ELEVEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN INAUGURATION

by Roberto Christiano

"I am out with lanters (sic) looking for myself."    

—Emily Dickinson

 

I am awake. I am a foreigner. Illegal. I am my 
parents. I know that I am not illegal. I feel that I 
am. I am scared.

My father was illegal. If you were stuck in 
poverty with Hitler’s trains running through you 
and countries crumbling before you, you’d be 
illegal too.

Musk gives the Hitler salute. Or is it the Roman 
salute? You know, the one you do to Mussolini.

My mother’s row house in the Italian section of 
D.C. was searched by the FBI for possible 
connections to Mussolini. Every Italian house 
was.

Male and female. Since when was that an easy 
divide?

Melania hides her face under a boater hat just as 
America hides her soul under a bushel.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

It snowed here. I can’t shovel. Uncontrolled high 
blood pressure. A man and his brother shoveled 
for me. Carlos and Zé. They won’t be here 
tomorrow.

I worked at the Library of Congress for twenty 
years. Our guards are the same as the Capitol 

guards. On January 6^th our guard was killed.
There are no degrees of separation. Separation is 
an illusion.

I am scared. I feel that I am. I know that I am not 
illegal. I am my parents. Illegal. I am a foreigner. 

I am awake.

Author’s note: Father married Mother and became a U.S. citizen. Mother was already a citizen.

Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from Northern Virginia Review. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poem, Why I Sang at Dinner, in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in The Gávea–Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (Brown University). His full legnth collection, Port of Leaving, is published by Finishing Line Press. Other poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, The Washington Post, Writer.org, and The Sow's Ear.

WWE

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Source: iStock; Composite: Angelo Jesus Canta via America Magazine.

One man's hero:
another man's tyrant.

China wanted a wrestler
to unite the barbarians
build global power:
Qin Shi Huang
killed scholars
burned books
while slaves
built his wall,
the immigrants
castrated.

The self-declared living god:
Caligula
loved his sisters
shared them
with his men
his horse
he made a priest.

Attila the Hun:
the scourge of God
raped and pillaged.
Genghis Khan:
killed the rich
using the poor
as human shields.

Tamerlane's tower:
built from living men
cemented and bricked,
their heads
made into minarets.

Ivan the Terrible
Grand Prince of Moscow;
Robespierre beheaded,
Lenin desecrated,
Stalin had gulags.

Il Duce and the Blackshirts
Hitler and the Nazis
slave labor and torture
concentration camps for all
not in the master race.

Chairman Mao and State control:
40 million dead.
Pol Pot: professionals
sent away
to reeducation farms,
special centers for people
who wore glasses, read books.

Idi Amin. Pinochet.
Assad. Kim Jong-un.
Mugabe of Zimbabwe,
Gaddafi, al-Bashir.
Vladmir Putin and
you-know-who.
The list goes on
the reigns of corruption
gripped tight
to this day

strongmen
still

just weak men
destroying to destroy
the enemy within
creating false worlds
building bone walls
burning the truth
in public bonfires
wrenching our history
away from us
in a soul crushing
illegal, amoral
stranglehold.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Her books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.  Project XX, a satirical crime novel, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. What I Did for Love was released by Bloodhound Books in October.

HOW TO SPOT A FASCIST, or WHAT I LEARNED FROM MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

by Kathy Conway

You could look for colors—black shirts for Mussolini, brown
ones for Hitler, red t-shirts and baseball caps for Chavez,
yellow stars on Polish children separated from mothers at railroad stations.

Listen for righteous us/them propaganda, use of simple words,
untruths to incite aggrieved followers, as Hitler did, repeating lies
until they were accepted as truth.

Listen for insults, bullying, ultimatums, rants—"huge, very dangerous"
to silence those who disagree—the press, media, cohorts, partners -
a la Mussolini.

Be suspicious of unbridled nationalism, separating families at borders.
False charges of being "Red" helped McCarthy to intimidate, create fear in
innocent people and muzzle Congress.

Be alert for a huge ego demanding loyalty, not to country
or constitution, but to him personally, who, with warped reality,
listens only to his own gut, ignoring experts and advisors.

