O BEAUTIFUL

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

 

Just before her 250th birthday

America, sweet land 

of checks and balances, 

has died in anguish.

So we must ignore

mixed martial arts fights,

the Marine Band, fireworks 

aimed at the moon.

A despot blocked the birth canal

of oil and gas.  

While conducting state business, 

he's gold-plated his family’s progeny.

Critics who think he’s broken laws,

say he should be held accountable—

he hunts down.

Since America has flatlined, honey, cancel 

the sticky lemonade, the red, white and blue 

sheet cake. 

On July 4, play taps.

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY, and Williamsburg, VA. Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Macrame Literary Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, Nixes Mate, and Streetlight Magazine. Her chapbook mansucript The Losing has been longlisted for The Headlight Review’s Annual Poetry Chapbook Contest 2026.

AND SO IT BEGINS

by Imogen Arate

Art by Ann Telnaes

I.
The video stunned
The spin followed

An award-winning poet
has been silenced
by the shrill bullets from a
21st-century fast-drawing
cowboy on the man-made
frontiers of the new wild West

Yet we’re subjected 
to the lies of a rapist

Another man trying 
to justify violence
against women

A bad remake
of another family 
forced into mourning

another community
thrown into chaos

II.
Yet we still think in terms
of elephants and donkeys

while neither will draw down
on the military budget

sunset high-tech toys
hardware for the police and

other testosterone-charged 

angst-driven angry boys

tear down boundaries
that gate-check
investments in decency
beyond the borders
of “me and my”

Repulsive successive local waves 
reinforce the national and the 
global of political expedience 
and small and large lies stack 
upon one another to enrage
as the bodies of the sacrificed
emit the noxious gas
of corruption to explode
in a tsunami of grief and fury

III.
He who became
a millionaire at eight
nursed on government subsidies
bailouts and tax breaks
feeds us the fast-food diet of rancor 
while he grabs a pussy a plane 
a tanker a president oil fields 
Greenland and lusts after resort money
built on a still-hemorrhaging mass grave

But he’s just another opportunist
a symptom mushrooming on the 
advantages of Eugenicist 
elitism ripened by everyday
brand ambassadors gladiating
for a piece of the imaginary pie

IV.
Our pens may ink mighty words
but their impressions are paper thin 
against the hurried tunneling
of semi-automatic street artillery
bump-stocked by the political will
of fuel-guzzling AI overtaking human 
value as they peel away with the 
breeze blasé over endless shootings
grown accustomed to washing away 
anguish with yet more agony while 
prayers whistling show tunes 
to soundtrack the cha-ching
of firearms outstripping humans

V.
But she was a white citizen
Why should that be the red line
when we don’t let spilt blood
rust before sacrificing more lives
to our inane judgement of worth 

This social engineering
was never meant to end well
when chaos has no red line
maelstrom cannot be reined in

The hunger of greed 
self-perpetuates
in unchecked growth
to unleash the pandemonium
of a self-fulfilling prophecy

Imogen Arate is an Asian-American poet in search of hope: that humanity will overcome our self-destructive tendencies to work together against the onslaught of the climate crisis. She's also the Executive Director of Poets and Muses, an award-winning multimedia artist platform that has featured diverse contemporary poetic voices from around the globe. She believes that we will only be able to value lives equally when we lend our ears and hearts to the life stories of those we don't readily recognize as our kin and stop requiring the presence of certain socioeconomic trappings to recognize people's right to a dignified existence.

SWAMP THING

by Mark Hendrickson

Kermit the Frog grew up in a swamp  
before he moved to Manhattan  
where all the rats still skate on butter. 
He tried to warn us that rainbows are only illusions,  
back before his voice changed,  
back when swamps seemed quirky and cute. 
 
Speaking of swamps, a story came out today  
about the 2010 discovery by Felisa Wolfe-Simon  
of a low form of life that lives in the muck  
and somehow thrives on toxic arsenic; 
she has now discovered other seemingly mindless creatures  
that appear to thrive on sheer magnetism alone. 
 
