THEY WALK AMONG US

by Zumwalt

The White House's new site about 'aliens' has nothing to do with UFOs. —NPR, June 3, 2026

It's a historical fact:
the indigenous American
during the colonial invasion
couldn't leverage AI to code html,
didn't have an alien tip line,
never created Alien and Sedition Acts,
didn't irresponsibly fabricate statistics,
didn't automate tribal dehumanization.

No, these early Americans
didn't call others "It"
as in "we will take care of 'it'
and return it to 'its' place of origin."

"Origin," a well-chosen word:
like the origin of infection,
the origin of contamination,
the origin of outrage.

The new settlers have the newest tools
to influence a receptive audience:
memes to maximize malice,
maps to marshal marginalization,
media to market malignity.

The means to turn others in—
besides a group to hate,
another group to join,
and providing perpetual propaganda—
there must be a way to inform,
conveniently, anonymously, 
one that instills a sense of pride
for an act of persecution:
the bright red button at the White House website. 

 

 

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt, a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, has recently been published in Light.  

LO & BEHOLD

by A.S. Coomer

The stick in the shit stirs,
swirling curdling fascinations,
condensing confections of confusion,
mingling malice with malignancies
so potent the stirrer wears a mask,
a mask of indifference,
a mask of superiority,
a mask haloed orange like the burnt offering,
some poor hamster caught, killed and propped up as a sacrifice
atop the altar of jingoism,
we all feel uncomfortable seeing,
a mask bought & sold & held over our heads
higher than our grubby, working hands can reach.
A mask atop a mask atop a mask.
I’ll turn my bare face to the sun before I wear one.

The stick in the shit stirs,
the stained hand is attached to a stained arm
and the poison courses deep through the veins of a man
in thousand dollar suits, a shark’s grin & puckered lips,
eyes seeing only various shades of green & red,
a man in a mask with a stick in his hand,
selling shit cakes to the empty bellied, to the disenfranchised,
to the misinformed & the uninformed, to the belligerent,
to those holding onto the last vestiges of power by the skin
of their privileged, primered nails.
Shit cakes. For one & all. Shit cakes by the dozens. Thousands. Millions.
I’ll take my turn at the soup lines before I have one.

A.S. Coomer is a native Kentuckian serving out a purgatorial existence somewhere in the Midwest. His work has appeared in over thirty publications. He’s got a handful of novels that need good homes. He also runs a “record label” for poetry.