NO KINGS

by Joan Gerstein

I painted two-foot high NO KINGS

in bold block letters on my blue fence

Months later   it remains unmolested

Months later   gas is $6.00 a gallon

Months later   Trump doesn’t know how to end wars he started

Months later   Trump rants senile threats and insults

On a busy street   my fence remains unmarred

Months later   Trump insults the Pope 

Months later   Trump posts a picture of himself as Jesus

Months later   Trump controls the Supreme Court 

In this Marine Corps city no one defaces my fence

Months later   Trump defies lower courts 

Months later   Trump strong-arms Republican lawmakers

Months later   Trump empties our treasury 

Months later   Trump demands effigies of himself on everything

and enriches his personal wealth through corruption  greed   lying

No one disfigures my fence in this conservative-leaning metropolis

because my message is meh     NO KINGS

I wish I had the guts to write     Dethrone the evil   vile   *$#)V&!

Joan Gerstein, a retired educator and therapist, teaches creative writing to incarcerated veterans. And, yes, at 78 she was up and down the ladder.

WHEN DO WE BEGIN, AND HOW SHALL WE END?

by Indran Amirthanayagam

 

 

 

 

The Pope will not attend the 250th birthday party. 

The gold-plated arch will tower over a dwindling 

number of illiberal potentates, driven by armored car 

from the Board of Peace. Orbán will be granted 

honorary American citizenship and sent as ambassador 

to San Salvador. Jesus will reclaim his right to authorize 

any and all uses of his image. Give me a break: Jesus 

with an American flag, warplanes, bald eagles? 

America, I can’t stand my own mind. 

But let’s get back to the future plans 

of Orbán and that miller brewing potions 

in the White House. Or Marco sporting 

platypus shoes, Hegseth strutting about on stage 

before stone-faced generals called in from 

all over the world for a pep talk paid for 

by the American taxpayer. Aah, poor taxpayer, 

your goodwill medicines undelivered 

to far away herders and victims of local wars,

money spent instead on fighter jets

and radar smoking on the ground

in Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.

And  the cross: how do we get it back 

into church and the altar at home 

and away from the necks 

of blasphemers, brutes, and butchers?

Tell me, Trump. Or are you 

disqualified from answering?

 

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

CECCO’S ECHOES

S’ i’ fosse foco, arderei ’l mondo—Sonnet 86 

by Cecco Angiolieri (Siena, c.1260–c.1312)

translated by Julie Steiner

Source: IranCartoon

Trump Tries to Make Sure States Don’t Fight Climate Change, Either: The Trump administration wants to block states from trying to limit the “astounding” costs and impacts of climate change. “This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. —Rolling Stone, May 24, 2025

If I were fire, I’d scorch the world all over.
If I were wind, I’d blast its storm-wracked ground.
If I were water, I’d make sure it drowned.
If I were God, I’d give it Hell forever.

If I were Pope, I’d gleefully endeavor
to prank all Christians, just to mess around.
If I were Emperor—what then? You’ve found
the answer: I’d behead all sorts, whoever.

If I were death, I’d give my dad a visit.
If I were life, I’d turn from him and scram.
And how I’d treat my mom’s no different, is it?

If I were Cecco—as I’ve been, and am—
I’d take the younger women, the exquisite,
and leave for other men each vile old ma’am.

Italian Original:

S’ i’ fosse foco, ardere’ il mondo ;
s’ i’ fosse vento, lo tempesterei ;
s’ i’ fosse acqua, io l’ anegherei ;
s’ i’ fosse dio, mandereil en profondo ;

s’ i’ fosse papa, sare’ alor giocondo,
chè tutt’ i cristïani imbrigherei ;
s’ i’ fosse ’mperator, sa’ che farei ?
a tutti mozarei lo capo a tondo.

S’ i’ fosse morte, andarei da mio padre ;
s’ i’ fosse vita, fugirei da lui ;
similmente faría di mi’ madre.

S’ i’ fosse Cecco com’ i’ sono e fui,
torrei le donne giovani e legiadre :
e vecchie e laide lasserei altrui.

Francesco ("Cecco") Angiolieri corresponded with Dante Alighieri, and addressed one of his 120 extant sonnets to him. Most of his work is humorous.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Her most recent verse translations from Classical Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian can be found in (or are forthcoming from) Literary Matters, The Classical Outlook, The Ekphrastic Review, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

BABY JESUS ON A KEFFIYEH

by Catherine Gonick

Beyond the manger sounds the roar—of politics,

revisionist history, replacement theology. Of

Palestinian identity and Jewish. Pogroms,

resistance, genocide. Cultural heritage, 

21st century swastika. Hope, love, and peace

to an overheated world. What the Pope

really meant. What it means when Christmas

coincides with the first day of Chanukah.

 

As a baby, Jesus can’t yet speak about symbols

or freedom of the artist. And no one mentions

on His behalf that to children, parents, even if one

of them is God, are only accidents of fate.

No child asks to be born or arrives knowing

its name. All are divine. The rest is learned.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in a wide range of journals, including The New Verse News, Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and The Orchards Poetry Journal, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, in plein air, and Rumors, Secrets and Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a business that seeks to lower the rate of global warming.

KING DONALD VERSION

by Rick Mullin

by Dave Whamond

I’m very friendly with the Pope of Rome.
In fact he likes the Bible I put out.
I have many, many copies in my home.

Bound in leather and embossed with chrome,
Trump Bibles make the stories sing and shout.
I’m very friendly with the Pope of Rome

who’s traded in his New Revised, that tome
of lies, for something we can talk about.
Trump Bibles. Home just isn’t home

without my Book of Acts. Amen. Shalom.
My TV pals agree the Book has clout—
Joel Osteen and the Pope of Rome.

And I mean all of them. The Astrodome 
has never seen the crowds that we turn out.
There are many mansions in my home

and proverbs in the many fields I roam.
I spread the Word and rid the world of doubt.
A holy boatload’s on its way to Rome.
I have many, many copies in my home.

Rick Mullin is a painter and poet living in northern New Jersey. His latest books are Huncke, Exot Books, and The Basilisk, Dos Madres Press.

A BISHOP RESIGNS

by Jack Belck

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” by Michael D’Antuono

Priests’ upward gazes to God
go also downward to where
wild male animals loiter,
battling to escape,
to do what God orders.

But those battles seen or unseen,
become mere memories for those,
confessed to but not confessing,
elevated to the bishopric.

Their own wild animals’ flights
are proven when bishops
replace pants with gowns.
So too cardinals and popes,
secure, satisfied neuters
ignoring young priests
battling anew
and children sacrificed
on celibacy’s stained altar.


Jack Belck is a retired university publications editor.

CONTEXT

by George Held

Barbarians come and go

with history's ebb and flow.

IS are the new iconoclasts

in a long line of enthusiasts.

Remember the Alexandria library

built by the pharoah Ptolemy?

Among those who burned it

was a pope of the Coptic

persuasion, 300 years

after Julius Caesar's

arson there. So remember,

while some wait for the barbarians,

others welcome them with honor

and others react with horror.

History's all about context:
burnt books precede new texts.

George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

YEAR’S END: 2013

by Frederick L. Shiels

                  to Richard Wilbur, with appreciation


December ends with thoughts of where we’ve been,
this year of typhoons, popes, dead heroes, Chelyabinsk

Chelyabinsk? you say, mark February’s sky-burst meteor attack
showering space rocks on Siberians fourteen miles below,

Nine thousand miles southwest, nine- months, three- weeks on,
they lay to rest man meteor Mandela in rose Transkei earth,

And from sublime to otherwise, our laptop screens parade
cool images of chemical-dead Syrian children, kids twerking—pick the best,

Lessing, Thatcher, Dear Abby leave the stage,
Hugo, Seamus, Ed Koch, to name a few, Adieu,

Fifteen year old Malala inspires her World in Pakistan,
Old Benedict resigns in Rome, New World Francis takes the papal helm

Liberation theology? gays "OK!", Abortion—wait and see,
Images not quite frozen: Nature flattens houses, people-- Oklahoma, Tacloban,

Late August, Voyager  streaks beyond the heliosphere’s dark edge
thirty six years, twelve billion miles past roaring over/out of earth,

And so much more, we “fray into the future” then,
But wait-- what was the year for You, my friend?


Frederick L. Shiels is a historian, professor and poet living and writing just north of New York City. Recently he has published poems in The New Verse News and will appear in the Winter Edition of Sixfold. He has a political blog, and his most recent book is Preventable Disasters: Why Governments Fail.

OF COURSE

by Gabriel Squailia

Of course there are atheists in foxholes, 

they're all suicidal, and of course there are

two snowflakes shaped the same, 

they just melted, and Schrödinger's cat

is observing you too, you know, 

and she sees a little lie in every truth you tell

and a great big truth in all the lies, 

and I'm the atheist in the foxhole, 

and I'm also a liar, so thank God

the new Pope says it's okay.

Gabriel Squailia lives in the Berkshires, writing novels and poems while working as DJ BFG.

THE POPE PICKERS

by David Feela

“Vatican Smoke” by Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via The Cagle Post.

“What color was the smoke this time?”
“I couldn’t see, but it smelled like bacon.”
“How long will they be in there?”
“It’s impossible to say.”
“What do they do between ballots?”
“Stare at the ceiling.”
“The one Michelangelo painted?”
“That’s the one.”
“Are there enough toilets?”
“Only because they’re all men.”
“Why is that?”
“Because God is a man.”
“I don’t think anyone knows that for sure.”
“The Cardinals do.”
“And who told them?”
“The Pope.”
“The Pope is just an elevated Cardinal, isn’t he?”
“We must not question the wisdom of nepotism.”
“I think they call it Catholicism.”
“Same thing.”
“When they finally decide, how will we know?”
“White smoke will rise from the chimney.”
“What if we can't see it.”
“It will smell like the toilet needs cleaning.”


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.