HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON

by Suzette Bishop

Go ahead and come on down to Alamo, Texas

To admire me, the wall at the border,

Go ahead and come on down to brag

About building me to keep the country safe,

Go ahead and come on down to praise me

And yourself,

How strong we are,

How big and beautiful we are,

How much we cost taxpayers,

How no one can scale us,

How we keep out criminals,

How we cage children but keep them warm

With foil blankets.

Let me help you have a photo op

Before you leave office,

A mic, a platform,

Since you were walled out

After breaking down the doors

And smashing the windows of the Capitol.

As you know, I may be incomplete,

But I’m great,

So great that at night under the stars

This section of me coils

Into a circle,

Tighter and tighter

Around you and your golf cart,

The ocelots staring at you

As they run from one border to the next,

Walling you in,

Keeping the country safe again.

Suzette Bishop teaches at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. Her books include Horse-Minded, She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes, Hive-Mind, Cold Knife Surgery, and most recently, a chapbook, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead.  Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. Poems about living on the border, animals, and endangered species are highlighted in her most recent poems and books while her favorite way to enjoy the borderlands is by horseback. 

ARMED AND DANGEROUS

by George Held

A pro-Trump mob interact with police after storming the US capitol. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images via The Guardian, January 6, 2021

Sure, the Jew-boy and the black preacher

Saved the leftwing bacon in Georgia last night

But they ain’t gonna stuff us back in the dirt

Or the bottle or wherever we came from

 

To make America great again. We’re white

And proud of it. We’re armed and dangerous,

As the sheriffs’ posters say it, and we might

Have us a little Civil War to settle things,

 

Only this time we win, ‘cause we’re armed

And dangerous, you bet, and ‘cause

The North is a bunch of mongrel cowards,

So this time we win behind General T****

 

And with our militia in defense of Red MAGA.

Don’t you play shocked or angry at my words

When you know I’m right: we are gonna’

Win this time and set up our new capital

 

In Tuscaloosa, where our footballers

Are already Number 1 and we can beat

Any fake students in other uniforms

Like Ohio State or Clemson and be champs

 

Again. Because the South she is rising

To be great again. We’re red from Texas

To Canada and lots of other states

Between the coasts. So join the movement

 

While you can and make us great again

Forevermore: in football and politics

And the military we’re the best

And soon we will really rule the roost.

George Held is a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

TRUMP OF THE WILL

by George Salamon

"That 'Triumph of the Will' is a great propaganda film, there is no doubt…”  —Roger Ebert

Watching the 'Save America' rallies

for T***p is a reminder that we cannot

do Fascism the way the Germans did

as was captured in that infamous movie

of the Nazi Party rallies back in 1934.

What we see in Washington is a drab,

rag-tag bunch of stragglers, wannabe

warriors for a stumblebum president

clinging to power, any movie made of

their antics would gather the worst of

reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for any

"Trump of the Will" version of an ism

that may come to America by the ballot

box on petit bourgeois feet instead.

George Salamon wonders if the "It can't happen here" argument about fascism is still heard in faculty lounges and Starbucks coffee houses in the blue areas of America.

LONG LIVE THE LAST KING

by Mickey J. Corrigan

People are saying it’s the biggest

the greatest, the best crowd

this shithole has ever seen

sleek limos slide through, his face

at the bulletproof window 

mouth open, golf cap tight

on his oversize head

People are saying

the crowd's as big as Lincoln's

and everyone wept, even Jesus

the fans wild with joy

racecar thrilled to see him

to be seen by him

the man who would be king

People are not saying

he took an appalling strut

across the world stage

that ended in folly, farce

reflecting internal unrest

bubbling anger, belligerence

and distrust of everyone else

People aren't saying

he was a mad genius

skilled at detecting weakness

in a narrow human range

of emotions others feel

absent in his lurking bulk

under the ruby crown

the bloated expression

of abject fear

People aren't asking

why the devout followers

of this crazy cult

still willing to sicken 

maskless in the face

of scientific evidence, millions

of facts like corpses piling up

vowing to win at all costs

or die trying

 

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

OH BEAUTIFUL

 by Shyla Shehan

The last we saw our king his head was deep 

in the crotch of some alabaster city gleam 

tweeting love notes to his adoring fans

twisting our once beloved patriot dream. 

While our halcyon skies are shrinking

spilling grief across our amber plains

he gathers up his Proud Boys

and hides his capital gains.

Our borders littered with families separated

huddled masses he has reviled

and presses portentous his own agendas

his unwrought thoughts run wild.

