THOSE IN THE LIGHT DON'T SEE THOSE IN THE DARK

by George Salamon

The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies. . . . The sinking of the vessels, which survivors say were carrying Ethiopians, is the latest tragedy to occur on the risky route used by African migrants seeking work in the Middle East. —News24, January 31, 2019. Photo: People collect bodies on Wednesday along a beach in Obock, Djibouti, after two migrant boats capsized off the coast. — AFP/VNA, January 3, 2019.

"I lost massive amounts of money doing this job. " —President T***p to The New York Times, January 31, 2019


For forty-eight hours here in
The heartland ice and snow
And arctic cold stopped
America's wheels from turning.
Nothing stopped the mouths of
America's rich and powerful,
These time-bombs to the planet's
Survival, these Attilas the Hun to
Its peoples' welfare, from the
Usual lying and whining,
While the poor, the homeless,
The nomadic dispossessed in its
Cities, on its borders, adrift at sea,
Can only live in imaginary places, or,
As migrants in rickety boats, drown
In the frozen seas of the human heart.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. He thanks Bertolt Brecht for the title.

SONNET FOR GOVERNOR NORTHAM

by Diane Elayne Dees





I had to shine my shoes that day. I might
have inadvertently smeared polish on my face.
I don’t recall—but I’m more or less contrite
(for those who get all worked up about race).
I know that I’m a doctor of neurology,
but I have a lot of brain fog and confusion.
That photo in my yearbook’s an anomaly;
it may even be an optical illusion.
I may have donned a baptismal-like robe—
pure white (and perhaps it had a hood)—
and though I’m trying really hard to probe
my memory, it isn’t very good.
In summary, I’m the short guy. No—the tall!
But wait.....I think I wasn’t there at all.


Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

THIRST

by Mary K O'Melveny

FOUR NO MORE DEATHS VOLUNTEERS FOUND GUILTY FOR PROVIDING LIFE-SAVING HUMANITARIAN AID ON “TRAIL OF DEATH” IN ARIZONA DESERT —No More Deaths, January 18, 2019

I.
What do most of us know of it?
Safe in our homes, cars, streets, sidewalks.
Plastic water bottles piled up,
filling the bellies of sperm whales.

We are half filled with liquids. Yet,
when water vanishes in an
eye blink, thirst is just death’s first sign.
A face reddens. A tongue swells. Limbs

cool, cramp. A brain aches. Eyes sink,
as if they might find liquids still
sloshing about under shrinking skin.
Deluge dreams become delusions.


II.
An Arizona desert turns crime scene.
Not because bodies of immigrants
lie scattered about, bone-thin hands
still clutching their rosaries,

but because someone has placed jugs
of water, cans of beans along
a ragged trail hoping to stave
off more gruesome deaths.

Four women may spend prison time
for desecration of a refuge.
Their water cans ran afoul of
the pristine nature of the place.

III.
Perhaps bodies gathering dust
along an arroyo where final
prayers for salvation once formed
do not amount to misdemeanors.

As dying travelers shed hats,
shirts, backpacks, photographs, sandals,
rangers scooped up remnants of lost
lives like so much tourist trash.

There is no one left to pay fines
for property abandonment
except earnest water bearers.
Our thirst for punishment wins out.


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 is available from Finishing Line Press.

SLUM LORD

by Steve Deutsch

This is what an eviction threat from Donald Trump looks like. (From a 1987 case involving an elderly couple living in the building at 100 Central Park South.) —CNN, March 28, 2016

You send the beef
in bowling shirts
and shitkicker boots
every Sunday morning
to collect from the perennial poor
in the claptraps
you own on Stone Avenue.

Rumor has it
the hobbled wretch
who begs at the five and dime
offered lip
instead of money
and they showed him out
through a third floor window.

Dad’s mom lived
on the fourth floor of #720.
A refugee from the shtetl
she was well prepared
to live without heat
or running water,
to navigate the teeter-totter stairs
in the half light of a 40 watt bulb,
to coexist with roaches and rats,
the acrid smell of cabbage,
untended garbage,
and the methodical cruelty
that humans without hope
inflict on one another.

I know you.
You have the health
and building people
in your ample hip pocket
and while you might
hire some people to spit
shine your shoes
and some to break legs,
you spend every Sunday night
counting and recounting
the stack of smalls,
the nickels and dimes—
because for you,
Donny,
a sumptuous view
of the New York skyline
can never compare
to the heft of a roll
of nickels.

Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble,  TheNewVerse.News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His chapbook Perhaps You Can will be published in 2019 by Kelsay Press.

YOUR OWN PERSONAL HITLER

by Alan Catlin

Pictured above is one of three watercolor paintings attributed to the former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler which were seized by shortly before they were due to go under the hammer on Thursday. “We received an online tip-off that the paintings are fakes,” Patricia Bremer, a police spokeswoman, told journalists. The watercolours had a reserve price of €4,000 (£3,450) each, and the Kloss auction house said interest was expected from collectors in the UK.“In my view they have no artistic value, it's simply adequate craftsmanship,” Hans-Joachim Maeder, a spokesman for the auction house said. “If you walk down the Seine and see 100 artists, 80 will be better than this. The value of these objects and the media interest is because of the name at the bottom.” —The Telegraph (UK), January 25, 2019

I thought I might have
dreamed a story I saw on
the eleven o’clock news
until I downloaded the
broadcast on line.

