AT WAR WITH MY(USUAL)SELF OVER MTG

by Alessandra Foster

I hate her.

I’m used to hating her.

I don’t want to call forth

a loving heart that says

Everyone has some good in them.

Everyone deserves another chance.

 

Her behavior has always been disgusting.

Witness - unfortunately I did—her vile

and despicable condemnation of Dr. Fauci 

to his face. Unforgettable. Unforgiveable.

 

She’s finally doing something 

on the side of right

and I should praise her for it?

Thank her better angels—

if she has any—that she is possibly

at the start of becoming a better person?

I don’t buy it. No benefit of the doubt.

She’s had years to show me who she is.

 

I actually laughed with amazement

listening to her at the anti Epstein rally.

My sister said, of course she’s a supporter,

she’s a woman.

 

Please. Isn’t she also a mother?

Does she care with a similar passion

about the schoolchildren traumatized/murdered 

because of policies and people she supports?

 

All my life I’ve said, Nobody’s perfect.

Be grateful for any step a person takes.

Don’t expect them to support all your causes.

Don’t expect a big change all at once.

So why is my hatred for her so strong

that I see selfishness and hypocrisy

in standing up for one gender, one issue,

while condemning everyone/everything else

she has sworn to serve and protect? 

 

With another person I would say

Give credit where credit is due. 

It was courageous to oppose other MAGA’s.

But to me she doesn’t deserve women’s gratitude 

so much as she deserves to be used by them for all

they can get out of her.

After all, sometimes it takes a real bitch

to tell the scumbags where to go.

Alessandra Foster. Lifelong and long-lived reader and writer of poems. Published in Bramble, Literary Veganism, Verse-Virtual.

THREE HAIKU FOR A WEEKEND RALLY

by Renée M. Schell

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Cherry blossoms sing
Potholes, sticks, and stoplights chant
Make Lying Wrong Again

I wear a sandwich
Front and back bloom violet
Not My DicKtator

Pussy willows whip
Forget-me-nots spread like words
Hands Off Our Bodies

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection, Overtones, was published in 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, and many other journals. She was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. A Best of the Net nominee, she holds a Ph.D. in German Studies and also taught at a Title I school in San José.

JUMP TO IT

an abecedarian

by Cecile Earle

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

A grasshopper chirping and clicking his legs
by the flower pot, sees me, sits up, rolls his eyes,
“Come on,” he says to me, “A 
dictatorship is coalescing.
Even I know—Let’s call it what it is: 
Fascism. Has a stun gun turned you into statues?
Gather your forces,” he says, “Come on
humans! All of you—Yes, you too, Cecile. Now!
In this moment! Wake up! 
Jump on it! Now! You teeter! You 
know nations can explode in a flash!
Listen! All I see you doing is waving arms,
making gestures, filing papers. And still,
nothing is coming together as this 
oligarchy solidifies like a glacier. And you?
Puzzled. Positing solutions. Talk. Talk. Stuck in glue. 
Questioning as you chatter, chatter.
Rally now.
Stop them.
Time’s up! Don’t 
use now to 
veer on the side of caution!
Wake up! Democracy! Ours! Don’t let
X and his minions rule our world!
You can do it,”  the grasshopper says, as he 
zips into the garden. Waves. “See you tomorrow.”

Cecile Earle taught English at UCB and Bay Area Colleges. She also focused on Latin American affairs and social justice as editor with the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley. She has published poetry, essays, memoir, and short fiction, and she has won awards for writing on immigration, nomadic migrations in Northern Kenya, and climate change with, among others, Soul Making Keats of the National League of American Pen Women, Bay Area Poet’s Coalition, Word Peace, and the Mendocino Writer’s Conference.

THE HIGH SCHOOL BAND AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

by Martha Deed

1 The Students

Tonight!
Gigantic Rally
at Madison Square Garden 

Our high school band
invited to play

Admission Free

We will march up Eighth Ave
in a ticker tape parade

President Eisenhower in person!

We will play “Hail to the Chief”
for real

Was I playing clarinet that year?

We will play in Madison Square Garden
as sure as 
as sure as the Knicks
to entertain the crowd

Or was I playing glockenspiel?

