THIRST

by Katherine West

Via The Daily Caller

And so there came upon me a time of great thirst.  Dust and hatred rose from desert roads, and monsoon puddles turned white, the evergreens unchanged as totems made of stone.  Oh!  How I thirsted for the softness of peace, of leaves and seasons, for yellow, the true color of death. 

For death there must be water, so we drove along the Mimbres River to Lake Robert, my neck soon sore from looking up at the tones of lemon, tangerine, rust, gold--all moving as if paint could not stop once it reached the canvas, but continued to mix and blend and breathe unbiased beauty.

In between were ragged signs bleached by the sun:  Don't Blame Me I Voted for Trump  or simply: Fuck Biden, right next to: We Love Cyclists, with seats in the shade for the tired traveler. 

The lake was a sequin-beaded dress from the 1920's that the wind exploded into diamond bits that blinded us where we sat beneath the willows that could not cease their orange song for every ear. 

There we died.  We drank color and light until we too exploded--then coalesced on the walk back, talking with Lalo the fisherman about the 90 year old woman with terminal cancer who caught the biggest catfish he'd ever seen, right there where he was fishing today, and he'd shown her the place, his secret spot that he showed to no one, and she'd whooped so loud people could hear her all the way across the lake, and she died that winter, where no one could swim due to all the hooks left in the sand, left in the mind, and we forgot to bring food so we ate the peace of apolitical ospreys fishing with Lalo in the morning as if the RVers with their Don't Tread on Me flags didn't exist, only their grandchildren, lying on their bellies in the sand, hanging over the bank, scooping up the craw fish the grebes eat, while we swallowed gallons of yellow death, and yet were empty, empty, empty, and light as leaves. 

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel, When Night Comes, A Christmas Carol Revisited came out in 2020, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing for whom she also teaches Creative Writing workshops.  The sequel to When Night Comes will also be released by BRP in 2021. It is called Slave, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist. 

DUPLEX: INHERITANCE

by Danielle Lemay

Studies in roundworms by biologists at the University of Iowa suggest that a mother’s response to stress can influence her children and her grandchildren, through heritable epigenetic changes. Their research, reported in Molecular Cell, demonstrated that roundworm mothers subjected to heat stress passed—under certain conditions—the legacy of that stress exposure not only to their offspring but, if the period of stress to which the mother was exposed was long enough, even to their offspring’s children. —Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, October 14, 2021

Study Suggests Maternal Stress Inherited

like passing down green eyes or curly hair.

 

          It’s not like passing down green eyes or hair;

          the scientists conducted studies with worms.

 

Scientists studied heat stress in worms,

so what does it matter to human mothers?

 

          Does it matter to human mothers

          that they will now be blamed for stress?

 

We know the moms will now be blamed for stress;

Of course. News stories manipulate us.

 

          Of course, news stories manipulate us.

          We learn from the world, starting with mom.

 

Perhaps we should calm the world, starting with mom.

Studies suggest maternal stress is inherited.

Author’s Note: I came across this story about heritable stress at the end of the work day, while I was quite stressed, and it made me think how I’ve probably passed stress to my children and how my mom was stressed and her mother before her, a whole lineage of stressed mothers, probably for as long as there have been Homo sapiens, or even worms. With each generation sharing stress with the next, like lines from one couplet to another in a duplex, I obviously had to write a duplex.

Danielle Lemay is a scientist and poet. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 and has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, ONE ART, Limp Wrist Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.

COUNTING BONES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

Eddie Canales, director of South Texas Human Rights Center. Photograph: Gabriela Campos via The Guardian.

for john meza and eduardo canales

how many graves received them 

that is 

what was left of their bodies… 

for two days 

you will sift the soil 

with your hands and small trowels  

letting the earth 

fall away 

from the whiteness of bone 

i cannot fathom how you . . . 

(my heart aches with this almost thought) 

how will you touch the small remnants of lives 

and still breathe… 

how…

only by kneeling 

                                     

Author’s Note: John Meza is one of the volunteers working with Eddie Conales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center. With members of the Texas State University Forensic Pathology Department, they exhume bodies in graves in San Ygnacio, Texas to help identify missing migrants.

