DEBATE PANTOUM

by Dion O’Reilly

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

Nothing's quite right—
ziggurats are toppling, the president’s stuttering, 
the courts are rigged, and it's too damn hot.
Buckle up baby... this shit's happening

—ziggurats, toppling. The president stuttering, 
millennials hating him ‘cause he won't stop a war.
Buckle up baby...this shit's happening. 
—a war that’s been raging for a million years.

Millennials hate him ‘cause he won't stop the war,
they can't buy a house, and they're paying back loans,
—this war’s been raging for a million years,
but now it’s thumb-tapped on our own little phones.

We can't buy a house, we’re paying back loans.
The problem’s too big to even begin,
thank god we can thumb-tap our own little phones.
There are just two choices, and they both look grim,

like problems too big to even begin—
The courts are rigged, and it's too damn hot.
There are just two choices and they both look grim.
Whom to vote for? Nothing feels right. 

Dion O'Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator, a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs, winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, The Independent Press Award for Poetry, and honorable mention for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award; and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Reader. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

THEY AREN'T JUST TAKING SELFIES

by Tricia Knoll

Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'. CLICK HERE to see her dramatic speech via CNN.

having sex before graduation,
or trying pot before sloe gin.

They volunteer, ride horseback
to halt pipelines, engage

with hip hop, rockers and rappers
to say words that need saying,

march in Washington and our city,
enlist, vote, call for police accountability,

and want citizenship for DACA immigrants.
Teenagers and twenty-somethings

see a world every day on their phones
where shooters slaughter friends

in school because there is no will
to ban assault weapons and control guns.

They know shots crack living room windows
on residential streets, that gangs fight useless

wars. When young people knew rightness
of the opportunity for gay marriage,

the nation swayed and so did judges.
They are screaming for gun control

and the right to sit in school
and learn without fear

with no more brush-off praying
for teachers and families

until something is done.
Yell with them.

We need them
to know we’re with them.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has signed petitions for gun control for more than forty years. "We are children" say the survivors in Parkland. Do we need to hear more? She doesn't. She is tired of the empty rhetoric of pray for the families and do nothing to stop gun lobby money in Washington. Her book How I Learned to Be White is coming out from Antrim House in 2018.