ACHILLES IN MEMORIAM

by Janice D. Soderling

Graphic: Odysseus With Achilles In The Underworld. Attica red-figure vase, ca 480 B.C. When Odysseus visits the Underworld in The Odyssey, Achilles tells him, “Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.”

Eulogies are written by the living,

never by the dead,

who would probably have said

something quite different about life and giving.

Janice D. Soderling has often published at The New Verse News over the years.  Her most recent collections are War: Make that City Desolate and Rooms and Closets.

FATHER, WAS THE PRICE TOO HIGH?

by Sharon Lopez Mooney

"The Wall," a painting by Salam Khalili, the subject of today's poem.

History accosts him with the nothing

of childhood he could have done differently, 

caught by father in a web of conniving for money, 

clever methods for work, but he knew, 

got smarter as he aged, sold his knowledge, his charm

became a word and brushstroke warrior of defiant freedom

not for father but in spite, 

bold for his people, his children, 

against other fathers who would not.

 

Now afar, he craves Jerusalem, sensuous city seized and torn,

she bled through his veins, bound him to her, 

his home where he is not allowed to return,

punishment for refusing to be silent, 

A cost too great?

Skeleton bones rattle in with every step he takes

as he talks over business with his son, he feels

the ache of those years where war against war, its demand,

its seduction, took from him a grave toll, his son, a daughter, his family.

 

He burns with unanswerable questions

could he have done it differently? Did he do it again? Sell 

himself, this time to flight, to safety, to promised freedom,

Did I, father?

in ‘this land of the free, home of the brave’ where he still craves

freedom, the past sears his memory into ash, blows it 

across fecund black earth, cool, quiet, safe,

Am I doing it again, father? 

is the price once more, too great?

invisible under the fascinating mask he wears, the scars

throb faithfully reminding, history is what he made,

and history married him to the destiny of his people 

where each vow could have been a thousand others.

He lays in this lost midnight, awake, feeling the pulse

of the past pounding in his body

praying the price is not his soul.

Author’s Note: Salam Khalili was a Palestinian poet, painter, and journalist in Jerusalem before, during, and after the 1967 "Six Day War." He was never a soldier, but knew and interacted with many independent fighters against Israel. He and his wife felt there was great danger to their family and so sent their children away to be protected by nuns at a monastery. Editor-in-Chief of Jerusalem’s Al-Quds Daily, he published in 1970 an uncensored story claiming a secret deal to give up Jerusalem. As a result, Salam was imprisoned in Israel for seven years. After Amnesty International and a group of journalists worked to have him released, Salam was deported from Israel. We met in California where he settled, and we became intimates. Although he was never able to find his way into written English, he remained a master poet and story teller in oral English. He asked me to pass on his stories in my own original poetry. This poem is one of them. Salam died in 2015, never having been allowed to return to his beloved Jerusalem. 

Sharon Lopez Mooney is a retired Interfaith Minister who worked in the death and dying field. She now lives in Mexico and visits northern California where her family still thrives. Mooney received a California Arts Council Grant for a rural poetry series; co-published a regional arts journal; owned an alternative literature service; and, produced poetry readings and performances. Mooney’s poems are or will be published in The MacGuffin, Fallow Deer, The Muddy River Poetry Review, The Voices Project, The Avalon Literary Review, Adelaide International Magazine, Galway Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, California Quarterly, Hags on Fire, The Ricochet Review, Roundtable Literary Journal, and the anthologies Calyx: Women and Aging, Cold Lake Anthology, Words of Power, Songs to the Sun, Poetry is a Mountain, Smoke & Myrrors (UK).

PHIL OCHS IN SPRING 2021

by David Chorlton

Photo credit: Phoenix Rescue Mission: “Last summer, record-breaking heat took the lives of 494 men and women in Arizona. As a community, we need to step up and reach out to those who may not know how deadly our summer can be.”

Wake up; check for rain; the daily high’s

a body count and rubbing the eyes

won’t move the images away

of yesterday’s encampment

winding around two downtown blocks

in plain sight of the sky.

It’s so hot all

I can do is to pour

this bottle of water over

my legs, and then

another, and

then another. It isn’t even news today

 

with nine semi-automatic victims

in California and

a gunman’s high-capacity rage

recalled by his ex-wife:

I'm going to beat him up, I'm going

to kill the son-of-a-gun;

Sometimes people say

things like that

when they're mad. The bedding is makeshift

on Eleventh Avenue, the clothing

T-shirt bright,

and blankets soften

the pavement in varying shades

of poverty. Sometimes a face

floats out from among

the collage of nylon and humanity:

remember it. Remember just

this one on behalf of them all. Remember

the song: And there but for fortune,

may go you

or go  I

 

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. A new book, Unmapped Worlds, featuring older poems that had suffered neglect, is out from FutureCycle Press. He recently took up watercoloring again, after twenty dry years.

IN UFO NEWS, A VILLANELLE

by Jeannie E. Roberts

 

A spherical shape was noted in flight. 

The object was dark; it moved back and forth. 

Scanned above water, it dropped out of sight.

The strange craft was tracked with IR* at night. 

The vehicle plunged, then altered its course. 

A spherical shape was noted in flight.

The video’s rendered in raw black and white. 

It splashed. It splashed, the audio reports. 

Scanned above water, it dropped out of sight.

Mark bearing and range, strategic advice. 

The U.S. Defense confirmed the clip’s source. 

A spherical shape was noted in flight.

 

Insight has teamed to discern greater heights. 

The Pentagon’s deemed it a special task force. 

Scanned above water, it dropped out of sight.

Intrigue orbits the phenomena of life. 

An archive exists, the “UAP* Drawer.” 

A spherical shape was noted in flight. 

Scanned above water, it dropped out of sight.

  

*Author's Notes: IR: Infrared; UAP: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Jeannie E. Roberts has authored seven books, including her newest chapbook As If Labyrinth—Pandemic Inspired Poems (Kelsay Books, 2021). She's listed in the Poets & Writers Directory and is a poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, you can find her drawing and painting, or outdoors photographing her natural surroundings. Roberts is an animal lover, a nature enthusiast, an equal rights advocate, and an ally of marginalized people.

THE CICADA

 

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who lives on a boat in the Potomac River. His first collection, The Blind Loon: A Bestiary, was published by Able Muse Press in 2017.

MIGRANT

by Matt Witt

Green-Tailed Towhee Taking Bath by Matt Witt

This green-tailed towhee

that weighs about an ounce

migrated more than 1,000 miles

from its wintering home in Mexico

to its annual nesting ground

in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument,

where I watched it taking a bath at a tiny spring.

 

It migrates every year,

eluding hawks and falcons,

braving snowstorms and lightning,

never losing its way.

 

This bird is a lot stronger

than I’ll ever be.

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer from Talent, Oregon. His website is MattWittPhotography.com.

DID JUSTICE NOT MOAN?

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

An encounter in 2020 between a Jewish couple in Ijzim, Israel (south of Haifa) and the displaced Palestinians in whose house that couple has lived since 1948 when the Palestinians were denied the right to return to their village and property. Photo from an Al Jazeera video report. At YouTube, you can click on “SHOW MORE” to read an English translation of the Arabic narration.

Did their mothers tell them

Take whatever you want?

Did their fathers say

By any means necessary?

Did the god they concocted assure them

That they mattered more than anyone else?

Did the historians of erasure argue

That until they arrived the land was uninhabited?

Did the cartographers of eradication draw beautiful maps

Haunted by ghost villages?

Do the politicians they vote for promise

A sanitized future cleansed of the Other?

When they faced those they had dispossessed

And claimed not to give them a second thought

Did justice not moan?

Did righteousness not weep?

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His new book is At the Driveway Guitar Sale: Poems on Aging, Memory, Morality (Main Street Rag Publishing). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife, Cynthia, in northern California.

PREAMBLE TO DEATH

by Monica Korde

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, ARE DYING.

Here with only hours to spare, air 

leaving the lungs, families rush 

from hospital to hospital 

begging for a breath, for a bed 

while opulent hotel rooms 

offer a hundred covid beds 

for members of justice.

Here votes matter, deaths don’t. 

Politicians ride chariots, strut 

through reckless rallies and 

use words liberally:

“Nothing to panic. It’s all imaginary.”

“No need for masks, why worry?”

“After all, everyone has to die eventually”.

Here the gravedigger works 24-hour shifts, 

his gloves left behind to 

avoid the spade from slipping. 

