MARS

by Howie Good

The god of carnage has grown

a balding man’s stringy ponytail.

Red, he says, means danger.

He shrugs his cruelly thin shoulders.

A tractor stands abandoned

in a field of what looks from here

like black puddles of blood.

The future will burn a full 40 days.

We will walk beside our coffins.

Starvelings will stare out

from behind barbed wire.

Mothers will shriek. There will be

nice grass in the cemetery.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

CIVILIZED DENTISTRY

by Caru Cadoc

We pay dentists to shave down our canines

nice and flush with the others

to help us dress up

and play humanists.

It's vain but honest.

They're such savage looking teeth.

And who needs canines anyway

when we have blow guns of chrome

Powered by powder more forcful than our little jaws

To project shards of metal designed to tear far deeper

Than our quaint little teeth.

Caru Cadoc is the lyricist for the Pseudosufis.  His work has appeared in Dead Flowers,The Boiler, MAKE, Jersey Devil Press, Word Catalyst and Storyglossia.

THE APOCALYPSE GOES UNNOTICED IN NEWTOWN

by Catherine McGuire

No one needs predictions, there.

And on Turkish borders, huddled tents

have no preps for crisis. Trenton slums,

the barrios of Rio, the drained and droughty deltas

of Tigris, or Sudan – Apocalypse can knock

and enter; no one will care.

Which is to say, the world is always ending;

our treasures crumble, dust to dust.

The myth-inflated bogeys threaten

while behind our backs, our futures rust.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep interest in philosophy, the “Why we are here?” question that lurks under so much of our lives. She will have a chapbook released by Uttered Chaos in September. It is tentatively titled, Reflections, Echoes and Palimpsests. She is webmaster for the Oregon Poetry Society and claims her entire garden as her 'poetry office'.

THE CHRISTMAS AFTER

by Carolyn W. Callighan A storm the size of all of Europe blew Along the coast. The buildings and the dunes, Mere toys against a sea, urged through the moon's Insistent push of water, spun and flew In all directions. Picked up by the wind, Possessions were encased in sand. Each one, Grief-stricken, stared at damage done. And, turning, Sand and damage to no end. . . . And now, weeks later, holidays and lights ring in A time of joy, but how to celebrate When all is topsy-turvy? How do we create A place of peace and joy, and stop the spin? We look within ourselves, and here we find The strength we need to heal, and to be kind. Carolyn W. Callighan grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, then moved to the East Coast for college and work thereafter.  She lived and worked for several decades in Boston, Phildalphia, Washington, and, finally, the New York City area.  Now, after several decades, she is back in Nashville.

A CHRISTMAS LYRIC FOR THE NVN SURVIVORS

by Earl J. Wilcox

If (as the old adage goes)

only two things are certain,

death and taxes—

and the Apocalypse did not

happen, then what

are we left with. Right!

Taxes and Christmas fruitcake.

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.

FOR THE REPOSE OF SOULS

by Carol Alexander

A Berkeley, CA vigil held to remember the victims and families of the Newtown, CT, massacre. Photo: Jeremy Pollack/Creative Commons

A pair of peafowl floats down from the trees,
the wan hen and florid cock picking their way
while the river slowly slips back in its banks.

The boy in his tall wading books creeps after,
licking rust from the muzzle of his gun.

The juddering of a turquoise fan perhaps will be
as close to flame of phoenix  as spirit will draw.
But we were born in fire, and to fire will come.

The woman with the small communion dress
rocks in her chair in her ordinary room
room with its proportions rudely skewed;
shocked feathers of the peafowls gently float down.

With their saintly calendar of woes,
country men and women walk in sober twos.

Still the shops stay open; trees blink red and green,
children dash across the street, cars swerve,
we hear the Morse code of the coming snow,
birds in starry park all the news that we can bear.

A pallid smoke in its helix twists and frays,
as if to question who to go and how to stay?
You mummers in a masquerade of death
shoot off your pop guns, begging cakes and ale.

Neither the country nor the quiet grave where we lay
our old ones down in the lightness of their years,
is this cold town where we have just begun to pray.

But unicorns and little maids remain entwined
(in sable trees an archer waits and strings his silent bow).


A writer for trade and educational publishing, Carol Alexander has authored numerous children’s books, served as a ghostwriter for radio and trade publishing, and taught at colleges around the metropolitan area. In 2011-2012, her poetry appears—or is scheduled to appear-- in literary journals and anthologies published by Avocet, Boyne Berries (UK), Chiron Review, Cave Moon Press, The Canary, Danse Macabre, Earthspeak, Eunoia Review, Fade Poetry Journal (UK), Fat Daddy’s Farm Press, Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Mad Hatter’s Review, Mobius, Numinous, OVS, Red Poppy Review, Red River Review, River Poets Journal, Sleeping Cat Books, The Whistling Fire, and Write Wing Publishing.

THE RAIN OF MERCY

by Laura Rodley

Image source: Dipity.

Now your waves drink the sky,
an everflowing cup,
that soothes your skin
constantly scorched by daily sun.
See how my raindrops
speckle you with sweet relief
so your tides can surge
upon the sand, keeping
the promise of everlasting life
a promise in danger of being broken
but here, the falling drops
wet and seal the cracks
so your waves tumble, tumble,
the ground sure beneath your reach.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.