DANNY P. BARBARE

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

Living from pay check to pay check. Not being able to take a vacation.


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HOW HAS YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

Reciting my poetry as I work as a janitor. Poetry about work. Trying to always be positive during negative times.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

My '89 Mercury


Power fluid bottle, brake, nickels, dimes
And pennies on the floorboard and empty soda
Cups. The front passenger door won’t
Open and the back left window will
Not roll down. The car drinks gas and
Sometimes
Leaks oil. But the insurance and
Taxes are cheap and the radio still
Plays and the car rides smooth,
Luxury style. But mostly, the ’89 Mercury still
Gets me where I’m going around town.

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ABOUT THE POET:


Danny P. Barbare is taking a few classes at Greenville Technical College. His poetry has appeared locally, nationally, and abroad. His '89 Mercury is still doing fine, besides getting the occasional sharps in the tires which has been a problem lately. He keeps taking different directions just to avoid them. Somewhat superstitious.

HAL SIROWITZ

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

The recession has affected me, making me think more about expenses. I’ve always had two lives – writer and school teacher – so I wouldn’t put any pressure on myself to make money through my writing. The royalties I made I saved for my retirement. Though, the one thing I’ve learned from the recession is that you can never save enough money for the future. I have to be careful not to go into my retirement savings.


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HOW HAS YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

It doesn’t cost much to be creative. Ted Berrigan said if you’re a writer and the choice is between buying a book or a meal, always go for the book. I still try to live that way, having a library that rivals any local one in terms of poetry books.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Economic Blues


They say money makes
the world go round, father said,

but the world could revolve
by itself. It’s moved by its

repulsion and attraction to the sun -
like your mother liking me on one day,

disliking me the next - or something
like that. Don’t quote me. I could

never keep my eyes open in science class.
But in economics class I stayed wide awake.

Even if I didn’t have any money, it was
fun pretending to spend it. FDR was

my hero. He spent the government’s money
on public works. If you’re going to spend

someone else’s money, it’s better to do it
publicly. If you spend it on yourself,

you’re liable to go to jail.

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ABOUT THE POET:

Hal Sirowitz's poetry is featured in an article in The Hollins Critic.



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KARLA LINN MERRIFIELD

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

While I have been only modestly financially scared by the recession, as an empath, I feel the horror of it deeply and that experience of horror has stemmed largely from the visual assault of its impact. Living in Florida, I see the recession everywhere I turn. There’s the roadside scene of yet another house in foreclosure. Another glimpse of an unfinished development, its condos enmeshed in vines growing out of unframed windows. And there to the left, another line forming at the food shelf as the doors open for the day. It’s unending. And what the eye sees, the heart feels with an enduring pain. For the first time in my writing life of nearly 50 years, I was moved to take action. That action ended up being Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, which I co-edited with activist-poet Dwain Wilder – a labor of love that just this month came to fruition with its publication by FootHills Publishing.


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HOW HAS YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

I’ve long been a plein-air poet who prefers whenever possible to write in the company of non-human nature. The recession and its dire impact on the people of this country, both the poor and the middle class, stranger and so many, many friends, has made my desire to commune with the simpler beings that are trees, birds, etc., an imperative for my soul’s sake. I am more and more often desperate to escape the latest recession news story or Facebook testimony of financial loss…and find a time and place in the wilds to heal so I can continue writing both “nature” poetry and political poetry.


Karla’s photograph of a burrowing owl in Far Tortuga.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Scherzi Sequence: Accessorize
the Tent I Occupy


After eons of reptiles,
my good taste leans toward limbic.

Nylon walls & dome do make
a cave for slithering dreams.

I invite snakes inside.
I eat with them off the floor.

I occupy this shelter,
half-human, half-tortoise.

After eons of rodents,
I still nest in marsh mouse fur.

My cot & sleeping bag
do comfort armadillos.

I envision the soft pillow
world of artful owls.

The wild motif serves its purpose:
I am animal.




Vigil


I count sheep at midnight.
Recite poems at 1 a.m.
Fret about my to-do list at 2.
Agonize at 3 over the book
that’s going to die of disinterest.
Clock clicks 4:
the wide-awake litany
of hydrofracking, censorship,
the brutality of greed, poverty,
the brutality of…
the brutality of….
By 5? Atomize. Wait.