I live in the blue center dot  
of a tidal pool made of salt and Windex  
surrounded by organisms that live  
on all that is poisonous, microbes that live  
by breaking down all structure,  
that thrive on decomposition.  
 
People cheer as every potentate since Saint Reagan  
swears to finally drain the swamp; yet instead  
we see it is the swamp that drains us. 
We are mangroves surrounding ourselves with mangroves,  
all standing up to our knees in it, 
mired in marsh and methane. 
 
We all know swamps smell like corrupted flesh,  
yet our nostrils are so saturated we can’t tell anymore. 
Complacency is a swamp we think is stagnant 
even as it spreads to engulf us, and Canada, and Greenland. 
We have become swamp things: reluctant heroes twisted by the world, 
trying to save what we can; a show too implausible to endure for long. 

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a gay poet and writer in the Des Moines area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Variant Lit, Vestal Review, The New Verse News, Spellbinder, and others. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician in a locked psychiatric unit. He has advanced degrees in marriage & family therapy, health information management, and music. Follow him @MarkHPoetry.

WE THE PEOPLE

 by Anayo Dioha

“Why are Nigerians protesting? Young people were roused by events in Kenya.” —The Guardian, August 3, 2024

You and your peeps pillage the purse of the people;
State proceeds hang beyond the reach of the people.
 
Passing frivolous bills, paying frivolous bills;
A despot’s impunity in full glare of the people.
 
Yesterday, presidential yacht. Today, presidential jet.
What frivolity awaits tomorrow? ponder the people.
 
A new SUV to distinguish a senator. A new 
Minimum wage? Uncalled for; can’t pay the people!
 
In this theatre of independence, the noose of nostalgia
Dares favour the colonist’s over the anthem of the people!
 
And now the streets rage with chants of hunger,
Tell, who can quell the anger of the people.
 
Certainly not those traditional stools that have stood
As stooges. Not those episcopal enemies of the people.
 
Why buy the institutions and become a monopolist
When you could buy hearts and be a man of the people?
 
On where lays your heart, Lord? Where else 
Do your feet stand but on the ground of the people?


Anayo Dioha is a Nigerian and has been previously published in the The New Verse News among other online and print literary journals.

TO A COMMERCIAL JUDGE

by Francisco de Quevedo (Spain, 1580–1645)

translation by Julie Steiner

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito did not disclose luxury gifts from GOP mega-donors, including Alito's Alaskan fishing trip, or recuse themselves from cases the donors had before the court. [...] Last July, after Alito wrote the Dobbs decision, he was a keynote speaker at a gala in Rome with the trip paid for by Notre Dame University Religious Liberty Initiative. He hadn’t disclosed that either, or recused himself from any of the multiple cases RLI had filed ‘friends-of-the-court’ briefs with. Ruling in Alito’s favor has been his fellow Justice Clarence Thomas who has been feted with financial favors from billionaire and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow. Those favors include Crow buying Thomas’ Mother’s home, which she still resides in, and also paying Thomas’ grandnephew’s tuition while he was in his care. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 23, 2023

A corrupted, partisan United States Supreme Court is how we will lose our democracy. —Mike Davey, The Miami Herald via Yahoo! News, June 25, 2024

The laws in which your court, Batino, deals
you’re less inclined to study than to vend.
They buy you things: that’s all you comprehend.
To you, the Fleece—not Jason*—is what appeals.
Your take on laws of man and God reveals
that either sort you rule on, you offend.
Your grasping hand, preparing to extend,
foretells which way your judgment fails. (Er, falls.)
You don’t know how to hear a low-cost case.
Who gives to you receives doubt’s benefit.
Your side-deal contracts take the law-tracts’ place.
Since bias and bribes are vices you won’t quit,
go wash your hands with Pilate, or unlace
your purse with Judas and hang yourself with it.

