THE MAD HATER’S TEA PARTY

by Lisa Shulman

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

“I’m throwing a Party,” the Mad Hater decreed,

“And it’s only for those of Certain High Breed.

The workers and riff-raff will not be allowed

We’ll clear this Great Land of such unwanted crowds.

We’ll send them all packing to back where they came

And build big border walls in Liberty’s name.”

 

He wanted the people meek and afraid,

Instead they came chanting and dancing, they prayed.

They flocked to the aid of their neighbors and friends,

They poured through the streets, angry crowds without end.

 

“Criminals!” the Mad Hater shouted with venom,

“Violent assassins, we’re going to get ‘em!”

He called out his proud boys, his goons and his gnome,

Said, “Smash their car windows, crash into their homes.

You’re breaking no laws if you do what I say,

My Words are the only Law you must obey.

But these people with cameras and signs in their hands

Are the worst of the worst, destroying our Land.

Arresting them all is how we stay Free,

Anyone is a traitor who doesn’t agree!”

 

The people still came with their banners and songs,

Would not be defeated, they knew right from wrong.

 

Then, “Off with their masks!” the large crowd declared,

“Let’s see why these big men are so terribly scared

Of children and mothers and men holding phones,

It makes them all trembly right down to their bones.

Their pepper and guns are no match for such threats

As inflatable frogs and knitters in sweats,

And pink dancing sharks and sweet unicorns,

And kids banging drums and blowing on horns!”

 

With all this distraction, this hullaballoo,

The Hater was pleased by something he knew.

He rubbed his small hands and gave a sly smile,

“At least they’ve forgotten about those damn Files!”

 

 

Lisa Shulman is a poet, children’s book author, and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in Sheila-na-gig, About Place, Anacapa Review, Inkfish, Kitchen Table Quarterly, ONE ART, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart. A Pushcart nominee, Lisa teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools, and workshops for women in recovery.

MY COUNTRY FOR A MEDAL

by Anne Herrick

Partially based on lines from Shakespeare's Richard III, Act 5

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

My medal, 

            my medal!  

                        America undone for my medal.

 

            Forsooth, sire, I will assist you

            in claiming this precious gold

 

Loyalist, I have lain my life upon this medal

I have set seven squabbles to peace—

Nay—I have in fact settled eight.

I must therefore have my medal.  

I will, I must, doom America for my medal.

 

Courageous Sire, it is Norway 

which has undone your gold,

I must find the wretch 

that decreed the providence of this prize

 

Great God of Heaven, say amen to all!

I will usurp, I will slay, this Danish bloody dog

which hath denied what has always been my due.

I will pluck this traitor’s foreign Greenland

and put its gold upon my oval mantelpiece.

 

            On bended knee I needs say, my Gracious Sire 

            that Denmark is not quite where is Norway —

            it is avowedly smallest, in the cold North Sea.

 

Oh, Slave, I will choose who is to blame.

I will push Denmark to weep in streams of blood.

I will save Greenland from Denmark’s yoke of tyranny,

dig far into the bowels of its land,

will cast its destiny with the doomed dome of America.

I know that true hope flies with swallow’s wings,
that it is the meaner creatures that make kings.

Anne Herrick has published a few poems and prose in the US and UK.

ALLEN GINSBERG'S "AMERICA" (AND OURS)

by Robert Knox

“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.” 

—Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems, 1956

 

I am frankly envious of the poet who, on Jan. 17, 1956,

wrote, in a poem entitled “America,”

“America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.”

 

Tennessee, I invite, in the same spirit of candor,

go shoot yourself with your absolutely unqualified no-foolin’, stand-your-ground

irredeemably nut-case gun rights laws,

per events on the ground taking place March 28, 2023.

