THE KIBOSH

by Steve Straight

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

Something that serves as a check
or stop; to halt, squelch, or cancel;
to bring to a sudden end.

Example: “We put the kibosh on that
to prevent another tragedy.”

Whatever its origin––
Yiddish, Irish, Arabic,
or perhaps just the streets 
of 1830s London––, though,
kibosh is still just a word.

When I put the kibosh on something,
I want it to stay kiboshed.

I would prefer a kibosh
to be a giant winged creature
with long talons and fierce eyes,
a mythical creature come to life.

I’m thinking some kind of griffin,
capable of plucking a certain human
out of his bunker
before he reanimates again
and causes another disaster,
or maybe out in the open,
on a golf course, say.

The kibosh would simply spirit this human
away, some place isolated
and barren and far from civilization.

This needs to happen soon, 
because God knows I can’t wait
much longer to taste the champagne.

Steve Straight’s books include Affirmation (Grayson Books, 2022), which won the 2023 William Meredith Award for Poetry, The Almanac (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2012), and The Water Carrier (Curbstone, 2002). He was professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College, in Connecticut.

VLAD THE BAD

by Richard Schiffman

His most execrable excellency,

Czar Vlad the Bad, 

a pint-sized Napoleon wannabe in a Gucci suit

decreed ten thousand widows,

and so they were before the cock crowed twice, 

on the morning he deemed cancelled

in the city he called dust.

Just your standard issue human madness.

Of course, of course. A monomaniacal error.

A payback for fanciful slights.

The psycho-historians will have a field day

while the citizenry sleep in the subway,

or pack the next train out.

But how to get away from that feverish brain,

that heart of burning petrol?

There isn’t a bunker deep enough to hide in.

Bankers on six continents dole out the pain.

No SWIFT Code for the codeless.

Oligarchs go yachtless. The ruble is rubble.

Meanwhile, the nuclear finger twitches.

A shudder ripples down nine billion spines.

The spineless despot preens for the cameras,

shows off his cadaverous abs. 

It’s flesh and blood 

below the tailored shirt, for sure, for sure,

fresh meat for a million gurneys.

Dead man walking pale as a crematorium

holds court in a palace of white marble. 

One nation huddles in the basement.

Another weeps and hides its face.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in The New Verse News, Alaska Quarterly, Rattle, The New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.