PRIMARY RANT

by Harold Oberman

Graphic via Nikki McWatters

At this exact moment
It is time to put your sonnets
      On hold.
No lyric musings
Until the Republic is secure,
Until the Senate gains sanity,
Until Justice does justice,
Until November.

“There is a criminal in the White House
Who bullies foreign powers to frame his political rivals”
Does not fucking rhyme with anything
So don’t even try,
At least for now.
“There is a criminal in the White House
Who pardons his cronies who fixed the last election”
Is not a simile, not even a metaphor,
So don’t get clever with it
At least for now.
“There is a criminal in the White House
Who foments hate for political gain”
Is not in iambic, nor even trochaic, so just say it,
At least for now.

Pick up your pen
And jab it in the back of someone’s hand
Goddammit
If they say, “I’m not going to vote on that day,
November Third.”
Pick up your pen
And jab it in the back of someone’s hand
Goddammit
If they say “It just doesn’t matter.”

Scream before you write the lyric.
Howl before you write the sonnet.
And whisper truth to your neighbor.

Harold Oberman is a lawyer and writer living in the midst of the South Carolina Primary. His work has appeared in the TheNewVerse.News  and in the Free State Review.

ON WATCHING THE PRESIDENT SIGN COPIES OF THE BIBLE

by Robert West

on eBay

“The devil can cite Scripture to his purpose”

—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

We used to say to get his way
   Old Scratch himself would quote it,
but never thought we’d see the day
   he’d act as though he wrote it.

Robert West's poems have recently appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Light, Red Dirt Forum, and Asheville Poetry Review. Co-editor of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013), he's also the editor of both volumes of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons (W. W. Norton, 2017).

THOSE IN THE LIGHT DON'T SEE THOSE IN THE DARK

by George Salamon

The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies. . . . The sinking of the vessels, which survivors say were carrying Ethiopians, is the latest tragedy to occur on the risky route used by African migrants seeking work in the Middle East. —News24, January 31, 2019. Photo: People collect bodies on Wednesday along a beach in Obock, Djibouti, after two migrant boats capsized off the coast. — AFP/VNA, January 3, 2019.

"I lost massive amounts of money doing this job. " —President T***p to The New York Times, January 31, 2019


For forty-eight hours here in
The heartland ice and snow
And arctic cold stopped
America's wheels from turning.
Nothing stopped the mouths of
America's rich and powerful,
These time-bombs to the planet's
Survival, these Attilas the Hun to
Its peoples' welfare, from the
Usual lying and whining,
While the poor, the homeless,
The nomadic dispossessed in its
Cities, on its borders, adrift at sea,
Can only live in imaginary places, or,
As migrants in rickety boats, drown
In the frozen seas of the human heart.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. He thanks Bertolt Brecht for the title.

MEANWHILE IN MIDDLE EARTH

by Matt Quinn

"Going Medieval" by Matt Bors at TheNib

Down in the valley’s toxic murk
wild gangs of rapey goblins lurk.
All shifty-eyed with evil smirks
and unbesmirched by honest work,

they lust for trinkets they don’t need,
like fifty-inch plasma TVs,
and get mashed up on meth-laced mead,
and spread diseases when they breed.

Not one can read or use a quill,
they have no useful trades or skills
and never ever pay their bills,
but peer with envy up the hill

to where the air is pure and clean
and sparkles with a silver sheen,
where no one does a thing that’s mean,
and all are blond and tall and lean

and bathe in crystal waterfalls
as lute-strings fill the shopping malls
with songs of liberty for all.
And so we built this great steel wall

(which also helps keep out the smell)
to shield our sacred citadel
from those who do not mean us well,
inscribed it with this ancient spell:

Don’t fuck with us, for we are elves.
We want to keep this for ourselves.

Matt Quinn lives in Brighton, England in a hobbit hole a short walk from the sea. His poems can be found online in Rattle, The Morning Star, The Deaf Poets Society, TheNewVerse.News and various other places.

ARMISTICE COMMEMORATION IN PARIS

by Alan Catlin

T***p appears disengaged,

outside of the spotlight, except

when greeting Putin and his thumbs

up salute.  Forced to listen to solemn

solo by cellist Yo Yo Ma, the day after

failing to lay a wreath on graves of

the fallen due to inclement weather,

he seems  preoccupied. Compelled to

listen to President Macron deliver

a speech decrying Nationalism, directly

criticizing him, T***p appears tired

as if formulating new ways to become

unchecked and balanced as autocrat-

in-chief, electoral defeats, and late night

television viewing, is wearing him down. 

