PREPPING FOR DOOMSDAY

by Tom Karlson

Michigan closed down its capitol in Lansing on Thursday and canceled its legislative session rather than face the possibility of an armed protest and death threats against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The gathering, meant to advocate opening the state for business despite the coronavirus pandemic, followed one April 30 that resulted in pictures of protesters clad in military-style gear and carrying long guns crowding the statehouse. They confronted police and taunted lawmakers. —Bloomberg, May 14, 2020

they are not wearing brown shirts
they can’t sing Deutschland Uber Alles
these protesters are tattooed white nationalists
cameo clad, heavily armed,
red hatted, tattooed, with confederate flag and swastika
they are dyed in the wool homegrown
Nazi  Motherfuckers

crazed defenders of the second amendment
president t***p tweets open up America,
protect the constitution
these are good people
these are his people

protected by Barr’s boys
the thugs are on the move
ordered and paid to liberate
Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky
they come to boogaloo (armed insurrection)
not native or black or brown
these pale thugs have carte blanche
from the loyal men in blue

BC (before covid)
45 and his boys knew
high stock market and
low employment equal
certain reelection

AC (after covid)
the equation is changed
and the impeached one
the quinine loving
fact fucker
does nothing for 8 weeks
for thousands a early death

and now we have
the orange domed leader
press briefing rallies
urging his doomsday prepping,
white privileged militia goons
to open up
and make america great again


Tom Karlson’s information: My poetry is political / my poetry is about stuff I can see / smell feel hear / read about / stuff from history, / natural history / my history / an outcry, protest / justice, injustice / of contradictions / and musings / sounds and goddesses / moving around objective / reality toward life / a better world is coming

APOCALYPSE

by Charles Harvey

Police escort the last of about 150 masked members of the Patriot Front from a parking garage, after they peacefully ended a march near Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Theiler

I don’t give a fuck

About Donald Duck
Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!
He a chicken shit
He a mouth too small to
Blow smoke up my ass
But he sure blowing jazz
Up some white folk’s corn holes.
He blowing smoke, and they
Inhaling the shit he shit.
He gonna paint the White House red
From the blood of busted skulls,
‘Cause the cops are coming
The Neo-Nazis are coming
The skinheads are coming
The KKKs are coming
The Jew-haters are coming
The nigger-haters are coming
The stars and bars are coming
The Uncle Toms are bowing,
“Yas suh! !Yas suh!” thirty pieces of silver
to seal they thick lips.
They raising Bull Connor from the dead
The fools have been fooled
The turkeys are coming home to defecate,
But the wise will rise
From the ashes of democracy.

Charles Harvey lives in Houston Texas. He is a novelist and poet. He is currently working on a volume of poetry, Rough Cut Until I Bleed, due to be out on March 24. He has numerous volumes of poetry and short stories all over the web. He is in the middle of revising several novels to be re-released soon.

AFTER THE CONFEDERATE FLAGCAME DOWN

by Margaret DeRitter

“not an uncommon example of humanity in SC: Leroy Smith helps white supremacist to shelter & water as heat bears down.” Image/caption source: @RobGodfrey

I came upon a wedding guest list tucked inside a legal pad. I needed the pad for a workshop: “Racial Issues in the LGBT Community.” But the list? What was I hanging on to—the way Amy once loved me? I know it wasn’t perfect, but what is? Hell, if love required perfection, there’d be no love at all. I was in a mood before I ever walked into that workshop. Then we had to name our preferred pronouns. I wanted to say this and that. I know trans people suffer, but do we really need to make an 80-year-old straight guy with a beard say he, him, his? By the time someone said hetero-normative, I was sick of words. It helped when Lester told us he was there because his gay son died in a car accident. Plain English. Real grief. The next day a newspaper photo caught my eye: black cop guiding sun-baked supremacist up South Carolina stairs toward air-conditioning. The cop looked sure on his feet, the white guy ready to topple onto his swastika. It was the day the Confederate flag came down at the state house. A reporter asked the cop why he thought the photo went wild on the Internet. Love, he said. I think that’s the greatest thing in the world—love. Yes, that, I thought, breaking down at last—for Amy and me, for Lester and his son, for the cop, for the hater, for the whole racist, trans-phobic, hetero-normative world.

Margaret DeRitter lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her dog, Murray. When she’s not walking him in the woods, paddling her kayak or writing poetry, she teaches college journalism classes and does freelance writing and editing. She worked as a full-time journalist for 30 years, including 22 at the Kalamazoo Gazette, Her poetry has appeared in Scarlet Literary Magazine, Melancholy Hyperbole, Midnight Circus and Encore.

SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY

by Max Gutmann

A group of Confederate flag supporters gathered near the Oklahoma high school where President Obama is scheduled to speak Wednesday afternoon, claiming that the flag represents heritage–not racism.“We’re not gonna stand down from our heritage. You know, this flag’s not racist. And I know a lot of people think it is, but it’s really not. It’s just a southern thing, that’s it,” Trey Johnson told KFOR. Johnson drove three hours from Texas to join the protest.   —BUZZPO July 15, 2015; Photo by Steven Romo / Twitter

When I welcome you, it's the intent
That's important. If you get all bent
Out of shape with offense,
Then you ain't got good sense;
What you heard ain't the thing that I meant.

Ain't that sensible? Then let's agree:
As your host, I am perfectly free
To display one long digit
And call you an idjit,
'Cause those are endearments to me.


Max Gutmann has contributed to The American Drivel Review and other publications.

ON FATHER'S DAY

by Joan Mazza

I’m not posting photos on social media
of my father with his arm around me,
both of us grinning, oozing affection.
No photos like that exist, not even
from my childhood.

On Father’s Day, I’m perusing again
of my boozy father’s last act, self-
inflicted gun shot that whisked him out
of this world and our lives. How did he
excuse it?

I’m remembering how my short-fused
husband insisted my father have a gun,
took him to buy that Walther PPK
and showed him how to use it.
Self-defense,

he said. That was the gun he used when
he could not defend himself against misery
and hopeless blues, my mother’s cancer.
I’m thinking how glad I am that my Ex
never was a father.

In an old photo, my not-yet-Ex husband stands
unsmiling, pistol on hip, rifle and Confederate flag
crossed across his chest, wearing a string tie
and cowboy hat. I took that photo, and only
was bemused.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.