WE STILL CALL IT FREEDOM

by Phyllis Frakt

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Do you still believe 
your world is real?
How medieval! So passé!
Abandon all hope,
enter our new reality—
facts are what we say.
 
We control the news,
can change it at our whim.
Technology will comply,
repeat the truth of every lie
in a thick mix of duplicity
on Fox, Facebook, X, AI.
 
We flood the zone,
you can't catch up.
Chaos is our game!
We still call it freedom.
But when something goes awry,
Joe Biden is to blame.

Phyllis Frakt writes poetry in New Jersey. She has published six previous poems in The New Verse News.

FREE BIDEN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

What we cannot explain. What we cannot 
decipher in mind and heart. What we cannot 
understand. That is the legacy of the man

who supplied 2,000 pound bombs, fighter jets,
attack drones; sent naval gunships to anchor 
within striking distance of the Strip, 

and provided building blocks for the Iron Dome. 
This man who championed and invested 
in America, in more red than blue states, 

besides walking the picket line, this loving 
father and husband, left his mind near Yaffa,
on the road to Bethlehem, yet another

occupied territory. Free Biden I hear 
blowing in the wind. among ashes. Too late.  

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). El bosque de deleites fratricidas is forthcoming from RIL Editores. He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

ANOTHER LION MEETS WINTER

by Jennifer M Phillips

Time to step back from your long labors, Joe,
and let the eager young ones try their hands.
You've kept the long watch safe all night, we know,
and spared the ship of state from bergs and sands.
Heed the prophet's words, predicting, at his finish,
"another will increase, and I must diminish."
 
Your whole career you've served the working jack,
walked the union picket-line, yanked foreign jobs home,
foreseen future industries, retooled the work,
and understood such tasks are never done.
How it pains the industrious will to step away
before well-laid plans arrive at light of day.
 
It goes against your conscientious grain
to leave unfinished what's urgently needed
for this time of tempestuous fire and intemperate rain,
but the ground is prepared and a good harvest seeded.
Trust our resilient future, its competent folk,
to find new pathways for new repairing work.
 
You've fought for justice, remedy, and franchise
on an uphill slope and seen strong weapons shattered,
and though, as always, demons and enemies rise,
you've braced to hold the line when it has mattered.
Now there is a rank of fresh supply behind.
Fall back with honor. Trust the guiding Mind.
 
Democracy feels a fragile edifice
that monks must sweep away when prayers are done
like a painting in sand that time and wind erase.
One God-breathed moment: hearts are not the same.
See: the fresh art commences, the template resurrects;
renewed hope finds voice, as the Spirit directs.
 
O world-sorrow always with us, wars that never end,
but flurry like grackle flocks from one tree to another;
Many losses borne; retirement's one more to mend.
Your back is strong, your loves close by, your  team calls you brother.
you've led us by your best lights, and now will lead in this.
Believe that a gallant soul is never purposeless.

Jennifer M Phillips is a bi-national immigrant, painter, Bonsai-grower, with two chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (Blurb, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). Phillips' work has appeared in over 100 journals, and is currently twice-nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize.

LIFE OF THE PARTY

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

The country trumps your wishes, Joe.
Admit it's time for you to go.
Unless you heed this urgent call,
The future's apt to Trump us all.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 300 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had seven previous poems in The New Verse News.

HELP ME, JOE

by Alan Walowitz

I’m not the handiest man
though sometimes feel the need to prove I am—
at least among those still extant in my demographic
who might be foolish enough to wield a screwdriver 
a couple of  feet in the air
and intend to get close enough to what needs tightening.
Though not mistaken for the Wallendas
who repair the skylight when it won’t close right.
Or that D.B. Cooper guy I hire to change the bulbs
in the fixture that hangs a hundred feet in the air
from my foolish cathedral ceiling. 
You know, it’s been a while since
I climbed to the top rung. 
I’m happier watching from the ground
and telling those youngsters 
everything they’re doing wrong
and how I would’ve handled it
way back when, a couple of year before. 
Though I do remember from being up there, 
the thrill of the heights
I know when you fall, you hit with a thud.
Meantime, help me, Joe. 
Hold this ladder, will you? 
For this young one—
willing, ready  to climb up.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

SENATOR UNINFORMED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

A U.S. senator calls 

the tents set up 

at universities

camps for Hamas;

and he says

he supports Israel

and if Hamas 

surrenders

and hostages

are released

the war will end.

He adds 

that he is 

deeply 

disappointed

that the President

has paused

some shipments

of heavy weapons

to Israel. Deeply 

disappointed

Senator 

Fetterman?

That is how 

I feel as well 

about you. 

Your ignorance

resounds. This

is not  binary.