Protestors raise new trial balloons of baby-

in-diapers-T***p to see if anyone salutes.


Alan Catlin is poetry editor of online journal misfitmagazine.net. His latest book of poetry is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.

IF MY MOTHER WERE ALIVE

by Diane Elayne Dees

If my mother were alive, what would she say?
She might just laugh and make fun of his hair,
or turn her eyes and quickly walk away.

She might recall a loud and smoky day
when she huddled underground, alone and scared.
If my mother were alive, what would she say

about the way the mobs are stirred today?
She might act as though she doesn’t really care,
yet turn her eyes and quickly walk away.

When he talks about the ones who shouldn’t stay
among us, would she find that hard to bear,
if my mother were alive? What would she say

about the vulgar signs, the cruel display
of bigotry, the children in despair?
Might she turn her eyes and quickly walk away?

His grinning minions flatter, and obey
his orders—cruel, toxic and unfair.
If my mother were alive, what would she say?
Would she turn her eyes and quickly walk away?

Diane Elayne Dees' poems have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, a semi-retired psychotherapist in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women's professional tennis throughout the world.

BEHIND TRUMP AT THE RALLY

by William Aarnes

Standing behind him,
you’re in heaven.

Not even praying
feels as righteous

as adoring him.   
The rapture of knowing     

the cameras will show you
nodding and smiling

thrills you and your wife
(in her Women for Trump tee)

more than making love.
There’s no explaining

the joy of cheering on
his cheerless babble   

but it sure beats thinking.
And, oh, yes, you’re exercising

your lethal right to loathe
the losers he derides.       


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

TRIOLET TO A RAINMAKER

by Robert West




                                  “ . . . a society awash in gun violence . . . ”
                                                                    – Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2018


If only you could get this through your head:
   we’re drowning in a bloody flood of guns.
We need to stem the torrent, count the dead;
if only you could get that through your head.
You call for more guns, everywhere, instead.
   Who knows whose daughters might grow up, whose sons,
if only you could get it through your head
   we’re drowning in a bloody flood of guns?

Robert West lives in Starkville, Mississippi. His poems have appeared in Light, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Alabama Literary Review,  American Life in Poetry, and other venues. Co-editor with Jonathan Greene of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013), he's also the editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, published in two volumes in late 2017 by W. W. Norton.

NOT JUST LISTEN, BUT HEAR

by Jonel Abellanosa

Cartoon by Eoin Kelleher

You heart is telling you
Billions of people need this planet, too
Countless animal and plant lives
Live on this planet, too

Your brain is telling you
The desire to join an I.Q. contest
Expired 60 years ago

Your pancreas is telling you
Be compassionate

Your kidneys are telling you
You’re septuagenarian already,
Be humble

Your liver is telling you, be kind

Your blood pressure is telling you
Be understanding

Your future gout and rheumatoid arthritis
If you still don’t have them
Are telling you
It’s okay to kneel
Like it’s okay to be black

Your arterial plaques are telling you
Don’t block the entry of homeless people
People fleeing political persecutions
People who risk their lives
To hold on to dear life
You may drive away people
But you can’t change the course
Of your blood —it will burst
Through a blockage

Even if you don’t like it

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Anglican Theological Review, Poetry Kanto, Filipino-American Artist Directory, The McNeese Review and GNU Journal. Early in 2017 Alien Buddha Press published his third chapbook Meditations. His latest poetry collection Songs from My Mind’s Tree is forthcoming (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York).  He is a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars Award nominee. A number of his poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News.

AT THE CROSSROADS

by James Cronin

The Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio

The first time I saw "The Seven Acts of Mercy" . . .  I knew I wanted to write a play about it: its generosity, its complications, its aggressive, violent compassion. —Anders Lustgarden in his introduction to the 2016 Bloomsbury Methuen edition of his play The Seven Acts of Mercy.

The artist painted a swarming crossroads where
two alleys, winged heaven and Naples did
intersect; all to show the fruits of fair
mercy, with the knife edge of its need not hid.

The city’s shame is so public, its wanton
cruelty on display. Does it want us
to keep moving, and not gaze at that fountain
replenished on its own? No, the chorus

reaching from the heavens bids us instead
to stare: as a noble hands a cloak to a nude
beggar; a weary pilgrim with a red
beard is pointed to shelter and food;

a servant moves a corpse for burial;
and a prisoner, condemned to starve in jail,
is suckled by his child, a surreal
story of old Rome. All true? Isms fail

where story succeeds. We are numbed
by numbers. Empathy demands a tale,
a face in the crowd. Compassion can’t be summed.
But now, even a clear summons can fail.

