The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, left, reacts as he and First Lady Melania Trump listen to President Trump speak at U.N. headquarters on Sept. 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer via The Washington Post)
Well, he
was a racist and a liar and a bit of a baby,
but maybe
not an outright crook.
Waiting now for the book!
Devin Nunes, hallowed be your name.
Hallowed be your midnight runs,
your dark-of-night dashes. Your fake news
echoes from Pennsylvania Avenue
and Capitol Hill across Merika
(“I love the uneducated!”)
as it does in Mar-A-Lago.
Give us your DOJ subpoenas,
your stooge notes,
your assistants’ typo-ridden memos.
No need for redactions.
Forgive us our conclusions
as we forgive our colluders and those
who conspire against us.
Lead us not to Truth
or let us know Integrity.
Deliver us from honest language like
vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus,
evidence-based and science-based.
For the kingdom of party hacks,
the power of military parades,
and the glory of Russian bot farms
are yours now and forever
in the annals of American history. Amen
Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collection Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag, 2015) and editor of Seeking Its Own Level, an anthology of writings about water (MotesBooks, 2014). His writing has appeared in River Styx, CutBank, The Kenyon Review and The Chattahoochee Review. Follow him on twitter @DentonLoving.
The player is a liar when he says sometimes wind and sometimes
women, sometimes waves and sometimes seals. The player is a liar
when he says one’s environment is a key to one’s identity, but that his
environment is a lost key. The player is a liar when he says jealousy
in men is as good as dollars in the soul, that men’s souls are oriented not
to miss things. The player is a liar when he says one’s environment is
the key to one’s identity, and that his environment is the master key.
The player is a liar when he says an ounce of genuine interest would be
a start, and steadfast resolution is thicker than water. The player is a liar
when he says a worm returned to soil, and wished he were it.
The player is a liar when he says I want dynamite under my car seat, but
there’s another wheel turning. When he says all the news without fear
or favor, the kiss of death is good. The player is a liar when he says
innumerable unseen spirits kick metaphysical footballs in a different
cemetery than the cemetery he lives in. The player is lying when he says
no one sees a subtextual reference to scrutinizing the remotest corners
most carefully guarded secrets, to pushes into the East Siberian Sea
and the Transpolar Drift, the rocky distant rim of the Canadian Shield.
The player is lying when he looks into the world of inquisition, when
he separates one integral part of any work from another. When he says
he was promised a world of lost forests, folded mountains, and labyrinthine
hiding places, a snack, something serious to eat, a mirage of salvation,
ascension sharp enough to consume sanity. The player is lying when
he says winter thaws to summer, the pack ice breaks up into the Chukchi Sea,
where warm Pacific waters join the gyre as it turns in its grinding cycle.
The player is a liar when he says he is falling back to earth in the form
of pine needles, that he is no better than those other clones. The player’s
soul is at work disappearing in lies, communicating its isolation as total.
When he says that the wings of the news are a malady, and the finalist
became a doctor of philosophy. He is a liar when the extermination
of the underclass is harvested on his tongue, when the processing line
will be cleaned and silent. He is lying at the end of the lane, slowly turning
in the dirt. His thoughts and actions are elegiac fragments, mechanisms
which flicker above the wrong note. When the circus in any labor wishes
to act not as a condition of membership but synthesized in underground
factories the requisite neurochemicals of cautious steps, an abyss
of crop-duster dictums spoken by twenty-first century revolutionaries
via minor routes, filth, blood, and noise.
Andrew Levy has published 14 books of poetry, including The Big Melt (Factory School), Cracking Up (Truck Books), Ashoka (Zasterle Books), Values Chauffeur You (O Books), Don’t Forget to Breathe (Chax Books), and Nothing Is in Here (EOAGH Press). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Writing From the New Coast, The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry, and Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s. He was editor, with Roberto Harrison, of the poetry journal Crayon. He lives in New York City.
From the age of five the man’s ambition was to be President of the most powerful nation on earth. This desire burned so intensely he acquired a swarthy, handsome demeanor that attracted beautiful women. He chose the loveliest and they worked together to fulfill his dream. He graduated from the top business school and felt that since government was the biggest business, he was uniquely qualified. His successes mounted and his family of five sons thrived. He craved leadership like a man desperate in a desert. He sweated desire and ambition. When he mounted his campaign for President after serving as savior of the Olympics and governor of a small state, the people did not trust him. They called him a liar and a fraud. His party renounced him and then slowly accepted him without passion. His opponent grinned and charmed people, his eloquent intellect a coin that dazzled. One pundit branded the man whose lifelong ambition dangled within reach a clumsy buffoon who wanted it too much. Voters agreed. On election day they chose the stunning intellectual by the slimmest margin, and the handsome businessman flew into the desert and disappeared.
Author of one collection, Everybody Has a Story, four chapbooks, and six unpublished poetry manuscripts, David Spicer has previously published in The New Verse News and also has work in Alcatraz, Nitty Gritty, Aura, Brown God, Hinchas de Poesia, Crack the Spine, Dirtflask, Spudgun, Mad Rush, Used Furniture Review, Fur-Lined Ghettos, Spudgun, Bop Dead City, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Resurgo, and elsewhere.
