The New Verse News

WEST SIDE BLUES

2009-12-17T15:00:00.002+07:00

by James K. Zimmerman

and I heard
          the three of you shouting
          outside the window of my
          fifth-floor walk-up
                    on a sweaty summer night

and I ran
          to the window to see
          you staggering out
          from the shit-hole bar
                    across the street

and I saw
          the two of them kicking you
          in the back, in the head
          holding you by the arm
          so you couldn’t get away

and I knew
          you were too drunk to know
          if this was real or the
          final chapter in the DTs
          that were your closest friends
                    for all those years

and I saw
          them pull out their blades
          and stab you over and over
          in the arms and legs and
                    back and head

and I thought
          I should do something
          shout out, call the police
                    do something

and I stayed
          at the window watching
          in the after-midnight stench
          and screech and scream
          of the dreamless night

and I saw
          you stumble to the corner
          where a miraculous yellow cab
          swept you up to take you
          to the hospital
                    or the morgue

and I watched
          the two of them saunter
          and slide down the street
          in adrenaline-pumped swagger

and I raged
          as they wiped off their blades
          and closed them up and
          put them back in their pockets

and I smelled
          the fear, mine and yours
          and the blood and the
          sweat and the stench
          of the dumpster where they
          threw the bloody handkerchiefs

and I heard
          the siren of the cop car
          at the end of the block
          coming down the street

and I saw
          the two of them drag on a
          casual cigarette or a joint
          in the rotating red glow of
          the oncoming cop car lights

and I saw
          the cops drive up the street
          as the two of them walked on by

and I shouted
          in my mind: “that’s them
          they’re the ones
                    stop them
                              make them pay”

and I knew
          in the dreamless after-midnight
                    stench and scream

I knew
          the cops would not stop  

James K. Zimmerman is the winner of the 2009 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest and the 2009 Daniel Varoujan Award. His work appears or is upcoming in SLAB, Penumbra, Off Channel, Winning Writers, ICON, SNReview, and the Poetry Annual from Wild Leaf Press.
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THE HITLER OAK

2009-12-16T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Michael Haeflinger

In June 2009, controversy erupted in Jaslo, Poland after the city council elected to cut a tree down in order to make way for a new roundabout. Protesters lobbied to save the tree, despite it having been planted as a gift from Hitler to the occupied city on his birthday in 1942.

were your seeds evil, too?
branches only longings to reach
out and swipe us all away?
leaves only brooms for sweeping
yourself under history’s carpet?

what of the smaller trees
who sprout at your trunk?
foot soldiers in your endless army
or resistance fighters racing
to obscure you, to bring you
down.

why are you here? more important: how
did your story survive?
why not shred the records
of your birth from the office
file cabinets in which they cowered
for half a century?
why are you here to put
us to this test?

how far has the wind carried
your acorns across the continent
and those people there,
do they know?

Michael Haeflinger is originally from Dayton, OH. His poems have appeared on Maverick, BlazeVox, milk, and in Southern Indiana Review. He lives in Berlin, Germany.
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GO-SLOW PARTY

2009-12-15T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Bill Costley

No longer obfuscating
things done under Dubya,
radical Republicanz play
GO-slow Party, saying:

“Let’s do...Nothing!”
about global warming,
about health-care,
about Afghanistan.

The less they do now,
the more they block;
the more they block,
the worse things get.

Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
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NAMES OF THE DEAD II

2009-12-14T15:00:00.003+07:00

by Floyd Cheung

of the ones we don’t know
of the ones not published in The New York Times

of those who fight on the other side
of those who are caught in between

of their names, ranks, hometowns, ages, and
by whom they are beloved

Editor’s Note: Click to read Names of the Dead I.

Floyd Cheung has taught American literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, since 1999.
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MALL BOOKSTORE IN ALBANY, NY

2009-12-13T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

(with a nod to Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California")

What fears I fear this fine afternoon, Allen,
     old friend, as I walk through the parking lot
     of Crossgates Mall on Thanksgiving Sunday
In Border's, the Border Songs pipe along like merry train wrecks
Whole families in the cafe stuff themselves
     with scones and muffins and giant cookies
Whole families flightless and full of mirth
Look, Allen, at the shelves where the nudges and winks
     of the crazy and avaracious of the earth
Sit side-by-side with Elie Wiesel's Night

