Goya in the time of King George*
By I.B. Rad
Goya, in our land
where Saturn devours his children every morning,
rigs markets in the afternoon
and goes to mass on Sundays,
where the "Prince of Peace"
becomes the God of War
and Mammon reigns supreme,
where witches and incubi eclipse our skies
and gnomes and hobgoblins roam our streets,
come paint our vapid king and queen,
our slaughter of the innocents
our Adams raping Eves.
Goya, come paint us mainly
not as we'll pay to seem
but as we are!
*Although the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746 - 1828) is perhaps
best known for paintings such as "The Naked Maja" and "The
Clothed Maja", he is equally revered for his satirical/"dark"
paintings and etchings that depict the follies and superstitions in
his native Spain. These include paintings such as "Saturn Devouring
his Son," "The Witches Sabbath," "The Incantation",
and "The Second of May", to pick a few, and his 3 collections
of etchings. The regal vapidity apparent in his painting, "The
Family of Charles IV," is probably more a tribute to realism than
a satire of his royal patrons. As the poem's title implies, it was written
during President George Bush's reign.
GRAVITY
By Bosacker
Isaac Newton watched an apple
fall
and then decided gravity was law
which indicates to me a logic flaw,
since that don't explain gravity at all.
Each hollow molecule's concavity
has vacuum that sucks on the next,
and this strong suction simply collects
and that's how we get gravity.
Bosacker's verse is uses ancient cliches and simple platitudes but always
with an element of sardonic wit, and sometimes, an important truth.
The trick to understanding his wry twists, is knowing when he is telling
the truth, or when he saying what might have been, and this, of course,
is done to make you think. Advanced age has not softened his choler against
injustice, but he has learned to expose his verities with sardonic humor.
Sometimes you have to look closely to see tongue-in-cheek hyperbole
and slyly exposed incongruities in his poetry but they are usually there.
Imagining Life
By Emmanuel Jakpa
I note there's a space next to the dash
after the birth year in a living
author's biography, enclosed in brackets.
I think it means that there's a pit
hungry to be filled at the end of the road
fenced with wind-bent trees.
But I like this author I am reading very much,
that I picture in my mind
I'm scattering bottle shards on the dark road,
on the dash-short lonely road.
I erect borders tight as steel ziplocks
and place iron board over the pit
after stuffing it with stones. The trees all cut down,
so the wind can blow freely,
or the eyes can see as far as possible.
Emmanuel Jakpa is living in Ireland.
He studied at the University of Lagos, and the University of Iowa.
He obtained an MA from Waterford Institute of Technology.
His poetry has been published in over 400 on-line and print journals,
and an Irish-Canadian anthology, Landing Places, Barnwood, Edison Literary Review,
and the African American Review. He was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize by The Swarthmore Literary Review,
The Taylor Trust, and Jack Magazine. And He received the Yeats' Pierce Loughran Scholar Award in 2008.
Child laborers
By Romi
Jain
In their hands is the hammer, not toys
Ripped through maternal lap, labor they in mine-
For bread, for pence, not butter, not wealth.
The stomach groans-the roaring suppressed
In confines of stifling cave;
The feeble body reduced to a desiccated grape.
On their helplessness and docility the sharks prey-
Labor hours elongate, but not the bread;
The body aches, no recompense
For the masters flesh is available too.
Shorn of dignity... bereft of self-worth, labor and
Labor they,
Holding in check fantasies of joyous childhood.
Romi Jain hails from Jaipur,
India. She is currently an MBA student at San Francisco State University,
San Francisco. She has published a novel 'The Storm Within' from Indiana,
USA in March 2008, which focuses on the theme and issues of casteism
and social hierarchy in India. Besides, she has published research articles
on US-China relations in refereed journals in India and abroad. In the
June 2008 issue of International Zeitschrift she published a
poem titled A Trafficked Girl Sighs.