What I heard was,

An auction house in
Europe was selling
watercolors signed by
Hitler.

And while, the general thinking
was, these paintings had "no
artistic merit" whatsoever,
it was thought the signature
would be of major interest.

The auction house hoped
to make a lot of money for
the owners . . .

And I wondered:
Were they planning to advertise?

Possess your very own Hitler.

And if you owned a Hitler,
what would you do with it?

Hang it on a wall?

Store it under lock and key,
only showing it on special occasions . . .

And what would those occasions be?

Your own, personal Hitler.

Think about it.

Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.

WINTER FRUIT

"Empire" star Jussie Smollett was hospitalized after “a possible racially charged” and homophobic assault and battery, Chief Anthony Guglielmi of the Chicago Police Department said in a statement Tuesday. —USA Today, January 29, 2019

James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News .

NO ANSWERS

by Marsha Owens

The poet said she was born “to look, to listen.” I envy her self-awareness, her certainty. Still night lifted, and I languished under warm morning blankets, listened to my breath coming and going, remembered each day’s name, not marked by miracles, yet reliably present after the darkness. Warning-less, reality tromped the sunshine. I felt dragged like trash into the ugliness, the unholiness of the day. “Let them get loans,” the rich man said, “let them find food if they can and insulin. Let them struggle like I’ve never had to. Let them work for a living, like I’ve never had to. I will feed at the trough off of their backsides, a flagrant godfather with not a shred of good intent. Let them be content.”

I screamed into my soul asking what am I supposed to do? For what was I born, dear poet? I’m sure she answered in the silence folding down around the dawn.

Marsha Owens lives and writes in Richmond, VA.

SHUTDOWN SHUT-UP

by David Feela

Cartoon by Mike Marland

We talked, then complained.
Now the why about what happened

deserves a reasonable explanation.
Fifteen days seems ample time

for tunneling under his wall of
obfuscation, finally into sunlight.

See the paunchy groundhog,
still afraid of his own shadow.

Tell him no, we’ll have no more
weeks of political winter.


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. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A Collection of his essays, How Delicate These Arches, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press will release his new chapbook, Little Acres, in April 2019. He's tired of winter.

FLY IT AT HALF-MAST ALWAYS

by Rick Kempa

"The New Normal" by Pat Bagley

A few AP headlines, January 27, 2019:

Search on for Louisiana man suspected in 5 deaths

1 dead, 1 wounded after shooting near Atlantic City

Police: 5 people shot overnight at Indianapolis bar

Teen arrested in shooting death of another Blue Springs MO teen

MSU police: Woman shoots herself at campus shooting range

Reno police: Man killed when shot multiple times in vehicle

New Haven Police investigate shooting of pizza delivery man

Fly it at half-mast always
because we are never done grieving,
because, one by one by one,
we are killing each other daily.

Fly it at half-mast
to declare our permanent sorrow,
the holes in our hearts, the horror
that we are no longer horrified.

Fly it to mark the fallen,
yesterday’s, today’s, tomorrow’s,
ten thousand exes on the streets,
a million feet of crime scene tape.

Because we are willing to sacrifice
our neighbors, our children
to defend our right to own,
to be killing machines,

because we fall so short of what we
could be and refuse to be, because
our numbness is complicity,
fly it at half-mast always.

Poet and essayist Rick Kempa lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he has recently finished his thirtieth and final year of teaching at Western Wyoming College. Other work of his on the themes of social justice and the lack thereof has appeared in Haight-Ashbury Review, Los Angeles Review, Little Patuxent Review, The J Journal, and elsewhere. His latest poetry collection is Ten Thousand Voices (Oakland: Littoral Press). 

WOMEN'S WAVE 2019

by Donna Katzin

A contingent of Jewish women and supporters march to Freedom Plaza in Washington on Saturday. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post, January 19, 2019)

In the shadow of the Thurgood Marshall Court House,
above the African Burial Ground,
we come from our own Egypts
our Red Seas, deserts of despair,
wildernesses of silence.

Rivers from centuries and continents
some resplendent, some reluctant,
converge, water this wave.

As the rally wakes to Aretha’s reveille—
Respect—the youngest demonstrator,
on her mother’s shoulders,
thrusts her tiny fist
over the shivering crowd.        

A black bearded brother in a pink pussy hat
snaps bare fingers, bobs to refrains
of Sweet Honey in the Rock.

And from the Italian contingent –
Ravioli, ravioli,
Give me my birth controli!

In kente cloth, a grandmother from Nigeria
waves her sign: Human rights
don’t stop at the border.

Our parka-ed multi-colored bodies—
gay, straight, trans—sway
to the Resistance Revival Chorus,
do not feel the cold.

