WHITE MAN'S BLUES

by James McKee

Musician and Trump supporter Kraig Moss sings and plays his guitar as South Carolina voters line —WNYC

Well I’m walking down the street,
There’s no English to be heard;
Yeah, I’m walking down my street,
Ain’t no English, not one word.
I was born in the First World;
Looks like I’ll be buried in the Third.


First they take away your job,
Send the factory off to Mexico;
Then they go after your woman;
Where she’s got to, I ain’t know;
Now they’re coming for what’s left,
Time for another Alamo.


I hear them say white man
With that look on they face;
Everybody saying white man
Like it have some nasty taste;
Seems like they forget
Who it was built this place.


Our daddies had it good,
Everybody knew God was white;
Our daddies kept it simple,
You were black if you weren’t white;
If that means they done wrong,
I got no use for doing right.


Prisons are full and getting fuller,
Because the law is the law.
How come we got so many prisons?
And who is it makes up the law?
Ask too many questions,
You find out what prison’s for.


In New York they call me racist,
Mock my accent and my state;
To L.A. I’m just a redneck,
Love two things, guns and hate;
But I’m the first to get a call
When there’s a war that can’t wait.


Had a dream last night:
A river of strangers rushing by;
No one hears me or sees me,
And then that flood, it runs dry.
I knew when I woke up
Nothing changes till I die.

James McKee and his wife live in New York City, in a neighborhood where the 1% seldom go.  A New Yorker by birth (and likely by death), he enjoys failing in his dogged attempts to keep pace with the unrelenting cultural onslaught of late-imperial Manhattan.  After taking a degree in English & Philosophy, he held a number of ludicrously unsuitable jobs before spending over a decade as a teacher and administrator at a small special-needs high school. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Raintown Review, Saranac Review, The South Carolina Review, THINK, Mobius, The Road Not Taken, The Worcester Review, The Lyric, The Rotary Dial, and elsewhere; one of his poems recently won the Sow’s Ear Review Poetry Contest, another is a finalist for the Dana Award for Poetry, and a third has been nominated for this year’s Pushcart Prize. He currently works as a private tutor and spends his free time, when not writing or reading, traveling less than he would like and brooding more than he can help.

LO & BEHOLD

by A.S. Coomer

The stick in the shit stirs,
swirling curdling fascinations,
condensing confections of confusion,
mingling malice with malignancies
so potent the stirrer wears a mask,
a mask of indifference,
a mask of superiority,
a mask haloed orange like the burnt offering,
some poor hamster caught, killed and propped up as a sacrifice
atop the altar of jingoism,
we all feel uncomfortable seeing,
a mask bought & sold & held over our heads
higher than our grubby, working hands can reach.
A mask atop a mask atop a mask.
I’ll turn my bare face to the sun before I wear one.

The stick in the shit stirs,
the stained hand is attached to a stained arm
and the poison courses deep through the veins of a man
in thousand dollar suits, a shark’s grin & puckered lips,
eyes seeing only various shades of green & red,
a man in a mask with a stick in his hand,
selling shit cakes to the empty bellied, to the disenfranchised,
to the misinformed & the uninformed, to the belligerent,
to those holding onto the last vestiges of power by the skin
of their privileged, primered nails.
Shit cakes. For one & all. Shit cakes by the dozens. Thousands. Millions.
I’ll take my turn at the soup lines before I have one.

A.S. Coomer is a native Kentuckian serving out a purgatorial existence somewhere in the Midwest. His work has appeared in over thirty publications. He’s got a handful of novels that need good homes. He also runs a “record label” for poetry.

POLLING

by Gil Hoy

I read on the internet today, on
Get US out! of the United Nations

That Barack Obama
supposedly said

we deserved 9/11 because
we didn’t respect Islam
we should not repeat that mistake

With a photograph of our black President
with 80 shares, 178 likes

With readers comments:

This Muslim does not
speak for me and my family.
What an asshole.

  Obummer is anti-AMERICAN!!!!!

           NO more muslims!!!
All must return to their homeland!!

Trump 42% Clinton 44%

I want to bang a hammer
on the world’s noisiest can,

I want to set off the world’s
loudest alarm.

Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer currently studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program where he had received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as Brookline MA Selectman for 4 terms. Hoy's poetry appears or is upcoming in Right Hand Pointing-One Sentence Poems, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News and The Penmen Review.

CONSPIRACY THEORETICAL WITCH HUNTS

by Richard Hacken 

Image source: Unload and Unwind

            Hillary, it has been shown, created ISIS.
            Everything we know shows how that terror crisis
            Came from Clinton’s wicked wish to sacrifice us.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            In Libya she only made things worse, because she
            Purposefully waited to send in the posse
            At the embassy when needed in Benghazi.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            Email servers were her tools of choice for treason
            As she lured and let the spies of the Chinese in,
            Laughing as she lied about her sordid reason.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!
         
            Shocking to our sensibilities as humans,
            Hillary dropped bombs less ethical than Truman’s,
            Pimping out her husband to young female students.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            Hillary remains untouched by House committees
            Searching hard to bring her down by her Achilles,
            While bribes she paid stack up in banks in offshore cities.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

Richard Hacken enjoys trochaic political satire.  While slightly amused by conspiracy theories and witch hunts, he hates to see them linked to each other. 

LIVING THINGS

by Gil Hoy

Until you’ve hurled the spear
or triggered the bullet

Pulled the jagged blade from
still warm flesh and washed

Blood from your hands,

Watched twinkling brilliant
eyes go cold and dark,

Put the plastic-wrapped package back
in the case and be on your way

You know not what you do.

Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer currently studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program where he had received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as Brookline MA Selectman for 4 terms. Hoy's poetry appears or is upcoming in Right Hand Pointing-One Sentence Poems, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News and The Penmen Review.

THE MUZZLING

by Devon Balwit

From this week's New Yorker.

Human-generated underwater noise doubled every 10 years during the last half of the 20th century, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Program. That cacophony is having a huge impact on life under the waves. Dr. Baumgartner compared it to a cocktail party at which everyone is talking at once and you can’t hear the person next to you. . . . “The cumulative noise is making it difficult for the animals to hear each other most of the time, not just once in a while,” Dr. Clark said. “Over a month on average, whales are losing approximately 85 percent of their opportunities to communicate.” That’s devastating, he added, for creatures who vocalize to find mates, to forge friendships and to share information about food sources. —"The Great New York Whale Census," The New York Times, July 7, 2016

Once there was silence
            in which we swam

long tendril trails,
            vocalizing.  With moans,

clicks, bubbles’ bright
            jewel boxes, we

welcomed mates, celebrated
            reunions, warned

of danger.  For lazy stretches,
            we made no sound.

Now, you are noisy, and
            we are deaf.  We

hear only motor roar, the rage
            of gears, your sonar,

your soundings.  To speak, to hear,
            we press against each other

like the blind.  Some promise
            a future once again silent.

Until then, we call to no one but ourselves,
            darkness within darkness.

Devon Balwit is a teacher and educator in Portland, Oregon.  Her poems have appeared or will in TheNewVerse.News, The Fog Machine, Of(f) Course, Birds Piled Loosely, The Cape Rock, The Fem, The Prick of the Spindle, Dying Dahlia Review, drylandlit_press, 3 Elements, and Leveler.

DEAD LAKE

by R. Nemo Hill 

LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks. The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change. “The lake was our mother and our father,” said Adrián Quispe, one of five brothers who were working as fishermen and raising families here in Llapallapani. “Without this lake, where do we go?” —“Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity,” The New York Times, July 7, 2016

Take from the albatross all air,
from the worm the lived loam.
On dust farms, on salt flats,
on what used to be the shore
of all that made a here of there,
leave the wingspread, the blindcurve,
leave one liftless, one unburrowed.
“I am living in someone else’s home.”

Drain all that was from all that is,
forget remembering.
Forget to float.
The past is this shrunken husk of a boat,
a souvenir woven from straw,
an orphan for sale in the marketplace.
The future’s this salt we grind and gather.
“The lake was our mother and our father.”

Take all the waters taught of tilt,
take lilt, take lap and swell and spill.
Take from the wave all that wets—
then time will harden as it crests,
our season stilled.
We could not wake one small swift fish from its stench,
or raise one bright flamingo feather from its fossil.
“We threw out our nets, there was nothing for us.”

