THE LEAK, THE CHILL, AND FOAMCORE

by Tricia Knoll

5am. This fleece robe does not ward off April chill

that goes to my bones knowing what leaked. 

Someone could not stay silent. Someone was right. 

Fifty years and my hand knows a rage. I grab a marker

to make my sign. Simple words, I insist, simple words:

I remember

 

                        that girl who hired a man to drive her

to Mexico. They did not drink Margaritas. She returned

with a raging infection. She lost one possible future

as a mother. She was eighteen. Jobless. Alone. 

She rocked herself holding a teddy bear

and smoked menthol cigarettes. She did not tell

her Catholic family.  I could hear her rocking

 in the room next door. Her teddy bear wore

 a scarlet ribbon. 

 

Rachel Maddow said all her life women had this one right. 

How strange to have become this old: I remember.

The Janes remember. The jobless remember. Those raped

remember. Those with hard decisions remember. 

And now it’s possible to get legal abortions in Mexico. 

Yes, I remember. My sign smells of broad-stroke marker. 

Tricia Knoll does remember the days before Roe v. Wade. This draft court opinion terrifies her. As people in Ukraine have expressed, it is no gift to experience deja vu. Her poetry appears widely in anthologies, journals, and five collections of poetry. She is a contributing editor to Verse Virtual. 

NEVER CRITICIZE A NAZI

by George Held

unless you have spoken out
in church or synagogue
or demonstrated in the streets
against your own fascist regime
as it squelches one civil right
after another

I know, as long as the sheriffs
concentrate on the Muslims
and the blacks and the Latinx
we can calmly complain among ourselves
about the increasing nastiness
and aggression

as the Other is whisked off
to prison and to the camps
now being built in the pine barrens
beyond the view of the casual
observer of all the nastiness
and aggression

and besides, it’ll be more peaceful
for a while, as long as we keep
resistance to ourselves and act
the part of loyal citizens—we know
the primacy of loyalty today—in
ignoring nastiness

have you calculated like an actuary
how long it will be before they
invade your house at 2 AM
and drag you before your cousin
the magistrate for arraignment
as a traitor

anyhow, it won’t be too long
unless you keep your mouth shut
and switch from Rachel to Hannity
at 9 PM and wear a handsome
red ball cap that says Keep America
Great

Oh, yes, and never criticize a Nazi.
Achtung!


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

LAND OF THE LIVING

by Laura Rodley

Image source: Pinterest

It is late April and night peepers sleep;
it is too warm right now for them to weep.

They want a cool night, to turn on spring’s lathe,
awaking in the pond where wood ducks bathe.

Too warm for them and too cold for my Dad
resting in his pond of electric bed, glad

to close his eyes and breathe, oxygen on,
waiting for Rachel Maddow, nighttime fawn

who only speaks through airways, her hollow
full of lights, as though the sun she swallows;

as soon as the lights are dim, she retreats
back into the deep woods on sneakered feet,

a fawn who speaks English, siphons the news,
that now is keeping my Dad living, glued.

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.