CALLING OUT THE NUMBERS

by Sharon Olson

DOGE Has Decimated the Institute of Museum and Library Services —artnet, March 31, 2025

In some retellings the Library of Alexandria
was burned by Julius Caesar, accidentally,
a casualty of war.

No accident the flashlights of the Doge,
peering with damning light, threatening
the rolled-up scrolls sitting pretty
next to 21st-century flash drives.

I can think of Dewey numbers 
the Great Leader would not like: 
sexual relations both gay and straight, 
301.424, public measures to prevent 
disease, 614.5, the library as refuge 
for the homeless, 362.5, Palestine 
and Israel shelved together, 956.94, 
even something so benign
as 351.1, federal jobs.

Not a bad idea to digitize, lest the temperature
rise to Fahrenheit 451, and only an AI librarian
available to operate the hose.


Sharon Olson is a retired California librarian who now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

TWILIGHT ZONE CHILD’S PLAY

by Andrés Castro

Otherworldly, Rod Serling was
                                                 ahead
of his time,
     foreshadowing
an old fleshy Trump
                                with a skinny blonde boy
who tortured family and neighbors,
                                                        turning
     on a sadistic whim,
          anyone
                     into a grotesque
                                               creature,                       like a sprung jack-in-the-box
                                                                                    with a dunce-capped head,
before planting them
     in his homestead cornfield.
     No one dared to look at this boy
the wrong way.

This 60s episode,
     It’s a Good Life
in black and white,
                                                     flashes forward now
                                                                                      to 2025,
                                                                                           in bleeding colors,
                                                                                      where Trump rules
just like that boy,
     with unpredictable tantrums.

     Except,                                                                           our boy
                                                                                       would love to rule the world
if he could;
     Except,                                                                            now he has a cast of commercial
                                                                                        to mercenary flying monkeys circling
                                                                                        around him.

                                                                                                            His Hail Caesar!
                                                                                                                 Heil Hitler! moments
                                                                                                            have begun

on our way past cornfields                                                             to crucifixions
                                                                                                                 to revolutions.

Andrés Castro, a PEN member, is listed in Poets & Writers Directory. He keeps a personal blog, The Practicing Poet: Dialogue to Creativity, Poetry, and Liberation.

GIVE UNTO CAESAR

by David Chorlton

Tiberius Penny at The Smithsonian

Word comes down from the mountain

that Caesar has awakened

and begun to ask for what is his,

much to the distaste of the next man in line

whose shirt tells everyone he’s tuned

to a radio in the sky and he can tell you

why Washington’s to blame

for the state of all things on Earth. He orders

enchiladas. Says with pride

he’s ex-law enforcement. Smiles

at a passing thought available

only to himself.

                        With taxes comes the time

the ocotillo greens in the front yard

where the first of summer’s orioles

has found her way back

to where she came last year. She’s a flash

between red blossoms

and arrives when the Earth’s clock tells her to:

when the people empty their pockets

and count small change, when they

find news in dark rumors, sign their checks

and send them to Caesar

on the last of winter’s winds.

David Chorlton observes the coming and going of birds in the corner of Phoenix where he lives, near South Mountain. The Mountain became the focus of his short book published by Cholla Needles last year, The Inner Mountain, which featured watercolors and poems.

TEAR GAS AND WOAD

by Peleg Held

A nude protester—dubbed later “Naked Athena"—faces off against law enforcement officers during a protest against racial inequality in Portland, Ore., on July 18. Credit Nathan Howard/Reuters via The New York Times.

Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem. —Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars


She fingers the blue on slowly, feralled in its wake;
she counts the steps from inside out the fenced-in fields of grace.

A vitrumned likeness wavers, a cats-lick from the rim,
in the tea cup in the circle of the saucer's closing ring.

Let the tongue tip shape the watchword in the shallows of its bow;
let sentry sleep and serpent sing beneath the shuddered vow.

Here is where their end is born; there is nothing at the gate
but ink and skin, the sylph herself: the cunt-directed state.

Caesar may misread you in the peripherals of his glass
or more likely overlook you, a needle in the grass

but as you plunge into his heel he will see the face
of what gives womb its dark and what gives blood its taste.


Peleg Held lives in Hiram, Maine with his partner and 21 chickens led by the world's tiniest rooster, Gavroche-That-Lives.

POMPEY MAGNUS

by George Held



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in this televised interview that God may have sent President Donald Trump to Earth to protect Israel.


Dressed in his black undertaker’s suit,
The Secretary of State, first in his class
at West Point, visits the Western Wall
with ally Netanyahu, then blithely tells
the press that as a Christian, first in his class,
he believes God might well have ordained
that President T***p be the angel
of Israel’s deliverance, a modern Esther
on this Purim 2019.