I could simply echo every sentiment in that mid-century poet’s inspired piece

     of unbridled spontaneity

composed on the theme of his America, in which he that mid-century poet vowed,

amid other proclamations,

“I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind”…

but I do not expect to be in my right mind

so long as the YMCA in which I seek to run away from my fury and despair

offers news channels on its TV service available to rats like me

who run on treadmills of anger and despair

 

Networks, that is, on which the munitions-injury expert

is asked to describe the effect of AR ammunition on the bodies of children,

and what I increasingly wish somebody (even crazier than me) would do

to the persons of the elected Tennessee officials

who valiantly protected their freedom-loving constituents from any limitation,

however slight and publicly supported by official law enforcement,

on their natural right to destroy the bodies of children

with whatever armaments the Good Lord, acting through the protected mediation

    of the National Rats Association,

entitles them to possess

 

“America,” Ginsberg demanded in his disarming and eternally youthful way:

“when will you take your clothes off?”

“America” – how’s this for pre-visioning the paramilitary far right?—

“why are your libraries full of tears?”

 

America, we ask in our hair-tearing, torn-clothing way,

Why are your courthouses, state houses, ballot boxes and school boards

full of self-made demagogues who failed to read the books

in their now besieged schoolhouses when they had the chance?

who think that libraries are merely back alleyways for the gang fights

     of the culture wars?

America, we ask, why do the voters of Tennessee develop amnesia of the ballot box?

When will it end, America, your war on humanity?

When will you be worthy of your blues singers, jazzmen, street corner poets,

         dancers on the page as well as on the stage?

When will you invite Stephen Colbert to be the speaker at the next inauguration?

America, the cherry trees are blossoming

and I feel sentimental about the days of wine and roses and that legendary decade ban

     on assault rifles…

and even when the party of Richard Nixon was, by comparison, a beacon of moderation

Americans, we are obsessed by media, by the Chinese timebomb that goes TikTok, TikTok

 

America, the best minds of my generation are already underground

America, there is nobody left to vote for

America, our ancestors saved the world from fascism

But all the fascists have to do today is show their pure-white fannies on TV

and the writing on the wall goes tic-toc-clock, as the timebomb of private self-interest

     melts the glaciers

and brings the ocean to your living room

just before the signoff of the foxed and phony nooz

 

America, you are teaching all the world how to kill people,

     best result for the buck

Because that is all you remember how to do

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of the recently published collection of linked short stories, titled House Stories. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site.

PUT DOWN THE FISHERMAN

A LITTLE RICHARD CENTO
by Chad Frame





"I’ve been gay all my life and I know God is a God of love, not of hate. How can I (put) down the fisherman when I’ve been fishing all my life?” 
     —Little Richard (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020)


If it don’t fit, don’t force it. Can’t help it. Son,
you better watch your step. Papa put me out
of the house, curtains and makeup, cherry-

red, long hair hanging everywhere. All
around the world, the magnolia smells
sweet, and white cotton warm. You said

you loved me, went to the window, peeped
through the blind—a whole lotta shakin’, good
goddamn. How can I put down the fisherman

when I been fishing all my life? Bad luck
baby put a jinx on me—ooh! my soul!—
this land of a thousand dances. You keep on

knockin’, but you can’t hear this jukebox jumpin’.
Keep on knockin’, gonna ring your door
till I break your bell. Go, cat, go. Rip it up,

good golly, heeby jeebies. Uptempo,
directly from my heart, you call it rock & roll.
At regular tempo, you keep on knockin’,

rhythm & blues. You keep on knockin’, baby,
say you only want to dance. Well, alright.
Come on over, baby—but you can’t come in.

Chad Frame’s work appears in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, and other journals and anthologies, as well as on iTunes from the Library of Congress. He is the Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the Poetry Editor of Ovunque Siamo: New Italian-American Writing, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry improv performance troupe, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival and Retreat.

