22 August 2009

Heather Egret

Anick Roschi

Stephen Williams

Heather Egret

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Debtors' Prison

Just try to find room in my debtors’ prison,
Where smoking is allowed and shops abound
And everything one buys, including diapers,
Encourages friendly-user finance charge
To party hardy—up to 30%;
If debtors can pay anything, it’s that.

Use of the lavatory is not free,
Rates dependent on manufacturers’ ease
The inside, foregoing the outside long ago,
Won’t recall there’s an outside after all.
Those hit hard by default are more broad
And inmates tend to roam around smoking.

Here cigarettes are worth more than all the gold
In California. Sideshow ethics,
Tobacco companies, consumer advocates,
Courtroom entertainment for the condemned,
Who struggle that not to borrow or steal
It’s as likely to find a home mortgage

Allotted inside a banana peel.
That’s why institutionalized smoke,
Both cloudy and clear under all this pressure.
Bless the downtrodden, grown increasing sane!
O, how to work hard to pay for our sin
When profits reaped to not turn round again?

Bio:
Heather Egret works in nonprofit finance in New York City and lives in Queens, NY. Her poetry has appeared in St. Luke’s Review, The Register Citizen, and the Paradigm Journal. Her full-length play, Oracle Bones, has been developed at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre and read by New World Theatre, NY in its summer reading series.

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Anick Roschi

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Capital Ground

Now is the shared time
Of our last riches

To each birth
Freedom
A drop of water
Thirsty of river

To each birth
Equality
A drop of sweat
Exhausted of misery

To each birth
Fraternity
A drop of air
Dirty of deserts

Now is the exorcised time
Of our planetary reasons

The articulated time
Of a capital
Ground.


Bio:
Anick Roschi has dual nationality; Swiss and French. After engineering studies in Geneva, he travelled extensivley in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. On his return, he retrained in social workers and worked for children's causes in Geneva. He has won first prize at Fiele Filiochta in Ireland, and has had work published in several anthologies in Belgium, Spain and Italy.


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Stephen Williams

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Doomsday

Over L.A.
dust floating
down

on our knees
scratching

shade
under tubular clouds

divining for water
groaning

movie theater
ancient on the corner

echoing warnings
we laughed at back then

smooching
in the dark
teenagers

I still dream
of your breasts

before the continual thunder.


Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Anthology, Avocet, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Byline Magazine, Chronogram Magazine, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, HUNGUR, Liquid Imagination, Nerve Cowboy, Mirror Dance, POEM, Poesia, Posey, Purpose, REAL, Tales from the Moonlit Path, and many others.


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08 August 2009

Daniel Callaghan

Nicole Goodwin

Anthony Lee

Daniel Callaghan

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Rosewood, Florida

Not far to our Pasco north, the ruins of Rosewood lay,
Mute witness of another day not long ago when
White slew black: not just flesh but dreams and hopes,
And the black was told: you never will be free,
Nor can your children hope to be, nor grandchildren
Dare to see a day when they too can have a dream,
And think to see that it will come true.
You, who bear the skin that now is white,
What lights your way through browned parchments
That still say only man shall be free, not me who is
Not white, nor me who is not man? Do you stand in pride
Of this nation so long empty of its promise? Will you stand
Pridefully in its way, to this day, when promises come due, and
Finally are true, for me, for us--and not just for you?
There came a time, when humankind first stood up to see
Across savannahs in Africa’s birthplace for us all,
And some ventured out to roam in waves, then came home
Before setting out once more, and settling down in
Europe’s cold caves, becoming more and more white,
Then daring unknown seas to claim a new continent’s shores,
Driving a race of red off their land and into cages of earth.
Do you remember proclaiming liberty, fighting to be free—
For whom? Not me who is not white, nor woman who is not he.
Rosewood’s long-kept secret now emerges from green dark—
Black towns rose and fell, and to be black until recently, was not free,
But rather, to wait, to know, fearing that all you know, make and are,
Can by a single white lie on a New Year’s Day, simply cease to be.


Bio:
Daniel Callaghan is a retired high school English teacher and bookseller living in Florida. A former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and the Special Forces (Airborne), Daniel is now a felon after being convicted for stopping a float in a local parade that he believes demeans and exploits American Indian culture and spirituality. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs, is Head Librarian of the West Pasco Historical Society, and protests the continuing wars every Friday on Highway 19 in Pasco County.



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Nicole Goodwin

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A Poem for Reinaldo

No one fights when beauty dies
Whether it was crushed by human hands
Or just with words and undying wills
There is always silence.
Looking deep into this fact,
Even I am no exception.

Dedicated to Reinaldo Arenas


Bio:
Nicole Goodwin is a twenty-eight year old single mother, writer and poet born and raised in New York City. She has performed at many spoken word venues including two featured performances at V-Day Poetry Benefit Concert on Feb 2005, and the Defenders of Love Benefit on Feb 2008. Her further literary achievements include the publications in three non-fiction anthologies: We Got Issues: A Young Woman’s Guide To A Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life There By Hangs A Tale: The Birth Issue, and the August Issue of Underwired Magazine, poetic inclusion in the 2008 Voices of Israel Anthology, The City College of New York’s very own publication Promethean along with a fictional piece printed in City College’s Global City Review.





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Anthony A. Lee

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Where is Neda?

Telephone images
jerk on my TV screen.
Crowds in the streets.
I push as hard as I can
but can’t come close.
Boys throwing rocks at men
in uniform, guns raised and cocked.
Boys in face masks.
Girls in scarves
hand them their stones.

There is blood.
The doctor’s hands can’t stop it.
He boards a plane the next day.
I am too far away and feel nothing.
All men are born as my brothers.
They are young.
They will grow bigger.
All women my sisters—
my lovers—and the men.

At night on the roof
a woman cries,
shrill, clear, angry:
Allah-u Akbar!
to begin the night chorus.
There are more dark rooftops.
God is Great!

I hear the human voices.
Is this prayer?
A deep voice asks
Neda koja’st? ...
A question?
Neda koja’st? is the answer.
Where is Neda?
Where is my sister?

Neda-jan, where are you?


Bio:
Anthony A. Lee, Ph.D. teaches African American history (and other subjects) at UCLA. His poems have been published in ONTHEBUS, The Homestead Review, Arts Dialogue, Warpland, and the 2003 anthology of the Valley Contemporary Poets (Sherman Oaks, CA). He is the winner of the Nat Turner Poetry Prize for 2003 (Cross Keys Press). His first book of poems, This Poem Means, was the winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for 2005 (Lotus Press). Some of his translations have been published in Táhirih: A Portrait in Poetry: Selected Poems of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Kalimát Press, 2004).


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