Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

THE WAR ON HAPPY HOLIDAYS

by Chris O’Carroll 


Editorial cartoon by Richard Crowson, The Wichita Eagle, December 8, 2013


We do not wish you happy holidays.
O’Reilly warns against that  liberal plot.
How dare you celebrate in diverse ways?
Just one gets our OK; the rest do not.

Our “Merry Christmas!” is not a benign
Warm wish.  It is an icy battle cry.
Inclusive salutations we decline
To utter.  Limbaugh we have heard on high.

A manger scene at every City Hall
Is ours by right.  And children of the poor
Deserve no government food aid at all.
Tax funds for welfare?  No!  For holy war!

All non-sectarian good will we shun.
God bless us.  But just some, not every one.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous New Verse News appearances, he has published poems in BigCityLit, the Kansas City Star, Lighten Up Online, Umbrella, and the Washington Post, among other print and online journals, and also in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.