JANUARY 6 SLUSH FUND LIMERICKS

by Paul A. Freeman

 

 

Cartoon by Clay Jones

DOJ official told GOP ally that big payouts were coming for Jan. 6 defendants: Months before the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund was announced, Ed Martin predicted Capitol rioters would get millions, even if it took until 2028, two people told NBC News. May 20, 2026

 

 

They climbed up to Capitol Hill,

Mike Pence they were going to kill;

and now, for their crime,

’gainst reason or rhyme,

their pockets they’re hoping to fill.

 

The criminals of January six,

are getting a monetary fix.

Yet women abused

and sorely misused

by Epstein and friends still get nix.

 

Paul A. Freeman is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States of America. The book is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul Freeman is the author of numerous published short stories, poems, plays and articles.

THE SADDEST DAY OF MY LIFE: JANUARY 6, 2021

by Nan Ottenritter

on the eve of the January 6 hearings

Television crews and technicians prepare for Thursday night's hearing by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, on June 7. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP via The Washington Post)

I want to say my saddest moment of my life

was when my first love left me, my father died, or

when we pulled the plug on my terminally ill brother.

 

I want to say the saddest day of my life

was a missed job opportunity, a miscarriage,

a failed novel.

 

But truth be told, it was seeing

our stormed Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The cracked glass, ransacked desks.

 

Hearing screams of trapped Capitol Police,

chants of hanging Mike Pence,

the hubris of those unquestioning, disrespectful

 

of all I have come to regard as second only to god,

sacred as only sacred in a secular sense can be.

How can you not appreciate our American democracy?

 

This democracy is the only life I know.

Please don’t take it away from me, from us.

Let me talk to you of miracles,

 

moments of shame and victory,

moments shared and shattered,

moments that are, like it or not, our collective lives.

 

I want to remain with you.

And you?

Nan Ottenritter lives and writes in Richmond, VA. Her first chapbook Eleanor, Speak is available from Finishing Line Press.

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

by Bonnie Naradzay

Detail of cover of book by Bearded Doctor.

after Ilya Kaminsky

we lived happily, forgive us, 

we survived, even thrived, 

the way we slunk into the mud

beside the walkways, gave in, 

turned our eyes away, gestured 

with gratitude, wore masks, 

our eyeglasses clouding over, 

vision blurred, happily seeing

hypocrites roll up their sleeves, 

watch them all jump the lines, 

pull rank, Pence with his naked 

flabby arm, bravely showing 

how it’s done, we stood aside,

read about the one pardoned 

for ordering her police dog

to savage a homeless man 

backed against the wall,

showing how it’s done, 

war criminals pardoned,

mercenaries, paid with 

our taxes, gunning down

children with impunity, 

the nakedness of our nation,

we bowed in obeisance, 

sidled by, raised our hands,

excused ourselves, waved 

a note from the teacher,

we lived happily (forgive us)

                     the long year, is it over yet?  

     

Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.   

ST. PETER'S PENCE

Edmund Conti is as old as the hills and older than the candidates.

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.

THE RIGHT TO REFUSE TO WEAR A MASK

by William Aarnes

the right to distrust
               expert advice, the right
                              to discount the facts,

the right to lie,
               the right to ignore
                              the common good,

the cherished right
               to intimidate with guns,
                             the right to infringe

on women’s rights,
               the right to profit
                              from wrecking the Earth,

the right to insist
               you’re better born
                              than others, the right

to hate whoever
               you wrong, the right
                              to yearn for tyranny


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

ENDEMIC

by Robert Knox

Illustration by João Fazenda for The New Yorker

Let's not believe in science
Let's just play it all by ear
Let's say it's all a swindle
There's nothing, folks, to fear
Let's blame it on the other guys,
who want to take our place
It's a hoax! And a disgrace!

Swindle time, scoundrel time
Don't let it all unwind
Dwindle time, fiddle time, reduce the prime
Con job on the knotty pine
A little bug in the system's all
Just wait, I'm sure we'll soon be fine

We're practicing our magic word
Like the Marvel man's 'Shazam!'
We'll say our word some lovely night
and deconstruct this sham
There is no call for fright
It will disappear when we say the word
We'll wonder why—it's so absurd!—
we ever could have been so dense

Don't ask me what the word is now
I'll keep you in sus-Pence


Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of a novel based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, titled Suosso's Lane. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as Off The Coast, The Journal of American Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Califragile, and Unlikely Stories. His poetry chapbook Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty, published in 2017, was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. The chapbook Cocktails in the Wild followed in 2018. He was recently named the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.

