TROMPE L'OEIL

by David Thoreen

Pere Borrell del Caso’s most famous work, "Escaping Criticism" (1874), uses trompe l'oeil to blur the boundary between real and fictitious space. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons via BBC).

after "Escaping Criticism"

Historians say it began in Pompeii,
with murals artfully deceiving the eye
into believing that beyond a wall lay
another room, or a garden and blue sky.

Dutch painters polished the ploy: a display
of totems owned by the powerful; often, a sly
reminder of death—the candle burned partway...
or there, at rest on the painted frame, a fly.

Pere Borrell del Caso’s barefoot boy will not stay
in his painting. Forget this gilt frame. Escape or die
trying. Enough posing. Why can’t he just play golf
or fillet a minion, parlay Kellyanne with her con of the day,
send Pence off to pray, pay somebody something to make it all go away?
Your pronunciation is fine:  T***p lie, T***p lie, T***p lie.


Editor's Note: 


David Thoreen teaches literature and writing at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  His poems have appeared in Natural Bridge, Slate, Seneca Review, New Letters, TheNewVerse.News, and elsewhere.

T***P BUMPS HIS HEAD, A BIGGER

by  David Spicer  

                                         

Cartoon by Darcy, Cleveland.com, May 10, 2017

idiot than ever. No, not impossible:
decades ago he grabbed a Voodoo
princess by her pussy in his penthouse.
Curses galore at the height of your infamy,
Goldie Small Hands! T***p didn’t laugh
but drools today. Today, swastikas curve fetally.
Today, the sheets of KKKers bleed.
Beavis and Butthead chew Tic-Tacs.
T***p’s blonde miracle weeps tangerine tears.
Whitey Pence shocks himself into a coma,
handmaids arcing around him, praying to Buddha.
Chris Christie scarfs twenty cheeseburgers.
Kellyanne Conway talks circles around herself
like a carousel pony. Congress is revolting.
Eddie Munster for Prez! moderates roar.
David Duke for King! fascists yell.
I want Ted Nugent! the Alaskan nincompoop drawls.
On second thought, I want me! Anarchists, nihilists,
and poets celebrate with a three-day bacchanal.
T***p disappears, descends into the earth via ICBM,
lands in China, deported to North Korea.
SUPREME LEADER STUPID HAIRCUT
BEHEADS ORANGE FACE!!! shouts
New York Post. Putin mourns, then farts.
Throngs cheer and party in the world’s megacities.
Back home, T***p’s cronies and their carpet bags
red-eye to the North. Little Jeff Sessions preens
in the mirror of the Justice Department toilet,
tokes his Alabama Bound weed, and dances helter-skelter
like Lorde, collapsing. Eddie Munster! Eddie Munster
for Prez! Gut Medicare, Eddie! Gut Social Security!
his toadies leer and chant. We love Hillary! progressives
scream. Bill Maher, we demand Bill Maher! millennials
moan. GO FUCK YOURSELVES! Bill Maher megahorns.
You’re dreaming again, honey. Wake up,
my wife says, shaking my shoulders.
What’s he done now? I ask.

David Spicer is a retired proofreader for a medical journal and has had poems accepted by or published in Reed Magazine, Alcatraz, The Mocking Heart Review, North Dakota Quarterly, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Nude Bruce Review and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

I HAVE BEEN COUNTING ALL HER LIES

by Barbara Crooker

Here's what Kellyanne Conway had to say about T***p when she was working for Cruz.

for Kellyanne Conway

Alternative truths, facts in disguise.
Microwaves that act as spies,
telephones containing bugs,
politicians who are not thugs
or Russian agents; no, not them.
Healthcare run by businessmen
whose focus on the bottom line
ignores the needs of yours and mine.
Whose vision to make this country great
will just include the ones who hate
and those whose income isn't taxed—
that's only for those of us who lack
loophole savvy CPAs—
If Kellyanne could have her way
America would soon become
a land of rich and white and dumb.
So watch out for your TV set
that now surveils your every step.
No Meals on Wheels left at your door.
No free lunches, that's for sure.
No one succeeds by being poor.


Barbara Crooker is the author of eight books of poetry, including Small Rain, Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems, and most recently Les Fauves. Her work has appeared in The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Common Wealth:  Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, and on The Writer’s Almanac. Barbara Crooker has received a number of awards, including the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships.

ALTERNATIVE FACTS

by Nancy Iannucci 

Bridget Bishop’s tavern
was a bump on a buggy ride
from Salem Village to Salem Town

where the menfolk congregated
like hogs over mugs of grog
they watched her closely
as she weaved in and out
of each Goodman,
bobbing like a blood-red
cherry in a cocktail.
they licked their lips
when she spoke outhouse-speak
& tried into the sunrise to intercept
her pass, grope her smicket
underneath a thicket
of red calico but she was
brassy, nimble like a cricket.
her familiar tormented their flesh
as they slept wet from dreams
of her dancing above their beds:
It was Bridget Bishop! they pointed.
She pinned me down in the night;
I could not sleep nor breathe!
the townsfolk sat & swayed
to a melody of alternative facts
& with their eyes closed
chanted in their Sunday best,
Guilty! Lock her up!
Hathorne's gavel pounded
sending her swinging
to the whine
of frictional
wood and twine
& it was there at
Proctor’s Ledge where
the menfolk licked
their lips for the
last time
trusting their
satanic satyriasis
had been cast out
with the witch.

Nancy Iannucci is a historian who teaches history and lives poetry in Troy, NY. Her work is published/forthcoming in numerous publications including Bop Dead City, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Star 82 Review (*82), Gargoyle, Amaryllis, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Nixes Mate Review,  Poetry Breakfast, Rose Red Review, Three Drops from a Cauldron, and her poem “Howling” won one of Yellow Chair Review’s Rock the Chair Challenges.

Details at ExtraNewsFeed

WE ARE ALL KENTUCKIANS NOW

by Diane Elayne Dees




How do we mourn
those who lost their lives
in the great Bowling Green
Massacre? For no one knows

how many died, who was left
lame or blind, who tearfully stares
at the photo of a dead loved one
at the end of each day.

How can we grieve
when the talking heads conspire
to cover up the detritus
of a bloody national tragedy,

while the women wearing hijabs
laugh at us behind their sinister
veils? The survivors have been
silenced, their misery dismissed.

How do we move on
if we are not allowed to rage
at those who came from a foreign
place, and quietly entered

Bowling Green and slaughtered
unknown numbers? The secret
had to be exposed, the reckoning
will come in time. Prepare.

Diane Elayne Dees's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women's professional tennis worldwide.