OH, TO BELONG

by Alan Walowitz

Russia has expanded its list of sanctioned Americans in a tit-for-tat retaliation for the latest curbs imposed by the United States. But what is particularly striking is how much President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is adopting perceived enemies of former President Donald J. Trump as his own. —The New York Times, May 21, 2023

I want to get on that Russia-list.

To be among those who can’t go to Moscow—

would be so Chekhovian, bittersweet

not to see the Cyrillic sights, or trade in  

Gazprom futures, or pass gas in Red Square.

Here in the Times is a list of my peeps, my peers—

the Jews, the odd, the Kleptocrat wannabes, 

the comedians, the gays, the left-wingers, a few right

who despise George Santos, his lies which

make them queasy, though wonder at how easy. 

Some who grew up in Brighton, or 108th in Queens—

and here a Huckabee from Arkansas, 

notorious for lying herself. 

And others, much kinder, smarter—

actors, heiresses, entrepreneurs, free-thinkers

who submit clever Shouts to The New Yorker,

most never to be heard

except for an occasional squint 

through that imperious monocle.

All of us who would have been

red diaper-babes once upon a time

whose mothers never lived to see the day

our names had made the Russia-list 

in The New York Times.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

RED DOMINION, THE TRANSITION: RATED R

by Alejandro Escudé

Illustrated | Mark Wilson/Getty Images, Lebrecht Music & Arts/Alamy Stock Photo via The Week

T***p stands at the top of the White House steps
holding an assault rifle: “Say hello to my little friend!”
he screams as the army rushes to arrest him, explosions
everywhere; in the Oval Office desk, dozens of encrypted
Russian messages, a diagram of an experimental aircraft
inside his seven iron, and the button, beneath the bust
of Taft, he pushed to open a passage to a bullet tram
leading directly to Moscow, on the way blasting by
Satan himself, his wild angel wings, demons wearing
MAGA caps raise their claws as he speeds through,
the tram, shaped like the cockpit of a 747, painted black
with T***P in red on its side; the final station is made
of gold, supporters and strippers greet him in Moscow;
police whisk him up a marble staircase to a glass elevator
and into a luxury hotel room near Red Square where
he’s met by a few KGB officials awaiting his last report
which T***p recites in precise Russian as he removes
the prosthetic face he has worn for decades, unveiling
a remarkable resemblance to Lenin; he runs a hand
over his bald head, the window open, sound of traffic
outside. Trump holds up a rumpled wig and smiles.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.