GOOD NIGHT AMERICA, JANUARY 2026

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

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

Good night almighty oaks, good night acorns
snug in shells. Goodnight hens, asleep on perches. 
Good night good people of Minneapolis St. Paul
hanging sheets of plastic over doors broken down 
by ICE agents. Lullaby your little ones to sleep.  
Good night neighbors with cameras and whistles. 
Good night Mr. President, tweeting your fury,
slide easy into haunting dreams of disloyalty, 
 
dreams of failed plastic surgery, bad poll numbers,
dreams of not enough admirers or paying guests—
Remember the kerfuffle when caviar was served 
at Mar-a-Lago in tiny plastic spoons? Never enough! 
It’s natural to want more caviar, money and power. 
It’s natural to want kids not to be afraid or hungry
or molested or separated or zip-tied or teargassed. 

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s latest novel is The Waters, W.W. Norton, 2024.

THREE YEARS SINCE JANUARY 6TH

by David Feela

Traitor Trump is a drawing by Mike Scott which was uploaded to Fine Art America on December 8th, 2022.

the rhetoric simmers
the threats rise like steam
the traitor still leading the charge
the office in florida a command post
the golf course his bunker
the tower branded by his babel 
the lies
the three years burning like acid reflux in democracy’s gut
the smell of pepper spray in everything he says
the mass deportation of his conscience  
the rumor he doesn’t have one
the constitutional disdain he swears to protect
the lies
the charisma he carries like a infected boil
the rule of law that doesn’t apply to him
the courtroom where he sits and glares
the indictments and mug shot 
the lies
the money he grifts 
the pussy he’s entitled to grab
the election he never won
the lies
the reelection he continues to rig 
the bible raised as a prop
the lies
the comb over that covers his heart

David Feela writes monthly columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his latest chapbook Little Acres.

LIKE GOLD

by Karen Olshansky

This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records on Dec. 7, 2021, in a storage room at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., that had fallen over with contents spilling onto the floor. Justice Department/AP via TIME.

In front of deep yellow drapes

on the stage of the gilded ballroom

stacked in haphazard rows

in the marbled powder room

under the crystal chandelier

behind the commode

piled high like cardboard towers

in a storage closet near clothing 

wrapped in cleaner’s plastic

spilled like a garbage can ransacked 

by raccoons in cartons overturned

with scattered yellowed 

newspapers and photos:

precious papers,

secrets that protect, that keep 

us safe, that the braggadocio

hordes for his own pleasure and profit,

a man protected by

slavish minions

and deplorable citizens 

in thrall to an UnAmerica.

Karen Olshansky lives in Marin County, California with her husband and a well fed Koi named Pickle Face. She writes poetry in order to maintain her sanity. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Tuck magazine, The News Verse News and the anthologies Lingering in the Margins, Unsealing Our Secrets, and Unspoken.

DJT’S HAIKU INDICTMENT DAY

by SusanTerris 

In court      

      
Not guilty, said Trump
Yes.  Okay, thank you oh yes
Yes. I do. Yes. Yes.
 
At Mar-a-Lago

blah ba lunaticans thTfake
criminalhateyeashittypersecution
bbwitch huntuckjail them all
 

SusanTerris is an editor, a poet, who has published books and chapbooks and has been given a Pushcart and has been in Best American Poetry.

AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF SEARCH WARRANT

by Michel Steven Krug 

Seizing the day requires the magistrate of the self to review sworn internal testimony, some of which is redacted by your affiant, as justified, to preserve dignity, when in fact the heavy black asphalt that covers those undisclosed confidential sources, is to preserve self-deception, that bleeds, when heated like molten lava, over all that which is tacit and evident. It is not unreasonable to search the house of the self, reviewing the papers and effects written on internal walls, like semi-ancient hieroglyphs and experiences that don’t belong to you. Therefore, access and seizure, are requested as follows:

1. In the chamber of the xxxxxxxxxxxx will be found ************************************************************************ recordings.
 
