UPENDED, UPDATED

by Phyllis Frakt

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

The West Wing cast 

upholds the Age of Reason

as credits start to roll

to end the third episode

of the second season.

 

Josh asks, What do you say

about a government 

that goes out of its way

to protect even citizens 

who try to destroy it?

 

Sam, C.J., Donna, Toby

solemnly intone in turn,

God Bless America,

defender of liberty,

tolerance, rule of law.

 

But now in dim twilight

we slide into an inverted age,

the age of no reasons,

only whim and might,

divine blessings upended.

 

What would the cast say

about a government 

that protects itself

while its own leaders

try to destroy it?

 

God Help Us, they’d sigh,

then invoke the words

of a slain commander:

Here on earth God’s work 

must truly be our own.

Phyllis Frakt was inspired to write poetry after hearing Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of Joe Biden. Since then, she has written nearly 250 poems, about a dozen published in The New Verse News and elsewhere. She lives in New Jersey.

SWAMP POEM

a sonnet by Cindy Hochman

Add caption

Throw your old comb & hairbrush into the swamp.
Throw your hamper full of dirty laundry into the swamp.
Throw that bad poem you wrote this morning into the swamp.
Throw your shattered-after-the-breakup heart into the swamp.
Throw your mother-in-law into the swamp.
Throw your cataracts, your ulcers, your tumors into the swamp.
Throw war and all its symbols into the swamp.
Throw all Rebel statues, from Virginia to Alabama, into the swamp.
Throw the lawyers, the bailiffs, the judges, and the guilty defendants into the swamp.
Throw the press secretary and her podium of mendacity into the swamp.
Throw the rolled heads of recently departed staffers into the swamp.
Throw the hurricanes’ fallen branches, and the West Wing’s executive branch,
  and the Great Lawn with its Easter Egg Roll and pardoned turkeys into the swamp.
And the president, that no-goodnik, into the fetid, putrid, malodorous, stinking swamp.


Cindy Hochman is the president of "100 Proof" Copyediting Services and the editor-in-chief of the online poetry journal First Literary Review-East. She is on the book review staffs of Pedestal magazine and Clockwise Cat. Her latest chapbook is Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press).