MADURO MADNESS

by Catherine McGuire

Art by Nick Anderson

Listen my children and you shall hear

of the midnight raids, as Trump interferes –

just past the end of 2025

with Miller and Marco, he did connive

to throw the world into chaos and us into fear.

 

He said to Bondi, “since he’s already charged

with drug crimes, that makes it all right

to drop bombs on Caracas then barge

into the palace, kidnap and take flight.

Drag them onto our ships, then launch out to sea

where your crooked lawyers had better be

ready to lie and make hash of the arm

of our law, claim criminal harm

which we will prosecute; thus Epstein’s disarmed.”

 

Then he watched all night, with unmuffled roars

as the airmen and soldiers assaulted the shores

of Venezuela, a country so rich in oil

that oil barons willingly embroil

themselves in an illegal war

to abscond with the goods, and to ignore

true ownership—the hell with rules! Far

better to seize, then let countries chide,

gnash their teeth, try to override.

 

You know the rest. In books we will read

how the Orange Pestilence spread, his misdeeds

piling like dung heaps, and the calls

to impeach and arrest ineffectual –

until true patriots chased red hats down each lane

to uphold the rule of law once again.

Under new-minted Congress, we strove

to repair all the damage, our country re-wove.

 

It starts now: this red line cannot be ignored

our cry is defiance, and not one of fear.

Our voice in the darkness must open the door

to accountability for him and each buccaneer

who soiled our history, and their greed financiers.

 

In this hour of darkness and peril and need

the people must waken and each volunteer

to protest and clamor till the country is freed

from the depredations of this profiteer.

Catherine McGuire is a writer/artist with a deep concern for our planet's future, with five decades of published poetry, six poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book,  Elegy for the 21st Century, a SF novel, Lifeline, and book of short stories, The Dream Hunt and Other Tales.

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

DEMOCRACY WITH SCISSORS AND LOOPHOLES

by David Lee

Original cartoon of "The Gerry-Mander.” This is the political cartoon that led to the coining of the term “gerrymander.” The district depicted in the cartoon was created to favor the incumbent Democratic-Republican party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists in 1812. Public Domain. —Wikipedia

They call it redistricting,
like moving furniture for better feng shui.
But the map on the table
looks like it’s been drawn by a toddler with a sugar high
and an eraser for a conscience.

The district snakes down one block
just to loop around a donor’s backyard.
Three neighborhoods vanish into
a comma-shaped voting island
where ballots get counted
only if the tide’s out.

Meanwhile, in the Capitol,
the same lawmakers who swear
the system is “by the people”
are day-trading defense stocks
before breakfast,
and exempting themselves
from every law they praise in speeches.

When asked why the rules don’t apply to them,
one Congressman grins like a cat on a warm hood
and says,
“Well, the pen is mightier than the ballot box,
especially if you own the pen.”

David Lee is a physician, poet, and occasional troublemaker who moonlights as a satirical commentator on the absurdities of modern politics and culture. His poems have been called “provocative, playful, and just unsettling enough to make you think twice before laughing a third time.”

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE

by Steven Kent

Republican congresswoman Kay Granger from Texas has not cast a vote in the US House since July while she has been grappling with “dementia issues” and residing at a senior living facility, according to her family – something she did not disclose to the public before a Dallas media outlet figured out where she was during her prolonged absence. —The Guardian, December 22, 2024

I'm a fan now of Congress's Kay,

Who does so much less damage this way—

To remain in absentia

(Forget the dementia)

Is true public service, I say!

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

ARREST HIM. DON'T FÊTE HIM.

by Rob Okun    

If Benjamin Netannotajew addresses a disjointed  
session of Congress on July 24 will it be
a day that will live in infamy?
 
You actually have the gall to ask that question!?
Of course it would be.
 
