SLUM LORD

by Steve Deutsch

This is what an eviction threat from Donald Trump looks like. (From a 1987 case involving an elderly couple living in the building at 100 Central Park South.) —CNN, March 28, 2016

You send the beef
in bowling shirts
and shitkicker boots
every Sunday morning
to collect from the perennial poor
in the claptraps
you own on Stone Avenue.

Rumor has it
the hobbled wretch
who begs at the five and dime
offered lip
instead of money
and they showed him out
through a third floor window.

Dad’s mom lived
on the fourth floor of #720.
A refugee from the shtetl
she was well prepared
to live without heat
or running water,
to navigate the teeter-totter stairs
in the half light of a 40 watt bulb,
to coexist with roaches and rats,
the acrid smell of cabbage,
untended garbage,
and the methodical cruelty
that humans without hope
inflict on one another.

I know you.
You have the health
and building people
in your ample hip pocket
and while you might
hire some people to spit
shine your shoes
and some to break legs,
you spend every Sunday night
counting and recounting
the stack of smalls,
the nickels and dimes—
because for you,
Donny,
a sumptuous view
of the New York skyline
can never compare
to the heft of a roll
of nickels.

Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble,  TheNewVerse.News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His chapbook Perhaps You Can will be published in 2019 by Kelsay Press.

WHAT WE COULD'VE BEEN DOING

by Lylanne Musselman

A Wrinkle In Time just in Time

Not fighting on Facebook about the NFL
about whether it’s unpatriotic to kneel—
causing all the false patriots to yell.
Not waking to new Twitter rants,
nor shaking our head over the latest
faux pas that crazy man said.
Not dreading each day more than the next
knowing we’ve lost ground; feeling put under
some endless voodoo hex.
Not fearing nuclear war with Kim Jong Un,
nor wondering which leader is the largest loon.
Not having our country purposely divided,
or seeing the news media accused of being one-sided.

We wouldn’t be worrying over losing our healthcare,
afraid of facing the next health scare.
Not feeling that just to get through each day
we’d need a round of whisky or a special little pill.
Not losing hope of preserving nature’s beauty
because of corporate fracking and looting.
We wouldn’t have to plot every minute
of how we can resist, feeling relief
only because so many of us persist.
Not wondering if losing net neutrality will affect our say,
or which famous male is the biggest pervert, still.
Instead, each day we suffer some new low
from Mr. “Make America Great Again”—our crisis
of electing the 45th President from a TV reality show.

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and artist, living in Indiana. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry Breakfast, TheNewVerse.News, Ekphrastic Review, and Rat’s Ass Review, among others, and many anthologies including Resurrection of a Sunflower, poems to honor Vincent van Gogh (Pski’s Porch, 2017).  A Pushcart Nominee, Musselman is the author of four chapbooks including the recent Weathering Under the Cat (Finishing Line Press, 2017). 

MIXED MESSAGE: A HISTORY LESSON 2017

by Alan Catlin

Capitol Police drag disabled protesters out of wheelchairs during Trumpcare protests. Forty-three people were arrested in connection with the protest. In some instances, police helped protesters back into their wheelchairs before forcibly removing them, but others weren't treated so generously Jacquelyn Martin/AP via The Independent (UK) June 22, 2017.

This is what
the Fascists did
in the 1930s and 40s:

cleansed the race
of the genetically impure

the mentally ill
sexual deviants
gypsies
jews

the cripples
and the infirm

Now here
in Washington DC
Today in June of 2017

republicans release
details of crafted-in-secret
No Health Care bill

arrest the protestors
in the halls of Congress:

the disabled in wheelchairs
on oxygen
disability disadvantaged all

and either forcibly carry them out
or escort them from in front
of the Majority Leader of the Senate’s
office door outside

to where the box cars are waiting.





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