TRADE WAR FALLOUT

by Devon Balwit

The Trump administration is considering tariffs as high as 100 percent on Scotch and Irish whiskey, Belgian waffles and wines from across Europe, as part of its retaliation against the European Union for illegal airline subsidies. —The New York Times, December 13, 2019

Just as I learn to love Laphroaig, the tariffs
come, T***p ever the buzz-kill.
Bled for an extra 100%, I’ll shift
from the peat-smoke of Islay to a local distillery.
For two hundred years, the Scots have bunged
casks. I hope they can hold out. Maybe
bootleggers will sneak crates ashore in dinghies.
I’ll learn the codewords and hiss, Hey
Pal, down by the docks, then hurry home
to shots. The hit-list includes many
favorites: Gouda, Olive Oil, Cashmere,
Wine—all now harvested for dusty
warehouses. O Airbus, what have you done?
You’ve greyed the grey world for everyone.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE

by Pepper Trail

Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast

"The new [Endangered Species Act] rules also give the government significant discretion in deciding what is meant by the term “foreseeable future." 

—The New York Times, August 12, 2019

The Administration has announced that the following are no longer to be considered part of the “foreseeable future:”

Ice for polar bears to stand on
Safe and legal abortions
The concept of objective facts
Efforts to reduce the burning of fossil fuels
An act of political independence by any Republican member of Congress
Revulsion against separating immigrant children from their mothers and imprisoning them
Glaciers in Glacier National Park
Condemnation of white nationalism by the President of the United States
Any evidence of compassion or empathy from the President of the United States
Elephants
Nuclear arms control
The languid flight of monarch butterflies over a summer meadow
The survival of human civilization

However, the White House assures anxious Americans that the following can still be relied upon:

Inaction on gun control
Unrestricted influence of money on politics
Uncontrolled corporate power

Be sure to visit this site for regular updates


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2020

by Susan Vespoli





Lines of voters came in throngs, moved swift
in crayon box of skin hues, multi-pack,
to sing and chant, hold hands, cause seismic shift—
a tidal wave to take their country back.

Predictions flopped, the race not close in least,
‘cause Gallup erred, forgot the massive group
who came to speak in global tongue of peace
to rid the world of meanness, fear, and dupe.

When all was tallied, good prevailed. Love won.
Red ball caps flew off heads like birds unchained
and clattered crimson into sky toward sun.
Then buckets fell from clouds: baptismal rain

like water dousing evil witch in Oz.
T***p melted, disappeared, like he never was.


Susan Vespoli writes poems, essays, and dreams about the disappearance of Trump. Her work has been published in spots such as Rattle, Nailed Magazine, MER, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.

HOW LIVING WITH A CHIPMUNK IN MY HOUSE IN WHITE RIVER JUNCTION IS LIKE LIVING WITH T***P IN THE WHITE HOUSE

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

I’m scared. Something from another world
has entered the place I thought was safe.
I am nervous every time I open
a door, feel trepidation turning
corners. I have trouble
going to sleep. I think
about taking sleeping pills
so that I don’t have to think
about the intruder—seeing him
over and over again sitting on his haunches
in front of the refrigerator,
scurrying across the wooden floors,
(lying to news reporters,
his hair fur rustled by wind).
My house seems over-
taken—I walk gently
or at times stomp
with a new anger, a new
sadness, never know
what I will see or hear.
I look down all the time,
not up at the sky or at the art
on the walls of my house
that I love to see. I research
incessantly—how can I get rid of him—
open an outside door,
so eager for him to leave,
I am open for others to enter.
I bought a Have-a-Heart trap,
because I have a heart. I bait him
with things he likes to eat,
wait for the two metal doors to clang,
imagine driving him in the back of my car
to a faraway place where he cannot
ruin a human home. Or maybe
just chuck him & his trap
in the White River, see if they’ll survive
in that water world.
But he’s still here. Somewhere.

Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form with conscious line breaks. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract, Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019). Recently, poems have appeared in Artemis, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO.

TELL ME THE AMERICA WE WANTED NEVER EXISTED

by Dwain Wilder

Tell me about Jim Crow and I will read you chapters from "Huckleberry Finn."

Tell me about slavery and I will tell you about Harriet Tubman, John Fairfield, Levi Coffin and a host of hidden hands, and the Underground Railroad.

Tell me about overweening power and I will tell you about the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Seneca Falls Convention, and Frederick Douglas.

Tell me about the worst of racism and I will tell you about a white man, John Brown, losing his life to spark a slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry.

Tell me about oppression and I will ring the rafters with Wendell Phillips,
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!
—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…"

Tell me the America we always wanted has never existed,
that people the world over, desperate for refuge
and yearning for it here
are but glamoured and I will show you a gift.

I will show you a present from another people’s dream of liberty,
a lady standing at a harbor raising a torch,
Holding a tablet inscribed with the day we called ourselves free;
at her feet, a few lines from a poem

and point out to you an endless procession of people who rely on her,
the gift of her,
rely on the torch,
rely on the tablet’s date, rely
on the fragment of the poem
and weep bitter gladness at first sight of the harbor.

The public anguish as our President and his henchmen
treat destitute people and their children like criminals,
little more than so much dirt,
for seeking asylum at our borders
—the existence of the America the humble of the world need
is proven by that anguish, its mass, its inevitability.

Your anguish. All it takes is yours. All of it.

Dwain Wilder is a Buddhist activist, editor of The Banner, an online weekly newsletter for grass roots activists working to get our country to acknowledge and respond to the current climate emergency. Dwain has taught meditation at Attica Prison, New York. He is a member of the Rochester poetry community, and builds stringed musical instruments for a living. He lives with his wife, their dog and cat, and a large rowdy macaw, in a quaint cottage beside a large dark forest.