Steve Hellyard Swartz, a regular contributor to New Verse News, has piles and piles of poems ready to be published. He has won Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg, Mary C. Mohr, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. In 2009, poems of his were published in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, which he wrote and directed, opened at The U.S. Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. He was recently selected Poet Laureate of Schenectady County in upstate New York.
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ICONOGRAPHY OF ART

2009-12-12T18:24:00.001+07:00

by Holly Day

the tide threatens to come and tear
our legacy down—handfuls of sand
poured through fingers forged
into building blocks
this is for the generations
I say to my son, half-believing
our tiny castle will withstand
time, stand until unearthed
by derby-wearing, monocle-sporting archeologists
from future civilizations that will never suspect
we built these turrets
in just one day

Holly Day is a journalism instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Bottle, The MacGuffin, and Not One of Us.
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PEACE & WAR

2009-12-11T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Mary Saracino

Peace is
a heartbeat
a breath
a bowl of rice
or soup
or pasta
or beans
a kiss
a caress
laughter
safety
school books
health care
jobs
joy
gratitude

War is
flat-lines
rattling rales
deafening dirges
a litany
of mangled
guts
oozing brains
righteous causes
cold coffins
anguish
terror
senseless
horror
duty to
god
country
honor
glory

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet and memoir-writer who lives in Lafayette, CO . Her most recent novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Her short story, "Vicky's Secret" earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.
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SALVATION 2009

2009-12-10T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Jean Liebert

     When I joined the teachers in 48,
The thought of sickness gave me the shakes.
     What would I do if the polio bug
Came to our house to give us a hug?

     Health insurance was available to all,
So I signed up with a sigh of relief.
     No more lying awake at night
With the fear of pending grief.

     We no sooner got it “just right,”
When everything began to crumble.
     First the economy failed us
And we all began to grumble.

     Jobs began to vanish overseas
And Wall Street came tumbling down.
     Just like Humpty Dumpty
It remains in pieces all around.

     To make it worse, pensions vanished,
And health insurance bit the dust.
     We now wait at the bottom
Forlorn and covered with rust.

     Today the light is shining on Congress.
Does it have the guts to move ahead?
     Or will it pass a health insurance bill,
That’s toothless and might as well be dead?

Jean Thurston Liebert, age 91, lives in Corvallis, Oregon. She writes poetry, short stories and novellas. Her published work is included in Apricot Memories, a non-fiction history of the apricot industry in California, Linn Benton Community College’s Collections and the Oregon Writers Colony anthology, Take a Bite of Literature. She recently completed a memoir, Another World.
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STRAIGHT TO JESUS

2009-12-09T15:00:00.000+07:00

by David Brennan

During Gay TV’s commercial break
Ricardo’s assistant Victoria pats
away the perspiration beading
the host’s upper-lip. The stage lights
are too close, too beating. Why bother
turning on the air
if he still sweats like a cold
glass on a hot day? Ricardo
is Catholic and drinks too much
coffee. He also has an idea or two
about his faith that he likes
to keep under wraps. For instance:
who decided Jesus
was straight? Sure, the rumored
marriage with Mary Magdalene
is popular with the parishioners,
but look at the facts: who did Jesus
pack about himself? Men.
Twelve: eggs in a carton.
Twelve: sardines in a tin.
Twelve: grown men like schoolgirls
gawking at the rock star’s
rad shredding and riffs,
not to mention his dirty-hip
good looks. Wasn’t it true
he taught them all how
to love? And Christ the free radical
had to understand the
positives of pleasure, of pressure
and release, the pain principle—
could he, Ricardo, with calm rational, reduce
the Passion of Christ to metaphor
for how Jesus got his rocks off?
“And we’re on in 10, 9, 8 . . .”
Ricardo’s automatic smile
flashes in the heat of the lights.
He is the host, with his whole body
he is host and so
ministers to those who have been
denied wine and host, denied
worship with their fellow men
in the name of interpretation, in the name
of what might have been misread.

David Brennan’s work has appeared in journals such as Action Yes, Pank, H_NGM_N, Parthenon West Review, Beeswax and elsewhere. His first book of poetry, The White Visitation, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books. Brennan lives and teaches in Harrisonburg, VA.
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GUERNICA 2009

2009-12-08T15:00:00.000+07:00

by George Held

The bombing [of Basque Guernica on 26.4.37] inspired the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso to make his famous painting Guernica, which was first shown at the Paris World's Fair in 1937. When the painting was finally shown in Spain in 1981—six years after the death of Spain's Fascist dictator, Generalissimo Francisco Franco—it had to be displayed behind bulletproof glass.

