THOUGHTS OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT

as He Languishes with Dementia 

at Age 83 in the Year 2030

by Albert Haley

                            

Disgusting. Corrupt. Liars!

Who is Melania?

Really, Junior, again?

Tower, tower, tower.

Haters. Where’s Vlad?

Make America grate?

Gold plated and Colonel KFC.

How to spell anything.

Perfect. Ivanka. If she weren’t

my daughter.

Was a time I could have shot someone.

Right in the middle of Fifth!

Wall, we were going to have.

What happened Tim Apple?

Gold plated wall. Good!

Have I said “pussy” yet?

Where’s my phone? Sad.

Me, me, me, my country tis of me. 

Do you like this hair?

In the middle of Fifth.

Put a tariff on it.

Put a businessman in 

the White House and acquit him.

They rip babies out of mothers

and smother them. Bullshit!

Sharpies predict the weather

better.

But who is this Mitch? Why do I miss

him. Lyin’ Ted sure knew how to lie

down with the lion. Good crew,

kept their heads off the pikes.

  

Greatest hits. Rallies                                                  

and media is enemy of the state.

Some people say. Snow falling. 

Told you it was a hoax. 

The earth’s cooling—me too?

If they’d only respected

the Second. Right in the middle of Fifth. 

Might have spared me 

(A-l-z… how you spell?) this.

The focused hot blowtorch

of hatred so carefully cultivated. 

Main act in the middle of their circus.

Cancel the failing show

with a ratings bang.

Obama? Birth certificate?

Never saw it. Get him out of here!

Highest form of love

a man like me can ever know.

Albert Haley's poems have appeared previously in New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, and Rattle. He lives and teaches in dry, dusty Abilene, Texas, which at present seems far away from any refreshing blue waves. Haley's poems have appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, and Rattle. He lives and teaches in dry, dusty Abilene, Texas, which at present seems far away from any refreshing blue waves.

COVFEFE

by Martin H. Levinson

He was always a thug with a coarse mouth, peacock swagger,
   and a proclivity to break rules like his paterfamilias who
wouldn’t rent to African Americans but sent his misbehaving boy
   to military school to learn how to play football, stick it to losers,
and escape the draft so as to not serve in Vietnam or praise
   John McCain for being captured rather than killing the enemy
in real estate deals that were too big to fail or have T***p

put into jail for hiring undocumented workers to mount his name
   on glitzy Gotham towers and gaudy gambling casinos that
went bust in New Jersey where busts are bounteous and
   pussies can be grabbed for the asking if you are a celebrity
palling around with Russians, wrestlers, and rapscallions from
   Fox and Friends who want to make America great again
like it was in the eighteen fifties when blacks were chattel and

nativist numbskulls were not considered nattering nabobs of
   negativity by their supporters but impassioned Neanderthals
capable of challenging Obama’s citizenship and backing a
   Muslim ban and a Slavic first lady who under our nation’s new
immigration rules would have been a deportation priority during
   the nineteen nineties when her husband did not report hundreds of
millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tenuous tax maneuver

later outlawed by a Congress that is now led by a Cheesehead from
   Wisconsin and a prune face from Kentucky who loves coal more than
the proles who work the mines in a state which ranks forty-seventh in
   educational attainment, is solidly Republican, and has a constituency
the POTUS respects as much as Marla Maples who learned she was
   being divorced by reading about it in the New York Post rather than
seeing it on TV where Jim Comey found out he had been fired as

Director of the FBI and students from T***p University discovered
   they had been defrauded by a corpulent con man who thought
climate change was bogus, Mexicans were bad hombres, and
a nasty woman was making life difficult on the campaign trail
   by calling the star of the Apprentice Putin’s puppet, a teller of
untruths and a fellow unfit for the highest office in the land
   of the me, the home of the knave, and the dockets red glare,

lawsuits bursting in air, gave proof through the night that
   our hate was where it has forever been—gays, the elites,
liberals, immigrants, people of color and those perceived as
   getting a good deal in a global economy that features
home runs for the rich, strikeouts for the poor and
   lies hit down the foul line that T***p always calls fair.  

Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published nine books and numerous articles and poems in various publications. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

YA THINK?

William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

THE BALLAD OF BRAVE SIR BANNON

by Arnold Snarb

Bannon head caricature by 

Bill Sienkiewicz

In the distant future, a decade from now,
            when our planet has ceased to be,
those intergalactic aliens
            shall recite my song with glee.

So gather round, ye representative few
            who make up the Electoral College,
And I’ll tell ye a tale of doughty deeds
            That’ll fill your brain with knowledge.

O I sing of a lad who fought the good fight,
            or would, had he shown up to fight it,
but word of a protest made him think twice,
            so he said, well they can just bite it.

A true son of Eire, a man of the Cross,
            in his blood run the waters of Shannon:
nor better a bloke e’er ran Breitbart News
            than wild-eyed, race-baiting Bannon.

A son of the South who gave fatwa ‘gainst Islam
            and savaged the global elite;
when he found out that Jews went to school with his kids
            he cut out two holes in his sheet.

A Birther by birth, he was early to ken
            the charms of our Dear tweetin’ Leader.
So he rolled up his sleeves, and pulled down his pants,
            said here’s all that you’ll need to beat her!

The shit that he peddled the Donald sold wholesale
            and they shared an establishment beef:
Though he’d worked for a decade at Goldman Sachs
            he’d make T***p Pussy Grabber in Chief.

A cock-of-the-walk who never looked back
            at the three divorces behind him,
that dark day in Cambridge he chickened out,
            O Brave, Brave Sir Bannon!

The protesters stood all night in the rain
            with their signs, petitions and banners
while safely ensconced on the Upper West Side
            Was Brave, Brave Sir Bannon!

One day he’ll return, Harvard’s Prodigal Son,
            and stick like a fly in the ointment;
on wind of impeachment he’ll take the next plane
            for a cushy K-School appointment.

Arnold Snarb is a poet and scholar who holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Yale. He is currently working on a memoir written in blank verse that recounts his youth and education.

BIRTHER

by Alejandro Escudé

The word enough
to welcome back
the stone-kings

of yesteryear,
who carved out land
through betrayals.

The xenophobe
raised by feckless
tirades, citizens

bled like calves,
hordes circling
tall, cold flames.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.