R. Nemo Hill is the author, in collaboration with painter Jeanne Hedstrom, of an illustrated novel, Pilgrim’s Feather (Quantuck Lane Press, 2002); a poem based upon a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, The Strange Music of Erich Zann (Hippocampus Press, 2004); a chapbook, Prolegomena To An Essay On Satire (Modern Metrics, 2006); and two collections of poems, When Men Bow Down (Dos Madres Press, 2012 ) and In No Man’s Ear (Dos Madres, 2016).  He is editor & publisher of Exot Books.

CONVERGENCE

by Jonel Abellanosa

As if no one notices yet.  Falling in places, with
Brexit like a planet aligning as the latest.  As if
Coincidence is still the most observable.  No
Doors for fleers from carnage, no asylums for
Escapers.  They’d rather say no and risk Europe’s
Fragmentation than be part of the solution, the
Greatest refugee crisis as if orbiting, our only
Home heating up like the fever of nationalism.
In my country Human Rights will be hanged, extra-
judicial exclusivity for the poor and powerless.  We
Keep divining stars as mankind, rising among us
Leaders with iron hands, lifted to power as
Messiahs, Impunity summarily executing, murder
Negating the promised change, whim from
One man the only law.  In the land of the free, where
Power is Jupiter, the worst of human nature
Quickly gains followers.  In the home of the brave,
Return to a Dark Age cheers a Demagogue.  It will
Shock me if, with this planetary pattern, the
Truest Racist won’t be enthroned in November.
Understand – not underestimate – The Cosmic                
Verity, Which (or Who) guarantees The Karmic
Whirligig.  Mars should perhaps be walled for
Xenophobes, our nostalgia for the strongman rule
Yoked to our willingness, history with the same
Zeal as the Universe granting our careful wishes

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, The Philippines. A number of his poems have previously appeared on TheNewVerse.News.

VIRUS

by Barbara Crooker

Cartoon adapted from and image illustrating "The Trump Virus: A Daily News Brief" by Gabe Capone.

As I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, I found
I had been transformed into a quivering sack of mucous.
Slime oozed out of every orifice, a glaze of yellow-green
the exact sheen  of Vaseline exuded from my pores.  Someone
was churning slugs into smoothies and they poured out
of my nose.  I began to watch Fox News.  I swallowed
huge globules of misinformation, and switched my vote
to Donald Trump.  Everywhere I walked, I trailed a ribbon
of glistening lies.

Barbara Crooker is the author of six books of poetry, including Small Rain (Purple Flag Press, 2014) and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry," and on The Writer’s Almanac.

THE PRESUMPTIVE G.O.P. NOMINEE

by Sandra Eisdorfer 

Image source: DonkeyHotey

One wonders how it comes to be
that his first insight about a person
invents a flaw, which he embraces
and coddles until it becomes
the bane by which his
sense of mastery flourishes
when he speaks it into the microphone,
publishes it instantly--"crooked,"
"little," "lyin'"--so that
instead of defining the object,
it names the speaker as a surfer
who always rides on fetid water,
the one-word loser who fouls
the language not only by ignorance
but by cruelty.

Sandra Eisdorfer was a university press editor (Duke, University of North Carolina Press, Oxford), a writing teacher at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke University, and now a teacher in literacy programs in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her "Haiku in the Modern Era" appeared in TheNewVerse.News on February 10, 2013.

THE LAST SURVIVOR

by Lisa Suhair Majaj

A tent in Idomeni Camp. Image source: Cyprus Refugee Solidarity, March 16, 2016

                                    “Hope is a tough bitch to kill.” —Faye Karavasili, Cyprus Refugee Solidarity

They trudge through rain and mud, their wrecked shoes
and sodden clothes a testament to everything broken,
lives reduced to rubble like the shattered hulls
of homes they left behind. Ahead lie footsore roads,
barbed wire,grim officials thrusting the press of bodies back
and back, floodwater rising on all sides, relentless
as the memories that pursue them no matter how far
they walk, heads bent beneath the rain, children clinging
to a parent’s back or borne on a weary shoulder,
a small hand in a larger hand, a long column of people
trekking weary, undeterred, from bone-chilled morn
to damp, cold dusk, snatching sleep in cramped tents
or open fields where they wait for dawn, for refuge,
for a border opening. But dawn comes each morning
with its orange refusal: rain, closed borders, stolen dreams.