Even bulletproof glass
Wouldn’t protect a painting
From today’s terrorists:

They’d blow up the whole gallery,
The whole museum
The whole block.

How innocent seem those Stukas
Flying low over Basque country
To lay their eggs

In civilian nests.
Those were the days, when
Big-time fascists like Franco

Hitler and Mussolini
Had armies and air forces
At their command

And quickly cowed their people,
And the great German Army
Quickly conquered Poland

And the other helpless lands
Until Hitler made his big
Russian mistake.

Today terrorists are common
Folk, inhabit people’s minds
Almost everywhere—

That’s the point of terrorism—
They have no native land,
The world is their target;

We are their targets.
Look at the carnage in Guernica;
Ask, can we end up like that?

George Held has collected many of his New Verse News poems in The News Today.
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STAYING AWAKE

2009-12-07T15:00:00.002+07:00

by CB Follett

The young men
in the neighborhood,
I mean, the young men,
the ones who are men
by the time they are seven,
seven come eleven
a crap shoot
when young boys are men
and the men are fighting
one to a sack.

And the mamas,
the mamas are grannies
before they hit twenty-eight,
and the two in the playpen
are nephew and aunt,
daughter and grandson
mixed up together
in the toys, rancid spit-up,
noise, and the no-time-to-nap,
those two, or her,
or any of them.
Don't turn
don't nap
and watch when you nod,
there's always trouble waiting.
Bad days
nights worse,
school's gone,
jobs whistle in your face.
Government wants you
for their looking-good-charts
with your spanish name
and your black face
that don't get you nothing,
nothing good at all.

Winner of the 2001 National Poetry Book Award from Salmon Run Press, CB Follett has had poems published by Ploughshares, Alligator Juniper, Calyx, Americas Review, Peregrine, The Cumberland Review, Rain City Review, Ambit (England), The MacGuffin, Snowy Egret, Birmingham Poetry Review, New Letters Review, Psychological Perspectives, Without Halos, The Iowa Woman, Heaven Bone, Green Fuse, Black Bear Review, among others. She has been in many anthologies; received contest honors in the Billee Murray Denny, New Letters Prize, the Ann Stanford Prize, the Glimmer Train Poetry Contest and several contests from Poetry Society of America, among others. Five poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize plus three nominations as an individual poet. The most recent of her four collections of poetry is And Freddie Was My Darling, 2009. CB Follett is publisher/editor of Arctos Press, including the anthology, GRRRRR, A Collection of Poems About Bears; she was publisher and co-editor of RUNES, A Review of Poetry, 2001-to 2008.
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A TRIBUTE TO OLD TOM WHO WAS SHOT FOR BEING "A NUISANCE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

2009-12-06T17:56:00.001+07:00

by Leah Maines

I'm sad about our sweet old turkey. I miss him. He would come up to the door and to the side window and just look in. He was as old as dirt. He would run away instead of guard anything. But he liked to prance around and flirt with his two hens. He would beg for bird seed and steal from the bird feeder. He liked cheerios.

Leah Maines is former Poet-in-Residence of Northern Kentucky University. Maines is the best-selling author of Looking to the East with Western Eyes, #10 in the "Cincinnati/Tri-State Best Sellers List" (Cincinnati Enquirer). Her most recent collection Beyond the River (KWC Press, 2002, 1st edition) won the Kentucky Writers' Coalition Poetry Chapbook Competition.
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DEMONCRAZY

2009-12-05T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Charles Frederickson

Demoncrazy has lost lustrous panache
In Gold Wet Rust corrrrosiononoNO!
Dog eat dogmajority slide rule
What’s in it for U$?!

Bipolar horseshoe magnet unhappppy hoooofers
mAlice’s white rabbbbit-foot pedicure pause
Cocksure lobbbbyists sharpening dependent clause
What’s in it for U$?!

Anti-Congressss party poooopers thwarting Progressss
Haunted house chamber of horrrrors
SENATOR anagram TREASON discrediting zillllion$$$
What’s in it for U$?!

Of – By – For – furtive peeeephole
Smart-Mart Open 24 Hours closed
Joblessss opppportunity doooors slammmmed shhhhut
What’s in it for U$?!

