LOVE & HATE ON A PORTLAND TRAIN

after the last words of Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche

by Scott C. Kaestner





hate versus love on a train
hate slashes at love, stabs
love in the heart, claims two
brave souls who defended
love in the face of hate and
as love lays dying on that train
a victim of hate, one last brave act
one last message of love, one last
ounce of love to give offering hope

"Tell them, I want everybody to know, I want everybody on the train to know, I love them."

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, a dad, Lakers fan, guacamole aficionado, and leftist dreamer. Google 'scott kaestner poetry' to peruse his musings.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

by Robert Lee Whitmire

B-52 Vietnam

Empty sentiment confounds me,
irritates me, angers me if truth
be told, causes me to see red
but pretend it’s not red.
Today
is Memorial Day,
and I hear
‘Thank You for Your Service’,
empty words showering star-spangled
fireworks on endless rows of white
headstones marking graves
of fell-too-soon human beings.

Oh, say can you see the rockets' bright glare
As green and red tracers tattoo the air?

My ‘service’ was no service to anyone,
least of all the people for whom
I was supposed to be putting my life
at risk. I served hubris, avarice
and a white nation’s desire to beat
another nation of obdurate brown
people into bloody submission.

AKs, 16s, rip like shredding guitars as
Ribbons of cannon fire hurl from the stars

I was the lightning that set the house
on fire, that killed everyone inside,
then struck again and again
and again, killing  killing  killing.
I was a tool, an instrument, a useful
fool ‘serving’ people who shamelessly
drafted or coaxed me and mine to do
the unspeakable in service of the indefensible.

But you believe you are sincere and so you
thank me, and I say ‘You’re welcome’ even
though you are not welcome--but the alternative
is for me to explode in your face like one of those
‘Bouncing Betties’ Charlie used to salt
jungle paths. Or I might infect you like a
shit-tipped punji stick, or turn into a child
wired with C-4 running towards you while
I hide in the trees, finger on detonator.

And children of God entreat for their lives,
Himself in His Heaven is deaf to their cries. 

How does it serve you for me to kill
a child running to kill me and mine,
who is innocent of any crime yet must pay
for that innocence with its life?
How does it serve you for me to fly a B-52
over a landscape tens of thousands of feet
below, dropping stick after stick of
aerodynamic death, more bombs than
fell in all of the Second World War?
How does it serve you for me to kill
more than a million human beings
who did nothing  nothing  nothing
to deserve their fates?

Words, no matter how polite or currently
sincere, are not welcome from those who met
us half a century ago when we were young
and thought ‘finally, safe at home.’ Remember?
Did you spit? Curse? Call us baby killers?
Did you get on your draft-deferred high horse
and go sanctimonious all over our asses? Are
you one of those who now wants to send
more young people to fight and die and kill
more brown people because they won’t
see our truth?

Do not thank me for a service I did not render.

Moans of the dying fading slowly to dead:
Perpetual harmony of fire and of lead.

Robert Lee Whitmire is a Vietnam veteran, a husband, a socially progressive Unitarian, and a retired journalist, photographer, and social worker currently living in Maine and doting on his two small grandchildren.

OUTSIDE THE TURKISH AMBASSADOR'S HOUSE

by Bruce Dale Wise

Source: The New York Times

Outside the Turk ambassador's house, Erdogan looked on,
while a man came to Ceren Borazan with open arms.
He was drawn to her chanting voice. He grabbed her from behind,
and gripped her neck so tightly, she was scared out of her mind.
The people suffering in Turkey, far way from them,
when he was yelling—kill you, bitch—they could not have heard him.

The men in suits, the bodyguards of Tayyip Erdogan,
had come to roust protesters out—Kurds and Armenians.
Attackers kicked one woman as she lay curled on a walk;
Abbas Aziz, a teacher, got a lesson in free talk.
He was knocked to the ground by men, and kicked in chest and head.
This is America, this is not Ankara, he said.

Bruce Dale Wise is a poet, essayist, and the creator of new poetic forms. His publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms.

