The New Verse News

IN TODAY'S NEWS CYCLE

2009-07-20T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Lylanne Musselman

There's no taming
a ventriloquist moon.
Mother Earth's little sidekick
seeks to shine
in headline news
eclipsing celebrities, dead or alive,
hiding the dark side,
always eager to dangle
full bright face
unfazed by a starless sky –
on path to wax fame
waning since landing center stage
July 20, 1969.
One moment of lunar magic
launched
hoax believers –
No Neil Armstrong on the Moon.
Skeptics
don't pull strings.
They know puppets
can't talk, never gaze
at the man (or woman)
in the moon,
dismiss silly nursery rhymes –
cats can't play fiddle,
cows don't jump,
and wouldn't a fork run away
with the spoon?

Lylanne Musselman resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. She's an Associate Professor of Writing at IUPUI and she teaches creative writing classes at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and at the University of Indianapolis' School of Adult Learning. Her story feature, L WordS, is aired live monthly on BloomingOUT, a weekly broadcast on WFHB radio. An award winning poet, Lylanne's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK Magazine, Flying Island, New Verse News, Ichabod's Sketchbook, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry Motel, among others. Lylanne's chapbook, A Charm Bracelet for Cruising, is forthcoming from Winged City Press.
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LIP SERVICE

2009-07-19T16:49:00.001+07:00

by Andrew Hilbert

Today
the biased,
celebrity media
hounds
bow to Cronkite
as he goes down.

Still,
there is news
about the state of things
between Brangelina,

And
there is news
about Janet Jackson
dumping her boyfriend
nobody knew she had.

To the most trusted man in America,
that's the way it is.

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

2009-07-18T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Helen Padway

The gentlemen in dark suits
and conservative ties,
red, blue, striped or checked,
keep throwing stones
into a deep pool of calm water.
The stones splash, sink and leave
concentric conversational circles
that soon fade, the stones
disappear and the pool is unchanged.

Helen Padway writes or thinks about writing most of the time. She lives in Milwaukee, WI and her work has appeared in both printed and ejournals.
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ROBERT MCNAMARA IN HELL

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

by Jon Wesick

Wire-rimmed glasses               brilliantine hair
map on an S-shaped country
Strange whiz kid
taming the yellow-eyed wolf of war
with punch cards and slide rules

Bomb pattern analysis               statistics of enemy dead
game theory     think tanks      Mutual Assured Destruction
Numbers don’t lie
Victory’s just around the corner

But the wolf slipped the chains of cool reason
for a sweaty jungle
Behind yellow eyes the enemy measures
calculates with alien mathematics
jagged steel                         napalm smell
morphine               MEDEVAC               58,000 dead
Numbers don’t lie

In an air conditioned office
tired eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses
checking and rechecking equations
for an algebraic error   a dropped minus sign
Unable to turn away
Not resting until he finds the reason
Still staring at that S-shaped country

Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
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THE READING

2009-07-16T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Lynnie Gobeille

after reading Charles Bukowski's "poetry readings"

She arrives in patterned flower pants
floppy sea green sweater, clogs,
her hair loose and matted
beaded woven bracelets dancing on her arm.
Introduces her first poem with the rambling saga
of her divorce, the recent death of her cat, how just
today she discovered a mouse had chewed through
small wires in the ice maker of her mother’s old refrigerator…
Her mother’s death resurfacing in all that water.
All of us are flattered when she remembers our names.
Talks to us as if she knows us. Or we know her.
I have been to enough of these to know
we are merely shells in the game.
People whose identity gets moved from here to here…
chair to chair ..reading to reading. We all sit in silence.
Witness her weave her star- like magic
Are her poems fabulous?
Or are they fabulous because we hear her read them?
My friend falls in love and buys two books. Hopes to have
them autographed and waits in line. Watches closely as the poet
signs each one with regal grace…
  I am asked to fetch more books
and dash off eagerly, honored by the task. Opening the car door,
overwhelmed by the sweet scent of spice and onions….I wade
through bags of garbage. An empty wine bottle rolls around at my feet
wrappers from a half eaten grinder slip through my fingers,
her children’s clothes and toys covering the back seat…
I kneel there breathing in all that is the magic of her life.
I recall the last poem she read.
  The one about the birds.
How they fly up and move from spot to spot,
three feet up to down.
She read it with such energy and amazement.

Breathing in one last blast of lunch
  and sweat and disaster,
I gather up her treasures.
Head back into the library…
Praying someday to be of equal measure

Lynnie Gobeille has been published in the Sow's Ear Review, Crone's Nest, Clear Creek Courant, The Avatar, The Prairie Home Companion, This I Believe (NPR) and New Verse News. She is the editor for The Poetry Corner in the Providence Journal South County section. Currently part of the Origami Poems Project, a state wide "free poetry event" based in Rhode Island.
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JUDGING THE JUDGE

2009-07-15T15:00:00.001+07:00

by Anne G. Davies

The GOP had well laid plans
For interrogating Judge Sonia;
From the outset they’ve treated her
Like an acute case of pneumonia.

She shouldn’t take it personally,
Or overdo placating;
No matter who Obama chose,
The long knives would be waiting.

Her opinions have been subject to
Minute examination;
Any hint of minority bias
Is grounds for condemnation.

Can a Latina with life experience
Know as much as a law-trained male?
We know many an ethnic mama
Wise as jurists from Harvard and Yale.

Many Republicans will continue
To nitpick, carp, and upbraid;
We trust that others will rise above
This unbecoming charade.

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.
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LINT HEADS' LAMENT

2009-07-14T15:00:00.000+07:00

by Earl J. Wilcox

Today, the last big mill in our town
burned down, almost to the ground.
It was a vast factory once, employed
thousands---textile heaven during its day.
Vandals probably started the fire,
as they usually do, though who can
know why they want to destroy this
last big building where their whole family
worked over the years. Dozens pour out
to watch the dark, coiling smoke climb
so high in the sky a city twenty-five
miles away sees one of our landmarks
go up, make a menacing cloud.
Friends who’ve not seen each other
since the mill closed decades ago
watch firemen douse the blaze.
Some recall teen years spent in spinning
rooms, some sweeping up cloth fragments,
others shed tears, glad they’re no longer
called lint heads.

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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THE INTERROGATORS

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

by Christopher Woods

Christopher Woods has published a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas. He shares an online gallery with his wife Linda at The Texana Review.
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SARAHTUDE!

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

by Bill Costley

She's so got it! Look @
any colorfoto of her:

teeth & skin & hair
2 absolutely die 4!

All she has 2 do is say:
"I'm just so...available!"

Like, I'm not kidding!
It's so...totally obvious!

Go, Sarah; Go-Go. Go.

Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
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CURIOUS AT THE SMITHSONIAN

2009-07-10T03:44:00.000+07:00

by J. D. Mackenzie

As the litany of useless details
began to reach Olympian proportions
what was to be a service became a circus

The grieving father moved
to ensure complete financial control
of more numbers than he could count

Two remaining Beatles
seeing an opening for justice
pondered buying their songs back

Three confused children
became even more so after
another strange day in their strange lives

The remaining four brothers
wondered through tears what they’d fetch
for a nights’ gig at the Aladdin

While millions tuned in to glimpse
how commoners send royalty
into the great beyond

But the Curator, paid to think of these things
could only watch and wonder
what ever happened to that damned white glove?

J. D. Mackenzie is a poet, college administrator, and improving organic gardener. His work has been widely published, generally when he remembers to submit it to online and print publications.
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BURIED WITHOUT HIS BRAIN

2009-07-09T05:42:00.001+07:00

by Janice Keough

Sorry, Michael,
but the brain stays
outside the remains.

They need time
to see the chem trail
written by you

To maybe explain
what you took
but never why

That would take
an interview
you’ll never give.

Your life was always
outside your control
then and now.

Janice Keough has published in the RI Writer’s Circle 2008 Anthology. Last January, the Bay Area Poets Coalition awarded her 1st Honorable Mention for the 64-count poem, "Lemon Life". Her "Billing Queen" appeared in New Verse News in April. Her poem ‘A little encouragement’ is being published in the Providence Journal.
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OFF THE WALL

2009-07-07T21:39:00.002+07:00

by Andrew Hilbert

today Michael Jackson will be buried

but not

Joe Jackson or Al Sharpton

they're sure to be

there

advertising whatever it is

they're selling

today on facebook

a friend (but i don't really know him)

compared getting tickets to see

the King's memorial to getting

the golden ticket to see Willy Wonka

some comparison.