Washington DCeption SOS = State Of Social-inSecurity
Pollllcat skunks fOXOXOXOXy cry babiezzzz
Questionabullll unsureveys mmmmulti-mmmmedia statistic-tac-toe
What’s in it for U$?!

Dr. Charles Frederickson. Name: D. Mentor Stan Doubt; Nickname: Nun; Address: Genial Devilry State of Denial; Zip: B9-1-1; Phone: Taco Bell; Faxhole: telepathetic moonsense UFOcult; Sexile: manimal; He-male: e-diot dot commie; vagabondAge: Ironic; Blood: Taipei; Vision: 20-20-20; Religion: Born Against trance-incidental Vegetation; Education: U-Nique BSer IV Leak Overachiever; Major: Mickey Mouse Pad Commuter Séance; Club Memberships: A, AA, AAA, AAAA, AAAAA; Special Abilities: Unmentionable Listless Hypist; halluciDate: Blind Man’s Bluff TGIF.
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ANOTHER APOLOGY

2009-12-04T15:00:00.000+07:00

by David Feela

I’m so sorry for the pain
(Guess I’ll won’t do that again,)
I have caused my family.
(though I did it just for me!)
I know I have let them down
(I’d better appear with a frown)
and lost their generous trust.
(but wow, that generous bust!)
I would like to make amends
(I’d kick the media’s ends)
by trying to be the man
(and screw the devoted fans)
I used to be, one that repents
(but I love the endorsements.)
and puts it all in the past.
(How long does this interview last?)

David Feela's work has appeared in regional and national publications. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Press. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas, is now available.
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NAMES OF THE DEAD

2009-12-03T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Floyd Cheung

CLEAVER
FRAZIER
HAND
SHERMAN

Staff Sergeant
Sergeant
Lance Corporal
Sergeant

John
Daniel
Nicholas
Benjamin

Marysville , Washington
St. Joseph , Michigan
Kansas City , Missouri
Plymouth , Massachusetts

36
25
20
21

Beloved
Beloved
Beloved
Beloved

Floyd Cheung has taught American literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, since 1999.
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THE DAY AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD (DEC. 22, 2012)

2009-12-02T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Lori Desrosiers

I will walk out on my front porch,
watch the children throw snowballs,
cheer on the postman in his high boots,
marvel at sun filtering through pine branches,
sing a song my mother used to sing,
shovel some snow, sweep up the house,
make a call or two, joke about the weather,
pick up an ornament from the floor,
put on the tea kettle, start chicken soup,
sit in my chair, pet the orange cat,
finish the dishes, make the bed,
put in a load of sheets , edit a poem,
remark to my husband
how delightful it is
that we are still here,
after all that hullabaloo.

Lori Desrosiers lives in a big house with a front porch in Westfield, MA and likes to sit and observe the world, then write about it. Her poems have appeared in many reputable publications, including The New Verse News.
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JUST SAY O! NO! TO WAR

2009-12-01T15:00:00.003+07:00

by Mary Saracino

We cast our votes for peace, not war
Were we wrong? We were wrong?
We filled our hearts with hope of change
Were we wrong? Were we wrong?
We cheered the Nobel Laureate on
Were we wrong? Were we wrong?
For sowing seeds of peace not harm
Were we wrong? Were we wrong?
Listen O, and heed the call
Don’t be fooled. Don’t be fooled.
The front line’s here, at home, not there
End the war. End the war.
With wages lost and health care woes
Hear our cries. Hear our cries.
Cast your vote for a different way
Keep the peace. Keep the peace.
Just say no, it’s not too late
Don’t escalate. Don’t escalate.

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet and memoir-writer who lives in Lafayette, CO . Her most recent novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Her short story, "Vicky's Secret" earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.
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THANKSGRIEVING

2009-11-30T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

A few of us still at the table with cake and pie
and strong spiked coffee, another Thanksgiving
where football insists that men and Hoosiers gather
before an ever bigger screen in a choreographed
silence, where the judge sits as far away
from the felon as possible, and on the couch
an adopted black girl naps next to my father who
regularly says “nigger” except for today.
There’s that to be said for football.

