CLOSE TO THE ABYSS

by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

 

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss—

a felon in the White House—yet you, my knight,

ride in. I wouldn’t think to call it bliss

 

with tensions at a high-pitched, python hiss

in news reports: so many crimes. Indict!

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

 

and you distract me as we reminisce

about our kids, the work we love, hold tight

to us, and still, I couldn’t call it bliss

 

when daughters, sons, so young, are stuck with this:

his lies, the vitriol he spews, the spite.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss.

 

You vow we’ll move to Portugal, dismiss

the obstacles of language, passports, flight,

the cost. Is now the time to call it bliss?

 

A lunatic— his head ballooned with hubris—

rouses me to stand, to choose to fight.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

but I have you. I will. I’ll call it bliss.

 

Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the South Coast of Massachusetts and works in her hometown library as Head of the Reference department. Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Magma, Orbis, Crannóg, Eclectica Magazine and American Arts Quarterly, among others. She won the 2017 Luso-American Fellowship for the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, was a Hawthornden Fellow in Scotland, and was accepted into Marge Piercy’s Summer Poetry Intensive in Wellfleet. She is a member of the Powow River poets, and her chapbook Nothing In-Between is available from Barefoot Muse Press.

DEAR 2022

an abecedarian

by Susan Vespoli

Abyss Painting by Gillian Fortson at Saatchi Art

Au revoir, heaviest year of my life,

bringer of shit and light,

carrier of catastrophe, 

death of my adult kid by bullet

explosion. It’s hard to say the word “dead,”

followed by the word “Adam.” I look for a

gentler way to say, “murdered son.”

How about “deceased,” or “angel son,” or

“invisible winged-son,” or “no longer

journeying on the physical plane.”

Kris, my cash-pay splurge of a

long-term therapist planted a

metaphor to help me

navigate: walking

over an abyss, holding a balancing

pole made of coping tools to remain

quaver-proof, (like poetry, therapy, 12-step, being in the

right-here-right-now), the rod’s weight increa-

-sing my moments of inertia,

tamping my tendency to fall. And I

understand, so I trek, carrying his

vivid lucence, his essence, as I

wire-walk, step tip to toe, eyes on

xystus on the other side of this

year, where I will enter 2023, sit cross-legged

zazen on the floor and breathe, Adam with me still. 

Editor's Note: The New Verse News previously published three of long-time contributor Susan Vespoli's poems about the killing of her son by police:  "Before I Knew Adam Had Died" and "My Ex-Husband Calls To Tell Me Our Son Has Been Shot By Police," and "Police Violence in Reverse."

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, Arizona where police violence and the criminalization of homelessness are alive and well.

CALLING IT

by Thomas R. Smith

Just to see and hear him on a screen

hurts the soul.  Stench of abuse.

The Abyss hijacks the microphone,

no muting the rant the psychotic

can’t switch off in his head.

The assault on truth is physical:

the viewer’s knees tremble, breath comes

up short.  Lies fly out of the mouth

in black streams.  They are his children:

father of lies, lord of the flies.

Damaged horror child exposed.

The networks call it a “debate.”

Burroughs called it “naked lunch.”

Yeats called it “rough beast.”  I call it

“rape in an abandoned  house.”

Thomas R. Smith is a poet and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin. He teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent poetry collection is The Glory (Red Dragonfly Press).

MOUTHPIECE IN CHIEF

by Mickey J. Corrigan

To be the scribe and whitewasher
changing slurs into diamonds
To edit out the coal dust, replace
with gold nuggets for all who believe
in the fraudulent intents
retro-disrupted and revised
so the world sees only the glitter
To lead the ruby-throated herd
to the edge of the flatland
let them jump, fall, moo
from burnt fields we insist
are green, lush, ready for bloom
To punch first, punch hard
blacken eyes that see the clarity
through the oil slicks
the choking smog
the hurricane winds
the historic floods that sweep away
rolls of paper towels, single serve
plastic soup in a hot bath
bubbling up
to engulf the debtors
the disenfranchised
the multitaskers
and hungry fat kids
listless on empty playgrounds
in the unyielding sun
To not speak of this
we use the magic cups
bait and switch-hunt
To lead with foaming mouths
red-faced faux outrage
at the shadows that must lurk
under the surface of greatness
To promise to those crushed
by the enormity of lies
if they continue to believe
if they continue to not see
the sleek black limo
nudging them
off the very edge

of the democratic abyss

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Project XX, a satirical novel about a school shooting, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. Newest release is What I Did for Love, a twisted psychological thriller (Bloodhound Books, October, 2019).

THANK YOU, STORMY

by Peggy Turnbull 

You know how to manage power,
dressing like an offensive weapon,
steering through men, creating
a wake where dicks stir, leers creep,
implanting images
into strangers’ wet dreams,
your iconic self melting
into unknown imaginations,

smiling to evoke volt-filled fun,
teasing that leads to a luxe room
where naked Donald
awaits, stone-faced on the bed,
erection quivering beneath
the belly of his junk-food appetite,
a devilish abyss
gilded with pyrite,
where nature smokes, razed,
all gentleness cropped
like a mountaintop.

Grimacing, you absorb
his distilled contaminants.
Sorrowful angels
send you compassion.
A bouquet of cut roses
nods in recognition.
We all have bad days.

But the aftermath’s best.
You, refusing silence.


Peggy Turnbull lives in Wisconsin near Lake Michigan.  Her micro-chapbook Rocking Chair Abstract was  recently published by the Origami Poems Project.