DON’T POINT FINGERS. DON’T ASK EVIL QUESTIONS.

by Raymond Nat Turner

This was a one in One Hundred Year Event!
One in Five-Hundred Year Event!
One in One Thousand Year Event—
Biggest, baddest— worst-est ever!

This was a one in One Hundred Year Event!
One in Five-Hundred Year Event!
One in One Thousand Year Event—
All we can do is prey—and Drill, baby drill!

In the Lone Star State, mass casualty events are
Football games. Games played for fossil fuels—sudden death
Over … time as droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes,
Flash floods chant dire warnings, “We will, we will, rock you!”

In the Lone Star State, mass casualty events are
Football games. And our children are 5th round draft choices— 
Cut—or carted off fields so sponsors’ and owners’ overstuffed
Pockets stay as swollen as Guadalupe River banks

But you’ll be fine. Be grate again— when your
Children get to Heaven. No tariffs in heaven! Get on
With your lives! Go out and get Crypto— And get on
With your lives! Get Bitcoin— And get on with your lives!

Don’t ask evil questions. Don’t point fingers! Your children 
Are in a better place. Price of eggs won’t be half as high in
Heaven! Go out and get some Crypto— And get on with 
Your lives! Get Bitcoin— And get on with your lives!

Don’t point fingers! Don’t ask evil questions. Of course we’re
First Responders. Responding First, Populate “Alligator Alcatraz;” 
Responding First, Big Beautiful Bill the 99%; DOGE— FEMA,
NOAA and DEI—fire anyone Black, competent, or rocking seniority.

Responding First, Meddle in Mexico; Rename The Gulf of Mexico.
Monkey with Canada as 51st state. Strong-arm Panamanians over
Their canal. Gangster Greenland; Bully Brazil over
Internal matters; And ship shackled Venezuelans to El Salvador.

Responding First, partner killing Palestinians. Bomb Yemen. 
Strike Somalia. Incite suicidal trade war with China—Ride 
Wall Street’s bull— like a tariff roll-a-coaster. Terrorize Chicago 
Children; Mess with LA’s mayor; Wreck Cali’s Economy!

Don’t point fingers! Don’t ask evil questions.
All we can do is weigh on you—
Prey on you.    All we can do is
Pray for you—We can’t pay for you!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

MOTIVES

by Abby Caplin

My neighbor has nodded to The Goon, some policies 
he approved of—arresting students in despair  
over genocide, mass firings, unmarked vans 
pulling people off our streets here, in America, 
and sending them to concentration camps. 
The Goon breathes on his mirrors and people 
quickly evaporate. But what really motivates 
my neighbor is his bank account, his investments 
dying like those rockets exploding over the gulf 
of American debris, so now 
he’s finally speaking up. It’s kind of fun, 
my amusement for the day, seeing him 
chided on social media by the Faithful, 
who say pipe down, in six months you will see 
how wonderful your life will be.

Abby Caplin’s poems have appeared in AGNI, The MacGuffin, The New Verse News, Pennsylvania English, Salt Hill, Stirring, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2024 and a nominee for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Abby is a physician and the author of A Doctor Only Pretends: Poems about illness, death, and in-between.

THE DEAL

by Pepper Trail

Art by Terry Graff at Michael Moore Substack

No word is savored with such relish
by those infantile, strangely moist lips
forever yearning, reaching for the teat
of unconditional love, with the infant’s
single-minded greed, the belief that
he alone is the center of the world
his demands alone must be met and
whenever he cries and always and now
 
Such a different word, in his mouth
than “agreement” or “treaty” and with
no implication of cooperation or respect
but only the self-satisfied smirk of the
bully standing over his helpless victim
surrounded by worshipful sycophants
among whom, you can be sure, stands
his next choice for public humiliation
 
For him, the art of the deal is deceit
the goal of the deal is domination
the result of the deal is not some benefit
some lasting accomplishment or legacy
– see his casinos, his hotels, his “university” –
but only the “win,” his claim of victory
and the wreckage he leaves behind
is just what’s coming to suckers
 
To those who took his deal somehow again
who chose to join the bilked investors, the
ex-wives, the abandoned students, the unpaid
lawyers, the discarded loyalists and now the
NATO nations, the Ukrainian people, the career
scientists, the medical researchers, the firefighters
and park rangers and the entire world economy
this is what you get: you must lose so he can win
 
That’s the deal.

