GIULIANI WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA

by Jon Wesick

with apologies to Charlie Daniels

Jack Ohman: "A peach of a guy," The Sacramento Bee, August 18, 2022

Giuliani went down to Georgia, he was lookin’ for votes to steal

He was in a bind ‘cause Trump was way behind

And he was willin’ to make a deal

 

When he came across the DA writing subpoenas and slinging ‘em hot

And Giuliani pled attorney-client with Trump

And said, “girl, let me tell you what”

 

“I guess you didn’t know I’m a lawyer too

At least until I was disbarred

Now you got a pretty good grand jury, girl

But why you gotta’ make it so hard

Makin’ me travel to Atlanta

By bus, or train, or car?”

 

The DA said, “My name is Fani and I’m gonna’ win

And you can bet you’re gonna’ regret

‘Cause I’m the best there’s ever been”

 

Giuliani wiped off his hair dye and said, “I’ll start this grift”

And nothing else passed his lips except, “I take the fifth”

All the hacks at Fox News made an evil hiss

While Lindsey Graham filed appeals for judges to dismiss

 

Fani said, “You’re pretty slick, old son

But sit right there in the witness chair

And I’ll show you how it’s done”

 

Classified documents out in the sun

While Trump considers a twenty-four run

New York, Georgia, and Feds closing in

Holding our breath for justice to win

 

Giuliani hung his head ‘cause he knew he’d been beat

As he climbed down off the witness seat

And Fani cracked a smile

“Come on back to Georgia

I’ll see you at your trial”

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, The New Verse News, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. Jon is the author of the poetry collections Words of Power, Dances of Freedom and A Foreigner Wherever I Go as well as several novels and short story collections. His most recent novel is The Prague Deception.

EVIDENCE

by Bruce Bennett

Glowingly, knowingly 

Cassidy Hutchinson 

Answers the questions 

Revealing it all: 

 

Rudy and Proud Boys 

And weapons and pardons 

And dishes in pieces, 

A smear on the wall. 

Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty poetry chapbooks. His most recent full-length book is Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems New and Selected, 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017). From 1973 until his retirement in 2014, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at Wells College, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. He predicted what we were in for in his November 2016 YouTube video, The Donald Trump of the Republic.

ITEMS NOT SEIZED FROM RUDY GIULIANI'S HOME

by Chad Parenteau

Art from 1999 by Robert Lederman.

Photo of Hillary Clinton

in white pantsuit, black stripes

drawn on in marker.

 

Five laptops with “Hunter”

scratched onto each bottom.

 

FDNY firefighter axe

with ninety-eight notches.

 

Two copies of

Time Magazine’s 2001

“Person of the Year” issue.

 

One copy signed to

“Abner Lube-Me-Up,”

 

the other to “Amadou Diablo –

Now you can count to forty-one!”

 

Atlas Shrugged book, pages

blacked out, “Truth isn’t truth”

written on back cover.

 

“Adolph Giuliani”

protest poster, signed.

 

One envelope returned

to sender. Contents include:

 

additional copy of

Time Magazine’s 2001

“Person of the Year” issue,

 

“For Trump” written on cover

in gold marker.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.

RIFF SESTINA

by Judith Terzi

Reps take their seats; Zelensky's praying for a shift.
The gavel resounds. Marie Yovanovitch is the witness.
Volodymyr knows how she got kicked out of Ukraine,
how Rudy, Igor & Lev tried to make T greater again,
how he's gotta win in 2020 by whichever M.O.
"Get over it, folks! Of course we did a quid pro quo,"

he heard Mulvaney say. "Everyone quid pro quos."
He admires the chair: the calm, collected Schiff.
He thinks he's a mensch, that he has a rabbi-esque M.O.
Respectful, reflective, meticulous as he bears witness.
His voice like a limpid stream one can listen to again.
His cheeks like a boy's on a snowy day in Ukraine.

Zelensky watches Nunes mock the frenzy over Ukraine––
a country at war. Devin calls the hearings a quid pro quo
of hearsay, a Watergate fantasy, a hoax, ad nauseam again.
The Dems got caught, they got caught, got caught. Schiff
is stoic during Devin's anaphora routine; he bears witness.
Z hears about nude photos of T. Who wants them? Oh!

The wrestler has the mic, no one fights his ringside M.O.
Jordan talks as fast as the speed of light, indicts Ukraine:
a shirtsleeves rant that leaves no time for the witness,
no time for Z to unpack every word, every quid pro quo.
Jim doesn't care what T said on 7/25. Motivations shift––
aid's unfrozen, T & Z rendezvoued. Ibid. ad nauseam again.

