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.

WD-40

by Jeff Burt

Craig Bennett

If only we had political strength WD-40, 

that you could spray a little on an MTG or MG 

and the braying, the screeching, the informing 

about its presence could be silenced by a squirt. 

The door would re-assume humility 

in being a utility again, no longer the portal 

which the candidates think they provide

into a yawning perfecting future, 

but simple wood, hinged and soundless,

meant once to be opened, and then kept shut.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California and has worked in administration of electronics and mental health care.

SENATE UNCERTAINTY

by Chris O’Carroll

by Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In an appearance back in his home state of Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) downplayed the odds of Republicans reclaiming the Senate—and, by extension, him reclaiming the title of majority leader. In doing so, he suggested that “candidate quality” was a key factor.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said, according to NBC News. “Senate races are just different—they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.” —The Washington Post, August 18, 2022

Mitchity-kvetchity,

Candidate quality

Doesn’t look great for the

GOP’s brand.

Voters seem cool to those

QAnonologists

Mouthing the lies MAGA

Wingnuts demand.

Chris O’Carroll is the author of The Joke’s on Me and Abracadabratude.  His poems have also appeared in the Potcake Chapbook series, New York City Haiku, Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections.

LISTLESS

by Tricia Knoll

I’ve grown weary of best of
recipes with wine
or cookie doughs
which candidate raised the most
murder mysteries
and top discoveries
must-see
movies
raw hip-hop
and alternative songs
records for longest feather
boa
lies we stopped counting
we endured
the year of fire
flood
wind
tornadoes
and can’t we just move
on
knowing what needs
to be done
and do it.

Tricia Knoll has seen dozens of media lists of "best of" in the news. The flashes of what famous people died in 2019 (without including the names of all the victims of bombings and war) and is suspicious there are also lists of the year of the most people who died by gun violence, etc. 

AND NOT THAT ONE, EITHER

by Devon Balwit

Cartoon by SIGNE WILKINSON, The Inquirer, February 13, 2019

Abrasive, ambitious, unlikable—
(truth is, you remind me of my mother,
or of those women who have “other
things to do” when I call) in short, unelectable,
no matter your platform. You remind me
of that girl in class who always scored
a point or two higher, who looked bored
when I spoke. You seem angry—
Why are you so angry all the time?
And who, if I may ask, is watching your kids
while you get uppity? Besides, bids
for President, for a place in the lime-
light should go to those with a prettier face—
(and who’d choose “pretty” for a Presidential race?)


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Fifth Wednesday (on-line), Apt, Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others.

THE JOYS OF SUMMER

by Frank De Canio




For once a year a level playing field
obtains for millions of us baseball fans.
No legislation works like bats men wield
for getting us to join disparate hands
in making sure the same ground work is done
that candidates are loath to do. One ump
enforces rules until the game is won.
Nor is there fear the losing team can trump
the outcome. Players get to base on balls
that otherwise are wanting in some pay
to play receivers heeding donor’s calls,
instead of those constituents convey.
And universal suffrage simply means
that all have access to their tv screens.


Born & bred in New Jersey, Frank De Canio works in New York. He loves music from Bach to Dory Previn, Amy Beach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.

VETERANS’ DAY

by Howard Winn

Above: The New Yorker Daily Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz, November 11, 2015

Honor their sacrifice and commitment
say all the politicians who have ducked
out of the room when the recruiters
appear with open arms to welcome
the children to their old men’s war
but they have appealed to some daddy
to get them out of it or into some
safe and cushy assignment that may
look legit but is as much a fake as they
are pretending that the National Guard
assignment in the states or a military
prep school where their harried parents
have put the undisciplined little bastard
out of their home and hair and some
tough drill sergeant is the one to shape
up the hulking darlings with too much money
and those who have actually served know
the game which often ends in maiming
or painful dismemberment or death
while each year at the time of  WWI
Armistice banks and the Post Office close
and in some schools at eleven o’clock
on the eleventh day of the eleventh
month there is a moment of silence
for children who have no idea why
this is happening to them until
they grow into the next inevitable war.


Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Descant.  Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. His B. A. is from Vassar College. his M. A. from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. He is an Air Force veteran who served overseas during war time.

PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS, 2015

by George Salamon

"In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia . . . he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise is the King."  —Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly.

Faces sly more than virtuous.
Words slippery more than true.
Hucksters and hustlers, narcissistic
Peddlers of the self  selected from
Political machines modeled after
Families of the Cosa Nostra.
Champions of the elite's freedom
To follow every desire, but ready
To foreclose the advance of the human
Spirit to the rest of us.

Their debates shoot-outs,
Where zingers and gaffes determine
Who sprinted ahead and who fell behind
In this sleazy horse race.

We the people of The Greatest Nation on Earth
Do not say, as ee cummings once did:
"there is some shit I will not eat."
We stuff our faces,
Sated and sluggishly sensing that
Our hearts and minds will follow.


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

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CANDIDATE

by Edmund Conti

Image source: DonkeyHotey

I

Among thirteen showy Mountebanks
The only intelligent thing
Was the hair of the Donald.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three Muslims.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
What would Ayn Rand say?

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and  a blackbird
Are one for the books but not The Book.

