by Steven Kent
"Platner Suspends Senate Bid in Maine After Rape Accusation" —The New York Times, July 8, 2026
A Dem is out, and rightly so.
How very, very different, though,
The whole affair would surely be
If he were in the GOP—
He'd say she lied re: the event
And then he'd run for President.
Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.