WHEN HE’S GONE

by Kay White Drew

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

…do unto his Mar-a-Lago North
what he has done to the Presidential residence:
tear it limb from limb, let
the wrecking ball swing free.

Gather the people from the four directions
to bear witness. Sing and chant, each
in your own tongue. Release your grief
and joy: the reign of terror is finally over.
Trash or melt down the tawdry gold things.
Remove with care the remnants
of happier days and the relics of the founders.

When the dust has settled, bring sages
and shamans and clergy of all denominations
to purify the space with prayers, smudge-sticks
and incense, libations and offerings
in rituals of repentance and reconciliation.

Dig a new foundation, build a new structure
that reflects our mongrel variety,
embraces us in all our multifarious glory.

       Not the White House.
       The People’s House.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in various anthologies and internet outlets including The Intima, Gargoyle, and The New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test, about medical school in the 1970s. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband. Reading and spending time in nature keep her sane(ish) in these difficult times.

NO KINGS ALLOWED

by DJ Benhaim

Cartoon by Omar Al Abdallat.

I.

In the beginning was asphalt.
And the word was protest.
And the word was pixelated,
buffering between freedom and feed.

A crowd of imperfect citizens
chants like a country relearning its name.
The chorus is improvised:
No kings allowed—no crowns, no conquerors,
no saviors in tailor-made sympathy.

Their voices ripple through barricades,
become algorithm, become echo—
a national heartbeat with a stutter.



II.

I have seen democracy drag itself
through a century of luminous slogans,
its reflection flickering in each broken screen.
Still insisting: I am not done.

Once, the Founders gathered by candlelight—
afraid of monarchs, afraid of mobs.
They drafted compromise as scripture,
named it law and order,
muttered prayers to Reason
as though Reason were a god inclined to listen.

Some nights I wonder:
who will amend the amendments,
who will serve the servants,
who will remind us that equality
was never intended to mimic sameness?



III.

—No Kings Allowed—
the maxim mutates through the crowd.
Each repetition, a revision:

No Kings (but maybe a firm hand).
No Kings (but someone must decide).
No Kings (unless it’s my kind).

The chant becomes confession.
The confession becomes commerce.
Every democracy finds its vendors.

A man sells T-shirts beside a food truck:
LIMITED EDITION FREEDOM.
The poet buys one—
because irony, still, is cheaper than hope.



IV.

O Republic,
child of contradiction—
you legislate mercy
and enforce it with tear gas.
You proclaim all men,
then redact the margins.
Your pledge is a mirror:
every mouth repeats it—
none can see its cracks.

Still,
you endure—
awkward and miraculous,
a choir harmonizing
in seventeen unresolved keys.



V.

Night closes in.
The crowd separates into numbers.
The flag waves like a faulty signal.

Somewhere, a migrant waits at the checkpoint,
a senator rehearses his talking points,
a teacher grades an essay on liberty
with a trembling red pen.

And the poet—our witness,
our reluctant chorus—
writes in the margin of his notebook:

We are not failing,
we are rehearsing.

He closes the book,
steps into the dark,
and feels the fragile promise
of a nation still deciding
whether freedom needs a throne—
or simply
a place to sit down and listen.

DJ Benhaim is an emerging poet from the Windy City—Chicago, Illinois, whose work explores current events, global awareness as well as Afro American culture and the preservation of its stories, history, and legacy. An avid supporter of the city’s spoken word and poetry community, he can often be found cycling along the lakefront, soaking up the sounds of local jazz and blues, or experimenting with a camera in hand. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig’s AMPLIFY Anthology, Kinsman Quarterly, and African Writer Magazine.

2045

by Zev Shanken

AI-generated image by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

In the year 2045 my great grandson will ask
what it was like when people really believed
they were in charge if they watched the news,
called in C-Span, and voted.
 
Well, son, I’ll say, you’ve read about when
everyone in Europe knew their place in 
Christendom and thanked God 
for giving life meaning?
 
Yes, grandfather. The Dark Ages. 
 
Well, son, that’s what it was like.
Only in our day we had History
and thanked our Founding Fathers. 
 
Did you pray?
We voted.

