OVERLOOKED VICES

by Philip Kitcher

“We have a vice president who is the least admired, least respected, and the worst vice president in the history of our country.” —Donald Trump’s lie at a press conference, August 8, 2024

Villains who drew a Vice-President’s salary?

Wander with me through an infamous gallery.
 
Dubya’s chief deputy, kindred of Vader –
Swap him for Kamala? Why would we trade her?
 
Spiro T. Agnew, indicted offender, he
Ended up pleading a nolo contendere.
 
Spiro was Vice to a Prez with a record:
Nixon’s own Veephood was… shall we say “Checkered”?
 
So many cases: Trump’s judgment’s a mystery –
So many scoundrels abound in our history.
 
How could he quell the desire to impugn
Militant slavers like John C. Calhoun?
 
Was it repression? Or was there a reason?
Secret respect for the Breckinridge treason?
 
Does he forget his self-righteous offense?
“Traitors must hang!  We should spare no ex-Pence!”
 
Flippant accuser, their peer in his felony,
Blind to the crimes of a shady miscellany!

 
Philip Kitcher has written too many books about philosophy, a subject which he taught at Columbia for many years.  His poems have appeared online in Light, Lighten Up Online, Politics/Letters, Snakeskin, and The Dirigible Balloon; and in print in the Hudson Review.

WHEN TWO'S A CROWD

by David Thoreen

Cartoon by Kuper

A fool and his facemask are soon parted.
Gather ye toilet paper while ye may.

The early bird gets the hand sanitizer.
What’s good for the goose is social distancing.

The road to Hell is paved with delayed interventions.
Give Mike Pence his due.

A rose garden is a rose garden is a rose garden.
Give me liberty, or give me quarantine.

Better to light a candle than to curse the virus.
You cruise, you lose.

You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an alternative fact.
A sneeze in line saves time.

Zoom each day as if it were your last.
Don’t shoot Dr. Fauci.

David Thoreen teaches writing and literature at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.  His poems have appeared in Great River Review, The Journal, Natural Bridge, New Letters, Slate, and other journals.

T***P BUMPS HIS HEAD, A BIGGER

by  David Spicer  

                                         

Cartoon by Darcy, Cleveland.com, May 10, 2017

idiot than ever. No, not impossible:
decades ago he grabbed a Voodoo
princess by her pussy in his penthouse.
Curses galore at the height of your infamy,
Goldie Small Hands! T***p didn’t laugh
but drools today. Today, swastikas curve fetally.
Today, the sheets of KKKers bleed.
Beavis and Butthead chew Tic-Tacs.
T***p’s blonde miracle weeps tangerine tears.
Whitey Pence shocks himself into a coma,
handmaids arcing around him, praying to Buddha.
Chris Christie scarfs twenty cheeseburgers.
Kellyanne Conway talks circles around herself
like a carousel pony. Congress is revolting.
Eddie Munster for Prez! moderates roar.
David Duke for King! fascists yell.
I want Ted Nugent! the Alaskan nincompoop drawls.
On second thought, I want me! Anarchists, nihilists,
and poets celebrate with a three-day bacchanal.
T***p disappears, descends into the earth via ICBM,
lands in China, deported to North Korea.
SUPREME LEADER STUPID HAIRCUT
BEHEADS ORANGE FACE!!! shouts
New York Post. Putin mourns, then farts.
Throngs cheer and party in the world’s megacities.
Back home, T***p’s cronies and their carpet bags
red-eye to the North. Little Jeff Sessions preens
in the mirror of the Justice Department toilet,
tokes his Alabama Bound weed, and dances helter-skelter
like Lorde, collapsing. Eddie Munster! Eddie Munster
for Prez! Gut Medicare, Eddie! Gut Social Security!
his toadies leer and chant. We love Hillary! progressives
scream. Bill Maher, we demand Bill Maher! millennials
moan. GO FUCK YOURSELVES! Bill Maher megahorns.
You’re dreaming again, honey. Wake up,
my wife says, shaking my shoulders.
What’s he done now? I ask.

David Spicer is a retired proofreader for a medical journal and has had poems accepted by or published in Reed Magazine, Alcatraz, The Mocking Heart Review, North Dakota Quarterly, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Nude Bruce Review and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.