HUBRIS

by Robbie Gamble

News item: scientists are jubilant

as a golf cart-sized hunk of space

payload pulled up and T-boned

a minor asteroid a touch more

massive than Fenway Park—

a veritable bullseye—our first

home entry into the extraterrestrial

demolition derby. Newsfeeds showed

grainy shots of an apparent pumice

stone looming in the void, then

a blank screen, followed by polo-

shirted Mission Control engineers

high-fiving and avowing “This one’s

for the dinosaurs!” as if they

might have changed the course

of paleontology had NASA been

operational back at the end

of the Cretaceous Era. Today

we are watching as Hurricane

Ian, a Cat 4 beast, is slamming

into the Florida Gulf Coast, and I

bet there’s a whole bunch of golf

carts being swept inland with

the storm surge, while the governor

hunkers behind hasty barricades

of banned books, and the Red Sox

might have to relocate for next

spring training. A certain president

floated the notion of nuking hurricanes

back out into open water. Hmm. And

there was also that business of beating

a virus back with bleach. In space,

no one can hear you tee off.

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Lunch Ticket, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont. 

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.

THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HOUSE LAVATORY

by Peter Nohrnberg

Now gather round, and ye shall hear

A tale of epic daring

About a King who tweeted lots  

But wasn’t into sharing.   

 

Forsooth it was a vile Act

That drove him into battle:

“Preserve all Records” Congress bade;

But records are known to tattle. 

 

At first he simply tore them up

But a Northern Plot took shape.

Foul thanes restored his mangled foes,

mended with Scotch tape. 

 

A vision came to aid the King

—O I fear my rhyme shall spoil it!—

To gather up his papers dear 

And take them to the toilet.

 

Now he himself sat on a throne

Of 24 karat gold,

But in the White House was installed

A porcelain commode. 

 

Notes, memos, logs, and Post-its too

In basin he did pitch.

A smirk upon his face, quoth he:

“Toilets never snitch!”

                                   

He flushed it once, he flushed it twice,

He cursed the gods above!

And with his little stubby hands

He gave a forceful shove.

 

Who knows what knowledge then was lost?

A proof of Fermat’s theorem?

Evidence of Electoral Fraud?

A Covid-19 serum? 

 

What was wiped out I cannot tell:

Mum’s the Orange Mandarin.

Destruction worse than what befell

The Library Alexandrian! 

 

The doughty deed now done he left

The toilet overflowing.

He soared above the effluvia,

POTUS the All-Knowing.

 

And yet he did not know when he

Flushed it all down the crapper,

That squatting in the stall next door

Was CNN’s Jake Tapper! 

 

Out burst the newsman, overwhelmed

By fast approaching flood,

He saw the thickening of the tide

And sensed it was not mud!

 

“Who brought on this catastrophe,

Who took this massive dump?” 

The scales then fell from Jacob’s eyes:

It only could be T***p.

 

For clinging to the leather sole

Of the shoe of Squire Tapper:

A doodle of two giant boobs

On a McDonalds wrapper.

 

It was the flush heard round the world,

Except in Mar-a-Lago.

About his deed he’ll tell no tales

Just like good old Iago.    

 

‘Tis true, ‘tis true the Don is dumb,

But everyone else is dumber;

He even one-upped Tricky Dick

By being his own Plumber!

A scholar of literary modernism, cultural critic, and poet, Peter Nohrnberg’s poems and essays have appeared in Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, Oxford Poetry, and Public Seminar. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. His essay “Joyce, Irish Photography, and the Making and Publicizing of National, Familial, and Authorial Images" is forthcoming in Joyce Studies Annual 2021.