ALL IN THE FAMILY

by David Southward

Rocky, who declined to provide his last name because he works downtown, was calling out to delegates and others leaving the RNC on Wednesday night, asking them about their views on LGBT issues. "You crashed our website!" he said, referring to news that Grindr was experiencing outages in Milwaukee during the RNC due to high traffic.—USA Today Network, July 19, 2024

While red-blooded men in Milwaukee
went ape on a gay walkie-talkie—
their fists pumped at Trump
while trolling for rump—
this fairy stayed home making gnocchi.


David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor's Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020).

A NIGHT AT THE RNC

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Oh, say can you see, by dusk’s dimming light, fake news spewing from the worst on the right, from the Senate’s blind mice, ignoring all vice, the children in cages, the jobless... no wages, federal troops, crushing protest groups, voters’ hopes flailing, domestic terror prevailing.  Oh say, can you see, by dawn’s angry red glare, pollution and hatred on the air, in praise of T***p’s props and photo ops, truth denying, the sick and dying, our worst fears rearing, Kent State reappearing.

Aging rapidly, alternately sad, and depressed, Lucille Gang Shulklapper is at other times the fortunate author of numerous poems (a dozen or so published in TheNewVerse.News since 2008)and stories, as well as five poetry chapbooks and a picture book. She recently started a program in her residential community titled Edgewater Poets, giving seniors a voice on a community channel as well as the staff employed there. 

BURN THE WITCH

by Catherine McGuire

The arena turned in a moment
to a lynch mob, frothing, hanging
on the words of a “prosecutor” who parodied
his job for a spotlight and cheers.
Guilty! raged again and again – the crowd
inflamed by sentences honed
to razors – the truth be damned! –
She’s a witch and we know it – Salem shadows
spiraled up from the floor, ashy, dark,
trying to voice their warning. But blood
boiled up, blotted out reason,
the hounds of hate set loose,
howling for a victim. On the podium,
sneering, the man disgorged his bitter fury –
passed over twice! – and clawed back
the adulation he knew was his.


Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for ecology and our planet's future. Her first full length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, will be published in October 2016 by FutureCycle Press.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE DELEGATES

by David Feela






I’d prefer if you counted
the red, white and blue balloons
instead of politicos,
inhale the rhetorical helium


that transforms normal voices
into falsettos of hypertension,
words lost in the vast empty
ceiling of a Cleveland arena.


Try stabbing a finger
into the paunchy gut
of the next vacuous promise
inflated by rage.


Oh Ohio, all week you’ve built
a future on a platform of fear,
thinking it will rise
for the next four years.

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.