The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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what trickles down is not their tax breaks
is not charity or compassion
what dribbles rather their self importance
hunger for power dispassion
what trickles down is not investment is not
wealth or higher spending
what oozes rather is their gluttony vanity
and planned meddling
what trickles down are not more jobs are not
higher wages or social security
what flows rather are attacks on speech over
reach and obscurity
what trickles down is not healthcare is not
welfare or opportunity
what leaks rather are their lies transgressions
and impunity
what trickles down is not a future is not progress
or positive growth
what percolates rather their narcissism and
hypocritical oaths
what trickles down is not good faith are not
grand ideas or democracy
what slithers drips seeps and bleeds conspicuous
autocracy
Rémy Dambron is an English instructor and lyricist from San Diego, California. His work focuses on denouncing political corruption, advocating for the environment, and promoting social justice. He has been published by Poets Reading the News, The Veggie Wagon Journal, and What Rough Beast. This poem was written in response to recent reports that dozens of multi-million and multi-billion-dollar corporations (like Amazon) paid zero dollars in taxes last fiscal year.
in quiver-pleasured olfactory raves & gullies out beyond
the blest kingdom
insect/ amphibian/ mammalian females choose their mates
whilst the males of the species
entice them uncontested/ none abstain in a homeland
convinced of its quiddities
I mark & mind an ancient détente as the eighty richest
chock-full ride it out from a distance
it’s a bad bad
business the way the wall says
inhale/ exhaleexpect nothing
as the dam diggers stem the flood over the faceless fence
& the wounded unwing-ed collapse & orange peacock-
eyed butterflies remind me
of rope & strand of knot & sign & climb
& hold on tight for dear dear
at the bottom of this breach
holed & don’t they know it up here though
on top between squab & hassock
common six-line racerunner skinks queue a line
from my chaise across the porch floor not stiffs
buried under a dune on the other side of a wall
but languid/ marking a border
they simply slip over
Mara Adamitz Scrupe is the author of five poetry collections: BEAST (NFSPS Press, 2014), Sky Pilot (Chapbook, Finishing Line Press, 2012), Magnalia (Chapbook, Eyewear Publications, 2018) and a daughter’s aubade/ sailing out from Sognefjord (winner, Fledge Poetry Competition, Middle Creek Press, 2019). She is the winner of the 2018 Grindstone Literary International Poetry Competition, and the Brighthorse Press Poetry Book Prize for her manuscript in the bare bones house of was which will be published in 2019. Her poems have appeared in international literary journals and magazines and she has won or been shortlisted for the Kay Murphy Poetry Prize, Ron Pretty Poetry Prize, BigCi Environmental Fellowship, Erbacce Prize, Fish Poetry Prize, Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Prize, Bristol Prize, and the National Poetry Society Competition, among others. She divides her time between her farm in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains piedmont and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she is Professor of Fine Arts and Creative Writing at The University of the Arts.
In the land of fake plenty
there’s a road paved with money.
If you’re something enough,
you can get on this road
but mostly you cannot.
Unless you can pull yourself up
on the straps of those boots
they stole from you.
Listen when the robot drones speak
from two sides of their mouth.
Do what you can to learn that language.
Try our six-week, no money back guaranteed language immersion experience Time is running out. Send your first-born child. Or give us your planet. We can work with you on this. Payment plans are available, but you must act now.
Each day is an equivocation
of that which they said
they did not say the day before.
Who can imagine? Look here, look there, look away, they say, And do not do what I would not do.
Or do it, at your own risk.
Advice is cheap. Money
is expensive. Walls are being built
as we speak.
The poems of Lisa Vihos have appeared in numerous journals, both print and online. Her fourth chapbook Fan Mail from Some Flounder was published by Main Street Rag Publishing in 2018. She is the poetry and arts editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal and the Sheboygan organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change.
President Trump kicked off his holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago Friday night at a dinner where he told friends, "You all just got a lot richer," referencing the sweeping tax overhaul he signed into law hours earlier. —CBS News, December 23, 2017
There are many places like it in California,
named after high class dreams, places
that promise drinks and ease, places that
don’t exist until you arrive then proceed
to disappear once you do arrive and check into
those warmly lit lobbies, fireplace nearby,
a bar with mortgaged cocktails, European-faux,
and palm trees; in LA as in Florida, palms
are usually guilty as shit—the sun as well,
that red and blue sock puppet in the sky.
I see the allure of signing the tax overhaul
as one would a pricey restaurant bill, blurry
from that last martini, that last buttery morsel
of lobster, well done steak. I could imagine god
as a speedboat, razor-edged as a chef’s knife,
the tomes girding his legitimacy like life rings
on a yacht, his high priests hotel concierges
handing over the only key card to the truth.
We should never think of them as uncouth
or snobby or even criminal. They’re in a hurry
to get there, to get to Mar-a-Lago. They wish
they could have left an hour or two sooner,
but this law had to be signed, a diamond scrawl,
cameras flashing like the eyes of the Titans.
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.
If I make enough money, I just might get
A tax break. If I join the 1% and belong
to the right club.
Then, I can schmooze with the right
fancy folk, forget the middle class
joke, nothing more than a pig
in a poke.
Or, maybe, I’ll just become a Pass-Through
Corporation.
