A STATUE OF A GUY ON A HORSE MAKES GOOD RIP RAP

by Lyndi Bell O’Laughlin

The Robert E. Lee statue for which the "Unite the Right" rally was organized to protest its removal in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 13, 2017.  (Tasos Katopodis / EPA via The Chicago Tribune)

It makes me want to hurl myself
off a cliff.
They are still here.
With permission to be unashamed
and a hall pass from the president,
who hand feeds them Ensure
and protein bars on weekends.
They slither the streets
as if they have something new
to add to the national discourse.
Swastikas.
Confederate flags.
Once I pretended they were rats.
Annoying, but you didn’t really
see them that often.
They have been breeding in the dark,
spreading disease across sidewalks
and playgrounds.
No antibacterial soap in the world is strong
enough to cover that kind of stench.
My eyes, lately a little stunned,
cast themselves on photos
of Charlottesville. They stutter when
reporting back to the brain,
who rubs its ears, slaps its cheeks,
reaches for dilapidated walking shoes.
Dips a finger into an ink pot and
traces NO across her forehead.

Lyndi Bell O’Laughlin’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, Fall, 2017), Troubadour: An Anthology of Music-inspired Poetry (Picaroon Poetry Press, 2017), Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press, 2016), Gyroscope Review, TheNewVerse.News, Picaroon Poetry, Unbroken Journal and elsewhere. 

INSIDE THE BASKET OF DEPLORABLES

by Tanmoy Das Lala

“Basket of Deplorables” by Clay Jones, The Moderate Voice.

I.

When you read out loud
the label names, the items,
at first, writhe in shame, then
fume with rage, demand
apology next, then hiss—forking out
their scornful tongues,
multi-pronged, whetted sharp, yet
quick to cry at truths about themselves
they know not how to defend.

II.

Standing along the perimeter of
the basket’s woven toe,
the xenophobe seeks to exclude—
in the guise of security. Everyone,
a foe, barring the throng of people,
whose skins, since birth,
have worn the lucky color of snow.

III.

Each ingredient in the basket
is wrapped and tied
in translucent films
of bigotry. Their gloat
of communion stems not
from an accommodating lens
of salt-and-pepper subsistence,
but from salt alone. The pepper—
they do not care for.

IV.

Some residents of the basket
still seek to sway, that the Bible
alone can help, pray the gay away,
that who one can love is a choice
self-paving a heinous fate, and I—
the basket outsider, cling desperately
to the belief that someday love will trump hate.


Tanmoy Das Lala lives in New York City with his partner, Eric and a pea plant. His works have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Thought Catalog and Chelsea Station Magazine.