2 The School Authorities and the Parents

We’ll let them go
even with the usual field trip worries
the bus could break down
a chaperon on the sauce
a kid throws up on the bus
or starts a fight

We shall vigorously lead the way
to a review and revision
of our immigration laws

after overcoming the fear of partisanship
we will not worry about the bomb threat
phoned to the New York Daily News
an hour before the rally began
because we won’t know about it

Four years ago
we wandered wearily
in the darkness
of a drifting war

because there is no internet to scare us bloodless
yet

we wondered how long a government
could effectively lead the free world
when it no longer commanded
the pride of its own people

We have welcomed an effective attack on inflation

Even as he speaks 

I have seen the face of our land
soil, rivers and forests
their richness and power conserved

and promises

to serve our national interest
to promote understanding in the world
to give new validity
to America’s role of leadership
in this world

they won’t remember anything he said.

3 Two days later

The letter from The White House
The letter copied for each band member
The words forgotten
The letter kept

Martha Deed’s third poetry collection Haunted By Martha was released by FootHills Publishing, July 2023. She has published ten books (poetry, mixed media, non-fiction) and ten chapbooks along with inclusion in more than 20 poetry anthologies. Individual poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Earth’s Daughters, First Literary Review—East, Shampoo, Gypsy, and many others.

FINDING HOPE

by Ron Shapiro

Festive.

Never in my life have I been to a march where everyone is smiling, singing along to the music, waving flags illuminating the space between elbow-to-elbow people of all ages.

Look to my left, women dancing. Look to my right, people hugging.

 

Is this the country I hear about on the news? Divided? Tribal?

 

None of that here. No way. No how.

 

Three mega-screens with the word Freedom surrounded with three stars on each side.

 

Above, wispy clouds and warm sun grace the day eventually evolving into a spectacular sunset of pink and orange clouds.

 

But right now, it’s a party! A celebration!

 

Good to be around so many like-minded folks. The vibe invites me to hope. 

Is that so bad?

You can’t tell me it is. No talking heads here. Just ordinary citizens being what this country could be.

 

Idealism bubbles up from the pessimism, cynicism, half empty, brokenness, anger, hatred and anything else in the raw sewage of lies and fascism.

 

Sitting now on the grass, I can only feel the deep bass shaking the earth and observe moving feet, bouncing bodies grooving with the music. I can’t help but smile. O’Jays “Love Train” rolling down the tracks of hope and love.

 

And if I look over my right shoulder, I can imagine the Washington Monument swaying a little.

 

The most alive I’ve felt during this election season. No news here; just joy of life, of being here now. Unplugged but plugged into the moment. Nowhere else I’d want to be.

 

This  place feels like a shelter from the political storm. Nothing to turn off or turn down here.

 

Just acceptance of how the country’s future could be if sanity, truth and love prevails. Nothing perfect but a baby step in the direction of King's "moral arc" of justice.

 

And should Harris win and repubs undermine some of her policy ideas, at least she will have elevated the English language.

 

Her speeches regularly use words such as hope, idealism, promise, opportunity, joy, rights, freedom, helping, raising, community, love, heroes, happiness, citizenship, compromise, love, new, forward, caring, trust, others, light and truth.

 

As someone who loves words, hearing and, yes, feeling those words at the rally yesterday emerged as one of the highlights for me. Being with 50,000 or so people immersed together in such positive language was deeply inspirational.

 

I think even Orwell would have savored the spirit of this uplifting moment.

 

And perhaps I sipped a bit too much of the celebratory kool-aid at the event.

 

But let me say that it was a delightfully sweet and tasty brew.

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, currently mentors college essay writing as well as teaches Memoir Writing through George Mason University. He has published writings in Nova Bards 23 & 24, Gatherings, Poets of the Promise, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine and twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces and Wonderings. He lives with his wife and Shanti the Cat in Reston, Virginia.

POST-ELECTION BLUES

by Peter Calder

after seeing a small rally of people in George Square, Glasgow (file photo above) following the recent election results in the UK

He says they’re
all in on it.
Every single 
bastard one.
 
