New Verse News

THE LAST GREAT DEPRESSION (OCCUPY THIS)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:25 GMT

by Lynnie Gobeille

They say his last conversation took place two hours before.
Seated in a comfy leather chair
he leaned forward and told his shrink
“life was going well.”
His kids were both in college, not Ivy League…
but good enough to impress.
His wife liked her new Audi, but was a tad upset;
was not the Beamer she had coveted.

He was, however, pleased with his medical practice…
the number of patients growing.
In fact,
or so his psychiatrist has begun to tell everyone,
You know they do this;
think eavesdropping on a conversation at a party:
“The man seemed perfectly fine to me.”

They say it must have taken great courage
to climb over the railing on the bridge.
They whisper that his last act was a mortal sin.
Wonder if he hesitated.
Debated.
Pondered.
Or simply shook his head.
Leaned forward.
arms spread wide
as he executed
one last perfect dive.

Lynnie Gobeille has published in The Sow's Ear Review, Crone’s Nest, The Avatar, The Prairie Home Companion, This I Believe (NPR), The New Verse News, The Providence Journal (Poetic License) and The Naugatuck River Review. Editor of the Providence Journal Poetry Corner (South County Edition ), her essays can be heard on NPR public radio. She is the co-founder of The Origami Poems Project, a state wide “free poetry event” based in Rhode Island . Her “micro chapbooks” can be found on their website: www.origamipoems.com .
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NEWT WANTS US ON THE MOON

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:00 GMT

by Amy Eisner

and the moon wants us too. It tugs at us, liquid and solid, morning and night,
its pulse slow as evening, interminable even if you never got as close

as Ronald Evans on the last Apollo, parked in orbit for four hours and six days—
leaning out to take pictures, keeping the Command Module in command

while others scratched at the surface. After that he pursued a career
in coal. In one of his photos, white marks scatter the midnight moonground

like dishwater spots on a wineglass, and in the center of one smudge
is the lunar lander, so high in the frame it looks like the head of a man—

and there’s the body, and the arms and legs: a primitive clockwork robot
laid against a tremendous velvet cushion, and if the robot’s head were only

square I’d say, that’s Newt! He is rising from the surface. He’s not leaving
us behind. His hand is for your shoulder. For all that is buried

will come into light. All that’s forgotten, repeal! and we will rise
and live forever, traveling far and enough and away.

Amy Eisner teaches creative writing and literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, The Louisville Review, Madison Review, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Washington Square, and other journals.
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WHILE YOU WATCHED THE SUPER BOWL

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:09 GMT

by Ngoma

At 4:00pm
the line to Trader Joe's was down the street and around the corner
the tax office in Cairo was set on fire to protest football violence
Mitt Romney proclaimed he didn't give a damn about the poor
the lines in soup kitchens were not one bit shorter
Israel stood on the brink of attacking Iran
Union contracts were under attack
the 1% still bought box seats
while the 99% Occupied everything else
Tim Tebow was not playing
the commercials cost $3.5 million dollars per 30 seconds
Mumia Abu Jamaal still lingered in a prison cell
The U.S. still had the largest prison population
in the so-called free world
Canada suffered a Katrina moment
birthers still debated whether or not Obama is a U.S Citizen
we were not one step closer to eliminating world hunger
Even with a progressive attitude, watching the Super Bowl,
which seems to float on rivers of oil - think car ads - and beer, is not exactly like holding an
Occupy Wall Street-style general assembly in the red zone
Flava Flave in a Pepsi add
didn't insure drinkable water in third world countries
James Brown isn't around to collect his royalties for the Volkswagon commercial
No Black performers have performed at a Super Bowl half time since Janet
There was no tribute to Don Cornelius and Soul Train
2/3rds of the worlds population with aids lives in Africa
70 percent of people in the world suffer from food insecurity
in the U.S. alone a woman is beaten every seven minutes
a woman is raped every eleven minutes
but overall, there are more people in the world who do not own a TV than those who do
so who wins the super bowl in the real scheme of things
is just not so damn important - is it?

Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka's Spirit House Movers and Players and of the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry and songs that raise contradictions and search for a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review, Bum Rush The Page/Def Jam Anthology, Poems On The Road To Peace (Yale Press) and Let Loose On The World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. Family Festival of Environmental and Social Justice (Yale University, New Haven, CT) since 1996. He was a selected participant in the Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Cape Town, South Africa in fall of 2009. In December of 2011 he was initiated as an Obatala Priest in Ibadan, Nigeria.
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BEULAH LAND BLUES

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:21 GMT

by Earl J Wilcox

Gunshot kills woman sitting at home

( Headline in The Herald, Rock Hill, SC, Feb. 2, 2012)

She was up before Monday’s sunrise, putting the sheets
in the washer, sweeping the little back porch, swatting
mid-winter flies away from the kitchen sink where

she’d left a small plate with tuna crumbs from last night’s meal.
Before her grand baby, Chloe, should arrive, she’d have
everything tidied and cleaned and stored, leaving plenty

of time for her to watch Curious George with Chloe
who always came galloping into the tiny house when
her momma dropped the toddler off around eight o’clock.

