MY COUNTRY FOR A MEDAL

by Anne Herrick

Partially based on lines from Shakespeare's Richard III, Act 5

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

My medal, 

            my medal!  

                        America undone for my medal.

 

            Forsooth, sire, I will assist you

            in claiming this precious gold

 

Loyalist, I have lain my life upon this medal

I have set seven squabbles to peace—

Nay—I have in fact settled eight.

I must therefore have my medal.  

I will, I must, doom America for my medal.

 

Courageous Sire, it is Norway 

which has undone your gold,

I must find the wretch 

that decreed the providence of this prize

 

Great God of Heaven, say amen to all!

I will usurp, I will slay, this Danish bloody dog

which hath denied what has always been my due.

I will pluck this traitor’s foreign Greenland

and put its gold upon my oval mantelpiece.

 

            On bended knee I needs say, my Gracious Sire 

            that Denmark is not quite where is Norway —

            it is avowedly smallest, in the cold North Sea.

 

Oh, Slave, I will choose who is to blame.

I will push Denmark to weep in streams of blood.

I will save Greenland from Denmark’s yoke of tyranny,

dig far into the bowels of its land,

will cast its destiny with the doomed dome of America.

I know that true hope flies with swallow’s wings,
that it is the meaner creatures that make kings.

Anne Herrick has published a few poems and prose in the US and UK.

TRUE HOPE IS SWIFT AND FLIES WITH SWALLOW'S WINGS

by Annie Cowell 

Mural with swallows, Kyiv.

At dawn there is a chattering outside;

the swallows have returned—

A clattering percussion after winter’s silence

And I wonder as I watch them 

hurtling like arrows across the sky—

are there swallows shrieking over Kyiv?

Whilst missiles blast the light from Kyiv’s skies

will children spy the swallows darting past;

olive twigs hanging from their beaks?

Will those birds find their nests are broken

and sit instead on the prow of Charon’s boat

to guide the dead to the underworld?

Or rather, as sirens wail in breathless darkness

will the swallows glitter amongst the stars—

souls of the dead heralding the sun?

They say that true hope is swift 

and flies with swallow's wings

‘and light will win over darkness’

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

MEMO TO JEFF SESSIONS FROM WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

by Wilda Morris

I warned you in my famous play
what happens when you grasp the coattails
of a sociopath drunk on the possibilities of power,
one who hides evil intent behind the scriptures
he quotes, sows seeds of division,
spreads false gossip, multiplies lies
while boasting his achievements, faith
and truthfulness. Had you read Richard III
and heeded Buckingham, you would have realized
that one brief pause before fulfilling all demands,
one little bit of conscience, and you’d be doomed.
You were destined, like him, for the axe
by your recusal.


Wilda Morris lives and writes in the Chicago area. Her blog provides a contest for poets each month.

DESCANT ON OUR DEFORMITY

by Rachel Voss

Richard III's skeleton as found in the grave beneath a parking lot. The remains of the King who died in the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485 were reburied in a tomb in Leicester's Anglican cathedral on March 26, 2015.

What’s more naked
than bones?  The whitewashing
of history, a ghostly rose

to honor the dead.  Which
dead?  “It doesn’t look like
the face of a tyrant,” a woman

said.  Hasn’t she heard
of Shakespeare (who couldn’t
have written a better ending),

or known any real sons of bitches?
It costs a lot of money
to look this immortal.

The onlookers point their thousand several phones,
and every phone takes several similar pictures,
and every picture condemns us all for vanity.

Now is the spring of our
reinterment.  Despite
the line of worshippers

and the royal craze, I, for one,
am determined to hate
the idle pleasures of these days.


Rachel Voss is a high school English teacher and lives in Queens, New York. She graduated with a degree in creative writing and literature from SUNY Purchase College. Her work has previously appeared in Hanging Loose Magazine, Borderline, WORK, Blast Furnace, and The Prompt Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in Newtown Literary and the Silver Birch Press Great Gatsby Anthology.

FINDING RICHARD

by Dave Goldenberg

Richard III, Infamous English King, Found Under Parking Lot --US News headline, February 4, 2013.
Image source: University of Leicester

"March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell

If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell."
--Shakespeare's Richard III



To none would this cold grave as heav'n appear,

And so it seems, clod-cloister'd in cold clay,

That I did damn'd in hell these centuries lay

'Neath Vauxhalls and Renaults in second gear



Yet 'tis in heav'n I have come to stay.

The Bard hath penned perhaps no greater role--

And lions have inhabited my soul,

Such as Pacino and Olivier.


Dave Goldenberg is a New York ad guy who moved his office about 30 miles uptown. Although he's won awards as a writer and creative director, he's equally at home in his left brain. Over 20 years he's served every kind of client, from AOL and American Express and Schick to MTV and America Online. But that's just his day job. He's also a folksinger on the local circuit, a passionate skier and an unapologetic Yankees fan.