REGARDING NEWS OF JANUARY 20, 2025

by Jacquelyn Shah

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

At home alone I don’t inaugurate.

As silent never-wish-to-witness, I

will read the news that’s fit-to-print, berate

the rest that shouldn’t even amplify

what’s nothing but unspeakable and grim. 

So watch––I’ll sit me down with paper, pen

and try to think of every synonym

for fiend and bully, brute and sadist... Then

inspired, I can write (restrained) a snippet

that indicates my indignation that 

my nation’s gone. Although this meager sonnet 

is nothing more than insubstantial chitchat,

I’ll revel in my puny getting-even:

shunning blather that I can’t believe in.

 

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah has AB–Rutgers U (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa); MA–Drew U; MFA, PHD–U of Houston: English/creative writing. Poetry publications: chapbook (small fry); full-length book (What to Do with Red); poems in journals. Hybrid memoir: (Limited Engagement: A Way of Living). She was a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee. Obsessive, she has written 540 centos.

THIS MAN, 2024

a cento by Jacquelyn Shah

Source: Stablecog

How will the future reckon with this man?

  ––Edwin Markham, “The Man with the Hoe”

   

There is no shape more terrible than this––

. . . dangerous man . . .

ignorant demagogue . . .    

inscrutably smiling

thick with power oozed over branches,

the capitalistic offices

   . . . makes us all turn green with fright

and through the green his crimson furrow grooves.

He must have come up from a drain.

Knowing this man . . .

(mean, underhanded, lacking all attributes . . .)   

is a man who makes avenging armies.

He makes of laws

a broken staff,

disturbs polite conversation . . .

The knotted fabric of our lives,

our words, our lives, our pains––nothing!

We talk despairingly and drink our tea,

everyone a life alone.

All day, all night, we hear, we feel,

men, women in cities, multitudes, millions.

The dead and the dead

of spirit now joined . . .     

All––only putty that tyranny rolls

between its fingers . . .     

Poor people make poor land.

Author’s Note: Cento—lines & partial lines (occasional slight alterations), in order of appearance, from: Edwin Markham; Sarah N. Cleghorn, Cleghorn; Lola Ridge; Archibald Fleming; E. B. White; William Rose Benét; Roy Campbell; Alfred Hayes; Edwin Rolfe; Selden Rodman; S. Funaroff, Funaroff; Oscar Williams; Josephine W. Johnson; Baratolomeo Vanzetti; James Palmer Wade; James Agee; William Stephens; Eunice Clark; Frederic Prokosch, Prokosch; Hugh MacDiarmid, MacDiarmid; Pare Lorentz. All poets included in A New Anthology of Modern Poetry, 1939 Ed. Selden Rodman.

Jacquelyn Shah. A.B., M.A., M.F.A. & Ph.D.––English/creative writing. Publications: poetry chapbook, small fry; full-length poetry book, What to Do with Red; poems in journals. In 2023 her memoir Limited Engagement: A Way of Living was published, and she was a Pushcart Prize nominee for Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor.

THE PLEASURE I’D TAKE IN THE ANY-AGE DEATH OF ONE WHO REMAINS UNNAMED

a truncated trenta-sei

by Jacquelyn Shah

Spoofing that poetic form of John Ciardi 

used for his “A Trenta-Sei of the Pleasure We Take in 

the Early Death of Keats”

“Still Life With Skull, Leeks, and Pitcher, March 14, 1945” by Pablo Picasso

I will not pretend to be sad
thinking about his death. A treat
it would be—(the species-truth? We are glad
to have a death to munch on.)
to wake some morning soon to a Tweet
reporting his demise. Why, oh why
am I so moved to pray he will die?

Thinking about his death is a treat

I allow myself. To be spared the bother of hearing,

day after day, his merely bitter, never sweet,

falsehoods, fabrications; watch his sneering

and his huff and puff, huff and puff

would constitute, for me, a quite-enough.

Re: Ciardi’s “species-truth”—yes, we are glad

to have a death to munch on. But truth to tell,

I’d forgo the munching; is snarfing up too-too very bad?

