap in all this yelling about witch hunts. At least one is known to guard the gold at the end of the rainbow. Knoll's most recent collection of poetry is How I Learned To Be White (Antrim House, 2018).

TRUTH IS

by David Spicer 

"Truth isn't truth." —Rudy Giuliani

If Truth isn’t Truth, what is it in this Twilight Zone of Lies?

A woman in a red dress who carries a tote bag of secret tapes?

Or a ghoul defending the King Kong of Truth’s desperate enemy?

Truth is Beauty, Keats said two hundred years ago.

Truth is in the mouth of the speaker mouthed to a mime of memes.

Truth is your mother, your mother said, offering you her Judas-goat
     milk.

Twenty women whirling in a field of tulips you lie in every morning
     is Truth.

The Grand Canyon at sunset echoing your prayers you recite on your
     rug.

Heartbeats between the breaths you breathe before you take a 
     morning jog.

I met Truth once in the guise of a beautiful femme fatale on the bed in
     my trailer.

She said, I just pity-loved you, clod, and you think we were lovers?

Truth is, that was her truth, truth is, it wasn’t pleasant, truth is, I’m 
     not over it.

Truth will knock your block off and demolish your stone-cold cities.

Truth will break your soul of week knees and tell you it did you a 
     solid.

Truth is, tell me a truth that doesn’t hurt and I’ll buy you a shot of 
     Truth vodka.

You’ll swig it like a liquid potato and savor it, you’ll swivel your head 
     and squint

your eyes in twisting pain that guts your gullet. Then you’ll make a 
     sound

like air escaping from a tire that’s tired from too much road. You’ll 
     feel good.

Now that’s Truth. Truth isn’t what you want it to be. Truth is what it 
     wants to be.

Truth is your grandmother standing naked in the kitchen in front of 
     you and you’ve

never seen a naked woman before and you don’t know what you’re
     seeing. It’s Truth, baby.

Truth is ugly, a bomb victim said that to me the other day when I
     visited him in the ICU.

Truth is callous. Your brother stealing your $600 while you’re
     sleeping, dreaming of beauty.

Dreaming of the time he outraced some knucklehead on the freeway 
     driving a Charger.

Truth was, your brother’s Chevy packed truth in its carbs and pistons
     and exhaust pipes.

Truth was, it wasn’t a chick magnet like the salesman said it would be.
     That was his truth.

My truth? I don’t know. Truth is the last thing I hope to see or 
     listen to before I disappear.

No, if truth isn’t truth, beauty isn’t beauty, ugly isn’t ugly, nothing is
     nothing but empty words

spinning from a lie peddler, a ghoul defending the King Kong of Lies.
     Truth is, his day

is coming. Truth is, it’ll be welcomed. Truth is, truth is death and it’ll 
     kill you where you stand.

David Spicer has published poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Oddball Magazine, The Literary Nest,The Tipton Poetry Journal, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press), and five chapbooks, the latest of which is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press), released in August of 2017. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.