Instead 

of pledging 

allegiance to Israel

come what may,

why don’t you 

in turn bow 

to the Palestinian

right of return

to homes from which 

they have been  

expelled since 1948? 

Why don’t you cite 

the ever smaller

wedge of Palestinian 

land, about twenty 

percent of what 

was assigned

to them in 1948?

Can you manage

to turn your head

around that fact?

Twenty percent?. 

One fifth of 

a shrinking pie?

And you say,

hard disagree

deeply disappointed.

Mr. Fetterman

pitch your tent

in Gaza. Wait

for food 

to be dropped

from the sky

Run and hide

when bombs

fall down 

instead.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. 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 edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

by Steven Kent

So listen, sheep: The earth is flat
(There's video to prove just that).
Each contrail you can see today
Was put there by the CIA,
While climate change is just a ruse,
A trick the Bilderbergers use
To dupe us now and gain control.

What's more, they mean to steal your soul
Through wicked work like plant-based meat,
Electric ovens for your heat,
Those 15-minute city plans,
And semi-auto rifle bans.
In fact, the Feds will take all guns,
Emasculate our manly sons,
Then bind us up with UN clamps
And ship us off to FEMA camps.

Bill Gates, we know, has killed a lot
Of people with his Covid shot,
Elections rigged--so neatly planned—
With checks George Soros wrote by hand.
We're red-pilled now, nobody's fools:
We watch and watch 2000 Mules,
Convinced that Biden cheated when
He won before, and will again!

A Swiftly conjured magic spell
May now control the NFL
Since Taylor is a psy-op drone
The Deep State here controls alone,
Her latest romance clearly meant
To reelect the president.
I'd still be in the dark, I'll bet
Had I not found the internet.
With Qanon right by my side,
My eyes at last are open wide:
Each truth another truth begat
Since I put on this tinfoil hat.

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.

DEAR GAG ORDER

by Susan Vespoli

The New Verse News originally published several of the poems that appear in this collection:  "Before I Knew Adam Had Died,”  "My Ex-Husband Calls… ,"   … In Reverse,” “I Am Finally Handed… ,” “Under Investigation… ,” “Dear 2022,” “Poem for My Middle Finger.”

“Do not speak of the loss or the case,” 

my lawyer’s email upon learning I sent copies

of One of Them Was Mine to President Biden,

Governor Hobbs, Senator Mark Kelly, 

Terry Gross, and a local NPR podcast host.

Dear tight strand of puka shells,

tiny beads and a flat silver OM sign,

my neck skin cinched.

Dear SHUT UP. Zipped lips.

Stage fright.    My mom’s, 

“Only say nice things.” 

Dear voice, found in my mid-forties

after a bout of cancer, the therapist

telling me later when I answered

FINE to every question, she knew

I had a lot of work to do. Dear Speak

the truth. Dear I can’t figure it out 

if I don’t write about it. Dear canceled 

poetry readings at Peregrine Bookstore

in Prescott and Changing Hands in Tempe.

Dear emotional eating, peanut M&Ms, kettle corn, 

asiago bagel, Voodoo Ranger IPA in an orange can. 

Dear “Do not speak of the loss or the case.”

Dear silenced.     Dear Adam, I am here 

to follow the thread to give you a voice. 

Susan Vespoli continues to write poems about the loss and the case, even though she wasn’t able to publicly share them for many months. She was finally able to read her book One of Them Was Mine about her son Adam's murder by a Phoenix police officer at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on January 5, 2024, because the book's poems (and the ones from Blame It on the Serpent) were already in the hands of the cop’s lawyers who were using her poetry books as evidence against her son's value as a human being.

BIDEN’S AGE

by Paul Hostovsky

Of course it’s a concern.

I, for one, would like to hear him talk about it

more candidly, 

the constipation, for example, 

and whether he uses Benefiber or Metamucil

or Miralax, or is that a state 

secret? I’d like to know how long 

on average he sits on the john

before there’s any movement 

on the southern front, 

and whether he writes any speeches 

in that attitude, that pose like Rodin’s Penseur 

sur la toilette. Because I myself

have sat on the john for an eternity 

without making any headway

but I get some of my best ideas there,

this one, for example, about Biden’s age

and my desire as a Democrat

for my president to be more forthcoming

about the daily indignities of the old, 

such as constipation, an indignity it isn’t dignified

or presidential to talk about in public perhaps,

but if he did talk about it he’d get my vote,

and possibly the votes of more than a few

Republicans. Because look at Trump–

I mean the guy is full of shit 

but he won’t admit it. I think if Biden 

admitted it, he’d have a good chance 

of winning the race 

and maybe get the runs

which would really turn things around.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.