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.

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.

VLAD THE BAD

by Richard Schiffman

His most execrable excellency,

Czar Vlad the Bad, 

a pint-sized Napoleon wannabe in a Gucci suit

decreed ten thousand widows,

and so they were before the cock crowed twice, 

on the morning he deemed cancelled

in the city he called dust.

Just your standard issue human madness.

Of course, of course. A monomaniacal error.

A payback for fanciful slights.

The psycho-historians will have a field day

while the citizenry sleep in the subway,

or pack the next train out.

But how to get away from that feverish brain,

that heart of burning petrol?

There isn’t a bunker deep enough to hide in.

Bankers on six continents dole out the pain.

No SWIFT Code for the codeless.

Oligarchs go yachtless. The ruble is rubble.

Meanwhile, the nuclear finger twitches.

A shudder ripples down nine billion spines.

The spineless despot preens for the cameras,

shows off his cadaverous abs. 

It’s flesh and blood 

below the tailored shirt, for sure, for sure,

fresh meat for a million gurneys.

Dead man walking pale as a crematorium

holds court in a palace of white marble. 

One nation huddles in the basement.

Another weeps and hides its face.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in The New Verse News, Alaska Quarterly, Rattle, The New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry. 

A LA MAISON DE TOLERANCE

by Bruce Robinson

with apologies, and homage, to Sandra Boynton  

". . . as the question of how to re-create humanity becomes a live question." —Hans Keilson, 1944 Diary (Damion Searls, Translator)

". . . they mistook his lies for truth, and his hysteria for sincerity." —Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad (Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler, Translators)


One despot, enthralled by thrones,
calls two despots with his gilded phone,
Three despots, reigns insecure,
bring along another four;    
Five despots become distressed
when six despots decline to invest;
Seven despots who have gotten the sack
join eight despots and sneak in the back.
Nine despots have no need to work:
they do what despots do, they skulk for perks.

All through the despot night
despots pardon with great delight
and despot forty-five decides
to stop just shy of infanticide.  

Nine despots, it’s a beast,
join eight despots glancing east
while seven despots look to infest
at least six children quite distressed
and five despots then decamp
with four despots for summer camp.
Three despots go awry
alas, two despots don’t know why:
One despot, his throne uncertain,
dismisses the prior forty-four . . ..
Curtain.


Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Pangyrus, Spectrum, Common Ground, The Maynard, and Connecticut Poetry Review.