WILLIE THE SHAKE'S BEEN SHOOK AWAKE!

by Alan Soffin

To be, or not to be?
That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the House
To suffer the Tweets and Falsehoods of our great misfortune
Or to take votes against the See of troubles
And by opposing, end him? To cry, to weep,
No more, and by that weeping say we end
The heartache and the endless verbal schlock
That citizens are heir to. ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To cry, to weep;
To weep: perchance to scream; Oy, there’s the schlub;
For while we weep near death, what schemes may come
When we have shuffled off his rotten coil,
Must give us pause; there’s the respect
That makes calamity of public life;
For who would bear the whips of K street crime,
The T***pish wrongs, the constant contumely,
The pangs of threatened healthcare, the GOP’s delay,
The soullessness of Mitch and the spurns
That patient merit of the greedy takes,
When we ourselves might our withdrawal make
With a bare ballot. Who would injustice bear,
But that the dread of something after T***p,
The undiscovered source from whose bourn
The ruthless right returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those crooks we have,
Than fly to Pence and those we know not of ?
Thus conscience doth make outcasts on the Mall
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with stale cant that’s bought,
And legislation of great pith and moment
With this regard await a better day
Beyond the grasp of faction—Soft you now!
The Statue Liberty, in all thy orisons
Please be democracy remembered!

Alan Soffin, Ph.D., has taught at Michigan State and Temple. His Rethinking Religion: Beyond Scientism, Theism and Philosophic Doubt is published by Cascadia Press. His essays have appeared in Images of Youth (Peter Wang) and DreamSeeker magazine. His photography has been exhibited at the Tubac Center for the Arts. His avant-garde film Confessor (1968) was funded in part by the American Film Institute.

BREACHING WALL

by Gil Hoy

The viability of the Trump administration's border wall has come under fire as all eight prototype structures have failed at least one breach test. The eight border wall prototypes in Otay Mesa, California were assembled in early 2017 after an executive order directed the Department of Homeland Security to build the border wall. The news comes as the administration prepares to potentially declare a national emergency to jumpstart construction of the wall along the U.S.’s southern border. —ArchDaily, January 14, 2019

There is many
a living thing

That doesn’t love
a wall.

Like hunters, rabbits
and yelping dogs

Like the pine trees
and apple orchards

Like human beings—
Who are not cows—

And quirky elves don’t
like them much either.

The frozen-ground-
swells beneath can crack

Even the strongest stone.
And there are many gaps

Between the stones
nonetheless. You can

Rub your fingers rough
and raw by placing
and replacing

The fallen stones.
Mr. President:

I see you walking in the darkness.

An old, rough savage-stone

Firmly grasped in each
armed hand.

Like an aged hypothermic man
who is lost

and cannot find his way

Like your crotchety, stubborn
neighbor beyond the hill.

Mr. President:

Spring is coming.
Let’s walk the lines:

Remove the walls
separating pines
and trees bearing fruit.

Pull up the stakes,
fill in the ditch, until
not a trace remains.

Mr. President:        
Forget your father

He was so very wrong.

Good walls, like selfish men,
make bad neighbors.


Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, I am not a silent poet, The Potomac, Clark Street Review and the penmen review.

STREETS OF RIO BRAVO

by Jan Steckel

A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a woman who had crossed the border illegally near Laredo, Tex., on Wednesday after the officer came under attack, federal authorities said. —The New York Times, May 24, 2018. Photo: A border fence in Laredo, Tex., not far from where a Border Patrol agent fatally shot a woman on Wednesday who the authorities said had illegally crossed the border. Credit: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times.

As I walked out on the streets of Rio Bravo,
As I walked out in Rio Bravo one day,
I spied a body all wrapped up in Mylar,
Covered with Mylar, as cold as the clay.

I saw by ICE milling that she was a migrant.
Marta Martinez was filming that day.
Marta Martinez, she held up her cell phone,
Yelled at the agents who murdered the girl.

Why are you maltreating them?
What have they done to you?
You shot that girl, she yelled,
Now she’s lying there dead.

We only tased her, claimed one of the ICE men.
Tased her! snorted Marta. You shot her!
She’s lying there stone cold. She attacked us,
Said the ICE men, with blunt objects.

What blunt objects? demanded Marta,
As the ICE men dragged three campesinos
Out of the trees and into their wagon.
Plastic water bottles? I don’t see any rocks.

They were running from you when you shot,
Cried Marta in anger. She’s somebody’s daughter,
Sister, maybe mother. It’s hard to tell how old
She was with half her face shot off.

Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as we carry her along.
Down in the green valley, lay the sod over her.
She was a young migrant they said had done wrong.


Jan Steckel was a Harvard- and Yale-trained pediatrician who took care of Spanish-speaking children until chronic pain persuaded her to change professions to writer, poet and medical editor. She is an activist for bisexual and disability rights who lives in Oakland, California. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her work won the Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest, a Zeiser Grant for Women Artists, the Jewel by the Bay Poetry Competition, Triplopia’s Best of the Best competition, and three Pushcart nominations.

T***P ADDRESSES THE SURVIVORS

by Earl J Wilcox

Thank you all for coming.
It’s so good to see such a great crowd,
especially those of you in pajamas,
without food, but carrying your pets,
and those who came wading or boating
in hip-deep waters, such a sacrifice, and
I am so pleased to see you old folks carrying
your meds, particularly one old grandma,
what a trooper you are granny,
to come all this way to see me here.
This morning, Melania and I are so thrilled
with this great turnout, your happy, smiling
faces, cheering us on. Truly we all—men and
women and children and dogs and cats, the
lame, the sick and frightened, such beautiful
faces—all are making America great again!
Thank you all for coming to see me.


Earl J. Wilcox, once a graduate student in Texas, lives now in SC, sends his best thoughts to his Texas friends enduring the heavy Harvey rains.

BOTH SIDES

by Judith Terzi





Lies and lies are everywhere,
and racist slogans fill the air
and hatred oozing everywhere.
We didn't know this way.

And now these folks they block the sun,
they ruin love for everyone.
So many things he could have done.
His base got in the way.

He looks at hate from both sides now.
The KKK's okay somehow.
His father marched, you will recall.
He really doesn't care about us at all.

His id rides on a Ferris wheel,
spins dizzy, hurtful tweets he feels
as all delusional goes real.
We didn't know this way.

So every day another show.
We cringe wherever he doth go.
And what will happen, we don't know
until the lies give way.

He looks at hate from both sides now
and white supremacists somehow
are good, he said, you will recall.
And Sheriff Joe isn't really bad at all.

Our tears and fears, not feeling proud
to say our country right out loud
is led by hacks and circus crowds.
We didn't vote this way.

Our senators are acting strange.
They shake their heads, but what will change?
Transgender troops may lose what's gained
in fighting every day.

He looks at hate from both sides now.
His nemesis is love somehow.
Dark clouds will reign, you will recall,
when Fascists really aren't that bad at all.

Judith Terzi's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as BorderSenses, Caesura, Columbia Journal, Good Works Review (FutureCycle Press), Raintown Review, Unsplendid, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By are her most recent chapbooks from Kattywompus Press.

JOHN F. KELLY, A MODERN FOUR-STAR GENERAL

by  Orel Protopopescu

   With Apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan

He is the very model of a modern four-star general,
thinks politicians should shut up or change the laws, ephemeral.
He’s sure the border’s leaking drugs that make us all delirious,
suggested splitting moms from kids might show them that he’s serious.

We’d “never leave the house” he said, if we all knew what threatened us,
and that’s why we need manly ex-Marines who take command and cuss.
But cussing out your predecessor doesn’t suit this paragon,
so Scaramucci’s days were numbered soon as “f-ing P.” was gone.

Some think that Kelly will control the president and moderate
a tendency to shoot himself that raised the shades of Watergate.
But will he dare confront his boss or click his heels to Yes, sir?  
When POTUS waved a sword, John muttered, “Use that on the press, sir.”

In short, commanding criminals, maniacally inimical,
he is the very model of a modern four-star general.

                                                                   

Orel Protopopescu won the Oberon poetry prize in 2010 and a commendation in the Second Light Live Competition, 2016.  Thelonious Mouse, her fourth picture book, was awarded a Crystal Kite, 2012, from SCBWI, and she’s written other prize-winning books for young people. Her poetry has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Oberon, Poetry Bay, Light, Lighten Up Online, TheNewVerse.News, Socialism and Democracy and other reviews, anthologies, and in her chapbook, What Remains (2011, Finishing Line Press). She teaches at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, Huntington Station, NY. 