THE CLOWN CAR

by Kyle Norwood

The clownishness of evil sometimes seems
To parody itself―buffoonish stare,
Garishly painted skin, foam-rubber hair―
Caricatures from circus-haunted dreams:

You’re in the stands and join in the applause;
Here comes the clown car, tiny as a toy,
While speakers blast Beethoven’s Ode to Joy,
But you don’t see how odd that is, because
You’re watching as the little car spits out
Clown after clown, burlesques of vim and pep,
With fake pink smile or red audacious pout.
One pounds a drum; the others dance in step
With flying feet in giant floppy boots.
Some moon the crowd, and some are even cruder,
Insulting us with boorish pantomime.
 (A choir sings Alle menschen werden brüder
Over the speakers, deafeningly loud.)
Looking around, you see that half the crowd            
Are dressed in frilly polka-dotted suits,                      
Hooting and stomping.  Clearly they approve.          
Meanwhile the clown car crew is on the move:  
Some run to block the exits; others climb  
Into the stands; two of them seek you out,
Surround you, grab you, lift you from your spot,
And drag you toward the ring of blinding light.
“Why me?” You cry.  “Why me?  What did I do?”
The folks in normal clothing turn their backs.
Last from the clown car steps a black-and-white-
Faced, bulging-muscled hulk, wielding an ax:
His hate-filled eyes are staring straight at you.

Kyle Norwood is the winner of the 2014 Morton Marr Poetry Prize from Southwest Review. His poems have also recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, Devilfish Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Lake (U.K.), Light, Right Hand Pointing, and the anthology Poems for a Liminal Age. He lives in Los Angeles, where he earned a doctorate in English at UCLA.

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

by Devon Balwit

HONG KONG — Speaking at the University of Maryland, Yang Shuping, a graduating senior from China, sprinkled her upbeat commencement speech with observations that drew warm applause: The air was far cleaner in the United States than in China, she said, and she could openly discuss racism, sexism and politics in ways that she had never before dreamed possible. Growing up in China, “I was convinced that only authorities owned the narrative,” Ms. Yang, a theater and psychology major from the southern city of Kunming, told the crowd in a basketball arena in College Park, Md. “Only authorities could define the truth.” The speech on Sunday drew harsh criticism, however, from some of Ms. Yang’s Chinese classmates in Maryland and from legions of social media users in China, many of whom accused her of selling out her homeland. Even the city of Kunming weighed in, saying in a message on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that her comments about the city’s air pollution were “not related to us.” —The New York Times, May 23, 2017

“…we count the whale immortal in his species however perishable in his individuality.”
                                                                                                 —Herman Melville


You speak your truth, and you are blacklisted
or must flee a social media shit-storm, the hard

shoulders that knock you out of true as you pass by.
Someone, somewhere messes with your data. Perhaps

you will shut up, shocked that your opinions matter,
but in ways you didn’t expect. You realize that you

are dangerous, a drop that can coagulate with others,
a splash that can thicken to storm. Of course, they

want you silent, but you, my friend, are immortal
in your species, however perishable singly. Though

they make this day a sinkhole, take the long view:
the ones to come freer for your hacking at the vines.

Devon Balwit is a teacher/poet living in Portland, OR. She has four chapbooks—How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press), Forms Most Marvelous (forthcoming with dancing girl press), In Front of the Elements, and Where You Were Going Never Was (both forthcoming with Grey Borders Books). Some recent poems can be found in The Non-Binary Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Almagre Review, The Stillwater Review, The Tule Review, Red Earth Review, The Free State Review, Front Porch, Concis.

DANGEROUS WOMEN

by Elizabeth S. Wolf

It was her first concert
out with friends. The gang of girls.
Besties since babies, they said.
They picked outfits and did their hair,
one high ponytail,  smoky eyes. They listened
to their parents lecture and promised
to follow the signs and obey the rules and
not take drinks from strangers and
oh my god mom, relax. It’s a concert.
Not a bar. Not a North-West Derby
brawl. Just a bunch of girls
dancing and screaming to their
favorite songs. It was Ariana Grande
live on stage: Manchester Arena
Manchester England
22 May 2017.