Millenials contemplate the question:
Ever wonder what you would have done during slavery,
the holocaust, civil rights?
You’re doing it right now!

Together we remember those who march with us:
Sandra Bland, Mother Jones, Dolores Huerta,
Ethel Rosenberg, Fanny Lou Hamer,
who taught us: Solidarity is
not a spectator sport.

Rise up, Sisters.
Democracy is a dance.
Our movement is a wave.
We are a revolution.

It’s our damn turn.


Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa. A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing. Published in journals and sites including TheNewVerse.News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

AFTER HEARING OF ANOTHER MIGRANT CARAVAN HEADING FOR THE U.S.

by Steve Dieffenbacher

A group of 376 Central Americans was arrested in southwest Arizona, the vast majority of them families who dug short, shallow holes under a barrier to cross the border, authorities said Friday. The group dug under a steel barrier in seven spots about 10 miles east of a border crossing in San Luis and made no effort to elude immigration agents. They included 176 children. The unusually large group was almost entirely from Guatemala. They were taken to Yuma after entering the country Monday. —KTLA, January 18, 2019

For years in our childhood
              we came upon them
in barrancas and bajadas,
              curiosity in our hearts,
their huts huddled
              in foliage.
streams running below
              with rocks
to promises of water,
              shelters
thatched on land
              they’d never own,
children staring,
              afraid,
wearing only a shirt.
              Behind them, always
a dirt floor under bare
              walls,
crude mats and pots,
              an emptiness
no rapist or killer would touch.
              On buses
the women sat stone-faced
              with baskets,
black beans and plantains to sell,
              men outside
bent over bundles of sticks
              faces in shadow.
Now the people stretch north
              from fear to fear,
faith lost in the known places
              they never
wanted to leave behind
               just to live.

Steve Dieffenbacher lived in Latin American for more than a dozen years during his childhood, most of them in Central America. His full-length book of poems The Sky Is a Bird of Sorrow was published by Wordcraft of Oregon in 2012. The collection won a ForeWord Reviews Bronze Award for poetry, and a poem in the book, “Night Singer, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico,” was named a 2013 Spur Award poetry finalist by the Western Writers of America. He also has three chapbooks: At the Boundary (2001), Universe of the Unsaid (2010), and Intimations (2018). He lives in Medford, Oregon.

TIT FOR TAT

by Tricia Knoll

She calls it. The government’s down for the count.
The structure is collapsing. That’s the State
of the Union, and she issues the invitations.
A move on the board, not unlike his moves, play
as you go. This knight rider woman
goes for the jump over. She’s has played
this game for decades. Knows all the moves.
Has played against the best. Calls the moves.
Three tilts make a match. We’re at two
and counting. Tit for tat


Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who is delighting in seeing a woman call Trump out.

FAREWELL, NAMESAKE I NEVER KNEW

by George Salamon

"For roughly a decade, the land snail species Achatinella apexfulva, which used to be plentiful on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, was believed to be down to a single survivor. His name was George, and he lived his last days alone in a terrarium in Kailua. Hawaii . . . but on Jan. 1, George died. . . . His death was symbolic of a steep decline in the population of land snails." —The New York Times, January 10, 2019  Photo Credit: Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources

I wish I had met you, on a
Stroll on a beach in Oahu,
One George and another.
Two anachronisms in
The age of speed.
Your species and mine
Face extinction, mine
By its own hand, yours
By predators that hunt you.
I read that you looked like a
"Swirled scoop of mocha fudge."
Ours would have been a sweet
Friendship, and I would have
Watched you as a buddy does,
And wondered if you knew we
Were both of a dying kind.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

STEVEN SPIELBERG VISITS AN ISLAND STILL WITHOUT ELECTRICITY IN THE MOUNTAINS TO PITCH HIS REVIVAL OF WEST SIDE STORY

by Mariana Mcdonald

"Steven Spielberg Met With Puerto Ricans About 'West Side Story' Concerns. At a town hall with University of Puerto Rico students and faculty, the director, flanked by screenwriter Tony Kushner, said his remake of the musical will strive for authenticity. Critics say the problems go deeper than that." —Hollywood Reporter, January 15, 2019

Steven, do not bring it back.

Once was enough. Too much,
in fact. Those melodies
for Natalie and Rita—

their perfect brilliance stuck,
made slurs standard,
made us Aunt Jemima.

Staccato steps
Little-Black-Sambo’d
our dignity and dreams.

Don’t bring it back. Instead,
make new sounds.
Tell new stories.

Let the dancers
razzle dazzle
to a voice

you don’t yet know.

Mariana Mcdonald is a bicultural poet, fiction writer, journalist, and editor. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Lunch Ticket, and Poesía en Vuelo, fiction in So to Speak and Cobalt, creative nonfiction in Longridge Review, and nonfiction in In Motion. She edited the 2017 International Latino Book Award-winning bilingual memoir Cartas a Karina by Oscar López Rivera. She is active in social justice movements and the writing community.