THE SUE BIRD PLAN

by Carol Parris Krauss




The grass is mowed, the weeds eaten.
Floors are polished and free of cat hair.
I have begun to create lessons for the upcoming
school year while the linens spin, rinse, rotate.
A quick glance at Twitter shows Sue and Megan
being interviewed during the WNBA All Star game.
The superstar couple. So while Baltimore is bashed,
women of color are insulted, Russian roulette spins
our president, and children are caged there is
evidence of love and beauty when Megan
steps aside, pushes Sue into the camera’s eye,
and declares “I’m on the Sue plan.”
Much more than a nutritional regime. Shouldn’t we

all have

someone look at us with those same eyes of
love and passion? Shouldn’t we all be on the
Sue Plan?


Carol Parris Krauss: Mother. Teacher. Poet.

FLORIDA MAN MAKES AMERICA HATE AGAIN

by Mickey J. Corrigan

"Florida man gropes woman on flight, tells police Trump 'says it's OK': A Florida man is accused of groping a female passenger while on a flight Sunday from Houston to Albuquerque and later telling authorities that the president of the United States says it's OK to grab women by their private parts." —AP, October 22, 2018

Florida Man:
he's any race or creed
the redneck black man
Jewish anti-Semite
woman-hating womanizer
alt-right progressive
an everywhere monster
never apprehended
always on the loose
in a dark alley
in your bushes, waiting
in the parking garage
at your desk
at work, at school
there
to offend again.

You know Florida Man:
your quiet neighbor
the one in the media
the shy fellow
with the big mouth
hard-drinking
teetotaler
with expensive shoes
riding a dented three-wheeler
living in an exclusive suite
at the pink sand country club.

Florida Man golfs hard
swims naked
eats flesh
passes laws
breaks laws
does drugs, injects
levity or ire
into any
conversation
about what's wrong
with the state
of the state
of everything
in America.

Florida Man:
indestructible
and coming
to a nightmare
near you.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. 

I LOVE A PARADE

by Linda Ferguson

as spontaneous as kissing,
one that opens like skies and camellias in January,
one that’s snug as the petals of artichoke buds,
one as knock-kneed as newly born calves in the spring.

I love a parade that knows the way, like elephants returning to a stream,
or a parade without purpose, one that drifts along, trailing its fingers in a summer lake,
or one that’s as wistful as the hound with its nose pressed
against the rough grain of gray fence planks.

Let’s have a parade that gleams like the keys that open the hidden doors,
or like the intrepid turtles that continue to carry small polished maps of the world –
a parade that smells of peaches and petrichor and pine –
a parade that surprises, like the sight of your name, handwritten in ink,
on a cream envelope.

Let’s have a barefoot, makeshift parade made of pinecones and popsicle sticks and twine –
a red-wagon parade, with wheels that squeak and trumpets that strain and ponies that canter
along crooked brick streets.

Give us a piggy-back, leapfrog, hopscotch parade –
a parade of acorns and feathers and beads,
a parade of thick knitted socks and worn wooden clogs,
a parade with spider web streamers and twig batons
covered in clumps of fresh emerald moss.

Let’s have a parade of flags stitched with verbs
like gentle and shimmy and billow and mist
or humble signs printed with pudding and pillow
and button and bone and apple and toe—

Let’s see a parade of dazed passengers stepping off a plane
into a long embrace,
a parade of soldiers lifting their palms,
a parade of perpetrators asking forgiveness,
a parade of jurors confessing, I, too, have sinned,  
a parade of ancestors promising, it will be alright.

Come, let our parade know the beams of a blue supermoon,
let our parade know the loneliness of being lost at sea—
let our parade be the one that remembers
how footprints tremble when they touch
foreign soil.

Linda Ferguson is an award-winning writer of poetry, fiction and essays. Her poetry chapbook was published by Dancing Girl Press. She has a passion for teaching creative writing classes that inspire and support students of all ages.

VANILLANELLE

by Susan McLean



Consistency is our delight.
Don’t make us try exotic flavors.
We want it plain; we want it white.

We think that blend-ins are a blight.
Your nuts or fudge do us no favors.
Consistency is our delight.