AFTER EUPHORIA

by Ralph La Rosa

A post-Obama meditation

After Emily Dickinson, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” (372)

After Euphoria, formal feelings come –
Once Tuning Forks, the Nerves won’t hum
And numbed Hearts wonder, “Where is the Sage who bore
Such sane Good News – out of the White House door?”

Eyes widen, dim, dart around –
Ears ache so
From toxic Lies – all Oughts –
In offal sown,
The requiems for loss – alone –

This is the Hour of Dread
For those who were misled –
But Sickened watchers of the Trumped-up show –
Rest – Regroup – Resist – their Hearts say he must Go


Ralph La Rosa’s work has been published online, including at TheNewVerse.News, and in the books Sonnet Stanzas and Ghost Trees.

NEVERMORE

by Susan McLean

Ah, distinctly I remember it was early in November
when the hearth-fire’s dying ember cast dark shadows on the floor.
As dry leaves went whirling, flying, suddenly I heard a sighing
as of someone softly crying, “Let me in! Unlock your door.”
Only this and nothing more.

Had she come again? I wondered.  As the storm clouds flashed and thundered,
in the throes of hope I blundered, flinging wide my chamber door.
But the vision I confronted was not her for whom I hunted.
Grief arrived and joy was blunted: through that doorway I deplore,
hope would enter nevermore.

Like a ghastly apparition on a grim and solemn mission,
an unnerving politician pushed his way into the room,
and I had the premonition that his access code to fission
soon would cause our demolition. Like a specter from the tomb,
in he came: the Trump of Doom.

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University.  Her books of poetry are The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife.  She has also translated over 500 satirical poems of the Latin poet Martial, published as Selected Epigrams by the University of Wisconsin Press.  Her light verse has often appeared in Light and Lighten Up Online.

DON'S POSTURE

by Andrew Frisardi 

Image Source: Say No to Grump

after “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is scourged with the posturing of Don.
He will lash out, like tinsel in brash lights.
He heckles into hatred, with a wreck of rights
Crushed. Why do some then now not call his con?
Civility has gone, has gone, has gone.
All is seared with words; bleared, smeared with sleights;
And wears Don’s smirk and shares Don’s smell: our sights
Are low now, nor can truth tell, being pawn.

And for all this, his flatulence is never spent.
There live the vilest gases deep down him;
And though the last lights off the campaign went
Oh, curses, at the brown rim backside, brim—
For the Wholly Self-Engrossed over the bent
Truth broods with loose mouth and with ah! cruel whim.



Andrew Frisardi has published poems in numerous online and print journals; and his volume Death of a Dissembler was published in 2014 by White Violet Press. He has also done a lot of literary translation, most recently Dante’s Vita Nova(Northwestern University Press, 2012) and Dante’s Convivio (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2017). Originally from Boston, he currently lives in central Italy but has his absentee ballot set to go for November.

I SHOULD HAVE PLAYED

by Martha Landman

after “Unfinished Business” by Primo Levi

Sir, please accept my apology
for taking up your time.
And the apology of all the others
giving you so much work.
We should have left you
to care for the badly injured.
I was supposed to play marbles
with my brothers in the sand,
but I hid with my family inside.
I was supposed to play with friends— 
enjoy the outdoors, run in the maze.
I would have loved to do it. I’m sorry.
But my parents kept me inside.
They said it was safer in there.
I was meant to tease the girls,
while they were skipping rope
or played with their dolls.
And now there is blood on my hands.
I’m not sure where it is from.
I haven’t done anything wrong, I promise.
And sorry for having made you cry, Sir.
I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.
If there’s any way I can help, let me know;
I do not want to waste your time.