Author's Note on Line 4: An Italian jurist named Giasone del Maino (1435-1519)—Jasón de Maino in Spanish—wrote widely influential legal commentaries, and is referenced in several Spanish dramas of this period. His legendary namesake Jason led the Argonauts in search of the ram that bore the Golden Fleece.

A UN JUEZ MERCADERÍA

por Francisco de Queveda (España, 1580–1645)

Las leyes con que juzgas, ¡oh Batino!,
menos bien las estudias que las vendes;
lo que te compran solamente entiendes;
más que Jasón te agrada el Vellocino.
El humano derecho y el divino,
cuando los interpretas, los ofendes,
y al compás que la encoges o la extiendes,
tu mano para el fallo se previno.
No sabes escuchar ruegos baratos,
y sólo quien te da te quita dudas;
no te gobiernan textos, sino tratos.
Pues que de intento y de interés no mudas,
o lávate las manos con Pilatos,
o, con la bolsa, ahórcate con Judas.

Francisco de Quevedo, one of the most famous poets of Spain's Golden Age (Siglo de Oro), wrote many savage caricatures of greedy lawyers and judges.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include The Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

MORAL CHARACTER

by Frederick Wilbur

Dear Justice Roberts, honorable by name,

here is a friendly note from the public-

at-large though the message is but one:

if you have even a whereas of shame

it would be wise, indeed, politic,

to share some with colleagues who have none.

Frederick Wilbur is a writer and architectural woodcarver living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. His poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and Conjugation of Perhaps. He was awarded the Midwest Quarterly’s Stephen Meats Poetry Prize. He is poetry co-editor and blogger for Streetlight Magazine.

CHICAGO, STANDING FAST

by Jack Phillips Lowe 

Chicago’s air quality: ‘We’re in the crosshairs.’ Wildfires and wind push region’s air to worst in the world, global pollution index shows. —Chicago Tribune, June 27, 2023. Photo: The Chicago skyline is blanketed in haze from Canadian wildfires seen from Solidarity Drive on June 27, 2023, as weather officials issued an air quality alert. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

They’ve counted you out… again.

They say you’re gone, for good this time. 

They say we must get used to 

speaking of you in the past tense. 

Is there nothing left for you,

dear town, but to be forgotten?

And perhaps forgiven, too, for all

that you were and weren’t?

Will there be any hope of legacy— 

the slim chance of being exhumed 

from the ashes of time, an ancient outpost 

to be ooo-ed and ahh-ed over by scavengers,

born centuries after you breathed your last? 

With no one left to tell your stories, 

will they fumble through your relics— 

children trying to piece together 

a picture puzzle that was made 

by grandparents they never knew?

I steal down your empty streets,

duck in and out of your deserted doorways, 

a ghost too naive to know that it’s passed.

I hunt faces in darkened windows. 

I chase traces of voices, fragments of songs

bouncing down bare alleys— 

I won’t believe that I’m alone. 

Chicago, I won’t quit you.

Go ahead, tax me—

take every one of my few dimes.

When my pockets are empty, 

I’ll present to you the lint from them,

gift-wrapped like the sweetest box of candy 

you ever tasted on St. Valentine’s Day.

Bon appetit, Chicago!

I refuse to fall out of love with you. 

Chicago, you can’t scare me off. 

I know all your tricks—

fires, floods, blizzards, 

heatwaves, riots, wrecking balls, 

lies, corruption, graft,

crappy sports teams

and blood, blood, blood.

Don’t forget: you made me.

I’m a monster in your own image, 

inoculated against all your horrors.

Chicago, I’m staying right here. 

Someone much smarter than I once said 

that a town is an idea, as much as a place. 

As long as there is a group of people, 

however small, to hold that idea in their hearts— 

come hell or high water—

then, that town will survive.

Look around you, my home. 

I’m not alone. Those faces I sought

peek out from all corners and shadows.

So many know and value you—

more than you do, yourself.

You’ve tried suicide before. 

But it never works out. 

There’s just too much life in you—

life that won’t be denied.

Stop, dear town, this self-flagellation.

Our faith in you lives on. 

