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Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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

Sunday, April 16, 2017

DOMESTIC GODDESS

by Katherine Smith




I do my best to ignore the news
vacuuming carpets, scrubbing goo
from microwave and screen.
I polish floors, un-tarnish green

copper tea kettles, pots that gleam.
I pay the bills, and bake a cake,
greet some evangelists, even take
a pamphlet from their little boy.

Though I’m a Jew and they are goy,
I wish the family Easter joy.
They spread across the neighborhood
this day that I devote to chores.

They preach good news from door to door
this Sunday the cable journalists
report to work, for T***p has pissed
off in a single week, the globe

from loving pope to xenophobe,
Syria, Russia, Britain, North Korea,
Christian, Jew, Sunni, Shia.
While North Korea serenades

an anniversary with grim parades
of weapons, and democracy devolves,
T***p relaxes with a game of golf.
I cook and clean with half my ego

adrift through Seoul, Aleppo, Mar-a-lago.


Katherine Smith’s previous publications include appearances in Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. My second book Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014.