DESPITE MANY EDITS, THIS POEM REMAINS A SCREED

by Devon Balwit

Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times

 

Individualized animal abuse is a crime; systematic animal abuse is a business model. —Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, June 10, 2023

 

What we can’t bear to look at, we tolerate hidden:

the living penned with the dead, vivisection,

 

infants torn from their mothers. Already, I imagine

you, reader, lamenting this poem’s wanton

 

cruelty. Or protesting that you don’t eat red

meat or chicken flesh and so aren’t implicated .

 

Unfortunately, milk and cheese also equal

death. I wish it weren’t so, for I was partial

 

to Gouda—and eggs—but the free range birds

we imagine exist mostly in our heads. Farmyards

 

would span entire states were the hens to peck

at will. Back we retreat, then, into our dark

 

ages, some fated to suffer in a preordained hierarchy.

We’d squirm if this logic were applied to our species:

 

Women, brown people, the poor—What

can one do? They just happened to draw the short

 

straw. Surely, mere appetite can be retrained

once we admit animals know pleasure and pain.

 

Devon Balwit walks in all weather. In her most recent collection Spirit Spout [Nixes Mate Books, 2023] she romps through Melville’s Moby Dick. 

ICE CREAM ACTIVISM

by Alisha Goldblatt

after “The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images via The New York Times.

Lick the sins of countries past,

the thrown stone, and gather your pints

in unbleached paperboard, crisp waffle cones.

Sell hazelnut play on words that

signal virtue and decadence, and

slick the tongue divine, smooth on spoon.

Let slingshots rile the bull market.

The only flavor is a flavor of fear.

In the modern white freezer, vats 

blister thumbs from the plastic scoop

whose spring-back lever neatly cleaves the ice.

The Green state, the Holstein cows, the fourteenth star.

Shirtsleeves cuffed, tough and chocolate stained

to show how cold we are, and numb.

Let the melting be violent and swift. 

The only flavor is the flavor of fear. 

Alisha Goldblatt is an English teacher and writer living in Portland, Maine with her two wonderful children and one lovely husband. She has published poems in the Common Ground Review, Literary Mama, and Burningword Literary Journal, among several others. Alisha writes whenever she can and gets published when she’s lucky. 

OUR COUNTRY... NOT OUR BUSINESS

by Jan Gross

2020 Hindsight by Rob Rogers at The Nib.

Buyers beware! 

We could lose our bid on the sale  

Citizens no more, but customers   

Truth no longer told, but sold

Off to the inside traitors  

   

Bought out by big business  

Walled in by Wall Street  

Gutted by greed  

Dealt out of the deal  

  

His bottom line rules mighty  

Regulations, taxes damned   

Hail to the profit margin!  

Protect the family brand!   

   

Fake the facts!   

Hype the hoax!  

Let hackers and trolls   

Surf coast to coast  

  

Masses trumpet triumph  

Chanting hate inspires  

Winners one and none  

Where QAnon conspires  

  

Monuments stage his glory  

A country’s reality show  

A bible brandished on high  

God’s Truth trampled below  

  

Heroes stripped of honor  

Fawners scale the ranks   

On all sides fine people  

Hateful words just pranks   

  

Covid breathes calamity  

Choked by one man’s vanity  

Old age best begone!  

Make way for the strong!  

  

Refuse to don your face masks  

Cures are easily taken  

His own comeback is clear proof  

Of experts long mistaken  

  

He’s fair as honest Abe was  

Not a racist bone in sight   

With insults heaped on icons   

He helps boost his loser’s plight  

  

Dissenters face dismissal   

Detractors face defeat  

The bar of justice lowers  

Tips the balance for deceit  

  

Clear the way for order!  

Twist the arm of law!  

Protests pave the future  

Marchers won’t withdraw   

  

Black and white, or red and blue  

Dividing lines he always drew  

Will this storm bring rainbows 

With hope to start anew?   