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” 

LIPSTICK

by Mary K O’Melveny

Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force. She is a space veteran, now making her second trip into orbit. She is set in the coming weeks to be the first Chinese woman to walk in space as China’s space station glides around Earth at 17,100 miles per hour. And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at the core of China’s ambitious space program, official and news media attention fixated as much on the comparative physiology of men and women, menstruation cycles, and the 5-year-old daughter she has left behind, as they did on her accomplishments. (No one asked about the children of her two male colleagues.) Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo capsule had supplied the orbiting space station with sanitary napkins and cosmetics. “Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup,” he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state television network. Photo: Col. Wang Yaping, center, with Col. Ye Guangfu, left, and Maj. Gen. Zhai Zhigang at a pre-launch ceremony on Oct. 15 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images —The New York Times, October 23, 2021

If one puts lipstick on an astronaut,

can she still blaze through arid

atmospheres, dangle wildly from a line 

that tethers her to the mothership 

even as she kicks up her heels 

and pirouettes out into star space?

 

It seems makeup is a juggernaut 

that enhances our reality. Some added

emphasis, a glowing image to re-define

a star-struck traveler, to make her trip

seem normal, like any mom who feels

a need to exit might arguably face.

 

There is nothing to be feared. We ought

to be glad some girl wearing a padded

suit has figured out she can still shine, 

even if she must give her family the slip.

Perhaps pancake isn’t so perfidious, but conceals

a dream or two that she might still embrace.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020. Her latest poetry collection Dispatches From The Memory Care Museum has just been published by Kelsay Books.  

ANTHROPOCENE ANXIETY

by Steven Croft

Illustration from The Guardian, October 23, 2021

As the beehive of news stories grew,

scientists reporting back from Greenland's

shrinking ice sheet, coral reefs in Australia, the Florida Keys,

the feedback loops of forests lost and wildfire,

a beehive building like the global sauna our

drowsy governments offer an impossible treaty to slake,

suddenly a question rose before me:

why are we losing our grip on our world's biggest problem?

Because it is too far gone to hold?

Because floodwater and crabgrass want our cities?

Miners complain about the earth's heat

as they dig lower for coal to send to the surface.

Metaphor become metamorphosis.

Today, I can't look at a dome of beautiful October sky

without my mind's eye seeing a blue-lit jail

for a fevered planet, without my mind's ear hearing

buffalo herds of wind speaking in tongues

of shrieks across this doomed green land.

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

TOUGH LOVE

by Katie Kemple

Illustration by Chelsea Charles for The Washington Post

Product of flesh, moldable 

robot, we blank out

your name, hide your limbs 

in a cross, until your head 

can’t hold itself up anymore. 

You fucked-up. That’s why 

we come for you at 3am, 

tell you to get dressed, 

handcuff your spoiled wrists, 

escort you to our car. 

Your parents watch. 

They hired us. In America, 

our tax dollars fund it.

Through the rear-view

mirror, I see you trying 

to memorize the route. 

Don’t bother. The place 

we’re going, you won’t 

get out. We strip you naked, 

yell: “cough!” You do it. 

We probe the secrets 

of your body. No drugs 

in your cavities. Prepare to rot, 

bitch. Now get going, 

I say: “git!” Your walls 

are concrete. The women 

have pressed the white sheets 

of the last girl. The one 

who turned herself into 

a scarecrow. Yours now, 

sleep. Rest your eyelid 

on the stain of her 

slutty-blue mascara. 

Author's Note: This poem is in response to Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker article “The Shadow Penal System For Struggling Kids” (October 18) and Paris Hilton’s Washington Post op-ed “America’s ‘troubled teen industry’ needs reform so kids can avoid the abuse I endured” (October 18). Both articles detail toxic, cult-like organizations that trap unsuspecting youth into a shadow penal system. Once surrendered by their parents, it’s nearly impossible for victims to escape. These companies come for children at night, subject them to strip searches, and inflict psychologically damaging treatments under the guise of "tough love". There are no laws to protect minors in the custody of these groups. In fact, they receive state and federal funds for their services. 

Katie Kemple (she/her) is a poet, parent, and consultant  in San Diego, CA. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Atlanta Review, Longleaf Review, Matter, Lunch Ticket (Amuse-Bouche), and Anti-Heroin Chic.