Where once only moral truth was needed,
our leader, peacock-brained, sees but his tail.
With miles of devastation unheeded,
his gloried behind dims all loss from the gale.

And those enablers of killing still stick
to their guns and sanctify murders’ ease.
No compassion! No mercy! What sick
huckster sells as freedom a deadly disease.

After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin returned to his first love, literature. Since his judicial retirement in 2007, he has participated in three poetry groups and has served as a facilitator in numerous courses for a lifelong learning program in Fall River, MA.

SWAMP POEM

a sonnet by Cindy Hochman

Add caption

Throw your old comb & hairbrush into the swamp.
Throw your hamper full of dirty laundry into the swamp.
Throw that bad poem you wrote this morning into the swamp.
Throw your shattered-after-the-breakup heart into the swamp.
Throw your mother-in-law into the swamp.
Throw your cataracts, your ulcers, your tumors into the swamp.
Throw war and all its symbols into the swamp.
Throw all Rebel statues, from Virginia to Alabama, into the swamp.
Throw the lawyers, the bailiffs, the judges, and the guilty defendants into the swamp.
Throw the press secretary and her podium of mendacity into the swamp.
Throw the rolled heads of recently departed staffers into the swamp.
Throw the hurricanes’ fallen branches, and the West Wing’s executive branch,
  and the Great Lawn with its Easter Egg Roll and pardoned turkeys into the swamp.
And the president, that no-goodnik, into the fetid, putrid, malodorous, stinking swamp.


Cindy Hochman is the president of "100 Proof" Copyediting Services and the editor-in-chief of the online poetry journal First Literary Review-East. She is on the book review staffs of Pedestal magazine and Clockwise Cat. Her latest chapbook is Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press).

SHIP-WRECKED MEXICANS

by Gil Hoy

All those
American citizens

With no food,
No water

On an island
Surrounded by
Big water

Ocean water,

Are getting
rowdy and unruly.


Let the wild winds howl,

Let the flooding rains run.


Editor's note: The title is an epithet defined here.

Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer and poet. He received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an MA in Government from Georgetown University, and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. Hoy served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. His work has appeared, most recently, in Third Wednesday, The Write Room, Clark Street Review and TheNew Verse.News.

A DIVIDER NOT A UNITER, T***P WIDENS THE BREACH

by Ron Riekki

Nick Anderson / Cagle Cartoons

            “A Divider Not a Uniter, Trump Widens the Breach”
                        --Peter Baker, The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2017


T***p’s a caesura, a seizure,     a thing that goes a-sailing
and assailing but needs desperate restraining; I think
of the psych ward patients in horror films but reimagine
them as reenactors, the way the Civil War never ended,
and a sort of clown makeup hairdo skin cross, no, crucifix
between John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy.  T***p’s
a business man, wise with pennies.  Let’s call him Penny-
wise, for short.  An It man.  In the whitest house ripping
the country in have and have-nots.  A snot Prez, a denier,
the dernier person we’d want to wed to the Presidency,
a David Duke of Earl.  But a part of me doesn’t blame
T***p, but rather blames the T***p voter who set up
for this country to be torn apart . . . You see racists hid
right in the word supremacists, hid right in the voting
booths.  The waitress approaches, says, Would you like
a John Wilkes table or a John Wilkes booth?  The sick
temper of his Sic semper tyrannis Oedipus train wrecks.
Even the Republicans at work are finally mumbling,
This guy’s a friggin idiot.  His only talent is garnering
media tension, ad nauseam.  You ever see a supposed
strong man rip a phone book in half?  It’s really sort of
highly                                                            unimpressive.

Ron Riekki wrote U.P.: a novel (Great Michigan Read nominated) and edited The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award), and And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press, 2017).

FLAG FOOTBALL

by Ed Werstein

Randall Enos / Cagle Cartoons

The president tweeted
his little whistle and threw the flag
in front of the protesting players.

For once the players weren’t
trying to call attention to themselves.
For once they weren’t stomping
or goose-stepping around the field
beating their chests with their
“I’m number one” finger
pointing toward the heavens,
or jumping into the laps of joyous fans.
They were kneeling.
Simply kneeling, to call attention
to an injustice suffered by others,
and to call attention to the fact
that they saw this as an American problem.
The problem for the president
was that they weren’t kneeling to him.
So he tweeted his whistle
as referee-in-chief, and threw the flag.
The call was unpatriotic conduct.
The president wanted the NFL renamed
The National Flag League. He wanted
the ball replaced, and a flag marched
up and down the field
in an even more war-like game
to match the militaristic fever
he wanted to stir up in the country.
Most of all, he wanted the players penalized.
He was used to people kneeling,
but right in front of him
and for a different reason.

