LEGAL ACTION AGAINST THE PRESIDENT

by Paul Dickey




Speaker John Boehner is planning to file a lawsuit against President Obama on behalf of the House of Representatives. Though he's been extremely vague on what exactly he plans to sue for, Boehner wrote on Sunday that Obama has "circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action," and that the House "has an obligation" to try and stop him. What, exactly, would this lawsuit entail, and how would it proceed? --VOX, July 9, 2014


I hear Boehner wants to sue
the President who will not do
just as Johnny likes.
He’s got nowhere with strikes,
but his cud maybe judges might chew.

But the Speaker has no issue.
He sobs into his tissue:
“What charge can I raise?
It’s no good just to curse the Gays.
Should I call Barack a Hindu?”

So he got a lawyer from Texas
experienced with a couple of ex-es
who wrote up a charge
and biggie-sized it to go large
and eat fries all the way to D.C. in his Lexus.

The charge, of course, was serious
but much too confused and mysterious
that Bachmann’s hot air
had barely a prayer
of even getting Fox News delirious.

And thus John comes to grips with his fate.
His put-down of Obama must wait,
so he asks him to golf
while Congress takes July off,
since nothing so big’s on their plate.


Paul Dickey’s first full length poetry manuscript They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January,2011 and was nominated by the press for the 2011 National Book Award in Poetry.  His second book Wires Over the Homeplace was published in the Fall of 2013 by Pinyon Publishing.  His poetry has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Mid-American Review, Midwest Quarterly, Pleaides, Bellevue Literary Review,  Crab Orchard Review and online at www.linebreak.org.

THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE SUMMARIZES HIS PARTY'S TAKE-AWAYS FROM THE SENSITIVITY TO GENDER DIFFERENCES SEMINAR

by Michael Brockley

Cartoon by Paul Szep

I think I speak for my colleagues when I say we’ve profited from today’s session. Most of us have friends, even family members, who are proud Vagina-Americans. So let’s agree to put the finer points about consensual and legitimate rape in the round file cabinet. Let’s pledge to redouble our efforts to create a society where our feminist friends and other unattractive women can access the mainstream success stories we take for granted. By starting small businesses, for instance, making gingerbread cookies or doilies and then expanding until they’re competing with Famous Amos and Walmart. I foresee a time when dozens of our members have mommy parts. Free market women with empty nests and a knack for memorizing the Good Book will stand beside us against minimum wage socialism, interspecies marriage and bans on the private ownership of drones. No doubt Code Pink has neutered American men, so we’re going to have to mothball bills requiring rape insurance until the deep pockets put our fat boy in the White House. And let’s not muddy the waters with any off-the-cuff remarks about rape being a gift from God. We can mend some fences by giving teachers merit pay. A hundred bucks. My better half always warns me against bringing gifts that come with electrical cords and surprises that run on batteries. Maybe the NRA can discount those pink snub noses I saw advertised last Christmas. I don’t think a dollop of estrogen poses any danger to our objectives. But I was surprised to discover 54% of voters prefer to leave the toilet seat down so they don’t fall in. Almost half. Who knew?


Michael Brockley works as a school psychologist in rural northeast Indiana. Several of his poems have previously appeared in The New Verse News. In 2013, he had poems accepted by the Indiana Humanities' tribute to National Poetry Month, the Borderlands Project: Eastern Poems and the Vonnegut Library Literary Magazine.

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.

THE MEASURE OF A LEADER

by Ed Bennett



SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Well, Bob, we should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws that we repeal.


And each broken bridge,
each rutted road paid for,
abandoned by our indolence,
these are the marks of progress.

Every hungry stomach rumble,
every second job to meet ends,
every idle worker without benefits,
these are the stories of self reliance

by those of us, four hundred fifty strong
(more or less)
who get full time pay
for part time legislation
(or none at all)

and nothing to show except
a blockade of obfuscation,
an obdurate session with
our greatest strength:
a calculated, orchestrated
shout of "NO!".

I am their leader,
the New Moses,
who would rather
sit in the desert heat
than move on to promises.

Let me lead you, brothers and sisters,
away from the evil of the Common Good;
kneel with me here in this desolate 'scape
to worship the imaginary calf
of a Laughing Baal.


Ed Bennett is a poet and reviewer living in Las Vegas, NV. His works have appeared in The Externalist, Touch: The Journal of Healing, The Lavender Review, Quill and Parchment and Lilipo. He is a staff editor for Quill and Parchment Magazine, the recipient of a Pushcart Nomination and the author of “A Transit of Venus”.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

by Llyn Clague





Friends, Americans, countrymen, hear me out.
I come to praise Christie, not criticize him.
The good that men do lives on after them,
While their mistakes typically die with them.
He is an honorable man, who has at heart
The welfare of the people.  His critics cry,       
He has ambition.  But did he not embrace
Even Obama, prince of the other party,
After Sandy?  Ambition should be made
Of sterner stuff.  Did he not excoriate –
Excoriate, I tell you – John Boehner,
Leader of his own party?  This is not
A man who puts his own ambition Ahead
Of the people’s weal.  His enemies complain
He’s costing the state $24 million
For two special elections to fill Lautenberg’s
Senate seat.  To save the people’s money,
Did he not cut pensions and health benefits,
Slash $8 million in college tuition subsidies,
$10 million in after-school programs
And $12 million more in charity care?
Would a man of overweening ambition so flaunt           
The common people’s needs?  Just to “win big”
In his own re-election and impress the fat cats             
Who dominate presidential politics?
Chris Christie, my friends, has the people’s good
At heart, and he is an honorable man.


Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, Ibbetson Street.  His sixth book, The I in India and US, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.

WHY WE'LL MISS YOU, MICHELE BACHMANN

by Chris O’Carroll





You spit on wimpy moderation
Like that zillionaire from Bain’s.
Your bulb’s less dim than Sarah Palin’s,
Your deck less full than Herman Cain’s.

You tried to out a State Department
Muslim mole, which was insaner
Than could win support from even
Right-wing stalwarts like John Boehner.

You’ve claimed the Founding Fathers were
Crusaders for Emancipation,
And anti-cancer vaccines are
A cause of mental retardation.

Gay marriage, like Obamacare,
Is something that you love to hate.
Your husband’s counseling helps queers
Become, like him, completely straight.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  A recent Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition prizewinner, he has also published poems in Angle, First Things, Light, The Rotary Dial, and The Spectator, among other print and online journals.

REV. BOEHNER'S HOMILY

by Ed Bennett





We have devolved,
you and I and the others,
the men and women around us
bunkered into our place,
our last stand
until the next one,

without a step or glance
into the middle ground,
the no-man’s land
of negotiation, reasonableness,
the anathema of all things
neither black nor white.

This is why we speak the parable
of vaginas with an off-switch,
the blood right of automatic fire,
the self imposed exile of
twelve million of those
who have the wrong accent.

We will ignore
the needs of those
without a lobby or PAC
but will make citizens
of every sacred corporate logo.
Let us pray.


Ed Bennett is a poet and reviewer living in Las Vegas, NV. His works have appeared in The Externalist, Touch: The Journal of Healing, The Lavender Review, Quill and Parchment and Lilipo. He is a staff editor for Quill and Parchment Magazine, the recipient of a Pushcart Nomination and the author of “A Transit of Venus”.