2. Between the webbing of the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX from the Davos Conference.
 
3.In the serpentine lining +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++is currently indecipherable. 
 
4. Amid the left-side quadrant of the papillae ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. toxins.
 
5. Your affiant has personally spoken with ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^, who confirms that $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ has been identified in 141 different locations of the ==============================================, including the bathroom.
 
Your affiant acknowledges that it undoubtedly feels violative, but only by seizure, inspection and reflection, elucidating each and every probable cause, can the path from Top Secret to transparency be realized. Ironically, without the seizure, the soul is defacto arrested, shackled, seized, like a sci fi attack, spilling all over others. Some admire audacity. Others condemn it. But no other remedy short of this relief will suffice.

Further your affiant saith not.

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 Liquid Imagination, Blue Mountain Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Portside, The New Verse News, JMWW, Cagibi, Silver Blade, Crack the Spine, Dash, Mikrokosmos, North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, Poets Reading The News, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Main Street Rag and Brooklyn Review.

THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HOUSE LAVATORY

by Peter Nohrnberg

Now gather round, and ye shall hear

A tale of epic daring

About a King who tweeted lots  

But wasn’t into sharing.   

 

Forsooth it was a vile Act

That drove him into battle:

“Preserve all Records” Congress bade;

But records are known to tattle. 

 

At first he simply tore them up

But a Northern Plot took shape.

Foul thanes restored his mangled foes,

mended with Scotch tape. 

 

A vision came to aid the King

—O I fear my rhyme shall spoil it!—

To gather up his papers dear 

And take them to the toilet.

 

Now he himself sat on a throne

Of 24 karat gold,

But in the White House was installed

A porcelain commode. 

 

Notes, memos, logs, and Post-its too

In basin he did pitch.

A smirk upon his face, quoth he:

“Toilets never snitch!”

                                   

He flushed it once, he flushed it twice,

He cursed the gods above!

And with his little stubby hands

He gave a forceful shove.

 

Who knows what knowledge then was lost?

A proof of Fermat’s theorem?

Evidence of Electoral Fraud?

A Covid-19 serum? 

 

What was wiped out I cannot tell:

Mum’s the Orange Mandarin.

Destruction worse than what befell

The Library Alexandrian! 

 

The doughty deed now done he left

The toilet overflowing.

He soared above the effluvia,

POTUS the All-Knowing.

 

And yet he did not know when he

Flushed it all down the crapper,

That squatting in the stall next door

Was CNN’s Jake Tapper! 

 

Out burst the newsman, overwhelmed

By fast approaching flood,

He saw the thickening of the tide

And sensed it was not mud!

 

“Who brought on this catastrophe,

Who took this massive dump?” 

The scales then fell from Jacob’s eyes:

It only could be T***p.

 

For clinging to the leather sole

Of the shoe of Squire Tapper:

A doodle of two giant boobs

On a McDonalds wrapper.

 

It was the flush heard round the world,

Except in Mar-a-Lago.

About his deed he’ll tell no tales

Just like good old Iago.    

 

‘Tis true, ‘tis true the Don is dumb,

But everyone else is dumber;

He even one-upped Tricky Dick

By being his own Plumber!

A scholar of literary modernism, cultural critic, and poet, Peter Nohrnberg’s poems and essays have appeared in Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, Oxford Poetry, and Public Seminar. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. His essay “Joyce, Irish Photography, and the Making and Publicizing of National, Familial, and Authorial Images" is forthcoming in Joyce Studies Annual 2021.

PARDON ME

by Michel Steven Krug

Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

We cross a bridge of shadows

when perjury is presumed forgiven

by a nation fighting for its lives,

this faintly boastful oligarch

who asked us to spritz Lysol like Binaca

to kill unwary opponents on contact.

 

He urges his confederates:

scatter the statistics, turn the numerals

Roman, so the national news reports the

toll like snowflakes in Viet Nam.