The desperate do not give up. They escape to illegal crossings,
wade into swiftly-flowing rivers, pass babies and toddlers
hand to hand in a human chain, threading the cloth of desolation
with a thin gleam of hope, even as muddy currents sweep away
the unlucky, the overly-weary. Their goal?
The future, the other bank, a chance to keep on walking.

In Idomeni camp, illness and despair permeate
everything: the sucking mud, the weighted sky,
the grim and cheerless air. A Yazidi child
peers out from a torn and tiny tent,
her face a bright beacon amid the gloom and muck.
She begs for a balloon, but there are no balloons
to be had here, only sodden rags that hang
from trees and tent poles – limp flags
that have long ago given up the dream of flying.
Yet at her plea something bright and colorful
rises wisp-like in the dank, cold air,
floating improbably above the tent-city
pitched on the razor-edge between despair and hope.

The mother smiles as she gently strokes
her daughter’s hair. “How can you smile?”
an aide worker asks, "amid all this?"
The mother pauses, then replies.  “They wanted
to chop her hand off for offending the faith.
Here, no one wants to chop off our hands or heads.
We can be free.” She speaks calmly, her eyes seeking
the gray horizon. Behind her, ghosts murmur,
their soft keening an echoing whisper
in the darkening sky, rising above this graveyard of dreams
where hope is the last survivor.


Lisa Suhair Majaj is the author of Geographies of Light, winner of the Del Sol Press Poetry Prize. She lives in Cyprus. This poem responds to the refugee crisis in Greece, particularly at Idomeni camp.

DELICIOUSLY DECIDUOUS SKY POEM TO REPLACE ALL POLITICS FOR 26 MINUTES

by Dennis Mahagin

Believe it or not, there once
was a sky, and construing itself
as de rigeur, congressman, it cradled
us all, mostly over
indigo,
with whipped cream
shots and espresso poured
on the moon at night, at night, this sky
whispered,
keep the spirits up, alright?
Then the wind
blew as March flew into super Tuesday,
and on, through May, ions
up there laughing
like icons
at sepia's stomp and dust affair,
low-lying
fluffy white ones where they met
and vanquished a Trump
in an August
sun dance.
Hard to forget, alderman, that sky, the happy,
happy contrails in air, creamy inchworm lariats
likened to smoke rings from Dunhill
cigarettes, they stayed
up there, aka "streams" -- -- -- -
and wouldn't let
a single jet
fall. Now I pray
to all expanses, with not a little fear
at the turning away, paparazzi bandolier, whir
of gears, arrows and lances
and ever narrow
slings and hot air and bullets and
drones and hot air, broken
wings and drones, and wings and
drones, moreover, in rotation, in stark
repetition mister
honorable mayor, fly-byes, a sky
up there, leaving nothing to chances
nowadays indifferent at best
and maybe neither
does she care?
Certainly
she's up there still, and will, --
this is where I invite
you all, earnest chaplains shepherding
the campaign in the ass,
only to consider
the reach of the grasp of the stately
previously unmentioned
Tree,
an aspen, peach, willow,
say, larch or
even weeping cottonwood,
while he ( the tree) glances
up, and nods yes, yes, affirmative,
yes, quite reassured
to every branch,
to the very rings,
a sky has got
your back,
says he (the tree), and which
one has ever willfully
been mistaken? Nor had occasion
to worry, to hasten
unto centuries? They are constituents,
with roots in the community.
She’s not going to
fall, despite
cries from the
left ( right? )
oh, she might send a
squall or two, tough love running
with thunder across
the sun, until the general
is done. Unlike a politician and natural
lies aside, lonely guys
( such as I )
must surmise, in order to decide:
and so I vote to try
to simply seize my slice
of sky. Look up,
one time, there’s the blessing
on the heels
of a peppermint sneeze,
let’s make it a quorum, see?
that it lasts:
it's lemon
merengue, senator
and dissolves
pretty

fast.


Dennis Mahagin is a poet from the Pacific Northwest, currently living in Montana. His collections of verse can be found, here, and there: And well, worth it. Maybe.