THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD IN THE DICTIONARY

by Arlene Weiner

“Tariff,” Donald Trump has said many times, “is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” —The Guardian

Tariff?
More beautiful than cerulean? 
Than mother? Than home?
 
Something Arabian
about tariff: a perfume. 
Something elaborate: a fringe. 
 
Certainly more beautiful
than beautiful, bee-yoo-tiffle.
Related to giraffe? To sheriff?
 
A herd of tariffs, say, gathers
high-hanging fruit. A tariff
with a posse protects. 
 
And yes, Arabian: Wikipedia: 
The English term tariff
derives from the French: tarif…
 
a descendant of the Italian: tariffa,
from Medieval Latin: tariffe…  
from the Ottoman Turkish…
 
borrowed from the Persian…
The Persian term derives from Arabic:
 تعريف, ta rif.
 
To riff on tariff: What if 
the English, the French, the Italians, 
the Turks, the Persians
 
had taxed foreign tongues,
policed the borders of language,
put up walls?
We’d have no tariff, no beautiful tariff.

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh. She has been a copy editor, a den mother, a Shakespeare scholar, and a member of a group developing computer-based instruction. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry: Escape Velocity, City Bird, and More. She also writes plays.

VOTING IS FAR MORE POWERFUL

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

with apologies to Emily Dickinson

Who is leading national polls?
Harris has been ahead of Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July, as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Kamala Harris: 49%

Donald Trump: 46% —BBC, October 9, 2024

 

Voting is far more powerful
Than Trump's attempt to rise.
So many times this sinking man
Attempts to reach the skies.
So push him down forever
To that abhorred abode,
Where hope and he part company—
His dreams morosely stowed.
The felon's sneering visage,
Most odious to see,

Let's shun without compunction
As an adversity.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 300 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), Politics/Letters, The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had nine previous poems in The New Verse News.