Three girls, who decided
at the last minute not to wear
kitten ears- three bold teens
walked into the concert as if
they owned the world.

One girl died on the floor,
shattered; the last thing she saw
bouquets of pink balloons
rising towards the ceiling.

The second girl bled from wounds
scattered about her body. She is
in hospital now, hooked up to tubes,
waiting on tests. For several hours
she asked so many questions, over
and over, but now she does not.
She answers the doctors queries,
shifts for the nurses hands: yes, her
ears are still ringing; yes, she still
smells burnt tubing. She sips water
and stares. Shell shock, they whisper.
Her ma and da take turns at her
bedside or tending the others
back home.

The third girl went home
uninjured. She spent a little
longer in the loo and got
separated from her friends.
She lost her voice
screaming for hours.
Now she won’t talk, doesn’t
eat, doesn’t drink. She lies
curled on her bed, clutching
the string from a pink
balloon. When she goes
to the bathroom, her mum
stands by the doorway, crooning
a lullaby. They call her
uninjured, because
she didn’t bleed
at the scene.

She lay in her bed while
day broke up night, again
and again. And on the third
day she called her mum.
Mum, she whispered, wide eyed,
after the bomb there was blood
on the walls, I got so scared.
I was alone! she said,
alone alone. But then
I saw a lady, almost like you,
and she stopped running to lift
up a little girl who had fell.
And the girl, she just hung
on, and I remembered to
look for the helpers.

That’s right, said her mum,
stroking her hair. Look for
the helpers.

And then I was running and screaming
and in the big room, in the hotel,
there was a lady, black as pitch, she
smelled like soap, said the girl. And
I was shaking and looking all around
and she came and held me. I
don’t even know who she is.

That was Amina, said her mum.
She works for the hotel, she
cleans the rooms. She left her own
country to flee the bombs and
find food.  Now she lives here.
And found you.

Mum, said the girl. I know what I want
to do now. I know.

What’s that? asked her mum.

I want to be a helper, said the
girl. And she got out of bed.


Author’s note: Characters and some incidents in this narrative are fictional although descriptions are based on news reports from Manchester.

Elizabeth S. Wolf writes because telling stories is how we make sense of our world, how we heal, and how we celebrate. She seeks that sliver of truth amidst the chattering monkey mind. Also, she sings loudly while driving. Elizabeth’s chapbook What I Learned: Poems is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in fall 2017.

CHOSEN VENUES

by Joan Colby


Where you are dancing.
Where you celebrate.
Where the bands play.
Where you congregate for coffee
Or conversation. Or to view the match
Or the marathon.
Anywhere you go to enjoy
Invites the strike. The explosive vest
Or car aimed at the thick of things.
What they seek to destroy is this:
Free pleasure. The authoritarian shift
To beheadings in an arena
Where you learn what to expect.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

THE RIBCAGE CLINGS TO A LOVER TIGHTER AFTER YET ANOTHER TRAGEDY

by J. Bradley

A man and woman hug on the streets of Manchester. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA via The Guardian, May 23, 2017

The talking head reads the names of people
who are no longer people. The expert
offers the hypothesis that the network paid for.

You ask this lover whether he knew
anyone in the building. He wipes his tears,
shakes his head. You try soothing him,
your tips coaxing his grief.

Once, you invented a shoulder
for a lover who knew someone
who died by bullet, explosion.
He heard the whir of helicopters
for weeks after it happened.

When he asked you to move in,
you left behind your shoulder,
a note: this is all I can offer you.


J. Bradley won Five [Quarterly]'s 2015 e-chapbook contest for his collection of flash fiction Neil. He is the author as well of the graphic poetry collection The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014) and the prose poem chapbook It Is A Wild Swing Of A Knife (Choose the Sword, 2015).

