DC CRAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS

A dramatic monologue in the voice of Donald Trump

by Pegi Deitz Shea

                              

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

 

 

I don’t care if Lincoln’s nose fell off!

It’s not getting fixed until it’s renamed 

the Trump Lincoln Memorial.

 

And if that damn obelisk cracks again,

it’s not getting another head job until it’s renamed 

the Trump Washington Monument.

And build it bigger because mine is bigger.

 

And the Iwo Jima Memorial—

my hand should be at the top of the flagpole.

 

Hey, ever see the statue in Trump Jefferson Memorial? 

Tom looks like a fairy with that hair.

(They say Sally Hemings was a total hoax.)

Send my stylist, colorist too.

 

That Vietnam Veteran Memorial

is never getting polished again

until my name is on it. You know,

I was itching to fight, but they

said my heel had bone spurs.

 

And what the fuck is that Korean War…thing?

Losers in ponchos marching in the rain?

Nobody remembers Korea.

Give it to Kim Jung Il. 

Now. The Vietnam Girls Veteran Memorial.

Put my face on the wounded soldier,

and make it the nurse’s hand on my crotch, not my own.

Christ! Masturbating in public is unpresidential.

 

Hey, hurry up with my arch

before the Supreme Court catches up!

Pegi Deitz Shea is a two-time winner of the Connecticut Book Award and the President of the CT Council of Poets Laureate. Her new book TiCK TiCK TiCK TiCK is a humorous hybrid of poetry and prose inspired by the author’s ongoing 28+ years of hell with Lyme disease. Her forthcoming novel-in-verse Uncharted: The Odyssey of Jeanne Barret, the First Woman to Circumnavigate the World is due out next month. 

THE MONUMENT

by J.S. O'Keefe

President Trump has revealed plans to make his proposed 250-foot arch in Washington, D.C. serve as a "military complex", including areas for military snipers and large amounts of weaponry. Trump added that the arch near the National Mall will "house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage." —PBS, September 20, 2026

The syntax of slaughter,


lubricated, rolled upon the palate,


tasted of rust and stale brine


before it slipped into law.

We've brought fresh geometry of iron


for the square,


where pigeons, fed on scraps of news,


fall stunned on the pavement,


necks broken by war noise.

Whose coin is this,


pressed hot into our palms


and called a gift?

Coughing rattles the tenement at dawn.


The triumphal arch stands upright and blind,


watching the river carry tired oil out to sea.

Someday, 

another tide will come back in.

J.S. O’Keefe is a writer and trilingual translator. He has published short stories, poems and creative essays in print and online journals, including Roi Faineant, Antipodean SF, Dissident Voice, Everyday Fiction, Spillwords, 50WS, and Satire.

CONSTRUCTIONS

by Tricia Knoll

AI video created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News.

Bowerbirds do it. Paper wasps. The beaver’s mound accessible from under water.  Such a soft spot we hold for nest builders, from weavings to cups and knot-hole drillers. My two grandsons built two forts of fallen limbs leaned up against beech tree trunks. I can stand up in the bigger one to admire the couch dragged into one corner, a broken log. In the hands of the ultra-rich, the opposable thumb demands grandiose. Outrageous and expensive. Palaces. A home with its own power plant. Walled compounds. Cliff-top villas. Gilded mansions. Subject to the whims of time, rot, fire, and penury. Shelley on the narcissist’s build: “Nothing besides remains.” Prince Prospero’s ballroom could not withstand the contagion of the red death. Vanity and striving after the wind. What happened to the angel who saved three men who refused to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar’s gold statue. She chastised the sneer of cold command known as retribution. The artifice of blue-tinged pools. As for the Arch, what words carved there would memorialize war, lies, inflation, tears of the hungry, sick and veterans betrayed. Good people disappeared. Such lone and level sands stretch far away. 

Most poets have memorized many of their favorite poems. Tricia Knoll is sort of stuck with Shelley's Ozymandias. In recent months she has moved from free verse to prose poetry. Her chapbook The Unknown Daughter was a finalist in the 2025 New England Poetry Club Chapbook contest. Wild Apples details downsizing and moving 3,000 miles from Oregon to Vermont. She is a Contributing Editor to Verse Virtual.