  

Battle lines are hardened  

The bitter end draws near  

  

Time to line up    

Time to fill in  

  

Ballots to mail or not   

Votes to cast once or twice  

  

Votes to buy   

To buy us time  

  

Time to keep us   

Here long enough  

  

To see   

… to see the turning of the tide   

        … for the tide has got to turn.  

Author’s Note: This poem echoes James Baldwin’s plea to settle for what a vote can get you… maybe not a job, or a loan, or a major reform, but “it may keep [us] here long enough … to see, and use, the turning of the tide—for the tide has got to turn.”  (Written prior to the 1980 presidential election in “Notes on the House of Bondage” and quoted in Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.)   

Jan Gross is waiting for the tide to turn. She is Professor emerita at Grinnell College, and is co-authoring a collaborative poetic memoir about interracial friendship, Black & White and In-Between. 

THE SKYSCRAPER MUSEUM

by Kate Bernadette Benedict

Even after the crisis eases, companies may let workers stay home. That would affect an entire ecosystem, from transit to restaurants to shops. —The New York Times, May 12, 2020

Indeed. This lobby is marble-graced.
Heels would echo as workers raced
for pinging elevators, though some stopped
at newsstands first, where they’d opt
for breath mints and a morning paper.
Here’s a New York Times, with vintage
headline. Centennial of Brooklyn Bridge.

Let’s go up, let’s press floor 43.
Bad art, glass walls, a ficus tree.
Outside : virtual sky and steeple.
Inside: holograms of busy people
dressed like Peggy and Joan and Draper.
Here’s a typewriter. Hear it clacking?
Pages on the side for stacking.

What a time it was! It ended.
Congregating got suspended.
The energy of streaming streets.
Uptown, Mad Men; downtown, Beats.
Coffee smells and carbon paper.
Towers went up and towers fell,
a simple virus fouled the well.

So let us praise Manhattan
as it used to be
and marvel that we worked that way
in harmony
in soaring buildings
that caught the sun
and let in moonlight too.
Eras end. History gives them due.

Kate Bernadette Benedict, of New York City, is the author of Earthly Use: New and Selected Poems.

THE GIVING TREE DRAWS THE LINE

by Michael L. Ruffin

The Tree had
grown old.

The Boy had
grown wealthy
and powerful.

“What’s wrong, Boy?”
the Tree asked.

“The COVID-19 crisis,”
the Boy answered.

"How can I help?”
the Tree asked.

 “You can die so
the stock market
can live,”
the Boy answered.

“You can kiss my roots,”
the Tree said to the Boy.


Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at TheNewVerse.News and is  forthcoming in 3 Moon Magazine and Rat's Ass Review.

GODZILLA VS KONG

by George Salamon


Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday officially filed as a candidate for the Alabama Democratic presidential primary … Bloomberg could jolt the Democratic primary race with his late entry and a personal war chest estimated at more than $50 billion.” The Hill, November 8, 2019

If two money monsters will fight
For the nation's greatest might
Yankee Doodle Dandy  has put
A feather of another color in his cap,
The one flying for democracy will
Have given way to one celebrating
The piracy of buying and selling,
Making business the only business
Of our fading political institutions.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and has most recently contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, Dissident Voice and TheNewVerse.News.

INNOCENT

by Ron Riekki

“The United States teamed up with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to challenge language that would have welcomed the findings of the landmark report, which said that the world has barely 10 years to cut carbon emissions by nearly half to avoid catastrophic warming.” —The Washington Post, December 9, 2018


“What’s been a rotten investment for me? . . . We bought a whole series of birds for the suites in the Plaza Hotel. These are real, live birds—all sorts of little birds flying around in the suites. Some people walk in, they don’t believe what they’re seeing. Usually they’re just little artificial birds. These are real birds. And we have to be very careful, David, with who we let go into the suites. Sometimes a high roller wants to come to New York, and they want to go into the Plaza Hotel, and I’ll never let a high roller from Atlantic City go into the suite in The Plaza where we have these live birds because the birds won’t be alive very long.” —Donald T***p to David Letterman, November 10, 1988 quoted in The Atlantic.
         