Our preferences are watertight.
Our love of sameness never wavers.
We want it plain; we want it white.

We shun sensations that excite
odd leanings or untoward behaviors.
Consistency is our delight.

We’re not repentant or contrite.
Change isn’t what the public savors.
We want it plain; we want it white.

Enough!  We have no appetite
for new ideas or dusky saviors.
Consistency is our delight.
We want it plain; we want it white.

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University.  Her satirical poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Light, Lighten Up Online, and The Spectator (UK).

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

by Devon Balwit

Top photo: “How New Yorkers Deal With Swastikas on the Subway” by Gregory Locke, The Forward, February 5, 2017.

Images collide in my news feed
the way strangers do on a train,
strangers on a NYC subway car,
rubbing out swastikas, the words
“Jews belong in the ovens,”
above archival Giacometti,
working papier-mâché
over the armature of a man,
a man gaunt like the Jews
after their ride in the trains,
heads shaved, teeth stripped,
children gone, names erased,
Giacometti’s man rising
like a corpse, refusing to stay dead,
race hatred rising, spectral,
bans, deportations,
Giacometti, the NYC riders,
showing what resistance looks like
when train doors open on shadows,
showing what makes a human being.


Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher from Portland, OR. She has two chapbooks forthcoming—how the blessed travel from Maverick Duck Press and Forms Most Marvelous from dancing girl press. Her recent work has found many homes, both on-line and in print.

WHEN WE TALK

Michelle Marie was a blog correspondent for Stop Street Harassment and reader columnist for The News Tribune.

CULLING DEADWOOD IN WINTER TIME SHRUB TRIMMING

by Earl J Wilcox

Poster by ErnestoYerena for We the People which will flood Washington, DC with NEW symbols of hope on January 20. You can download the set of posters for free at http://bit.ly/wtpdownloads. You can choose to support this We the People art project via Kickstarter.

The crape myrtle have long ago dropped their snowy flowerlets.
Seedlings spread asunder along the drive way commingle with
elm and river birch leaves sticking to the soles of my shoes.

High on scrawny deadwood oak and cherry quaint mocking birds
harass me, their sniveling artfully calls my name as if I give a damn
they are jealous of my red hat, purple sweater. Everything in their

vision--and mine—clashes like the winds of war this week
before our democracy inaugurates a senseless man fixed
on his prosperity with such narcissism the mind not only

boggles, the brain buckles, sheer madness mocks mankind.

Earl J. Wilcox writes poetry daily, publishes some of it online and some in print journals.

HANUKKAH DEMONSTRATION AGAINST HATE

by Judith Lechner

More than 75 people from the new Hudson Valley chapter of the group Jewish Voice for Peace gathered at Wall and North streets in Uptown Kingston late Wednesday afternoon to demonstrate their solidarity with Muslims and other minority groups. —Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman, December 21, 2016

Candles challenge city lampposts, neon signs, passing headlights.

            A miraculous oil lit the lamps in the Temple.

Crowd’s voices gather strength, shout “Love, not hate, makes America great.”

            Hanukkah candle flames remind us of ancient battle against oppressors.

December night chills hands holding placards of painted candles that tell their story.

            Holy Temple in Jerusalem 170 B.C.

            Greek-Syrian despot Antioch  forbids Jewish worship.

            Sends soldiers to massacre resistors in Land of Israel.

            Invaders erect altar to Zeus defiling the Temple.

            Long struggle led by Judah Maccabee wins back the holy site.

            Only enough oil to purify the Temple for one day.

            A miracle—oil burns for eight days.

Hanukkah is the memory of the rededication of the Temple.

            Purification celebrated by lighting eight candles one a day.

We dedicate ourselves to fighting hate in the temple within.

            Shine light on the persecution of Muslims and Blacks. 

We form a human menorah to display our unity in diversity.

            Lights spell out our message of brotherhood and justice.

Each candle helps illuminate inner darkness, clear hatred from clouded eyes.

             The message of Hanukkah --“a miracle can happen here.”

Judith Lechner—poet, short story and essay writer—has also written 24 nonfiction books for school libraries. Her poetry book The Moon Sings Back appeared in 2011. She is a member of the Goat Hill Poets, a performance group and has won the Green Heron Poetry Prize and Tattoo Haiku contest.