But back toward the kitchen,
the next generation of women dishes to the next
about their aging folks, their quirks and questionable
decisions. When does helping become enabling?
And isn’t talk of what parents do always just
a little bit about money? To vent is good; to solve
from hours away impossible. Days of indigestion
elapse before I realize this. Sweet sight of faces…
if only their mouths were basted shut.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske's fourth book of poetry Dominant Hand is now available from MayApple Press. She teaches at Kellogg Community College and runs the annual Poems That Ate Our Ears Contest in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
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THANKSGIVING 2009

2009-11-29T15:00:00.002+07:00

by George Held

The old football coach tells the radio host,
“It’s great we’ll have a night game
in the NFL on Thanksgiving this year.
Previously we just had the two early games.
Now we'll have something to watch
After we eat the turkey.”

Now, that’s something to be thankful for,
Like the news we’ll be out of Afghanistan
By 2017. Of course, that “we”
Won’t include the thousands of war dead
And the thousands who’ll die without health care.

The formula is dazzle ’em with football
And ignore ’em on ending the war
And providing universal healthcare
And reducing carbon emissions,
And pray the market won’t tank.

“We cower together to ask the Lord’s blessing,”
The old hymn goes. “He chastens and hastens
To make His will known.” Can his will
Include a gluttonous assault on factory
Farmed turkeys while the Lions mew on TV?

The first whites to give thanks in “The New
World” fasted a day or two before feasting.
Today only the poor fast and without choice
While gluttony produces obese, diabetic cattle
On two hooves throughout the land.

In the land of the fat, a slender black man
Will be king. Like other monarchs, he will
Gird his loins for war, grant favors to the rich,
And soothe the poor with resonant rhetoric.
Yea, we are thankful for him: he’s not the king
We had last year. Pass the gravy, please.

George Held has collected many of his New Verse News poems in The News Today.
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DUBAI ON E-BAY

2009-11-28T15:00:00.002+07:00

by Earl J. Wilcox

First on the auction scene,
a multi-billion dollar ski slope,
followed by seventy-five sand islands,
and the world’s tallest (unfinished) building.
Bidding bonus: 500,000 Expat slaves
from the Philippines , Egypt , India , and Croatia .
Opening bid: Emirates’ dignity.

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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TOUGH YEAR TO GIVE THANKS

2009-11-27T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Ray Brown

It was a tough year to give thanks.

Grandmother had seen it in the depression,
but she learned a long while ago to stay out of it.
The teenage daughter wanted a Blackberry
and the mother used to like an Italian Prosecco
before Thanksgiving dinner,
but after being out of work for nine months,
worried the unemployment was going to run out
he took a job at ShopRite bagging -
and they gave him a free turkey for Thanksgiving -
that was the only way they made it.

When he was a young boy, his parents had little.
He was happy then with little.
They were happy then with little.
Gave thanks for the little they had.
He and his family now had much more
and would not be happy until they had much more yet.
These are hard times….

Ray Brown lives in Frenchtown, NJ. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. In 2009, his poetry has appeared in the 13th Annual Poetry Ink Chapbook (Moonstone Publishing), The Star-Ledger of Newark, and NJ Lawyer Magazine. He received a NJ Poetry Society 2009 Recognition Award, and will be published in upcoming volumes of the Edison Literary Review, the Big Hammer, FreeXpresSion, and the River Poets Journal.
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THANKSGIVING: OUR PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES

2009-11-26T15:00:00.001+07:00

The New Verse News is proud to nominate for the Pushcart Prizes the following poems published in our pages in the last twelve months . . .

“Venison” by Thomas Reynolds

“News On a March Full Moon” by David Plumb

“Sacramento” by Eliza Kelley

“Gunman Kills 8 at N. Carolina Nursing Home” by Steve Hellyard Swartz

“Sculpture, Ohio, Spring 1970" by Mary Turzillo

“Autumn Turns Through Stratified Wars” by Scot Siegel

. . . and thanks all the writers who have shared their passionate poetry with our readers this year.

