THE RACEHORSE THEORY

by Mickey J. Corrigan

T***p tells white audience in Minnesota they have 'good genes.'

Only the best horses
the best of the best
genes all American
we have been told
winning is ours, it's
in the genes

In the genes
of the whitewashed
suburban picket fences
clean rural outposts
pristine fields, barns
purebred offspring
the best future
of the ultimate winners
of this gifted generation
history outpacing, outrunning
imagination so we cannot see
our dwindling
power dementia darkness
taking root.

Taking root
in the hayfields, cornfields
urban tracks and highways
bleachers and country clubs
of the best country
only the best
of the best of us
betting on the top
horse to win
at any cost.

At any cost
we run the track
we've run before
we keep losing
the best
of the human race
costing us
everything.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

THE CHOKER-IN-CHIEF

by Jack Powers





The virus is just like hitting a few bad shots. It happens. You just have to keep your head down, you know, stay positive, play through it. Suddenly you'll be hittin' beautiful drives again.

People dying from the virus is like losing golf balls. You're gonna lose a few! Everybody does. Everybody. I mean, you can't waste time hunting for 'em. You gotta play on!

And these protesters! A bunch of punks leaving their divots and driving their carts on the green! Not raking the traps. No respect for property. They're ruining our beautiful course! Where are the rangers? Where are my rangers?

All these marchers chanting Equality! don't get it. You've got golfers. You've got caddies. The golfers are doing the caddies a favor, really.

The stock market is just like the scorecard. Everybody hits a couple of bad shots. You miss a putt or two. But did you make the big ones? Did you win?

All I'm asking for is a mulligan. One mulligan! What have you got to lose?


Jack Powers is the author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere.

SUBURBAN SMOKE

by Alejandro Escudé

Sometimes I visit the suburb of LA
I grew up in. There was a park
a block away from the house we rented.
I played little league baseball there.
It was a park, like a park with swings
and a pool. Now it’s a homeless encampment
and the little leagues are gone.
Maybe baseball is gone too—I can’t tell.
I mean I watch it. I root for the Mets
because that’s the team I was on
when I was a scrawny lefty outfielder
because there was no way
the coach was playing me on first base
or shortstop. I was lucky if I got to bat.
The coach was a winner; if you’re American,
you know what I mean by that.
I was lucky if I got to bat.
I remember hearing the LA riots looming
in the east; a hornets nest of helicopters,
the smell of smoke, a cacophony of sirens.
My father talked of Reginald Denny
he said: “I just crossed that intersection.”
His face pale. “I had so many tools
in my truck too.” Maybe that’s what
a suburb is, a place where one just
barely avoids the tragedy of America.
Oh there were lawns, basketball hoops
above garage doors. On Sundays,
it was very quiet, and I don’t remember
talking about the President.
He wasn’t a big fat face in the sky.
There weren’t goose-stepping posters
lining every citizen’s mind, a fear-bomb
exploding each half hour. In every suburb,
there’s a Beirut, a Moscow, a Jerusalem,
a Kenosha, a T***p bent over in his driveway,
cutting up a freshly caught rattlesnake.


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.

OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE

by Gary Glauber

The action’s good and nasty
till late in the game
when angers flare
on the hard court:
sudden death, annihilation,
season-ending elimination,
the paint inside, the pain out.
There are no more fouls to give.
Nothing but sharp sounds
of rubber on wood
punctuate proceedings
until whistle blows and
we awaken to a world seething
in misdirected rage, driving the lane
under falsest of pretenses.
Shots in the back are foul shots.
And criminal ignorance walks unimpeded,
as if rewarded points for
an intentional flagrant
as pseudo-reparation,
a false notion of prejudice
masquerading as protection.
Serious spins go deking and ducking,
a head fake here and next thing
a body leans in to draw
the biggest foul imaginable,
the same one that has
poisoned outcomes
before the game ever begins.
For now, there is outrage,
hope replaced by those
sick and tired of playing at
this unjust and unfair contest
like hurling one up from half court,
wishing it might yet go in
when life repeatedly
shows you otherwise.
Sadness and frustration
dictate the facts that
for now, this game is over.


Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has three collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit) as well as two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. Another collection, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing), is forthcoming soon.

LAST BUS

by Margery Ross





I catch the last bus
out of downtown DC on April 4, 1968.
Fires loom and looters
have a field day at
D. J. Kaufman’s across
Pennsylvania Avenue from the DOJ
where I monitor urban riots
for the Attorney General. Now
it’s me in the midst of the melee
headed toward Georgetown
hoping to get home.

Fifty-two years, history repeats,
it’s one step forward, five back.
Police still kill with impunity,
cities burn, no end to toxic words
from a reality TV celeb—
good trouble trashed as anarchy.
When reading Ta-Nehisi Coates
five years ago I protested
exaggeration. No more.
Between the World and Me—
That last bus is leaving.


