DISMANTLING THE DEPARTMENT OF DEMOCRATS

by William Palmer

MoveOn

Delete each leg

so there is nothing to stand on.

 

Delete each hand

so no one can point any fingers.

 

Delete each arm

so no one can wave them like bats.

 

Delete each head

so no one can understand.

 

Delete each heart

so no one can care.

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in Ecotone, I-70, JAMA, The New Verse News, One Art and elsewhere. A retired professor of English at Alma College, he lives in Traverse City, Michigan. 

BEAUTY AND THE WOOLY BEAST

by Lisa Seidenberg

Left: Archaeologist Kathleen Martinez believes a marble statue discovered at a temple site portrays the face of Cleopatra. (Image courtesy Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities via Hyperallergic. Right: Researchers inspect the remains of a baby mammoth found in the Siberian permafrost in Russia's Batagaika crater. (Image by Roman Kutukov / Reuters via NBC News.)

A female wooly mammoth was found
In the frozen reaches of the “mouth of hell”
Nestled in a crater underground

50,000 years since she made a sound
Did she leave with a tale to tell
Nestled in her crater underground?

She was named Yana, a gentle sound
We don’t know if she let out a yell
Stumbled down by chance or forced underground

Cleopatra’s stone head was found uncrowned
Along with coins and other bagatelles
Scattered near her tomb recovered underground

Burial sites are a scientist’s playground
Clues in bones, a grown-up show and tell
Treasures from an ancient lost and found

Might the wooly beast and the Egyptian Queen 
prefer their secrets to remain unseen?
Safe-keeping their private lives 
Locked away from prying eyes

Lisa Seidenberg is a writer and filmmaker who resides in coastal Connecticut. She is a nominee for the 2025 Pushcart Prize. Her recent work has been published in Asymptote Journal, The New Verse News, OneArt: A Journal of Poetry, and Gyroscope Review. She is peer poetry reviewer for Whale Road Review.

RUBIALES KISS

by Paul Hostovsky

They call it football because
you can only use your feet.

Though sometimes you can also use 
your head, your chest, your legs.

But you can’t use your hands.
And you can’t use your arms. 

Those are the rules.

They call it a kiss on the mouth because
it’s a kiss on the mouth.

You can only kiss the mouth of someone 
with whom you are intimate. 

A lover. A spouse. 
Sometimes also family.

Use your head. 

That’s the rule. 
In all countries and in all languages. 

True, it is an unwritten rule,
but that’s no excuse for breaking it.

And now that you’ve broken it, Luis,
now that you’re flaunting it 

and famously showing your contempt for it, 

you can be sure the rule 
will get written down after this.

And though you probably won’t end up
in jail, you just may end up 

giving your name to this kind of unwanted kiss. 
Even without your consent. 

Because that’s the rule with eponyms.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

BLACK TRAFFIC, STOP

by Rémy Dambron

The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., released videos on Wednesday showing a white officer fatally shooting Patrick Lyoya (pictured above), a 26-year-old Black man, after a struggle during a traffic stop last week. The officer, who has not been named, was lying on the back of Mr. Lyoya before he appeared to shoot him in the head. In the seconds before the shooting, Mr. Lyoya and the officer wrestled on the ground and seemed to be fighting for control of the officer’s Taser. —The New York Times, April 13, 2022

at first 

an ordinary traffic 

stop, routine

suspect 

you

stay in the car 

get back in the car

do you have a license 

your plates don’t match

do you speak english 

show me your license 

i said your plates don’t match

stay in the car

no stop

you can’t stand there

hey you can’t stand there

stand here no 

wait STOP

grabbing him 

restraining him

throwing him to the ground

with the force of the law

immunity qualified

we’ve seen this before 

too many times before

released body cam footage shows

cop shoots black man

don’t watch it

hurts 

(body camera shuts off)

he shoots 

he shot him

the cop shot the black man

(body camera turns on)

paramedics can’t revive him

because the cop 

he shot him

he shot him dead 

for what 

why

forgive me 

for being repetitive 

but another man with a badge 

shows his bad intentions and 

oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the head

they called it a struggle

a fight for control over the taser

cop drawing the weapon first

ready to electrocute 

the man he would instead 

just shoot 

but no charges filed

the investigation is ongoing

ongoing, yes

forgive me 

for being repetitive but 

another man with a badge shows his bad intentions 

and oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the head

his community going on 

carrying his cry for help

to the city steps in protest

to say to their reps 

please 

enough 

stop letting them shoot us

for gods sake 

jesus 

forgive me 

for being repetitive 

but another man 

with a badge 

shows his bad 

intentions and 

oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the fucking head

Rémy Dambron is a former English teacher now Portland-based poet whose writing focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social/environmental justice. With the help of his chief editor and loving wife, his works have appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Words & Whispers, Spillwords, Robot Butt, and The New Verse News. 

IF WAR IS A HEADLESS BODY

by Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

Image source: Truthout.org via flickr

then what would you have me say
to this Veteran of Foreign Wars?

Retired military.  He’s living PTSD.
Attends therapy weekly.

Day by day -
dust covered cobwebbed dreams

spin into hellish-waking nightmares
filament by filament

each strand a broken memory.
War’s understated motto: Kill or Be Killed.

Served 26 years, since he was 19.
Straight out of high school

entered camel humped wars
of dirty sand and intense heat.

While in Iraq wandered
into their market place

into the minotaur’s “staged” rage.
An Iraqi (barely able to speak English)

said, “Chop Chop! Come on – Chop Chop!”
Communal eyes followed

a buff-built man dressed as evil genie.
A downward swinging wave –

one-cleaved sparkling and sharp cut.
A hooded head, beheaded.

As if lawlessness ended
with a thud.


Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, a native Philadelphian, is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Images of Being (Stone Garden Publishing, 2011), Lights Battered Edge (Anaphora Literary Press 2015), and Night Sweat (Red Dashboard Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in a number of on line and print publications. Awarded a grant in poetry from the AEV Foundation in 2013; served as Poet in Residence at Ryerss Museum and Library and as Poetry Editor of the Fox Chase Review. On Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qir5_xPSNiU

GENUFLECTION

by George Held

Senators Mike Lee abd Ted Cruz. Image source: Twitter/Ted Cruz.

“Any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander in chief of this country.” — Ted Cruz at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa, Nov. 9, 2015


Ted Cruz in Iowa courting Christian
Fundamentalists by declaring genuflection
the default prayer position
for US Presidents recalls
Abraham Lincoln (“I would neither slave
nor master be”) who would bow
his head in communion with his deity
but would not sink to his knees like a slave
nor would he rave like the Canadian-Cuban-
American even to climb in the polls
were there polls in his day when “poll”
meant “head” as in “poll tax”
or the “shaved poll” of a prisoner
and Lincoln would simply ask God
to bless this rough and unready,
agonized and striving country
as it writhed in second birth (the first
being in 1776) from 1861-1865, when
the great commander-in-chief would bow
his head and bow his neck without shamelessly
courting the fundamentalists of his day
by telling them what he thinks they want to hear.


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