DEATH TRIUMPHANT

by Howard Winn

Roger Ailes

But do not speak ill of the dead
was my mother’s advice when
I was young for as a believer
she felt that the lord’s judgment
would be fair and not need
disparaging human reminders
but those of us not so certain
there is any judgement except
the human one of a fair and honest
analysis is required in a civilized
world where true belief in being
“fair and balanced”  is merely a
hypocritical marketing slogan
rather than an honest statement of
principle and when the purveyor of
alternate facts and the misuser of
women passes from the scene as proper
victim of the bad blood of ruthless
kings honest reporting is a requirement
of an enlightened society not to fool
itself into laudatory obituaries unearned
when the evil one passes out of life
and truths of character must be disclosed.


Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

MR. T***P GOES ABROAD

advice for his aides
by Mare Leonard

Prepare as if dealing with a child
Surround him with people who smile
Do not leave him alone, ever
Fear what he might say or surrender
Keep his name in all your briefs
Give him all the help he needs
Make sure he pockets his candy
Doesn't give away Yosemite
Be careful, tiptoe, offer treats
Flatter him, coddle him, praise him
Remind him what country he's in
And above all, promise he can tweet

Mare Leonard's work has appeared in A Rat's Ass,  Perfume River, The Courtship of Wind,  Bindweed,  Forage, TheNewVerse.News, The Chronogram.  She lives in an old school house overlooking the Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches writing workshops for all ages through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.

FRIDAY NIGHT ON EAST VAN BUREN

by Roxanne Lynn Doty

"Weeping Woman" by Pablo Picasso

It was the end of the line on Van Buren, a Friday night in April, a section of this gritty street where it leaves the city behind, disappears into east valley sprawl, and forgets the history that rumbles beneath its concrete and asphalt, the ghosts of old Phoenix that breathe the night air. The woman stood under the 202 overpass, moving from fence post to fence post, lightly touching each as if in a child’s game or dance, her long hair flying in wind that rushed through the valley that night, blew dead palm fronds across the 4 lanes, debris into the air to flutter gracefully in the haze of dull streetlights and she walked into the oncoming traffic, stood with arms spread—a welcome or a plea or an effort simply to breathe and the cars stopped and watched and some blew their horns and waited as she got onto her knees and folded her hands in prayer in the glare of terrified headlights. And I wanted to say, leave her alone, give her space, don’t call anyone, she has probably been fucked over time and again and beauty has a strangeness and sadness a glow and I looked around for red lights, for an official vehicle that might have been summoned.  But the night remained still and free from authority and we waited and the woman finally rose, and walked to the other side of the street and climbed the incline toward the highway and the traffic began to move again.

Roxanne Lynn Doty lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She has poetry in I70 Review and short stories in Four Chambers, Forge, Soundings Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature and Lascaux Review. Two of her  stories were nominated for the New Letters Alexander Patterson Capon Prize for Fiction.

PROJECTIONS

by Cally Conan-Davies

Large blue letters projected over the entrance to the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Monday night read “Pay Trump Bribes Here,” an allusion to questions about President Trump’s business affairs with foreign governments. Photo by Liz Gorman. —The New York Times, May 16, 2017

I passed the old post office a week ago—
saw its new name and sighed. A cab slowed
for a red light right in front, its rooftop ad
read Rise of the Underground. I took a photo
from the opposite side of the road. No light stabbed
the dark entrance. But the hotel name and the ad
lined up for a bit an embryonic, eerie sentence.
The signs are multiplying. That night I saw a rat
at the border of Georgetown. It had died
but bright blood was still leaking from its head.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who wanders and wonders.

BREAKING: FIRST DRAFT OF T***P INAUGURAL ADDRESS "FOUNDED"

by James Penha

Inspired by "Claims about President Trump lifting lines from various films for his inaugural address are unfounded." —Snopes

America, first you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punks? Today, I consider Americans the luckiest people on the face of the earth. Cause they call me Mister President! Yippie-ki-yay, motherfuckers!

Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the greatest one of all? America? First, I’m ready for my close-up. Hello, Gorgeous. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I have never depended on the kindness of strangers. Being me means never having to say you’re sorry.

I'm the king of the world! Round up the usual suspects. I love the smell of fear in the world.  I keep my friends close, but my enemies disappear. A Muslim once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Mexico? Go ahead, make my day, Mexico. Hasta la vista, baby. I'll wall you pretty, and your little chihuahua, too! If I build a wall, no one will come. Refugees, you're gonna need a bigger boat. One morning I shot a refugee in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.

Who can't handle the truth? The first rule of the Truth is: You do not tell the Truth.

The White House? What a dump. I am big! It's the house that got small. Life is a banquet, and most of you poor suckers are starving to death!

Tax returns? We ain't got no tax returns! We don't need no tax returns! I don't have to show you any stinking tax returns! I rob banks. I’m as mad as hell, and I'm not going to file them anymore! Show me the money! As God is my witness, I'll never be bankrupt again.

Why so serious? I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way. You ain't heard nothin' yet! After all, tomorrow is another of the first 100 days! Carpe diem. I feel the need—the need for speed! Fasten your seatbelts, America. It's going to be a bumpy night. To infinity and beyond!

My daughter thanks me. My son-in-law thanks me. My sons thank me. And you had better thank me. You know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow me. La-dee-da, la-dee-da.

James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News .

CLOAKED IN CLOUDS

by Meryl Baer

Washington Post, May 17, 2017

The Man seduced the people,
Spilling warped words of wisdom.
The crowd kowtowed to their savior.
They yelled, they screamed
They jumped for joy.
The Man came forth to save them
Roaring Admire me! Adore me!
Love me evermore.
Crushing competence and candor,
The Man proclaims his Word.
The people say:
The Man understands our woes.
He speaks what's really in our hearts
Of hatred, fear and foes.

Meanwhile:
Snakes slither,
Squinting in the light,
Spreading venom.
They grab they stifle
The other, the unfamiliar, the foreign,
The ones abhorring The Man.

I wait, hope, anticipate one morning when
Clouds scatter and
Seeds sprout
Strangling those gnarly, nasty rascals
Unfurling hate and fear.


Meryl Baer is a recovering financial geek now freelance writer and blogger.

400 BIRDS

by Preston Martin

Photos of birds that died Wednesday, May 3, after crashing into a high-rise building in Galveston. Animal Control Officer Josh Henderson said a total of 398 birds crashed into the building, and three —Houston Chronicle, May 5, 2017

In Auden’s low dishonest decade
History displayed a taste for tyrants.
Recent voters share that taste.
Some pray this retreat a wrinkle,
global sense will, with a start, awake.

New reality weighs our days,
our troubled nights; we grow stooped.
We appeal to our turning minds
see the long view, humanity is wise,
yearns for truth, fraternity. As if
wishing could make true.

Yesterday four hundred birds
lost their birdy instincts, reason—
blinded in reflection of a Galveston high rise—
flew full and headlong to greet their deaths.

Speculation by bird authorities:
glare mistaken for the sun, or moon light,
something, that seemed right at the time—
led them, without reason, to their demise.

Warblers, redstarts, ovenbirds,
bluebirds, cuckoos, sparrows, kestrels,
blackbirds, redwings, robins, cardinals,
orioles.

Preston Martin has published poems in literary journals including New Ohio Review, Iodine, Chaffin Journal, Kakalak, won awards or recognition by the North and South Carolina Poetry Societies and the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival. He has also published in anthologies including Every River on Earth: Writings from Appalachian Ohio (Ohio University Press), and  Heron Clan III. He reads, writes, and teaches in Chapel Hill and Durham, NC, and chairs the Brockman-Campbell book competition for the North Carolina Poetry Society.

VANILLANELLE

by Susan McLean



Consistency is our delight.
Don’t make us try exotic flavors.
We want it plain; we want it white.

We think that blend-ins are a blight.
Your nuts or fudge do us no favors.
Consistency is our delight.

