by Karen Warinsky
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| AI-generated graphic created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News. |
President Trump is rolling back anticorruption efforts and ethical standards for himself and allies like Elon Musk. —The New York Times, February 12, 2025
The millennial check-out clerk
holds my 50 toward the florescent light,
squints hard to find a fake
which is harder by the day
with so much fakery about,
and I wonder
who will exchange those phony notes
along with those played for the crowd
at rallies and events?
Who will teach the young
the dimensions of truth;
how large, how important it really is,
how to hold assertions to the light,
see if they are real?
Hot with anger I ponder
what will be left after
the stuffing’s been kicked
the juice squeezed
as billionaires slice us thin
try to make grinders
of us all,
garnished with dollar bills.
Will they realize in time
that people are worth more
than money,
and will we do whatever it takes
to keep from being
eaten alive?
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| AI-generated graphic created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News. |
Karen Warinsky is a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest and a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee. She is widely published in anthologies, journals and E-zines. Her books are Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby, (2022) (both from Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023, Alien Buddha Press). Warinsky coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large in CT and MA.
