HOW #BLACKLIVESMATTER CHANGED MY LIFE

by Clara B. Jones

Ben Carson, with his wife Candy, arrives to speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National at National Harbor, Md., March 8, 2014. Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images via ABC.

If I were a good mother I wouldn't trigger trauma. He told me it wasn't my fault, but I never thought it was. I am not responsible for the rows of trailers along Route 40 where my son had a play-date before going viral in the reality show of our lives. I wasn't guilty, but in my mind I was since it took two hours off my life to read The New York Times. I would rather deploy, deliver, and execute, but my libido was never my strong suit because racism is a global movement even though Anna Wintour will be obligated to feature Candy Carson on the cover of Vogue wearing a Steve McQueen gown after Ben and Candy purchase a summer home in Ferguson with the money Ben made from translating The Bible into non-standard English to win Al Sharpton's endorsement. Ben's next book will be titled, How #BlackLivesMatter Changed My Life.


Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Asheville, NC. She is a Staff Writer for the poetry journal, Yellow Chair Review. As a woman of color, Clara writes about identity and power, and her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous venues. Her collection, Ferguson And Other Satirical Poems About Race, won the 2015 Bitchin' Kitsch Chapbook Competition. Clara studied with Adrienne Rich in the 1970s and has studied recently with the poets Meghan Sterling and Eric Steineger.

REPUBLICANS REACH OUT TO WOMEN

by Chris O'Carroll



     “And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it, let’s take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than Democrats have made them out to be.”
     -- Mike Huckabee addressing a Republican National Committee meeting


Hey, ladies, listen up.  Mike Huckabee
Gets where you gals are at.  The GOP

Rejects those Uncle Sugar Democrats
Who want you doing it like alley cats

While taxpayers shell out for your libidos.
We live by holier free-market credos.

You do the reproductive heavy lifting,
We do your thinking for you.  We are gifting

You with a chance to raise your girlish voices
And cry, “Please, fellas, take away our choices.

Please give us more deception and distortion
Regarding contraception and abortion.

We don’t want rights.  We don’t want dignity.
Give us prescription-strength Mike Huckabee.”


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous New Verse News appearances, he has published poems in BigCityLit, the Kansas City Star, Lighten Up Online, Umbrella, and the Washington Post, among other print and online journals, and also in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.