Imagine “Arrest him. Don’t fête him” protest signs popping up across
the country while organizers fill busses from 30 states with patriots
headed to DC to say no way will a wanted war criminal speak in
the People’s house
 
Liberals opposed to the prime sinister will sip wine at fundraisers in Takoma Park
twisting themselves
                                         into impossible-to-achieve yoga positions from
two-state downward dog solution to low down dirty dog final solution
 
“If Israel doesn’t qualify as a true democracy anymore, do we still
have to send them weapons—no strings attached?”
You actually have the gall to ask that question!?
 Yes. We “have” to send them the weapons. If we don’t 
all heaven might break loose—
beginning with an end to the slaughter of Israel’s semitic cousins
 
In this heatwave fever dream, the growing movement of next gen jews
will lead a multigenerational march for peace where it will be permissible 
to use the following words and phrases:
 

38,000…mostly women and children…likely thousands more under the rubble…

humanitarian aid convoys blocked—again…West Bank “settlers” sadistically gone wild…authorities turn a blind eye…they’re committing war crimes… permanent cease fire

 

Note: If possible, however, not to ruffle the feathers of Israeli censors, avoid using 

the words: Palestine… Palestinians… unprecedented number of murdered journalists…

bombed hospitals and schools…starvation…malnutrition…unsafe drinking water…and, 

of course—genocide…

Oh—when discussing the recent daring rescue of four Israeli hostages, absolutely avoid mention of 274 Palestinians killed and 700 wounded. (It is permissible to use the phrase “collateral damage.”)

 
How the hell, you’d be right to ask, has the unlawful firm of Biden, Blinken & Austin
continued to arm this country, ruled by a madman, for so long?
You actually have the gall to ask that question!?
 
There are now—and always have been—Jews who have wept over and still 
weep over the dashed dreams of a 1948 communal Israel-Palestine populated 
by two peoples living side-by-side in a world 
where no one ever heard the word nakba—or spoke
about forced displacement
Is the world ready now—after a full term pregnancy's length of war—
to invigorate that vision...take it from aspiration to realization?
Yaweh and Allah, I hope so.

Rob Okun, editor emeritus of the three-decades old, profeminist magazine Voice Male and editor of the anthology Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Profeminist Men’s Movement, has worked in activist journalism since the 1970s. His commentaries appear in numerous publications and on digital platforms including The Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Ms., and Common Dreams. He is syndicated by Peace Voice.

ON CASSIDY’S COATTAILS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

You have affirmed my faith Cassidy Hutchinson
in telling the truth, in speaking it openly before
the camera, in real time, before Congress, before
history and its judgments, before the criminal
watching from his Mar a Lago mansion, before
my children, before all people interested
in seeing the line that cannot and will not
be crossed no matter how many tantrums,
and lunges for the clavicle, and requests
to overturn an election fairly won come down
from the boss, the besotted and dangerous fool
who took control of the powers of state and sought
to make them serve himself first, his acolytes second,
and damn the people, his charge. Damn even
the deranged, armed with rifles, handguns,
spears and flagpoles and bear spray who marched
to stop certification of the US election. Amazing

that we saw this defacement, as Cassidy said,
of our Capitol. Amazing that we got through
that plunder, and are still living and loving
and moving about our United States. We were
driven to the brink. And the violation of 
women’s rights called Dobbs, and the approval
to carry guns in public, and I don’t know what
else, will come out of that radicalized building
on 1^st Street NE, but let me speak for the not
silent majority. No more. We will not allow
Januuary 6^th to happen again. Not in one day.

Not incrementally with elimination of
our human rights. There is a new day
in America charged, recharged, driven
by ethics, faith in the republic, in
undeniable rights. Morning again
I call it, for the mother and father
of all marches, in America. Not
on the Capitol, but in the conscience
of all our people. for truth, for justice,
for liberty. for the American way
not the highway, not the forked
road, not the Kool aid served
by the deluded prophet in a MAGA hat.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

PERFORMANCE BONUS

by Imogen Arate

Four of the Republican senators bankrolled by the NRA. From left to right Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Richard Burr, and Roy Blunt. —Newsweek has the “Full List of Republican Senators Who Receive Funding From the NRA.”

