CRISIS

by Tony Brown


We claimed
we didn't know anything
about how this would be
right up to the day

the dragon,
the one we'd been watching stir for ages,

the one whose back had been humping up
the earth like a monstrous gopher as long as we could recall,
the one whose scales had been landing on us
like scalding flowers for eons,
the one whose breath had tanned us so raw
that warm drizzle felt like an alcohol bath,
the one with eyes like star sapphires
that dazzled us into inaction,

until the day the dragon rose into
full and awesome view
and demanded our firstborn, our secondborn;
demanded that he be slaked and satisfied
with all our legacies; demanded nothing explicit
because his sheer sudden command of the common sky
told us all we needed to know then and evermore;

and then we ran about like cinders
jerking crazily in the general cloud of destruction,

sparks that vanished even as we flew,
lost in the heat of a moment
we'd known was coming for years
and yet
had denied as easily as any other god
we'd ever taken on casual terms...

of course,
since we had made this one ourselves,
we still believed we could remake it
right up to the second
that we fell, consumed,
back to the black ground
as fodder for whatever folly
followed us.


Tony Brown is a poet living in Worcester, MA. His work has appeared in The Riverwalk Journal, The November 3rd Club, and many other publications and Anthologies. A chapbook, Flood: New Poems, will be published soon by Pudding House Publications.
_______________________________

AMONG THE WHISPERS

by David Plumb


Maggots in his eyes someone said?
Dead five days.
Coroner asks who saw him last
Lights on all night for how long?
Threw up blood someone said.
Had the HIV, quit his job or lost it.
Drunk most of the time but a nice guy.
Lived up there alone With IT.
Nobody should, but they do
don’t they, live alone with AIDS.
You just think it goes away
that everybody gets the message?
Bang it’s back and he’s what?
Fifty-three? Died alone
with two cats he yelled at.
Voices he’d been hearing for years
amid drinks and echoes
of whispers and blue.
Maggots in his eyes?


David Plumb’s latest fiction book is A Slight Change in the Weather. He has worked as a paramedic, a cab driver, a, cook and tour guide. A long time San Francisco writer, he now lives in South Florida . Will Rogers said, “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” Plumb says, “It depends on the parrot.”
__________________________________________________

WRITE THIS DOWN MR. BOOSH

by Spiel


"History.
We won't know.
We'll all be dead."

that's what you once said
mr. boosh

oh you should be so lucky

but i say
one moment
after midnight
today
is history

and right this moment
dear mr. boosh
history's not
turning out
your way

don't even bother
with a book of lies
the cowardice of
your yes men
is being revealed

and your secrets
slaughtered and
three times fried
for you to gag on
so duck your head
between
your knees

by the time
"we'll all be dead"
if you're lucky
history
might record those words as
the only profound thing
you ever said


Neither the NEA nor an MFA influences Pushcart Prize contender, the poet Spiel, in his diverse works of personal conflict and social consciousness, published frequently online and in independent press journals around the world. His latest books are: she: insinuations of flesh brooding published in 2008 by March Street Press and once upon a farmboy published 2008 by MadmanInk.
__________________________________________________

WEIGHTY MATTERS

by Bill Costley


Weighty matters weigh heavily as the Taurus
carbon observatory falls to Earth & sinks.

Mardi Gras offers one last day’s distraction.

Obama gets even seriouser with Congress;.
Bernanke says the recession will lift this year.

Anybody still running on hope is wondering:

What in hell are the Republicans thinking?
Can’t they see we see right through them?


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
________________________________________

SQUAWK BOX ON THE STREET

by James Penha

Something there is that doesn’t love:
a wall.

Shadows shake and stammer
This stage of the world--
They talk, these self-important stars
Spread out like stooges waiting
For Godots
Or the next dowel driven
In their heady knotholes. How hard
It is to balance books
On a thin red line
With no limbs to stand
On but the maestros’
Arms
And so they stand for nothing
But the fall.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.
_______________________________

BANKER'S FIB

by Neal Whitman
with due respect to Leonardo Fibonacci

“The big brains in banking just aren’t feeling the love.” --The New York Times

“President Obama is aiming to water down Democratic proposals on pay caps for banking executives because he fears a “brain drain” on Wall Street.” --The Times

Brain
drain
banker
makes the claim:
"I am worth the bucks,
even if my performance sucks."


Neal Whitman is a featured author on www.shortpoem.org where he posts one haiku per season and is a frequent contributor of fibs to www.fibetry.com.
__________________________________________________

BANKROLLING THE BANKS

by Anne G. Davies


The biggest banks don't even pretend:
They simply have no desire to lend
Until taxpayers (though they be unemployed)
Renew the status they once enjoyed.
They've outfoxed Fed Chief Bernanke
Who seems powerless to stop this hanky-panky.