They know what 
they are doing.
Death of Scotland.
That’s what he says.
 
Politicians. Scientists. 
Journalists.
All of them—
Liars.
 
A ripple of hands
startles a pigeon
and sends the flock
soaring above the square.
 
But this Rally—he says
is rewriting history.
A pocket of truth 
in a new skin suit.
 
And I guess he’s right.
It is just skin 
holding us together.
We’re all in on it.
 
The left. The right. 
The indifferent.
Every single one of us 
wrapped up in it.
 
From Westminster 
to Glasgow lies
a body, bruised 
in patches of blue.
 
It happens almost
unnoticed. The birds
loop and scatter 
on the ground.
 
An old man
tosses crumbs—
and the flock
follows.

Peter Calder is a Primary School teacher living and working in Glasgow. He is the co-founder and editor of the Hull based magazine Descent Spread and has had poetry and short stories published in various UK-based magazines.

STURGIS HERE WE COME

by Jan Chronister

“If you are a Covid-19 coronavirus and happen to miss Lollapalooza, don’t fret or make crying, boo-hoo motions with your spikes. There will be other upcoming opportunities such as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 2021 which is set to begin next week, August 6 at Sturgis, South Dakota and continue through August 15. The Sturgis Rally website says, ‘We’re spreading out wings.’ With over 500,000 people expected, that may not be the only thing that’s spreading. As I covered for Forbes last September, one study estimated that the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally caused over 260,000 new Covid-19 coronavirus cases. While you shouldn’t bank on that specific number since the study had a number of limitations that I described, it wouldn’t surprising if the 2020 Sturgis Rally did contribute to the SARS-CoV2 surges seen last Summer.” —Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes, July 31, 2021

Doesn’t matter that we did this

last year, spread the virus

cross-country. Doesn’t matter

that we will gather in bars, 

spew saliva while we shout

face to face, maskless.

Doesn’t matter that

we are unvaccinated.

What matters is that we are free,

our hogs roar down the highway,

jobs and offices forgotten. 

Doesn’t matter that small

businesses just barely caught up,

will have to close again,

students, teachers, parents

left wondering how to cope.

Consumers plan to stock up

on toilet paper, coffee, flour. 

None of this matters.

No libtards can tell us

what to do. Fauci

is evil. Masks

don’t work. The virus

was engineered by globalists

to thin the herd.

We’ll survive—

doesn’t matter who else dies.

Jan Chronister recently resurfaced and is mad that we may all have to don masks and lock down to survive. She is grateful her home is in the country in northern Wisconsin, her freezer is full, and she can always work on poems while isolated.

LAME-DUCK LIMERICK

by Patricia Mosco Holloway

Drawing by Dominic Xavier at rediff.com, November 9, 2020.

A plan to remove the stout lout:

We let him rage on, threaten, pout.

     Still valid, our tally.

     Get him to a rally.

Then all we need do?  "Lock Him OUT!" 

Patricia Mosco Holloway is a writing teacher in Denver, Colorado. She has poems published in The New Verse News, Rattle, The Ekphrastic Review, and Silver Edge.

NEEDS

by William Aarnes

At protests, mostly white crowds show how pandemic has widened racial and political divisions. —Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2020

“The seeming needs of my fool-driven land”

—W. B. Yeats, “All Things Can Tempt Me”

. . . the need to flock
to beaches, to swarm

into parks, the need
to hear a preacher

in person, to crush
together in bars . . .

the need to fear
the foreigner, to toy

with the facts, the need
to exploit the poor,

to be free of caring
about the dying . . .

the need to brandish
a weapon, to rally

in support of a fool . . .


