MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

by Jerome Betts

Theresa May has announced that she will resign on June 7, 2019.

The Brexit poisoned chalice
Releases bile and malice
While people, pub to Palace,
   Ask what on earth it means.

But now, to add confusion,
With her plan proved mere illusion
May's reign has reached conclusion
   So they plot behind the scenes.

Her power in transition
Sees the country facing fission
And has triggered mad ambition
   In buffoons and drama queens.

Referendum or election
To stop Britain's vivisection
And its chronic misdirection
   As it plays out on our screens?


Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus,  TheNewVerse.News, Better Than Starbucks, Parody, Per Contra, and Snakeskin.

SUNFLOWERS

by Ed Madden

for Dónal, Dublin, May 2015

At dinner in Dublin only days before
the vote, a friend told a story about
being on the 13 crosstown bus,

carrying a bunch of sunflowers for Gary.
He was wearing his Tá Comhionannas pin.
A drunk began to harass him, snatched

at the flowers, pulled off the head of one.
He said the Dublin grannies on the bus
got the driver to throw the fellow off

at the next stop. One picked up
the broken flower, returned it to him, saying
something about his girlfriend.  When he replied

that the flowers were for his boyfriend, he said,
the whole bus seemed to be filled
with grannies talking about the referendum—

all the rest of the way all the Irish
grannies telling me they’re voting yes.
Oh, to be on that bus.


Ed Madden is an associate professor of English and director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of South Carolina.  He is the author of 4 books of poetry -- Signals, Prodigal: Variations, Nest, and Ark (to be published spring 2016).

SCOTLAND FOREVER

by Mary McLean






As we drove home from Edinburgh

following the Fringe,

romantic jingoism sparked

a Scottish music binge.



Our CD player blasted out

the Corries' famous song

putting Proud Edward in his place,

and we both sang along. 



We chose Proclaimers' Greatest Hits

to carry on the mood,

neglecting to eject the Corries

first. Now both are screwed.



The Corries, on the bottom, we

can listen to; but then,

no more CDs will ever ever

ever play again.



Think about it, Scotland, in

the coming referendum.

A Yes vote might feel satisfying

now, with the momentum



of national pride; you'll still have oil;

you'll win some golds at curling;

but do you want to live your lives

stuck On the Brig o' Stirling?


Mary McLean grew up outside Washington DC and now works as a scientist at the University of Cambridge. Her poems have appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Light and Lighten Up Online.