Inconspicuous, I feel
normal. I am anything but.
It won’t be long now.
Another sleepless night will end.
Daylight comes to their crosshairs.




Occupy Fort Myers Quincouplets,
Reversed for the Cause into Hopelets

[Curator's Note: Click on image to see larger image]




Letter from the Editor


I make a last call for action
on Facebook and LinkedIn: Submit now.

Time is of the essence to the movement
as time always is. I channel

Ginsberg to howl, Ferlinghetti to roller-
coaster us into archetypal dream.

I implore Snyder to bow
from his mountainside, embracing

us in spirit in these pages.
We shall Occupy the Universe

with peace & love & unity & truth & courage &….
We continue to believe in better things.

We even put it in writing
into a protest anthology

so the beat & the vigil go on.
Out of many voices – 99 – one.

I part my lips. You follow suit.
We kiss the book.




The 99% Guarantee


Strictly blue collar, luckily
unionized, I labor as Editor #13.

My job order for this shift
is to ensure something specific

but utterly preposterous is written.
The next poem rolling along

the conveyor belt to my station opens
           There once was a doggie named Shelby

           whom Occupy Denver elected their leader.
           She sits. She stay. She shakes paws

           with City Council pols, the police chief,
           and pees on their plush wool carpet.

           Don’t sic ‘em, lick ‘em, atta girl.
For a protest lyric it will do.

I stamp it factory-approved.
Another one gets shipped off

to the warehouse of quirky odes
for the revolution to Occupy.

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ABOUT THE POET:

Award-winning poet, National Park Artist-in-Residence, and assistant editor and book reviewer of The Centrifugal Eye, Karla Linn Merrifield has had work published in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has six books to her credit, including Godwit: Poems of Canada, which received the 2009 Andrew Eiseman Writers Award for Poetry, and her new chapbook, The Urn, from Finishing Line Press. Forthcoming from Salmon Press is her full-length collection Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. And from Finishing Line Press Merrifield’s The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica. She just completed co-editing the newly released Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%. You can read more about her and sample her poems and photographs at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.




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HOWIE GOOD

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

My disillusionment with the political process has deepened as I have seen how utterly ineffective our so-called "leaders" have been in addressing the economic suffering engulfing the country. I haven't been downsized or dispossessed, but life seems more anxious and uncertain than ever before.


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HOW HAS YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

My poetry has always had a political dimension. That dimension has become more pronounced in the past few years. It's included starting cur.ren.cy, a digital zine, with Dale Wisely and F. John Sharp, that publishes poetry and short prose about the current hard times.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

LOVE DURING THE GREAT RECESSION


Everybody I know says the same thing,
We don’t make anything in this country anymore.

They say our politics are broken.
They say the Dream is finished, it’s dead.

I requested you in lieu of flowers.

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ABOUT THE POET:




Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the new poetry collection, Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to a crisis center, which you can read about here: https://sites.google.com/site/rhplanding/howie-good-dreaming-in-red




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JP REESE

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

Four years ago, I came home from my part-time job as an adjunct professor in the middle of a weekday afternoon, and my husband of four years was sitting outside on the back patio smoking a Marlboro. He had just lost his job of eight years as an architect with a local Dallas firm. They were downsizing in the blackening economy that had begun to gather as stories on the nightly news like sullen thunderheads. Soon enough, for sale signs began to dot our neighborhood and many others like it. Many houses stand vacant now, their yards bedraggled, their windows smudged and empty. Our home is only a year or so away from the same fate.

We were lucky in that we had some savings to fall back on, but each year that money disappears into a mortgage we can no longer afford on our current salaries and to pay off credit card bills left over from the thoughtless years of acquisition that dog us still. Today, my husband sells cars on commission for less than half his old salary. All the full time jobs at the college where I still work as a part-time adjunct are gulped down by PhD's who can't find a position at a more prestigious college or university. We're pretty much in the shitter financially, and our future prospects look dim. Of course, we can't afford health insurance.


