CHICAGO AND THE SWINE

by Ralph La Rosa

After and with Carl Sandburg

 

Trump Swine A Porky Parody Framed Print by Ingo Klotz

“Each day, it seems like the president is deciding maybe he read something in the newspaper and he’ll send troops to Portland or perhaps to New Orleans or perhaps to Chicago, so I’m always glad to know he’s not sending them to Chicago. We don’t need them. There’s not an emergency in Chicago,” [Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker said. —WGN-TV, September 11,2025

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man in the Chicago area who drove his car into ICE officers, a representative for the agency said on Friday, adding that the man had been resisting arrest during a vehicle stop. The man, who the authorities said was not legally in the country, dragged the officer as he fled in his vehicle, the agency representative said. The officer was severely injured and was in stable condition. —The New York Times, September 12, 2025

Hog butcher for the world
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
 
Euphoric, I recall Chicago and my strenuous birth in Mercy hospital eighty-seven years ago, 
as shaggy as an ape, they said, big shouldered like our city, and soon to be mentored
by its churning and creating twin energies of increasing good and encroaching evil—
but never like the present and deadly evil of the lurking and hulking Super Swine.
He intends to break your will with his weaponized and endlessly destructive lies. 
 
Carl, like you, I have seen the gunmen kill and then set free to kill 
again, when he, the Swine, forgave his armed and loyal mob
of treasonous thugs he ordered to overthrow democracy.
But I know Chicago is brutal: brutal enough to resist his folly, expose 
that he’s no better than another hog to butcher for the world.
 
As you chanted, Carl: Show me another city with lifted head singing so proud 
to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. 
It needs to be; for if the Swine slogs through our city, destroying lives and laws,
unmet by brutal resistance, he will make moves to widen his war throughout our land.
 
 
Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. And he loves The New Verse News!

PERIOD PAINS

by Adele Evershed

On the radio, they talk about having a temper, as if it’s a wild creature, something you house in your chest—either caged or rampant. But the bigger conversation is about the trouble with boys, fueled by the latest viral offering on Netflix: Adolescence, which touches on the toxic brew of manhood and violence against women. I’ve watched the show, and unlike most sausage-stuffing series, it offers no explanations—no cathartic “I guessed that all along” or shocking dénouements. You’re left with more questions than answers. It’s simply a story about someone’s son who does something bad, and in the margins, there are glimpses of misogyny, of mob thinking, illustrated with kidney beans and dynamite emojis—look them up, especially if you have teenagers.

But then a man rings in and talks about how “what it means to be a woman” has changed over time, how this has been embraced and encouraged, and unbidden, the Beyoncé song Run the World starts a beat in my chest that tames my beast. Then he adds that “what it means to be a new man” has been ignored, but when asked how to combat that, he’s stumped. Finally, he says, “We need to talk about it.” And there’s the rub—because in my experience, men like to run the world, but find it hard to talk about things they consider “female vices” like accountability, coping strategies, and keeping their temper.

blood moon…
I ask my husband to buy
some tampons
 

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the valleys for the American East Coast. You can find some of her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, The New Verse News, Gyroscope, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Janus Lit, and upcoming in Poetry Wales. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Her third collection In the Belly of the Wail is upcoming with Querencia Press. 

DEMAGOGUERY FOR DUMMIES: LYING WITH IMPUNITY

by Paul Burgess

President Trump’s shifting positions and outright lies have presented the American public with dueling narratives at every turn. —The New York Times, March 8, 2025

When caught in bold, apparent lies,
Just look accusers in the eyes
And flash a grave, offended frown
While digging in to double down. 
 
When people say they've gotten proof,
Declare their sources stand aloof 
From all that's decent, true, or fair 
And freeze them with an icy stare.
 
Then take their claims and throw them back
And wear them out with your attack.
Their armor takes no time to rend.
They came to charge and not defend.
 
Insist they envy all your fame
And labor hard to smear your name.
To get the mob to take your side,
Appeal to people's sense of pride.
 
Convince them that their brains are wired
To see the way your foes conspired
And other folks are not as smart
Or simply play the villain's part.
 