When it comes to lying, this unnamed guy does it well,

and his performances, so brash, his smear and jeer

deserve no curtain calls, despite the fools who stand and cheer.

To wake some morning soon to a Tweet 

reporting death, underscoring had he lived, my own remaining time

could be not merely dull but dreadful… how Sweet!

O beautiful, the death of one whose power-grubbing lifetime’s

gone. And gone would be, ungenerosity, extravagance, and full-

blown pretense, double-crossing, treachery, cock-and-bull!

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah, nonbinary iconoclast holds A.B. & M.A. English and M.F.A. & Ph.D. English/creative writing–poetry. Her publications: chapbook, small fry; full-length book, What to Do with Red; individual poems in various journals. Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest winner, she has now won a non-fiction book award contest and her memoir-essay collection will be published this summer. 

WITHOUT APOLOGY, WILLINGLY I DO IT

by Jacquelyn Shah

"Him" by Paula Rego

Because there is no one else to do it, no other woman willing

able  qualified  skilled  articulate

(and certainly no man capable or inclined)

I’ll be the one to do it.

Not only do it but delineate the how and why of it.

Because it’s so extreme  widespread  persistent  long-term  deep-rooted––

violence in our world, persecution  torture  abduction   

rape  incest  murder  war  subjugation  massacre  annihilation

     (our language is rich with words for various brutalities)

and because it’s carried out by those who hold the power, men––

I hate them. I hate men. 

Hate men fervently!  Hate them for all the damage they have done and do.

And continue doing and doing and doing... 

it never stops: the constant brandishing of weapons

like hands  gun  rifle  rope  knife  dagger  sword  bomb  penis, etc.

the never-ending violation and violence

of women (yeah, and men), children, babies––yes, babies!  Jesus!

Serial murders   mass murders   executions   sometimes necrophilia.

And ongoing destruction of the earth––

Hate them. With all my heart and soul and, especially, brain––

for I have observed, considered and concluded.

I’m willing to hate men.   Willing to say I hate them.

Their behavior merits it.  But my hatred will never MANifest in violence–– 

I won’t suppress  rape  torture  murder  abduct men.

Though men deserve everything bad they ever get,

I will never give it to them,

but hate them, yes, vigorously, steadfastly! 

          And dismiss them.

Men. They’re targets of nothing from me

except this quiet  hopeless  worthless  toothless  futile

statement made. And repeated, repeated with candor, vehemence: 

I, a pacifist, hate  men.

All of them?    No, not quite all.

Those undeserving get no such ardor,

just a cold shoulder––

because they’re all complicit, especially those in positions of power

who do nothing to change the current killing in our pathetic country.

How they all love guns and how I hate them!––men and guns.

Jacquelyn Shah—iconoclast, feminist, pacifist. A.B., English, Phi Beta Kappa; M.A.–English; M.F.A., Ph.D.–English lit/creative writing–poetry. Publications: chapbook, small fry; full-length book, What to Do with Red. Poems in various journals; Winner of Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest

THE NEWS

by Jacquelyn Shah

Little in the news is truly new now,

though it should be suspensed with, 

the infelicitous word truly, 

which can’t be employed justifiably.

Close relative of truth, a word that’s lost

its eminence since failing

to hang on to sense and signification, 

truly must follow it out the door,

down the street, to the junk-yard, to lie

with all the other useless rubbish.

Truth be told (...but remember, it can’t be!) 

the word truth had been aging 

badly for some time, beginning to resemble 

a jalopy, which might or might not 

reach its destination,

and while moving, often sputters,

even stalls. 

But getting back to news... 

The only thing to be said about it,

given its all-too-often-grisly forms––

à la weather, health, politics, economy,

sports, murders, war, etc.––

is: the time has come to minimize

my TV viewing time, 

which has truly been nothing more 

than an attempt to keep abreast.

And who needs another breast?

Not me, I’ve three already.

Jacquelyn Shah—iconoclast, feminist, pacifist. A.B., English, Phi Beta Kappa; M.A.–English; M.F.A., Ph.D.–English lit/creative writing–poetry. Publications: chapbook, small fry; full-length book, What to Do with Red. Poems in various journals; Winner of Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest