FIDDLER WITH THE PROOF

by Edmund Conti

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting chief scientist said in an email to colleagues Sunday that he is investigating whether the agency’s response to President Trump’s Hurricane Dorian tweets constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics. Also on Monday, the director of the National Weather Service broke with NOAA leadership over its handling of Trump’s Dorian tweets and statements. —The Washington Post, September 9, 2019

to the tune of "Matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof

Mapmaker, Mapmaker
Make me some maps
And put in some storms there
A Cat 5 perhaps.
Then you will have to
Send me relief.
Just a few billions
Will allay my grief.
Mapmaker, Mapmaker
Take out your Sharpie
Use all your witchcraft
Be your best Harpy.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Add a small line
And soon we’ll see FEMA
And life here in Alabama (or Georgia or Mississippi) will be fine.


Edmund Conti will alter your poem for a small fee and make it his.

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS

by T R Poulson

I wish all emergencies could take place like this:

a theater in the city, stage guns made of rubber

and metal to withstand so many drops and hits

in rehearsals, forgotten lines and flubbers.

The line: I am not throwing away my shot,

as the killer creeps in—Lord show me how

to say no to this—that flutter, why not

here among the songs? The heartbeat now

slows, the patron falls, as Aaron Burr’s pistol

pops. Dying is easy, young man, living

is harder. It plays out as in a crystal

ball. Gun! No prayers, thoughts, forgiving

this time. If only hearts could always feast

on rhymes, as the attack of living lurks, looms,

the gunman a mere actor, a ghost deceased

long ago. I want to be in the room 

where it happens, where everything is just

musical, where lights give me an eyeful,

where words spoken, though fiction, I trust,

and paper walls surround non-shooting rifles.

T R Poulson lives in San Carlos, California.  Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, J Journal, and others.  She enjoys basketball, windsurfing, and going to plays, including a recent performance of Hamilton in San Francisco, which took place the day before the performance in which there was a false shooter alarm.

HAMILTON STILL SOLD OUT ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY

by Albert Haley

"History is happening in Manhattan: Hamilton has set a record for the most money ever made in a single week by a Broadway show."—The New York Times, November 28, 2016. 

That autumn a silver-haired man came
to see what was so highly rated.
The dancing, rapping, the black and brown
bodies bodiced and laced to build
a country from the pink soles up.

It wasn’t the livestock show
at the Indiana State Fair
or Peyton winning Super Bowl XLI
for the Colts stolen from Baltimore.

It wasn’t the cars going around
and around the Brickyard, spewing
fumes on Memorial Day.

It wasn’t even poor James Dean lying
beneath a marble slab in Fairmount
in the shadow of his uncle’s pig farm.

And it sure wasn’t talk radio,
Sunday pass the collection plate
church, or after home-school
milk and cookies. Not a goddamn
Oreo in sight.

Of course, the silver-haired man
knew this, only wanted credit
for trying to love the Founding Fathers
before being Secret Serviced out.
Dust rising, dust settling.

What did they think would happen?
It’s theatre. The show goes on.

The hills still alive with the sound
of that new music, the bold story
that must be sung.

A time-told tale that unleashes
rhyming tongues, night
after night, with men and women
who dance joyfully, freely on the graves
of any who might wish to enslave.

Albert Haley is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in the Texas Review, Poems & Plays, and other journals. He lives in Abilene, Texas, which is as odd of a place as it sounds.