When 7:15 rolled around, Alma sat in her rocker, tilted
her head back for a brief nap, awoke when St. Peter
called her name, asked her to step lively as the morning

dew was almost gone from the deep back yard grasses
where she was hanging out her fresh wash on a peaceful
mid-winter Monday.

Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.
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SIX MORE WEEKS

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:00 GMT

by Roxanne Hoffman

on Groundhog Day

Awake anxious burrowed below
curious critter doubtful dutiful emerges
eyes furtively facing greyness groundside
harbinger hunched instinctively intuits
jowly judges kingdom keenly

Legendary Litmus:
maybe? maybe?
no... not...
oh! oh!

Prognosticator’s Proclamation:
quivering quixotic
regards retreats
sunshine’s shadow seen
tanking temperatures unrelenting

Underground:
vernal vibrancy waits
wintering yogi yawns
Zzzz-zoned

Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline for a New York home healthcare provider. Her words can be found on and off the net in such journals as Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, The Fib Review, Hospital Drive, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, and Shaking Like A Mountain; the indie flick Love And The Vampire; and the anthologies The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70 (Wising Up Press), and It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). She and her husband own the small press, Poets Wear Prada.
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SMALL GOVERNMENT

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:00 GMT

by E. F. Schraeder

A shadow operation manages
to paint itself minuscule.
It solves problems

by shrinking beneath doorways,
into bedrooms
to stop lovers from wedding;

into doctor offices
to peek beneath the paper sheets,
and block reproductive services.

Small enough to fit into wires,
listen to protestors plan permitted
events in gated public spaces.

Small enough to build walls
between countries
and boost border brutality.

Small enough to fit into dictionaries,
rename activists as terrorists,
liberals as radicals, radicals as socialists.

Small enough to shrink corporate dollars
into unlimited campaign funnels
in a public court

and small enough to fit
neatly, like a concealed carry
law, in a small space,

offering a perfect fit
for closed
minds.

E.F. Schraeder's work has appeared in Haz Mat Review, Blue Collar Review, Hiram Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a new manuscript of poems.
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TURN THE WORLD -- #Occupy

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:00 GMT

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

It is not
Upside down
We wish
To turn
The world
But right-side
Up

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. With his wife Cynthia he is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, Outside In, and co-editor of the forthcoming book About Face: GI Resisters Turn Against War (PM Press, 2011). He is also co-producer/director of the documentary Por Que Venimos.
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SONNET FROM THE AMERICAN

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:00 GMT

by Judith Morehouse

Wikipedia, how did I miss thee? Let me count the ways.
I missed thee to the depth and breadth and height
That false information can reach, when the answer was out of sight
And I tripped during the researching race.
I missed thee to the level of everyday’s
Most urgent need, when the fist of knowledge was tight.
I missed thee freely: I have no money;
I missed thee purely, knowledge from error.
I missed thee with a passion, for thy uncensored wealth.
I missed thee with a mind that I seemed to lose
With my lost internet,--- I missed thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if SOPA should pass,
I shall but miss thee more after death.

Editor's Note: This poem was written in a responsive style. Lines were alternately written by Judith Morehouse and Sarah Graf. The complete poem was edited by Judith Morehouse who holds all rights to the poem.

Judith Morehouse is a performer and poet. She is currently preparing the role of Inez in Verdi's opera Il Trovatore and the role of Yente in Fiddler on the Roof. In her sparse, spare time, she keeps up with politics and reads.
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TRANSPARENCY

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:50 GMT

by David S. Pointer

Transparency

interferes with
the absence
of insightful dialogue
transmitted to people

interferes with
the preference
for high level privacy
during economic piracy

interferes with
the low pay repositories
the free people usability continuum
the lifecycle curiosity extraction

interferes with
the data purge
of financial, medical
and chemical information

interferes with
the myth, beauty, trivia
poetry professors pretending
they are above the fray

interferes with
the myth of the great man
the domestic assassination
the international assassination

interferes with
the diversionary entertainment
the familial and world peace
the quiet green horizons to come

David S. Pointer lives and writes from Murfreesboro, TN. He has recent acceptances at Rattle, Static Movement, and The Spirit of Poe anthology at Literary Landmark Press. All proceeds from the Poe anthology will go to benefit the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Baltimore, MD that lost $80,000 in government funding.
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BBC REPORT FROM [INSERT COUNTRY NAME HERE]

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:00 GMT

by Richard Storm

And now, daytime traffic is allowed again.
The smell of burning in the air.
So many families have lost loved ones.
This was something else.
A man was standing in front of his home. “Your children are okay then?” He refused to give his name.
The people here, however resilient, will need time to recover from this.

Richard Storm moved from his native Oregon to Manhattan in 1978 to pursue an acting career. A charter member of brevitas, an email poetry collective, he believes poetry need not be obscure to be poetic.
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