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HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

The worst that will happen? We will shortly lose our house when our savings finally run out, sell our possessions (except for books), and move into an apartment. The best that has happened? I covet few material comforts these days and have learned to appreciate what is truly important, and it isn't a new car every three years; it certainly isn't a house with a pool, a new cashmere sweater, or the latest cell phone. What is important is to know that my own worth as a wife, a mother, a friend, a teacher, and finally, as a respected writer, is not tied into some cultural construct that depends on envisioning myself as member of a moneyed class. I am free to simply be me.

I have never written more poetry or with as much power as I have in the last two years. The acceptance of possibly losing just about everything in the material world has concentrated my vision in amazing ways and inspired me to reach a level of creativity I hadn't known was possible in my more comfortable, upper-middle-class days. My first chapbook has just been accepted for publication, and I have had more journal acceptances in the last two years than rejections. There is joy even in loss.

This blossoming of my creative side does not mean I'm not afraid for the world my sons will inherit. I am. It doesn't mean I don't care about class inequity in this increasingly lopsided society. I do. But sinking into genteel poverty has encouraged me to live a more vivid, satisfying life of the mind, with poetry as its end product, and I can't help but find some solace in that unanticipated and happy outcome.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:


"Number Five," painting by Lisa Cardenas

2008, What I Wanted

I wanted it to be 2007, before my husband lost
his white collar and our nest egg broke its shell against
the blind windows of Wall Street. I wanted not to feel
the clench in my guts every time the bills came due.
I wanted to believe my son, almost grown, would head
to college and enjoy the life my parents provided me.
It is 2011. My son works overnights. Mornings at seven,
I hear him climb the stairs toward his day's rest.
If I am quick, I may catch a trace of his boy's smile,
testing itself against an older, stranger's face.

(First published in Wilderness House Literary Review, January 1, 2012. Forthcoming in my chapbook, Final Notes from Naked Mannekin Press, 2012)


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ABOUT THE POET:

JP Reese has work published or forthcoming in over forty print and online journals. Reese is a poetry editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact (connotationpress.com) and THIS Literary Magazine (thiszine.org). Reese's chapbook, Final Notes, will be published by Naked Mannekin Press in 2012. Her published work can be read at Entropy: A Measure of Uncertainty (http://www.tumblr.com/blog/jpreese).




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ROBERT GIBBONS

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

I am not sure if I have had a great recession experience. I have always been limited in the area of finances. Due to my limitation I have learned how to live within my means and sometimes this is difficult because there are certain occasions when I would like to go a poetry reading and the reading has a minimum and then they ask for a donation. So now I am more selective in the readings I go to and I do the research. I want to go out and support other artists in the poetic community but sometimes it can become costly. So I just do not attend readings as much as I used to when I first started out as a performing poet.


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HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

I think the recession has affected my poetry immensely. I have always been sensitive to the conditions of others but the present economy has escalated that pain even further. I find myself being more careful in spending and being more considerate of the ones who are less fortunate. I went to a dinner party one night and the tab was so expensive I began to cry. I could pay my share but I just felt like me being a part of this was somehow not right. So I observe the pain of others more closely. I live within my limitations and I do overlook the less fortunate.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) REFLECTING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Mean Streets
(for Piri Thomas)

people are coming out of port authority
like water; see them in a place
that will spit them out like a cough; people
are walking into nowhere; into a place
as tall as steal; as the New York Times
building; people will crowd this corner;
stores of big watches and comedy clubs;
they come because they are attracted to
the lights; they are attracted to Frank O’Hara
idea of a walk; they are attracted to BBQ’s
and ten dollar shoes; just to say they bought
it; they are attracted to the idea of a marquis;
the little lights bulbs encircling the sign;
they find themselves stranded on the corner
with a suitcase and cell phone; they find
themselves with a pretzel and a hotdog;
with a newspaper and disappointment
they find themselves stranded like
a shish kabob and a bun; in the middle
of this endless parade; without float
or hope; an illusion as back door theater;
they will never be invited; they catch
a train bound for Brooklyn; in these
few streets that once held their dreams;
not long ago they can’t afford the subway
peanuts; a few streets of African men
carrying signs of tour buses; but even
they can’t understand; they only under
stand one thing; it is as urgent as their
red vest; they will never be accepted;
they will never be asked to diversify;
they may be a target; because of their
table full of off brand bags; they too
are rebels against the system; a system
that will never respect them; for now
they are traffic tickets; a summons
and violations; too these few streets
that held their dreams; they are another
collection for the IRS and they will run
you over if you get in their way; these
few streets will take your picture; plaster
it all over the blotter; so you might as well
hold yourself down; in hells’ kitchen;
walk away from fifteen minutes;
it is a waste of time; you can’t afford me;
anyway. I am expensive; if I were you
I would find a diner; with a special;
a spaghetti or eggplant; cause those
fifteen dollars at Manhattan Plaza
no. your money will not save you