Editor's Note: Efforts to identify the boy [in the photograph] were unsuccessful. He was treated on Tuesday night at the Omar Hospital [in Aleppo, Syria] and released, said Baraa al-Halabi, a citizen journalist who photographed him. None of the medical workers who could be reached remembered the boy, which is not unusual in the overwhelmed hospitals. —The New York Times, August 21, 2016

Martha Landman lives in Adelaide, Australia.  Her work has appeared in various online journals and other anthologies.

WALT WHITMAN AT THE 2016 OLYMPICS

by Bob Katrin

O for any and each the body correlative and attracting.
Singing the muscular urge and the blending…
the welcome nearness… the sight of the perfect body.

The splendor of the opening ceremony and around the
corner the reeking-of-life favelas monitored by
Praetorian Guards with automatic weapons. Keep out
the riff raff, the plenty persons near but not
the hot, the right ones.

The corruption of city-states, the poor, the beggared,
and the rich, the corporate and the incorporate; the
dopers, tokers, and politicians.

The athletes, lithe, lean, and lovely, and the “bulge.”
Ah! The fit-witless and the bulge of youth, the beauty
anyway and incorruptible discipline and dedication
irrelevanced by “commercials.”

And on Copacabana Beach, “We don’t need a stadium
to play volleyball.”

Oh Latin America, Oh Columbus, Columbanumbus!
The New World screwed screwing itself.

The hungry gnaw that eats me night and day…
I need another glass of cachaca and a plate of feijoada.

Tonight I dance with the dancers and drink with the
drinkers. Everyone is my friend even the crooks
on the Olympic Committee.


Bob Katrin is a writer and poet living in Southern Pines, NC.

THE DONALD SONNETS

by Llyn Clague

IMAGE OF OUTFIT VIA DEAGOSTINI / GETTY; PHOTOGRAPH OF TRUMP BY JOHN TAGGART / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY. Detail of photgraphic result published in The New Yorker, Daily Shouts, October 28, 2015.

Sonnet LXXI

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than flitting across your screen you see my obit
Announcing I am gone.  No smarmy op-ed
Will weep that I have left this hypocrite
World.  No, if you peruse these lines, do not think
Of me who wrote them: so great is your love
Of self I would not give them cause to wink
At you for my shortcomings, and so shove
You off the cliff of their so precious hauteur.
If, I say, you look back upon this verse,
My smallness must not reduce your superior
Vision of greatness, of better, not worse.
Let not the wise world mock your glory
By tying you to my too ordinary story.

Sonnet XCI

Some glory in their birth, some in their wealth,
Some in their cleverness, or in a pretty face,
Some in bodily strength or personal health,
Or cars and yachts boosted in this rat race.
Every type has its particular niche
Where it finds its special gratification.
But these trifles – even, Donald, your riches,
to me but means to ever greater action –
Are nothing: with your love of self you trump
Smooth cleverness,  a beauty-pageant chest,
The bulge of biceps, and arrogant assump-
Tions of birth certificates. I boast I’ve the best:      
Wretched in this alone, that, losing, you take
Self-love away, and wretched my heart will break.

Sonnet XXIX

When, disgraced by boss, society, and fate,
Along with others filled with helpless rage,
I cry to heaven with my unbounded hate
And look upon myself as a rat in a cage,
Haply, Donald, I think on thee, and my heart,
Like hope in a gambler in your casino,
Leaps up into a sweet realm apart,
Made magic by almighty, endless ego.
When I revel in the inebriation
Of your inspired take-downs, smears and sneers
And abandon myself to the elation
Spreading far and wide with all your cheers,
Then, bathed in the glow of your Caesarian
Narcissism, I scorn compassion from any man.

Llyn Clague is a poet based in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.  His poems have been published widely, including in Ibbetson Street, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly.  His seventh book, Hard-Edged and Childlike, was published by Main Street Rag in September, 2014.  

EU BORDERS

A migrant pushes a wheelbarrow in a muddy field at a camp of makeshift shelters called the Grande Synthe jungle, near Calais in February, 2016. Thomson Reuters via Business Insider.

Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

TRUMPTY DUMPTY

by Catherine McGuire





Trumpty Dumpty sat on his wall,
Trumpty Dumpty looked on toward the fall.
“I’ve won their horse race, I’ve got my own men—
I’ll make America greatest again.”

