WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NEW YORKER CARTOONS?

by Earl J. Wilcox

From the current issue of The New Yorker. 

Once, they were not just cutting edge,

They were the edge. Timely, clever,

Witty, observant of contemporary politics,

Our mores (for better or worse)—

Fresh, unique, without peers in other

Mags. (I could go on listing adjectives

Suggesting their demise, but you get the point.)

 

Was it the pandemic? A change in editors at

The storied mag? Perhaps all the good cartoonists

Died or became so out of touch or old or both

They no longer know what’s funny and what’s

Just a quaint take on our times.  I long for a return

To those good old days when The New Yorker 

Made me smile out loud at least three times

Each week. Or is it just me?

 

When did I stop seeing humor in politics and people,

In our pain and our poignant moments, our sass,

In all that’s worth seeing in human nature, even

Occasionally cruel jesting at our sores and warts,

our meanness. So many sexy innuendoes in those

Cartoons one could publish a book (as the mag’s

Editors have done several times over!) Such

Terrific and precious or precocious punch lines.

Is such pleasure taken from us forever?

Is this the way the world may end, not

With a SHAZAM but a New Yorker

Cartoon blaaah?

 

 

Earl Wilcox discovered The New Yorker cartoons about seven decades ago.

JE SUIS CHARLIE

by Mary R. Finnegan

Cartoon by Tom Tomorrow at The Daily Kos

I stand outside Notre Dame

quietly, for a moment of silence,

after a lifetime of silence.

Je suis Charlie

I write my rebuke in 140 characters

for the hashtag 

is mightier than the sword.

Je suis Charlie

I unite with all mankind

to strongly condemn

this horrific shooting

or whatever the masses are saying.

Je suis Charlie

I do all these things from over here,

and not too loudly, and only

among friends and infidels 

on the internet and possibly

with the saucy courage of alcohol

in a dark bar 

on a flag draped street somewhere 

in an undisclosed location

because I am only 

looking at blurred cartoons

and pixelated slaughter.

I am only in my pajamas

complaining of the cold

and the price of oil,

keeping my head 

below the parapet.

I am only 

wearing these boots

to wade through

the frigid streets because

Je ne suis pas Charlie.

For when the liar speaks

I do not wish to agree

so I say nothing

Je ne parle pas

when the threat is made

I do not wish to disagree

so I remain silent

Je me tais

for when prayer is called

I do not wish to offend

so I believe nothing

Je ne crois rien

because when the scimitar is raised

above my slender white neck

I do not wish to lose the head

that has done nothing

said nothing

believed nothing.

Non, Je ne suis pas Charlie.

I do not agree 

or disagree.

I do not offend.

I do not blaspheme.

Can you not see

I am on my knees?

Je ne suis pas Charlie.

Je ne suis personne.

Ça va.

Ça va, oui, ça va?

Mary R. Finnegan is an operating room nurse in the Philadelphia area who also writes poetry and short stories.

ZERO IN THE CEMETERY

by Carolyn Gregory 

Nocturnal Sunrise by Alison Strange-Green

The angels at Pere Lachaise Cemetery
weep this morning,
tears glued frozen to classic features,
wings unable to fly.

They are mourning the dead journalists
who were too saucy with cartoons,
lambasting the prophet
when thousands die under drones
in trenched caverns in Syria.

One man's religion is not
another man's feast to roast and ride
when children and women drop
at weddings and in small cells.

The angels light the graves
of Oscar Wilde and the French Resistance,
stones shining above snow

and then they retreat
to melancholy for this season of violence,
wings bent down with grief.


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, in 2012. She has been working on a series about the history of guns in America for several years now.