BLADING

by Daniel Romo

Abdullah the Butcher

The politician wasn’t struck in the assassination attempt

and only his ear was grazed, but the trickle of his blood caused

          half the country to cry, Hero!

          and the other half to yell, Staged!

though no one can deny 

octogenarians are more brittle bones 

than bulletproof, and 

all’s fair in love and reward.

 

There are those who claim we never landed on the Moon 

and those who maintain the Earth is flat,

yet that doesn’t change the fact that 

           Abdullah the Butcher 

secretly sliced his forehead with a razorblade during matches 

in the days when wrestling was supposed to be 

                     considered real,

and his blood poured down onto his opponents 

like a christening for non-believers in the crowd 

at a baptism rooted in amusement      

and self-mutilation.

 

My dad didn’t initially recognize me as I visited

him and my mom this weekend

and blamed it on his cataracts.

And while that may be the cause,

I clearly see what’s to come 

for us all. 

 

When a platform is based upon pretending 

and failure to acknowledge that it’s not true sport 

but entertainment,

who could blame the public’s skepticism 

when a former president is clipped by a sniper 

and seconds later raises his fist to Heaven

as if not giving praise, but 

milking the most out of 

                                life’s misses?

 

I’m sure the candidate will still be able to hear 

from his right ear 

but never listen.

 

I’m sure my dad will continue to deny

the natural by-products of his age

 

because lies build like

scar tissue piled up upon skin,

like fresh dirt piled upon 

graves. 

Daniel Romo is half curve ball, half prose poem, half bodega. Proof at danieljromo.com.

UNDER

by Jenna Le

Political Art is a painting by Gull G

Under the politician's monument,
there was a grub twisting in the topsoil,
and a topsail from an ancient ship
folded nine times,
and a mole with pale human-like fingers
prodding a tree root,
and under this,
a chest seething with stolen coins,
and an aquifer dank with depleted water,
and a cave system beading on for miles
and miles, and a vein of gold ore,
and a cache of diamonds, and a hoard
of sapphires, and under this,
a corpse moaning the name of its child.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011),  A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. 

KAKISTOCRACY

by Susan Terris

THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE ABOUT THIS IS TO USE ALL

CAPS FOR THE RAGE I FEEL ABOUT HAVING A GOVERNMENT

 

FILLED WITH INLAWS. EX-LOBBYISTS, STOOGES AND A PRESIDENT

WHO IS UNQUALIFIED FOR THE JOB. IT’S THE WORST OF

 

THE WORST. My husband, who has left this world, used 

to say what we needed as a president was not 

 

a politician but a businessman. I may have to dig under

the birch tree to find his ashes and try to tell them 

 

just how wrong he was.

Susan Terris’ recent books are Familiar Tense (Marsh Hawk) 2019; Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn) 2017, Memos (Omnidawn) 2015; and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She's the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and one play.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest chapbook is Dream Fragments, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

QUID PRO . . . WHAT?

by George Salamon

We can't tell a quid when we hear it,
but we can spot a quo when we don't.

Quid and quo were conceived as twins,
now nobody can tell which is which.

A man asks for a quo by offering a quid,
unless it's a politician caught in the act.

If a quid can be without a quo,
a quo can exist without a quid.

For our leaders faith is the same as proof,
and Tweedledee one with Tweedledum.

George Salamon contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, One Sentence Poems and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.

MUSINGS ON A LINE BY REDD FOXX

two triolets
by Julie Steiner

"Trump finally calls Waffle House hero." —Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2018

"'I'm Not A Hero,' Says James Shaw Jr., Acclaimed As Hero Of Waffle House Attack." —NPR, April 23, 2018

"Trump on Florida shooting: 'I really believe I'd run in there, even if I didn't have a weapon.’" —CNN, February 26, 2018


Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
They say, “I wasn’t brave!
I had no choice,” when honored.
Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
What accolades they’ve garnered,
they claim they don’t deserve.
Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
They say, “I wasn’t brave.”

That puffed-up politician
who claims heroic courage
and lack of hesitation—
that puffed-up politician—
has trademarked truth-distortion.
Disgusted, I disparage
that puffed-up politician.
(Who claims heroic courage?)


Julie Steiner rolls her eyes in San Diego, California.

THE SKELETON RIDES SHOTGUN

by Charlotte Jones

Deathocracy Mask

The night arrives,
that single night of the year,
when the sleigh
pulls free of the underworld,
dragged through the ether
by hellhounds
reined and guided
by the unholy ghost
while the skeleton rides shotgun.

