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News Poetry

News Poetry: A Day Like a Watch Tower

New Year’s Day 2019 we looktoward the months to come,alert as a widow in the night, 1945,an empty school on the hill,spy glasses aimed...

News Poetry: How to Love a Monster

It’s all in my head, the morning news, mourning cities and synagogues. I sit here muttering until my mouth goes dry, fingers cramp around the pen. Sorrow is below,...
Timothy Krause photo

News Poetry: I’ve been called names

I’ve been called names, unhinged, wacko names, un-American and treasonous. The angry mob.    Evil. I’ve been called evil. I incite Hondurans to walk a thousand miles for refuge. I’m hunger, nights on...
Photo: Elián

News Poetry: Food Chain

On your sofa, a visitor— call it puma, mountain lion, or panther, it is not the fine mouser you left there curled on your couch. That cat has been...
Orange fall leaves on the ground

News Poetry: Upslope Downfall

Brilliant trees drop their gold. Today’s Supreme Court nominee Yesterday’s boozy rapist Humphrey’s voice for civil rights against his Southern colleagues only to take the progressive teeter to Johnson’s Texas totter At a too perfect fall...

News Poetry: In Syria

soon my fingers say crickets sing the river laughs death dances words like a weariness ...

News Poetry: A Day at the Library (and no, I don’t mean Amazon)

It could be any day, but let’s say it’s Sunday. A little before one. The line outside the door forms like a queue at the deli....

News Poetry: Paving Meadowlarks

A reporter stands knee deep in swirling prairie while wind bullies the mic. Pushing hair from her face, she tells viewers about plans to develop this vastness. The camera scans...

News Poetry: Three Bars of Summer 2018

Three Bars of Summer 2018 Karen Betstadt I. Hard brown coating constrains the running of cold white cream. I study the brown rectangle. choose a corner; bite. Like a skater falling through...

News Poetry: Waxing

Everyone’s cranky. The bees are cross though they don’t know the president, though they take a dim view of outsiders to their hives, though they guard sweet wealth...