THE BRIDGE CLUB DISCUSSES THE ELECTION

by Susan McLean

Image source: Yahoo News Photo Illustration; Photo: AP/Getty)

“If he groped her, she’s a liar."
            "If he didn’t, she’s a frump.”
“If she blabs, he’ll call his lawyer.”
            “What a bozo!  One no trump.”

“Thinks he’s smart to pay no taxes:
            ‘If you pay them, you’re a chump.’”
“He’ll give safety nets the ax.” “As
            well as poor folks!”  “Three no trump.”

“He’ll wall off the southern border.”
            “And haul Muslims to the dump!”
“He’ll show blacks what law and order
            really stands for.”  “Four no trump.”

“He’ll throw Clinton in the slammer.”
            “Then he’ll lift us from our slump,
helped by Putin’s blade and hammer!”
            “What’s your bid now?”  “Six no trump.”

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University. Her books of poetry are The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife. She has also translated over 500 satirical poems of the Latin poet Martial, published as Selected Epigrams by the University of Wisconsin Press. Her light verse has often appeared in Light and Lighten Up Online.

LO & BEHOLD

by A.S. Coomer

The stick in the shit stirs,
swirling curdling fascinations,
condensing confections of confusion,
mingling malice with malignancies
so potent the stirrer wears a mask,
a mask of indifference,
a mask of superiority,
a mask haloed orange like the burnt offering,
some poor hamster caught, killed and propped up as a sacrifice
atop the altar of jingoism,
we all feel uncomfortable seeing,
a mask bought & sold & held over our heads
higher than our grubby, working hands can reach.
A mask atop a mask atop a mask.
I’ll turn my bare face to the sun before I wear one.

The stick in the shit stirs,
the stained hand is attached to a stained arm
and the poison courses deep through the veins of a man
in thousand dollar suits, a shark’s grin & puckered lips,
eyes seeing only various shades of green & red,
a man in a mask with a stick in his hand,
selling shit cakes to the empty bellied, to the disenfranchised,
to the misinformed & the uninformed, to the belligerent,
to those holding onto the last vestiges of power by the skin
of their privileged, primered nails.
Shit cakes. For one & all. Shit cakes by the dozens. Thousands. Millions.
I’ll take my turn at the soup lines before I have one.

A.S. Coomer is a native Kentuckian serving out a purgatorial existence somewhere in the Midwest. His work has appeared in over thirty publications. He’s got a handful of novels that need good homes. He also runs a “record label” for poetry.

REFLECTING ON MOBY DICK A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Wilda Morris

Image source: aNewDomain

We still have not learned
all the lessons that Melville taught:
the Union is not as united
as we once thought,
how easy it can be to drop prejudices
when we get to know
and love the pagan stranger,
the risks of empire building,
and how bowing to a self-absorbed
and vindictive leader puts us all in danger.

If Melville were writing today
the crew would grow from thirty
to fifty, as many as the states
that could sink into the abyss
if we leave this election to the fates.
We may be on the brink.


Wilda Morris has a doctorate in political science from American University in Washington, D.C., but instead of becoming a political scientist, she ended up as a poet. Her blog provides a monthly contest for other poets.

THE BRAGGER

by Martin Ott

Image source: Reptiles Guru

Told the world that the ferret on his head was his own virile pelt and the sheen of tangerine on his cheeks was the glow of courage. He promised that his body parts were wonderful to behold and hold, and that his brain was bigger than even his intentions. The tales of his successes became his job, and he could not divorce the actor from the man as easily as his early wives. He learned from an early age that suckers were made, not born, and the dramas around the world could hold him as a leading man in the narrative. There is nothing he won’t say he can do. He can stomp his feet like a lizard king and crush foes. The rich will build castles that will not be torn down by the rabble. The rabble will have fortresses made of sticks and straw, but the moral of pigs and wolves is a lie. Time is a backwards journey and the smoke rising from our planet is just the end of a cigar with the proper vantage. Words will tingle at nighttime and sleep will settle in with gasps and tiny knives on your arms. Dreams will frame his face in a flower, in the horizon, in everyone.

A previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Martin Ott’s most recent book is Spectrum, C&R Press, 2016. He is the author of seven books and won the De Novo and Sandeen prizes for his first two poetry collections. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and a dozen anthologies. He tweets and blogs.

WORDS

by Wayne Scheer




The American presidential election
has come down to a
words matter candidate
and her
it's only words opponent.

One uses words
the way a munitions expert
approaches a live grenade,
the other
tosses the grenade
to see
what will happen next.

One respects,
considers, even fears words
while the other
sees words as fuel
and acts surprised
when an explosion results.

One selects words
as carefully
as one chooses a diamond ring,
the other
loves only the sound
of words,
unconcerned with their appearance
or meaning.

One will be elected president
and speak
for America.

Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He's published numerous stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments,  a collection of flash stories. His short story “Zen and the Art of House Painting” has been made into a short film.

SCHOOLYARD RETORT WITH 14 LETTERS:

a found poem by Dale Wisely

i

Putin would rather have
a puppet as president. 

No puppet, no puppet.

And it's pretty clear --

You're the puppet.

It's pretty clear you won't admit —

No, you're the puppet.

ii

For the clue schoolyard retort
you can find ten possible solutions. 

Schoolyard retort with 4 letters

AMSO ISSO

Schoolyard retort with 5 letters

AMTOO ARESO CANSO IAMSO ISNOT ISTOO

Schoolyard retort with 6 letters

ARENOT  YOUARE

Sources: Transcript of 3rd Clinton-Trump debate; Crossword Solutions Dictionary.

Dale Wisely edits Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, and White Knuckle Chapbooks.

NEVERMORE

by Susan McLean

Ah, distinctly I remember it was early in November
when the hearth-fire’s dying ember cast dark shadows on the floor.
As dry leaves went whirling, flying, suddenly I heard a sighing
as of someone softly crying, “Let me in! Unlock your door.”
Only this and nothing more.

Had she come again? I wondered.  As the storm clouds flashed and thundered,
in the throes of hope I blundered, flinging wide my chamber door.
But the vision I confronted was not her for whom I hunted.
Grief arrived and joy was blunted: through that doorway I deplore,
hope would enter nevermore.

Like a ghastly apparition on a grim and solemn mission,
an unnerving politician pushed his way into the room,
and I had the premonition that his access code to fission
soon would cause our demolition. Like a specter from the tomb,
in he came: the Trump of Doom.

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University.  Her books of poetry are The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife.  She has also translated over 500 satirical poems of the Latin poet Martial, published as Selected Epigrams by the University of Wisconsin Press.  Her light verse has often appeared in Light and Lighten Up Online.

SELF-UNMADE MAN

by Orel Protopopescu

Cagle Cartoon

Such a self-destructive talent
is a rarity on earth.
What heroic liquidation
of the gifts of chance and birth!

Could another heir to millions
have corralled the tricky skills
he expressed erecting towers
on fat piles of unpaid bills?

Who raised armies of attorneys
twisting laws to break his fall,
then retreated from his failures
like a Roman leaving Gaul?

Smartly stashing spoils of combat,
filing bankruptcy four times,
he redeemed his reputation
while committing legal crimes.

Such swashbuckling, bold bravado
took him nearly to the peak.
Cheering hordes adored their leader.
How they loved to hear him speak!

But his toxic mouth undid him,
spewing sexist, racist lies,
for what won his nomination
soon conspired  to lose the prize.

And the world gasped in amazement
at this fierce, pig-headed horse,
who could race himself to pasture
while he seemed to run the course.

Orel Protopopescu won the Oberon poetry prize in 2010 and has a commended poem in the 2016 Second Light Live competition, to be published in November. What Remains, her chapbook, appeared in 2011.  Thelonious Mouse, her fourth picture book, won a Crystal Kite, 2012, from SCBWI. A Thousand, Peaks, Poems from China (with Siyu Liu) was selected for the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age list. A Word’s a Bird, her animated, bilingual (English/French) poetry book for iPad, was on SLJ’s list of ten best children’s apps, 2013. Her poetry has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Oberon, Poetry Bay, Light, Lighten Up Online, TheNewVerse.News and other reviews and anthologies. She teaches at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, Huntington Station, New York.

