THE BALLAD OF LINDSEY GRAHAM'S PICKLE

by Janice D. Soderling

Dong, dong, it pealed from each bell tower
until full twelve was said.
Cold, coverless and quivering,
Graham flopped around in bed.

He sat up, did the Senator,
and stared into the night
for at the footboard of his bed
commenced a nebulous light.

A ghastly apparation grew
and softly did it moan.
With trembling hands, it held aloft
a moss-bedecked tombstone.

"Oh, Lindsey," wheezed the ghostly guest.
Oh, Lindsey Graham, behold."
There on the mildewed stone was writ,
Orange glitter is not gold.

"And quid pro quo is not BS.
Go read the damning transcript."
A tortured moan froze Lindsay's blood,
"Far better men than you've flipped.

"Beware the traitorous pumpkin man."
The moan rose to a shout.
"I come to save you from yourself."
The frightened man cried out,

"Who art thou, apparation grim?
Who gives my blood such chill?
The Ghost of Hearings-Yet-To-Come?
Or that socialist, Joe Hill?

The glowing ghost gave mirthless laugh.
"Joe Hill has never died.
Takes more than guns to kill a man,
No matter how they tried.

"John sent me here to wake you up.
You're backing the wrong horse.
The bus is nigh. His game is rigged.
Stay off his damned golf course."

Then Lindsey woke, relieved, and said,
"Joe Hill's a loser Commie.
But that's the last time that I eat
dill pickles with pastrami."

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work was recently at Light, Better Than Starbucks, and La Libélula Vaga.

T***P VISITS GOLF CLUB FOR THIRD CONSECUTIVE WEEKEND

by JP Thelbert Bryant

Donald Trump has played golf every four days of his presidency.

—The Independent (UK) October 23, 2017

What’s out there, the solution to healthcare?
Secret plans to back down North Korea?
An apology letter about Russia’s interference?
Pussies to grab?

And do you ever feel guilty in those tight khakis
and white shirt, that children are hungry,
that gays are scared, that religion is taking over,
that women hurt?

Does it make you feel powerful to swing a club, put balls in holes,
tug on that baseball cap probably made in China?

I wonder these things as I work everyday, as I set aside money for sickness, as I monitor the gasoline I use, the food I buy.

I have no time for golf. Most of us have no time for golf.
We have to worry about feeding our children, fending off diseases,
nuclear bombs, conservative evangelicals dictating our lives,
our bodies, our minds.

But only pretty rich folks play with you.
And no one wants to think about sad things anyway.
It’s just some of us have to think about them. Everyday.

JP Thelbert Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He lives in the woods of Virginia where he burns incense, deer watches, and dreams of oceans.

NAMING OF PARTS

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: White Mountain Puzzles

After Henry Reed

Spring eased the almond blossoms open
and promises of cherries while we named parts
left over from winter. Collusion. Taking
away, reducing, throwing in the trash
legal widgets that keep the water pure,
air open to the cherry’s pollen flight.

We named parts with words round
to our tongues, like emoluments, to see
how that piece fit in the grooves
of palaces and greens like golf courses.
Lies are new lower swing swivels
alternatives, the stock aiming.
We call the liar  a number, not a name.

We watched tired armies of people
whose papers dictate that they bolt
backwards, locked. Riled bees assault
the fumbling flowers and some too
called that easing the spring.

Assembled from parts, the barrel
is loaded and pointed at every one
of us. The sick. Disabled. Those
who stumbled. Women mourning
in too many dry cities to count.
Children born to know only this.

Whatever bitter cold silence ensues,
whatever violence, these parts came
forged as cocking-pieces, and the many
words to name them buzzed over us
diseasing the spring.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who in the last week has read Henry Reed's famous 1942 poem "The Naming of Parts" about fifteen times, sharing the dismay of progressives at how rapidly important protections of people and the environment can be dismantled. Her new book, Broadfork Farm, is a series of love poems to a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington.

ERASURE

by Terry S. Johnson

from “Trump Turns Staid Process Into Spectacle as Aspirants Parade to His Door,”

The New York Times, 11/20/16

President-elect Donald Trump heads inside the clubhouse following his meeting with David McCormick, president of the management committee at Bridgewater Associates, at Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster Township, N.J. Drew Angerer/Getty Images via NPR, November 20, 2016

                                                                        Trump

                        inscrutable

                                                Spectacle                                            for

                                                                                    the world

                                       a pageant

                                                                        Teasing

           contenders

                        The Club’s      farmhouse

                                                         gushed

                                    former adversaries

 “phony”

                                                 Preference for older white men

                                                            military

                        No

public process

                                                 Discarded

                        election cycle

                                                                        Make

                        deals

                                                                                                Shape

                                                posture

                                                                       

                                                            Bursts

            of

                                                                                            disapproval

                                                                                    “ – nothing

funny at all.”

Terry S. Johnson explored careers as a newspaper advertising clerk, a library assistant and a professional harpsichordist before serving as a public school teacher for over twenty-five years. She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has published in many anthologies and journals.  Her first book Coalescence was published in 2014 by WordTech and won an honorable mention award in the New England Book Festival.