Pompey Magnus, Pompeo’s antecedent,
Had three Triumphs in his day; now here’s
Another one, at the Western Wall at the expense
of the wall between Church and State, descended
from Roger Williams and T. Jefferson,
whose descendant T***p desires above all
a wall along the Mexican border, the modern
version of Sicily, which Pompey the Great
conquered in the name of the Republic.

Will our Pompeo the Great, first in his class,
bring down, like Joshua at Jericho, the wall
between State and Church? Who is this god
for whom Pompeo speaks with such confidence?
Who is this Caesar T***p, who like Emperor
Sulla, sends his consul abroad to make
policy without consent of the Senate? And
will he avoid, like Pompey, the scathing
nickname, earned for causing carnage, “carnifex”*?


* “the butcher"  


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has a new poetry book, Second Sense, forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada.

ANOTHER YEAR

by George Held

Another year ends and a new year starts
and I have fewer—it’s just math—
to count on, but I’m glad to have
been born too young for WW 2
and too old for Korea and Nam

and too ancient for the all-volunteer
Army dispatched, like Caesar’s legions,
to any hot spot in the Empire,
though Afghanistan’s a region
a bit too far out for our ambition.

Another year, the President’s third
in office, on the horizon for him
to continue our retreats
from remote and alien climes
(poetic word for “region” and for rhymes)

or to launch new strikes, like missiles
out of the blue: it’s all up to him,
our grand commander-in-chief,
our modern chief executive officer
and main deal-maker and pussy-grabber.

Will this be another year of immunity
for executive privilege, the one man
above the law, for him who has slouched
from the bestial floor in Bethlehem
to rename the world like a neo-Adam,

whose jutting chin recalls Mussolini
and racist rants echo Hitler’s
and whose repeated lies outdo Goebbels’
but who knows how to talk the talk
that enthralls his adamantine Base.

Another year, or could it be our last
before the earth floods or a nuclear blast
solves our overpopulation problem?
The bourgeoisie now draw near the edge
over which many poor have lately plunged,

and the widespread wish of “Happy New Year”
seems frivolous if not a beard for fear.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

HIGHLY FUNGIBLE

by Maryanne Hannan

“Mr. Trump’s popularity — his support in some polls is double that of his closest competitors — is built on his unfettered style, rather than on his positions, which have proved highly fungible.” —Trip Gabriel, NY Times, Aug. 5, 2015. Image Source: Angie's Diary

Maryanne Hannan has published poetry in Rattle, Light Quarterly, WomenArts Quarterly, and Minnesota Review. A former Latin teacher, she lives in upstate New York.

TO THE NEW REBELS

by Margery Parsons

Inspired by the young demonstrators in Madison, protesting the police killing of Tony Robinson.

Spartacus on a hill
dreaming up at a tapestry of stars
as slaves from a far flung empire
prepared to fight Rome.
What made the ragged minions
with nothing to call their own
except misery
dare to challenge Caesar's throne,
its fearsome weaponry,
legendary battles won,
and all the philosophical sophistry
used to justify its reign?
What gave them the temerity
to defy gods, to tear down
idols, to question
the exalted certainty of the known?
Look into the eyes
of a mother who has lost her son
to a centurion,
a father carrying the remains
of a child slain by drones.
Listen to the cries
of a generation doomed to oblivion
and you will know why you must rise
as they have done.


Margery Parsons is an activist and poet; she lives in Chicago, works for an arts organization, loves movies and music.

EVIL ON A SMILEY FACE

by George Salamon




  They stride in Washington's corridors of power,
  shit-eating grins on their well-fed faces,
  irresponsible thugs wearing dark suits and conservative ties.
  They strive to deprive the poor and the helpless of
  food and health, of dignity and hope.
  Jesus would have chased them out of the temple,
  Moses would have smashed tablets over their heads,
  God would have told them that He does not
  help those who already help themselves.

  The trio of love, mercy and compassion
  has abandoned us to  mean-spirited
  bookkeepers and power-hungry Caesars,
  rulers of the market and governors of nations,
  CEOs of selfishness preached in our
  business schools and bibles of management.
  These new priests of the global religion
  cut the heart out of what was best in us.
  We stood by and eagerly scooped up
  the crumbs that fell off their table.

  And now we are forced to swallow the dessert.


George Salamon taught German literature and culture at several East Coast colleges, was a reporter for the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor of Defense Systems Review. He has contributed to The Washington Post, The American Conservative, New Verse News and writes regularly for the Gateway Journalism Review. He currently lives in St. Louis, MO.