SLIMY GREEN CESSPOOL REFLECTING CAPITALIST RULE

by Raymond Nat Turner

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

Capitalism says corporations are people… It says,

Money’s speech… Buying, bossing, sock-puppet

politicians on Capitalist Hill; White Supreme Court; and

Offal Office’s corrupt cabinet of Epstein class War House.

Capitalism pulled One Big Beautiful Bank Job, stage whispering, 

DOGE really means Department Of Grifter Enrichment! Then,

boasted about looting fruits of our labor; while its Cruel Reich Cult 

casually kills on our streets and strolls unaccountable into the sunset.

Capitalism’s painting our streets crimson, killing class bothers and sisters 

San Diego to Maine. Turning cobwebbed warehouses into torture, murder,

Mengele Medicine hells. Bombing humble boats full of fish on the high seas.

Reducing apartment buildings, hospitals, schools teeming with dreams to rubble…

Capitalism crowned a chainsaw prancing prince of apartheid

First Techno-Fascist Trillionaire. And celebrated his warped

worldview of spastic stiff salutes and spit-shined jackboots—

Mirroring the stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule.

The stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule

Mirroring testosterone-intoxicated, pomade man, obeying orders 

of Captain Morgan, Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Foolish Fox-box 

foot soldier lusting blood: Blowing up schoolchildren and teachers!

The stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule

Algae attack, metaphor for war. Peeling paint, Pentagon pimps

shredding social safety net with looped, weapons-testing, wars

Horrific, eternal, trade shows of terror… 

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

THE PEELING OF AMERICAN FLAG BLUE

by Celeste DeSario

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

“Multiple arrests,” Truth Social shrieks!
“People vandalizing the Reflecting Pool”
“Eco-Terrorists!”
 
David Hearn, the “eco-terrorist”
Aka former Olympic canoe racer
Stopping by the pool during a 64-mile bike ride.
Curious as to what is going on,
(These days we have to see for ourselves—
So much spin, so many lies.)
 
Curious, a regular citizen,
Reaching into pool to examine the peeling coating,
briefly touching a chunk on the side of the pool,
Letting go the moment a park worker tells him to.
Detained by National Guard troops for 5 hours before being released.
Because that’s what we have become:
fodder for an old man’s lies.
 
There. That takes care of all those doubting Dumb-a-Crats
Who keep asking why I spent $14-million- plus
Just to spruce up the green, algae -laden pool
For the nation’s 250th anniversary.
 
Backfired? Mistake?
Never admit to a mistake.
It’s Biden’s fault. It’s Obama’s fault.
 
American flag blue will cover up the Iran war, 

Why did we attack them again?
The Epstein files, 

Did you finish redacting any mention of my name yet?
The dismantling of the East Wing,
The dismantling of our democracy.
 
Throw in chemicals!
Kill the algae while I find the time to attach blame.
Drain the swamp!
Deflect it.
Shroud it.
  
The American Flag Blue lining peeling away
Beginning to fail,
Exposing the filth on the bottom.
You can only cover that up for so long.
 
And, here’s my question:
What do YOU see when you stand by the edge of that reflecting pool
And look into the green globs of phytoplankton, bacteria, green scum?
 
The water is “crystal clear.”
Believe me.
Just look away.
 
You, throwing insults and bombs
Retreating to your gilded office
To type out words you hope the world
Will believe.

Celeste DeSario taught English at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, New York for 37 years and received teaching honors from both SUNY and the University of Texas. Now focusing on creative writing, her recent poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, The Changing Times, The SportScribe Literary Magazine, The Ekphrastic Challenge of June 6 of Wenzel Hablick’s Utopian Buildings and The Ekphrastic Review’s July 6th online issue.

SO MAYBE / THAT’S THE METAPHOR THIS TIME

by Paula J. Lambert

It’s all just a little too on-the-nose. Today,  

the duckling floating in the reflecting pool—

 

as if the algae weren’t its own metaphor,

and the peeling paint, American Flag Blue. 

 

The memes came quickly, the Rothko references,

dark humor that, for us, lets off a little steam 

 

but does nothing for the actually dead duck

who had no way of knowing what an idiom is, 

 

the meaning of metaphor, the swampy weight

of prophecy. Lame duck. Sitting duck. 

 

Duck, dead in the brackish waters of ’Merica, 

the good ol’ US of A, a country of promises

 

never realized, not fully, a country never once

able to reflect on its faults. So maybe 

 

that’s the metaphor this time, refusing to see

what we really are: Ugly. Unwilling to change. 

Paula J. Lambert Paula J. Lambert has published five full-length poetry collections including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025) and six chapbooks including Sinkhole (Bottlecap Press 2025). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and her mentorship has been recognized by PEN America. A strong supporter of the intersection of poetry and science, she lives in Columbus with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist. 

UPON THE BEAUTY OF COLOR

by Anne Herrick

Ducks Likely OK As Trump Admin Dumps Hydrogen Peroxide Into Green Reflecting Pool —HuffPost, June 19, 2026

Days after his administration claimed the pool was actually “crystal clear,” despite an unmistakably green hue, the US president acknowledged issues—and, without evidence, blamed foul play. —The Guardian, June 20, 2026

Who doesn’t agonize over color

for a kitchen, bathroom, house siding,

a fence, the front door? Or

even the color for a pool, to make

it bright, enticing, exciting.