Say: the fraud is in the mail, in the

machines, then the rule of loyalty prevails.

 

The oval office birthed an infection

the careless insistence like shells on furlough

Flynn no longer in jeopardy.

He’s given a mask to take wherever it’s needed

the plague of Turkey behind him,

a reserved suite in Fort Mar-A Lago awaits.

 

Coerced truth is just a ploy,

Another plea for alchemy answered,

sent at the highest twitch:

the pardon has come, Papadopoulos,

the pardon is coming, Manafort,

resonance for an imperfect union.

 

We live in an era of broken pleas and oaths.

We cross a bridge of shadows tonight

While others debate a return to openness.

Who waits on the other side,

Reveals the bobbing

of a constitution on the margin.

 

Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. He also litigates. His poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Poetry24, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review, and others. 

NOTES FROM THE WEEKLY MEETING OF THE 75-YEAR-OLD ANTIFA PROVOCATEURS

by John Hodgen

Welcome back, Martin. How’s the noggin?
(Laughter.) (Applause.)
You really used your head this time, big fella. Careful when you log in.
Taking one for the team, Martin. Way to go. One for the cause.
And great job with the Fake Blood Pellet in the Ear trick.
And the old Backwards Trip and Fall Stutter Step. Worked like a charm.
All that practice paid off. A perfect 10 from the Russian judge. Terrific.
Wall to wall on OANN. And you got the CNN and MSNBC crowd alarmed.
You’re a meme now. More people have seen you fall than watched the Towers.
Score one for ANTIFA. Talk about defunding the police. Fight the power.
And you even got all the police scanner info with your secret decoder ring.
Proud of you, big guy. Let’s get started now for your next gig.
Mar-a-Lago. The old swan dive under the golf cart. Do your thing.
This is going to be big.

Editor's Note: The 75-year-old man hospitalized after he was pushed by a police officer during a peaceful protest last week in Buffalo, New York, suffered a brain injury as a result of the incident, his lawyer revealed Thursday. Kelly Zarcone said her client, activist Martin Gugino, "is starting physical therapy," which Zarcone called "a step in the right direction. As heartbreaking as it is, his brain is injured and he is well aware of that now," Zarcone said in a statement. "He feels encouraged and uplifted by the outpouring of support which he has received from so many people all over the globe. It helps. He is looking forward to healing and determining what his ‘new normal’ might look like." The New Verse News offers this poem to cheer him and those who have come to know and love Martin for his work and sacrifice. We wish him all the best.

John Hodgen is the Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University in Worcester, MA.  Hodgen won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).  His fifth book The Lord of Everywhere is out from Lynx House/University of Washington Press.

CHASING THE AMERICAN DREAM

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

“Unpresidented,” by Sue Cole at the Galerie St. Etienne via The New Yorker, January 1, 2017

Forty thousand [immigrants] had come [to the U.S. since January] from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office. —The New York Times, December 23, 2017

Some day, a hut hurting someplace—
from creaked bolts, jolts and thunder bolts
may find sunshine, side by side the spire
of Mar-a-Largo—a dream.

After the settling of rain, hurricanes and all,
then would they embrace what is left
of the saltiness of seas and foreign sand left
on shore or savor jointly, the after taste of sea weed.

After the atmosphere has rested from pouring rain,
side by side still, they will behold clearly the combined smiles
of gods which used to hide behind layers and layers
of pretentious stratopheric ozone—

After the smiling of gods,
side by side still, they will pour out whatever soot is left
in their bellies as contrite offerings to the gods—
the joint confessional and thanksgiving of immigrant houses,
made welcome.


Lind Grant-Oyeye, a winner of the Universal Human Rights Student Network human rights poetry award, was born in Nigeria. She has work in several literary magazines world wide.

MAR-A-LAGO

by Alejandro Escudé

Image from “Donald T***p at Mar-a-Lago” by Eric Harthen.

