Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Monday, February 01, 2010

FREE TO BE CORPORATE

by Bill Costley

". . . the Senator from Du Pont Chemicals with his forty-five votes
. . . the Senator from Nash-Kelvinator with his six."

--Pohl & Kornbluth, The Space Merchants (1952), pages 13-14.

Money talks. Politics calls:
“Steve, I need to know where
what’s left of GM stands on this.”
“I hope you’re recording this,”
asks GM Senator Steve Steeves.
“Yes, I am,” says UAW Senator
Paul ‘Polack’ Propulski. Silence;
neither realizing they’re tapped
by Ford Senator Henry Ford IV.
who thinks “Those jerks don’t
realize all this is legal now” with
corporate masters humanized,
according to SCOTUS, free to
exercise 1st-amendment rights.
“Speak up, you 2!” says Ford,
breaking their cautious silence,
"Be freemen in a freecorporate
world. You're finally…free!
Let's work a corporate deal.”


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union.
___________________________________________