LIZZO

by Judy Juanita

I am 100% behind you baby girl

Behind your superb black ass

Behind your exponential black ass

Behind all the big black women

We who are BeyBey

We who are BeyBey's kids

We who raised BeyBey

Who raised BeyBey's babies and babydaddies

We behind you Lizzo

Show that ass

Put that ass on the Lakers scoreboard

For the world to see

Your big fat cocoa ass

As important for the world to see as 

Emmett Till's bludgeoned face

"Let them see what they did to my boy

Let the world see what they did to my boy"

Let us worship Lizzo

That's right—Bow down

Before her big black ass 

Before her big black booty

Not injected into her backside by a Dominican doctor

Not leaking formaldehyde into her veins clotting her heart

Killing one more big fat implacable life

Fuck Brazilian butt lifts

Fuck the strip clubs that hire the women

Who pay with their very life for butts

That sit high on their hips

21st century Venus Hottentots

Fuck the only way these women will earn $2,000 a night $3,000 a night $4,000 a night

Instead of working at  Walmart

(Yeah yeah yeah do the math $15@ hr. times 30 hrs a week so they don't have to give them health benefits. That's $450 a week, $1800 a month, the living wage that Biden is fighting for? Get real. You'd hop on a plane to the Dominican Republic, leak silicone all over the seats armrests tray tables too for a big black ass a big black ass)

Lizzo's black ass is worth gold

Diamonds and Gucci

In the belly of the beast 

Same place where

Lizzo's Army yeah

A black only army for the descendants of Buffalo Soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen 

A big black beautiful army whose big black unbleached asshole emits the noxious gases called life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Same place where corner stores have filled those asses for decades with hostess twinkies butterfingers koolaid fruit loops sodas hogmaw and chitlins hot links potato salad macaroni and cheese sweet potato pie (BeyBey's son the athlete/personal trainer says with disgust, Ma, this is carbo overload, but eats at the christmas table because he too worships Lizzo once a year)

We love you Lizzo

Our anti-Lady Godiva

Our anti-Kardashian

Our anti-American

Miss America?

You're the missing America

The antidote to self-loathing

You had to be huge

In our face

All over the place

You are the dream deferred no more

You cannot be invisible

You will not live underground

Not one more day

Lizzo our Lizzo

Lizzo Lizzo Lizzo Lizzo Lizzo

You is You is You is

America the beautiful.

Judy Juanita's book of poetry Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the 2021 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her short story collection The High Price of Freeways won the Tartt Fiction Award and will be published by the University of West Alabama's Livingston Press in 2022. Het debut novel Virgin Soul was published by Viking in 2014. 

THOSE THE EARTH TAKES IN SECRET

by Bradley McIlwain

Outdoorsy. Beautiful. Outspoken for justice. Full of humor. “Being outdoors and enjoying nature gave her that feeling of empowerment of being free,” a line from her obituary read. The 23-year-old woman was reported missing by her family after she failed to return home. Weeks later, her remains were discovered in a field in Wyoming. This wasn’t Gabrielle Petito, who disappeared a month ago and has over 20 million search results associated with her name on Google. The 23 year old was Jade Wagon, a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who went missing from her home on the Wind River Reservation in January 2020. Her death was ruled accidental due to hypothermia and drug intoxication, but her mother, Nicole Wagon, believes that her daughter was a victim of violence. Jade Wagon has 3,610 search results mentioning her name on Google. While developments on Petito’s case have made national news and retained engagement for weeks running, her story is one of tens of thousands of Americans that experience interpersonal violence every year. For many like the Wagons, the tide of activism in Petito’s case reaffirmed what was missing for women of color in similar circumstances. The vast majority do not receive widespread media coverage, let alone sizable social media investigation. Feminist journalist Gwen Ifill originally coined the term “missing white woman syndrome” in 2004, highlighting media’s tendency to favor sensationalized coverage toward white female victims of violence whilst neglecting stories of women of color, who face violence at a disproportionately higher rate, according to the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. —Kyran Berlin, Golden Gate Express, October 15, 2021

Cloudy skies.

The world shadows

Itself from prying eyes.

A shudder 

cracks the night

like a hammer

Shattering ice.

We fall through.

Our souls know

No use.

Water safeguards 

Our secrets, washes 

Away 

old bones.

We don’t see

The murder of crows

Until Valhalla is near.

After the battle

Valkyries peck 

At the armour 

we don’t need.

What’s dead

We leave behind:

Our blood on the blade.

The earth takes

Our stories, scattered

And scavenged 

under the trees.

Who will see?

Is there anyone left

Who will speak for me?