Willy Wonka was alive.

in his death,

Moonwalker is still treated as an

item

a commodity

Andrew Hilbert has a degree in History at Cal State Long Beach and lives in Orange County, California.
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I LOVE MY FEET, OR OVERLOAD OR SOMETHING ELSE

2009-07-06T19:52:00.000+07:00

by Kim Doyle

Uyghur American Association is news to me;
never heard of them before the troubles
came to Xianjing. They (Uyghurs) are the n-word
to the Han Chinese majority it seems.

Muslims in a “buffer state” in central Asia
buffering, I guess, the world of Han
from the burgeoning world of Islam.
This is sometimes called “East Turkestan.”

It’s hard to keep up with everything reported
24/7. I used to know what to worry about
but now am confused. So I sample all the channels;
clicking, flipping, wanting to know and knowing
that what I get will just cause me to fret some more.

News is a whore feeding at the tit of the dead
Michael Jackson. I forget, wasn’t he a pedophile
or something like that; you’d never guess it’s a fact.

And who elected him ‘King of Pop’?
And was the election held in Iran?

Kim Doyle reports: "I try to know everything, but only Jorge Luis Borges did that; and he's long dead. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown."
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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

2009-07-05T19:45:00.000+07:00

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Every morning
For more than six decades
I have gotten out of bed
Put on my clothes
Eaten breakfast
Brushed my teeth
Opened my front door
And stepped out of my house
Into a world that men driven mad
By money and power
Threaten to blow to smithereens
Or otherwise render unlivable

Who can say I am not
A man of faith

Buff Whitman-Bradley is a peace and social justice activist in Northern California. In addition to writing, he produces documentary videos and audios. With his wife Cynthia, he is co-producer/director of the award winning video Outside In, about people who visit prisoners on San Quentin's death row.
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PIT STOP

2009-07-04T19:12:00.001+07:00

by Catherine McGuire

This is no tourist trailer parked beside us:
a cold dawn fingers
rusted ladder rungs curving
up to the dented roof, open-air “attic”
piled with summer clothes in garbage bags,
a coil of hose, buckets that might hold oats
or old shoes. Their featureless aluminum box
wheeled onto blacktop off the main road,
to the fringe of this roadside park,
among the Bounders' and Outlanders'
expandable rooms and sleekly furled awnings
hasn’t moved since Wall Street hit a pothole
got a flat and swerved
sending their lives off the edge
they‘d spent years clinging to.

The bike tied to the back
is unhooked for the graveyard shift
at the Highway Gas ’N Grill.
She cooks silently at a charcoal grill
the hot plate burnt out, she told me last week.
The white poly deck chairs and tv trays
create the dining room
that doesn’t fit inside. They eat
with their backs to the rest of us - she's slim,
he's hefty, with long gray-streaked hair.
They don’t socialize; don’t use the concrete clubhouse
or showers, or play bingo or cards.
Brown and green empties roll loose
tinkle like windchimes under the wheels
as cedars waggle admonitory fingers
over the rust-speckled, once mobile
home.

I hear them inside, though.
Morning is just another excuse to drink;
noon a rendevous with Oprah;
evening a cold bike ride to the edge
of the interstate which is endlessly
leaving them behind.

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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NO TRESPASSING

2009-07-03T19:54:00.001+07:00

by Janice D. Soderling

A carefully trimmed hedge
behind a fence.
Two ornamental stones
like runway markers.
A tailwind.

Dandelion seeds flying in low.

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to New Verse News. Her work appears in many online and offline publications including nth position, Boston Literary Magazine, Alba, Right Hand Pointing, Shakespeare's Monkey Revue, JMWW, Literary Bohemian and Anon. She lives in a small village in Sweden.
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EQUAL RIGHTS

2009-07-02T19:28:00.001+07:00

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

2009-07-01T15:00:00.000+07:00

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?

2009-06-29T18:17:00.001+07:00

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

2009-06-29T15:00:00.002+07:00

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

2009-06-28T18:40:00.001+07:00

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

2009-06-27T19:18:00.001+07:00

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

2009-06-26T17:56:00.002+07:00

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

2009-06-25T18:36:00.001+07:00

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

2009-06-24T19:06:00.001+07:00

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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