CLEARITY

by Mark Williams

Cartoon by First Dog on the Moon

“Hello. I am Austin Baggerly and I am giving my speech
in Mrs. Colley's fourth grade class at West Park Elementary,
which you already know since you are my friends
and you are here too. Mrs. Colley said to give a speech
on something that our country needs more of.
I asked my mom what our country needs more of
and she said clearity. I asked her what is clearity
and she said the state of being clear. I asked her
which state is that and she said the blue ones. Mom says
a person can never ever be too clear. Never.
She says for example take our President who says
the first thing that comes out of his mouth only then
it is too late since it is already confusing everyone.
Like he said when it gets warm the virus will give up
and quit killing old people. I hope so cause Grandma Baggerly
is old and I do not want her to die. But how do we know
the virus does not like hot weather too? It could.
Or when he said he wants to leave the people
on the boat since that would be good for the numbers.
What does that mean? What numbers? Whose numbers?
I heard my mom on the phone telling Aunt Alice
that she is surprised to learn Mike Pence has balls.
She does not mean basketballs or baseballs eccetera.
Even golf balls. She means for once he stood up like a man
to the President and said we do not have enough tests
to see if we have the virus after the President said
we have all the beautiful tests we need. Mom says
just you wait the President will fire Mike Pence
if he keeps being clear since that is the one thing
the President is afraid of even more than the virus.
So always be clear. Also wash your hands. And
Mom says to tell your parents and grandparents
to wash their hands of the President this November.
So that virus doesn't spread too. Thank you.”

Mark Williams lives in the red but otherwise good state of Indiana. His poems and stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, New Ohio Review, Drunk Monkeys, The American Journal of Poetry, and the anthologies American Fiction and The Boom Project. His poems in response to the current administration have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Tuck Magazine, and WritersResist.

WILLIE THE SHAKE'S BEEN SHOOK AWAKE!

by Alan Soffin

To be, or not to be?
That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the House
To suffer the Tweets and Falsehoods of our great misfortune
Or to take votes against the See of troubles
And by opposing, end him? To cry, to weep,
No more, and by that weeping say we end
The heartache and the endless verbal schlock
That citizens are heir to. ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To cry, to weep;
To weep: perchance to scream; Oy, there’s the schlub;
For while we weep near death, what schemes may come
When we have shuffled off his rotten coil,
Must give us pause; there’s the respect
That makes calamity of public life;
For who would bear the whips of K street crime,
The T***pish wrongs, the constant contumely,
The pangs of threatened healthcare, the GOP’s delay,
The soullessness of Mitch and the spurns
That patient merit of the greedy takes,
When we ourselves might our withdrawal make
With a bare ballot. Who would injustice bear,
But that the dread of something after T***p,
The undiscovered source from whose bourn
The ruthless right returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those crooks we have,
Than fly to Pence and those we know not of ?
Thus conscience doth make outcasts on the Mall
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with stale cant that’s bought,
And legislation of great pith and moment
With this regard await a better day
Beyond the grasp of faction—Soft you now!
The Statue Liberty, in all thy orisons
Please be democracy remembered!

Alan Soffin, Ph.D., has taught at Michigan State and Temple. His Rethinking Religion: Beyond Scientism, Theism and Philosophic Doubt is published by Cascadia Press. His essays have appeared in Images of Youth (Peter Wang) and DreamSeeker magazine. His photography has been exhibited at the Tubac Center for the Arts. His avant-garde film Confessor (1968) was funded in part by the American Film Institute.

GUIDED DREAM TOUR

by Cody Walker

On Monday, Trump hosted a 2020 strategy meeting with a group of advisers. Among the topics discussed was whether Mike Pence should remain on the ticket, given the hurricane-force political headwinds Trump will face, as demonstrated by the midterms, a source briefed on the session told me. —Gabriel Sherman, Vanity Fair, December 5, 2018

Cody Walker is the author of three poetry collections, all from the Waywiser Press. He lives and teaches in Ann Arbor.

MIKE PENCE, I AM NOT TRYING TO SEDUCE YOU

by Melissa Fite Johnson

Tweet by Quinn Sutherland‏ @ReelQuinn, March 30, 2017:  “Yes, I’m here for my meeting with Mike Pence.”