And when I do, I’ll make sure
all that extra cash
t
r
i
c
k
l
e
s
d
o
w
n.
Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who is studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy 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 (or will be appearing) most recently in Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, The Penmen Review, TheNewVerse.News and Clark Street Review.
What’s out there, the solution to healthcare?
Secret plans to back down North Korea?
An apology letter about Russia’s interference? Pussies to grab?
And do you ever feel guilty in those tight khakis
and white shirt, that children are hungry,
that gays are scared, that religion is taking over,
that women hurt?
Does it make you feel powerful to swing a club, put balls in holes,
tug on that baseball cap probably made in China?
I wonder these things as I work everyday, as I set aside money for sickness, as I monitor the gasoline I use, the food I buy.
I have no time for golf. Most of us have no time for golf.
We have to worry about feeding our children, fending off diseases,
nuclear bombs, conservative evangelicals dictating our lives,
our bodies, our minds.
But only pretty rich folks play with you.
And no one wants to think about sad things anyway.
It’s just some of us have to think about them. Everyday.
JP Thelbert Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He lives in the woods of Virginia where he burns incense, deer watches, and dreams of oceans.
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love . . .
Embedded into this video is a 36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman's voice reading four lines from the poem "America:” Recording: Copyright Eric Forsythe, 2012–2013. Made available on the Whitman Archive with permission of the rights holder. Audio may be reused for non-commercial purposes, with credit to Eric Forsythe and the Walt Whitman Archive. For more information on this recording, see Ed Folsom, "The Whitman Recording," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 9 (Spring 1992), 214-16.
I.
I see you, Walt Whitman---an American
Rough, a Cosmos! I see you face to face!
I see you and the nameless faceless
Faces in America's timeless crowds of men
and women who you saw in your mind's eye.
I see you crossing the river on your ferry.
I see you walking down the public road
Where everyone is worthy. Neither time,
Place nor distance separates.
II.
You once saw the currents of corruption,
Fast flowing into the land that you loved.
You once saw that which had departed
With the setting sun, half an hour high,
For when another is degraded,
so are you and I.
You once saw what had flowed in with the
Rising flood-tides feverishly pouring---
Tides saturated and soaked with exploitation,
Bribery, falsehood and maladministration.
III.
When you saw the motionless wings of
Twelfth-month sea-gulls, When you walked
Along Manhattan Island---When you watched the
Ships of Manhattan, north and west---
Could you see Wall Street banks
Seizing the homes of your beloved countrymen,
Voyaging in their fragile ferryboats? The carpenters,
Quakers, scientists and opium eaters; The immigrants,
Squaws, boatmen and blacksmiths; The farmers,
Mechanics, sailors and priests?
IV.
Could you see the monstrous megaton corporations
Feasting on America's flesh blood bones, those
Nameless faceless parasites
Sucking the soul from your loved land,
Like a malevolent disease?
V.
For you saw quite clearly the political and
Economic malfunctioning mutant ties that connect us.
Neither time, place nor distance separates.
And you saw very clearly the sickly green sludge
Secreted by lobbyists to their bought and sold
Henchmen soldier baby-kissers, to slow and
Stop the flow of nourishing rushing sea tides
Into your dear, revered democracy.
VI.
You saw the evil dark patches---the clinging selfish
Steadfast pernicious grasp of the flourishing one
Per cent oligarchs, Who lusted, grubbed, lied, stole--
Were greedy, shallow, sly, angry, vain, cowardly,
malignant--Seeking only to hold onto their fool's
Gold and preserve the status quo.
VII.
Each still furnishes its part towards the death of
America's democracy. Each still furnishes its part
Towards destroying her soul. The mocking bird
Still sings the musical shuttle to the tearful
Bareheaded child, and the final word superior for
America may still be her death, death, death,
Death. The sea has whisper'd me, too.
Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer who is currently studying poetry at Boston University, through its Evergreen program, where he previously received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy started writing poetry two years ago. Since then, his work has appeared in Third Wednesday, The Write Room, The Eclectic Muse, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News, Harbinger Asylum, Soul Fountain, The Story Teller Magazine, Eye on Life Magazine, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Penmen Review, To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology, The Zodiac Review, Earl of Plaid Literary Journal, The Potomac, Antarctica Journal, The Montucky Review and elsewhere.
There is a special place in hell
(a little sad, a little scary)
where chickenhawks and vultures dwell.
Not far from where good Dante fell
some godforsaken February,
there is a special place in hell.
The geysers and volcanos swell.
The lava tarnishes the prairie.
And chickenhawks and vultures dwell
over a crumbling citadel
devoid of prey or adversary.
There is a special place in hell,
just like she told her clientele
before she hit the cemetery.
There, chickenhawks and vultures dwell,
aligned as in a villanelle.
One greets her: “Madam Secretary—
there is a special place in hell
where chickenhawks and vultures dwell.”
Author's Note: After Madeleine Albright had her "undiplomatic moment," I gave myself permission to have my own. This poem is my attempt at imagining a special place in hell for foreign policy hawks and hedge fund managers.
A mathematician by profession, Pedro Poitevin is a bilingual poet and translator originally from Guatemala. He is a contributor to Letras Libres and Periódico de Poesía, the poetry journal of the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM). Poems in English have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, Angle, Mathematical Intelligencer, Everyday Genius, and Nashville Review, among other venues.