President Trump kicked off his holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago Friday night at a dinner where he told friends, "You all just got a lot richer," referencing the sweeping tax overhaul he signed into law hours earlier.  —CBS News, December 23, 2017

There are many places like it in California,
named after high class dreams, places
that promise drinks and ease, places that
don’t exist until you arrive then proceed
to disappear once you do arrive and check into
those warmly lit lobbies, fireplace nearby,
a bar with mortgaged cocktails, European-faux,
and palm trees; in LA as in Florida, palms
are usually guilty as shit—the sun as well,
that red and blue sock puppet in the sky.
I see the allure of signing the tax overhaul
as one would a pricey restaurant bill, blurry
from that last martini, that last buttery morsel
of lobster, well done steak. I could imagine god
as a speedboat, razor-edged as a chef’s knife,
the tomes girding his legitimacy like life rings
on a yacht, his high priests hotel concierges
handing over the only key card to the truth.
We should never think of them as uncouth
or snobby or even criminal. They’re in a hurry
to get there, to get to Mar-a-Lago. They wish
they could have left an hour or two sooner,
but this law had to be signed, a diamond scrawl,
cameras flashing like the eyes of the Titans.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

BROKEN RECORD(S)

by Edmund Conti




Most lies. Most firings.
Fewest hirings.
Most gaffes.
Most laughs.
Most insults.
Fewest results.
Most lies (latest count).
Most cronies (large amount).
Most vacations
at southern plantations.
Believe me.  Believe me. Be-
lieve me.  Believe me.  Believe
me. Believe me. Be…

Edmund Conti has been published in new verse news, in new verse news, in new verse news, in new...

THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE IN CHARGE DURING A FLOOD

by Diane Elayne Dees

Eat birthday cake in the Arizona desert.
If, however, you’re not invited to the party
like the other guy was, don’t despair:
Arizona still needs you, though it’s as dry
as a page torn from the Constitution.
There is work to be done in the West,
though relentless rain assaults Houston,
and parts of Texas look like a war zone.

You could briefly fly over and have an aide
explain to you what’s going on; it took only
moments to fly clueless over Louisiana.
After that, you’re free to leave what looks
like the end of the world in the hands
of the callous and incompetent.
Heck of a job.

But you like to do things your own way,
to break the rules because you can.

You could ride out the storm at Mar-a-Lago
while Texans sleep on the floors of shelters,
avoid the bunker while they wade through
flooded highways. Or you could gather
the press to remind them that Texas
gave you its electoral votes, and the streets
were mobbed for your inauguration.
And you could assure Texans, as they search
for gas, water, food, their furniture, their pets,
their sanity—that everything will be fine
because there soon will be a wall.

Diane Elayne Dees's poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita. Diane, who lives in Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women's professional tennis throughout the world.

THAT'SA MY BOY

by Edmund Conti




When your son (what a guy!) meets a Russian and spy
That’sa politics.

When he then says “So what?” since they got diddly squat
That’sa politics.

Dems will sing "What a ding-a-ling, what a ding-a-ling"
And you’ll sing “Mar-a-Lago.”
Let them sing, "Junior Junior jerk, Junior Junior jerk"
You can all keep Chicago.

When the votes make you drool even though it’s not cool
That’sa politics.
When you dance down the street tweeting tweet after tweet
You’re on top.

When you walk in a dream and you’re fooling your team and the voters
Scuzza me, but you see, just between you and me
That’sa politics

Edmund Conti is not related to Eddie "Butterass" Conti nor is he connected. Not to anyone. Especially not the Poetry Mafia.

THERE'S SOMETHING DYING IN MY BRAIN

by Gil Hoy

Why, in wealthy America

must the beggared sick
lay ill in their beds

While a well-to-do
privileged white man

Dines on fine rich foods,
swings at a little white ball

at his country club
in warm sunny Florida.

