LOYALTY TO THE BASE

by George Held

I am not a scientist
& the earth is flat.

I am not a scientist
& climate change is bunk.

I am not a scientist
& coal mining does not cause black lung.

I am not a scientist
& embryonic stem cells are off limits.

I am not a scientist
& the way to defeat ISIS is nucular.

I am not a scientist
& we need hydraulic fracturing.

I am not a scientist
But, some say, a bald-faced denier,
a loyal Republican liar.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

IF DIAMONDS WERE MADE OF COAL

by Tom Russell

Shallow men with deep pockets and dark goals
say that up is down and down is up.
Their corrupted family values put the Koch brothers ahead
of working mothers and fathers and leave
far too many to the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Their ballot-mining canaries sing boastfully
of ransacking the middle class and liquidating
those with less.
All who are the coal for their diamonds.

Good common sense and
a sense of the common good
are Black Lung to these dregs and dredgers.
Good common sense and
a sense of the common good
will silence the dirges of their dirty yellow birds.


Tom Russell works at the Omaha Public Library in Omaha, Nebraska.