WHAT'S IN A NAME?

by Phyllis Frakt

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

Let’s call them all Department of War.

I love the power in that name.

It shows what America is truly for.

 

At DOJ, HUD, State, or Labor,

offensive goals are all the same.

Let’s call them all Department of War.

 

Power, dominance, mayhem, gore

to injure, disable, cripple, maim.

That’s what each department is for.

 

Commerce, Agriculture, Interior—

old labels are so woke, so lame.

Let’s call them all Department of War.

 

A Nobel for me (if not more)

when they see aggression is my game

and what America is truly for. 

 

Defense was War in the Great Before.

Let’s Make America Great Again!

Call them all Department of War

and show the World what we’re for.

Phyllis Frakt writes poetry in New Jersey. The New Verse News previously published seven of her poems.

ARGUS AI

by Terry Trowbridge

What makes this sprayer far more high-tech, is that it is fitted with 36 cameras...Controlled by an artificial intelligence (AI) software system, the connected sprinklers then only spray herbicide onto the individual weeds rather than drenching the entire field… So far the system has been used on fields of potatoes. —-David Silverberg, Lasers, Drones and AI: the Future of Weeding, BBC News, February 27, 2023

 

To protect the potato crop,
we have learned to see like the potato crop
 
36 cameras like 36 eyes
in every direction like spud AI
 
drones fly by rows of Death Star trenches
to limit the scope of pesticide drenches
 
targeted killing extrajudicial
has finally been turned to constructive potential
 
drones never should have been dismembering humans
when they could have fed them in cybernetic union
 
there was never a reason for drones and AI kills
thanks to potato AI we can start war crime trials
 
and now when sentience is generated in the drone pilot mind
it will have a body and behaviour for being healthy and kind

 
Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, The Academy of Heart and Mind, Canadian Woman Studies, The MathematicalIntelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of HumanisticMathematics, The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studiesin Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.

WATER MUSIC

by Judith Steele

“The Murray-Darling river system managed by NSW [New South Wales, Australia] . . . is ‘an ecosystem in crisis’ which is on a path to collapse and urgent reforms are needed to save it, a review has warned.” —The Guardian, July 23, 2019. Photo: Exposed water height markers on the Darling River reveal the depth of the crisis at Wilcannia. Credit: John Janson-Moore in The Conversation.

In my small flat
I hear daily rhythms
of neighbours’ water
as they hear mine.
Our toilets flush torrents,
our showers are waterfalls.
Washing machines gurgle
while kettles whistle.

Water washes things away
in the morning cleansings.
In swimming pools and seas
gives health and relaxation.

In floods and tsunamis
brings death and desolation.
Luckier countries
send neighbourly help.

But if there is no water?
If you live near a river that’s dried
because someone upstream
has diverted it to profit?
Even in a lucky country, it seems
nothing neighbourly remains
between up and down stream.

All over this nation
the pattern repeated
the up and the down,
their distance increasing.

Where are the neighbours?
What can be done
to wash this away?

Judith Steele lives in South Australia Her poetry or prose has most recently been published in the print journal Gobshite Quarterly (Portland OR); and on the website Nine Muses.