It is Ramzan but he must have water before 

he goes on- turning the earth, getting the body

removing it from the makeshift ambulance 

burying it faster than he can count. 

The priest works equally—

he prays for a hundred pyres, stokes the fires, and 

this pandemic pandit of sorts walks round-the-clock 

through this burning mess

roll calling names as the flames get warm enough. 

Here the departed lie outside 

community-built crematoriums. 

No marigold, no silk, no sandalwood 

to adorn the tired bodies. 

Carefully wrapped in outrage, in anguish

they find kinship and unity

these souls on stand-by

waiting for an undignified exit. 

 

ENDLESSLY EMERGING IN BODY BAGS ON GURNEYS—ONE, TWO, THREE DEATHS PER MINUTE, OVER FOUR THOUSAND IN 24 HOURS—ON THIS DAY OF MAY 2021, WE MOURN IN THE MAKING OF THIS REPUBLIC AND QUESTION HEREBY HOW TO ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION. 

Monica Korde, is a poet from India, currently living in Belmont, California. Along with writing poems, she reads at several virtual poetry readings hosted in the Bay area and regularly co-hosts an online poetry open mic. Her poetry has appeared online on the website of San Francisco Public Library, on YouTube published by local poetry open mics, and in anthologies. 

 

WE HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO DIE

by Tricia Knoll

Explosions in Gaza City on Tuesday. Last week, New York Times journalist Iyad Abuheweila saw their destructive power up close at his home in Gaza. He quotes his brother Assad as saying, during the bombardment, "We have no option but to die." Photo credit: Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, May 21, 2021

This headline arrived in a tweet,

restating the obvious fate 

we forget in warm sun, 

when the lilacs bloom, as my dog

chases a bouncing green ball

into a clump of trees. 

 

Then his story. The bombs. The blasts.

Newlyweds who lost everything they had.

His mother pleading her sons to stay 

in the same room so they could die together.

Their nights allow no hope for sleep,

dreams cancelled, the nervous

edge of dawn slicing open new visions

of destruction. Rockets and airstrikes.

Airstrikes and drones. Someone whistles.

Another chants God is great.

 

Buddhists tell us we are of the nature to die. 

Is it hubris for me to believe I will not die

today? What gratitude do I owe for the bloom

of the peony, the trust with which I put 

the tomato plant in soil? Do I know

how far I am from Gaza? 

How close? 

Tricia Knoll is a poet living on the unceded land of the Abenaki people in Vermont, land divided into rectangles of ownership. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies. Her new book Checkered Mates is now available.

THE POEM THAT LANDS ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE

by Janet Bowdan

Jac Zagoory Rocket Pen Holder

I forgot what I was going to ask,  

just a question that popped out of my head 

the moment I went into the kitchen, 

and Blair laughed saying I was entitled 

to a day off and maybe so 

 

but what if this is not the day 

what if this is the day I can write about Israel 

firing back on Gaza, the two women who died 

running for shelter, the military targeting Hamas 

tunnels but bringing down buildings, children 

dying, maybe this is the day I can make them stop 

killing each other if they can only stop— 

the poem that lands on Netanyahu’s breakfast 

so he has to read it, how his vow to make 

Hamas pay “a very heavy price” is a weight 

in his throat; he tries to swallow it down 

with coffee. It is not Hamas who’s paying, 

his orange juice says, his bagel with cream cheese. 

We’re all paying. Make it stop, the poem 

says before it backflips and speeds like a rocket 

to the Hamas leaders: make it stop. And it lights up 

the sky but harms no one. 

 

Janet Bowdan's poems have appeared in APR, Best American Poetry, The Rewilding Anthology, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Making Progress came out in 2019 from Finishing Line Press. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband and son (who recently had a zoom bar mitzvah), as well as a cat and a chinchilla. 

TURN OUT THE LIGHTS?

by Gil Hoy

Bill Bramhall's editorial cartoon for Thursday, May 20, 2021, as Republican leaders turn against a bipartisan bill to create a January 6 commission for the U.S. Capitol insurrection. (Bill Bramhall/New York Daily News)

Nothing lasts forever.

Democracy’s

 

No exception.

 

We’ve arrived at 

That critical hour. 

 

The moment 

We’ve all been

 

Dreading. 

 

Like the moment

You realize 

 

Your parents 

 

Aren’t perfect. Will

 

America’s democracy 

Hold?

