A FUGUE

by Martin H. Levinson




is a contrapuntal composition in
which a short argument or fight,
like the one we had on Wednesday
over the meaning of Mueller’s
testimony as to who will get to
govern this great nation that
wasn’t so great for blacks,
women, and gays when I was
growing up in the fifties on
a tree-shaded block close to
Ebbets Field, home of the
Brooklyn Dodgers, a team that
left the borough of churches and
underdogs to watch the McCarthy
hearings on television where a
senator who saw Reds under every
bed got his comeuppance but not
before we took cover under our
desks at school so we wouldn’t
die when the Russians dropped
nuclear bombs on New York City
where short arguments or fights
didn’t stop us from to thinking it

was worse during the Civil War
when instead of quarreling on cable
and social media about whether you
can indict a sitting president or what
constitutes fake news, people were
killing each other, blowing up bridges,
and burning down Atlanta where the
traffic these days makes getting from
one end of town to another a nightmare
in our nation’s history that seems to

some to be coming to an end because
even if a new president is elected the
damage to civil discourse and shared
norms has been so eroded that only
poetry and a knowledge that America
has weathered other crises in its past
will be able to save us, but who these
days is writing poetry or knows much
about our nation’s past?


Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN America, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published ten books and numerous articles and poems. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

JUST THE FACTS

by g emil reutter

The shade is always drawn
bland as a meadow hiding from the sun
robin pecks at cracks in dirt
worms deep in hardened soil.

This poem could be about window shades
a meadow, a robin or worms but it isn’t.

Coffee maker gasps and chugs, good to the
last drop, I pour my morning fix. Sun is shy
today, humidity at 83%.

But this poem isn’t about a good cup of coffee
or the weather today.

On Wednesday I watched as the old man spoke
baggy eyes, drawn face. A serious man encircled
by the circus of sound bite panelists. He spoke
the truth, did not perform.

Not a hoax he said, integrity he said, obstruction
true he said, no conspiracy with the enemy he
said, contacts he said. Although there was a
sputter here and there, his just the facts response
reflected courage, the search for the truth.

The Russians are coming again in 2020 he said.

In this time of chicken-hawks, cowardly pols
self-important talking heads, this old man
pushed up the blind, let the sun in.

Down Pennsylvania Avenue, President Bone Spur
squints from the light, speaks of performance
distorts facts, criticizes the heroic old man whose
shoes he could never wear.

And so it is, moisture from the air seeps into the
ground, unrelenting robin hops and listens, plucks
a fat worm through the softened surface. Much as
the old man did on a Wednesday in July of 2019.


g emil reutter can be found at here.

LET US BE VERY CLEAR

by Kathryn Silver-Hajo

Image source: From Words to Deeds

If we’d had confidence that
a crime was not committed
we would have said so

If we’d had confidence that
a crime was committed
we would not have said so

because that would be unfair
because if a crime was committed
justice would not be brought
because the justice department
doesn’t do that kind of justice although

No one is above the law
and the law is above no one who
is above the law because
That is someone else’s job
and that someone else

would like the discussion to end because
Bringing the one who is above the law
below the law would be
a distraction
from the law-making agenda
And it’s just. not. worth it

Kathryn Silver-Hajo studied in the MFA program at Emerson College and at Grub Street Writers in Boston. While seeking representation for her recently completed novel Four Swirls of Ink she is working on a collection of poems and short stories and is headed to the Spannocchia Writers’ Workshop in Tuscany this summer. Her poem Beirut-Tripoli Highway at Rush Hour is forthcoming this fall in Rusted Radishes.

STILL WORDS

by Martin H. Levinson

I put the 448-page report on my desk and
asked it if the president had colluded with
the Russians or had obstructed justice and
like a stone sphinx the tome stared back
at me not uttering a sound or attempting to

make contact with a person who believed
Robert Mueller when he said that he had
chosen the words in his account carefully
and that the words speak for themselves,
which they were clearly not doing despite

the fact that I was only being polite in
asking my questions and had even offered them
a cup of coffee and some cookies to help
break the ice between us that I didn’t think
should be there since I’ve always been a

big fan of words and have used them
often in my writing to express what is in
my head and heart but when I told that to
the words in front of me they just gave me
the cold shoulder, which was sad since I had

no room in my house for a chilled appendage
and what I really wanted was not a chunk
of their torso but a discussion with them
about what did the president know and
when did he know it.

Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN America, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published ten books and numerous articles and poems. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

INFIRMITY

by Rick Mullin

After the Mueller Report by Barry Blitt at The New Yorker

The faithless Democrat turns very fast
on a purported savior when that savior
doesn’t let him have his way. The last
two days bring out his worst behavior.
Now the hope of a purported dossier
is dashed, the clumsy meeting in the tower
proves another harrowing non-starter.
The Democrat hangs back at happy hour,
pining for the days of Jimmy Carter
before the Gipper took his ball away.
“Perhaps that special counsel was a ruse!”
He’ll air that out on social media.
His reverence for a savior’s fast and loose,
unlike that of the MAGA ascaridia
whose savior lives to loathe another day.