The President called for bonus reductions
Generating loud howls and ructions,
And a salary cap of 500 k
That causes bankers shock and dismay.
They say no one can live on half a mil
Without a fatal lifestyle chill.

Summer in the Hamptons might be abolished
Country club deal-making all but demolished
Move from that co-op with all its amenities?
The mere concept gives rise to obscenities.
And another scenario that disturbs:
Bankers might be forced to flee to the burbs
To confront a fate especially cruel,
Sending their children to public school.

But then we heard from Timothy Geithner
(Touted as the economic bright'ner)
Who handed us a cocktail of platitudes
Spiced with residual Wall Street attitudes.

Barack, though pressures are mounting on you
You asked us to choose you and we¹'e counting on you
To deliver us from GOP control
Lest all but the richest end up on the dole.


Anne G. Davies is a fund-raising writer by profession and a writer and versifier by avocation. Her work has been published in local and regional papers. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.
__________________________________________________

DEATH RATTLES GAUGUIN

by Rochelle Owens


When you are hearing Tahitian
speaking through fingers shaping fingers
forming a hole a circle a spiral
a hemisphere a terrain
then an island
                              The shape of a woman
                                             out of a corner
                                                            of your eye
A woman with purple blossoms
in her braided hair and on her head a basket
filled with dried husks of fruit shells
teeth and finger bones the dry bones
give out faint light
                              The muscles of her neck
                                             tropical orchids
                                                            twined around
your brain––the final domain––vibrations of air
the death rattle of Gauguin a hollow tube
filling with pigment O islands of epidermis
deep ridges of malachite layer by layer
layer by layer the skin
breaking down vascular tissue
pumping stomach gut bladder pancreas
intestine anus
                              luminous membranes
                                             blood in blood out
                                                            organs liquefying
And in a single rapid stroke swarming insects
like star clusters––a colony of fungus gnats
lay their soft eggs
The skull filling up with blue-green algae
with the sea and air the skull of Gauguin
filling with strumming plucking sounds
filling with the sounds of Tahitian
The dry bones give out faint light


Rochelle Owens is the author of eighteen books of poetry and plays, the most recent of which are Plays by Rochelle Owens (Broadway Play Publishing, 2000) and Luca, Discourse on Life and Death (Junction Press, 2001). A pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement and an internationally known innovative poet, she has received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her play Futz, which is considered a classic of the American avant-garde theatre, was produced by Ellen Stewart at LaMama, directed by Tom O’Horgan and performed by the LaMama Troupe in 1967, and was made into a film in 1969. A French language production of Three Front was produced by France-Culture and broadcast on Radio France. She has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan’s novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Oklahoma and held residencies at Brown and Southwestern Louisiana State.
_________________________________________________

NUREMBERG CLASS ACTION

by Steve Parker


in a sudden swoop this morning Mr Wolfowitz Cheney Bush
was arraigned in the wire for dredging during a sudden raid
by shock baboons of the eastern interior department.
in other news the killing of children by the application
of either reeling waves or massifs of failing concretion has become
so routine that it's now funny so what do you call a three year old
wearing a three ton party hat quick we gots ta get outta here
before the brown comes around and the black gets back and
the red man is a head man. andy murray won something at
snooker too. what do you call a philistine with no table manners?
haha. what do you call kristal and perle? depends where the
shock baboons are. oh all so ready to weep with terror and all
so ready to weep with joy. juvenilia has outbroken in all
provinces. the sun arched itself as a westphalian slunk
spread for the taking oh god just spreeled for sheens of love.
some interference is to be expectorated. normal service will
be subsumed. read here about the new Japanese
remote-controlled musical toilet with bottom-washing facility.
excuse me while I do nothing at all.


Steve Parker is a UK poet working near Haworth in Yorkshire. He’s been published in various journals and zines etc, including Underground Voices, The Chimaera, The Cleave, Ditch, Dogzplot, Cause and Effect, Admit Two, Chaos International, Machenalia etc etc, with more forthcoming. Published in a couple of anthologies, with two poems forthcoming in the Cleave Anthology this Spring. Also published a couple of short collections, with another coming soon. Parker was a founder-member of the Orzel Collective experimenting with transtextual poetry. He also runs a poetry and critique forum and has a lively poetry blog.
__________________________________________________

