SELLING OUT

by Orel Protopopescu

The sellout’s cards are selling out, 

the freakish cards of Don. 

No other president has shown 

such genius for a con!

 

Had Washington chopped up that tree

and sold each splintered share, 

he could have used a submarine 

to cross the Delaware!

 

And Lincoln never thought to sell 

real Lincoln Logs, it seems, 

too busy binding up a land

of violent extremes.   

 

But W may still have time 

to trump T’s licensees

by storing paintings of his toes

in polished NFTs.

Self-portrait by George W. Bush.

Orel Protopopescu has written prize-winning works for children and adults. She won the Oberon poetry prize in 2010 and 2020. Her light verse has appeared in Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, and elsewhere. Her first biography Dancing Past the Light: The Life of Tanaquil Le Clercq (University Press of Florida, 2021) received a starred review in Library Journal. 

PERFORMANCE BONUS

by Imogen Arate

Four of the Republican senators bankrolled by the NRA. From left to right Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Richard Burr, and Roy Blunt. —Newsweek has the “Full List of Republican Senators Who Receive Funding From the NRA.”

Every time a bullet screams a child's name

Congress rings in a payday

Every time gold-strung puppets mimic "thoughts and prayers"

NRA makes it rain

The more they pile up

the cheaper they come

The higher the body count

the bigger the ROI.

The stock market may be free-reeling

NFTs may be worthless

but LaPierre makes good on his promises

though he trades in rubles 

We've arrived at the age 

of lead-pegged currency

We've come to celebrate each day

as gun-violence survival day

drunk the mercurial mead 

of gilded hearts playing 

a mental-health sleight of hand

while we thirsted for salves

that vanished as another gunman

turned the page onto another tragedy

danced our last to the whizzing rhythm

of gun-powdered blues

as we grew confused over 

which loved ones got shot when

or which crisis actors got paid

while feigning condolences 

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest, where she has served as a national-level poetry judge in 2021 and 2022.  Her poetry has appeared in 18 publications on four continents.  You can find her @PoetsandMuses and @ImogenArate on Twitter and Instagram.

METAMOLOGY

by James Penha

Andertoons Word Cartoon #2815

NFT beats cheugy to be Collins Dictionary’s word of the year 

—The Guardian, November 24, 2021

Before these words become as cheugy 

as Regencycore or climate anxiety this 

pingdemic opens a metaversal auction—

open only to the double-vaxxed for crypto 

or cash—on an NFT of this poem penned 

in mī (that’s mī neopronoun just coined) 

hybrid working spaces hither and thither.

Author's Note: The top ten words of 2021 according to Collins: NFT, cheugy, climate anxiety, crypto, double-vaxxed, hybrid working, metaverse, neopronoun, pingdemic, Regencycore

James Penha edits The New Verse News. Twitter: @JamesPenha