NO RESOLUTION

by j.lewis

Image from Breaking Burgh

again, the ball drops, but does not break
its descent carefully engineered to delight

again, the ball is fumbled, or intercepted
despite the carefully engineered play

again. the ball passes its mark in space
the carefully engineered orbit a quiet assurance

again, we wait, not for ball, but for hammer to drop
for the carefully engineered investigations to resolve

but the dropping ball,
wobbling pass,
eternal orbit,
special investigation
seem to have no end

again, an angry tweet that
"my button, my nuclear football
is bigger than yours"
pushes us closer to the dropping
of the other shoe
and no amount of careful engineering
will save us when it strikes the floor

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poetry and music reflect the complexity of human interactions, sometimes drawing inspiration from his experience in healthcare. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California. A Clear Day in October, j.lewis’s first collection of poetry paired with his own photography, is available directly from E&GJ Press.

VIEW FROM ABOVE (A CAROL)

by Melissa Balmain 

"Argh," the herald angels sing,
"Who's this guy who thinks he's King—
Grabbing gold (and other stuff),
Kicking Dreamers in the duff,
Lobbing incoherent tweets,
Flitting off to golf retreats?

"Argh," the herald angels sing,
"How'd they pick this ding-a-ling?

"Christ, it really frosts our gourd,
Seeing such a threat ignored—
Any day, he'll twitter, 'Hey,
Rocket Man, it's bombs away!'
But what do his minions do?
Say, 'Enough' and stage a coup?
No, they simply kowtow while
He's got crazy on speed dial!

"Argh," the herald angels shout,
"Earthlings, while you can, get out!"

Melissa Balmain is the Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (Winner of the Able Muse Book Award), is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

TO HUMANITY'S LEADERS AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHES

by George Salamon

You do not hear others.
You listen to voices inside yourselves,
Voices crazy with the sanity of greed,
Inspired by the magic of power.
You nurse profane dreams of
Treacheries and lies, never cringing,
Navigating toward escapes from your motives,
While neither God nor man blocks your evasions.
Your end will arrive, by accident or error,
But with it, no Peace on Earth.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

LET US NOW PRAISE SMALL THINGS

by George Salamon

Video illustrates the November 16, 2017 New York Times article ”Downing North Korean Missiles is Hard. So the US is Experimenting In-Depth."

On an idle afternoon
In my apartment
I see by the kitchen sink
A letter for me.
I haven't read it.

The radio tells me
Of rocket launches
And anti-rocket rockets
Of wars that never end,
Of a war not yet started.

All I see on this
Idle afternoon
Is my woven bread basket,
A few drops of olive oil spilt
On the bamboo cutting board.

It doesn't matter
About you and me.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

T***P VISITS GOLF CLUB FOR THIRD CONSECUTIVE WEEKEND

by JP Thelbert Bryant

Donald Trump has played golf every four days of his presidency.

—The Independent (UK) October 23, 2017

What’s out there, the solution to healthcare?
Secret plans to back down North Korea?
An apology letter about Russia’s interference?
Pussies to grab?

And do you ever feel guilty in those tight khakis
and white shirt, that children are hungry,
that gays are scared, that religion is taking over,
that women hurt?

Does it make you feel powerful to swing a club, put balls in holes,
tug on that baseball cap probably made in China?

I wonder these things as I work everyday, as I set aside money for sickness, as I monitor the gasoline I use, the food I buy.

I have no time for golf. Most of us have no time for golf.
We have to worry about feeding our children, fending off diseases,
nuclear bombs, conservative evangelicals dictating our lives,
our bodies, our minds.

But only pretty rich folks play with you.
And no one wants to think about sad things anyway.
It’s just some of us have to think about them. Everyday.

JP Thelbert Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He lives in the woods of Virginia where he burns incense, deer watches, and dreams of oceans.

SUNDAY MORNING IN ST. LOUIS

by George Salamon

Police arrested at least 22 people in a protest at the St. Louis Galleria on Saturday, September 23 amid the continuing reaction to the acquittal Sept. 15 of a white police officer in the shooting death of Jason Stockley.  —Photo tweeted by Derk Brown

Water on the stove is boiling,
I slice a loaf of bread.
Restless, I press the power button
On my small kitchen radio.

"North Korean crisis heats up,
Washes whiter than ever,
Military option is on the table,
Big tech stocks are on the rise."

I don't pound the radio to smithereens,
Its voice of terror soothes me,
Its familiarity calms me,
Confirming most of us are still alive.

In St. Louis, protesters are marching and shouting again. Then those not arrested go home.


George Salamon lives in St. Louis, MO.

NUCLEAR NURSERY RHYME

by Jerome Betts

A Reddit user used Photoshop to imagine what President Trump and Kim Jon Un would look like if they swapped hair. Via The Daily Mail.

One brought new missiles out to play
To which another said ‘No, K!’
So Rocket Man and Donald J.
Between them risked a world flambé.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, TheNewVerse.News,  Parody, Per Contra, The Rotary Dial, and Snakeskin.

