I WANT TO SEE IT

by Tricia Knoll

Trump fingerprinted. Putting his fat fingers

on the inky pad, rolling each one back 

and forth like criminals do. Dirty

hands. Who hands him something

to wipe the ink off? Does he bite at his

lip angry about he got here? Does he try 

to make a joke, pretend it’s an autograph

requested by some MAGA man

in a red hat? Talk about it going 

to his Library? 

 

Those secret service agents watching, 

what do they know of irony?

What vow have they made?

 

The bored jail officer has done this

a million times. Can that officer

categorize the look in the eye of this man? 

 

When it’s all done, is he obsessed

with the shadow of ink only he

can see? Wondering what smut 

clogs his crevices, the bacteria 

that linger. Does he ask his aide

for hand sanitizer as if to wipe

away the moment. 

 

Does anyone in the room dare

laugh?

 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. Her most recent collection is One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which shares poems about trees she has loved, planted or worries about in the time of climate change.

THE BIRD IN A BUSH

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

A gardener who trimmed a 10ft hedge into a hand flipping the middle finger has been warned he faces police action if he doesn’t chop it down. —The Independent (UK), October 19, 2021

Throughout the lore of English countryside,

Home topiary's an art that has been prized—

Except by one whose eyes were mortified

By what a green-thumbed gardener devised

In Warwickshire: a middle-finger shrub

Raised 10 feet high to flip the bird, in jest,

Directly opposite a village pub

In Warton. For two decades, it impressed.

Now someone wants to kill the goose that laid

A golden egg—more tourists at the inn—

By chopping down the shrub. So calls were made

Upon the gardener. But he won't bin

Street art he's groomed for decades as a joke—

His bush still flips the bird at prudish folk!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

PANGOLIN STEW

by Fran Schumer

White-bellied pangolin photo by Darren Pietersen.

My son sends a picture of a pangolin;
my husband jokes that lunch is bat soup
and pangolin stew.
My mother calls me, angry at my father
for sleeping all the time,
and leaving her to die alone.


Fran Schumer is the author of Powerplay (Simon and Schuster; NYT bestseller) and Most Likely to Succeed (Random House). Her work has appeared in various sections of The New York Times including Op Ed, Book Review and Sunday Magazine; also, Vogue, The Nation, The North American Review, and other publications. She is the winner of a Goodman Loan Grant Award for Fiction from the City University of New York. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.

SESTINA IN BROWN

by T R Poulson

UPS workers react at the scene where a gunman shot and killed multiple people including himself at a UPS facility in San Francisco, California on June 14, 2017. Several people were shot on Wednesday at a San Francisco warehouse and customer service facility operated by global parcel delivery service UPS, authorities and the company said. UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin told AFP the incident involved four workers at the sprawling facility, which employs 850 people. Photo credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images

The Warriors were on fire
we said: those crisp plays and passes
around the curved black line, the ball and net’s
dance, again and again, those hands
lifted like a lover’s wave. The players
taunted and shoved and said they were joking.

Game four was a joke.
Overseas, nobody laughed as the fire
climbed higher, higher, disrupting play
in bedrooms and out. Things curved and passed
and fell through smoke and flames. Hands
dropped a blanket-wrapped baby through the net

of smoke, as below there were no nets
to catch him (this was not a joke).
The baby fell, and different hands,
sure as Steph Curry’s, took him from fire
to something unknown, a no-look pass,
from love to a chance to make plays

on dark courts like the one where we played
off Arlington Street, Friday nights, the net
of work behind us as the moon made its pass
above us, until dawn loomed, and our jokes
grew strange.  Here, my memory’s fire
smolders.  Years pass, and still underhanded

bosses rule us, who judge and hand
out warning letters, or play
with our numbers, even try to fire
us, though our union’s safety net
saves us.  It was only a joke,
the bantering words that slanted and passed

among us, about a coworker who could pass
for a molester in a movie.  We pictured his hands
with a gun.  It was only a joke.
My buddy used to pretend, to play
the creepy coworker, his friendship a net:
“When he brings in a Glock, he won’t open fire

on me, and I’ll hand him a list.”  Names passed
between us:  the spitfire loader, the sorter with the net
stockings at home, the player of wives.  A joke.  A joke!

T R Poulson is a UPS driver out of the Menlo Park, California, center.  She attends community classes at Stanford, and her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Verdad, Main Channel Voices, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Verdad.