Watch for leaders who declare a state of emergency
like Erdogan, try to build a border wall like Orban or promise to
"drenare la palude"—drain the swamp—like Mussolini.

Heed if they goad violence against perceived enemies with
pumped-up machismo, incite prejudice or seek to destroy faith
in an independent press, electoral process, courts, military.

Notice how he gets away with it. The public doubts he'd
do more—until he does, incrementally. His followers believe
he's working for them, against "others".

Be leery of copy cats who, like Peron, aspire to be Hitler.
Do they admire and cozy up to Kim Jong-un,
Mohammed bin Salman or Putin?
                                                 

Kathy Conway splits her time between a cottage on the coast of Maine and her home outside Boston.  She has taught memoir poetry in Maine and Florida. Her chapbook Bacon Street is about growing up in a large family.

ANOTHER YEAR

by George Held

Another year ends and a new year starts
and I have fewer—it’s just math—
to count on, but I’m glad to have
been born too young for WW 2
and too old for Korea and Nam

and too ancient for the all-volunteer
Army dispatched, like Caesar’s legions,
to any hot spot in the Empire,
though Afghanistan’s a region
a bit too far out for our ambition.

Another year, the President’s third
in office, on the horizon for him
to continue our retreats
from remote and alien climes
(poetic word for “region” and for rhymes)

or to launch new strikes, like missiles
out of the blue: it’s all up to him,
our grand commander-in-chief,
our modern chief executive officer
and main deal-maker and pussy-grabber.

Will this be another year of immunity
for executive privilege, the one man
above the law, for him who has slouched
from the bestial floor in Bethlehem
to rename the world like a neo-Adam,

whose jutting chin recalls Mussolini
and racist rants echo Hitler’s
and whose repeated lies outdo Goebbels’
but who knows how to talk the talk
that enthralls his adamantine Base.

Another year, or could it be our last
before the earth floods or a nuclear blast
solves our overpopulation problem?
The bourgeoisie now draw near the edge
over which many poor have lately plunged,

and the widespread wish of “Happy New Year”
seems frivolous if not a beard for fear.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

LAWYERING

by Alejandro Escudé


There’s no free association on the mood-bus.
The mind of the President’s lawyer and his team
of modules; so that, you have a blank canvas
awakened at birth to reveal the edgings of industry.
He says, “I hope he’s doing alright.” The word
“alright” refers to business. It’s not Jesus dying
on the splintered cross, or Peter observing
the feet of his followers. I see a guitar hanging,
Mussolini, his mistress, Italians spitting words
like spit and spit like words over their corpses.
I dated a girl once I met on a website, beautiful
and dumb. She had one phrase she’d text
over and over again: “Are you serious?”

That was it. “Are you serious?” I wasn’t serious.
The ground gave way, or the server, and I saw
she was a myriad of connections. Her system
opened before me and she posed on a shell,
beckoning with her infinite curls. And he was
there to defend me, the businessman-lawyer,
extending the trial. My voice trilling with anger.


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.

THE COST OF THE WHITE

by Cally Conan-Davies

“When Roman emperors, Michelangelo and Mussolini needed the finest marble they all knew where to go—Carrara in Tuscany. But some are worried about the future of the quarries that have been used for thousands of years,” writes Antonia Quirke., BBC News Magazine, July 24, 2016. Photo: Carrara marble quarry. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Turning to stone is how some old bones last,
but David's statue seems to be relaxed
as if the stone were going the other way
into a body full of the light of day.

As if it could make light work of defeat,
after all, it had survived rejections
(unstable, they called it, flawed, the risk too great).
Until one man could see through imperfections

something to put his hands on, and set free
a man from a mountain.
Now the mountain is sinking
into counter tops and bathrooms, artlessly.

There are shadows in the falling light.
And nothing—not paper or pearls or stars—is always white.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

REAWAKENED

by Richard Schnap




I hear the sound
Of drums approaching
Beating a rhythm
From the distant past

Down a ghostly road
That’s been reopened
To slither beneath
A bloodstained dawn

And in the wind
Come a thousand voices
Cheering the arrival
Of a man I’ve met before

Speaking a language
Of fashionable hatred
Designed to enshrine him
In the temple he’s rebuilt


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally, and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.