CONFIRMATION TIME

by Jane Patten

The process begins—

But confirmation

Will depend

Upon its closeness to the midterms 

Or what it costs to send

A moderate to the court,

Saturn lying opposite

The Sun or

The last of the Super Moon

Shining bright, 

Agreement from the Right

And well-laid plans

To obstruct and strike again.

After retiring and moving to Huntsville, Jane Patten decided to write about her adventures, including growing up in Delaware and her career as a teacher in rural Georgia. Her writings have been published in Out Loud HSV: A Year in Review anthologies, The New Verse News, Reckon Women, and Reckon Honey.

OBJECTIONABLE SUSTAIN

by Scott Keeney

Judge, it’s hard to remain calm and measured
and I’m not even alone in a room with you,
not even a teenage girl, not even a woman
of today looking out at a landscape of tattered gowns
and heels in the trees and slips on the wires,
listening to the clamor of countless voices
that might as well be the silence
of the countless others, hum and burn.
It’s hard to remain calm and measured
even without a hand over my mouth
and another groping the smooth hellacious
curves of my salacious details
until I want to throw up, and maybe do a little
in my mouth under your hand
and under the snickering in my ear
under the echoing snicker of your friend,
until I want to vomit the musculature
of an entire culture of pretty domination.
Judge, you have made a mockery of us
who stood all night in a drunk girl’s room,
who got in maybe half a kiss
before realizing she was about to pass out
and so eased her down on her bed
without so much as copping a feel
and watched out her window
and stood by her door other men had entered before,
and wondered if we were a chump, a loser,
an impossible man, missing our chance
for what, the anonymous no-glory
of doing the right thing? And it’s not
that we should be judged by what we did
in high school, I liked beer
so much I drove my mother’s car
into the broad side of the Public Works garage,
but we shouldn’t misrepresent ourselves
before congress, before the people, and that
shouldn’t be a thing that needs pointing out,
and we shouldn’t forget that to be Supreme Court Justice
is not a right but a privilege and any
who would hold that position should be above
causing consternation and palpitations,
agita and outrage to a huge swath
of our population. It’s October 8th,
the Monday after your unholy confirmation
and a mosquito lands on my hand
as I type this. Judge, should I squash it like a bitch
who’s confused about the past?
Karie at work emailed me today to say
she was leaving the office early, too much talk
about how could this happen, how could women
vote that way? She couldn’t concentrate,
was shaking inside. I don’t know when
she’ll return. It’s enough to almost make you
forget there are still kids in cages, separated
from parents sent who knows where, for
the crime of impatiently wanting
nothing more than a better life, wanting just
to survive. Unconquerable violence.
Do you know what it’s like just to want to
survive? My teenage daughter rages every day
that we have a sexual assault artist
in the oval office, and now that artless force
of capitalist nature, with his congenital
shell games and compound interest, has his
justice. The Liar in Chief and his Liar in the Court
blaming the blameless, shaming the shamed
who should not have been shamed, but who always
are. Liar in the court. Liar in the court.
Bang, gavel, bang! Liar in the court!
Go sit well in your seat in your death-colored robe.
Go ahead and adjudicate the defiling of Democracy
with your green hand over her mouth.
Go, you Strawman, go and judge.
Go bury your past, you Executioner of Justice,
you sword in the hand of the Galahad of doublespeak
in this land of liberty and whatnot for all.

Scott Keeney has published four collections of poetry, most recently Pickpocket Poetica. His works have appeared previously at TheNewVerse.News (here and here) as well as in Columbia Poetry Review, Failbetter, Mudlark, New York Quarterly, Poetry East, and other journals.

THE DEED IS DONE

by Marsha Owens

Cartoon by Michael de Adder @deAdder

            October 6, 2018
            lying Supreme Court Justice confirmed


I have no tears
maybe music for solace. . .
my cat sings soft melodies
moments click by on the clock
the wine cork pops
and I settle, watch

evening fold its cloak
around trees dropping leaves
the sun drops into its night
place beside those who can cry

and the anger, the anger
roils like hot oil

tap it down, tap it down!
stay calm! vote! be strong!

Being strong sucks . . .
We’ve been strong for centuries
We’ve marched for decades
We’ve kept silent because
            (“it’s a man’s world” my mother said)
We’ve raised daughters
We’ve raised sons
We’ve raised husbands
We’ve cried into pillows at night
We’ve put one foot in front of the other
We’ve organized
We’ve been in therapy
We’ve cashed inferior paychecks
We’ve walked in the dark with fear
We’ve birthed babies
hoping . . .

WE. ARE. TIRED.

My dear women friends . . . sleep.
Find peace and quiet.
It’s been a long day.



Marsha Owens writes to understand. Her poems and essays have appeared at The Literary Nest, TheNewVerse.News, The Huffington Post, thewildword, Rat’s Ass Review, Streetlight Magazine, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, among others. She lives in Richmond, VA, not far from the peaceful Chesapeake Bay.

SHE PERSISTS

by Cally Conan-Davies





Beyond my door is a stream I sit beside
and consider the lastingness of things
—rubber soles, for instance, and woollen socks,
a glass bottle, a foam cup, a knot of fishing line—
things that get caught up in the stream.

The hills sharpen the shriek of the owl
and one thought tears away
like a hound into the wind:
men must give a mind
to earth's own laws. I've seen

her body of fresh water
glaze the dark roots of her weedy banks,
her luxury of flowing downstream not locked in
to anything but pouring and falling down; her lowly law:
to round the shape of everything she meets.

She sings syllabically. She looks troubled.
She is and she isn't. Doing her cold work
she streams. She won't go quietly
because the quality of water is not just
locked in. It is fluidity and partner to the wind.

She is what comes from broken stones,
she won't be silent. She is water-talk
from a clouded mountain thrown down on her
and from the weight of this history
she can improvise a trickle in the dust.

She is last and thirst, her religion is open to life.
She puts her money on the ground and sees it gone.
She is the bend in the spear grass. She gives
her light to irises. She stands
in the poppies where a battlefield was.

By otter and crow, these are the faithful facts.
The stream flows even past the span of stone and heron.
She is the engine drinking in every moment,
clear, and charged, and overlapping,
and making things green where she passes

streaming . . .


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

THE PARK CLOSES AT DUSK

by CL Bledsoe & Michael Gushue

The problem is bears in the classroom.
The problem is bears who don't know
which utensil is for the pâté, which
is for olives.
The problem is that I'm right.
The problem is our tax dollars at work.
Ask all the questions you want. Questions are free.
Answers require donations.
The problem is bears who don't speak proper English.
The problem is bears stealing jobs.
The problem is union bears.
The problem is the lack of bear vouchers.
Bears should be left up to the states,
the largest donors.
Bears eating pâté. Bears who can spell their government
representatives' names and use a touch-tone phone.
The problem is bears who don't know how to stitch
their own wounds.
The problem is bears on death panels,
bears running internment camps.
The problem is bears as Uber drivers.
Bears want to take away our pâté knives.
The problem is bears don't eat pâté
and the ones who do don't vote.
The problem is bears taking our guns and making them into backscratchers.
Russian bears who've invaded our classrooms after the arctic ice melted.
The problem is what's going on behind the bears' backs
while we're watching their teeth.

CL Bledsoe is the assistant editor for The Dead Mule and author of fourteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love. He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Michael Gushue is co-founder with Dan Vera of Poetry Mutual and Poetry Mutual Press. He co-curates the intermittent reading series Poetry at the Watergate with Deborah Ager. His chapbooks are Gathering Down Women, Conrad, and Pachinko Mouth. He lives Washington, D.C.