Jordan grins, pouts, gesticulates, rustles notes again.
Zelensky's watching him, studying this histrionic M.O.
(Z was an actor & a writer before becoming Pres.) Schiff
could replace T, muses Z. Cooler vibes for Ukraine.
Adam could be his bro: no Burisma, no quid pro quo,
no server, no Putin behind his back, no Joe. No witnesses

like Yovanovitch who got dumped, who bore witness
to Z's anti-corruption stump. She could vouch for him again.
He hears Volker et al., & Sondland saying ni ni quid pro quo,
then tak, tak quid pro quo. Z gets Gordon's schtick, his M.O.––
a zillion bucks to get on a plane to the E.U. then Ukraine.
Volodymyr's watching, praying for change, praying for Schiff.

He hears Schiff's finale––he's eloquent again. Witness
Hill cements the quid pro quo. Ukraine can't wait for Z's
new series: "Magnum, M.O.: Do Us A Favor, Though.”

Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books) as well as of five chapbooks including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus). Her poetry appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, has been nominated for Best of the Net and Web and a Pushcart, and read on the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN IMPEACHMENT DEFENSE

by Edmund Conti

13 or so Republican whitebirds.

I
Among the Carpathian Mountains
The only moving thing
Was Hunter Biden.

II
I was of three minds
Like a Congress
In which there are Republicans, women and blacks.

III
The blackbird whistled in the autumn winds.
Someone find out who he is.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A quid and a quo and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blower whistling
Or just after.

VI
Reporters filled the White House
Listening,
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood?
The blackbird cackled
Indecipherable caws.

VII
O thin men of CNN,
Why do imagine golden birds?
Do you not see the corruption?
Where is my lawyer?
Rudy. Rudy. Rudy!

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
A beautiful phone call when I hear one
Is what I know.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light
I cry out for a red light
To stop everything.

XI
He rode over Connecticut Avenue
In his limousine,
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The Washington Wizards
For blackbirds.


XII
The river is moving.
Get over it!

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The Democrats sat
Waiting.


There are many ways of looking at Edmund Conti’s poetry. Right side up is best

CAPO GHAZAL

by Esther Greenleaf Murer

Of course I’ll release the funds.  But first, do me a favor.
No, of course you’re not being coerced—just do me a favor.

Those shitholes out there are trying to undermine me!
They have to be slimed and aspersed, so do me a favor.

Help me out with this and I’ll invite you to the White House.
Just do your best (i.e. worst) and I’ll take it as a favor.

Rudy is coming with an offer you can’t refuse:
end up in the Dnieper feet first, or do me a favor.

This transcript is going to the secret computer system,
so forget that we ever conversed; just do me a favor.

Esther Greenleaf Murer is a longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News.  She lives in Philadelphia.

AND THEN THERE WERE LAWYERS

by Alejandro Escudé




A garden of lawyers planted with the utmost care,
            petunia lawyers, and rose lawyers, daisy and sunflower lawyers,
as the sun sprinkles its salty light over the plots; at night,
            the moon rises like a white crow flying in eternal circles,
the stars spit old blue mucus—lawyers blooming among lawyers,
            suited in pink, lilacs, oranges, the soil healthy, dark, biblical
beneath their lawyer root-feet. They dig deep down into the earth,
            so far down their defenses are solid as stone. The judge
presides over the seasons. He of the morning cloth, he of the pit
            and tractor. Green and motorized. His honor the plough,
his honor the keeper of the books. One lawyer reflects more
            expressions than ripples in a water trough. His head a skull,
his mind an exactitude of inexactitudes. “Truth isn’t truth,”
            he would often be heard whispering to the beetles that punctuated
the documents of creation. Indeed, the rain excised no tax
            on him, this silly, ill-begotten snake who swore only to protect
the politicians politicking from stump to stump like magpies.
            When the day comes pure, cold against the volcanic solitude,
think of the low road that sinks beneath the river. No flies
            near the dead-spaces. Let’s not forget, justice isn’t human.


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.

TRUTH IS

by David Spicer 

"Truth isn't truth." —Rudy Giuliani

If Truth isn’t Truth, what is it in this Twilight Zone of Lies?

A woman in a red dress who carries a tote bag of secret tapes?

Or a ghoul defending the King Kong of Truth’s desperate enemy?

Truth is Beauty, Keats said two hundred years ago.

Truth is in the mouth of the speaker mouthed to a mime of memes.

Truth is your mother, your mother said, offering you her Judas-goat
     milk.

Twenty women whirling in a field of tulips you lie in every morning
     is Truth.

The Grand Canyon at sunset echoing your prayers you recite on your
     rug.

Heartbeats between the breaths you breathe before you take a 
     morning jog.

I met Truth once in the guise of a beautiful femme fatale on the bed in
     my trailer.

She said, I just pity-loved you, clod, and you think we were lovers?

Truth is, that was her truth, truth is, it wasn’t pleasant, truth is, I’m 
     not over it.

Truth will knock your block off and demolish your stone-cold cities.

Truth will break your soul of week knees and tell you it did you a 
     solid.

Truth is, tell me a truth that doesn’t hurt and I’ll buy you a shot of 
     Truth vodka.

