New Verse News

EQUAL RIGHTS

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:28 GMT

by Barbara A. Taylor

gaydar demands
under the rainbow
hand–in–hand
remembering stonewall
forty years on

Barbara A. Taylor's poems appear in literary journals and anthologies, including The Salt River Review, Tattoo Highway, qaartisiluni, Lynx, Modern English Tanka, Kaleidowhirl, Umbrella, Magnapoets, Triplopia, Poemeleon, Loch Raven Review, The Blue Fifth Review, Contemporary Haibun On Line, and elsewhere. Her diverse poems with audio are available online.
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CONFIDENCE IS A DUTY

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:00 GMT

by Kim Doyle

I am confused, I don’t know whether
it is better to spend or save. I am
naïve about this, as I am about many
other routinely political things.

As a generation we have been castigated
for not putting enough away for a retirement
that might entail eating cat food, or spending
time in a nursing home where we will be abused.

Now we are told to spend, this swirling tail
eating circle never ends, and I am not amused.
Spend or save; each conflicting wave assaults
me, sapping the strength remaining.

There are fearful lessons in this Great Recession;
if I could only cipher out their true meaning.
I’m leaning towards spending; never ending questions.

Life’s a beauty; confidence is a duty.

Even now Kim Doyle is not confident he’s got it right. However, he does have a new bath room, his contribution to the coming economic boom.
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GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WHERE ARE YOU?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:17 GMT

by Joan Gelfand

Now that the buck has stopped
The jig is up
The well done run
Dry your eyes. You’re done.

The party’s over the game is played
The bad boys took off
With the cache.

Now that the buck has stopped
Where are you?

I mean not in time, as in ‘where can you be found,’
I mean, what’s your place?
Minus the accoutrements, the overflow
The excess? What’s really on your mind?

Once the future planning stops
The next distraction plummets
The cold hard facts can’t hide
Do you really like, can you face
Yourself? The one in your bed?

Can you remember anything she said?

Now that the buck has stopped
Did you make the right choices
Sacrifice the best of times?
Can you remember your kid’s last season?
Who won, who lost, who’s behind?

Did you forget the name of her favorite actor?
Did you catch the school play?
Did you have anything to say?

Good morning America.
The drug of distraction has worn off
The cocaine high of overvalued
Done gone good-bye.

Now that the buck has stopped
The well has dried
Are you filled with dread?
Not that you won’t survive -
Worse has happened.
Than losing a million
You never earned in the first
Place. It’s more about not hiding

Behind it all.

You’re not really that tall.

And this downturn, this turn down,
This big big disappointment, bummer slump
Is just nature’s way of cooling us off
Cooling us down - all that dough
Rising and rising making us feel
Super
Natural but you know she’s the boss
Even if you think that dough made you
Hot hot shit you were taking out chicks
Who wouldn’t have looked twice if you
Were working in the P.O.

You were getting blow
Jobs from girls who
Never gave bj’s before but for three carats
And some Charles Jourdan shoes
They were going down.

Yeah nature had to cool that shit off
Man she was feeling the heat
Feeling your four by four feeling you
Feeling like you’re feeling like the boss of
Things.

You have lost and
I feel for you
All that hard work and
Faith in the street

Or was that greed
I heard knocking
Your knees
Back there?

An award winning poet and writer, Joan Gelfand’s work is published in national magazines and literary journals. A graduate of Mills College Masters in Writing, Joan currently serves as President of the Women’s National Book Association, a national organization of publishing industry professions with 10 chapters and over 700 members. Her two full length collections are: Seeking Center published in 2006 by Two Bridges Press and A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams published in January 2009 by San Francisco Bay Press.
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SO SORRY

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:00 GMT

by JoAllen Bradham

The Age of Faith makes sense: worship, serve,
Eyes upward, souls aimed for life eternal.
“Age of Machine” stamps out hard images
Of wheels and gears, smoke stacks, ill-lit mills.
And the Age of Aquarius felt so free—
Rocking, blasting, long-hair flying
To strobes and sounds of souped-up sex.
But this nouvel Age of Apology
Is simply sorry, I regret to say.
I hope this won’t offend your tender ears:
It sucks.

Since when could apology compensate
For initial stupidity, you swine?
Oops, sorry! Mea culpa, I misspoke.
Since when did the band-aid of apology
Cure wounds cut by some oaf’s ignorance?
Damn! Please be so good to forgive my slip.
I’m all contrite. Didn’t know the mike was hot.
I’m filled with shame—at least I hope you’ll buy
This pious plea. Where, oh, where are they—
My slimy sackcloth, my verbal ash?
Haute couture today, in such demand
Penitents Mart can’t keep such garb in stock.
I’m abject. Hell, no, I’m only CYA**.

How did we make an apologia of apology
To overpaint our general sorriness?

JoAllen Bradham lives and writes in Atlanta. She is a published novelist (Some Personal Papers) and, by training, a specialist in satire.
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WAND WAVERS OF AMERICA

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:40 GMT

by David Plumb

I left my wand, in Argentina. High on a bed with luscious breasts.
I left my brain in Argentina. High on shelf and out of breath.
I left my mind in Argentina. High on a cloud with a tiny head.
I left my pants in Argentina. High on a flag I love to hoist.
I left my family for Argentina. High on a dream I had to waste.
I left America in Argentina. High on myself and to hell with the rest.