DOG-WALKING IN THE SHADOW OF PYONGYANG

by Devon Balwit




We flip a coin over who walks
the dog, not tired, but edgy,
for the loser glances covertly
upward, listening for whistles,
siren-ready, side-eyeing each lot
for shelter. Somewhere in Pyongyang,
a finger hovers over a button, a head
cocks to catch the command
that will release the unmaker of worlds,
mine. The button-pusher is loyal,
me, reduced to caricature, and soon
to ash, all of us, web-stuck
in history. As with solar flares,
the big quake I’m told is coming,
or closer still, the millions arriving
next month to eclipse-gawk, my way
to cope is to deny, acting as if
and going about my business.
Kim Jong Un may render all
my insomniac panic moot—
aging, health-care, the planet,
my kids, my craft—a flame out sear
to trace elements in an open crater.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.

DEAR LEADER I WORRIED HIM

by S.O.Fasrus

Image source: zazzle.com

There was Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-un
turn up the telly
not much fun

Car on the road
masses of space
art on the wall
Kim Jong's face

Go to the shop
can't find one
There was Kim Jong-il
There was Kim Jong-un

Dear Leader Un
taking in the view
firing off a missile
fuse just blew

There was Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-un
turn up the telly
but you can't turn it off


S.O.Fasrus has verses at LUPO and is currently writing a YA novel.

DOMESTIC GODDESS

by Katherine Smith

I do my best to ignore the news
vacuuming carpets, scrubbing goo
from microwave and screen.
I polish floors, un-tarnish green

copper tea kettles, pots that gleam.
I pay the bills, and bake a cake,
greet some evangelists, even take
a pamphlet from their little boy.

Though I’m a Jew and they are goy,
I wish the family Easter joy.
They spread across the neighborhood
this day that I devote to chores.

They preach good news from door to door
this Sunday the cable journalists
report to work, for T***p has pissed
off in a single week, the globe

from loving pope to xenophobe,
Syria, Russia, Britain, North Korea,
Christian, Jew, Sunni, Shia.
While North Korea serenades

an anniversary with grim parades
of weapons, and democracy devolves,
T***p relaxes with a game of golf.
I cook and clean with half my ego

adrift through Seoul, Aleppo, Mar-a-lago.

Katherine Smith’s previous publications include appearances in Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. My second book Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014.

WHAT T***P WAS REALLY SAYING

by Kathleen A. Lawrence

Image by DonkeyHotey

      a word collage from T***p’s

           2/15/17 press conference

I’m not ranting and raving. This is how I won.
Lying, hacking, cheating and very fake news.
It’s all fake news, and lies. I like them.

I am putting out lies. I am running a Russian scam.
It’s a ruse. I am false reporting. I am. I am. I am.
I’m so beautifully brutal, like a nuclear holocaust.

I’m fantastic. I’m terrible.
I’m one of the bad ones, like North Korea.
I hate, but I’m the least racist.

I shame. I have a certain bias.
I can’t fix the inner cities. Why should I?
I like bleeding jobs.

Can I be honest with you?
It’s great that that there’s one Chicago that’s luxurious.
I think it’s great that I can divide this country.

I think I’m great. Pretty great. Really great.
I am a fine tuned machine.
Just push my stupid plastic button.

Just look, look at me.
I can make it bad, really, really bad.
I’ve got uranium. I’ve got secrets.

I don’t think. I don't care about any of you.
Well, maybe some of you. I just don’t think.
It’s really bad, but I don’t think.

Kathleen A. Lawrence’s poems appeared recently in Rattle’s Poets Respond, Eye to the Telescope, Silver Birch Press, and haikuniverse. A poem in Altered Reality Magazine was nominated for a 2017 Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She was a Poet of the Week at Poetry Super Highway in January 2017.

CHILDHOOD'S END

by James Cronin

Cartoon by Cagle.

The illusion, that those in charge must know
what’s right and wrong, will fade at childhood’s end.
Dense swirls of gray, not black and white, will rend
us then, and those whose past we rest upon
be seen, like us, as flawed but dear, and so
we’ll pass, but such is not the world’s antiphon.
Its song for the alpha male lets monsters breed,
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, to name a few,
who murdered more than every breath they drew
and left a legacy of homicidal greed.

If murder will out, so too, it will go on
as Aleppo proves day to day; while in
North Korea, a gulag not a nation,
a murderous piglet—in a starving land
the double-chinned is king—wants a weapon
of world’s end to brandish in his fat hand.
At home, a smirking clown—anxious to please
Putin—sides with him on world woes; and more,
he’d tell that seated child, face veiled by gore,
he’s quarantined out as a subspecies.

After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin returned to his first love, literature. Since his judicial retirement in 2007, he has participated in three poetry groups and has served as a facilitator in numerous courses for a lifelong learning program in Fall River, MA.