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ABOUT THE POET:


Robert Gibbons is originally from Belle Glade (Palm Beach County), Florida. An honors graduate of Glades Central High School, Robert matriculated to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he received the B.S. in History in 1989. Robert has taught in the Palm Beach County School District; the Prince George’s County School District; the Fairfax County School District; and now works as an English Specialist for the Renaissance Charter High School of Innovation of East Harlem (Manhattan), New York City.

He moved to New York City in the summer of 2007 in search of his muse-Langston Hughes. Robert has featured in many venues around New York City, as well as in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Florida. He most recently has offered his poetic performances in such places as: Cornelia Street Café; the Church of the Village; the Saturn Series; Perch Café; Barnes and Nobles Brooklyn; the Saturn Series; Stark Performances; Otto’s Shrunken Head; Poets on White; Nomad’s Choir; Taza de Café and many others. Moreover, Robert has been published in Uphook Press; Three Rooms Press; Stain Sheets; Brownstone Anthology; Dinner with the Muse; Cartier Street Review; Nomad’s Choir; Palm Beach Post; and recently was produced on a CD called Brain Ampin through Hydrogen Jukebox, a poetry series produced through the Cornelia Street Café. Additionally, Robert has taken classes with Cave Canem and the 92Y and has studied under master poets such as: Cornelius Eady, Marilyn Nelson, KImiko Hahn, Nathalie Handal, and Linda Susan Jackson.

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DAVID S. POINTER

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE? / HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION AFFECTED YOUR POETRY

The questions give me considerable trouble because my experiences didn't really start or end with the recent downturn that affected the middle class. I started writing political poems for publication in 1990. Most American poets had gone to sleep by this time. Most had been school trained to accept beauty, trivia and mythology as that which would flow from the barrel of an ink pen. I elected to write for the underground and focus on truth, politics, social justice and similar topics.



The current recession just drives home to me that most Americans don't know what happened to political poetry. They don't know that Ed Guest was the last major political poet in the major newspapers. The don't realize that advertisers worked to get the political poetry out of the public view. Later, they would get the political poetry out of the alternative weekly papers and so on. Eventually, it would become nearly extinct to the popular culture masses. Each year after 2000 though as more poetry editors found themselves excluded from participation in the economic system—the poetry doors of inclusion started to open. They would publish more and more serious issue poems and give them equal billing in the small presses alongside the aforementioned trivia, beauty and mythology.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Birth of a Political Poet


I read the MFA candidates
lemon drop dahlia, and baby
duck petunia poetry, and praised
those Lasik surgeons enhancing
the illusion goggle worldview
of so many renowned ‘writers,’
but somehow in all of this pulp, I
found the moneychangers mirage
starting a bardly itch amongst
molecules of my own interatomic,
ink pen bonds, flowing for truth

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ABOUT THE POET:


David S. Pointer was the son of a piano playing bank robber who died when David was 3 years old. David later served in the Marine military police.




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ED GO

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?


Ed Go at Occupy Wall Street

MY HYPOCRISY

We accuse others as if it’s a bad thing, as if we are not so ourselves, but it is among the most human of attributes. I manifested mine recently on Black Friday—outwardly critical of the consumerist phenomenon, yet taking part; shopping at a major retail chain I got well over $200 worth of clothing for less than $70. The next day was Small Business Saturday—an idea I support in spirit—but I can’t afford small business prices, at least not while the big businesses are offering the same at a third of the cost. My hypocrisy—I constantly struggle with it—the product of my humanity.