Every time a bullet screams a child's name

Congress rings in a payday

Every time gold-strung puppets mimic "thoughts and prayers"

NRA makes it rain

The more they pile up

the cheaper they come

The higher the body count

the bigger the ROI.

The stock market may be free-reeling

NFTs may be worthless

but LaPierre makes good on his promises

though he trades in rubles 

We've arrived at the age 

of lead-pegged currency

We've come to celebrate each day

as gun-violence survival day

drunk the mercurial mead 

of gilded hearts playing 

a mental-health sleight of hand

while we thirsted for salves

that vanished as another gunman

turned the page onto another tragedy

danced our last to the whizzing rhythm

of gun-powdered blues

as we grew confused over 

which loved ones got shot when

or which crisis actors got paid

while feigning condolences 

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest, where she has served as a national-level poetry judge in 2021 and 2022.  Her poetry has appeared in 18 publications on four continents.  You can find her @PoetsandMuses and @ImogenArate on Twitter and Instagram.

MARJORIE'S LIQUID SALAD

by Diane Elayne Dees

Antonio Banderas is the only gazpacho policeman 

we have ever known, and he still cuts a fine figure,

in or out of uniform. Perhaps Almodóvar

can call him to duty, for Marjorie has gone

far beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown. 

This time, Officer Carlos will have to stay sober:

The future of an entire nation depends on him,

as he sorts tomatoes and cucumbers and bell peppers 

for Nancy, and collects enough white bread

to thicken the soup before he spikes it,

and renders Congress near-unconscious—

yet how could we tell?

There is no need for spying—

the schemes and plots and crimes

are all on display in plain sight.

Officer Carlos and Nancy eat a cold soup

of anarchy, dishonored pledges, cult devotion,

and blueprints for total destruction,

while an entire nation—on the verge—awaits.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books) and the forthcoming chapbook The Last Time I Saw You. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world.

DUCK AND COVER

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The sound of helicopters was nothing new. They often arrived to ferry out Turkish troops stationed near Ahmed’s town, a stone’s throw from Syria’s border with Turkey. But this was different. “The sound was horrible,” he said, describing the swarm of U.S. military helicopters that descended on a home less than two miles away from Ahmed’s house early Thursday, on a mission to kill ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Ahmed, who for safety reasons spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name, went up to his roof, he said in a telephone interview. The thunder of the helicopters was eclipsed by a terrible clatter of gunfire “from the sky,” he said… At least a dozen people, including six children, were killed along with Qurayshi, according to local first responders. The Pentagon said that three members of his family were killed when Qurayshi detonated an explosive device on the top floor of the building, along with a child who was killed on the floor below in circumstances that remained unclear. The first responders, known as the White Helmets, said survivors of the night’s violence included a man who lived near the house and a young girl whose entire family was killed. For a time, they said, the girl was unable to speak, from the shock. The group was not sure how the other people died. “Truthfully all the bodies were largely covered in blood, sometimes it could not be discerned if it was bullets or explosions,” a spokesman said in a message. —The Washington Post, Februaryj 4, 2022. Photo: The scene after an overnight raid by US special operations forces against suspected jihadists in north-west Syria. Photograph: Aaref Watad/AFP/Getty via The Guardian, February 3, 2022.

It is hard to palaver on the verandah, or bake bread in the kitchen,

or step out for a drive while helicopters fly above preparing to strike...