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

CONTAGION

by Mary K O’Melveny

When dispersed, dandelion seed heads, also known as “blowballs,” can travel vast distances due to a unique morphology of the pappus, a fine hair-like material which holds the spherical seed heads and enables their wind-aided dispersal.  The pappus adapts, based on wind or air moisture, closing its plume of seeds until optimal conditions for maximum dispersal and germination occur.  

the metaphor seems right

too obvious of course

as arenas fill up with 

chanting shrieking clapping

sounds of sickness  backbeats

to our long agony

everyone in MAGA

hats or face masks   Look

to your right or your left

infection will arrive

like a dandelion’s

pappus as it sails off

carried by wind to new

meadows,  gliding down like

wartime propaganda 

hoping for fallow fields

and willing minds   there is 

no ripcord    just free fall

furtive looks  yield nothing

no obvious symptoms

everyone could carry

these germs    no one will tell

truths   everyone will shift

blame   new tears will be shed 

you cannot lock us all

up   cannot invent a

failsafe test   find a cure

hiding inside some lab 

mouse   even if we steal

back money from builders

of walls a plague still looms

dress up in your white coats

smile at your neighbors who

are about to lock their 

doors so you can’t enter

wash your hands one more time

then beg them for mercy

show them how your face mask

can repel each viral 

blast better than theirs  

tell them you have never 

seen a hot zone or helped 

a victim    promise you will

never argue about

anything important

won’t blow any whistles

tell them you are grateful 

you will not doubt again


Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

NOW THAT HE'S HAD A TASTE OF WAR

by Joan Mazza

Trump's reelection campaign is fundraising off Soleimani's killing. —Yahoo! News, January 8, 2020

He pats himself on the back for the drone
strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
We got him! he brags at another rally,
smirks while his supporters cheer, eager
for the blood of brown-skinned people.
He calls them scum, terrorists, animals,
as he called Mexicans rapists and murderers.

The old playbook is wide open, rage
fueling rage, war and more war. Poor boys
fed into the machine return in body bags
with flags. He promises to bomb cultural
heritage sites like the Golestan Palace,
or Persepolis first looted by Alexander
the Great, or Pasargadae from 600 BCE—

meaningless places for an egomaniac sans
empathy, ethics, or education. The only
sites he cares about are those he owns,
those that make money, with his name
in giant gold letters across the façade.
Would the beauty of mosques with tile
mosaics or gardens move a man who lacks

feelings for the children he separated
from parents? Nothing will pierce the heart
of a man who always gets what he wants,
who suffers no consequences for fraud
and cheating. The laws of war and human
decency do not apply to him. He’ll take
a bit of purple rubble as a memento.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and she is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Prairie Schooner (forthcoming), and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes a poem every day and is working on a memoir.

A "PERFECT" BARGAIN

by David Feela

Trump Dingell published December 20, 2019 by Rick McKee politicalcartoons.com

Feigning sincerity from the podium
in Michigan, staring straight into
the camera, our White House storyteller
fabricated a Faustian fairytale

about his role as benefactor to
the late John Dingell, a dedicated
man who occupied the U.S. House
of Representatives for sixty years.

Whether the soul arrives at birth
or tempers over time is impossible
to say, but one of these men
certainly possessed a soul,

while the other more than likely
sold his to a foreign government.

David Feela writes columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres.

LSD AT T***P RALLY

by Nate Alaska

A bronze extraterrestrial preaches to an ocean
of oscillating flesh and bright red mesh

He is deep sea indigo, scab scarlet, moss green
Phoenician purple, and labia pink

Weeping faces shift expression beneath
ripples of power and contort themselves in concert

The orchestra of discarnate beings that shouldn’t be
issues forth gentle hymns of revolution

A secret of forbidden lust dribbles from
every observable orifice with peculiar viscosity

Chanting declarations of rage summons forth
a parade of creatures from their nightmares

Millions worship together in silence at an
altar of pain beyond language or feeling

Nate Alaska is an amateur poet, author, and a student of philosophy from Chicago's Southwest suburbs. When he isn't counting syllables toward sonnets, he enjoys coffee and wine, hiking, cooking vegetarian cuisine, and practices meditation.

BEHIND TRUMP AT THE RALLY

by William Aarnes

Standing behind him,
you’re in heaven.

Not even praying
feels as righteous

as adoring him.   
The rapture of knowing     

the cameras will show you
nodding and smiling

thrills you and your wife
(in her Women for Trump tee)

more than making love.
There’s no explaining

the joy of cheering on
his cheerless babble   

but it sure beats thinking.
And, oh, yes, you’re exercising

your lethal right to loathe
the losers he derides.       


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.