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Lullaby and Wheel.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

by Edmund Conti

Collusion Conclusions by Matt Bors at The Nib

Mueller was our hero
Until his work was done.
Final score, Mueller zero;
Barr none.


Edmund Conti has written several poems. Final score not in yet.

YOGA AND THE MUELLER REPORT

by Judith Terzi

Our bodies sinking into mats.
We are mountains on our heads.
Inhale, exhale. Collusion between
body and mind. We count long
breaths for remedy. We inhale.
Energy streams, recedes. We look
into ourselves, release the mélange
of hype, exhale the yoke of power's
deception. We twist into eagle pose.
We are king palms, oaks. We are
the sky, we inhale warmth, salute
the soar. We are royal warriors
in child's pose. We exhale all
the words. Our ears are sealed.

Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books, 2018) and five chapbooks, Judith Terzi's poems appear widely in literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been read on the BBC, nominated for Best of the Net and Web, and included in a study guide for the artist-in-residence program for State Theater New Jersey. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and lives in Pasadena, CA with her husband and cockatiel.

WAITING FOR MUELLER

by Rick Mullin

by LysergicAcid25

The Conversation lingers and abides,
a live feed to the hungry living room.
Incessant Facebook messaging provides
an outlet to the core where we assume
participants are pro-democracy,
politically correct, and mostly woke.

Arriviste Ocasio-Cortez
is on the line. We love the way she spoke
to power only yesterday. She says,
“Après le déluge, you can count on me!”

The Special Counsel wraps up any day.
The noose is tight and we expect it all
to come together. Confident, we stay
awake, empowered by the spectacle
of drying paint on MSNBC.


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Lullaby and Wheel.

MUELLER MULLING

by Edmund Conti

There is no smoking gun yet.
Results look rather thinnish.
But wait, we are not done yet.
Please just let me finish.


Edmund Conti is about finished as a poet.  Wait, maybe a few more.

YEARS AGO AT THE TROLL FACTORY(A FLASHBACK)

by Melissa Balmain

CNN video from Oct 26, 2016.

"What to know about the Russian troll factory
listed in Mueller’s indictment" 

—Vox, February 16, 2018

Chug-chug, the googly-eye machine

goes round; a massive table brims

with squat injection-molded limbs

and fluffy topknots (orange, green)

as workers in white coveralls

toil on without a kasha break.

At last: "We've done it, no mistake!"

the comrades whoop. Then silence falls

as they behold their masterpiece—

that gruesome grin! That triple chin!

That overcooked-kolbasa skin!—

and plot its glorious release.

Melissa Balmain is the Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award), is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

INCANTATION: LET THE MAGIC BEGIN

by Mare Leonard

art by Noely Ryan @ ArtStation

You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man. I can grab your pussy, stick out my tongue, spit, sputter like geysers from below.

Into what hell of fake news,  ruse of tax cuts,  mountains of lies, the lawyer in the room guise  stirs the cauldron  today? Don't lean on hopes of Flynt. He scratched a rock, lit a light of immunity for morality or him? Like a geyser, he may spark, sputter, reach to the sky and fizzle. The devil resides in the cauldron below. Deep under the caw caw of the crow, geysers spout up and we shout this is it, the one, howl, don't let babies burn  burn, burn, don't let lifelines fall through the cracks, don't give  billions to the rich. don't mock the middle, the poor, the immigrant. Drown out congressmen in LaLaLand who like Marie Antoinette shout, Let them eat cake. Geese honkhonk, Resist. How does the GOPP, the party of the pedophiles exist, how do they move and eat and sleep? Hooked on opiods, burgers, midnight tweets, a belief in trickle down economics, the lie that sweeps the donors cash for their ten thou dinner treats, another castle on a hill?  We observe, take photos when the earth splits, sweeps you all below. We sing, you can run you but you can't hide, you can shout  but Mueller and the FBI will  crack you GingerBreadMan and your vanilla wafer friends. You'll tremble and crumble, rollrollroll into the underland.  And in the heavens  the #MeToo will light the sky.  We'll sing, love, love, love, hug women, men, babies, The LGBTQ, DACA, Muslims all who  rise from the dead to hear from above no one can  pardon the King of Scam.

Mare Leonard lives in an old school house overlooking The Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.  Although her most natural writing voice is humorous she has published in a range of voices and in all forms and subject matters. She was a finalist in last year's NY State Di Biase contest. Some of her latest publications appear in the Vietnam poetry publication from Perfume River, Rats Ass Review, Figroot, Sweet Tree, Eunoia and in the British Journal of Arts&Letters.