No need to pluck the napkin from your lap,
Mike, I’ll only stay a moment. I have
a table already, over there by that window.
See my husband, speaking with the waitress
in a way that doesn’t make me uncomfortable?
Yes, I agree—the waitress is beautiful!
There’s something about a natural redhead,
you’re so right. It looks like he’s ordered us
a bottle of wine. That’s nice. Anyway,
Mike, if you could put down your fork
for a moment, I wanted to talk to you about
Planned Parenthood. Oh, stop, I understand
this is a fancy place, but surely some people
are talking shop. What about that booth?
Four white men, all in suits. You don’t think
that’s a business meeting? Please.
I’ve seen photos of your business meetings.
As I was saying—hey, could I sit for a minute?
I feel a bit awkward hovering over you
like some genie. Wait, are you blushing?
Do you have a thing for I Dream of Jeannie?
Heh, should I call you Major? No need to
flag down a waiter, Mike, I’m kidding.
So my friend went to Planned Parenthood
two years ago, and it ended up saving her—
Hello? Mike? Oh, is that your wife over there?
Talking to my husband? He probably
called out to her as she left the restroom.
She looks fine to me, Mike. Oh, my God,
did you really just ask about my intentions?
I intend to tell you how Planned Parenthood—
Jesus, I’ll explain my intentions as soon as
she comes over here. For now, she’s laughing
pretty hard. Yeah, my husband’s hilarious.
You know, it wouldn’t kill you to crack a joke
now and then. You’ve got one?  Let’s hear it!
Christ, Mike, a blonde joke? That’s the kind of
sexist thinking I’m concerned about. Sure,
take a moment, try again. Yes, I can see
your wife’s still laughing. Mike, seriously.
I’m not worried; you don’t need to be worried.

Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015),won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas. 

PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE

by Thomas R. Smith

Late afternoon sun on snow. Intense
flare concentrated in the west, skimming
cold shadows pooling below the dam.
On the path I stop a moment to commiserate
with a friend, both of us scalded by
the daily piss shower out of the White House.
Still January and the open river
hosts hundreds of ducks, geese, and swans. The new
EPA head listens to oil and coal
companies but not the community
of beings. I see my neighbors the water-
birds almost every day. I must owe them
something. Does money and power have
the right to disregard their fate? Ryan
and Pence stand smirking behind T***p while
the lit fuse sparks past their ankles.
Do they really believe that only
the President will be burned? Things can
get corrupted so inconspicuously—
a file, water, air, democracy—that we often
notice only when the screen’s gone blank.
The body politic knows it’s infected,
will the immune system mobilize?
The purveyors of “alternate facts” tried to
smear Rachel Carson too.  Heroically
she saved us from ourselves. Do we have it
in us to save us from ourselves this time?
I look out past the fliers and swimmers
at home on the river, toward the sun’s
setting splendor.  Our twilight will be
uglier, like the men at the top. To them
say, Earth first! You can’t be my government
if you won’t be the government of the geese.


Thomas R. Smith has had hundreds of poems published on three continents.  In the United States, his poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  His poems were included in Editor's Choice II (The Spirit That Moves Us Press), a selection of the best of the American small press, and in The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner).  His work has reached wide national audiences on Garrison Keillor's public radio show Writer's Almanac and former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's syndicated newspaper column, American Life in Poetry. His most recent book of poems is The Glory from Red Dragonfly Press.

FUNERALS FOR FETUSES

by Eliza Mimski

This poster was created by Shepard Fairey who eight years ago made the iconic Obama poster that captured a period of HOPE in America. Today we are in a very different moment, one that requires new images that reject the hate, fear, and open racism that were normalized during the 2016 presidential campaign. So on Inauguration Day, We the People will flood Washington, DC with NEW symbols of hope. You can download the set of posters for free at: http://bit.ly/wtpdownloads. You can choose to support this We the People art project via Kickstarter.

1969. Nineteen years old and pregnant.
I couldn't afford to keep the baby.
In those days, before Roe vs Wade,
you had to prove to two psychiatrists
that you were mentally unable to go through
with the pregnancy.
They wrote letters to the medical board of the
hospital performing the abortion.
Insurance didn't cover the psychiatric visits.

The first psychiatrist asked if I would kill myself
if I didn't have the abortion.
I said yes, I would take my life,
even though this wasn't true.
He jotted some notes on a yellow legal pad.
He asked me little else.
The second psychiatrist asked if the sight of a penis
frightened me. I said yes. I lied that the sight of a penis frightened me.
He wrote that down.