RAPTORS

2009-11-25T15:00:00.002+07:00

by CB Follett

High on the thermals, raptors are winging.
They circle the heights, easing south.
           Buteos, Accipiters, Harriers, Peregrine
Red Tail hawk banks against clear air, flashing
the rufous under-blush that gives him name.
          Sharp-shins, Coopers, Merlins, Ferruginous
Their beaks are curved, their plumage concinate.
Slicing the wind, in sweeps the Kestrel,
sleek, small, and bullet straight. The Windfucker.
             klee klee klee    killy killy killy

Down in the canyons, raptors are circling
in long limousines. On executive-gray car phones,
they are riding the thermals of stock buys and leverage,
their sharp claws extended. They are wheeling the air paths,
and dealing down, and their beaks are red.
             sell sell sell    buy buy buy

In the deep dark of the penta-building,
raptors rip the flesh of war,
circle the heights of power, riding
thermals of their special interests.
Hawks tear the clean white dove feathers
into ribbons of red.
               rat-tat-tat    rat-tat-tat

Deep in the dark undergrowths, the raptor is waiting.
His breathing circles, riding thermals of night,
in the parks, in the big, unweeded city.
His claws are curved, as he grabs, hurts, kills.
               And his cry is silence.

Winner of the 2001 National Poetry Book Award from Salmon Run Press, CB Follett has had poems published by Ploughshares, Alligator Juniper, Calyx, Americas Review, Peregrine, The Cumberland Review, Rain City Review, Ambit (England), The MacGuffin, Snowy Egret, Birmingham Poetry Review, New Letters Review, Psychological Perspectives, Without Halos, The Iowa Woman, Heaven Bone, Green Fuse, Black Bear Review, among others. She has been in many anthologies; received contest honors in the Billee Murray Denny, New Letters Prize, the Ann Stanford Prize, the Glimmer Train Poetry Contest and several contests from Poetry Society of America, among others. Five poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize plus three nominations as an individual poet. The most recent of her four collections of poetry is And Freddie Was My Darling, 2009. CB Follett is publisher/editor of Arctos Press, including the anthology, GRRRRR, A Collection of Poems About Bears; she was publisher and co-editor of RUNES, A Review of Poetry, 2001-to 2008.
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GUERNICA

2009-11-24T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Alan Catlin

"in my hometown
there's even a nightclub named
Guernica." Jessica Hagedorn

where they play nothing but
dangerous music, atonal and
dissonant, so strident unmuffled
ears bleed, are assaulted by solo
guitar riffs, percussive drum beats,
organ blasts; killer sounds one and
all. The bouncers are all armed guards,
uniform like Nazis. No one dares
to intrude, tires to leave once they
are locked in for the night of danger
and beauty, gangster love and heart
throbbing infarctions. The heat inside,
the unnatural light inspires visions,
tropical apparitions vivid as death
squads, angles from hell with pilot's
licenses, machine guns and bombs.
In my town there is a night club named
Guernica where turf wars are fought
and lost, where the innocents plead
for mercy and are denied. In Guernica,
I am the demon on the dance floor,
the one with a coat of arms: blood
splatters on a field of clay.

Alan Catlin's latest chapbook is a long poem, Thou Shalt Not Kill, an updating of Rexroth's seminal poem of the same name. Whereas Rexroth riffs on the abuses of the Eisenhower adminstration, the update observes abuses of power in the previous administration with particular attention to the cynical, criminal behavior towards the Katrina hurricane victims.
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ONE SALAAM, TWO SALAAMS

2009-11-23T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Michele F. Cooper

1
Barack salaams the Emperor,
cameras rolling and Fox lit for joy.
“We don’t bow,” they insist.
“He’s a Muslim, a fake, has links
to terrorists, wasn’t even born here,”
all on prompts before the President
straightens up and CNN’s showing tapes
of Nixon and Eisenhower bowing low.

2
No salaams for an old lady,
stooped as she walks to the bus.
She’s been cowed by the years
since she lost the twins
in Qandahar , caught in crossfire
on their way to a temple station,
plus the neighbor's boys in Iraq ,
scared to death, they were,
saying their last goodbyes at Hood.

3
I asked Barack, after shaking his hand
and keeping my posture tall,
why he salaamed that skinny emperor.
“In a word?” he asked. “Respect.”

Michele F. Cooper is the first-place winner in Poetry Canada's Rhymed Poetry Competition and the TallGrass Poetry Competition, second-place winner in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition, author of two books and numerous published poems, founding editor of the Newport Review and Crone's Nest literary magazines, and of a chapbook series, Premier Poets. She recently won honorable mentions in the Emily Dickinson and New Millennium Poetry Competitions. Her book Posting the Watch has just been published by Turning Point, the narrative poetry imprint at WordTech. She is listed in Who's Who in America, Contemporary Authors, and the Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, among others. She recently moved from the edge of a small horse farm (not hers) to Providence, RI, and now to the Cleveland area, where she writes and works as a book editor.
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