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.”
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POP STAR DEATH

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:18 GMT

by David Feela

When the actual death occurs
it’s not conclusive until the coroner’s report
details those last moments,
what it felt like for everyone
had they been crowded into the same room
and only then do heads nod,
the public finally told
what it suspected all along.
And it’s mostly the air electrified
with media frenzy that people feel
against their skin, the close up
that swells like a tear
from a camera lens,
not any bona fide separation
from a personality they never knew.
The public owns his first record,
or a ticket stub from a concert
with a hundred-thousand other fans,
and this intimacy substitutes
as an emotion, singing along,
spending time with the disembodied soul
of a musician. He touched our lives,
the anchor explains, and made such a difference
we’ll never be able to hear
that song without remembering
how he thrilled us into
creating for him a life.

David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, and book collector.. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including the High Country News' "Writers on the Range," Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas, is now available.
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HE'LL CRY FOR HIMSELF, ARGENTINA

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:56 GMT

by Barbara Lightner

The Governor’s staff does not know where he is.

He left a country where getting along
with pedestrian things
like a wife,
pork barrels and pigs,
and running a state,
seemed boringly wrong;

Some place else becked his call,
at first sight,
one of great exotic,
erotic,
delight;

an Argentinian smack-of-the-lips
to ignite
his very insides.

But when he got there,
was the cupboard so bare?
he so hung in mid-air?
that he had nowhere to go
but home?

(to the crux of a wife
who’d already said
get out of my life).

So he'd sigh, blubber and cry
for himself;

a cock horse in a desolate farmyard,
suspended between home and Argentina.

Barbara Lightner is a 70-year old shameless agitator, retired. After a career of community organizing and teaching at university, she turned her hand to poetry. As a bookshop owner, she sponsored poetry readings, and published chapbooks of local poets in Milwaukee, WI. Her poetry has previously appeared in New Verse News; Poesia and Table Rock Review; as well as in Letters to the World, an anthology of women’s poetry.
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ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:36 GMT

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

We pass signs for
Scottish Souvenirs
Cheese Art
Theme-Shaped Pools
Maple Wine
Dinosaur Steaks
Wax-Figures from the War on Terror
Day-Old Soldiers
All-U-Can-Eat at the Returned Hero Buffet

On the road again
We pass signs that are
Part-nightmare
Part-fantasy
You learn early in America that you’re always 21 miles from something
You learn early that
There’s not enough time for everything
So you need to prioritize
And most important of all
You need to forget

Steve Hellyard Swartz is a regular contributor to new verse news. His poems have also appeared in best poem, switched-on gutenberg, Haggard and Halloo, and The Kennesaw Review. He has won honorable mention in The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (2007 and 2008), The Mary C. Mohr and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards. In 1990, his film, Never Leave Nevada opened at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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CLEVELAND: UNLUCKY NUMBER

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:06 GMT

by Catherine McGuire

One home in thirteen empty,
that thirteenth family set wandering,
the albatross mortgage dead around their necks.
To whom do they tell their tale?
This one is coffined -- cheap plywood
closing windows like dead eyes.
Next door is newly-orphaned, ghosted
by the family who fled last night or last week --
the windows unclouded, the lawn still green.

Two doors up, a third -- rivulets of black rain
graffiti the trim, as does paint sprayed in gang-spoor,
red and black, on the door.
A block away, one like road kill, vulture-ridden:
insides gutted of appliances and lamps
even the copper veins are stripped;
hacked corpse left rotting.

Across town, duplex rowhouse doubly forsaken,
red bricks sprayed with hot orange note --
Do Not Enter - UNSAFE. Whatever happened inside
stays inside. Curling up a hill, three half-baked shells;
the bubble burst before their studs were dry;
the cul-de-sac now twice a dead-end.

Nearby, a foreclosure sign: the bank is looking
for some brass-knuckle investor to drop-kick the old widow
still living inside. She peers from between dishtowel curtains
at the clear-windowed box with its colorful descriptions
of her family’s much-loved rooms.

The blight proceeds unevenly: an unseen loft above a vacant grocery;
a pretty yellow bungalow, front porch strewn
with collapsed lawn chairs, trike, plastic buckets, bags of trash.
Some blocks have just two families left;
some are whole -- for now.

Take a walk; count thirteen as you go; picture it.

Catherine McGuire now peeks at the news through sheltering fingers. A third of her poetry is political; the rest is about Nature - before it's too late.
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ANTHROPOLOGIST AT PERSIAN FUNERALS

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:53 GMT

by J. D. Mackenzie

I’ve tried and I’ve struggled
to make sense of their suffering
encountered while crashing
these gatherings of grief

My senses can’t keep up
with sounds and bright colors
persona that seem to
re-appear over time

What kind of sick mind
can find some fulfillment
in rituals and rites
beyond tragic and strange?

I craft Farsi subtitles
lacking all truth
no personal ties
no sense of their pain

J. D. Mackenzie took a break from political poems after the 2008 U.S. elections but resumed writing when the Iranian elections started to sound like our own in 2000.
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