Cheered by a racist, misogynist rabble,
Trumpty Dumpty struts and he babbles—
“It’s gonna be HUGE, cause everyone loves me.
I own the party; there’s no one above me.”

In the hallways of power, the leaders are shocked—
this kind of revolt should be easily blocked,
and yet Trump has smashed the establishment boys;
he can stoop even lower than the worst red state ploys.

And smug pundits claiming, “It could not happen here”
choke on their words and cry in their beers,
“It’s the death of conservatism! Horror of horrors!
If Trump becomes president, there’ll be no tomorrow!”

So now Trumpty Dumpty wants to be crowned;
wants the Bushes to grovel, Paul Ryan to bow down.
Though he thinks he has won this political bet,
Trumpty Dumpty may find elephants never forget.

And Trumpty Dumpty will find in the race,
most voters require at least some social grace.
Small-hand obsessions and childish tweets
show the orangest candidate can’t take the heat.

While the world looks in horror, while the world holds its breath,
the voters will choose if we pull back from the death
of what makes America historically best—
patience and kindness, tolerance, respect.

But that’s not up to Trumpty; that job’s up to us!
Enough with the rhetoric—it’s time to discuss
where we’re going with neighbors, we can and we will
back away from the hatred and turn down the shrill.

Find your opposite number, have a coffee or beer—
chat for an hour, unlearn your fear.
We live here together, and together must work
to uncover and vanquish the hatred that lurks

where people feeling unheard and under attack
blame their lost future on the Latin, the Black—
don’t put your trust in a strange orange man;
let’s bring our country together again.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for ecology and our planet's future. Her first full length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, will be published in October 2016 by FutureCycle Press.

DANIEL

by Carol Alexander

What we know of spirit and visible ink,
the human voice raised in remonstrance
against bloodshed and greed

we learned from you, and from your small birds
glimpsed at twilight,  and the ubiquitous coat
shrouding flesh against plague.

They are walking against this morning's rain,
and the habit of skirting the terrible questions
that imbue the bomb and splintered cross.

The fountain will not die with you
but frame its steeple with the greater strength
and yes, waters will upward rise

in the memory of you.

Carol Alexander's poems have appeared in such journals as Bluestem, Caesura, Canary, The Common, Chiron Review, Illya's Honey, Mad Hatter's Review, Mobius, TheNewVerse.News, Poetry Quarterly, Poetrybay, Red River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Sugar Mule, THEMA and Zymbol, as well as in various anthologies including Through a Distant Lens (WriteWing Publishing) for which she received the award for best poem, and Proud to Be, for which she was a poetry finalist. Alexander's chapbook, Bridal Veil Falls, was published by Flutter Press (2013).  Recent work appears in Split Rock Review and Clementine Poetry Journal.

OCTOBER SURPRISE

by Ed Goodell

Photo: Susan Walsh/AP/Corbis via New York Magazine

a dramatic dialogue

dedicated to "Lyin’" Ted Cruz

and that "Sniveling Coward," Donald Trump

Speaker 1

Did Jupiter blink when the sun slid low

In the fall of a savage year?

Or was it something else, a weight, I fear,

That subdued what truths we did know?

Speaker 2 

Your concerns are of no concern to me,

Less real than an effervescence.

This purchase you seek bespeaks no presence –

Let us trust in fortuity!

Speaker 1

I never questioned the unintended,

Nor held certainty above chance;

But this is head-knocking, not providence:

Little fists, duress, lies tendered.

Speaker 2 

Trifles trifling! Change inevitable!

These old gods – we’d never progress!

From a future of ease you would digress,

Your plaints most plainly pitiful.

Chorus

New alliances forming, landscapes shifting,

Nestlings stay nested as trees take wing;

For November winds bring indefinite things

When the leaves are adrift and drifting.

Ed Goodell is a teacher of English and Journalism at Jakarta Intercultural School in Indonesia. When not in Jakarta, he makes his home in Olympia, Wa.