Each day we go out of business.
I meant to say that we should mind our own business.
I mean to say that we shouldn’t,
that we’re too busy with banishing,
I mean,
vanishing.
I mean to say that you’re a mean one, Mr. T.,
the bad T.,
the one with truckloads of money
where he trumpets his everything,
the one who’s trying to truncate us,
the U.S.,
the U. S.O.S.—
by this I mean that we might be adding humans
to the list of
the African elephant
            whooping crane
            Puerto Rican parrot
and the rest predicted to go extinct,
the rest that’ll rest for eternity,
restless,
from trick-or-treat voting,
a true-lies presidency.
I write this while listening to a neighbor’s coughing
next door,
a coughing that sounds, strangely, a bit like whooping cough,
a coffin type of coughing,
whopping,
his lungs taken
by the recent forest fires
that weren’t forest fires
but everything fires—
Tule elk fires
and California clapper rail fires
and golden trout fires
            and San Francisco garter snake fires
            and California newt fires
(all of which only live in California)
and, of course, Californian fires


88 killed in the recent fires


climate change
vs.
change = coins = money
meaning
there is a lot of money to be made
from deregulation,
from rampant pollution,
from prioritizing coal overall
over all
rational
thinking,
how a friend
who said his coworkers working on the electric car
are worried they’ll end up in the electric chair,
meaning there is sabotage in this age,
extinction tied to someone ExxonMobil-loyal,
that our President’s hands are covered in oil
the way that Macbeth’s were covered in blood.
The innocent sleep.  The innocent sleep.  The innocent slept.

Ron Riekki wrote U.P. and edited The Way North (2014 Michigan Notable Book), Here (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award), And Here (Michigan State University Press, 2017), and the upcoming Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (with Andrea Scarpino, MSU Press, 2019).

ELIZABETH SCANS THE BUSINESS SECTION

by Terese Coe

How do I loathe thee? See to these:
I despise the slithering maze
of investment bankers’ plays,
their derivative devices
and manipulated prices,
the calculated connivance,
the jacked-up stock contrivance,
the GMO mutations,
the cryptic appropriations
alive with codes and ciphers
engorging weasels and vipers;
the Social Security fix,
the felonious politics,
the safety net protections
lost in mystic elections
where every connected clod
claims to be one with God,
but lives in fear of the Order
of  the Cellphone Vid Recorder.
I condemn thee with robust
expressions of disgust,
I loathe thee like the flood
of Mississippi mud,
I despise thee till obsessed,
disquieted, possessed—
and even for thy perjured shibboleth,
I pray thy greed will sicken thee to death.

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, Agenda, Ploughshares, Poetry, Threepenny Review, New American Writing, and many other journals and anthologies. Her recent collection is Shot Silk.

DUNKING

Editor's Note: We are pleased to repost this poem, originally published in TheNewVerse.News on Thursday,March 19, 2015. It is one of our 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees.

DUNKING
by Richard Spilman

Back when you were fourteen, small
and new to that school, three toughs
cornered you in the boys’ john, shoved
your head into a bowl of yellow water,
and when they let you up you screamed
bloody murder, hit anything your arms
could reach. To shut you up, the big one
put his foot on your neck and told you
what they’d do. You believed and cried.
Hands in pockets they left one by one
Silently, as if they’d watched a man
betray his friends for a moment of breath.
You dried off, picked up your books,
and went to class. You didn’t tell, and
the teachers didn’t ask about you wet shirt,
and the kids already knew your disgrace.