We won’t let you destroy yourself.

Chicago, we’re standing fast.

Jack Phillips Lowe is a lifelong resident of the Chicago area. His poems and short stories have appeared in Clutch 2023, Cajun Mutt Press, and Red Fez Magazine among other outlets. His most recent book, Flashbulb Danger: Selected Poems 1988-2018 (Middle Island Press), is available from Amazon.com. 

THE TALE OF THE HORSE'S ASS

by Samantha Pious

In times of old (but not so old

as Greece or Rome, nor yet, I’m told,

so recent as the Renaissance)

disaster struck the realm of France:

war with England, war with Flanders,

the king’s own family prone to scandals,

mounting deficits, inflation,

civil strife, unjust taxation,

the summary burning at the stake

of enemies of church and state,

the persecution of the Jews... 

in short, the usual abuse.

But, worst of all, the royal court

was currying favor with—a horse!

This horse’s coat, it’s strange to say,

was neither chestnut, brown, nor bay,

sorrel, black, white, brindled, gray,

nor any color known today

in France or the U. S. of A.

From head to hoof, this horse was orange.

Most people viewed it with abhorrence

but some decided (whether they

grew foolish or were born that way)

to fatten it on oats and hay,

to pander to its every neigh, 

to stroke its coat with brush and comb,

to let it make itself at home 

behind the lofty palace walls,

to clean its hooves, muck out its stall... 

all in the hopes that it would give

its friends a handout. Which it did!

Sporadically, it would provide

good luck in spades. It also lied.
It lied about the coming plague.

It promised it would never raise

our taxes. It would drain the swamp.

With utmost circumstance and pomp,

it would transform mice into men.

The nation would be great again.

Ah, what a gallant, noble steed!

And it was lying through its teeth.

This orange horse (of yellow mane)—

tell us, Muse, what was its name?

Was it Fauvel, the word for “fable”?

Was there a placard for the stable

genius? Come Judgment Day,

when every horse is called to pay

its debts, say, when they sound the trump,

who will be driven by the rump

down to the fiery pits of Hell?

Say, who but Tr——I mean, Fauvel?

Samantha Pious is a poet, translator, editor, and medievalist with a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. "The Tale of the Horse's Ass" is inspired by a  14th-century French and Latin satire, the Roman de Fauvel, which really does feature an orange horse as its anti-hero.

HISTORY RECALLS

by Tom Bauer

Everybody knew she was a trojan horse.

(Just insert and get the power you need!)

All that busy unity behind the scenes;

one big team serving money, not People.

I guess the game is fun, but science shows

the best games work for all players, not just

the handful who get to make all the rules.

And this is a sore game of lies, of values

used for misdirection; heartfelt statements

we stepped in and now must wipe off our shoes.

But even as I curse them for ice skating

over the faces of those who watch, like me,

I wonder, despite my outrage and disgust:

what are they gonna do next to line their nests?

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

DEEP WINTER CLEANING

by Mary K O'Melveny 

Painting by Chris Austin via My Modern Met.

Our house always looks neat enough.

If you don’t stare into cupboards

or study drawers too closely. Our stuff

seems mostly under control, buffered

by simple messages, pristine lines.

Desires to peer to closely are aborted

by earnest visions, surfaces that shine.

 

Every now and then, something untidy

slips into view despite best plans,

forcing us to mop, sweep what might be

dust mites or cobwebs from doorjambs,

haul away plastic bags of trash

filled with threadbare linens, brown-edged

papers, dead tennis balls, a rash

of too small jackets, too high heels wedged

 

in closet corners. The birds benefit

from stale biscuits and limp popcorn.

A container of frozen food—whatever it

was now unknown—will not be mourned,

along with moldy bread and avocados.

We haul debris out to the bins.

A period of satisfaction follows

but prophylaxis never begins.

 

Eventually, our grimy shadows emerge,

widen once more. They lurk under chairs,

deep in cabinets, still a scourge

like monsters hidden beneath the stairs

to the basement.  A pandemic excused

us briefly from deep cleaning fits

as time marched forward and dust renewed,

but our shambolic state persists.