Margery Ross is an artist, poet and avid book listener trying to survive in Washington, D.C.

RUNAWAY COVID AND THE HAVE NOTS

by Terese Coe

"Did Trump Say More COVID-19 Testing Makes the US Look Bad? The president has been accused of forgetting the people behind the coronavirus case numbers. True." —Snopes

With the poor, poc, and seniors dead,
the Dotard and Bojo are raking in bread.
Few testing sites means few revivals,
no masks or meds, then no survivals.

The people spoke, but they were clawed
by racist, ageist dotard frauds.
The people spoke, the people died.
Covid was oversimplified.

Did Vladimir think of everything
for the cliques of the turkeys à la king?
It’s hardly a story you’ll find is new:
more for the toffs and nothing for you.

Terese Coe's poems and translations appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, The Moth, New American Writing, New Scotland Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Threepenny Review, and the TLS, among others. Her collection Shot Silk was short-listed for the 2017 Poets Prize, and her poem "More" was heli-dropped across London for the 2012 Olympics Rain of Poems. Her most recent book is Why You Can’t Go Home Again, and her black comedy Harry Smith at the Chelsea Hotel was recently presented at Dixon Place, NY. 

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.

WALKING DEAD

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

The Lakota people  consider the Black Hills to be sacred ground; it was originally included in the Great Sioux Reservation. The United States broke up the territory after gold was discovered in the Black Hills. The mountain into which the Rushmore figures wer carved is known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers. Photo: Six Grandfathers circa 1905. Source: Wikipedia.

On the eve of the fourth
in Lincoln’s shadow
on sacred ground
of the Lakota and Cheyenne
downwind of the dust
of an unfinished bust
of Crazy Horse
not one of his kin asked for
a sitting president defending
the Stars and Bars
its politicians, generals and adjutants
to extolling chants of

USA! USA!

What do you say to a drop in
from a fortified copter flying
the Great White Father
over crowds of people whose lands
these stone monstrosities smother
carvings made at the hand of a man
who sympathized with the Klan
a troupe of Confederate brethren
keeping alive the dream of Calhoun
interposition, the antebellum masculine
to thwart a more perfect union?

Carve the face of the great emancipator
beside slaveholders and Teddy R.

I think the fourth is in danger of becoming
a mausoleum because we do not vet
the monument builders
history stalks the land like the undead
in a high ratings show many of us watch
on television.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. Recent work is appearing at Isacoustic, So It Goes, Muddy River, Wilderness House Literary Review, and The Right Life.

VOICES FROM THE PAST

by Gil Hoy

Their homes, cone-shaped poles
of wood covered with buffalo hides.
Set up to break down quickly
to move to a safer place.

She sits inside of one of them.
Adorning her dresses, her family’s shirts
with beads and quills.

Watches over her children. Skins, cuts
and cooks the buffalo meat. Pounds clothes
clean with smooth wet river rocks.

When she sees the blue cavalry
advancing, she begins to run again.
Is that what made America great,
back then?

African families working hard
on hot cotton farms. Sunrise to sunset,
six days a week. Monotony broken only
by their daily beatings. By their singing
of sad soulful songs.

Like factories in fields, dependent solely
upon the demands of cotton and cloth.

You could buy a man for a song, back then.
Is that what made America great,
once again?

There are swastikas in our streets today.
Black men being murdered. Whitelash.
While the new man at the top
tweets videos ranting of white power.
While the old man at the top
says he’ll make America great again.

They say the full moon was bigger and brighter
last year than it’s been in 73 years.
Than it’s been since Jackie Robinson
played his first big league baseball game.

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Right Hand Pointing, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and TheNewVerse.News.

PLACES OF SAFETY

by Pepper Trail

"There Is No Safe Place" by Amanda Lea Sidor

Iowa small town, the Methodist sanctuary, stained glass and bright wood
The scent of lilies,  smiling voices loud, "Great is Thy Faithfulness"

Pizza place down the block, always busy, orders shouted backward
Line at the counter, stomachs growling good, quick hit of gossip

Bear curled in its den, cubs asleep and suckling, living warmth
Above, outside, snow shadow of Denali climbing the white sky

Lafayette Park, high school groups, hormones and democracy
The White House in its dignity, old church tower looking down

North of the river, Estados Unidos, breath held no more at last
The child in your arms, shivering but safe, but safe

What we thought we knew, we did not know
Where we thought we were, we are not


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.

