GENESIS 2025

by Michael Dorian

Source: Seattle Times

In the beginning

He pardoned all the seditionists.

Now the nation was barren and shapeless,

darkness was upon the land

and He said, “Let there be lies,”

and there were lies.

He saw the lies were good

and He separated the lies from the truth.

He called the lies “truth”

and He called the truth “lies.”

And there was evening 

and there was morning—

the first day

And He said, "Let me stop the wildfires

scorching the pretty landscaping

and those expensive houses. 

I know some people in L.A., some 

very wealthy, well-connected people."

And He released with almighty force

from his gullet a torrent of water pressure

the likes of which no man had beheld.

And the fires stopped burning.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the second day

And He said, "Let the illegal immigrants

in the land be returned whence they came."

So with a gust of His great breath

He swept them all up in a glorious gale

and blew back to homelands the vermin, 

scattered like so much feed.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the third day.

And He said, "Let me build a big beautiful wall

And He saw it was a good wall,

a great wall, better than China’s,

The Greatest Wall Of All Time

that anyone has ever seen anywhere

on Earth or any planet in our 

Solar System or even in all of Space,"

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fourth day.

And He said, "Let me stop the war in Ukraine."

And a great swathe of his carefully—

coiffed hair sent all the soldiers

toppling like toys back into their

respective sovereign countries

(with Russia gaining great areas

of formerly Ukrainian land)

and the bloodshed ceased 

like the last lilting notes 

of cherubs’ trumpeted fanfare.

And He saw this was good

(for Putin and Himself, anyway)

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fifth day.

And He said, "Let me drill, baby, drill!"

So with tremendous huffing and puffing

He had an angel, a female one, fluff

His manhood until it stood,

a tower of steel shining in the sun,

and He poked it in and pulled it out

with enduring virility

until he had poked 

many a holy hole 

deep into the Earth’s womb

and into 625 million acres

of preserved coastal seawaters

and the nation became richer with crude.

And the land and great numbers

of its people were crude.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the sixth day.

And on the 7th day

He played golf and he cheated.

Once upon a time, Michael Dorian had a collection of poems and a play in one act published by Silk City Press entitled "The Nektonic Facteur.”  He likes to think that when the going gets tough, the tough write poems. 

AN EARLY AUDIENCE: JANUARY 23, 2022

by Wu “Sacred Bee” Li

A Chinese PLA Xian H-6 jet bomber. China’s air force flew 34 fighter jets, one bomber, two electronic warfare planes and two intelligence-gathering planes into the Taiwan Strait on Sunday. Photograph: Taiwan Ministry Of National Defense/EPA Helen Davidson in Taipei —The Guardian, January 24, 2022

The Red-capped Cock-man has announced the Coming of the Dong .

The Keeper of the Robes is bringing terror to Taiwan.

The heavenly nine doors re-ve-al thirty-nine aircraft.

The coats of many countries kowtow to the Golden Calf.

Sunlight has entered into the Cheat’s craven carven plans.

Incense and hatred round the Dragon spread to many lands.

The Chengdu J-10 fighters, electronic spotter planes,

and the Shenyang J-16 jets roar out enraged refrains.

The audience hears edicts, blue, black, yellow, red and white,

a Phoenix phalanx sent forth by the Secretariat.

Wu “Sacred Bee” Li is the latest anagrammatic pseudonym of a New Verse News regular. This poem draws on a poem from the Tang dynasty by Wang Wei (王維, 701-761). Dong means East.

TIME'S UP

by Richard Meyer

Follow the online bot that tweets the elapsed amount of the T***p presidency in 0.1% increments .

Deranged, incompetent, irate,

the loser won’t admit he lost.

Refusing to accept his fate,

he’ll lie and cheat at any cost

and even wreck the ship of state

while claiming he’s been double-crossed.

But he’s defeated, shamed, undone.

The unrelenting countdown clock

keeps dropping digits one by one.

He cannot stop the tick and tock.

He’s out of time. His end has come,

a failure there’s no hiding from.

He’s squeezed inside an hourglass,                 

dissipating grain by grain.

The dwindling moments come and pass,                    

and nothing of him will remain.

His legacy and final brand

will be a little mound of sand.

Richard Meyer’s poems have appeared in various publications, including Able Muse, The Raintown Review, Think, Measure, Light, TheNewVerse.News, Alabama Literary Review, and The Evansville Review. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone” and was the recipient of the 2014 String Poet Prize for his poem “The Autumn Way.” A book of his collected poems, Orbital Paths, was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.

GOODBYE, CHARON

 by David Spicer

Charon, no converted souls await you on this side 

of the river. Guided by your two ugly thugs,

Klaus the Klansman and Hector the Hell’s Angel,

you frighten the depressed night with amber hair,

its illicit brilliance shining for your devoted

minions with the dull transience of a caution light.

Charon, no new naive souls clamor for you on this

river side. Your boat collects water every time you                      

row down its waves, long ago bereft of their blue,

now shadowed by our despair. We hear your entreaties,

Charon, but your words are empty as our dead skies.

We see your eyes shine with the chaos of conflict,

but we tire of them: no more limber sycamores

bloom in the daytime. We know when the darkness

appears that you are here, your loud presence deaf

to our ears at this late date. Each of us dies, Charon,

but, if we see our end near, we want a fresh ferryman     

to steer us to our side of the stormy river that rises:

Your speeches are lies, you have cheated the taxman,

we do not need your worthless coins to hide our eyes.

Soon morning will wake and we shall demand you

depart our banks, leave with your henchmen, and veer

near the poison side of this river, where your fate awaits:

your reckoning, your trials that you have forever evaded.

David Spicer has published poems in The American Poetry Review, CircleStreet, Gargoyle, Moria, Oyster River Pages, Ploughshares, Remington Review, Santa Clara Review, The Sheepshead Review, Steam Ticket, Synaeresis, Third Wednesday, The New Verse News, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections, the latest two being American Maniac (Hekate Publishing) and Confessional (Cyberwit.net). His fifth, Mad Sestina King, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

TO LIE IN STATE, AS USUAL

by David Feela

Years down the political road
an ex-con will be carried to the rotunda
by military men at taxpayers’ expense

though he never served a day in uniform.
Mourners will respectfully file past his remains
though never in his life did he lawfully

file his taxes, wash his hands at humanity’s
fountain, or recognize a truth before
wringing out a lie. A closed casket affair,

nobody certain if he’s actually in there,
his supporters aghast, as a democrat is
accused of raising the flag to full staff.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook Thought Experiments won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A collection of his essays How Delicate These Arches was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in April 2019.