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

ON THE AFTERMATH OF A CONSEQUENTIAL ELECTION

by Peter Nohrnberg

Art by Soybeing at Michael Moore Substack

Outraged and exhausted, we make our choice
guided by billions that masquerade as voice.
Like good consumers, we were well apprised; 
knew the cost of eggs, if not of lies.
Fever dreams of unruly immigration 
return to T---p the frayed reigns of the nation.
Sworn in under the Capitol’s Rotunda—
a cold snap turns DC to arctic tundra—
the colossus takes his oath on Lincoln’s Bible.
(Who but Abe or Jesus can claim libel?) 
Fearing his dark promise of retribution 
Silicon Valley makes a contribution. 
Bureaucrats begin to take their leave 
as Musk and DOGE descend like drones on Kyiv.
Among those given the algorithmic axe:
employees who fend off nuclear attacks. 
Less government reform than “shock and awe,” 
cutting of red tape, and rule of law. 
T---p wields his blunt Sharpie like a machete,
shreds the Constitution to confetti.
Vital public info goes up in smoke,
sacrificed on the altar of “anti-woke.”
An able four-star general gets the sack,
replaced by one with three-stars who’s not black.  
POTUS’s pen claims there’s but two genders;
and those born intersex? return to sender!
Like King David who forgave his half-brother, 
Trump pardons both rioter and traitor. 
The Senate coddles his menagerie of weasels 
while unvaxed kids in Texas contract measles.  
The keys to New York City pass to ICE
while Don Junior cavorts on Greenland’s ice.
Deported “illegals” are dealt a dismal fate:
and on the return flight? The brothers Tate. 
Statecraft becomes T---p’s Art of the Self-Deal,
while folks in Gaza scavenge for a meal. 
(One day they’ll all be served a ten-course feast 
at the “Riviera of the Middle East”;
but first they must go on a long vacation 
while Gaza undergoes renovation). 
Back in the Oval Office on his knees 
Zelenskyy begs, but stops at “pretty please”:
desperately in need of guns and tanks,  
dressed down for not dressing up, not saying “thanks.” 
 
Does the arc of history bend toward justice;
Or does history simply bend and break us? 
Does democracy die in darkness, or blinding light? 
How should we view this spectacle, our plight? 
Will art and culture help us ride out the storm,
or did they bring about this new abnorm?  
Did treating blue collar folks as ignore-ables 
help gather MAGA’s “basket of deplorables”?
Or were their grievances, self-pity
what drove them to become so proudly sh---y? 
Perhaps there’s something deep within us all 
that answers to the con man’s siren call.   
Devotion to another’s certainty 
distracts us from the world’s contingency.  
How easy to blame DEI, the border;
easier still to make disorder out of order.
 
When power controls the future and the past, 
can even the written word persist, outlast?  
Yet words, like insects tend to stick around;
gone for years, they emerge from underground:
can sting or float, be bee or butterfly,
little strong things to pinch an ugly lie.   

A poet, cultural critic, and a scholar of literary modernism, Peter Nohrnberg has had his poetry published by Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, and Oxford Poetry, among other journals. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. 

HE COULDN’T CARE LESS

No eggs I can afford!

     Couldn’t care less

No job with government

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t pay for room and board

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t afford a car.

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t keep health insurance

    Couldn’t care less

My children have measles

    Couldn’t care less

But cod liver oil’s sold out!

    Couldn’t care less

Campaigning again

    Dems should care more

Because He Couldn’t care less

By Joe Blow who couldn’t care more

Ralph La Rosa invented this Joe Blow.

PRESIDENTIAL BOWLING

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

BROKEN RECORD(S)

by Edmund Conti




Most lies. Most firings.
Fewest hirings.
Most gaffes.
Most laughs.
Most insults.
Fewest results.
Most lies (latest count).
Most cronies (large amount).
Most vacations
at southern plantations.
Believe me.  Believe me. Be-
lieve me.  Believe me.  Believe
me. Believe me. Be…

Edmund Conti has been published in new verse news, in new verse news, in new verse news, in new...