APOCALYPSE

by Charles Harvey

Police escort the last of about 150 masked members of the Patriot Front from a parking garage, after they peacefully ended a march near Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Theiler

I don’t give a fuck

About Donald Duck
Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!
He a chicken shit
He a mouth too small to
Blow smoke up my ass
But he sure blowing jazz
Up some white folk’s corn holes.
He blowing smoke, and they
Inhaling the shit he shit.
He gonna paint the White House red
From the blood of busted skulls,
‘Cause the cops are coming
The Neo-Nazis are coming
The skinheads are coming
The KKKs are coming
The Jew-haters are coming
The nigger-haters are coming
The stars and bars are coming
The Uncle Toms are bowing,
“Yas suh! !Yas suh!” thirty pieces of silver
to seal they thick lips.
They raising Bull Connor from the dead
The fools have been fooled
The turkeys are coming home to defecate,
But the wise will rise
From the ashes of democracy.

Charles Harvey lives in Houston Texas. He is a novelist and poet. He is currently working on a volume of poetry, Rough Cut Until I Bleed, due to be out on March 24. He has numerous volumes of poetry and short stories all over the web. He is in the middle of revising several novels to be re-released soon.

BLEEDING HEARTS DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

by George Salamon

"I have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a fear of human life, of human touch, so deep, that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable organic connection between his public stance and his private life." 

—James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

It is not a lesson
Easily learned.
After absorbing it,
One comes to
Rely on smaller
Emotions, just to
Be on the safe side.

George Salamon, retired from college teaching, journalism and public affairs, has contributed most recently to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, One Sentence Poems and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.

FREAK

by Terese Coe

In each pathological deal

Freak is petulant, false, and unreal.

His extortion and murk

are what passes for work

while he tweets about copping a feel.

The bigot’s a twist and a troll

whose psychosis has taken a toll

on folks who can’t cope

with a chief misanthrope

traitor who's deep in a hole.

It's past time he gave up the ghost.

Every tweet still drives home that he’s toast:

a demon enraged,

it's time he was caged

and dropped 90 miles off the coast.

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Agenda, The Moth, New Walk Magazine, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Review, the TLS, The Stinging Fly, and many other publications and anthologies. Her collection Shot Silk was nominated for The Poets Prize of 2017.

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE: ASYLUM IS OUT OF STOCK

by Joanne Godley

The United Nations refugee convention of 1951 provides the basis for American asylum laws. Unlike the Trump plan, it does not prevent refugees from traveling through several countries before landing in the United States and seeking asylum. But it does ban signatories to the convention, like the United States, from deporting asylum seekers to countries where their safety is at risk, a process formally known as “refoulement.” —The New York Times, September 14, 2019. Photo: Members of a migrant caravan made up mostly of Hondurans and Cubans resting in the town plaza of Escuintla, Chiapas, Mexico, in April.Credit: Brett Gundlock for The New York Times.

put the word out  on the street    we’re out of asylum         finished      weʻre not stocking asylum this season    there’ll be no safe harbor here    if you were looking for justice / equality / a listening hand / freedom from persecution     we used to carry all those things but no more
asylum was way too popular!     everybody wanted it!   we couldn’t keep it on the shelves    it got out of hand     anyway we won’t be offering asylum under this current management
you ask—is there anywhere  you can go to  get some asylum these days? under the table? you’d pay above market price?  you say  you just want a whiff?  well   you might try our neighbor to the  north—they may have a small amount of vintage asylum  left         i wouldn’t advise trying our southern neighbor    they’re liable to tell you “si, como no    asylum”  then try and  interest you in  some AR-15s smuggled from here to there

Joanne Godley is a practicing physician and poet whose work has appeared in the anthology 50/50: Poems and Translations by Women over Fifty and the Kenyon Review blog. She lives in Maine.

AFTER THE SHOOTING IN EL PASO

by Tina Barry

Image by Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Invade with your            hot mouth   lie

uncovered among the fragrance      of the world!  

Look at what comes    Look at them    An invasion 

what marches toward us    marches with night-

eyes   An invasion   To be invaded       To be  

“simply defending my country” To deafen

To defend “from cultural and ethnic replace

ment”   The rest are in the light that bursts

into secret        Where what are?  

Things that begin  when fire-

blue waves open fire on 

                    the poor

                parched heart

Author’s Note: The poem’s lines are borrowed from Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnet “I” in his 100 Love Sonnets and from “El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language,” by Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, The New York Times, August 4, 2019.

Tina Barry is a freelance writer, poet, short fiction writer and curator. She is the author of Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016). Tina’s writing has been included in The Best Short Fictions 2016, Drunken Boat, Inch Magazine, Yes, Poetry, Connotation Press, and several anthologies including Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Feckless Cunt and A Constellation of Kisses. In 2018-2019, Tina conceived and curated “The Virginia Project,” a collaborative written word and visual art exhibition that celebrated Virginia Haggard, the partner of the artist Marc Chagall, and Haggard’s daughter Jean McNeil. Beautiful Raft, the writing that launched the exhibit, will be published this fall. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink. 

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.