QUEENS MAN INDICTED

by Martha Deed

“Lox Him Up!” tweeted by @DAMendelsohnNYC.

A Queens man was indicted Thursday for allegedly making hush money payments to a porn star before he was elected President of the United States in 2016. —Queens Eagle, March 30, 2023

Purple lilac buds double in size almost overnight,

defying snow and ice, while all across the country,

poets are writing small poems each day

for National Poetry Month to prove that they can. 

They seek images that split their lines wide open even in the rain.

Two House Finches—pinkish he, strong-striped she—

24th species of the year to feast at the feeder.

A lame Canada Goose crosses the yard. Green

leaves drip from its beak. A feral black cat

circles the base of the feeder, its eyes to the ground.

The sharp-eyed poets seek something novel,

like whalers persevering through fog.

Trump's first indictment ain't it.

Martha Deed's poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, BlazeVox Journal, Mason Street Review, Unlikelystories, and many others. Her third poetry collection Haunted by Martha is forthcoming from FootHills Publishing in 2023. Two Pushcart Nominations and one Best of the Net Nomination. 

ACROSS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

by Judith Terzi

Across the Atlantic
a 13-year old imitates
as best he can with a crossbow
that kills a teacher.
Anniversary of Columbine
in a Barcelona school.
Blossoms on the verge
of unlocking in Colorado:
blue violet about to spill
across the San Juans.
Across the Capitol lawn
a gyrocopter glides to a stop.
No odes aboard, only
political prose for campaign
finance reform. Oh mail me
a poem, Mr. Mailman,
make it the lyric of the month.
I know you're someone's hero,
an elegy clinging to a wing,
like migrants hanging
to la vita on a shoddy ship
across the Mediterranean.
They sold their organs to pay
pirates in coyotes' clothing.
And across the bench sits
Dzhokhar, gaze pasted
to the scribble of alphabet,
bowls of letters across a page.
If onlys dangle between blue
lines like columbines hugging
the soil before the next rain.


Judith Terzi is a Southern California poet whose recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Off the Coast, Raintown Review, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque). If You Spot Your Brother Floating By is her latest chapbook from Kattywompus Press.