What's true will shortly be defined 
In only ways you have in mind.
Their truth's not worth a bag of beans
Because you'll change what “honest” means.

Paul Burgess lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the sole proprietor of a business that offers ESL, translation, and interpretation services. He speaks several languages fluently and enjoys engaging with the cultures and intellectual histories of many nations. His poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Orchards, Parody, Lighten Up Online, and other poetry publications.

ON WATCHING A REENACTMENT OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

by Matthew E. Henry

The Boston Tea Party Reenactment: On December 16, 2023, Boston will commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

I was not prepared for how horrifying it feels to be Black 

and suddenly so pro-British. the desire to don a red coat, 

fingers itching to clutch a cartridge of ball and black powder. 

to lift a loyalist musket to shoulder and beset Boston Common 

or Lexington Green. the feeling even brother Crispus could catch 

a hot one were he to cross between Congress and State Streets today. 

 

if crows assemble in a quiet murder, and ravens collect

in a tranquil unkindness, what is a mass of frenzied 

white men? a mob, a riot, does so little justice. 

 

have you seen it? the screaming “sons of liberty”— these boys

proud in their covered faces, heads feathered and mohawked 

more than wearing tri-cornered hats. the ecstatic storming 

from a speech past ill-armed guards, hands aflame with torches.

 

have you seen it? fists, feet, bars, and axes shattering brown 

box heads, spilling loose leaf blood into the Harbor’s once 

placid waves. white rage decrying oppression through 

$1.7 million in adjusted destruction, hoping to make america

great. again, I am shocked how the echoes are almost enough 

to make me holler, “Long Live King George!”

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six collections, including the Colored page and The Third Renunciation. He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes and Rise Up Review. The 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Prize, MEH is an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.

THAT'SA MY BOY

by Edmund Conti




When your son (what a guy!) meets a Russian and spy
That’sa politics.

When he then says “So what?” since they got diddly squat
That’sa politics.

Dems will sing "What a ding-a-ling, what a ding-a-ling"
And you’ll sing “Mar-a-Lago.”
Let them sing, "Junior Junior jerk, Junior Junior jerk"
You can all keep Chicago.

When the votes make you drool even though it’s not cool
That’sa politics.
When you dance down the street tweeting tweet after tweet
You’re on top.

When you walk in a dream and you’re fooling your team and the voters
Scuzza me, but you see, just between you and me
That’sa politics

Edmund Conti is not related to Eddie "Butterass" Conti nor is he connected. Not to anyone. Especially not the Poetry Mafia.

THE RALLY

by T R Poulson

Image source: Snopes.com

Crowded around the gleaming
convention center, protestors light flames
and collect bottles, in piles

as the candidate inside talks and shouts
about how much he loves coal mines
and beauty salons, the people of New Mexico

and dollars donated to tall towers.
Outside, the haze forms leering ghosts
as the protestors sway and swarm.

The mounted police appear, helpless
against the storm, and then the renegades,
passionate as the politician they hate,

single out one of the horses, a dark bay
with an upside down white heart
beneath his forelock.  Later, we learn

his name is Stryker.  I once bought
a horse, from a woman who’d rescued him
from the track and tried to love him,

but when her husband found her
wrapped in his best friend’s arms
he took revenge, every night

by flinging rocks at her thoroughbred.
At least this is the story I heard
and believed, because when I bent down

to pick up a dropped brush or carrot,
he would tremble like cornered prey.
So, when I heard about Stryker,

and the mob of haters, snarling
like lions, who reached out to take
bottles and rocks to hurl, hard as fists,

at at him until he fell down,
his cannon broken as a politician’s
promise, the vet finally able

to penetrate the sea of humans
and prick his damp, dark neck
with that final, merciful injection,

I wanted to punch those protestors
in the face.  Except, that Stryker’s leg
was never broken, he wasn’t euthanized,
and nobody knows why he fell.

via Snopes.com

T R Poulson lives in East Palo Alto, California, and takes writing courses through Stanford’s continuing studies program.  She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Reno.  Her work has appeared in Verdad, The Raintown Review, The Meadow, Trajectory, and Alehouse.