OccuPoetry is taking a (hopefully brief) hiatus. During that time we will not be accepting new submissions to the journal. We plan to resume receiving submissions and publishing later this year.

The editors are taking this time off in order to look at ways of redesigning the journal, to explore options for funding that will not require fees with submissions, and to determine the best way to solicit submissions from a wider range of poets.

Thank you for your support, your readership, and your poems. We will see you soon.

The editors
OccuPoetry

With roots in the Occupy Wall Street protests and encampments, OccuPoetry is a journal of unabashedly political poetry. Poets, always in the margins, have critical perspectives on the world. OccuPoetry welcomes submissions of formal and free-verse poetry of a political nature, where the author takes seriously the craft of verse. The editors particularly enjoy historically informed poetry that looks beyond the self.

OccuPoetry has published established poets such as Joe Wenderoth, Francisco X. Alarcón, Laura Lee Washburn, Luisa A. Igloria, and Diane Raptosh. On several occasions, the journal has also been the first place of publication for emerging poets.

With the fourth issue, the founding editors, Phillip Barron and Katy Ryan, welcome Paco Marquez to the editorial board. Originally from Mexico, Paco Marquez studied philosophy at UC Berkeley and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at New York University. His work has appeared in Late Peaches: Poems by Sacramento Poets, the 2012 Squaw Valley Review, and has recently gone up on the side of a building in Sacramento through the Sacramento Metropolitan Art Commission’s Del Paso Words & Walls Project. He was also recently the featured Lo-Writer of the Week in Juan Felipe Herrera’s California Poet Laureate website. He served for four years as a board member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol. His poem, Silver-Green Ladybug on Pine Bark, appears in Issue 3 of OccuPoetry.

Submissions for the fourth issue will be considered on a rolling basis through June 15th. Submit your poem(s) here.

Phillip Barron
Co-Editor, OccuPoetry

Download your copy here, or flip through the Issuu copy to read it online.

Issue 3
published December 2013

It’s said a murmuring
rose from the crowds of men
both outside and inside
the Stock Exchange, a mur-
muring like subdued fire
crackling just like cows
moaning or slaughtering
their own horror, trying
to… indescribable,
the way money is
and isn’t life, the way
higher, even higher
speculative bubbles
burst before and after
turning all the way back
into descending jelly-
fish pumping, churning years
of water in vain, salt
in men’s veins, leading to
bread and lines, better
than blood after and
before out of mouths
it rose, murmuring
something about savings
and lives of yellow fields
and red and yellow roses
(not even close),
murmuring in unison
a day before the brief
bank bailout, five whole
days before Black
Tuesday began, for lack
of another word, mur-
muring like both burnt
and unused coal both inside
and outside the earth.

October 24, 1929 – Douglas Nordfors

Douglas Nordfors received an MFA from the University of Virginia, and has been publishing poems off and on since the late ’80s in journals such as Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, The Iowa Review, and Quarterly West, and in online journals such as Stickman Review, and The Monarch Review. He published a book of poetry, Auras, in 2008, and another poetry book, The Fate Motif, is forthcoming this fall, both from Plain View Press.

Bars of sunlight stripe rooms.
Outside trees teem
with birds
and the hum of insects
on streets
graceful and quiet.

Bars of music rise from computers,
boxed Pandoras
safe to open
with arms full of songs
and symphonies
waiting to be chosen.

Bells on the handlebars of bicycles
tinkle like clinking wineglasses,
gleam like jewels of sound
up and down lake paths,
past boats moored in snug harbors,
picnicking and laughter.

Across town and far away
a bar and party store
anchor a forlorn corner,
blocks of abandoned houses, doors ajar,
with backyards
full of old and broken cars.

The few homes that remain
have bars on the windows,
barricaded
against poverty and pain.
Every family has a father or a son
behind bars and gone.

People here are barred from dreaming
anything will ever change
But bar none are seething
especially the young
with rage
barely contained.

Bars – Margery Parsons

Margery Parsons is an activist and poet who lives in Chicago and works in the arts. Parsons’ writing has most recently been published in Poetry Pacific and the Rag Blog. She is a passionate music and film lover, and feels strongly about the role of art as part of the struggle to change the world.

     I hear America singing, the varied verses I hear,
     Those of stockbrokers, each one singing buy low, sell high,
     The attorney, chanting in Latin as he clogs up the court system with ludicrous litigation to accrue gargantuan fees,
     The medical insurance companies, singing as they raise their premiums and deny your claims,
     The politician, howling his pleas to the public to provide him one more chance after being indicted for a money/sex scandal,
     The avaricious tune of the CEO, singing I deserve my bonus even though the company went bust,
     The rapacious real estate agent, singing housing is back and now is the time to jump on a really good deal,
     The siren song of the public relations agent, singing the praises of deficient and defective consumer goods and services,
     The carefully modulated refrain of the accountant, singing and signing on the dotted line after a desultory glance at invented figures,
     The banker, singing all way to the bank that has been bailed out with taxpayer funding,
     The used car salesman, warbling how wonderful that shiny-looking preowned vehicle that will conk out right after you purchase it is, and you can buy it for a song,
     The borrowed verse of credit card companies, singing take on debt you can’t afford and don’t pay now, pay later at usurious rates of interest,
     Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
     Each singing for their supper, and for your meal, too.

Leaves of Grass Updated – Martin Levinson

Martin Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, Academy of American Poets, and is the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published eight books and numerous articles and poems in various publications. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

Each year the light is less.
We can barely see it now,
The faint necklace of
The Milky Way.

The old ones were wrong,
You know with their waxed fingers
Pointing up like abandoned adobe.

Yet you know better in your cubical gardens
And half moth-eaten moons,
You have arrived in
Handcuffs.

 Lightless – Clint Inman

Clint Inman was born in Walton-on-Thames, England in 1945, grew up in North Carolina, graduated from San Diego State University in 1977, and teaches high school in Tampa Bay.  He lives in Sun City Center, Florida with his wife, Elba.

• The machine must be serviced every day.
• You will turn on the machine at six o’clock every morning, seven days a week.
• You will turn off the machine at eleven o’clock every night, seven days a week.
• You will service the machine every day of the year.
• You will be responsible for servicing the machine on holidays.
• You will have to arrange any days off or sick days with other employees assigned to service the machine.*
• You will hurry.
• You will be back in time for your normal work hours.
• You will not allow your duties to the machine to interfere with your normal work hours.

*You are the only employee currently assigned to service the machine.

• You will drive miles out of your way to reach the machine.
• You will furnish your own car.
• You will furnish you own car insurance.
• You will have the opportunity to attend a safe driving course.*

*The safe driving course will be mandatory.

• When you are not at work or servicing the machine you will be on-call to service the machine should an error occur.
• You will be responsible for repairing any errors the machine has.
• Any errors can be fixed by reading the manual.*

*You do not have the authority to read the manual.**

**You may submit a written request to see the manual.***

***Per article seven, section eight of the manual, “All requests to see the manual will be denied.”

• You may apply to be reimbursed for fifteen percent of the total cost of the safe driving course.*
• You will receive no additional monetary reimbursement for your commute.
• You will not be paid for the time spent on your commute.
• You will only be paid for the time you actually work on the machine.
• You will receive no additional monetary compensation for working on holidays.
• You will receive no additional monetary reimbursement for being on call.
• You will receive no additional monetary reimbursement for the time you work on the machine.
• You will receive an additional 3-4 hours of work at your normal pay grade for the time actually spent working on the machine which should amount to no more than twenty-one additional dollars per week.
• Any time spent on the machine totaling more than twenty-one dollars a week will be deducted from your normal work hours.

*Reimbursement is contingent upon an audit by the oversight management committee determining adequate availability of funds.**

**The oversight management committee has determined there are no available funds.

• Failure to attend or pass the safe driving course may result in immediate termination.
• Any failure to meet your normal work hours for the week may result in immediate termination.
• Any failure to furnish a replacement from the available pool of employees currently assigned to service the machine may result in immediate termination.
• Any requests for days off or sick days must be requested at least six days in advance in order to receive approval from the oversight management committee.
• Failure to receive approval may result in immediate termination
• As per article eight, section seven, of the manual, “Any request to see the manual may be viewed as a sign of incompetence on the part of the employee and may result in immediate termination.”
• Any failure in the performance of any of your normally assigned duties or any duties relating to the machine or any failings of the machine in your absence may result in a probation hearing with the oversight management committee which will result in immediate termination.

Employee Orientation – Damien Shuck

Damien Shuck received a BA from the University of Colorado and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine.  His poetry has previously appeared in the Cider Press Review and he is the winner of the 2012 New American Poetry Prize.  His first book of poetry is forthcoming from New American Press. 

sunlight through cascading pools
says getting mad at politicians
who sell their souls
for women or money
is like getting mad
at an insane dog
who bites your hand
or a big tree
the wind pushes over.

Deep in the Old Growth Forest – Scott Starbuck

Scott T. Starbuck’s newest chapbook, The Other History, Unreported and Underreported Issues, Scenes, and Events of the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries, is forthcoming in Fall 2013 from FutureCycle Press in Georgia. He has a humorous/subversive teaching poem at Work Literary Magazine, and an anti-nuclear clay-poem “Napali” which appeared in the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) Particles on the Wall Exhibit (May and June 2013) about the “lasting impacts of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the nuclear age.” Starbuck has had two other poems at OccuPoetry: “Listening to a Banker Talk About Losing [Only] Two Billion Dollars as Schools Are Closed”  and “San Diego Swap Meet.”

He was a 2013 Artsmith Fellow on Orcas Island.