Recently, accusations of hypocrisy have been aimed at ows protesters: it’s been said that you can’t oppose corporate America while you’re using a cell phone. This misses the point entirely. It’s not corporations that the movement is protesting; it’s corporate personhood. It’s not the exorbitant salaries of the average CEO; it’s the disproportionate salary of the average worker, who makes less than the cost of living. This disproportionateness is not a natural occurrence; it is a carefully constructed social system engineered by the wealthy in order to hoard wealth at the expense of working people.

Hypocrisy is ubiquitous—we all share in it, even as we reverse-hoard it in accusations of the other.

In A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid writes about the condition of her country of origin, Antigua, and does not hold back on placing the blame on you (it’s written in 2nd person), a white tourist from “North America (or, worse, Europe)”; when discussing this book with my students, the class was always divided: some hated her, decrying her for writing a book—which they viewed as a capitalist venture (She did it for the money!)—and for not being an activist (Has she given any money? Has she returned?); others came to her defense, proclaiming the act of writing her contribution (She brings attention to the situation.) We would then discuss the value of knowledge and whether simply knowing is enough. Does one have to be active in order to be an activist? I admitted my quandary: I watch the news and say, What the hell is going on in the world? Something’s gotta be done! Then I crack a beer and change the channel—American Idol is on (I’m rooting for the Asian chick, but I know she won’t win).

“It takes a certain kind of person to be an activist,” one of my students said during a class discussion of Kincaid, and I remembered when I was a student and had written a paper on America’s foremost political prisoner Leonard Peltier; discussing my paper with one of my classmates, he started talking at length about Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, and at some point my expression must have revealed my drifting thoughts because he stopped and said, “. . . and you don’t care.” “Of course I care,” I protested. “I wrote a whole paper about it. What was done to this man was wrong beyond belief; it’s a travesty, and a demonstration of our so-called ‘justice’ system at it’s worst!” He came back at me, “Then why aren’t you down at the jailhouse with a sign—” “Oh, I don’t want to get involved. . .”

This is my struggle, and I do not run from it. But lately I have been moved to become more active. Those who know me know that shit’s gotta be pretty goddamn fucked up for me to get active about anything. And it is. I live in a city where the mayor—one of the richest men in the country—makes no effort at hiding his hypocrisy; everything he’s done in office has been to the benefit of the 1%. But that’s politics, and it’s to be expected. I do not fault him or any other politician for what is simply a manifestation of their humanness. As the Occupy movement struggles to forge a better future for our country and our world, my struggle continues to be with myself. I am in full support of the Revolution and will do what I can to further the cause—but what it is I can do is yet to be determined. Right now, I am writing about it. For now, perhaps knowing is enough—knowing is an action of a sort; it’s fruit is awareness, which produces motive, which leads to activity, the occupation of the activist. I think I’m on my way, but as I write the last sentence of this piece I struggle with what I will do next: I’ve lost interest in what’s on and I’m thirsty and my ass is uncomfortable, but I’ve got a nice couch and beer in the fridge and there’s always something else on—the biggest determining factor of my next action could be whether I can find the remote.


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HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

How now affects my writing? I never know—not until ages have passed. Not until the wages of the moment have been spent, and the cold vision across the chasm of memory crystallizes. I am still waiting to discover how the world around me affected the writing of my first poem, written in class in Red Hill Elementary School, Honolulu Hawaii circa 1980/81—something about happiness and friendship, 5th grade stuff, sunrises or sunsets, the naive pre-dawn/adolescent nonwakening waiting to fall back in on itself . . . a reminder of what I once had, and will again. . . .


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE

government cheese

bellatrix lestrange arranged to have us boiled in oil
but we found ways to find ourselves stuck in bed instead
a dream came wooden beams we toiled & hoped someday
would someday be someday as paper gave way to plastic
& plastic back to paper & money in the plastic

as rats we are to plastered & night comes & we wick our
candle dripping back of careful squandered brick foundations
templed as the trailer on cinderblocked foundation
too hot the one too cold the win to wasted too move deathward
& someday came someday when someday turned to sunday

apricots tupperwared visions in our cupboards
fucked till raw meat burned & called it bend of broker
& pretended not to hear us screaming con los pobres
de la tierra cast my luck none knowing where is where
or how or when when what it is or even whying whofor



american

shakin bakin like mom used to do
stove top stead of potatoes
leftovers foilwrapped at lunch
brought aahhhs that couldnt be traded
(my father being from some “3rd world” we never
       threw away after a meal
[i learned that in the lunch room]) one time
i puked cuz that little fag toby
was blithering his idiocy all over his apple & sister
margaret mary cursed me for spewing
but he got away with his drooling
i got the cake with the ruler         [the principle
force of the matter]        & they get the cake & the file to break
to a bailout & we with our
twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbunkeepitreel

at a party my friends brought whiskey & wine
while some brought brie & tequila
some brought fruit trays
& some brought mushrooms
I brought pop tarts & boones

