NO. NO.

by Nan Meneely

 

 

This protest was regional, the work of dedicated leadership in several small Connecticut towns. A group of somewhere between 20 and 30 or 40 people of all stripes, races and ages (and signs) gathered outside a café where three local roads collide, every single Saturday morning from the one directly following Trump's first election for more than four years. Nan's sign read "Honk Against Hatred;" the vigil was supposed to be silent, but she was unable to restrain her shouted thanks for every honk. This is a picture of one of the first meetings, with the central sign that was reproduced after the first and larger one was defaced.

2016
We hold a protest silently with signs 
that welcome all who worship other gods.
A pickup ploughs the shoulder 
where we stand, kicks gravel as it stops.
We back up quiet, listening. A man in camo, 
raging, crying, leans across his passenger 
to scream his epithets: ignorant fuckers,  
we don't know shit of the animals we invite.
Who of us has watched a friend
disintegrate, arms and legs no more
than shrapnel in a blazing Afghan sky?
His mind is full of massacre.
He loved. He hates.

I want to climb in next to him,
hold him in my Nana arms until he stills.
I've heard his wounds before.
My husband keened in nightmare
when he found again among the vines
of Vietnam his comrade's boots
with nothing of his comrade but his feet.
 
I know my luck that I don’t know.
Even as the soldier curses me
in his convulsive bitterness,
I want to love him back 
from where he lives. 

2026
Ignorant fuckers, haven't you learned 
you kill the ones who survive ?

 
Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

LETHALITY

by Nan Meneely

His father taught him how to enclose a spider
so gently in tissues he can carry it live from his room
to a better place outdoors.
 
He grieves when a chipmunk lies mid-road, 
as exquisite as alive, forepaws stretched 
toward the brambly green safety ahead.
 
Knowing he might be too soft, he signs
with the Army to muscle up. But he didn’t bargain
for lethal, a word the recruiters never said.
 
He’s as certain of this as anything:
if he killed those named his enemies—
Venezuelans in fishing boats oceans away,
 
brown men working shop floor or field for minimum wage,
protesters armed with sandwiches shouting truth
to power, Somali immigrants fleeing hate—
 
he would kill the important part of himself,
the part he would fight for in anyone else.

Author's Note: This matter matters to me. My father, a doctor with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII, joined up enthusiastically but came home with a hatred of war and what we now know as PTSD. Eventually he killed himself. So Hegseth's lethality can be lethal in too many ways. 

Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

FAIR IS FAIR

by Nan Meneely

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to restrict U.S. passports based on gender identity, a setback for non-binary and transgender people seeking the document. The court order requires the gender designation on the passport to reflect the biological sex of the person applying for it. Transgender and non-binary Americans have called the effort unconstitutional.

If a passport is required to declare
the “truth” of genetic charts,
then surely it should note the fact
that some people are born without hearts.

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

Nan Meneely is the lucky member of several sterling writing groups. Her Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book, Simple Absence (Antrim House), was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been both published and turned down by The New Verse News.