MISOGYNY ALA DONALD

by David Spicer

I agree: we need to strike with force

and hijack our favorite fetish. Shout

Shit! at our divorce depositions, buy

a bus ticket to Buffalo, Wyoming

with our lawsuit checks. Before we leave,

let’s sing our inner rock songs, wear

rattlesnake skin cowboy boots, and tickle

Heather on her tasseled tits while she’s

corkscrewing an orgasm down the grind pole

in the dank pit of The Holy Moly.

We can steal a bottle of our favorite Korean

champagne, rub it against the sunburned

barmaid’s crotch and tell her the next

round is on her. We’ll film the janitor

in flagrante delicto and crunch her

cauliflower ears, and then raid the fridge

of its last slices of Boston crème pie.

Bug anybody we can, shout horny

come-ons in our black leather

dusters, and then label each other

The Fuck Geeks of Sauerkraut Doom.

Yep, let’s break the rules every chance

we get and feel great about it, let’s be

boys being boys and climb the prettiest

willow we can find and whistle-whisper

to her so sweetly she sighs and swoons

under the mighty, cloud-kissing moon.

David Spicer has had poems in In Between Hangovers,  TheNewVerse.News, Gargoyle, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

NOTE TO SELF

by Thomas R. Smith

Well, we die whether we stay together or fall apart.
Finally the world goes on its way without us.
The most scourge-like name alive today will one day
be spoken seldom if at all.  To what purpose
this sighing and raging?  To what purpose this pain?
The main thing is to be a part of one's time,
no matter which side seems to be winning.  It's OK
to be a noble failure, a fool in the eyes of the world,
to die in the relentless faith of a Pete Seeger
or Rachel Carson.  The big truck taking up so much
space will one day come to the end of its road.
Insults will be forgotten.  Offended decency
will be forgotten.  In a hundred years, new
people and new problems.  And we can be
sure there will be some glory in being alive
in just their moment, as there is in ours.
Even as I write and as you read, the termites
of ruin are chewing day and night at the under-
side of the hypocrite's mask that shines with
such shameless intensity in the national
spotlight.  The time to speak is always now.
Say your truth if only for those who may be
listening from the galleries of dead and unborn,
if not the childish public locked in their
death tango with destruction.  Reserve for yourself
days of uninterrupted silence in which to hear
those things that have settled in your heart most deeply
sing their faithfulness beneath time's altering sky.


Thomas R. Smith has had hundreds of poems published on three continents.  In the United States, his poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  His poems were included in Editor's Choice II (The Spirit That Moves Us Press), a selection of the best of the American small press, and in The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner).  His work has reached wide national audiences on Garrison Keillor's public radio show Writer's Almanac and former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's syndicated newspaper column, American Life in Poetry. His most recent book of poems is The Glory from Red Dragonfly Press.

DON'S POSTURE

by Andrew Frisardi 

Image Source: Say No to Grump

after “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is scourged with the posturing of Don.
He will lash out, like tinsel in brash lights.
He heckles into hatred, with a wreck of rights
Crushed. Why do some then now not call his con?
Civility has gone, has gone, has gone.
All is seared with words; bleared, smeared with sleights;
And wears Don’s smirk and shares Don’s smell: our sights
Are low now, nor can truth tell, being pawn.

And for all this, his flatulence is never spent.
There live the vilest gases deep down him;
And though the last lights off the campaign went
Oh, curses, at the brown rim backside, brim—
For the Wholly Self-Engrossed over the bent
Truth broods with loose mouth and with ah! cruel whim.



Andrew Frisardi has published poems in numerous online and print journals; and his volume Death of a Dissembler was published in 2014 by White Violet Press. He has also done a lot of literary translation, most recently Dante’s Vita Nova(Northwestern University Press, 2012) and Dante’s Convivio (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2017). Originally from Boston, he currently lives in central Italy but has his absentee ballot set to go for November.

BIRTHER

by Alejandro Escudé

The word enough
to welcome back
the stone-kings

of yesteryear,
who carved out land
through betrayals.

The xenophobe
raised by feckless
tirades, citizens

bled like calves,
hordes circling
tall, cold flames.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.