Ed Werstein, Milwaukee, a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, was 60 before his muse awoke and dragged herself out of bed. He advocates for peace and against corporate power. His poetry has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Blue Collar Review, Gyroscope Review, and several others. His chapbook Who Are We Then? was published by Partisan Press.

NUCLEAR NURSERY RHYME

by Jerome Betts

A Reddit user used Photoshop to imagine what President Trump and Kim Jon Un would look like if they swapped hair. Via The Daily Mail.

One brought new missiles out to play
To which another said ‘No, K!’
So Rocket Man and Donald J.
Between them risked a world flambé.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, TheNewVerse.News,  Parody, Per Contra, The Rotary Dial, and Snakeskin.

HURRICANE SEASON

by Jan Steckel 

Poster by Rusty Ford

The mercury was in triple digits, the moon
ocherous with smoke, cities submerged.
An orange gibbon necklaced in skulls
drop kicked brown-skinned Americans
over borders, polkaed over illegal bodies.

We sandbagged against the Klan,
stored water for dousing crosses,
hoarded fuel to flee Brown Shirts.
Cyclones whirled clockwise
south of the equator,
widdershins in the North.

We covered windows with plywood.
Black Bloc buffeted the downtown.
We all renewed our passports.
Churches built secret shelters
for the undocumented.
It was too late to evacuate the States.

We sheltered in place,
hunkered and braced for
depressions and disturbances.
A brassy trumpet’s wall rumbled up.
The Daily Stormer surged.
The Republic came tumbling down.

Jan Steckel was a Harvard- and Yale-trained pediatrician who took care of Spanish-speaking children until chronic pain persuaded her to change professions to writer, poet and medical editor. She is an activist for bisexual and disability rights who lives in Oakland, California. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her work won the Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest, a Zeiser Grant for Women Artists, the Jewel by the Bay Poetry Competition, Triplopia’s Best of the Best competition, and three Pushcart nominations.

MOTHER EARTH

by Scot Siegel

Image source: America By the Numbers

Record snowfall in Australia.
Record wildfires across the west.
Record hurricanes and floods
Batter the Gulf, and bear down
On the Eastern Seaboard. In Texas
A preacher locks a door. Loss of
Permafrost in the Arctic, and don't
Ignore that rift across Antarctica.
105° in San Francisco. Smoke
On the coast so thick you can't breathe.
The president wants a wall. No,
He wants a garbage chute. Dreamers
Have no place in this country. Christ,
They have no place at all. Who are
The Dreamers? What does it mean
To dream? God, it makes me want to stop
Cursing, and get some religion.
The real kind. God, anytime now.


Scot Siegel, Oregon poet and city planner, is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012), both from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. His poetry is part of the permanent art installation along the Portland, Oregon Light Rail Transit ‘Orange Line.’

ADVICE TO A PRESIDENT

by Howard Winn

from a president
literate and wise
protect our democratic institutions
for those are what
distinguish us from the
world’s dictatorships
and it is our role
to provide that pattern
which has been
established by wise
people over time
for presidents are temporary
guardians of unique
traditions established out
of the experience of
many judicious men and women
certified by courts of law
and genuine patriotism
not tin horn palaver
for the unique American
experience that must be treasured.


Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

BROKEN RECORD(S)

by Edmund Conti




Most lies. Most firings.
Fewest hirings.
Most gaffes.
Most laughs.
Most insults.
Fewest results.
Most lies (latest count).
Most cronies (large amount).
Most vacations
at southern plantations.
Believe me.  Believe me. Be-
lieve me.  Believe me.  Believe
me. Believe me. Be…

Edmund Conti has been published in new verse news, in new verse news, in new verse news, in new...

T***P ADDRESSES THE SURVIVORS

by Earl J Wilcox

Thank you all for coming.
It’s so good to see such a great crowd,
especially those of you in pajamas,
without food, but carrying your pets,
and those who came wading or boating
in hip-deep waters, such a sacrifice, and
I am so pleased to see you old folks carrying
your meds, particularly one old grandma,
what a trooper you are granny,
to come all this way to see me here.
This morning, Melania and I are so thrilled
with this great turnout, your happy, smiling
faces, cheering us on. Truly we all—men and
women and children and dogs and cats, the
lame, the sick and frightened, such beautiful
faces—all are making America great again!
Thank you all for coming to see me.


Earl J. Wilcox, once a graduate student in Texas, lives now in SC, sends his best thoughts to his Texas friends enduring the heavy Harvey rains.