MALL MONUMENT TO A PRESIDENT

by Patrick G. Roland

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

Maybe every other president was doing it wrong.
Hell, maybe I’m doing it all wrong. 

My four-year-old once told me
my tie looked like an elephant trunk with a cold,
so she swapped it for a toy mermaid’s tail,
and I got compliments—
even a high-five from my boss.

So, I turned to her again,
this time about the president’s tour of the Middle East.

In Saudi Arabia, he’s got luxury towers going up.
They gave him $600 billion for defense.
“Rapunzel had a tower for her hair, Daddy,
maybe he needs to protect his hair.”

In Qatar, it’s golf resorts and seaside villas.
They threw in $200 billion for Boeing,
and gave him a $300 million jet. 
“When I eat all my dinner,” she said,
“I get vanilla ice cream for dessert.”

In the UAE: a golf course, a skyscraper, and a crypto deal.
They pledged $1.4 trillion for U.S. tech.
“Krypto was Superman’s doggy friend.”

Don’t get me wrong, it smells like what I think
immoral would smell like—
if ethics had a scent.
My daughter can smell hardened Play-Doh
before she even opens the canister.

So I asked her if any of the deals 
smelled like an emolument.
She said mall monuments smell like pretzels.

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked.
You ask questions.

Patrick G. Roland is a writer and educator living with cystic fibrosis. He explores life’s experiences through poetry and storytelling, seeking to inspire others in the classroom and through writing. His work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Sacramento Literary Review, Maudlin House, Trampoline, and others.

BLOSSOMS

by Bonnie Naradzay

In Gaza City, Riad Ishkontana mourned the death of one of his children on Sunday. Mr. Ishkontana said that when rescuers pulled him and his 7-year-old daughter from the rubble of his home after an airstrike, he awoke to a new life—one without his wife and four other children. Credit:Hosam Salem for The New York Times, May 19, 2021

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns

rubber tipped bullets and tear gas cannisters

that I pay for with my taxes, and the Boeing 

weapons sales, mainly kits transforming bombs 

into precision missiles dropped from planes 

on Gaza, as before. Armed forces wreck Minarets 

during Ramadan. The call to prayer, up in flames.

Worshippers at the mosque are felled with bullets.

Evictions are enforced by the Courts, the way 

it’s always done. Snipers target fleeing children;

they’ve done it all before.  When will we learn?

Here, orange blossoms are exploding in the sun.

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns.

 

Bonnie Naradzay’s recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and others. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC. 

HAIR AND THE HEALTH OF THE WORLD

by Kit Zak

the doctor clips
a few strands of my hair—
the adrenal fatigue test

I think about all that stresses
my gray head
            (not so many now that my children are fledged)
it’s their turn. Still

thoughts of hair seize my brain
            (not just the mineral deficiencies the test might show)
but candidate Trump’s coif
floating over his head
like a gold hairball
            (WHO has hair like that?)
Or like his devil-

interlocutor, Megan,
her honey tresses and
the talented stylists who make hair
their calling (card) and fortune.

Oh style
and the making of a President
while really
it’s Boeing and Lockheed Martin
dictating our future

such a  three-ringer
(circus): the Hawks’ war path
and the Republican guardians for coal plants

I stress
over the rising tides in coastal cities and
the killer storms (my kids in Norfolk and Miami)

American politics: it’s just entertainment and imagine
what the Europeans must think of our clowns

I await test results
and wonder about the cure


Kit Zak lives in Lewes, DE. She’s an activist who has published in various journals and anthologies.