Bradley McIlwain is a Canadian writer and poet, whose works have appeared in The New Verse News, The Origami Poems Project, Platform Magazine, and others. He is the author of Elementals: Poems (IOWI, 2015).

SQUATTER

by Chad Parenteau

“DONALD TRUMP, UNPROMPTED, TELLS GOP DONORS HE DOESN’T LIKE HAVING WOMEN PEE ON HIM: ‘I’m not into golden showers,’ the former president blurted out to the crowd.” —Vanity Fair, October 15, 2021

First lady of her kind

stares down her man’s

new list of never woulds,

 

knows that he thinks

someone’s been lady

too long, far enough.

 

Opportunity fades.

No children are left

to shield his storm.

 

For now, she waits

by bully’s pulpit

for highest calling.

 

Standing on bed,

uncaring hands braced

on shatterproof ceiling,

 

she’ll stand over him,

open gates to nearest

heaven he can claim.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.

ETHIOPIAN DÉJÀ VU

by Phyllis Wax

Despite mass starvation occurring in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray, senior international aid officials are tiptoeing around declaring a famine nearly a year after the civil war erupted. Photo: This is one of the malnourished children being treated at Ayder Hospital this week —BBC, October 16, 2021

We’ve seen them before,                             

living skeletons,

bones like knobby sticks,

 

carrying children too weak

to brush flies

from their faces,

 

so hungry

they’ve been eating

leaves.

 

A hooded figure

strides among them,

his sharp scythe ready.

 

Trucks with life-

saving food and medicine

have been blocked.

 

Our feet seem stuck            

in concrete. 

Social issues are a major focus of Milwaukee poet Phyllis Wax. Her work has appeared on The New Verse News in the past, as well as in numerous other journals and anthologies, both online and in print.

WHAT IT TAKES TO LIVE HERE

by Joseph Hope

Gunmen have killed at least 30 people in northwest Nigeria in the latest round of violence in which hundreds have been killed so far this year and thousands more displaced. —The Washington Post, October 18, 2021. Photo: Some members of the Nigerian Armed Forces Sniper Unit. Stefan Heunis/AFP via Getty Images via The Conversation, October 18, 2021

What it takes to live here.

                 Numb. Wait for the news:

unknown gun men killed an 

             unknown number of people, 

go to bed and hope there is 

             tomorrow, of course there is 

always tomorrow 

                       and aways bad news, 

a man named Naira 

                       fell from it high horse 

and broke more than a neck. 

                         The president said shoot 

the protesters, No, 

                      the Army chief did, No, 

an unknown fraternity bigger 

than the government gave the command, 

we don't know who fired 

                                 but we know who died. 

Pretend. Pretend you're happy 

and unhurt, riddled with holes and alive. 

Try to live on unpaid  

                               salaries for months 

and save enough to buy a house 

                          from unpaid pensions. 

Understand to plan your future  

                           on nothing but prayer, a lot of it 

that the church overflows and spill

into the street                         like chemical waste. 

                  Understand ghost walking, 

understand the rhythm of bullets, 

                          understand the many ways you could 

die gradually until blood              looks like red paint, 

                  until bodies piled like groundnut 

pyramid appear 

              as a necessity.

                       It would take more than 

the blood of children drooling from the altar 

                       of terrorism to 

inflate your already               deflated emotion. 

The superpower           of being a Nigerian 

is that you can              make comic of death, 

dance in anger,             and swallow grief 

like your daily                  vitamin supplement.

Joseph Hope is a student of Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, Nigeria. He is currently studying applied chemistry. His works are forthcoming or already published in Reckoning Press, Evening Street Press, Zoetic Press, The New Verse News, Praxis Magazine, AfroPoetry, Gemini Spice Magazine, Spillwords, SprinNG, Writers Space Africa, Nthanda Magazine, 5th Chinua Achebe Anthology, Ariel Chart, Best "New" African Poets 2019 Anthology, and more. He's a reader for Reckoning Press. He was a fellow in the 2021 SprinNG Writing Fellowship. He tweets @ItzJoe9 & IG: _hope_joseph

THEY CALLED HIM A "F-ING N—"

by Rémy Dambron

Ahmaud Arbery's aunt, Theawanza Brooks, says, "Nobody has the decision to make as far as being the judge, jury and executioner." Her nephew was shot and killed in 2020. The trial is set to begin Monday in Brunswick, Ga. —NPR, October 18, 2021. Photo: NICOLE BUCHANAN FOR NPR

Once again, it falls 

on Georgians to guide the way

to be our nation’s conscience,

filtering out the noise, the hyperbole,

the lies.

Once again, it falls

on Georgians to decipher the truth

to act not on our prejudices or partisanships, but on our collective

humanness.

Once again, it falls

on Georgians to rise,

to stand as one and affirm 

that this man was not a thief,

was not burglar, was not a prowler, was not a criminal, was not a threat,

just a jogger.

Once again, it falls 

on Georgians to convince the courts

not to fear him for his skin,

not to judge him for their rage,

but to picture them standing over his bloodied body, shotgun still smoking

with the gall to call him that horrible word.

Once again it falls,

on Georgians to uphold the law,

to make right the wrongs 

of centuries of recklessness,

of supremacy.

To make good on the little remaining scraps of a social contract we used to

cherish.

Once again it falls,

on Georgians and a jury of their peers 

to demand that justice be done 

but never done,

screaming one more time

into the void of voids

enough is enough.

Rémy is a teacher and Portland-based activist whose work focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social and environmental justice. With the help of his loving wife and chief editor, his poetry has appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Society of Classical Poets, and The New Verse News. 

WILDERNESS SURVIVAL

by Gus Peterson

Gary Paulsen, a prolific writer whose young-adult novels like “Hatchet” and Dogsong” inspired generations of would-be adventurers with tales of survival, exploration and nature red in tooth and claw, died on Wednesday [October 13] at his home in Tularosa, N.M. He was 82. Photo by Brian Adams. —The New York Times, October 14, 2021

for Gary Paulsen

 

Today you slipped like a plane

beneath that nameless lake.

And who could blame you

for disembarking now?  

My newsfeed this morning:

moose in Vermont drunk dry

by 90,000 ticks, another friend

diagnosed with Lyme. There is

nowhere we can’t kill us anymore.

In Nunavut the water asphyxiates

with gas and there are still days I am

crashing, where I google a map of this

world and try to land on any thumbprint

of blue. Tell me, was it like discovering

fire, the moment you realized just how

fucked we are? I want to pull your book

down off the shelf and be that type of free

again. I return home, walk woods I walked

with it in hand. Here a splash of wintergreen

harvested for tea, the ring of blackened stone

driving back darkness. One last shelter resisting

its ruin, and in that small space two had lain

down their love on a blanket twined through

leaves and needles. Imagine their wildness,

the heavy plumes of breath ghosting up,

a floor pressed dry and soft to quivering skin

though the roof hadn’t been patched

since middle school.

Gus Peterson lives in Maine. 

BIGGER THAN THE GAME

by Bonnie Naradzay

                           Galileo:  “Eppur si muove,” and yet it moves.

 

An NBA player who shall be unnamed

refuses to have the coronavirus shot

and says this is bigger than the game; 

this was after he'd said the world was flat

but some years later blithely explained

he was big into conspiracy theories then

and said we’ve all been there, right?

Meanwhile an island that's part of Taiwan,

just six miles from mainland China,

has been surrounded by Chinese boats 

fishing for squid; the boats flood the sky 

with lurid green lights to stun the squid, 

deplete all fish, send the islanders into despair.

It’s complicated, it’s covert aggression, 

nothing can be done, it will only get worse, 

like the illegal settlers (during the olive harvest 

with the few trees left) on the West Bank

who beat the limping Palestinian teen,

hung him from a tree, burned his feet,

released him to the Israeli police.

My friend says he doesn’t read the news

to protect himself from being sad

but I think why am I alive, otherwise,

if not to know what’s wrong and right, 

for I believe in Paradise, 

in the separation of church and state,

in the perfidy of pulpits and gerrymandering.

It’s bigger than the game. 

      

            

Bonnie Naradzay leads regular poetry workshops for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. 

PLAYING FOOTSIE

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Like many people, Mr Goxx is dabbling in cryptocurrency, hoping to strike it rich. He's notable for two reasons: first, he is making money, with his lifetime career performance up about 20% –beating many professional traders and funds. Second, Mr Goxx is a hamster. The business-minded rodent has a trading office attached to his regular cage. Every day, when he enters the office, a livestream starts on Twitch, and his Twitter account lets followers know: Mr Goxx has started a trading session. By running in his "intention wheel", he selects which cryptocurrency he'd like to trade, as the wheel spins through the different options. His office floor has two tunnels nearby: one for buy, one for sell. Every time he runs through a tunnel, the electronics wired to his office complete a trade according to Mr Goxx's desires. —BBC News, September 27, 2021

Pronounce F T S E the Footsie way,

Lest others think you're too naive to trade—

Although, as Fur Topped Stock Exchange, you may

Yet stupefy them with the gains you've made!

In Germany, a hamster, Mr. Goxx,

Negotiates his treadmill like a chess

Grand master, moving pieces of his stocks

From here to there to rival the success

Of Footsie and the Dow. By racing through 

Opposing tunnels, he can buy or sell

The cryptocurrency whose trade is due

So expertly, he makes his holdings swell ...

It makes you ask why Wall Street bank elites

Earn such high pay—for trades a hamster beats!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

UNDER SUBPOENA

by Michel Steven Krug

Cartoon by JOEL ORFF, SONOMA INDEX-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL CARTOONIST, October 11, 2021

I.

 

Exiting the house select

Committee revolving doors

 

The Sergeant at Arms has eyes

For each witness under subpoena

 

Not ready to defy the privileges of

A defeated Executive whose policies foreign

 

And domestic are personal, useful,

Promoted to deceive,

 

American idolatry

Useful sabotage propagated

 

By the nouveau KGB

Useful USA, for re-re-election

 

US Useful idiots

To serve a majesty.

 

II.

 

Servile to posted democracy,

Offering truths of the click bait asserted.

 

Espionage at law when

In defiance of domestic channels

 

And congressional oversight

His majesty’s attorney general

 

Exacted deals to debase his rival

By erasure with stabbed glass

 

That avenges

Opaque defeat.

 

III.

 

We are informed by heavy flag poles.

We are all under subpoena,

 

Freedom of disinformation

Overwhelms veracity,

 

Its volume too temperate

Its tone too coherent

 

Its fidelity too rigid, too conventional

For an era that discounts reason.

 

IV.

 

2021:

Democracy has not been so degraded

That its franchise is mere debris.

 

The corrosion has been a cruel aberration

An arc necessary to sober

Cynicism and incredulity.

 

Exquisitely appalling, helium packaged,

Like ice melts in the spring,

Exposing all of its menacing emptiness.

Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine and he litigates. His poems have appeared in JMWW, Cagibi, Silver Blade, Crack the Spine, Dash, Mikrokosmos, The New Verse News, North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review with poems forthcoming in other journals. 

WHERE TRUTH AND THREAT TANGLE IN KNOTS OF NO NAME

by Jen Schneider

Judge Donna Scott Davenport during a 2017 deposition. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio.

Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge: Judge Donna Scott Davenport oversees a juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, with a staggering history of jailing children. She said kids must face consequences, which rarely seem to apply to her or the other adults in charge. —Meribah Knight, Nashville Public Radio, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica, October 8, 2021

tiny babies on metal swings,

toss rubber balls on concrete

tiny babies clothed in fabric

of NBA stars & NBC scenes

chalk words on concrete

tiny babies entrusted

to institutions of unknown pores

& unsuspecting wills

serve time on concrete

 

NO

           1. __ 2. __ 3. __

 

cold benches

cold eyes

filters everywhere

 

tiny babies on metal cots

fight demons of demonstrative

power & fail to sleep

 

NO

           1. __ 2. __ 3. __

 

cold lots (& bots)

cold plots

filters everywhere

 

dark curtains blanket lives

& squash truths

dark curtains conceal filters

& give breadth to those who

struggle to breathe

journals fail not to reveal

false truths. journalists

fight to reveal hidden truths

 

NO

           1. __ 2. __ 3. __

 

cold data

cold calls

filters everywhere

 

as locks turn right

& shifts (shifty eyes) turn left

truths & threats tangle

in knots (& playground lots) of no name

time ticks. clocks run.colds (& charges) linger.

tiny babies of metal

fences take charge. document false charges.

tally lives on indefinite pause

& subject to indeterminate pain

judicial oaths & pledges

of allegiance

stream syllables of familiar

themes

1. Liberty 2. Justice 3. All

& strings of familiar

knots

1. Truth 2. Transparency 3. All

& cracks of familiar

ideals

1. Peace 2. Fairness 3. All

frayed fibers, tangled twine

false/falsified/fabricated (truths, charges, crimes)  

true fear (& dark curtains) everywhere

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming Atmosphere Press).

