HILARY CLINTON READS SYLVIA PLATH’S COLLECTED POEMS BEFORE HER LATEST CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

by Mary Ellen Talley

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

I would no more pick up a book

of confessional poetry than 

read cautionary tales and Greek myths 

while picketing the White House in my youth.  

Vietnam was such a waste.

Why in the world am I reading Plath

when I should be boning up for Epstein testimony?

Some say my schedule was suicidal

when I was Secretary of State. I came of age early

but took Bill’s name as my own

in spite of Gloria Steinem’s dominion.

There is little value in confession; 

Whitewater just about did us in,

but see how even my daughter 

embraces our legacy. She learned the lesson 

of the ratings game and will thrive

even if her hubby’s hedge fund 

ever skims the truth. At least I’m free

to be honest. Epstein was Bill’s gig,

not mine, although I’m savvy enough to know

the more opulent connections the better, 

especially while the world goes bonkers.

Plath wrote,  It might be heaven,

This state plentitude: still in one

Gigantic tapestry…. That’s my life.

Plath’s young mental illness captures me, 

Twice that lamp of the possible.  

I believe in that.  We studied the Greeks

at Wellesley. First reading, I disliked Perseus, 

but here I am in Plath’s title,

The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering.

I refuse catastrophe. I still maintain 

more rigor than any elected sycophants.

No rigor mortis come to stiffen all creation.

If I could only sway Senators with such strong words!

But why am I reading from a woman 

who let adultery cave her in? Not me!

I’m blond. Plath brunette. Neither of us stupid.  

But she stuck her head in the oven to escape.  

How could she dare to evade

this imperfect future, this amazing challenge?    

   

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have appeared in many journals including Louisville Review, Deep Wild, and Trampoline as well as in multiple anthologies, and three chapbooks. She resides in Seattle, WA and worked for many years as a school-based speech/language pathologist (SLP.) 

HILLARY'S SONG

by Sue Fagalde Lick

Margot Gerster poses for a photo with Hillary Clinton on a hiking trail in Chappaqua, New York on Nov 10 2016. Photographer: Bill Clinton. Credit: MARGOT GERSTER, The Huffington Post, November 10, 2016

On Day Two, she wakes up late.
No alarm, no phone, no car waiting,
just rain streaking down the window
beyond the white lace curtains.

She hears her husband’s scratchy voice
talking downstairs to the dog,
a clatter of cups, the microwave.
She stretches and sighs, it feels good.

She reaches to turn the radio on,
then stops. What for? No.
It’s over and she didn’t win.
Still no Madame President.

She pictures her opponent’s day,
at dawn already in his suit,
the media, the press of aides
calling him president-elect.

Her followers are all in tears.
They’re holding protests in the streets
while the gun-toting, woman-hating
winners have stolen their country back.

She snuggles in her flannel sheets
and sighs again. We cracked
that old glass ceiling more
but didn’t quite break through.

They called her “Crooked Hillary,”
his voters chanted, “Lock her up,”
they displayed her husband’s mistresses,
hit her hard and yet she stood.

She stood tall, a chubby woman
in designer pantsuits and heels,
with styled hair and painted face,
looking up at all those men.

All the girls and women thought
now our voices will be heard,
but did she really want the weight
of an entire country on her back?

She could do it, and do it well,
better, in fact, than any man,
but the spotlight burned, her feet were sore.
She’d seen the job turn young men old.

Today while Trump is getting briefed—
the wars, the codes, the protocol—
she can take a bubble bath
or sit and watch the world go by.

She puts her slippers on and stands,
looks into the mirror and smiles.
It’s someone else’s problem now.
And I don’t have to style my hair.

Sue Fagalde Lick returned to poetry after a long detour in the newspaper business and a better-late-than-never MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in New Letters, Tenemos, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Windfall and other publications. Her books include Stories Grandma Never Told and Shoes Full of Sand. 

SUNDAYS IN THE PARK WITH DONALD

by George Salamon

"Yet it took Mr. Trump five years of dodging, winking and joking to surrender to reality, finally, on Friday, after a remarkable campaign of relentless deception that tried to undermine the legitimacy of the nation’s first black president." —Michael Barbaro, The New York Times, September 16, 2016

Important men should be honored,
But they should not be believed.
So wrote a poet from Germany.
To give Trump his due, says this
Nattering nabob of doggerel,
Build him a statue in the park,
A place for pigeons to poop and
Shrine to his character.
Create hell of a hullabaloo
For talking airheads on TV.

Some of our presidents have been crooks,
Others just moral zeroes.
But now we really need heroes.
To ride up Capitol Hill.
Guess we'll have to make do
With Hillary and Bill.

