GREAT MEN

by Kyle Gervais

 after Robinson Jeffers

Consider greatness.
A great man must have a following, and this is true,
as death, of Trump, who pulls like a fear-blind buffalo
the pressed herd onward, downward, over the land’s edge
to an imagined security. Kanye too is great,
is he not, in his crazy rage, and a yearning
turning, centrifuge fast, to an ever darker love?
But Elon’s greatness outpaces even these, demonstrably, incontrovertibly, 
one hundred twenty million 
massed numbers following him where he flutters, of all
such vast images that are not good, but great,
today the greatest.

Kyle Gervais teaches Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, where he lives with his husband and two cats. He has poems in Arion, Canadian Literature, Classical Outlook, Eunoia Review, The New Verse News, Litbreak Magazine, PRISM international, and elsewhere.

COMING UP

by Chad Parenteau

Trump, Kanye

and a ghost

of others who

the former

President has

never seen

without sheets.

Also, Milo

Yiannopoulos

going Jews

for Jesus

slicing

Semitic bits

to trade

for bodies

of Christ.

A pride

of people

fine to be

on same side

until not.

And also,

why this

is bad for

Joe Biden.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.