QANON AND THE BUTTERFLIES

A Found Poem with the Species List of the National Butterfly Center

by Pepper Trail

Why did the National Butterfly Center in South Texas close last week? 🦋

Because of a conservative conspiracy, of course! @mehdirhasan brings you the troubling tale: pic.twitter.com/FLTzl14LeT

— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) February 8, 2022

In a country where many believe that Satan-worshipping pedophiles 

run the government and the resurrection of John F. Kennedy Jr. will 

 restore a Trump presidency, the Butterfly Center has become 

the latest unlikely victim of wild misinformation 

and outright lies spreading rapidly online.

 —The New York Times, February 6, 2022

 

How are we to make sense of this?

The Question Mark

 

Among the flowers are butterflies, only butterflies

The Monarch and the Soldier and the Queen

The Blue-eyed Sailor and the Painted Lady

The Dainty Sulphur and the Silver Emperor

 

All mingling together in peace

The Black Swallowtail

The Great Southern White

The Mexican Yellow

 

Outside the fence, all is fire and storm

The Malicious Skipper

The American Snout

The Fatal Metalmark

 

But here, can we not agree on beauty, at last?

            The Common Banner

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

NOVEMBER'S FEAST

by A.S. Coomer

Airwaves shocked full of jingoist jingles,
ones & zeroes blinking red & blue & filtering fuzzy hatreds into you.
Sing me to sleep, America. Put me on out, lay me low, down,
somewhere green, somewhere dark, out of my misery.
November’s laid out like a feast, plates & platters of curated misinformation,
prepped prejudices propped up, steaming & juicing, on hot beds of hostility.
The feast seems to be never-ending but not all are invited.
The few will dine then trickle scraps unscrupulously down
to us mangy mutts, waiting with wide eyes & wagging tongues
for whatever it left of the land we stole to begin with.


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.