That was the last time you ever cried.
Not when you were wounded in war,
not when your wife left telling you
she couldn’t love a man so closed off.
You make money trading commodities.
You don’t buy and sell goods, you buy
and sell futures—someone always wins,
someone loses, roulette with wheat and gold.
You trade in illusions, in rises and falls
on a screen created by phantom sales.
Investors like fish rise to your bait.
At the reunions you bring your latest,
her blonde youth a testament to your
prowess, but they laugh behind your back.
For them, your collar is forever yellowed
with piss, your eyes rimmed with tears.


Richard Spilman is the author of In the Night Speaking and Suspension. He lives in Hurricane WV where he is discovering that a bathroom above a garage makes for a frigid winter.

ONE MAN, ONE VOTE

by Gil Hoy

Image source: NY Times, October 10, 2015

One hundred and fifty eight families, out of
One hundred and twenty million families, finance
One-half of Presidential campaigns, after
One Supreme Court ruling.  They're the

Ones who make billions in finance and energy, the
Ones who contribute from business addresses and post office boxes, the
Ones who want wide wealth inequality, the
Ones who favor fat tax cuts for the rich, the
Ones who would reduce regulations, the
Ones who are business partners, in-laws, and poker buddies.

One hundred and fifty eight families, out of
One hundred and twenty million families, finance
One-half of Presidential campaigns, after
One Supreme Court ruling.

One Man, One Vote


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer, writer and poet. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. His poetry has appeared most recently in The Eclectic Muse, Third Wednesday, Montucky Review, The Potomac and TheNewVerse.News.

WHAT THE 4TH OF JULY MEANS TO ME

by George Salamon

Myths chain our minds.
Shibboleths cull our words.
Cynicism corrodes our expectations.
Lassitude lulls our vigilance.

A free people surrendered to lobbyists,
To hucksters of Wall Street,
To gurus of management,
To an elite empowered by degrees from institutions
Worshipping the con of the market and
Bowing to the mandate from Return On Investment.

Freedom's choices confined to
The aisles of Walmart and Target,
We make do with civic life as theater, its
Message acted out by pompous poseurs
Talking of "folks" and "freedoms"
Abandoned in the sewers of D.C.

"The system works," they proclaim periodically,
Insisting that a blind pig's stumbling upon a truffle
Reveals democracy at work.

And we continue to fool ourselves.


George Salamon taught German language and literature at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter on the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor on Defense Systems Review. He published a reader in German history and a study of Arnold Zweig's novels on World War I. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

DUNKING

by Richard Spilman

Back when you were fourteen, small
and new to that school, three toughs
cornered you in the boys’ john, shoved
your head into a bowl of yellow water,
and when they let you up you screamed
bloody murder, hit anything your arms
could reach. To shut you up, the big one
put his foot on your neck and told you
what they’d do. You believed and cried.
Hands in pockets they left one by one
Silently, as if they’d watched a man
betray his friends for a moment of breath.
You dried off, picked up your books,
and went to class. You didn’t tell, and
the teachers didn’t ask about you wet shirt,
and the kids already knew your disgrace.

That was the last time you ever cried.
Not when you were wounded in war,
not when your wife left telling you
she couldn’t love a man so closed off.
You make money trading commodities.
You don’t buy and sell goods, you buy
and sell futures—someone always wins,
someone loses, roulette with wheat and gold.
You trade in illusions, in rises and falls
on a screen created by phantom sales.
Investors like fish rise to your bait.
At the reunions you bring your latest,
her blonde youth a testament to your
prowess, but they laugh behind your back.
For them, your collar is forever yellowed
with piss, your eyes rimmed with tears.


Richard Spilman is the author of In the Night Speaking and Suspension. He lives in Hurricane WV where he is discovering that a bathroom above a garage makes for a frigid winter.

THE EARTH’S FEAR

by Paul Dickey

Syrian refugee children in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Photograph: Sam Tarling (The Guardian, May 9, 2014)

I would not say
the earth was afraid,
although it shook terribly
at each of my steps
in the moonlight.
It was only protecting
the children, it seemed,
who had poured
themselves out,
like soft drops of rain
over the hills and valleys.
But I carried on.
I had a business of fire
in the city and in the night
that the earth knew
nothing of, work
that could not be ceased
even had I wanted.
In my own way,
I too worry for the children.
How will they become
as hard now as diamonds?


