T***P TAKES ON THE FOUR SEASONS

 by Anita S. Pulier

Editor's Note: @TotalSeasons is a parody account on Twitter.

The world hears him

banging on the courthouse door

filing comical briefs,

blustering nonsense 

against Fall,

against colors turning,

against leaves falling,

against gearing up for Winter.

And in liberty’s fading light 

he waves his flabby arms, 

proclaims Winter will never arrive

he simply will not allow it, 

screams plot, fraud, fake.

Eyebrows raised, we

take a deep breath,

await Winter's chill.

In this pandemic year of challenges Anita S. Pulier can share some good news: her second full-length poetry book Toast will be out from Finishing Line Press in February! In a past life, she was an attorney. Now she writes poetry (published in many journals and anthologies) and hangs with poets.

NARRATIVE

by Colm Ó Ciarnáin

Artwork: Indie

Gibberish       weponised    nonsensity

Obnoxification of society
ratification of cagedness
realization of stupidity
recognition of affirmation bias
nausea at repugnance
aversion to its abhorrence
revulsion at the antagonism
animositic reluctance to truth

                          and traveling abroad we find exciting
                          and It can be life changing enjoying that freedom

and traveling abroad we find exciting
                          and It can be life changing enjoying that freedom

speak fluent moran
crisp without even a sludder
then lean into the suck
as there is a virtue in
broadcasting your amorality at
the highest known volumes of stupidity
trust busting reality of lies

                          and we enjoy new languages
                          and they give us hope
                                                 
                          and we enjoy new languages
                          and they give us hope

untethered to truth
thoughts prayers and cynical gestures in
pioneering of nauseating evention, testifony, fasadism
mythic past warped by
liberal             feminist          or                      immigrant
conjured truths against faith and adjacent reality
decorum trumped constantly by derision
bannonesque divisions

                          and my friends are with me
                          and it's going to be a good day

 and my friends are with me
                          and it's going to be a good day

fetischouce twitter fingers
trust busting realities of lies
I believe him Truth isn't truth but When I can, I tell the truth—
He means it
making hate again
with truths that burned witches
make fake again by self-proclamations testifications
down the slinker hole
otherings untethered to truth

                          and we shall have fun
                          and the future is bright
                                                                           
                          and we shall have fun
                          and the future is bright

Colm Ó Ciarnáin is a cultural worker originally from Ireland but now living in Sweden. He likes to use his emotions to paint pictures with words. He realised early in life that no matter how much he talked around a subject, words didn’t have the power to convey his feelings, being hampered by logical structures. He finds though that words when used in poetry for him paint between the lines. Flowing beyond the confines of realism and logic to bare self. A nudity of the soul inconceivable except in the hope of a poem. His poetry defines his inner self.

SPELL CHECK

by Jennifer Hernandez

Image source: REDBUBBLE

The constant covfefe
leaves me breathless,
when you voceffe
so close to me, makes
me want to run to our
special effecov and sip
a coffeev.  My evoceff—
so hip, so now—mingles
with ecoveff—so green &
environmentally friendly.
If I wasn’t suffering from
fecovef, didn’t have this
lingering evecoff, I wouldn’t
effvoce like I do. I’d be my old
voffcee self, singing voceffe
at the top of my fefevoc lungs.

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she works with immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Much of her recent writing has been colored by her distress at the dangerous nonsense that appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Recent work appears in Anti-Heroin Chic, Dying Dahlia, TheNewVerse.News, Yellow Chair Review, and Writers Resist.

THE GOLDEN CALF

by Ed Shacklee

Photoshopped image by Freelancer at DemocraticUnderground.com.

Times were hard -- the fearful crowd, unruly,

felt they'd become a television serial

whose laughter track embarrassed them unduly;

they longed for prose both purple and imperial.

The promises the idol strung together

were catchy nonsense jingles if they'd listened.

Its hide, so thin, was stitched from shopworn leather.

A fool could tell it wasn't gold, but glistened;

but they were sold, for God was dead or missing -- 

the brazen moos would answer every prayer.

What did it matter what the snake was hissing?

The Trojan Horse was none of their affair.

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia. He is working on a bestiary.