You’ll swig it like a liquid potato and savor it, you’ll swivel your head 
     and squint

your eyes in twisting pain that guts your gullet. Then you’ll make a 
     sound

like air escaping from a tire that’s tired from too much road. You’ll 
     feel good.

Now that’s Truth. Truth isn’t what you want it to be. Truth is what it 
     wants to be.

Truth is your grandmother standing naked in the kitchen in front of 
     you and you’ve

never seen a naked woman before and you don’t know what you’re
     seeing. It’s Truth, baby.

Truth is ugly, a bomb victim said that to me the other day when I
     visited him in the ICU.

Truth is callous. Your brother stealing your $600 while you’re
     sleeping, dreaming of beauty.

Dreaming of the time he outraced some knucklehead on the freeway 
     driving a Charger.

Truth was, your brother’s Chevy packed truth in its carbs and pistons
     and exhaust pipes.

Truth was, it wasn’t a chick magnet like the salesman said it would be.
     That was his truth.

My truth? I don’t know. Truth is the last thing I hope to see or 
     listen to before I disappear.

No, if truth isn’t truth, beauty isn’t beauty, ugly isn’t ugly, nothing is
     nothing but empty words

spinning from a lie peddler, a ghoul defending the King Kong of Lies.
     Truth is, his day

is coming. Truth is, it’ll be welcomed. Truth is, truth is death and it’ll 
     kill you where you stand.

David Spicer has published poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Oddball Magazine, The Literary Nest,The Tipton Poetry Journal, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press), and five chapbooks, the latest of which is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press), released in August of 2017. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

RUDY! RUDY! RUDY!

by Darrell Petska

Caricature by Josh Ferrin

Hey, He could've shot james comey
and not been prosecuted:
He's the President.
He can say what He wants,
do what He wants:
more power to Him!
He can sleep with your lover if He wants,
steal babies from their mothers,
hell, He can rob an armored bank car
for all I care, and not be prosecuted
while He's the President.
He can pardon chuckie manson,
lee harvey oswald, the golden state
serial killer—whomever He damned well pleases:
He's the President.
He can put jeffy sessions out of his misery.
I mean permanently.
That turncoat trey gowdy, too.
He can cop a feel on sarah what's-her-face
sanders and what could she possibly do?
He's the President.
Just try to indict Him. He'll pardon Himself.
Besides, He can't be guilty of collusion or obstruction
when recollections keep changing.
What are facts, anyway? After three days
they begin to smell.
Allow me, your beloved prince of new york,
to spare you that terrible stench
by uttering the stupidest things—
just as He hired me to do.
(Praise god! I'm relevant again.)
I represent the President,
the One, the Anointed, the Boss,
so take it from me:
you'd better toe the line, amigos,
or He'll strip you of the rest of your rights,
and there'll be nothing you can do about it
while He's the President.
Capiche?


Darrell Petska often doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry at the news. So he tries to laugh.

REBIRTH

by Howard Winn

Image: “Rudy Giuliani’s Scar Power Grabs” by Keith Seidel for Washington Monthly Magazine

Floundering in the sea of anonymity
with head barely above the surface
weighted with the concrete blocks
of three wives some past but always
present he was desperate to be important
again in a world that had left him
behind if not the eight-ball at least
the news of the day and that coveted
spot in the political power structure
where he could be someone rather
than no one so he embraced the Satan
of the moment masquerading as the
savior who would recreate the past
that was now irrelevant in the present
complexity of society and truth from
science as well as standards from
faith had to be denied in order to be-
come important once more so again
he could be America’s heroic mayor.


Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Descant. Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. His latest work is Acropolis, a novel published by Propertius Press. He is Professor of English at SUNY-Dutchess.

AMERICAN LOVE STORY

by Chris O’Carroll

Rudy Giuliani Is Now Trump, Minus the Hair. 

--Frank Rich, New York Magazine, February 25, 2015

“Barack Obama doesn’t love me!” Giuliani cries.
“Rudy, chill.  Nobody does,” the whole wide world replies.

But then Hizzoner takes it up a notch: “He doesn’t love
America, which is the country he’s the POTUS of.

“I know he doesn’t love this nation.  If he did, he’d say
That Islam’s always evil, and so’s marriage if you’re gay.

“He’d say that workers shouldn’t have the right to unionize.
Protecting the environment is something he’d despise.

“Of birth control and women’s right to choose he would be scornful,
And when black guys get killed by cops, he wouldn’t be so mournful.

“He’d shut up about plans to keep the poor insured and healthy,
And dedicate himself to lower taxes for the wealthy.

“He’d say non-Christians aren’t protected by the Constitution,
And there’s no evidence for climate change or evolution.

“From Fox News he would take his cues about what’s patriotic.
As you can see, I’m not irrelevant or idiotic.”


Chris O’Carroll has published a number of poems in The New Verse News.  Some Americans love his work.  Others, not so much.