Paul Dickey’s first full-length poetry book They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January 2011 and was nominated by the press for the 2011 National Book Award in Poetry.  His second book Wires Over the Homeplace was published in the Fall of 2013 by Pinyon Publishing.  Dickey’s poetry has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Mid-American Review, Midwest Quarterly, Pleaides, Bellevue Literary Review,  Crab Orchard Review and online at www.linebreak.org.

TROJAN

by J. Bradley

With Friday’s school shooting in Connecticut reviving the national debate over gun control, some Louisville gun shops said Saturday they were already seeing an uptick in customers concerned that the shootings could lead to stricter gun regulations.
“There is an increase in calls and sales,” said Steve Hixenbaugh, owner of Oakwood Guns in Middletown. “Any time a tragedy like this happens, people do worry some type of legislation will go through.” --CourierJournal.com

In my country, we use bullets
as birth control.

Yet the parking lots of gun factories,
the sidewalks parallel to gun shops,
the stalls of shooting ranges remain
clean of poster board outrage.

The cycle whirs; we’ll always
keep the axle greased.

J. Bradley is a contributing writer for Specter Magazine and the Interviews Editor of PANK Magazine. He lives at iheartfailure.net.

IFFY FUTURE FORECAST

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

Topsy-turvy third planet from Sun
Upside-down silk lining turned inside-out
Biofuel technological solutions replacing geological
Asteroid mining commercial solar power

Oceans cannot absorb greenhouse emissions
Cataclysmic climate effects current adrift
Digital radar storm tracking surveillance
Arctic shrinkage meltdown icebergs overturned

Handle With Care survival issues
Over-consumption splurge space tourism colonies
Funny business as usual until
Endangered resource depletion runs out

Nanotech manipulating nothing’s the matter
On quantum atomic molecular scale
Biosphere demands exceeding global biocapacity
Supply chain profit margins unlinked

Systematic holistic challenges about-face turnabout
Equitable sustainable cosmos needs different
Set of values bankrupting nature
Contaminated eco-environment next generation’s legacy

Regenerative telemedicine cloning dinosaur egg
Autonomous robots emotionless artificial intelligence
Discovering fast-forward ways toward happier
More contented resilient co-existence habitation

 No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

THE MAN WHO WANTED IT TOO MUCH

by David Spicer 

        From the age of five the man’s ambition was to be President of the most powerful nation on earth. This desire burned so intensely he acquired a swarthy, handsome demeanor that attracted beautiful women. He chose the loveliest and they worked together to fulfill his dream. He graduated from the top business school and felt that since government was the biggest business, he was uniquely qualified. His successes mounted and his family of five sons thrived. He craved leadership like a man desperate in a desert. He sweated desire and ambition. When he mounted his campaign for President after serving as savior of the Olympics and governor of a small state, the people did not trust him. They called him a liar and a fraud. His party renounced him and then slowly accepted him without passion. His opponent grinned and charmed people, his eloquent intellect a coin that dazzled. One pundit branded the man whose lifelong ambition dangled within reach a clumsy buffoon who wanted it too much. Voters agreed. On election day they chose the stunning intellectual by the slimmest margin, and the handsome businessman flew into the desert and disappeared.

Author of one collection, Everybody Has a Story, four chapbooks, and six unpublished poetry manuscripts, David Spicer has previously published in The New Verse News and also has work in Alcatraz, Nitty Gritty, Aura, Brown God, Hinchas de Poesia, Crack the Spine, Dirtflask, Spudgun, Mad Rush, Used Furniture Review, Fur-Lined Ghettos, Spudgun, Bop Dead City, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Resurgo, and elsewhere.