OKKKLAHOMA

by Chris O’Carroll

The Daily Cartoon by Emily Flake, The New Yorker

Okkklahoma, where the white frat boys think hate is great,
And black guys swing in the songs they sing
’Cause their campus is a lynchpin of the state.
Okkklahoma, where the Klan was strong in ’21
When Tulsa burned, and no one learned,
So “hang ’em from a tree” still sounds like fun.

We know we’re the heirs of Jim Crow.
If it weren’t for that damn video
EN EYE GEE GEE
EE AR is something we’d feel free
To go on sayin’,
And we’d feel fine.  Okklahoma!
But just one K, OK?


Chris O’Carroll used to live in Kansas, and has performed at comedy clubs in Oklahoma.  He doesn’t expect to be invited back any time soon.

MARCHONS!

by George Held

   To the indelible spirit of “La Marseillaise”                                                          

Though assassins dealt a death blow                                                                        
To cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo,
Now the free world joins to say “Non!”
To terrorists who trade in woe:
“Vive la satire!” “À bas” the foes
Of liberty, equality, fraternity,
Those magnificent words English
And French and their multicultural
Societies share and now renew
Their commitment to.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.