WEAVING JUSTICE

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Bad Dog Metalworks

the great unraveling      has begun

frayed threads    of society’s      hidden
     fabric     are being pulled          violently

a crude quilt     erratically stitched     connects pieces      
     appliques      depict justice  
             point the oblivious     to cloaked truths


Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations at state, diocesan and national levels. Her work has appeared in several Old Mountain Press anthologies, Poetic Portions anthology, Soul-lit Spiritual Poetry, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Panoply Literary Zine, Snapdragon Journal, Whirlwind Magazine, Kakalak, Red Clay Review and Gyroscope Review. Five poems were turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham.  Her chapbook Being Kin (CreationRising Press) was published in 2019.  She lives in Durham, NC.

OUR DICTATOR

by Carol Dorf

Art by Adrian Teal

When the young ask “Why
did you let it go on so long?”
they have forgotten

an essential fact—he was
our dictator—small fingers,

and disconnected
speech rhythms of our crazy
uncles raging on.

Carol Dorf has three chapbooks available, Given (Origami Poems), Some Years Ask (Moria Press), and Theory Headed Dragon (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry appears in Shofar, About Place, Great Weather For Media, Slipstream, The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, Heresies, Feminist Studies, Scientific American, and Maintenant. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing. She is interested in the intersections between poetry, disability, science and parenting. 

A PESSIMIST TAKES STOCK

by George Salamon

Darkness & Light Art Print by Zeke Tucker

"Pessimism is a conscious filter which disarms ideologues and frees us to act in a practical manner.” —John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion

The air all around our leader echoes with shouts,

His Tweets can not put the tiles that fell off the

Roof of his political temple back up, the storm of

Coronavirus has come and its furious waves grow

Denser, it bursts through masks and measurements

As it rages and more than 142,000 lives have gone down.

Our leader is concerned only with the quadrennial

Cockfight staged for us as Democracy while too many

Among us have lost touch with first things,as bands of

Rebels, marginalized and mocked, try to restore it,

In their own fashion, forcing us to see the state of our

Union from the short view, pitch in, waiting for the

Long view to stumble and stagger close enough to

Lead us to the light out of the darkness we chose.

George Salamon took to pessimism when he was a refugee kid in Switzerland during World War Two and the Holocaust, but he has not let it sour into cynicism. He lives and writes in St. Louis, MO, and most recently has contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems and TheNewVerse.News.

A PRESIDENT SO VILE

by James Penha

The New Yorker, July 20, 2020

"The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday." —The Washington Post, July 19, 2020

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” —Sherlock Holmes

If America were ever
to have a President so
vile and blasphemous

to his oath—to preserve

and protect—he’d seek

at every turn of a poll

by means unfair and foul 

to dwindle rival voters

especially those of color…

should a pandemic come

to rage, like him, against

minorities and raze the poor

particularly, might he not ignore

or even encourage a plague

he deems allied to his future?

James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News .

STYMIED

by George Held

T***p wears mask in public for 1st time. The president told reporters, “I've never been against masks,” before departing the White House for Walter Reed Medical Center. Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP via ABC News, July 12, 2020

That is no planet for old men, or young –
the Earth contaminated by a virus
so deadly that in one great city
one in three hundred has become

infected and in a tiny Arkansas town
one in nineteen, and all the while
the most powerful man on Earth
wears no mask, except at Walter Reed.

Maybe a mask offers no more protection
than a rubber with a hole in it
but still, the President might wear one
at least to show concern for prophylaxis;

so those who mask up to walk to the post
office must encounter strapping young women
and men whose aplomb, arrogance, or disregard
for more vulnerable citizens

lends even a commonplace sortie
a risk like charging a machinegun
nest on Iwo Jima. But most old folks know
their time is up and dying from the virus

can be more efficient than falling victim
to a malignancy. An aged human
is but a decrepit thing, unlikely to remain
a golden bird upon a golden bough,

much less to sing to a careless emperor…

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, is sheltering in Eastern Long Island.