America. America! You are still beautiful 

and mine. There is space inside my heart—

a hope for you, again, to shine.

As our thoroughfares of freedom are stretched 

thin across from all cities to the sea.

America, I beg of you now!

Please show your grace his leave. 

Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo who has spent the majority of her life in the midwest. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska and lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband, children, and four wily cats. Shyla spends most days tending to a healthy household and is pleased with her role as Managing Editor for The Good Life Review.

THE LAST ELECTION

by George Held

“The worst case,” [Barton] Gellman writes [in The Atlantic], “is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him.” Merely by refusing to concede, Trump could keep the electoral result in doubt through the 79-day period between Election Day and the day the next president is to be inaugurated. Gellman's reporting shows that Republicans are already discussing plans to bypass the popular vote and directly appoint electors to the Electoral College. This could lead the country to a precipice: Two men could show up to be sworn in on Inauguration Day. “One of them,” Gellman writes, “would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor, The Atlantic in today’s email to subscribers releasing the magazine’s November cover story.

 ...the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote... 

—Twelfth Amendment, U.S. Constitution

 

The sound of horse-drawn tumbrils

Echoes in DuPont Circle 

Punctuated by the chop of the guillotine 

As the heads of the opposition fall—

the chairs of the most strategic committees,

ranking members of others,

obstreperous heads of key organizations... 

 

The death of the most influential liberal

Justice and her replacement

By another grim rightist ideologue 

Have opened the sluice gates

Of reprisal and crimson revenge. 

 

The Orange Duce is often smiling

As good fortune shines upon him,

Death having opened a decisive seat

On the Supreme Court—never more supreme

Than when handing down death—and then

As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment,

He receives another term in what will be

The last election, election for life.

 

So, set in motion by his hippo

Of a compliant attorney general,

Who gets the Orange Man’s code— 

No translator needed—his bizarre fantasy

Of a return to the terror of the sans culottes

Haunts official Washington and the entire country,

 

Like a corporeal rendition of the Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse,

Every night at 5 on Fox TV, kicked off

By a pep rally and boastful remarks

By the Orange Man in Chief,

The tumbrils roll and the glistening blade falls

While, in the continuing pandemic,

The maskless base howls in visceral support.

 

 

A longtime contributor to The New Verse News, George Held plans to vote in 2020.

SUMMER WINDING DOWN, SALISBURY, 1666

by Sharon Olson

The king is always allowed to do as he wishes.
And so he chose our city, our neighborhood,
as a hiding place from the plague abound in London.
We who live here are weavers, our hands and feet
engage with our looms, the steady thwacking,
for shawls and lap rugs and the tightly woven arras
behind which the king is kept safe, wrapped in his silks.

The king never travels alone but brings his retinue,
his retainers, the men and ladies waiting on him,
jesters, hangers-on, crowds he thrives on
who gawk at the royal trappings, and yes,
the shiny bubble of pestilence has journeyed
here as well, so that each time we entered the church
we could hear the names being written in the parish book
of Salisbury, St. Edmunds, beginning in July:

Elizabeth Clark, of ye plague
Sarah dau of John Conduit, of ye plague
Martha Bartlett, widow, of ye plague
Elizabeth wife of John Conduit, of ye plague

until in September the buriall column in the ledger
overflowed, in Salisbury alone five hundred died.

The king has had his carnival, has come and gone.
Long live the king.


Editor's Note: “Many of the more affluent city members left London when the plague broke out, including King Charles II and his entourage who left the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Lawrence, to deal with the plague while the king and court retired to Salisbury; they possibly brought the plague with them in the process, as it broke out there after they arrived.  Once this happened, the king and court retired to Oxford to wait it all out.” —Today I Found Out


Sharon Olson is a retired librarian who lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

ARMISTICE COMMEMORATION IN PARIS

by Alan Catlin

T***p appears disengaged,

outside of the spotlight, except

when greeting Putin and his thumbs

up salute.  Forced to listen to solemn

solo by cellist Yo Yo Ma, the day after

failing to lay a wreath on graves of

the fallen due to inclement weather,

he seems  preoccupied. Compelled to

listen to President Macron deliver

a speech decrying Nationalism, directly

criticizing him, T***p appears tired

as if formulating new ways to become

unchecked and balanced as autocrat-

in-chief, electoral defeats, and late night

television viewing, is wearing him down. 

Protestors raise new trial balloons of baby-

in-diapers-T***p to see if anyone salutes.


Alan Catlin is poetry editor of online journal misfitmagazine.net. His latest book of poetry is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.