One moment you, human and humane, are alive, the next pulverized,

and that evening a headline, made famous instantly until the next drone

in the neighboring country shatters, or a kid shoots into classmates

somewhere, or a young girl is slaughtered by her brother for the family's

honor in a country that ends with 'stan (or states), no country immune

from trafficking in honor, and I declare I am most certainly politically

correct. That said, let us get down to the heart of this body otherwise

split by shards scissoring from the drone that dropped out of the sky

to finish political differences by means of a battering ram, an oxen

head, a threat, then action against what remains of order and grace,

ordinary representatives debating bills, showing the family around

the hallowed halls, certifying an election in these United States.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

CONFIRMATION TIME

by Jane Patten

The process begins—

But confirmation

Will depend

Upon its closeness to the midterms 

Or what it costs to send

A moderate to the court,

Saturn lying opposite

The Sun or

The last of the Super Moon

Shining bright, 

Agreement from the Right

And well-laid plans

To obstruct and strike again.

After retiring and moving to Huntsville, Jane Patten decided to write about her adventures, including growing up in Delaware and her career as a teacher in rural Georgia. Her writings have been published in Out Loud HSV: A Year in Review anthologies, The New Verse News, Reckon Women, and Reckon Honey.

EXPOSED IN MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

by Sandra Sidman Larson

A fist sculpture is situated at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, also known as George Floyd Square, on March 25 in Minneapolis. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

As a spring storm begins to rumble outside, I wrap

my dog in his thunder shirt, yet I must remain calm

and unprotected from what bears down

on us, whether it is thunder, city coyotes howling,

the probable headlines of the Star Tribune—the paper flung

outside my door this morning, as every day, by a poor man,

his young children waiting in his idling car.

The fate of George Floyd’s murderer is soon to be

determined by twelve citizens in a courtroom barricaded

with barbed wire as have been the halls of Congress,

precautions against returning mobs, recently sicced

on the representatives of our frail democracy

by a crazed president who we supposedly ushered out

the door. But what to do about the cop who puts his knee

for nine minutes upon the neck of a Black man,

smothers him to death, stopping all our lives, turning us

to marching in the streets, while troublemakers—homegrown,

or blown into Minneapolis—set the city streets and stores afire,

inciting chaos among thousands of protesters, many of us

now realizing we need other gods or old gods to appear,

to stop us from killing each other, we who are filled with love,

hate, hope, and despair, stirred up by the fates—

so little to protect us?  All I can do is close the window

against the thunder, the smells of rain-damped debris;

note the snow almost gone from the ground, now newly bare.

Sandra Sidman Larson, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has three chapbooks to her credit: Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Over a Threshold of Roots (both Pudding House Press Publications), and Weekend Weather: Calendar Poems. Her chapbook Ode to Beautiful was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016 and her first full manuscript by Main Street Rag Publications in 2017. Her poetry has been published in many venues such as the Atlanta Review, Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters and on-line in The New Verse News and others. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies, one being what have you lost? edited by Naomi Shihab Nye.  (Who nominated her for one Pushcart Prize). With a Masters Degree in social work and community planning, Sandra’s primary career was in social service and social justice work. Her poetry career began at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. As a poet with grandchildren and great nieces and nephews she longs for a world where all children are cherished and cared for and justice reigns for all.

SCREWGED

by Shelly Blankman

‘Tis the night before Christmas

and all through the House,

where the reps were so hopeful,

the Senate’s a louse.

T***p kills funds to feed families

as long food lines grow. 

Our incomes are shriveling

while his own funds flow.

The White House is lit 

with bright colors galore 

while suffering lingers

among the Black, Brown, and poor.

Small businesses are dying

while T***p continues to tweet

months after numbers 

clearly show his defeat. 

Not one single tweet 

about the sick and the dead

Medics, now heroes.

Hospitals now out of beds.

He pardons the thugs,

the rich white and male,

because white lives matter

while Blacks linger in jail.

He’s neglected the needs

he was sworn to protect.

In the end those he cared about

were extremely select. 

So Merry Christmas to all,

And to all a good night.

May next year be better

with T***p out of sight!

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland. She is author of Pumpkinhead, a collection of her poetry, printed for her as a surprise by her two sons, Richard and Joshua, currently quarantined in New York and Texas, respectively. Shelly's poetry has been published in a number of journals, including First Literary Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Verse-Virtual.