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ABOUT THE POET:

Ed Go is a former school bus driver, exterminator, garbage man, phonebook deliverer and lead singer in a punk-folk band. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various online and print journals including Underground Voices, Bastards and Whores, Boston Poet Journal: Bad-Ass edition, Breadcrumbs Scabs, the bad futurist, In Between Altered States, and others. He currently writes and lives in New York, where he teaches and co-edits the Other Rooms Online Poetry Journal for Other Rooms Press, which he co-founded in 2007.




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RAY SHARP

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

As a planner in local public health in rural Michigan, I see unmet individual and family needs multiplying, while limited resources are divided among the many. We are used to hardship and deprivation in rural America, and here in Houghton County, Michigan, times have been tough since the copper mines closed in 1968.

In one sense, here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, we always have hard times. We are far from the state's centers of industry, commerce and political power, a nine-hour drive from Detroit, and the capital, Lansing, up north on the shore of Lake Superior. Our population, school enrollments, tax revenues and employment all have declined gradually since the copper mining industry left in 1968 after a prolonged strike over wages and working conditions. Now, much of the economy depends on tourism and the low-wage jobs in hotels, restaurants, bars and retail,sectors which have been very slow during the last few years.

In the local public health sector, many of our programs and services are income-dependent, like nutrition programs and free immunizations for low-income children and families. Our caseloads are skyrocketing as people lose jobs or have to make do on part-time wages. But, conversely, state and federal funding is reduced, and within our agency, so we have had to reduce our nursing staff and salaries were cut by 6 to 10 percent.


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HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

My own depression obeys no season, it is chronic and everlasting. It ebbs with the tides, it waxes with the moon.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Occupied By Love

We are the 99 percent
who occupy the centers of commerce
and convention with no capital, save
our love-me-tender for illegal tender,
squatting in tents of passion,
bumming kisses, protesting the inequities –
I do protest too much — of love.
We invested our hearts’ savings
but the bubble collapsed,
leaving me alone in the shanty town
of my great depression, lining up
at the soup kitchen of despair
where loneliness is ladled into tin cups,
a thin and scalding broth.
If corporations are people
and loves are lives that are born and die,
we were downgraded to junk bond status
and pepper sprayed with stinging words
that left us red-eyed and wheezy.
I gave you 99 percent of my heart,
more than I could afford, and still
we ended up bankrupt.

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ABOUT THE POET:


Ray Sharp lives in the rural, rugged and remote Western Upper Peninsula region of Michigan, a land of deep snow, cold lakes and buggy summers. He enjoys running in the woods during the brief Michigan Upper Peninsula summers, and many of his poem ideas come from his treks in nature. His first book of poems, Dark Hills of Just-Lived Moments, to be published in 2012, is a lyrical journey through the seasons.

LISA M. DRAGO

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

Materially, I've been living a simple life for many years. I work part-time and don't have a home or credit cards. This has protected me from the most painful parts of the Great Recession: job loss, home foreclosure, depleted investments in stocks, 401k, etc. However, as a sensitive soul, my heart aches to see all the pain and suffering endured by average working people and families. I wonder where our country is headed, how to wake people up to what really matters in life - such as love, service, friendship, compassion and sharing. The greed of the super-rich cannot continue unchecked. My feeling is that, in some way, 2012 will be a turning point.


