City Belt

POEM: OBJECT

My pink Jesus
Leaks blue blood
On Corinthian capital

When I got him last year
He was full
And I was full
And when I asked him
Anything
His answers made me laugh
I could make sense
Of them

POEM: BLESSED IN NEWARK

Orthodox in all but name,
We find ourselves between the apse and nave
Of two worlds where our reflections
Mimic blank expressions
And pepper mosaic windows.

The bus wends its way through Vailsburg,
My spiritual home, our Fatima,
Where we gained strength
On Friday evenings in April and May
And heard the Sodality Sisters gather and sing
The hauntingly beautiful Acathistos service
To the Mother of God.

This annual preparation for the Passion
Featuring sacrificial tin can banks,
Was shattered by a new wave of bloodshed,
The fifth attack in three weeks,
Which sparked a night of rioting near Bethlehem.

The suicide bomber on a bicycle,
Who may have been a woman, died.
When was the reincarnation?

Did I miss the body?

Which turn for Zarvanytsia?

-- Roman S. Ponos

POEM: ITINERARY

I consult a weathervane
But the wind disappears
Just a fallen arrow now

I open unsuspecting jars
And unleash my tongue
Lids stay sticky anyhow

I hail all rocks on water
That skip longer for less
Descent climbs offshore

Morning I steal for love
Afternoon I know is iffy
Night I see once on tour

-- Daniel Morris

POEM: POOR RECEPTION

Picture an apartment with
a rusty fire escape in a city called
"Somewhere, New Jersey."

A man in a black T-shirt sits
smoking and chewing, watching
George W. in a blizzard of static.

"What now?"
the man asks a sleeping
dog at his feet.

The mutt growls and
twitches, the channel flips to
a woman eating a spider. "Hell."

The man runs down three flights
to the street, stops to watch
the moon rise over roofs,

its bewildered face a mirror of his own.

- Michael Gates

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POEM: BUT FOR THE GRACE OF ...

Tucked in the lower corner,
the headline told the ostensible story,
“Former professor, to call girl,
then suicide, police say.”

Untold, unsung, are the thousands like Brandy,
those less picturesque,
less resonant to media,
as untold as the untellable millions
endangered by her passing.

In the battle against AIDS, against the virus that slays
through sex, drugs and their seductions,
Brandy was a brilliant coming star
who married bright ideas, research savvy, caring,
passion, and impatience —
all needed, all in short supply.

POEM: 111 FIRST ST. HAIKU

Formerly art house
Oh-so-modern Rem Koolhaus
And now we've "arrived?"

- Jon Whiten

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POEM: LITTLE-SKY COUNTRY

I live in the little-sky country,
where buildings shadow the setting moon,
and Orion spends his nightly frolics
skipping behind trees, bushes,
and the house next door.

We see him only dimly
through second-hand mall-lights
reflecting off organic clouds
excreted by the makers of wonder drugs
to cure the cancers
that fill this land.

Yet on a winter morn,
fetching the daily news
from snow drifts,
a glimpse of Vega or Mercury
brings scintillating tears
of nostalgic love
above my desiccated nostrils
and pluming breath.

-- Sam Friedman

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POEM: FINE DETAILS

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Remember when we learned we cared not for the modern
feminists;
the truth, thicker than whispers of a serpent though
it slithers, hissed
at as it is by forked tongues. Remember a smothered
sky
of fat leaves as we discovered the thinning sameness
of forest
trudges to breath-taking views, the berried shrubs,
the most high.

You made the ivory tower romantic, the deep sniff of
library:
a bed of books, sweeter than others' roses, in lean
clear lines free.
Then hatred bloomed as news came in, and cardinal
friends fell out.
Barricades rose as soldiers marched, rosy to the most
fined capillary.
Remember crosscut woods, concentric rings, thinnest
during drought.

-- Lee W. Jenson

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Lee W. Jenson is a graduate student at Rutgers Business School. Besides writing poetry, he also contributes articles under a pseudonym for www.wsws.org, a Trotskyist online newspaper.

POEM: THE BRAVERY OF LAUGHTER

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For Mike

Fourteen and fifteen
Give or take one
In either direction
Catching mass
Transit
From Jersey suburbs
Through factory high
Rise smog and
Ear pop of
Subterranean tunnel
Into Penn then out again.

You lead the way
Past the peanut-pretzel perfumery
Of New York City sidewalks
And wintertime subway exits.

We gathered our courage
Into the Chinese variety market
Hinted for a box of nitrous oxide
One cracker
Two balloons,
Laughed our
Oxygen levels down
Houston to the park.

Everything seemed possible
Then.  We bonded
Like brothers could.

-- Daniel McNulty

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Daniel McNulty is a founding member of Raconteur Publications who's first book, The Raconteur Reader, is due out in June. He was the general manager of The Raconteur's Word Fest, a four hour literary event held at Metuchen's landmark The Forum Theatre. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

POEM: THEY HAVE STOLEN OUR WORDS

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Once the orgasm at the climax of philosophy,
“democracy” now connotes
lawyers, tobacco ads, CIA-choice cocaine,
and atomic bombs in your own back yard.

“Workers” are read as stereotypical rednecks
driving pick-up trucks,
stopping for a beer, gay-bashing, or rape
on their way home from a vanishing job.