TO THOSE MISSING IN ACTION

By Bradley McIlwain


You know I don’t believe what they say, that dead men
Tell no tales – I have heard their stories at fruit stands
And checkouts across America, those who are missing
In action or just returned from war – and I have seen
Their pictures in the morning paper, carefully inserted –
Each face is personal. I have stood among their graves
And wept, too many countless dead – know one really
Knows how many. The other day I visited the grave of
The American Soldier known only to God, the site of
Arlington’s Unknowns – whose sealed bones cry out
For identification, visited daily by thousands of tourists –
Just like the liberty bell. But there are no bells here, only
Tears – and there are no sounds but guns – twenty-one
Of them angry, pointed at heaven. The bullets pierce my
Heart. I have recently spoken with a soldier’s widow
And a mother, who has seen both below the ground
Before their time. She asks me when they’ll end the war.
I tell her soon – in reality I don’t know, none of us do.
I continue reading the editorials of the ones we’ve lost, of
The ones gone missing – still waiting to be returned. The
Women down the street have started a church group, and
There are frequent candle light vigils for a safe return.
They sing Hosanna in the Highest – their echoes reach
My windowsill at night, and I think about how quickly
Their songs become elegies. I drown in them nightly,
Hoping that someone will hear. Sometimes I think about
Whitman, and hear the sad songs of America stretch
Across the countryside at night – can you hear them
Whitman? These are the songs of change. In the morning
I will read the columns again that once more give faces
To the dead, to those returned from war or those who are
Missing in action – but maybe soon the war will end.
Maybe soon it’ll all be over. I have heard on the news they
Will shut down Guantanamo Bay. Maybe these are the
Songs of change.


Bradley McIlwain is a Canadian based writer and poet. He is currently finishing his undergraduate education in English Literature, and is working on his first chapbook. His work has been published in Wanderings Magazine and others.
__________________________________________________

THE DEBTOR

by Andrew Hilbert


I shouldn't even file
My California state taxes this year

It's always more
Complicated than the federal form anyways

But I had to do it
Just to see how much in I.O.U.s Arnold owes me

Arnold,
You owe me $8.00.
Keep it.


Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
__________________________________________________

WORLD FOR SALE

by Bernard Gieske


Who said, "You can be whatever you want to be."
                                                            was not a laborer
being squeezed by corporate octopuses
forever grabbing more and more
                                                            free of guilt.
WORDS WORDS WORDS
the panopticon of fantasies
                                                            I am your hands
recycling your throw-aways
                                                            I am your sewing machine
... made in China ... Puerto Rico ... and Paraguay
                                                            I am a bushel basket
of tomatoes still on the vine
                                                            I am your Chablis
plucking grapes from the vine
                                                            I am your machines
with revolving hands turning out
your bargain products,
scrabbling, barely surviving on the edge
beyond the outskirts of security
                                                            I am long gone
lost amid the multitudes
toiling late into the night
locked in pools of sweat and debt
making ends meet with barely a wage
and no insurance

I am the "garbage" of the global economy.
Now’s the time for the revolution to be unfurled.
Go now, tell it on the www
until it reaches all the edges of the world.


Bernard Gieske lives in Bowling Green, KY. He has always been involved in political issues and does what he can to express his views and concerns. Since he retired he has have writing poetry to do the same. His poems have appeared in Words Words Words; moonset THE NEWSPAPER, cc&d magazine, Poetic Hours, foam:e, Language and Culture, paper wasp, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and Oh!, What a Tangled Web.
__________________________________________________

DRONE PATROL

by Robert M. Chute


High above Afghanistan's vengeful hills
a battle whose motives Kipling
would understand rages still, rousing ghosts
from Alexandrian legions,
British disasters, Russian retreats.
The motives common, the means surreal,
as disembodied men control
my brain, my conscience and my soul
from half a world away. There'll be
a two second satellite delay
between command and act so if
one of those men meeting at the border
of Pakistan steps outside to piss
now he may fight another day.



Robert M. Chute has a book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, of poetry based on scientific articles, that is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
__________________________________________________

EYES IN GAZA

by Karen Greenbaum-Maya


I want to write about the children
I've seen their dark, liquid eyes
luminous as onyx

I don't want to write about war
I want to write about those eyes
that strain to figure out
what will happen next
why blue jeans and pans are piled in cartons
why families huddle in freezing schools
and mothers never stop sweeping

I want to wonder
how leaves still feed on sunlight
how the eyes find daylight through the smoke
if moon and silence will return

I can't write about war
I see the untrusting eyes of children
whose dreams are loud as waking
who can't play house
who have learned to be at home
with the ready shape of hatred


Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Claremont, California. Before her doctorate, she majored in German Language and Literature so that she could read poetry for credit. She has written since she was nine, but did not submit poetry for publication until 2007. She laughs at things that no one else thinks are funny. She proof-reads too much for her own good; as a therapeutic measure, she started an on-line photo group dedicated to making public the grammatical and other written idiocies that we see out there. Her poems and photos have appeared in Untamed Ink, O Tempora! Faraway Journal, online whispers & [Shouts], Superficial Flesh, the San Diego City Works Press 2008 anthology of Hunger and Thirst, and Schmap, and will appear in Lilliput Review. A poem of hers has been nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize.
__________________________________________________