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HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

This recession has inspired me to start writing poetry for the first time in over 25 years. I took a poetry workshop four months ago and have felt motivated to keep putting words on paper. My usual genre is nonfiction spiritual-type writing as found on my blog (written with my husband), Soaring with God. In many ways, I am quite surprised, but also very excited, to be writing poetry. I don't put pressure on myself; I simply write what and when I feel inspired.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Aches


It pains me to live
In a nation of greed
And exploitation
Imprisoned by
Oh so many
Deified masters
Of manipulation

We place no value
On youthful education
Yet extol virtues of college
And fancy vacations
Endless incantations
To the money-god

More and more
Bigger and better
Procuration
All this to benefit
The super-rich
While millions
In our population
Suffer hunger
Lose their homes
Refuse adulation

Lack of moderation
Spirals into pain
My broken heart
Dreams daily
Of peace and justice
True mediation

There seems no end
To these tribulations
I pray for wisdom
And patience and hope
A world of brotherhood
Mutual appreciation

Jan. 23, 2012 Note: Here's another poem. My husband and I went to eat at the Silver Diner (in Virginia Beach) this weekend - only to find it closed for business.

Silver Diner

I'm shocked to see
You've closed your doors
Weren't you here to stay?

With your 1950's decor
Playing the Beatles and Elvis
On the table jukebox

Yummy sliders, milkshakes,
And the world's best
Chocolate cake

Saddened is what I am
By your demise
No more food, fun, laughter

How many others will be forced
your way?

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ABOUT THE POET:


Lisa M. Drago works as a fitness instructor, personal trainer and yoga teacher in Norfolk, VA. She serves as Treasurer for Hampton Roads Writers (http://www.hamptonroadswriters.org), a non-profit literary group that promotes the craft of writing and the love of reading/literature. She is enjoying her new journey into the world of poetry.




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SARAH SARAI

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

Everything Tastes Better with Two Forks and Whipped Cream

A greater mystery than faith, than love, is money, in my life at least. So the Great or Most Recent Recession hasn't depleted me of accumulated wealth because I had none and neither had I a clue as to how to garner—to “attract” as we new agers like to think we are capable of doing—money. No depletion. Great enervation. Much better than enervation would be innovation.

I freelance as a copyeditor, mostly medical, in ad agencies, a job title I migrated to when I accepted the fact that I couldn't reliably support myself as an adjunct professor.

In the corporate terrain—and nearly all advertising agencies are subsumed by greater, international corporations and accumulations of ad agencies (weird but true)—financial decisions are fickle and self-serving, which is to say they are, repeat, corporate in its most malign manifestation.

Management will proclaim, Cut back on freelancers (and don’t hire any more temps), although that line in the budget is minimal. But it is a decision which sounds good to capitalists who want for themselves and want to want nothing. It serves the money accumulators, while creating stress for the editors on staff. They work long and longer hours without any freelancers to help with overflow.

One of the more amusing corporate decisions came down three or four years ago, at one of the great lead-ins to the great recession. The CEO of American Express announced his pay cut of around five percent, which is the equivalent of you or me mistaking dropping a few pennies on the street. A CEO's pay cut means nothing, a nothing mocked at by his private elevator, jet, various houses, remarkable perks, payouts, parachutes.

The CEO of American Express took an (approximately) five percent cut while the wages of the temps were cut by approximately fifteen percent. Now that cut meant something. I know, because over five years, I was hired two or three times a year, along with a team, each member, like myself, in the arts—playwrights of note, lighting specialist hired by theaters around the country, vocalists, writers. Ironically, or cruelly, we were hired to copy edit and proofread the SEC filings which are, in spirit and fact, justifications, er, uh, “explanations” for the benefits and salaries of the board members of American Express (or any corporation).


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HOW HAS YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY? / PLEASE SHARE A SAMPLE POEM(S) ADDRESSING (IN PART) ADOPTION:

Before the great recession hit I wrote this playful poem (published by Pool Poetry, #8):

Commerce for the Good of the Peoples

At the shop of good moral character
you bought five grams of valor and
a strong chin

For your love, essence of steadfast heart
in a vial

Good gosh, that's pricey stuff

You speculated over glasses
Horn of Africa-rimmed so you could
spot a swarthy pirate, yo-ho

For your love you thought, Titanium frames!
because

You passed on the steady gaze for its claim on
concentration
There's only so much
good moral character a person can stand
in a day
You and your love pledged to
utilize purchases
soon as you were home and
would have but for a stop
for wines and tidbits,
brandy and later a few tokes
from that joint
in the car ashtray

Anyway
your love left her steadfast heart
in the Audi whilst the cat ate
your strong chin (at least you
brought your purchase into the house)

You and your love split the valor
Everything's better with two forks and whipped cream

In the midst of the great recession I finished the following poem:

Ambivalent Queen

The parade of vanities is everything hoped for
and nothing gained. A few chipped teapots
won't win you out of hock.

