A BRIDGE TOO FAR

by Karen Warinsky

A protestor entered his fourth day atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. Guido Reichstadter remained on top of the bridge as of 4:35 p.m. Monday and told WUSA9 that he would spend another night there. He also indicated that he ran out of food on Saturday and water on Monday morning.

If you shout your sorrow

from a mountain top 

will the wind take your voice

throw it into empty caves

through the standing trees?

 

If you climb a high bridge

cast a symbol of that sorrow

from the crown

a black cloth 

flying in protest

saying, “not in my name”

to war

to inhumanity

to school girls obliterated at their desks

to a president’s threat to 

annihilate an ancient civilization,

to the locomotive of AI 

tearing across the land,

will anyone hear?

 

May Day.  May Day.

 

The protester speaks of conscience, soul and duty

but the MAGA reporter in her blood red dress

counters with the evils of Iran;

how they murder their own citizens

have killed Americans.

He agrees, “It’s awful,”

but she is incredulous

at his desire for peaceful change

barks questions through crimson lips

as night surrounds him

a thousand feet in the air

his answers delayed by the wind

buffeted back by her commitment 

to make him wrong

make him look crazy

her commitment to more war.

Karen Warinsky, Best of the Net Nominee and Coordinator of Poets at Large, is the author of four collections including Dining with War and Beauty & Ashes.

QUIET, PIGGY

by Ron Shapiro

Words that carry me back to a deserted island

where a group of schoolboys tried to survive 

as a civilized community without adult supervision

were the words the bully in the bully pulpit used

to silence a female reporter who asked a question

about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

 

Right out of Golding’s novel, this country’s leader

is our Jack Merridew, a boy who relishes a life of

no rules, uncouth rhetoric and violence. His passion

centers on killing a pig. To accomplish this, he dons

a mask of savagery and attacking anyone who gets

in his way. Far from being a responsible leader,

 

Like our bully, Jack’s id controls his behavior. 

In seeking his prey, whether a pig or Piggy, the 

group’s intellectual, he lets the signal fire go out.

The boys’ main chance of being rescued no longer

important to Jack’s purpose of creating chaos.

 

In the novel’s climactic scene after Jack steals Piggy’s

glasses, a symbol of his ability to ‘see’ the downfall of

this civilized and democratic microcosm of society,

Piggy leads the last boys to Castle Rock, the setting

of Jack’s fort, in order to retrieve his glasses.

 

At that point, Piggy utters the book’s central questions:

“What are we civilized or savages? Which is better---

to have rules and agree or to hunt and kill?” With

the launching of a huge boulder from the mountaintop,

Piggy’s fate is doomed. All hope for democracy is lost.

 

Piggy’s question, like that of the reporter’s, followed by

the bully’s misogynistic, curt reply echoes Golding’s.

“Quiet, Piggy,” poses the same question about Amerika

as her shining light dims to a flicker. Sadly, in these times, 

a country being hi-jacked, held hostage by fear, offers silence. 

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.

DEL’ MONOCLE TALES

by R Longfield

AI-generated graphic for The New Verse News by Shutterstock

Prologue

In the monthe of March, as the Ides blew colde,
Climbers of Capitol Hille, younge and olde,
And woerkers of the grate howse whyte would meet,
Their sorrows to drowne with wynes so strong and sweet,
Or bourbon’s amber anodyne in glass,
To make all sadness and trouble quickly pass.
Del’Monocle was called this wondrous place,
With its olde-tyme feel and ambient grace,
And I as the host of these raconteurs,
Their stories I will attempt to preserve.
The first, a staffer, an assistant younger,
In the grate howse whyte, so demure in tongue,
Yet so strong and brave in manner of speech,
Her spirit of golde let no man impeach.
Then, was an intern of the people’s howse,
Fair of face and hair, but a flitter-mouse,
Paled in comparison to what she heard,
Oh how she did clingge to every word.
A reporter of news was in their midst,
His drinkes, the strongest, and always a twiste,
Just like his stories and searches for truthe,
His favorite remedy was in vermouthe.
A cooke was among those in this party,
His laugh was loud, his appetite hearty,
For Oysters, Manhattans, and Cowboy steaks,
His favorite saying was, “Them’s the breaks.”
Next to the reporter, a Fixer sat,
His clothing was dark, his demeanor flat,
His eyes looked downe, his vicissitudes were blacke,
As if a large target were attached to his backe.
Beside the Fixer sat an Aesthetician,
Whose countenance was far from patrician,
Her language was flowery, to say the least,
While comparing her client to a beaste.
An ancient Senator joined them later,
Upon his escape from the high chamber,
Flaccid was his face of whyte, thin, his haar,
His half-pied clothes, from no Haberdasher,
Behind him a ladye from Georgia, faire,
With bleached wyhte teethe and badly tinted haar,
Many were her tayles of conspiracies,
Laysers from spayce and other such theories.
Last in the group, an insurrectionist, 
His convictions stronge, a long, written listed,
With grievances many, his anger and rayge,
Spewed forth from his mowth, discretion uncaged.

All of these pilgrims here rested awhile,
Each told a tale with various style,
Before heading home or travelling south,
To kisseth the ring of the man with the mowth.
The man with the mowth and the bright orange fayce,
Their object of worship, some seen as disgraced,
At least, this is what was told me tonighte,
Their tales I recount here as best I might,
Read on as you please, with scorne or delighte.

R Longfield was born in Atlanta but has lived nearly all her life in Southern California. She believes in magic and the power of laughter to bring tyrants and buffoons down to size. Down to an extremely small size.

LIANG XIANGI AND I

by Devon Balwit

She rolled her eyes, and then she was gone. Liang Xiangyi, who raised her eyebrows and turned away from a fellow journalist who was asking a servile question during China’s choreographed National People’s Congress on Tuesday, has not been seen or heard from since. —The Sunday Times, March 17, 2018

Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady!

my grandmother would thunder, underscoring

her message with a smack of a firm palm

against my cheek. Fake-meek, I lowered lids

against hot embers and dumped my dirty dishes

in the sink. I’ve still not learned, giving in

to the eye roll just the other day when confiscating

the exam of a young man who swore

he wasn’t cheating even though his phone screen

glowed with the very words being tested.

Or when Rubio faulted Obama’s relaxing

of discipline for our most recent spate

of school shootings. I wasn’t alone

in registering disbelief at the bad faith,

eyes looping like memes. It’s hard to give

nothing away, disgust ripe in one’s nostrils.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.