Our preferences are watertight.
Our love of sameness never wavers.
We want it plain; we want it white.

We shun sensations that excite
odd leanings or untoward behaviors.
Consistency is our delight.

We’re not repentant or contrite.
Change isn’t what the public savors.
We want it plain; we want it white.

Enough!  We have no appetite
for new ideas or dusky saviors.
Consistency is our delight.
We want it plain; we want it white.

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University.  Her satirical poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Light, Lighten Up Online, and The Spectator (UK).

MY MOTHER’S OCEAN

by Bill Meissner

vis Giphy

I can never take just one photograph of
the ocean. The cerulean waves are too
lovely, too graceful, tumbling gently over themselves,
then turning to foam that kisses
the sandy lip of the world.
There are no other words for it—this
huge and endless ocean’s rise and fall, this
rocking back and forth, back
and forth, the way my mother used to

hold me when I was a small child, afraid
of the oncoming storm.
The brittle window glass rattled, but
she rocked me, and replaced the thunder
with a humming, a lullaby
that rose and fell.
It’s a melody I would,
as the years passed, remember,
then forget, then
remember again. There are no words

for this song my mother sang, her liquid voice
small, but still filling the room,
overpowering the fists of wind and stabs of lightning
with a language I couldn’t understand

at the time.
One single photograph
is never enough. I know now
that there is beauty in the things that are
closest to us, and beauty in the things
that we lose. She

is gone now.
But as a wave lifts itself and rolls
toward me, then bows down and becomes
a wing of bright diamonds,
I stand again on this shore, without words,
my bare feet sinking into
the hourglass sand,
and wait for that song to wash over me.

Bill Meissner is the author of eight books, including a novel and four books of poetry.  His most recent poetry book is American Compass from the University of Notre Dame Press.

WATER'S MEMO TO THE T***P ADMINISTRATION

by Meredith Stewart Kirkwood

We will have
what we want which is
to merge, to circle,
to never stay.
We will knock down
your wall
if we have to. We will
overtake your cities
if you don’t release us
to the sea.
We will pass over your farms,
we will seep through cracks
and expand them.

We do not mind your rhetoric.

We are not listening at all.

Meredith Stewart Kirkwood received an MFA in poetry from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Santa Clara Review, Windfall, and others. Meredith co-hosts a poetry reading series at the Lents International Farmers’ Market in Portland, Oregon.

IN FAIRY TALES

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Piñata by Dalton Ávalos Ramírez.

There could be a stranger with a poison apple.
There could be a girl who flies to an island.
There could be a maiden in love with a monster.
There could be a bluebird, a blue belt, a blue light.
There could be a chicken that predicts the end of the world.
There could be an enchanted pig.
There could be seven henchmen men scattered across three decades.
There could be a puppet with a nose that grows when he lies, and he lies anyway.
There could be a celebrity who runs for office.
That big name could know nothing of geopolitics or governing.
That man could make a mess of our habitats.
That man . . . but no, the tale is too far-fetched.
And how could we tell it to the children?


Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the  Ozarks where she Resists Arkansas politics and politicians. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks.

T***P BUMPS HIS HEAD, A BIGGER

by  David Spicer  

                                         

