THE POET PROVOKED

by Roberta Batorsky

These verses searchlight wrongs,
thrust into the light
all injustice lurking in the shadows.

Stanzas pry loose prison bars,
insights scorch wrong-doers,
violators of decency

No place for you to hide as
my couplets cauterize you.
These devices are unsparing
instruments of revenge.

Haikus hunt you
Elegies eviscerate
Ballads batter 
And meter mauls you.

My lyrics bear the sting 
of sincerity,
passing merciless
judgment in rhyme.

 

This poet for hire.

Roberta Batorsky, a New Jersey poet, has published this month her first book of poetry, Perihelion.

AFTER HELSINKI

by Robert West

President Trump chaired a meeting Friday of his most senior national security advisers to discuss the administration’s effort to safeguard November’s elections from Russian interference, the first such meeting he’s led on the matter, but issued no new directives to counter or deter the threat. —The Washington Post, July 27, 2018. Cartoon source: Dayton Daily News.

Lower and fold the flag, my friends, assign it a sacred drawer:
to fly it now would only mock the good we’d flown it for.

And don’t repeat that noble pledge we said each day at school,
till we’ve regained our self-respect and fired that fascist fool.

Robert West's poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poetry, Light, and other venues. His latest chapbook is Convalescent (Finishing Line Press in 2011). The editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, published by W. W. Norton in 2017, he lives in Starkville, Mississippi.