While a smiling young girl
skips along the beach in her
wildly carefree exuberance

While an inquisitive circling
seagull soars overhead,

Searching for something
fresh to eat in the sea’s puddles.

Gil Hoy is a personal injury lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts, a former Town Selectman, and a regular contributor to TheNewVerse.News. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and online journals.

DOMESTIC GODDESS

by Katherine Smith

I do my best to ignore the news
vacuuming carpets, scrubbing goo
from microwave and screen.
I polish floors, un-tarnish green

copper tea kettles, pots that gleam.
I pay the bills, and bake a cake,
greet some evangelists, even take
a pamphlet from their little boy.

Though I’m a Jew and they are goy,
I wish the family Easter joy.
They spread across the neighborhood
this day that I devote to chores.

They preach good news from door to door
this Sunday the cable journalists
report to work, for T***p has pissed
off in a single week, the globe

from loving pope to xenophobe,
Syria, Russia, Britain, North Korea,
Christian, Jew, Sunni, Shia.
While North Korea serenades

an anniversary with grim parades
of weapons, and democracy devolves,
T***p relaxes with a game of golf.
I cook and clean with half my ego

adrift through Seoul, Aleppo, Mar-a-lago.

Katherine Smith’s previous publications include appearances in Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. My second book Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014.

TO EAT AND LEAVE THE NIGHT AN EMPTY PLATE

by Alejandro Escudé

A Donald Trump mural painted by street artist Hanksy on Orchard St. between Canal and Division Sts. on the Lower East Side. —NY Daily News Photo by SHAWN INGLIMA

In the blonde hair-skunk, in the barbershop of the mind
where the scissors raise hairs and pat them down
to demand what one wants not needs, the patience of a lion,
ingenuity of a roach, America with a Trump at its head,
the roach motel of the world, on his knees, a nice picture…
what he said to the young woman on t.v.,
a working class woman, it’s a nice picture, you
on your knees. Walled off in the mind, the soul
a mountain range of rage and nowhere to go but
to the streets where a young man bears the likeness
of North America on his bloodied face.
Do we recall the ISIS terrorist in his jeep
happy to drag five corpses? Five corpses
hanging from the moon, five corpses loaded like bullets
into the chamber of a gun, you fire-walker, you brandist,
you woman-basher, you human torture chamber,
you radioactive toad, you lacquered manipulator,
you burnt toast anachronism, you oversexed missile,
you Roman fop, you Towers burning, one man leaps
from a window of the World Trade, martyr man,
L-man, J-woman, moon feces in the shape of Trump,
in the shape of Mar-a-Lago, in the shape of Chris Christie,
piles in the cemetery where Lorca’s body lies forever
falling, never forgetting the artists’ Golgotha
in the rainstorm of human history where Trump’s foot soldiers
come to take Federico away at dawn as the rooster crows
as the apostle drowns his only son as George Washington
steps on the muddy bank as Hamilton takes aim at Burr
as Burr is borne again as the harrowing present grows wings
as the Star-Spangled Banner itself sings as the baseball field
turns to boner flowers or red licorice for wealthy trophy wives
as the hives of the rich enlarge as the states pronounce
themselves more significant than the next. Who comes
in the name of business rats? Who’s driven in Picasso
limousines? Who comes in chariots of designer
water bottles? Who comes in light-clouds Wall Street?
Who comes wagging an Arizona finger? Who comes
riding a marble horse? To eat and leave the night
an empty plate for children to weep, for the landlord
to tie our wrists down in the apex of our city streets
where the thief is arrested, shouting in stressed vowels,
as the helicopter shakes our house out of its safe slumber
and into another broken eight years of politicos and bankers,
eight years of sourceless regrets, eight years of teachers
blamed like communists, eight years of flogging
middlemen, eight years of clown-hog campaigns,
eight years of pornographic magazine covers, eight years
of cigars and neon caviar, eight years of swimming in pools
full of sheep semen. We, it began, we, it finishes, we.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.