SPIT IN A TUBE

by Roberta Batorsky

As soon as the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy on March 23, 2025, concerns about what would happen to the personal information contained in its massive genetic and health information database were swift and widespread. A few days after, a U.S. judge ruled that the company could sell its consumer data as part of the bankruptcy. —Gizmodo, April 7, 2025.

23andme is out of cash
but they have all my DNA
Boy, would I like to settle their hash
get my stuff back from them today

Someone could cook a clone of me
build a murderer or pedophile
I could turn out more horrible
morphed into a raptor or reptile 

Would they use my letters
to cause harm to me and mine?
Or, could it work out for the better
to improve the basic design

A version thinner prettier funnier
someone proud to wear my name
Or, the duplicate only in veneer,
my identity would claim

So, if they have people’s recipes
a new world could they create 
of peace, tolerance tranquility
a universe free of hate

Where Trump and his minions
Bannon Rubio Musk Vance and Waltz
are on a garbage scow due north of Greenland
ice-bound ‘til they express remorse

23andme is out of cash
but they have all my DNA
Boy would I like to settle their hash
get my stuff back from them TODAY

Roberta Batorsky is a Biology teacher, poet and freelance science writer. She has published poems in Fine-lines and Heron Clan and is working on her first poetry book. Her science blog is https://solipsistssoiree.blogspot.com and her instagram is RobertaBatorsky_poetry.

O, SAY CAN YOU SEE

by George Held

Mr. Mammon. Posted by Fearguth at bildungblog, February 25, 2016.

Once-temperate female Facebook friends
Who’d reckoned Hillary would win for femmes
Now sound in defeat as intemperate
As the rightwing half of the electorate.

Some blacks and Latins now prove as hateful
Toward whites as the most bigoted of baleful
Enemies who supported the winner, Trump,
Who they’d supposed would land on his rump.

Now that there’s no hope for e pluribus unum,
And our petitions are voided in a tweet,
As we prepare for Armageddon in the street,
Listen up to what the Whitelash has spoken:

A land run by conglomerate Trump Bannon
& Co., in thrall to almighty Mammon.


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has a new poetry collection: Bleak Splendor (Muddy River Books, 2016).