THE WITLESS MAY PROCEED

 by Steven Kent

Hearings, we hold hearings by the score;
In fact, no time is left for legislation.
Our tools are slander, smear, insinuation,
Red herring, shady witnesses, and more.

Ukraine's on hold, and Israel to boot;
The "crisis" we decried down at the border
Seems not so pressing after all: Trump's order
To wait till post-election we salute.

Impeachment, though—Mayorkas—couldn't wait,
While hopes today are really, really ridin'
On hints and whispers aimed at Hunter Biden
(Since we've found zero evidence to date).

Hearings, we hold hearings by the score;
We talk the talk but balk at taking action.
We work instead through media distraction--
Real governance these days is such a bore!

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and Oxford comma enthusiast Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Journal of Formal Poetry, Light, Lighten Up Online, New Verse News, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and Snakeskin. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

DEMO

by Michel Steven Krug

Jeff Koterba / Cagle Cartoons

In the House

there’s treachery afoot.

 

A leader sandwiched by volleys

of red sensation

and

what formerly was known

as consensus.

 

And the price to be paid:

parliamentary

demo-

li-tion. 

 

I move that the Country

Avert economic infanticide

By installing cold showers

That spray the margins where

Passion plays like theatre 

To astound the outer rings.

Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and he litigates. His poems have appeared in Sierra Nevada Review, Jerry Jazz, Whistling Shade, St. Paul Almanac, Liquid Imagination, Blue Mountain Review, Portside, New Verse News, JMWW, Cagibi, Silver Blade, Crack the Spine, Dash, Mikrokosmos, North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, Poets Reading the News, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Main Street Rag and Brooklyn Review. His collection Jazz at the International Festival of Despair is scheduled for publication by Broadstone Books, in the spring, 2024.

OUR HOUSE INSPECTION

by Joseph Kleponis

Claytoonz by Clay Jones

Our house is set on a foundation
Hundreds of years old. The men who set it,
The foundation and the building, too, were wise.
They saw what had and had not worked elsewhere,
And so, they reinforced the foundation
With a seemingly simple substructure
Of beams that balanced and braced itself
To support the elegant edifice
They had dared to frame. It has weathered storms,
Abuses from within and from without,
But now the climate has begun to change,
We have noticed threats where there had been none—
A minor infestation in the basement—
Will the structure hold, or need amendment?

Joseph Kleponis lives north of Boston, Massachusetts. He’s had poems published in online and print journals nationally and internationally. His book Truth’s Truth was published by Kelsay Books in 2021.

INMATES IN CHARGE OF THE ASYLUM

by Howard Richard Debs

Win McNamee/Getty Images accompanying “The Big Picture: Danger ahead,” NPR, January 7, 2022

I stayed up until the wee hours

wakeful and fearful, riveted by

the proceedings of the U.S. House

of Representatives, 435 voting

members officially; as if votes matter—

which they do indeed since sold

on the auction block of avarice

and greed for power for the sake

of it, for with power comes privilege,

aggrandizement, garnering the purse

of a play plot based on chaos theory

its final act to be the end of a democracy.

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications. His photography is featured in select publications, including in Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing) is the recipient of a 2017 Best Book Award and 2018 Book Excellence Award. His latest work Political (Cyberwit Press) is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust forthcoming from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of Anne Frank's diary. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.

LIZ

by Jo Ann Steger Hoffman

Only a few are brave enough, a few

only, who listen to the inner voice

that does not lie, speaks clearly what is true.

These few decide to make the harder choice

 

to stand apart, alone, claim truth out loud

despite the storms that blow the House apart

when one with strength of purpose stands unbowed

beneath the weight of censure, dares to chart

 

a course that steers its way by compass points

unshaken by fierce winds of ambition,

steadied by faithfulness to what anoints

a leader with the right to set direction.

 

What some will view as weakness in this hour

will soon reveal itself as peerless power.

Jo Ann Steger Hoffman’s publications include a children’s book, short fiction and numerous poems in literary journals, including The Merton Quarterly, Persimmon Tree, Pinesong, The New Verse News, Kakalak, Red Clay Review, Broad River Review and Flying South. Recognition from Palm Beach Poetry Festival contests and a Pushcart nomination are among her awards. Her narrative non-fiction book Angels Wear Black recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley. A native of Toledo, Ohio, Jo Ann and her husband now live in Cary and Beaufort, North Carolina.

CONSPIRACY THEORETICAL WITCH HUNTS

by Richard Hacken 

Image source: Unload and Unwind

            Hillary, it has been shown, created ISIS.
            Everything we know shows how that terror crisis
            Came from Clinton’s wicked wish to sacrifice us.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            In Libya she only made things worse, because she
            Purposefully waited to send in the posse
            At the embassy when needed in Benghazi.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            Email servers were her tools of choice for treason
            As she lured and let the spies of the Chinese in,
            Laughing as she lied about her sordid reason.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!
         
            Shocking to our sensibilities as humans,
            Hillary dropped bombs less ethical than Truman’s,
            Pimping out her husband to young female students.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            Hillary remains untouched by House committees
            Searching hard to bring her down by her Achilles,
            While bribes she paid stack up in banks in offshore cities.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

Richard Hacken enjoys trochaic political satire.  While slightly amused by conspiracy theories and witch hunts, he hates to see them linked to each other. 

ANOTHER USELESS HEADLINE POEM

by Ed Werstein

"US Senate Response to Orlando: Nothing"

                     The Guardian, June 21, 2016

I’ve been thinking about flesh

and blood

and guts

and guns

and bullets

and assaults

on our sanity.

And I’ve been thinking about guts

and guns

and gold

and gilt

and guilt

and gullibility

and gushing blood

and the gumption

it might take

to change things.

And I’ve been thinking about how

we must not be

disgruntled enough

disgusted enough

about how we must not be

dis-gutted enough

to stop watching the news reports

to stop posting on Facebook

to stop writing ineffective

and useless poems

about it,

to finally rise up

and do something real

to change it. 

Ed Werstein spent years in manufacturing before his muse awoke and dragged herself out of bed. In addition to NVN, his poems appear at Re/Verse and Your Daily Poem. He is East Region VP for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. His chapbook Who Are We Then? was published by Partisan Press. His contact information can be found at the WFOP.

MIDNIGHT

by Catherine McGuire

They stand at their podiums –
empty voices in empty chambers –
they might as well be on different planets.
Maybe they are.
The words spoken earnestly
repeated, re-tweeted, their mantras
pass through each other like fumes,
like dogs barking, like that chill
of someone walking on your grave.
Meanwhile, the country folds flat
like a house of cards collapsing.


Catherine McGuire has had almost 300 poems published in venues such as: Adagio, Avocet, Folio, Fireweed, FutureCycle, Green Fuse, Main Street Rag, New Verse News, Nibble, Portland Lights Anthology and Tapjoe. Her chapbook, Palimpsests, was released by Uttered Chaos in 2011. She has three self-published chapbooks.