George Salamon has turned from coverage of the campaign to reruns of M*A*S*H, but does not advise that you too do this at home. He lives in St. Louis, MO, often a blue pocket in a red state.

THE LONG REACH OF KARMA

by Richard Hacken

Kenneth W. Starr announced Wednesday that he would resign as chancellor of Baylor University, effective immediately, saying it was a “matter of conscience.” Mr. Starr’s decision came less than a week after he was stripped of the more operationally powerful position of president of the university in the wake of a scandal in which Baylor acknowledged that it had mishandled accusations of sexual assault against several football players. . . . Mr. Starr was an independent counsel whose report to Congress led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. —NY Times, June 1, 2016. Photo: Kenneth Starr speaks to the media after arguing a case on student free-speech rights before the Supreme Court in Washington on March 19, 2007. (REUTERS/Molly Riley via RawStory)

Could some current Norman Mailer
write about the mess at Baylor,
which is so in need of journalistic prose?
Is the football program’s failure
to send rapists to the jailer
going to send it into existential throes?

Football culture says to nail her,
take a woman and impale her
when protected so that any onslaught goes.
Players hope the coach will tailor
strong defense so words will fail her,
and no prosecutor credits what she knows.

In the court: assault and flail her
and with wholesale slurs assail her,
so with craftiness your guilt you can transpose
till she seems a drunken sailor,
and you easily curtail her
own ability to witness and disclose.

With the Baptist creed at Baylor,
there’s no way truth will avail her,
since suspicion on her own sins will repose.

Now the President and Savior
of the football games at Baylor
was Ken Starr, a man to gridiron wins devoted.
Yes, Ken Starr, the Clinton slayer,
the Lewinsky-scandal hailer
(who as Special Counsel over sex tales gloated)
has mishandled accusations
of forced sexual relations,
and for this from president has been demoted.

Oh, they say that fresh raw karma
is a targeted sweet charmer
that is stronger far than energetic speech
and that irony’s sly reach
can shape attitudes and teach
with capacities designed to, well, impeach.

Richard Hacken is a poet and librarian who has published in TheNewVerse.News before. He once introduced X.J. Kennedy to the plenary session of a literary symposium via rhyming couplets, which may or may not have been gauche. 

SIDES?

by Gil Hoy

So it’s bound to be

    Hillary (thank god)

Obama can’t and

      Warren gave her word 

and if donkey's second best’s lust

       full hubby     can please

keep his      self-destructive philandering

                  habits to himself         

   and both of you please stop         

                       taking big money for

            giving speeches because

      it’s all about public service and       

remember  to              get all money

             out of politics anyway             and it better 

be Bush                      on the elephant side 

just in case because 

                         for one reason

     who could begrudge a man for 

defending his own brother  against wmd

        and another is anyone but    those fruit cakes 

from Texas Florida or            Wisconsin  and also 

he’s better than the other wacky tea party folks and

Editor's note: Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush images from DonkeyHotey.

Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in Philosophy and Political Science, and received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Gil started writing his own poetry in February last year. His poems have been published most recently in The New Verse News, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, and The Zodiac Review.

A MASH NOTE TO HILLARY

by David Spicer

You’re an American pioneer.
A world warrior.
You scare the hell out of everybody.
Except your believers.

Why do you want this job?
Don’t give me patriotic bunk
You recite on Hardball.
You want what you want.

Is your ego the size of Texas and Ohio?
Are you Machiavelli’s spiritual great granddaughter?

Your lemon meringue pantsuit fails the fashion test.
That laugh could chop wood.
If I hear On Day One again,
I’ll yank out my bazooka and shoot the Milky Way.

You thought the job a divine right.
You owned the nomination.

Then along came Barack Obama,
Grinning like a llama.
A meteor that seduced a nation:
The Blessed Orator.
The Golden-Tongued Angel.
Smooth as peanut butter on fresh bread.
You'd  met your match.
You hated it.
Live with it.
               
You fight in the era of the last bastion
Of white males.
They resist, a phalanx poised
To confront and destroy you.
Don’t concede.

You’ve been reviled.
Caricatured. Pilloried.
You don’t care. You persevere.

You’re not our mother, our sister, our daughter,
Our girlfriend, our waitress, our opera escort,
But our leader.

And a cat with twenty lives.
Not in double digits yet.

Hillary, you’re my hero.
Tougher than the meanest missile in the world.

Answer this note.
Please.

What about Bill? you might ask.
Forget him, though you love the guy.
Divorce him on Day One.
(Remember, hell hath no fury . . .
He doesn’t want you President anyway.)
Throw him out on the steps with his humidor.

We’ll elope to the Ukraine.
The world our oyster.


David Spicer is  seeking a publisher crazy enough to print his manuscript American Maniac. He has had poems in The New Verse News, The Naugatuck River Review, Spudgun, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere.