KRISTI NOEM’S MIRROR

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

meme by witchofsouthernlight at Instagram

A federal judge issued a last-minute temporary stay on Monday to block the Trump administration’s attempt to remove temporary legal protections for up to 350,000 Haitian immigrants across the United States. In a brutal 83-page takedown, Judge Ana C. Reyes of the US District Court for DC specifically laid into a December X post from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that claimed foreign “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” are ruining the vision of the founding fathers… Reyes said that it was therefore “substantially likely” that Noem had moved to end TPS status for Haitians due to “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” —Mother Jones, February 3, 2026

Ice queens must be manicured, beautiful,
at least from a distance. Hence, Botox 
 
serums, facelifts, veneers, fillers, lashes,
skin resurfacing, Medusa extensions.
 
Athena sprang helmeted from the bully Zeus,
She was divinely fair, they say, the gray-
 
Eyed patron and protector of violent men.
Kristi hatched from an old orange thatch
 
to sit at the right hand of Daddy. A son
might have overthrown Zeus, as prophesied. 
 
Such loyal daughters must envy witches.
Cruella de Ville was her own woman, the Wicked
 
Witch of the West, unmoisturized, answered to no one.
But like a witch, ice eventually melts. 

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s latest novel is The Waters, W.W. Norton, 2024.
 

LIKE A HURRICANE

by Mary K O’Melveny

She blew in like a Hurricane

A river deep    A mountain high

 

She ditched Ike   Took over the mike

Blew our minds   Broke our hearts

 

Tina Turner knew first hand 

What love’s got to do with it

 

She told us what we needed

Knew what we wanted

 

Tina stamped her feet   Released her hips  

Danced like unleashed wind

 

She defied age   Demanded respect

Broke the rules   Exposed the fools

 

Tina wore Stiletto heels   Spangled dresses

Split sexy skirts    Spiky blonde hair

 

She even taught Mick Jagger

How to dance   swivel   shake

 

Tina shouted loud   Made us proud

Said we’d better be good to her

 

She will keep on like a Hurricane   

Turning    Burning   Churning  

 

Tina was our Queen of Rock ‘n Roll 

Simply the best   Better than all the rest

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

THE QUEEN IS DEAD

by Debbie Peters

Destitute Dead Mother holding her sleeping Child in Winter, 1850 (Oil on Canvas), by Octave Tassaert

In a housecoat she slept

till breath came no more

        with no one beside her
        lest roaches and mice

her beauty obscured
by toilets she cleaned

        her wisdom unheard
        by those whom she served

my mother, your drudge—
Long live the Queen.

Debbie Peters lives in New York City and dedicates all her writing to her beloved Gerson Lesser. She encourages the world to open its eyes to the millions of queens who quietly die every day, everywhere.

WE CAN STILL DREAM

by Katherine West

American Dream, mixed media in resin artwork by Raphael Mazzucco.

            "I have a dream... we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Last night I dreamed of rain

It overflowed the culverts 

It washed out the road in waves 

Like a sea in the desert 

It filled the arroyos like a lover 

Or the tide before love the opening 

Before the opening the flower 

Dreaming of the bee dreaming 

Of pollen generations of honey 

The wealth of the hive 

And the queen humming 

Her birth song of infinite flight 

Over a globe of no boundaries 

One garden all colors 

A palette of rainy territories 

Mixing new shades forgetting borders 

Katherine West is the author of three collections of poetry and one novel: Scimitar Dreams, The Bone Train, Riddle, and Lion Tamer, respectively.  She has had poetry published in Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, Tanka Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and TheNewVerse.News who nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  She lives in the mountains outside of Silver City, New Mexico where she translates Mexican revolutionary poetry and creates custom, hand-made poetry chapbooks.

THE THREE SHADES

by Sara Cahill Marron

After Les Trois Ombres, 1886, Auguste Rodin, 

Plaster, Bronze

Three hooded men sit knees pressed to chests
foreheads falling together on the curb
Not quite a prayer circle the needles

lay littered, Chick-fil-A styrofoam cups
dance semi-circles between feet some
shoed some toes exposed from greyed

socks I sniff for the stench of days old
urine on cloth smelling only syrup thick
yellow honey heaviness tree pollen whipped

lighter as four p.m. descends on a breeze
carrying contagions, The Three on the nod
from too much junk slowing labored lungs

still as cut bronze heads and shoulders
hung so lowly so lost in Sister Morphine’s
seductive dose depressing respiration

The Three Shades barely breathing surrender
one battle, one corner—CoVID, the Queen,
burns through the streets with her World War.

Sara Cahill Marron, a relocated New York poet living in Washington D.C., is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018) and Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Dark Matter, Chagrin River Review, Foliate Oak, Gravel, Crab Fat Magazine, Gravitas, Atlas + Alice, Joey & the Black Boots, The Write Launch, Cordella, FLARE the Flagler Review, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunch Ticket.

ROYAL WEDDING

by Harold Oberman

It’s days like this
When I’m glad I’m not
Britain’s Poet Laureate.
Appointed by the monarch,
Expected to write verse
About significant national occasions,
There’d be an expectation I’d have to write about this.
Oh Lord
And Ladies,
Commoners and Kings,
Take me to the Tower.

I’m content to be
The self-appointed
Poet Laureate Of My House
And write about
Significant occasions there:

How the AC clicked on for the first time all Spring
Filled the upstairs bedroom with cold air
Soon confused by the ceiling fan
Into a current or eddy or breeze
That stirred the blank pages of this pad Into a rustling call for a blue pen;

How a random bee somehow got inside again,
Buzzed against the window pane until it dropped
Onto the inside sill, exhausted and wing-broken
From, I guess, its quest to get back to the hive
To produce honey or such, or to mate,

Or to meet the Queen.

Harold Oberman is the Poet Laureate of 25-d Montagu Street.  He likes pomp, but not necessarily circumstance or monarchy.

SCARAMUCCI RHAPSODY RISING

by John Dooley

“But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away.” —Freddie Mercury


I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramucci, Scaramucci, well, he got the Trump: fire-go.
Thunderbolt and lightning,
Very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo, what a mouth.
Magnifico-o-o-o-o.

“I'm just a rich boy, nobody loves me.”
“He's just a rich boy from a poor family,”
“Spare him his life from this monstrosity.”

Easy come, easy go, will you make me go?

Oh, Papa Donald Papa Donald Papa Donald Let me go!
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, Donnie, can't do this to me, baby,
“Just gotta get out, just gotta get right the !@#$%^& outta here.”

(Ooooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah)

Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters,
Nothing really matters to me.

Any way the wind blows.

John Dooley lives in the national forest near Prescott, Arizona, teaches in the Masters in Counseling Psychology program at Prescott College, and advocates for peace.

QUEEN

by Scot Siegel

Image source: Pinterest

for Melania

One hundred days the Queen hibernates,
burrowed deep in a cavern of bark.

Every day, a star blinks on, or off,
birth of another scientist, or murderer,

and someone loses his or her job.
Every day is someone's first

at something, waking up married, burying
the dog, eating dinner alone as a widow.

Every spring, the earth gets back to work.
Queen searches for a dry place, a loft or shed,

a wedge of light between truss and stud,
someplace warm and undisclosed,

close to the source: Wood she'll strip from lap
or fence, chew and mix with saliva.

She works fast, connects petiole to rafter.
Spins the nest about the center stalk, weaves

combs for drones whose eggs take five to eight
days to incubate. Then they get to work.

Everything they do is for the Queen.
She never returns to the same nest.


Scot Siegel, Oregon poet and city planner, is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012), both from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. His poetry is part of the permanent art installation along the Portland, Oregon Light Rail Transit ‘Orange Line.’