So you try strolling down past doors

and walls in Ireland, Italy, Mexico,  

or find yellows in Van Gogh’s flowers

his blues in Starry Night, perhaps examine

the deep and bright reds of Kahlo,

or even view the wide selection

of Monet’s greens. Some study flags,

like the yellow and blue of Ukraine,

the red, white, and blue of the UK,

or, for that matter, of proudly independent

America—the blue perfect to highlight

a very long pool, a tourist attraction

feting a famous president,

and perfect, too, to invite the beauty

of algae, that emerald green 

celebrating warmth, humidity, and sun.

Yes—such is the power of summer energy,

it gifts green to water, and even peels

blue paint, encouraging new tourists, 

ducks, to fly in for a visit hoping it is a snack

of duckweed, while men and women 

in waders, scoop and scoop, day after day,

until the pool eventually becomes dry.

Until, in fact it will lie still in peace

in its comfortable century-old familiar

worn grey coat.

 

 

Anne Herrick has published a few poems and prose in the US and UK.

RED TIDE RISING

by Geoffrey Philp

“This is absolutely scary!” declared Mary Jones when she beheld thousands of dead fish lining the Harbour Head shoreline in Harbour View, St Andrew, yesterday morning. She was among several persons who made the usual Saturday morning trek to the area for recreational fishing and was shocked by what greeted them. Photo by Ricardo Makyn. —The (Jamaica) Gleaner, December 10, 2023

It began slowly at first. Mary was the first to notice the algae’s tendrils, wispy and scarlet, intertwining with the seagrasses. But like the warmer winters, she paid it no mind, for she was determined to finish her Christmas shopping in New Kingston before the end of the day.

 

As far as she saw

in the season of light, fish

drowning in the sea.

Author’s Note: Whatever the source of the buildup of nutrients, either from sewage or ship impacts, Jamaican authorities need to develop policies that limit the spread and severity of devastating red tides.

Geoffrey Philp, a Silver Musgrave Medal recipient, is the author of Archipelagos, a book of poems about climate change which was long-listed for the Laurel Prize. Philp’s Twelve Poems and a Story for Christmas retells the nativity story, transporting readers back to that holy night in a fresh yet traditional way. His poem “A Prayer for My Children” is featured on The Poetry Rail—an homage to 12 writers who shaped Miami's culture. He  lives in Miami and is working on a children's book Marsha and the Mangroves.

SARGASSUM

by Mark McKain

“Yellowtails and Turtles in Sargassum” by Michelle Nicole Lowe

This morning folds of orange light, the garden under construction. 
A heat wave threatens. The Gulf Stream slowing.
 
Dislocated matts float into the Caribbean. Home to fish, turtles, 
childhood memories. Sexual identity, nutrient availability,
 
dust from Africa. Wanted: herbivories to graze algae from the reef 
able to scrape the toughest deposits. It won’t recover
 
without your teeth. Seaweed swirls, coquina clams burrow. Shush 
of white noise only birds can penetrate. Water sings to the child,
 
running to the shelter of mother’s knee, a soft tree. Wake up worrying 
I will have to flee—censorship-antisemitism-misogyny-racism
 
feet high washing ashore. A teacher works overtime to erase “take a knee.” 
Her job eliminated if she didn’t ban empathy.
 
Rows of brown-green rafts on the shore, covering turtle nests, 
choking air passages with sulfur fumes—how I often feel,
 
out of place, like Braithwaite in New York, yearning for the “blue mist 
from the ocean” the cotton tree in the school yard,

the crack of sugarcane. The houses flood the trees aflame the bed shaking 
like a theme-park ride throws me into the street.
 
On the curb with cracked cup. And you, sea, gulping water and sky.
The house groans, swims.  

Mark McKain’s work has appeared in Agni, The New Republic, The Journal, Subtropics, Cimarron Review, Superstition Review, ISLE, and elsewhere. He has published two chapbooks: Blue Sun by Aldrich Press and Ranging the Moon by Pudding House Publications. He writes, teaches, and experiences global warming in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

BLOOM

by January Pearson





From the blue loom of rivers
to Florida’s shorelines
where locals sift
sand for Tulip shells,
wind and current disperse
a deadly invisibility,
microscopic cells of algae
bursting in bloom

bursting with growth,
tentacling through coral
and seagrass to spread
its poison.

Karenia Brevis magnified
one thousand times
looks like soft dusty lobes
pinwheeling like a poppy
like a poppy
dead and colorless

dead as the seacow
unlowing in the waves
and the double-breasted
cormorants knuckled
with disease.

The schools of fish
pale in the harbor,
toxin-soaked
and sideways, hundreds
of one-eyes open to blue,
hundreds of ashen one-eyes open
unbloomed.


January Pearson lives in Southern California with her husband and two daughters. She teaches in the English department at Purdue Global University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Journal of American Poetry, The Cape Rock Review, and Summerset Review.