 Zev Shanken’s  two full length books Memory Tricks (2016) and If I Try to be Like Him, Who Will be Like me? (2019) are available on Amazon. The New Verse News has published three of his poems in the past.

HAMILTON, SHMAMILTON

by Kenneth J. Purscell

We could argue all day long

On where the Founders stood 

Regarding things like Christ and church

And Triune personhood.

And some who do so feel compelled

To stand and testify,

To preach and rescue souls because

They fear the End is nigh.

But when "producing" Broadway shows,

Believers must get real.

You'd think a church should not forget

The Law: "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL!"

Kenneth J. Purscell is a retired retail cashier, adjunct professor, and pastor. He has been published sporadically, but has made submission more of a habit. He lives with his wife Koni in the south suburbs of Chicago. And he apologizes to Lin-Manuel, who probably could have done this better.

THE CONSTITUTION AND A SPRIG OF RUE

by David Chorlton

     Clarence Thomas says American citizens are seemingly

     'more interested in their iPhones' than 'their Constitution'

 

Because an iPhone knows

the difference between a single-shot musket

and an automatic weapon;

because the Constitution never mentioned

an abortion but if you ask Siri

she will direct the question to a source explaining

the what and how of it; a source

incidentally unavailable in seventeen-eighty-seven.

One little know-all tablet

fitting comfortably in the hand

can tell you where to turn to reach a stated

destination, connect to the latest baseball scores,

and provide a recipe. But even an iPhone

can’t tell behind

which desk a pupil ought to shelter, or

where the emergency exit is

to get away from someone openly carrying.

Its time to reload

the letters in the Constitution’s “chuse”

with the neatly rounded “oo” that brings

choose up to modern usage.

Ask Siri when the wire coat hanger

was invented. She’ll say Eighteen sixty-nine.

For what was used in earlier

times, Benjamin Franklin advised the use

of an abortifacient to resolve

“the misfortune” of an unwanted pregnancy . . .

while an old Sephardic song

tells of Una Matica de Ruda, the sprig of rue

as a gift from the young man

who has fallen in love.

David Chorlton came to live in Arizona in 1978 and always loved the desert. The land has come to be a part of much of his writing, while other aspects of political and social life present more troubling questions. 

WHEN FREEDOM'S SAKE IS MUCH THE SAME AS HEAVEN'S

by David L Williams 

after "Sonnet 19: On His Blindness,” by John Milton

“And that one Talent which is death to hide . . .”

Dave Granlund cartoon originally published March 7, 2014!

When I consider how our country’s spent

In darkness by near half its population,

I fear that our once enviable nation,

With lost regard for civil government,

Is now deprived of any common sense

And blindly on the road to self damnation

Unless we find a way to restore reason,

Ceasing to stoke these vain and would-be tyrants,

I have to ask myself if this was meant

By founders who insisted all are equal

And fought a war to prove that this is true,

Defeating enemies who stood against

The principle that all our sovereign people

Are equally entitled to self rule.

David L Williams is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since he went to college there in the 80s. His poetry has mostly been written since May of 2021, and he has only recently started trying to publish, with success already in several publications, including The New Verse News. 

MUSEUM OF IMPEACHMENT

by Anna M. Evans

After W.H. Auden

About the Republic, they were never wrong,
the Founding Fathers: how well they understood
Its vulnerability: how it could be taken down
While the people are ordering off Amazon or streaming Netflix dully along;
How, when the activists are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous vote, there always must be
Young people who did not specially want it to happen, eating
Avocado toast in a trendy new brunch place:
They never forgot
That probably the dreadful presidency must run its course
Anyhow on Fox News, the unlikely spot
Where the talk show hosts deny all facts (which is torture)
And then cut to a story about a horse.

In this Impeachment, for instance: how everyone turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the Republicans may
Have read the "transcript," considered forsaken Ukraine,
But for them it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the House Articles disappearing into the biased
Senate, and the expensive, delicate congressmen that must have seen
Something amazing, a president abusing his powers,
Had an election to get to and sailed calmly on.


Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her new collection Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic is out now from Able Muse Press, and her sonnet collection Sisters & Courtesans is available from White Violet Press.