My fate was in their hands.
They determined
my future . . .

The state of Texas now requires women
who have abortions or miscarriages
in hospitals,
in abortion clinics
or in other health facilities
to bury or cremate the fetal remains.

In Indiana, Mike Pence signed legislation
to force women to have fetal funerals
for abortions or miscarriages.
This can be carried out by the facility.
A name for the fetus during
transport to the burial ground
is not required.

Eliza Mimski is a retired high school English teacher living in San Francisco. She is still coping with the election and the news by writing poetry. Her work has appeared in Quiet Lightning's Sparkle and Blink, Fiction 365, Poets Reading the News, and is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic.

HAMILTON STILL SOLD OUT ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY

by Albert Haley

"History is happening in Manhattan: Hamilton has set a record for the most money ever made in a single week by a Broadway show."—The New York Times, November 28, 2016. 

That autumn a silver-haired man came
to see what was so highly rated.
The dancing, rapping, the black and brown
bodies bodiced and laced to build
a country from the pink soles up.

It wasn’t the livestock show
at the Indiana State Fair
or Peyton winning Super Bowl XLI
for the Colts stolen from Baltimore.

It wasn’t the cars going around
and around the Brickyard, spewing
fumes on Memorial Day.

It wasn’t even poor James Dean lying
beneath a marble slab in Fairmount
in the shadow of his uncle’s pig farm.

And it sure wasn’t talk radio,
Sunday pass the collection plate
church, or after home-school
milk and cookies. Not a goddamn
Oreo in sight.

Of course, the silver-haired man
knew this, only wanted credit
for trying to love the Founding Fathers
before being Secret Serviced out.
Dust rising, dust settling.

What did they think would happen?
It’s theatre. The show goes on.

The hills still alive with the sound
of that new music, the bold story
that must be sung.

A time-told tale that unleashes
rhyming tongues, night
after night, with men and women
who dance joyfully, freely on the graves
of any who might wish to enslave.

Albert Haley is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in the Texas Review, Poems & Plays, and other journals. He lives in Abilene, Texas, which is as odd of a place as it sounds.

THE DEVIL'S RUNNING MATE CONSIDERS HIS PLACE IN HELL

by Ned Balbo

I don't agree with everything he says--
his followers too often turn to violence--
but who am I to argue with success?
He knows how to inflame an audience.
I'm not sure whom he'll jail or deport
to warmer climes where punishment's severe,
whom he'll select to serve him on the Court,
which lands he'll occupy or treaties tear
to fiery pieces . . . Still, I wish him well.
I'm told I have a talent for persuasion:
he might reduce the temperature in Hell
if I stand at his side to lead the nation.
I'll state my views, whatever his decree is.
You must admit, he's got some good ideas.

Ned Balbo's newest book is Upcycling Paumanok, just out from Measure Press. His previous book, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line) was awarded the Donald Justice Prize and the Poets' Prize. He currently teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.

SING A SONG O' MIKE PENCE, A CHILDISH SONG AND DANCE

by D. Brian Craig

Song:

Sing a song of Mike Pence

he claims it's our mistake

to read into this Hoosier law

more than wedding cake.

Dance:

But Governor, yes or no,

will the law allow discrimination?

Could you make this about something else?

May I ask you seven more times?

Origins, Meaning, and Interpretation:

Some infer in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

a prognostication wherein Belch (no accident that) 

tells a clown (nor in that):

"Come on; there is Mike Pence for you: let's have a song."

Some, however, find the name a corruption, or at the very least

too great a price to pay. On this not all folios agree.

Other scholars find parallels in the 21st-century social amusement 

of placing live politicians on a hot plate, 

as a form of entremet (something to be enjoyed between 

servings of cute animal videos).

The recipe most often called for birds

of a uniform feather to be locked in an oven,

or statehouse, from which they would, after a time,

poke their heads out half-baked;

an uproar would ensue, after which they would be returned,

only to emerge finally

singing a different tune

to the great amusement and delight of the electorate.

No corroborative evidence supports either of the above,

though the earliest tradition, in one stanza,

clearly mentions Naughty Boys

from whom little is heard of afterward.

D. Brian Craig is a scientist, engineer, and writer, though not always in that order, nor separately. His writing has appeared most recently in The Pitkin Review and FEBS Letters.