 

When a Grand Old Party

Has lost its soul. 

 

Sold its soul for  

A personality cult. 

 

Sold its soul for 

A man without one.

 

So many abandoned 

Principles. 

 

So many Cowards 

Telling

So many lies.  

 

Is the party over?

Gil Hoy is a widely published Boston poet and writer who studied poetry and writing at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. While at BU, Hoy was on the wrestling team and finished in second place in the New England University Wrestling Championships at 177 lbs. He served as an elected Brookline, Massachusetts Select Board Member for four terms. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer. His work has recently appeared in Best Poetry Online, Muddy River Poetry Review,  Tipton Poetry Journal, Rusty Truck,  Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review, Misfit Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Chiron Review, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. Hoy was a Best of the Net nominee last year.

A BRIEF GEOGRAPHY OF GOODBYES

by Mary K O'Melveny

"Red Composition" by Jackson Pollock

Everyone who knows grief as it settles onto chests,

humid as a jungle, thick as fog on a heath,

understands that goodbyes can be a gift. A brief

cushion to ease the long emptiness ahead.

 

As I write this, my friend’s husband is dying

in hospice care in New York. He surrendered

after waging a fierce battle with leukemia that,

for a merciful time, he seemed to be winning.

 

Each arc of loss beams wider than celestial skies

on clear summer nights. His young grandchildren

gather at a grassy hospital garden to say goodbye.

Siblings fly from far-flung homes to do the same.

 

My sister and I stood at our mother’s bedside

watching lights on monitors fade and fizzle out.

Without evidence of audibility, we still sang to her,

believing emigration is aided by a sound track.

In Gaza, bereaved households are less blessed.

A fine whine of rockets the only warning before

a family’s cardamom tea and künefe splatters

like a Pollock canvas across living room walls.

 

In Delhi, breaths come to a close after failed searches

for oxygen – it seems there is no price that can be paid

for air though grieving loved ones would mortgage

their own lung capacities if currencies allowed.

 

In North Carolina, police kill a man as he tries

to drive away from death. His story forms a pattern

recurrent as an Escher etching. Each morning’s only

question – will this day mark memory’s final day.

 

COVID focused attention toward microscopic gestures –

the tensile strength of touch, the graceful creases

of a laugh line, the thrill of whispered thank yous.

Such gifts may allow us to survive our diminishments.

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. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

BLOSSOMS

by Bonnie Naradzay

In Gaza City, Riad Ishkontana mourned the death of one of his children on Sunday. Mr. Ishkontana said that when rescuers pulled him and his 7-year-old daughter from the rubble of his home after an airstrike, he awoke to a new life—one without his wife and four other children. Credit:Hosam Salem for The New York Times, May 19, 2021

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns

rubber tipped bullets and tear gas cannisters

that I pay for with my taxes, and the Boeing 

weapons sales, mainly kits transforming bombs 

into precision missiles dropped from planes 

on Gaza, as before. Armed forces wreck Minarets 

during Ramadan. The call to prayer, up in flames.

Worshippers at the mosque are felled with bullets.

Evictions are enforced by the Courts, the way 

it’s always done. Snipers target fleeing children;

they’ve done it all before.  When will we learn?

Here, orange blossoms are exploding in the sun.

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns.

 

Bonnie Naradzay’s recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and others. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC. 

CORPORATE SPRING

by Douglas Richardson

Fight for $15.

Walking west on 6th Street

All the trees are green

The sun is warm upon my face

My hair is moussed and preened

 

I’m listening to Corporate Pop

on my way to Corporate Eatery

I fling my tie around my neck

a leaf among the scenery

 

My table’s cleared

My glass is beered

All the unions disappeared

The working world is free

 

 

Douglas Richardson is a poet and novelist who lives in Santa Ana, California, with his wife Jen and cat Wes. He is the founder of Weak Creature Press. He has written a fiction series, American Strays, which comprises the novellas The Corruption of Zachary R., Trust Fund Baby, and Kay Sutter Through the Ages. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Black Poppy Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Hobo Camp Review, Misfits’ Miscellany, The Nervous Breakdown, Straight Forward Poetry, Trouvaille Review, and Poetry Super Highway. In 2013, he won the Poetry Super Highway contest with his entry, “Notes from the Graveyard Shift.”