HE WOULD LIKE TO BE A CONFEDERATE GENERAL

by Howard Winn

but was born in the wrong era
even though he tries to assume the
role in modern times and dreams those flabby
wattles firmed into the mountainous
stone of Mount Rushmore with the
other great presidents where he knows
he belongs as the statues come down
he poses as if he could join one eternal
and turns to the computer and twitter
away as if an eternal mockingbird
that ignores the twenty first century
and will bring back the America
that split into the democracy and the
autocracy supported by the labor
of slavery subject to their murder
in the pretense of maintaining law
and order which masks prejudice
and chauvinism that supports
the fake humanism of the fox
slinks in to empty arenas and
pretends there is always an admiring
crowd of empty seats that do not clap

Howard Winn's poetry and fiction has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his published poetry will be published in early summer.

COMMODUS

by Howie Faerstein

Commodus as Hercules, also known as The Bust of Commodus as Hercules, is a marble portrait sculpture created sometime in early 192 AD. It is housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy. Originally discovered in 1874 in the underground chambers of Horti Lamiani, it has become one of the most famous examples of Roman portraiture to date. Commodus (31 August 161 AD – 31 December 192 AD) was Roman Emperor from 180 to 192 and the son of the previous emperor, Marcus Aurelius.During his sole reign, he came to associate himself with the Greek hero, Herakles (whose myths were adopted in Rome under the name Hercules), eventually having a bust depicting him as the hero created near the end of his reign.There is speculation of the Emperor's intent by creating depictions of himself as a godlike figure. While some sources say it was Commodus's desire not to be the protege of Hercules, but to be a god, the incarnation, the epiphany of Hercules and others claim instead that he simply desired to be the center of attention and show his intense appreciation for games and spectacles. —Wikipedia

Claiming to be Hercules reincarnated,
Commodus killed one hundred lions
and three elephants single-handedly
and our leader thinks he’s special,
says his I. Q. is one of the highest.
To honor the gods, Commodus had amputees chained together
in the arena and, pretending they were giants, clubbed them to death,
and our president says part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.
Late 2nd century emperor, Commodus
renamed Rome Commodius Commodiana,
and our buffoon-in-chief says, I could shoot somebody in the middle
of 5th Avenue and I wouldn’t lose voters.
With his bow, Commodus shot the heads off ostriches in full gallop,
slew a giraffe once, strange and helpless beast.
With each appearance as a gladiator,
he charged the city a million sesterces, depleting the treasury.
Citizens were often killed for making him angry.
He proclaimed a new order
just like T***p
and was assassinated finally
by his mistress, his chamberlain, and his prefect.

Howie Faerstein is the author of two poetry collections: Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn and Googootz and Other Poems both published by Press 53. His poetry and reviews can be found in Great River Review, Off the Coast, Rattle, upstreet, Mudfish and on-line in Verse Daily, About Place, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, Poetrybay, Peacock Journal, and Connotation. He presently volunteers at the Center for New Americans and is co-poetry editor of CutThroat, A Journal of the Arts. 

CALLING CAPTAIN AMERICA!

by Susannah Greenberg

Graphic by @PresVillain who takes real Trump quotes and Photoshops them into existing comics.

“In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.” 

—Art Spiegelman, The Guardian, August 17, 2019

They co-opt us and adopt us,
steal the words that we say.

They corrupt us, interrupt us,
default and delay.

Mr. Marvel, Mr. Lieber, rolls in his grave,
as Americans all are the Orange Skull's slave.

Lying and trying to borrow our song,
with tongues forked and twisted, it comes out all wrong.

With the Dictators Playbook on his nightstand,
he dreams of a people he can command.

One day we'll awake and when we are woke,
then once again we can call him a joke.

Oh Captain, my Captain, I fear you are dead,
they're taking away our roses and bread.

Captain America, won't you come home,
your people are calling, wherever you roam.

Susannah Greenberg is an independent book publicist at Susannah Greenberg Public Relations.  Since that terrible day in November 2016, she's turned to writing rhymed verse, which is better than drinking she supposes.