WHOSE STORY? WHOSE CHOICE?

by Laurie Rosen

Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz/AMS via The Washington Post.

I am 35, 

I am 19, 

I am 12. 

Put a bounty on my head,

on my confidants and advisers

my doctor, too. 

Sue the office administrators,

the taxi driver that brought me.

Come for me with handcuffs.

Restrain my arms behind my back,

haul me off to jail.

Lock me up behind bars, 

Throw away the key.

Call me a murderer, baby killer. 

Selfish, hateful. 

I plead guilty. I don’t deny it. 

But, look me in the eyes 

and tell me I am not speaking 

your story or your lover’s,

your sister’s, your best friend’s,

maybe even your daughter’s. 

I am 35, mark my body   state controlled,  

I am 19, proclaim my uterus   conscripted,

I am 12, classify my heartbeat   irrelevant.

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poems have appeared in Sisyphus, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Oddball Magazine, Soul-Lit, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. 

SNAKE OIL

by Julie Steiner

Cartoon by Necessary 2021 GoComics.com

“At least seven radio hosts and high-profile anti-mask and anti-vaccine advocates have died from COVID-19 in recent weeks. The men are radio hosts Dick Farrel, Phil Valentine, Bob Enyart, and Marc Bernier, as well as former CIA officer Robert David Steele, anti-masker Caleb Wallace, and conservative leader Pressley Stutts. Misinformation around the virus and vaccines remains widespread as cases continue to rise.” —Business Insider, September 19, 2021

“You shall not—surely!—die. Fake news!”

he scolds. “Don’t do as you are told!

(Except right now, of course.) Refuse

to be so easily controlled!”

“You shall not—surely!—die,” he sneers.

“The risk of death’s been overstated.

Powers That Be keep fanning fears

so Man can be manipulated.”

“You shall not—surely!—die,” he hisses,

half disdainful, half disgusted.

“Keeping you from knowledge? This is

why Authority can’t be trusted.”

“You shall not—surely!—die,” he scoffs,

then bites the dust. But that’s not closure:

Eve’s now fevered. Adam coughs,

aware at last of their exposure.

Author's Note: Genesis 3:4-7

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

KNAVES AND HEARTS

by Joe Crocker

u/Rhodesy97 at Reddit

Prince Andrew, interviewed by Maitlis
called to mind no arm-round-waist. His
fault, he shrugged, if fault it be,
was honour in too high degree
 
And being honour bound could he
ignore a friend in need or flee
the duty that behoves a Royal
or, God forbid, appear disloyal?
 
Appearances. That is the key
to understanding how men see
yet fail to notice girls beneath
the clothes, the curves, the smiles, the teeth.
 
But girls don’t count for much apart
from being pretty: they’re just tarts
for knaves to steal. Boys will be boys.
who rubberneck like angle-poise
 
lamps in search of something sweet.
And, finding honey at their feet,
take their pleasure as they please.
Lips are licked and chances seized.                   

Well, times have changed. They’re better now.
Or would be if we could learn how
to be excited by success
that marries want with tenderness.
 
Let lawyers push the paper round 
—their casuistry may rebound
to shame them as they batten down
(including he who wears a crown).

Author's Notes: Previously, in interview with BBC’s Emily Maitlis , Prince Andrew, said he had no recollection of being photographed with his arm around the waist of 17 year old Virginia Roberts Giuffre. He defended going to stay in the house of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying “at the time I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do and I admit fully that my judgement was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable.” Now Prince Andrew accepts he has been served US court papers over sexual assault claims. The issue of whether the royal had been notified about the case had previously been contested (Guardian). Prince Andrew’s lawyer Andrew B. Brettler had argued at a previous hearing that Ms. Giuffre had entered into a "settlement agreement" with Epstein that would end her current legal action. He believes that the agreement "releases the duke and others from any and all potential liability."

 

 

Joe Crocker gets suspicious when lawyers look for loopholes. He has had poems published in The New Verse News, Snakeskin, Allegro, The Orchards, Philosophy Now, and Light.

Haiku

Photo: A seagull rests as workers clean the contaminated beach Wednesday after an oil spill in Newport Beach, Calif. Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press, October 10, 2021.

