HE COULDN’T CARE LESS

No eggs I can afford!

     Couldn’t care less

No job with government

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t pay for room and board

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t afford a car.

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t keep health insurance

    Couldn’t care less

My children have measles

    Couldn’t care less

But cod liver oil’s sold out!

    Couldn’t care less

Campaigning again

    Dems should care more

Because He Couldn’t care less

By Joe Blow who couldn’t care more

Ralph La Rosa invented this Joe Blow.

ON THE ROAD WITH MY GRANDDAUGHTER BEFORE THE 2024 ELECTION

by Susan Vespoli

~Dedicated to the man who just macheted Trump signs in Yuma and then drove his car over them

Feeling cranky about mean election signs

along Phoenix streets that tell lies or say F**k 

one candidate’s prayers, (paid for by his Republican

opponent for Senate) yet finding myself laughing 

at the Hitler mustaches graffitied onto the upper lip 

of Trump and Kari Lake, I tell myself to breathe, 

ask my granddaughter about Addy, 

the 4th grade friend she calls talented. How so? I ask, 

and Molly replies, well, she can suck in her breath 

so hard her nostrils seal shut, and she can stand  on her head 

and balance her water bottle on the sole of one of her shoes. 

Did you see her do it? I ask. Yes, she nods. I exhale.

Susan Vespoli believes in the power of writing to heal. Her poems have been published in NVN, Rattle, ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other cool spots.

READING, WRITING, ARITHMETIC

by Ron Drummond

Sign up at Vote Forward

“The library is open.”

– RuPaul Charles

 

 

“Turn the page,” my candidate says,

and we are even more delighted 

with this ambassador of sanity 

than five-year-olds at story time.

 

I turn the page of a roll of voters

registered to the same party as me

and continue personalizing notes and

envelopes to possible “for” votes,

 

my handwriting in each letter

paired with a QR code spelling 

how, where and when to cast

their vote. I band stacks of stuffed,

 

stamped envelopes – this batch

of over three hundred going to

a state where all zips begin with

two, the numeral that allows for 

 

my finest work: a slight, lovely curve 

that swoops to a taut, crisp horizontal.

At some point, I will put on some music,

but for now, I am flying solo.

 

I picture the recipient’s odd experience 

of holding a hand-addressed envelope to be

like Sondheim’s Joanne pausing her song

to ask, “Does anyone still wear a hat?”

 

I relive the tedium of my factory job

working with extruded plastic, and those

night-shift endings at Denny’s “marrying”

the ketchups” – wedding the contents

 

of the bottles so that none are partly full, 

leaving each with the sediment of ancient 

condiment at their bottoms – when all 

I want is dawn, and to go home to bed.

 

Within reach of where I stamp and seal

is a cigar box of campaign buttons, mostly 

from lost crusades. I’m not a snob about them.  

I don’t take pride in backing failed runs. 

 

Most of the buttons promote anti-war pols,

and half are red, white and blue discs 

with the much-later-to-be-assassinated 

Allard Lowenstein’s name on them. 

 

But when this current election is over 

and I add a shiny new navy-blue one 

to my collection, I envision this old 

El Cid Corona Minors box – it once held

 

25 seven-inch (54 ring-gauge) cigars 

with open feet & capped heads – being 

transformed. It will no longer be a flat, 

hinged urn. It will no longer be a grief box.

 

“Turn the page,” my candidate repeats,

using a gesture even the non-literate

can understand.

Ron Drummond is the author of Why I Kick At Night (Portlandia). A founding editor of Barrow Street, his poetry and translations have appeared in over forty journals, as well as in anthologies and textbooks. He has received fellowships from Ragdale, VCCA, Blue Mountain Center, and the Macondo Foundation. He lives in NYC with his husband Terry Cook.

POWER OF THE VOTE

by Paul Brassard

Public Domain Photo by Simone D'andrea altered by the poet using GIMP image manipulation software.

Paul Brassard is a retired teacher of high school students with behavioral challenges. He has been writing poetry and fiction since he wrote his first short story Honolulu Calling at the age of twelve. Paul has been writing a personal haiku, senyru or haiga every day for the past several years as a method of self-reflection or in response to current events. He writes his short stories and poetry at his home in South Portland, Maine, which he shares with Patti, his wife of 50 years. His writing has appeared in The New Verse News.