 

Now we are facing winter storms,

still surrounded by unexamined chaos.

Until we undertake sweeping reforms,

mops and brooms will be superfluous.

We need to unearth all our buried

secrets, those sordid truths we never found

time to tell, the hopes repeatedly miscarried.

Lay them bare on our snow-layered ground.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

OUR COUNTRY... NOT OUR BUSINESS

by Jan Gross

2020 Hindsight by Rob Rogers at The Nib.

Buyers beware! 

We could lose our bid on the sale  

Citizens no more, but customers   

Truth no longer told, but sold

Off to the inside traitors  

   

Bought out by big business  

Walled in by Wall Street  

Gutted by greed  

Dealt out of the deal  

  

His bottom line rules mighty  

Regulations, taxes damned   

Hail to the profit margin!  

Protect the family brand!   

   

Fake the facts!   

Hype the hoax!  

Let hackers and trolls   

Surf coast to coast  

  

Masses trumpet triumph  

Chanting hate inspires  

Winners one and none  

Where QAnon conspires  

  

Monuments stage his glory  

A country’s reality show  

A bible brandished on high  

God’s Truth trampled below  

  

Heroes stripped of honor  

Fawners scale the ranks   

On all sides fine people  

Hateful words just pranks   

  

Covid breathes calamity  

Choked by one man’s vanity  

Old age best begone!  

Make way for the strong!  

  

Refuse to don your face masks  

Cures are easily taken  

His own comeback is clear proof  

Of experts long mistaken  

  

He’s fair as honest Abe was  

Not a racist bone in sight   

With insults heaped on icons   

He helps boost his loser’s plight  

  

Dissenters face dismissal   

Detractors face defeat  

The bar of justice lowers  

Tips the balance for deceit  

  

Clear the way for order!  

Twist the arm of law!  

Protests pave the future  

Marchers won’t withdraw   

  

Black and white, or red and blue  

Dividing lines he always drew  

Will this storm bring rainbows 

With hope to start anew?   

  

Battle lines are hardened  

The bitter end draws near  

  

Time to line up    

Time to fill in  

  

Ballots to mail or not   

Votes to cast once or twice  

  

Votes to buy   

To buy us time  

  

Time to keep us   

Here long enough  

  

To see   

… to see the turning of the tide   

        … for the tide has got to turn.  

Author’s Note: This poem echoes James Baldwin’s plea to settle for what a vote can get you… maybe not a job, or a loan, or a major reform, but “it may keep [us] here long enough … to see, and use, the turning of the tide—for the tide has got to turn.”  (Written prior to the 1980 presidential election in “Notes on the House of Bondage” and quoted in Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.)   

Jan Gross is waiting for the tide to turn. She is Professor emerita at Grinnell College, and is co-authoring a collaborative poetic memoir about interracial friendship, Black & White and In-Between. 

IF ONLY

by D. R. Goodman

If truth were a truncheon
            and logic a scythe
and facts were a finger—
            a poke in the eye,
then their smack or their cut
            would be suitable tools
to counter corruption
            and falsehood and fools.

But truth is a concept
            and logic a skill,
and facts are for science,
            while lies are for thrill;
corruption’s for profit,
            and profit is yuge;
and fools lack self-knowledge—
            they’re stuck as the stooge.

So temper your weapons
            and fight back in kind;
abandon persuasion,
            abandon the mind;
and dull your compassion,
            for their side has none.
But go vote your ass off,
            lest they will have won.


D. R. Goodman teaches martial arts in Berkeley and Oakland, California. She is the author of Greed: A Confession from Able Muse Press, a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and twice winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, and in many other journals.

TRAGEDY IN [...]

by Devon Balwit

Lebanese security forces confronted protesters during clashes in downtown Beirut on Saturday, following a demonstration against political leaders blamed for a deadly explosion in the city. Credit: Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, August 9, 2020

The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs “Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites” or “Israelis and Palestinians.” We call ours “Democrats and Republicans,” but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die. And second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics—even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic. 

—Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, August 9, 2020

How does a city fall, how does a nation?
A raft of catastrophe floats in & is lashed
to a bollard & then forgotten, pleas for attention
ignored or handed on, fears quashed

beneath derision. Those at the helm creep
away in the dark after pocketing what they can.
Those who cannot leave tremble at the seep
of decay & instability, hoping to withstand

the blast that finally comes. Many won’t.
Their names will be added to a list, misspelled,
the list lost, their ashes scattered amidst
a hundred thousand livelihoods propelled

into calamity. Then, blistering recrimination
& grim survivors doing what must be done.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE MAST

by Devon Balwit

A brokenness in need of fixing, we carom, 

blowing out sail after sail. At the helm 

gapes a hole the shape of a captain 

in love with his flail. We keep eyes 

to our holystones, thinner with each 

fretful pass, and scrub fore and aft. 

In sight of shore, we hoist a false flag, 

gilded with import. All know our master’s 

true master, his fathomless coffers 

deep in the hold. Our sad tongues 

misremember the taste of fresh water, 

the tartness of greens as we bleed 

from both ends. Weeping awakens the sleepers 

in the fo'c'sle. We ourselves 

may be its source. Without a hand 

to our throat, there’s no knowing.

Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

CAN'T BREATHE

by Lynn White

A protester is seen at the area where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was pinned down by a police officer kneeling on his neck before later dying in hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. May 26, 2020. Credit: REUTERS/Eric Miller

We are being suffocated
in this society
of masks and
miasmas,
of family connections
and corporate interests
smothering us
with hidden pillows of power
and corruption,
of prejudice
hardly hidden
in institutions
we thought would protect us all.

We are all George Floyd potentially
behind the mask.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal and So It Goes.

THE MEN IN BLOOD RED POWER TIES

by Howie Good

I have seen them corrupt water and air, spew contagion when they speak, block the light from windows with their empty bulk. I have seen them gather armies of the deluded and the stupid, place the law in the keeping of shit-stained hands, turn away smirking from the motherless, the helpless, the lost. I have seen them obscenely rub up against dictators and corpses, reserve for themselves the best or the most, erase the last trace of truth with acid, chisels, and a blowtorch. I have seen them make a crisis of every loving gesture, a crime of every beautiful thought.

Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

HE'S THEIR MAN

by Orel Protopopescu

To the tune of "I'm Your Man" with apologies to Leonard Cohen

If he needs a liar
They’ll say anything he wants them to
And when his pants catch fire as they do
They’ll push his point of view
When he tries to sell his corporate brand and
When he needs to keep an aide or witness
Off the stand
He’s their man

If they ask for players
He won’t run onto the field for them
But when he needs naysayers
There is nobody they won’t condemn
If he’s got remittances to hide
Or when he wants to take us for a ride
He knows he can
He’s their man

Ah, the truth’s too bright
And the noose too tight
The world can’t go to sleep
While he’s making good on his vows to the hood
In Moscow where his debts run deep.

Ah, but no one ever got a country back
By abandoning the race
While he smirks for the cameras with a blade in his sheath
Or howls at his rallies like a dog in heat
Or he claws through our laws while we’re gnashing our teeth
And tells his base (so base!)
I’m your man

And if we lose our way along this road
They’ll let him steer for us
And as he adds more carbon to our load
They’ll let him crash the bus

If you want a future for your child
Or only want to walk in peace a while across this land . . .
He’s not your man

Orel Protopopescu won the Oberon poetry prize in 2010 and a commendation in the Second Light Live competition, 2016. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, and paper-based reviews and anthologies. Her book of translations (with Siyu Liu) A Thousand Peaks, Poems from China was honored by the NYPL. Other publications: a book for teachers of poetry, prize-winning picture books, a bilingual poetry app for children and a chapbook What Remains. She is currently completing work on a biography of the legendary ballerina, Tanaquil Le Clercq.