Deborah P Kolodji is the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America and has published over 1100 haiku worldwide.  Her first full-length book highway of sleeping towns won a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award from the Haiku Foundation.

PIPELINE

by Scott C. Kaestner

Birds are seen as workers in protective suits clean the contaminated beach after an oil spill in Newport Beach, Calif., on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. A major oil spill off the coast of Southern California fouled popular beaches and killed wildlife while crews scrambled Sunday, to contain the crude before it spread further into protected wetlands. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu via The Columbian, October 8, 2021)

The pelican covered in oil dying on the contaminated beach

doesn’t give a shit about how much you love your new car

or how cheap the gas is at Costco 

it’s too busy taking one last breath.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and a man trying to get more fiber in his diet. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

"FLUFFY DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE,"

by Gil Fagiani

Richmond Center for Rehabilitation, Staten Island

 

my son says, as his new roommate: black teeth,

angry eyes, mumbles to himself, as he storms

out the door when I ask him to lower the TV.

 

Chubby, gentle, slow-talking Fluffy went every-

where with his pink teddy bear: the bedroom,

the dining room, the dentist’s office, he even

took showers with him—“that’s how he got

the nickname Fluffy,” my son reminds me.

 

He loved to sing Sammy Davis Jr. songs with Jill:

“Everything Is Beautiful, ” “The Candy Man.”

Last week he reportedly touched her backside,

“inappropriate contact,” the head nurse declared.

 

“He was sent to another unit,” my son says.

“Everyone on the ward misses Fluffy, even Jill.”

Gil Fagiani (1945-2018) was a translator, essayist, short-story writer, and poet. He  published nine books of poetry: Connecticut Trilogy: Stone Walls, Chianti in Connecticut, Missing Madonnas; as well as his collections Logos, A Blanquito in El Barrio, and Rooks; plus three chapbooks, Crossing 116th Street, Grandpa’s Wine, and Serfs of Psychiatry.

THE CALL

by Maria Lisella

The call came

A three-story roof,

not a big building

serious enough

to break bones.

A day later,

another call comes.

A room

at Jacobi.

 

I plan.

He drives.

I’m the passenger.

She’ll be there, you know.

I know, I hear myself say,

the mother is always there.

 

I hate

the stereotype, but it fits.

The mother takes him back.

He doesn’t get better.

He never leaves except

this way.

 

The cycle—failure,

salvation, failure,

a passive remote control.

Patched up.

Lateral moves

ward to ward.

Suicide watch.

 

From the parameter,

I watch.

Stepmother

not blood

not natural.

Despair respects no borders

legal, illegal.

 

You love what you touch,

love more what touches you.

Maria Lisella is the recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the American Academy of Poets and the author of Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings and is a travel writer by trade.

SHOOTER

by Stan Pisle

@Walt_Handelsman

Shooter 

Reported in Florida…

Forget how many times. 

An involuntary pulse throbbing 

in the dark, in the light,

Our schools, our arenas, our malls, courts, playgrounds, homes. 

 

A shooter took the life four cops in Oakland, 

five in Dallas, 

two in New York, 

26 people at a Sutherland Springs Church 

Nine in Charleston

58 in Las Vegas

—with 851 shot. 

Eight hundred and fifty-one people shot by one man. 

The numbers grow too much for a poem.

Stop 

Telling us life stories of the dead.

Window dressing over crackles of bullets.

Building fences between shooters and the shot.

NPRing, obits of people murdered for mercantile. 

Attempting animal warmth on cold dead bodies piled up.

Dividing and parsing the pile, determining which shot member counts. 

 

Show

Bullet riddled heads.

Emmette Till open coffin the funerals.

Zoom in where the casing entered under the nose, ejecting the soul.

Fuck that, assault rifle hollow points facture on contact.

Nothing’s left, only pulverized.

Narrate the blood cone spurting across theaters, schools, country music festivals.

Interview the bump stocked woman baren from five shells raping her womb. 

Collect the pools of bone and hamburger from the 100,000 shot each year.

Let gravity channel it to the twits and fat bros of Fox.

To the manufacturer of the hollow points 

Let them wipe up the fragments flowing in a bath the rest of us are forced to take.  

Stan Pisle is a Berkeley California poet. His work as appeared in the Arroyo Magazine, on KQED San Francisco, The Ravens Perch, and The New Verse News.