ALTERCATION IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

by Jerome Betts

The war-time dead, thanks be, sleep sound
Where laid to rest in hallowed ground
Immune to campaign cheers and boos
Or use by self-obsessed yahoos.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online.

ELECTION 2024 GHAZAL

by Mary K O’Melveny

Vice President Kamala Harris appeared for the first time alongside her newly announced running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, introducing him on Tuesday evening at a packed rally in Philadelphia. “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” a beaming Mr. Walz turned to tell Ms. Harris after she presented him to the crowd. —The New York Times, August 6, 2024

What a long time have we been waiting for joy!
Like brassy laughter, what we really need is joy. 

Today, our air is alive, electric. A chorus
of voices can be heard in harmonies of joy. 

No one disputes that such emotion is good for us. 
What else can balance doomsday fears like joy?

Once I heard a wood thrush hidden in a porous
bush, its notes sensuous with forbidden joy. 

It’s been too long since we could bask in glorious 
sound. Listen as it rises like a songbird, joy-

 

ous with promise, ascendant with purpose, raucous

with Hope—which we now know by its other name: Joy.

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird (Jerry Jazz Musician 2024) is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.

TRUMP'S ABORTION CONTORTION

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

“Trump’s abortion position” by Dave Whamond

Days after saying that abortion policies should be left to the states, former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday criticized an Arizona court ruling for upholding an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions...Yet even as he suggested his disapproval...Mr. Trump defended the position he took in a video statement on Monday, when he said that states should weigh in on abortion through legislation. —The New York Times, April 10, 2024, Updated April 13, 2024.

 

Trump varies his stand on abortion.

If only his prospects were dim.

This country could ward off distortion

By taking a stand against him.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had three previous poems in The New Verse News.

THEY'VE STOPPED CALLING

by Kelley White

Vigorous turnout for Tuesday's primary in Laconia, Meredith and Gilford 

—The Laconia Daily Sun (NH), January 25, 2024

Ron’s been after me for months. Maybe a year.

Those first calls from a Florida area code.

Not saying much. Just I want, I need, I feel you.

Then Mike started in, and Chris and Tim

and then Vivek and Nikki, people I’d never heard of

let alone from, Asa and Doug and... well, even

the Big Guy, whose name I will not repeat here.

The calls and texts really ramped up after Christmas.

They just don’t get it—I moved to Philadelphia in 2018

even though I kept my 603 phone number. So I’m

still a potential to them (you can tell how accurate

their information is... So many invitations

to coffee, to lunch, to rallies, townhalls, for a while

Nikki was inviting me multiple times a day—to Plymouth,

to Meredith, North Conway, Bristol, Littleton, she must

have wheels on her little high heels. Vivek had the most

interesting menus—hot dog cart, bagels, ribs! That was

a surprise. Today the phone’s silent. No one cares about

small me anymore. And the Big Guy? I know he hit my home

town. Probably won it. My poor deluded former neighbors

and their little red hats.

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.)She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her newest collection, NO.HOPE STREET has just been published by Kelsay Books.

THE ORIGINAL TRUMAN SHOW

by Phyllis Frakt

“Want to understand 2024? Look at 1948.” —Nate Cohn, The New York Times, January 4, 2024

“I trust the people, because when they know the facts, they do the right thing.” —Harry S. Truman, November 1, 1948

Give ‘em hell! they yelled at me.

Then I made 352 campaign speeches
in 31,000 miles of whistle-stops.
Millions came – they cheered,
learned the facts, did the right thing.
I have to admit I inflated a bit,
but you can’t accuse me 
of confusing the issues 
or spewing fake news
like today’s raving orange outrage
with his distortions and contortions,
his lies, denials, indictments, and trials.
My time of truth and trust fell
to an entire age that gives you hell.

 

Phyllis Frakt writes poetry in New Jersey. Her previous poems in The New Verse News are "Teach to the Test," "Caught in Between," "Not in Our Star...," and "Believing is Seeing."

OLD MAN SHOUTING IN A BARN

by Tricia Knoll

Photo by the poet.

On any given fine fall day and this one was given
as gold on the hills, gold in sunshine after rain,
two young parents push a stroller for a baby
wearing a knit hat down a fine gravel road.