Cartoon by Darcy, Cleveland.com, May 10, 2017

idiot than ever. No, not impossible:
decades ago he grabbed a Voodoo
princess by her pussy in his penthouse.
Curses galore at the height of your infamy,
Goldie Small Hands! T***p didn’t laugh
but drools today. Today, swastikas curve fetally.
Today, the sheets of KKKers bleed.
Beavis and Butthead chew Tic-Tacs.
T***p’s blonde miracle weeps tangerine tears.
Whitey Pence shocks himself into a coma,
handmaids arcing around him, praying to Buddha.
Chris Christie scarfs twenty cheeseburgers.
Kellyanne Conway talks circles around herself
like a carousel pony. Congress is revolting.
Eddie Munster for Prez! moderates roar.
David Duke for King! fascists yell.
I want Ted Nugent! the Alaskan nincompoop drawls.
On second thought, I want me! Anarchists, nihilists,
and poets celebrate with a three-day bacchanal.
T***p disappears, descends into the earth via ICBM,
lands in China, deported to North Korea.
SUPREME LEADER STUPID HAIRCUT
BEHEADS ORANGE FACE!!! shouts
New York Post. Putin mourns, then farts.
Throngs cheer and party in the world’s megacities.
Back home, T***p’s cronies and their carpet bags
red-eye to the North. Little Jeff Sessions preens
in the mirror of the Justice Department toilet,
tokes his Alabama Bound weed, and dances helter-skelter
like Lorde, collapsing. Eddie Munster! Eddie Munster
for Prez! Gut Medicare, Eddie! Gut Social Security!
his toadies leer and chant. We love Hillary! progressives
scream. Bill Maher, we demand Bill Maher! millennials
moan. GO FUCK YOURSELVES! Bill Maher megahorns.
You’re dreaming again, honey. Wake up,
my wife says, shaking my shoulders.
What’s he done now? I ask.

David Spicer is a retired proofreader for a medical journal and has had poems accepted by or published in Reed Magazine, Alcatraz, The Mocking Heart Review, North Dakota Quarterly, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Nude Bruce Review and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

THERE'S SOMETHING DYING IN MY BRAIN

by Gil Hoy

Why, in wealthy America

must the beggared sick
lay ill in their beds

While a well-to-do
privileged white man

Dines on fine rich foods,
swings at a little white ball

at his country club
in warm sunny Florida.

While a smiling young girl
skips along the beach in her
wildly carefree exuberance

While an inquisitive circling
seagull soars overhead,

Searching for something
fresh to eat in the sea’s puddles.

Gil Hoy is a personal injury lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts, a former Town Selectman, and a regular contributor to TheNewVerse.News. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and online journals.

NOT ABOUT PROVIDENCE

by David Feela

Every night before sleep
deeds of maleficence
get counted like black sheep
in Paul Ryan’s head.

Hour after hour
tallying the flock,
pounds of mutton
lifted over his tiny fence.

Enough to populate
an elysian field
where the grass stays green,
locked in a banker’s vault.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

SNOT

by Katherine Smith

President Donald Trump stood alongside House Republicans in the Rose Garden Thursday to applaud the narrow passage of legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. The bill, also known as the American Health Care Act, aims to effectively gut health care coverage for millions, cut Medicaid funding by 25 percent, and allow states to deny coverage for a slew of pre-existing conditions. —Mother Jones, May 4, 2017

Suspended in the blue horizon like a pale blue sea creature
we sing.  We sing of crown vetch rising from ditches like a minor god
that will still be here in a billion years, a music
we make each day. We believe in our solidity
like sea creatures under the ocean
in their geometric palaces made entirely of mucus,
whirling shells, transparent rooms that filter water
to feed pinkie sized larva. We build our cathedrals,
in love with monuments, marble columns,
the Nautilus of our constitution. In the Rose Garden
Americans have dragged a palace from under the water—
two children sleeping under a blanket on a beach
tended by a woman with a brain tumor who will die in a week—
heaved it onto the thorns, drip under collapsed walls.

Katherine Smith’s publications include appearances in Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review and many other journals.  Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. She teaches at Montgomery College in Maryland.

THEIR OWN SPIRIT

by Jan D. Hodge

T***p, GOP Leaders Take Victory Lap After House Passes ‘Trumpcare’ —NBC News, May 4, 2017

Thus sayeth the Lord God, Woe to the foolish prophetswho follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing.                        ―Ezekiel 13.2

When things get bad in the bog,
toads squat on the shoulders of pygmies.

Jubilant if they can see
clear to the next rotten log,
they trumpet farts of glee.

Two things about toads:
    they celebrate the smallest victories
    and always gloat with so little class.

