18 December 2010

Eve Lyons

Rae Rose

Jan Theuninck

Eve Lyons

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Personal ad for my country

Married Jewish female
seeks one person
who knows how to love country
without hating its inhabitants
who knows how to cradle
both extremes while standing
astride the middle.
Married Jewish female
whose marriage is only legal
in five states, who feels
as uncomfortable with
the Orthodox of her own kin
as she does with orthodox Christians
orthodox Muslims
orthodox capitalists
and orthodox secularists.
Married Jewish female
seeks a country
where the borders don't feel like prisons
where the talking heads
on the television
don't preach hatred
and mistrust.
Married Jewish female
seeks love.
It's hard enough
some days
to remain
a married Jewish female
without feeling the urge to
"fuck and run"
from arguments over whose turn it is
to change the cat litter
from arguments over which part of the population
deserves more funding
from attack ads
from bitter political debates
from a whole world.
Married Jewish female
seeks a home
Not a condominium or
a house or a mortgage
Not a rented space
from year to year
But a home
a place where my soul
can rest.


Bio:
I am a 30 something year old married queer woman living in Boston, MA.
I have been previously published in Fireweed, Concho River Review,
Labyrinth, Women’s Words, Woven, Sapphic Ink, Texas Observer, Word
Riot, Houston Literary Review, and two different anthologies. I have
performed in the now defunct Amazon Poetry Slam for many years and
recently had a ten minute play in the production Ten Tiny Shows in
Cambridge, MA. I currently have a poem coming out in January in voxpoetry.


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Rae Rose

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Sometimes A Man Comes Back From War

like shadow –
himself, but different.
Some kind of science fiction,
Invasion of The Body Snatchers.

Same body, sometimes.
Same eyes – used up,
inkwells that can't be refilled.

His fingers know how to touch wire
and explode, or –
sometimes he comes back,

war stuck to his shoes,
he drags it inside,
right over the welcome mat.

Sometimes his family
huddles like sheep.
Eyes shut so tight

it aches.
We bought him a war,
he sometimes comes back

all shadow,
footsteps like gunfire
up the hall, down the hall.


Bio:
Rose's poetry and fiction have been published in literary magazines,
including The Pedestal Magazine, Cicada, The San Diego Poetry Annual,
Earth's Daughters and THEMA. Her poetry about race and gender has been
used as a resource within the Portland State University sociology
department.



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Jan Theuninck

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Beyond the limit

tempting is
the border area
hanging around
in the gray zone
watching the game
of back and forth
seeing how vanity
and power
push them
far
beyond the limit


Bio:
Jan Theuninck (born 7 June 1954 in Zonnebeke, Belgium) is a Belgian painter and poet. His work in both media is guided by his social and political convictions, dealing with topics such as colonialism old and new, mass and society, and pacifism.



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04 December 2010

Laura Gail Grohe

Janice D. Soderling

Laura Gail Grohe

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Sugar and Spice

Nice girls kill themselves
rather than their enemies.

Nice girls prefer to swallow the poison themselves
rather than watch their rapists choke on their own bile.

Nice girls know how to make polite conversation
while walking on piles of broken glass,
feet bloodied, but not a hair out of place.
Watch a nice girl, with her lovely measured steps,
her nails are trimmed and perhaps painted pink (never red).
She wears her mother’s brooch over her heart
like a medal for a war she never won nor lost.
Casualties have no sides.


Bio:
Laura Gail Grohe lives in western Massachusetts. She believes in the power of poetry to change the world.


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Janice D. Soderling

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Torture

Waterboarding? It’s just a word,
a useful word, like surfing, like sailing,
like basketball. Nothing appalling
about it, friend. That scream you heard?
I didn’t hear nothing. Maybe a night bird.
Anyway the end
justifies the means. Anyway the point is to bend
not break. OK, so break a little maybe. That wail you heard?
Just the wind. Don’t forget
we’re the good guys. Not some Hitler jerk or Stalin
character. We got nothing in common
with historic monsters like them. I’ll bet
you don’t understand the kind of people we’re dealin’
with here. It’s like they aren’t even human.


Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to Protestpoems. Her poems with political themes have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Apple Valley Review, New Verse News, nth position and the sadly now defunct journals Green Fuse and Babel Fruit. Scheduled publications include The Centrifugal Eye, Studio Journal, Literary Bohemian, Literary Mama, Turtle Quarterly, dotdotdash, Boston Literary Magazine. Coe Review and Mezzo Cammin.


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