The mission is not to
distribute gifts to
undeserving children,
but to harvest the souls
of those who have bargained
with the devil—
the proud,
the greedy
the politician
who takes away
the rights of the masses.
Their souls in exchange
for power and dominion
over the poor, the weak,
the unsuspecting.

They walk among us,
smug in their undetectability.
You see them on the nightly news,
read about them in the papers,
they sometimes run for president
and rarely, very rarely
they wind up in jail.

But rest assured,
hell awaits.

Charlotte Jones writes poetry and flash fiction in Houston, TX.  Her work has appeared in over eighty literary and commercial magazines including The Bellevue Literary Review, Nerve Cowboy and Barbaric Yawp which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize.  When not writing, she loves to travel, golf, sing and play the piano.

IT IS DRIZZLING HEAT

by Martin Willitts Jr

NEW DELHI—The death toll from the blistering heat wave in India exceeded 2,000 on Sunday as weather officials said the sweltering conditions would persist for another four or five days. —WSJ, May 31, 2015

It was ninety degrees with humidity topping a hundred,
and the heat felt atrocious
until reading it was one hundred and twenty-two in India
where the roads had melted.

Here the haze was merely white blossoms of agony,
and the residue of moisture disappears before forming.
In India, their minds must have been cooking
and their eyes must feel like frying while sleeping.

Some politician denies climate change
and car tires in India explode overheating.
Somewhere night promises more heat for tomorrow.
Politicians must have air conditioners hearts.

The angry god of furnaces depletes water to bone.
Somewhere a rich person wonders about the fuss.
Comparatively speaking, I have it good to India.
Politicians have assured me heat is my imagination.


Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian. His poems have appeared in Blue Fifth Review, Stone Canoe, Centrifugal Eye, The New Verse News, and others. He has 8 full length collections of poetry and over 20 chapbooks including his social issue chapbook City Of Tents (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2014). His forthcoming full length collection, God Is Not Amused What You Are Doing In Her Name (Aldrich Press) should cause a ruckus or two.

NEW DARK AGE

by Richard Schnap

A crowd in Selma, Alabama before the historic March 1965 march. Photograph by STEVE SCHAPIRO, “The Long Road from Selma” in The New Yorker, 22-29 December 2014.

I hear the cry

Of a distant siren

Wondering if it will bring

A mother to tears

And I hear the words

Of a holy man’s sermon

Instructing small children

On the best ways to kill

And I hear the testimony

Of a fat politician

Saying that those tortured

Got what they deserved

And I hear the ticks

Of a madman’s clock

Moving with precision

Backwards in time

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

MAYBE SANDY IS ANOTHER NAME FOR KARMA

by Ngoma

some say they should have
named her karma
i'm not sure
if she was a conspiracy theory,
or an act of god
bible thumpers called her
a revelation
a halloween trick or treat
a politician's opportunity disguised as disaster
some claim it was punishment for sin
but churches were flooded too
steeples and oak trees in the wind
proof that global warming deniers can't ignore
we could say I told you so
and maybe this is a wake up call
as roller coaster rides are buried in the flood
and marathoners take up hotel space
while many victims have no food
or a place to lay their heads
bodies still being found
in flooded burnt out homes
with no escape by subways
filled with water like underground cesspools
as Jamie Curtis talks about survival kits on Jay Leno
and tells us to donate money to the Red Cross
yet to show up in Mount Vernon
with gas lines around the block
for gas stations that are empty
meanwhile the major news media
act as though disaster only happens in america
as the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba
are ignored by major media
and there is no FEMA to guarantee votes for Obama on election day
suddenly we see what it may be like to live in a 3rd world country
where lack of gas and electricity is an everyday experience
and half the world is a disaster area
waiting for a relief concert to raise funds
that would not be needed if the wealth was redistributed
and warnings of global warming had been heeded


Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka's Spirit House Movers and Players and of the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry and songs that raise contradictions and search for a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review, Bum Rush The Page/Def Jam Anthology, Poems On The Road To Peace (Yale Press) and Let Loose On The World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. Family Festival of Environmental and Social Justice (Yale University, New Haven, CT) since 1996. He was a selected participant in the Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Cape Town, South Africa in fall of 2009. In December of 2011 he was initiated as an Obatala Priest in Ibadan, Nigeria.