The sun might have known it would dip soon
to a sunset but in that moment’s radiance, I asked
what brought them to this Vermont farm
this afternoon. They had many choices


on a day as fine as this. Snow has already topped
a nearby mountain. My purple petunias took on frost
last night. These October days are numbered
more reluctantly than most days, double digiting.


They said they came to u-pick a pumpkin
for Halloween to carve the baby’s first ghost face.
Light a candle. A fine Sunday to get out. Then
they heard “the old man shouting in the barn.”


I nod to the baby, ask “Another first?”
They smile. Another first for sure.
Too bad the baby won’t remember this.
That old man is Bernie Sanders,


a rally three weeks before mid-terms.
The baby inherits our crisis of climate change
and on this fine day, the old man whipped us
up to cheering his amplified words in a barn.


The mother, father and little boy—who will soon
see his first ghost—go rolling up the road to a field
where they might find a perfect pumpkin,
harvest gold despite this fine summer’s drought.



Tricia Knoll attended the rally in a barn in rural Vermont for Democratic candidates in Vermont on Sunday, October 14. This is a true story that means whatever you think it does.

TO SAVE THE COUNTRY

by Brenda J. Gannam

ACLU People Power

with sincere apologies and enormous gratitude

to paul simon

the problem’s not all inside the beltway, can’t you see
and the answer’s not easy, if you take things personally
i’m going to explain it—so we can defeat this tromperie
there must be fifty ways to save your country
fifty ways to save the country

you say it grieves you so to see your rights withdrawn
and you can’t sleep at night, you toss and turn till dawn
so please tell yourself you won’t just lie there, fret, and yawn
there must be fifty ways to save your country
fifty ways to save the country

just jot down a plan, dee ann
go to the poll, noel
vote out the jerk, kirk
come, listen to me

march on the square, claire
give your voice sway, josé
protest the wall, saul
soon, results you will see!

join in a rally, sally
promote the facts, max
speak out the truth, ruth
till the seed grows a tree

e-mail a friend, hind
make your tweets ring, ming
keep the thoughts straight, kate
they can’t stop you and me

start a campaign, lorraine
draw a cartoon, haroun
sing a strong song, jong
even better, all three!

counter that spin, gwen
support the press, bess
write an op-ed, ahmed
for the truth sets you free

yes, the truth sets you free!

Brenda J. Gannam, an Arab-American living in Brooklyn, has been a member of the New York poetry community for 25+ years and has published her poems and haiku in a variety of journals and anthologies in print and online.

ELECTION: 2016

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

They’re handing it out—whatever it is.
And we’re taking it—exile, house arrest,
a wall, mass deportations, the molded,
melded, stretched and excised truth.
I hear some are taking it and buying the hat.
We might as well paint the country alizarin.
Other names for alizarin are Mordant Red
and Turkey Red. We should certainly paint
the country alizarin. Eventually,
we will want to get back to forming our
days with our hands. We will be unable
to move our fingers. Then we will want
to hear the new lies, the small stories
of the worms’ triumph. It will be too late.
I tell myself, “don’t borrow trouble. We
still have months.” I tell myself “you
can move. A month is an augenblick,”
I tell myself “it can’t be that bad.”
I say “not here, it can’t happen here.” I wonder
where to live next. Taut faces surround me.
In every group, a mother who says,“hush,”
a mother who says “everything is fine.”
Around me, children are blown to mush.
I am a mother. Don’t we say dumb stuff?


Author’s gloss: augenblick—the blink of an eye

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and write in the Ozarks. She is the author of two books and three chapbooks, most recently Persephone on the Metro. See her work in Concis, Rat’s Ass Review, Mom Egg Review, and the Kentucky Review.

DOVES BY STORMLIGHT

by David Chorlton

Wednesday’s was a sky
to cleanse a sinner of his sins: apocalyptic
rays from sunset
streaming up against a storm
about to break. The telephone cable

between the alley and the house
sagged with the weight of light
from the sun in the west
while earthquake, war, and political
intrigue welled up in the clouds
behind it. All day

the numbers rose
of bodies in the rubble, refugees
and campaign propaganda
until the pale doves

on the power line
brightened into blazing commas
from a text whose words
the news had rendered
insufficient.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book, A Field Guide to Fire, was his contribution to the Fires of Change exhibition shown in Flagstaff and Tucson in Arizona.