Once whispering sweet somethings from its enjambed arch,
that Rolex with diamond fittings
now whimpers from back of the shop,

circumspect in entitlement everyone (everyone) enjoys.
What does it mean to enjoy, and is it a variable of
entitlement, an actuarial curse?

A professor stared at her breasts and to her protest said,
But you’re not wearing a bra.
Life is brutish, nasty and short-haired as

a cat’s accordion, a lyrical magnificence of purring.
Faith’s is an illogical residence, mapped by
the golden thread winding north of pawn shop and parade.

Insincerity's basic to this plaything.
When a Wedgwood saucer is held to light
to see its roses bloom, a foreclosure gets its wings.

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ABOUT THE POET:


Sarah Sarai's poems are in Boston Review, Minnesota Review, Threepenny Review and others; in Say It Outloud: Poems About James Brown (Whirlwind Press); in her collection, The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX [books], reviewed on Galatea Resurrects. She is a co-facilitator of Occupy Language; presented a manifesto in the Tendencies series in honor of Eve Sedgwick at CUNY; featured in the Mary: A Literary Quarterly benefit for the Ali Forney Center for homeless GLBT youth. Her MFA in creative writing is from Sarah Lawrence College. Find links to her poems, short stories (Fairy Tale Review, Tampa Review, The Writing Disorder and others) and interviews at http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html.




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LORI M. IZYKOWSKI

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

Living paycheck to paycheck again at middle-age (partly due to divorce, partly to recession), seems to be my most significant experience.


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HOW HAS THE GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY (OR NOT)?

Probably not; fairly new to the poetry thing, although maybe there is an added edge to some of it, since the financial struggle is daily and stressful.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Insidious Recession

Quietly invading, present without presence.
Drawing back, falling away.
Coming…sneakily, meanly.
Going away…slowly, painfully.
Insidious recession.
Like watching grass
grow…or die.
Waves at the shore,
eroding, encroaching.
The green of life…
it moves, changes hands,
goes away from some, goes to others, endless
cycles of more and less, less and more. An
ebb and flow of the lifeblood, pulsating from hand
to hand, a stent here, a dam there, and still it moves.

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ABOUT THE POET:

Lori M. Izykowski is an 8-5er raising an almost 17 y.o. daughter living in Fredericksburg, VA. "I use my blog and poetry as cathartic instruments whenever I’m struggling with something. I submit irregularly to Vox Poetica (editor Annmarie Lockhart)."




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ANNMARIE LOCKHART

WHAT IS (PART OF) YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE?

As a writer/editor/publisher, I find the Great Recession has given artists more time for their art but more angst about their self-reliance. I also find the work of selling books has gotten a bit more challenging as people are reluctant to spend what money they have on luxuries. And the idea that books can be a luxury instead of a necessity saddens me. But the reality is grim across the board.


Annmarie Lockhart with one of the anthologies she published at unbound CONTENT in 2011.


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HOW HAS YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE AFFECTED YOUR POETRY?

The Great Recession has affected my poetry by rendering my scope somewhat smaller. In poetry as in other areas of living, lushness seems to have given way to spareness. I find language and theme to be more pointed and tightly focused, less broad and sweeping, more internal and detailed. I see these effects in the work of other writers as well.


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PLEASE SHARE A POEM(S) ADDRESSING YOUR GREAT RECESSION EXPERIENCE:

Here is a poem I wrote inspired by your call for writing on the subject of the Great Recession:

Always Another Setback

recession
depression
famine
these become entwined
on some molecular level
with words and heredity
carrying their own DNA
phenotype expression
for a writer whose lines
extend back from Jersey
to Queens, Counties Cork
and Kilkenny, and Dublin
honoring muses named
Addiction
Prohibition
Blight

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ABOUT THE POET:

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the everyday, and the founder of unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of Bergen County, NJ, she lives, works, and writes 2 miles east of the hospital where she was born. You can find her words at fine journals online and in print.