V

I do not know which to prefer
The beauty of my  inflections
Or the beauty of my brother’s.
Or Dad whistling
Just after Reagan.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass
The shadow of the candidate
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
A Princeton man

VII
.
O thinking men of Ohio,
Why to do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how my resume
Puts to sleep
The women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the Bible is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the candidate flew off the radar
Only Senator McCain
Seemed to notice.

X

At the sight of motorists
Merging  after  a green light,
Even the bawds of gluttony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

She throws stones
From her glass house.
Once, a fear pierced her,
In that she mistook
The shadow of her imagination
For babies.

XII

The tide is turning.
The candidate  must be flying
But not back to Cuba.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon
It was snowing
Even in Louisiana
The candidate sat and waited
OHMMMMMM


Edmund Conti is a retired poet.  He is still looking for his golden parachute.

HAIR AND THE HEALTH OF THE WORLD

by Kit Zak

the doctor clips
a few strands of my hair—
the adrenal fatigue test

I think about all that stresses
my gray head
            (not so many now that my children are fledged)
it’s their turn. Still

thoughts of hair seize my brain
            (not just the mineral deficiencies the test might show)
but candidate Trump’s coif
floating over his head
like a gold hairball
            (WHO has hair like that?)
Or like his devil-

interlocutor, Megan,
her honey tresses and
the talented stylists who make hair
their calling (card) and fortune.

Oh style
and the making of a President
while really
it’s Boeing and Lockheed Martin
dictating our future

such a  three-ringer
(circus): the Hawks’ war path
and the Republican guardians for coal plants

I stress
over the rising tides in coastal cities and
the killer storms (my kids in Norfolk and Miami)

American politics: it’s just entertainment and imagine
what the Europeans must think of our clowns

I await test results
and wonder about the cure


Kit Zak lives in Lewes, DE. She’s an activist who has published in various journals and anthologies.

HAND PICKED

by Bill Petz

The freshly harvested bountiful crop of fruits and vegetables
take the farmers' market tailgate stage
crying out to mingling uncertain gawkers:
I'll keep illness at bay
I'll save money
I'll make you feel good
I'll restore strength
I'm locally grown.

Jalapenos, on display by themselves, strut hot flashes of flavor
Still dirty carrots suggest birth place fertilizer
Peaches picked too late fear flavor will be missed
Misshaped heritage tomatoes downplay ancestry
Sturdy, ruddy potatoes claim center place to mask blandness
Seedless watermelons deny impotency
Red Delicious apples tout their hearty core.

None name the brown hands that plowed, planted and picked.


Bill Petz lives and writes in the mountains of western North Carolina. His work has been published in Status Hat, The Ashevillle Citizen-Times, The Chronicles of Higher Education and Artists & Writers Quarterly. 

PICK ME, PICK ME

by Earl J Wilcox

Image Source: DonkeyHotey

In my small South Carolina town, kids line up to be
chosen for the summer sandlot baseball team.
Nine or ten players (or more) arrive already, chatting
and showing off their stuff before a tiny crowd. First,
there’s Linsdsey, home town favorite, such a hawk
sure to be chosen for the outfield, where he can roam
freely. Over here looking eager is hunky Rand, pepper pot
for short stop--gutsy, full of chatter, though his coiffed hair
will be hidden beneath that ball cap. Hey, look! It’s good old
Huck chatting up the coaches, winking and shaking hands
vowing he will gladly say a prayer before every game.
And standing nearby in freshly pressed uniform it’s Rick.
Oh, such a sweet demeanor, he’ll be an outstanding catcher,
one who can control the game while showing his sparkling teeth.
Then, any solid team needs a bulky New Jersey first baseman.
Chris is so stout he can block Hillary or Patrick or Bernie—
anyone who might try to hustle down the line. Oh, let’s not
forget: any team wants a doctor:  let’s choose Carson, who, by
the way, also helps with our minority numbers, as does Carly;
she will add a splash of beauty to our bench. Everyone knows
a Cuban is essential for today’s baseball team, so Marco’s our man
for the hot corner at third base. But we save till last choosing
our pitchers and outfielders from among whose ranks are such
audacious governors and one wily Texan (Cruz): Jeb and Scott
and Jindal and Pataki and Kasich because they have an array
of fading fast balls, screw balls, even more curve balls and knuckle-
balls, to say nothing of already honing their skills for arguing
with umpires about every pitch and close call. Play Ball! Batter Up!

Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.

AT THE VENETIAN RESORT CASINO ON THE STRIP

by Janet Leahy



LAS VEGAS (The Borowitz Report)—The casino billionaire and Republican kingmaker Sheldon Adelson met several 2016 G.O.P. candidates available for purchase over the weekend, but decided to buy none of them, Adelson confirmed today. --The New Yorker, March 31, 2014


An escape to Vegas, to bend
the ear

of a rich man, a foot
in the silver door

to dirty money, to hunger
that gnaws

for more, a psalm of himself
chips piled high to buy

someone plastic, the candidate
cannot wear a dark patina


Janet Leahy writes poetry in New Berlin, Wisconsin.  A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she has two collections of poetry, The Storm, Poems of War, Iraq and Not My Mother's Classroom.