SONNET FOR THE COMPTROLLER

by Beth Cleary

He is showing us what to say, how to be, when
they come for us: upright, measured in tone and gaze,
Do you have a judicial warrant? You do not have 
the authority to arrest U.S. citizens. Show me
your judicial warrant. These are the ways, the phrases,
memorize them. I have memorized them, in the night
when footage of the arrest—I am not
obstructing anything I am standing here—replays
in the basement of my heart, near where my diaphragm
tucks up, presses down, basement where I store
cups, snippets, grains of information, instructions
for later. For when they come for us, soft body and cheek
jammed against a pillow/wall, gloved hands breaking our backs.

Beth Cleary's essays and poems appear in Ninth Letter, The Maine Review, Artist & Influence, Fourth Genre, and other publications. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the main No Kings! march was upwards of 60,000 strong despite shock about assassinations, unknowns about an active shooter, and warnings to stay away. 

MAUI BANYAN

by Amy Barone

Home to chatty mynah birds, you flank 
the Old Lahaina Courthouse by the ocean
 
on an island of sugar cane hills, Hana sunsets,
historic red wood buildings and Ka’anapali Beach.
 
Stretching nearly two acres with 16 trunks,
cousin to the fig tree, hub for Maui’s
 
huge Halloween party and costume parade,
you star as stage and shelter for natives and tourists.
 
A century and a half old, now survivor of brutal wildfires 
that charred cars and an enchanting town that I first visited
 
as a wide-eyed teen on vacation, marveling at your vastness, 
that paradise exists in an old whaling village in the USA.

Amy Barone’s poetry collection Defying Extinction was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books published her book We Became Summer. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway(Foothills Publishing.) Barone belongs to the Poetry Society of America. She lives in New York City.

A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Giving the middle finger is a “God-given right,” Canadian judge rules. —The Guardian, March 10, 2023

A judge has ruled that if you are Canuck,

God gave to you a fundamental right

Of self-expression: use what rhymes with duck,

Deployed with off. Although it's not polite,

Good manners maketh not the man who gets

Insulted by a neighbour with a grudge

Vindictively repeating epithets

Expressing scorn. According to the judge,

No crime's committed if you flip the bird,

Rebuffing smears. In all his decades while

In court, no feebler case was ever heard:

Good sense, he said, would see the case's file

Hurled out the window——but, in Montreal,

The courthouse has no windows, none at all!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.