Jan D. Hodge's poems have appeared in many print and online venues. His Taking Shape (a collection of carmina figurata) and The Bard & Scheherazade Keep Company (tales from Shakespeare and the Arabian Nights recast in double dactyl stanzas) have both been published by Able Muse Press.

SECOND COMING

by James Bettendorf

Detail of poster for The Young Messiah film.

Imagine Jesus is alive again.
He has to go to school,
it’s the law.
The kids tease him
his hair so long,
Are you a boy or are you a girl? 
He hears the judgments
echo in his head
as he walks home
to build furniture
with his immigrant father
while his mother
takes in wash
so they can eat.

He is smart, hides away
in his teen years, builds
a robot of wood and spare parts
from the appliance junk yard.
He covers it with silk and denim
so it looks like a real person
When his real father says

          IT IS TIME

he substitutes the robot
so he can avoid the pain
and won’t have to roll
the stone again.

He goes on to star
in Hollywood comedies
as a transgender female.

James Bettendorf is a retired math teacher who recently completed a two-year poetry internship at the Loft in Minneapolis  after having taken many classes over the years.  He is a member of the Forward writing group at the Loft.  James has been published in Rockhurst Review, Common Ground Review, Verse Wisconsin and Light Quarterly as well as the last eight volumes of Talking Stick.

NOW THAT MACKY'S BACK IN TOWN

by George Salamon

"Paul Ryan wins near-party-line showdown on Health Care.”

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 4, 2017

Mack the Knife

Has found new life

As cuttin' Paul Ryan.

Obamacare must burn in hell

So insurance companies do well.

The people? Who cares if they survive

As long as the wealthy continue to thrive.

Democracy has been sold for its market price

As the necessary national sacrifice.

George Salamon is in reasonably good health for a curmudgeonly senior citizen.

THE BODY POLITIC

by Edmund Conti

We both liked Istanbul.
She, having been there, and I
probably because I am,
as our President would say,
an international. I like
the idea of its being on two
continents. Intercontinental
our President might say.
I like the idea  that Istanbul
was Constantinople, that
Constantinople was Byzantium.
Wishy-washy our President
could say. Our President
talks turkey. But, then,
he’s a President and I?
I’m a Poet. And she?
She laughs at us both.


Edmund Conti's poetry is all over the place.

THE DEVIL OF A DILEMMA

by Regina Vitolo

Image by Matt Chase, The New York Times, February 17, 2016.

the mistress of the universe has deigned to immerse us
in the devil of a dilemma
as complex as puppet strings intertwined dancing
on a papier-mâché platform
the planets collide, missiles leave silos, gravity reverses,
earth trembles
nonsense makes the best sense, nonetheless, so say
the pundits of the day
the wrecking ball swings, misses the gringo living yuge
in the capitol—
claims Andrew Jackson could have resolved the Civil War
but for a few facts
be damned, like the Constitution (no longer relevant) and
the NINTH CIRCUIT
to be mission accomplished with a tweet or two or more.


Words fascinate Regina Vitolo and ignorance in a leader shivers her liver. She has been published, but is willing to absorb more.

QUEEN

by Scot Siegel

Image source: Pinterest

for Melania

One hundred days the Queen hibernates,
burrowed deep in a cavern of bark.

Every day, a star blinks on, or off,
birth of another scientist, or murderer,

and someone loses his or her job.
Every day is someone's first

at something, waking up married, burying
the dog, eating dinner alone as a widow.

Every spring, the earth gets back to work.
Queen searches for a dry place, a loft or shed,

a wedge of light between truss and stud,
someplace warm and undisclosed,

close to the source: Wood she'll strip from lap
or fence, chew and mix with saliva.

She works fast, connects petiole to rafter.
Spins the nest about the center stalk, weaves

combs for drones whose eggs take five to eight
days to incubate. Then they get to work.

Everything they do is for the Queen.
She never returns to the same nest.


Scot Siegel, Oregon poet and city planner, is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012), both from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. His poetry is part of the permanent art installation along the Portland, Oregon Light Rail Transit ‘Orange Line.’