THREE YEARS SINCE JANUARY 6TH

by David Feela

Traitor Trump is a drawing by Mike Scott which was uploaded to Fine Art America on December 8th, 2022.

the rhetoric simmers
the threats rise like steam
the traitor still leading the charge
the office in florida a command post
the golf course his bunker
the tower branded by his babel 
the lies
the three years burning like acid reflux in democracy’s gut
the smell of pepper spray in everything he says
the mass deportation of his conscience  
the rumor he doesn’t have one
the constitutional disdain he swears to protect
the lies
the charisma he carries like a infected boil
the rule of law that doesn’t apply to him
the courtroom where he sits and glares
the indictments and mug shot 
the lies
the money he grifts 
the pussy he’s entitled to grab
the election he never won
the lies
the reelection he continues to rig 
the bible raised as a prop
the lies
the comb over that covers his heart

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

MEDIA SPEAKS

by Patricia Carragon

The internet is a war zone—

violence seizes eyes,

rhetoric bangs on eardrums.

Another report

shoves smoke up nostrils,

cuts vocal cords from 

speaking the truth.

The zombie apocalypse

handcuffed to take sides.

 

Justice walks

amid bombed-out cities, 

wears bandages and blood

of innocent minds—

limps on crutches,

unshielded—

determined

to breathe life back 

into the walking dead.

 

Finds Peace

trapped in the rubble—

its tattered feathers 

drip in blood and ash.

Inside its beak,

a scorched branch

of an unlived tree—

two leaves

still intact.

Patricia Carragon’s recent publications include Dreams in Hiding Anthology, Fixed and Free Quarterly, Jerry Jazz Musician, Out Loud, an LGBTQA Literary Arts Anthology (Red or Green Books), Soup Can Magazine, The Scene, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow Anthology, When Women Speak Poetry Anthology, Vol. 1, Witchery, et al. Her debut novel is Angel Fire (Alien Buddha Press). Her books from Poets Wear Prada are Meowku and The Cupcake Chronicles. She hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. 

DANGEROUS

by Dana Yost

The Globe and Mail

Excuse me

but this is dangerous

work,

writing in a time like

this, a time when words

get twisted and torn,

not believed, turned

into political device.

U don’t mind being

a political device,

but with my own words

my way,

not picked up

by a politician

and run through

a damned 

microphone

in front of 4,000

flag-waving

believers

of non-belief.

There is a man

outside on the street

wearing a stocking hat

and long-sleeved shirt

blowing hard in the afternoon

wind. Is he spying 

on someone or just sitting

on the bench

waiting for his children

to come outside?

It is sights like

this that stoke 

paranoia, of course,

in the left and the right.

But damaging a man’s

skull is something 

no one should

accept or mock

or use to rally

the charges.

It’s sad

and sickening

and a crime

and that’s what

it is and, there,

I’ve said it—a crime

fueled by rhetoric,

and the grocery clerks

and taxi drivers

in this town will

either agree

or hate me.

This is dangerous

to be a writer

today, to say

what is ugly,

to say it

plain,

to walk

on downtown

sidewalks

books lunging

out of my coat

pockets

because there

are men with guns

who don’t know

how to use them

but think they do.

Dana Yost was an award-winning daily newspaper editor and writer for twenty-nine years. Since 2008, he has published eight books and been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes in poetry. His poetry has appeared in several reviews, magazines and other publications, including previously in The New Verse News.

INSIGNIFICANT RAMBLINGS AT MIDNIGHT

by Peter Witt

My rhetoric went a pettifogging
in the wee hours
talking ad nauseam
to tired eyes
drinking milk
to sooth their ulcers
I crafted pettifoggery
which proved inconsequential
some might say piddling
adding nothing to the dialogue
laying unabsorbed
by already made up minds

I baked a trifling roast
of picayune sour grapes
with no-account measures
of over-stuffed plums
oozing with petty wisdom

I poured an elixir
of concocted alternative truths
into two-bit beakers
considered by all
to be fine Italian whine

Until it was finally over
and I could sleep

more hairsplitting
quibbling
nitpicking
pushed off
until tomorrow

Peter Witt lives in Bryan, Texas, a former university professor, writes poetry and research family history in his retirement.

SEAN DOOLITTLE JUST CAN'T GO

a poem found in the words of Sean Doolittle

Sean Doolittle decided to decline an invitation to the Washington Nationals' World Series celebration at the White House on Monday. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

I put thought into this:
I just can’t go.

It has to do with rhetoric
enabling conspiracy theories,
widening the divide.

I just can’t go.

People with those beliefs
feel empowered, feel like
they have a path. I don’t want
to hang with somebody
who talks like that.

I just can’t go.

My wife and I
stand for inclusion and acceptance,
and we work with refugees—
people from "shithole" countries.

I just can’t go.

I feel very strongly
about race relations,
the Fair Housing Act,
the Central Park Five,
Charlottesville.

I just can’t go.

My wife has two mothers
in the LGBTQ+ community
I want to show support for them.
That’s an important part of allyship.
I don’t want to turn my back on them.

I just can’t go.

My brother-in-law has autism,
How would I explain to him
I hung with somebody who mocked
a disabled reporter, the way he talked,
the way he moved his hands?

I just can’t go.

People say you should go because
it’s about respecting the office.
I think he’s done a lot of things
that don’t respect the office.

I just can’t go.

Note: This found poem, based on The Washington Post's interview with Sean Doolittle, was compiled  and organized by the Editor of TheNewVerse.News.

AND NOT THAT ONE, EITHER

by Devon Balwit

Cartoon by SIGNE WILKINSON, The Inquirer, February 13, 2019

Abrasive, ambitious, unlikable—
(truth is, you remind me of my mother,
or of those women who have “other
things to do” when I call) in short, unelectable,
no matter your platform. You remind me
of that girl in class who always scored
a point or two higher, who looked bored
when I spoke. You seem angry—
Why are you so angry all the time?
And who, if I may ask, is watching your kids
while you get uppity? Besides, bids
for President, for a place in the lime-
light should go to those with a prettier face—
(and who’d choose “pretty” for a Presidential race?)


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Fifth Wednesday (on-line), Apt, Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others.

WATER'S MEMO TO THE T***P ADMINISTRATION

by Meredith Stewart Kirkwood

We will have
what we want which is
to merge, to circle,
to never stay.
We will knock down
your wall
if we have to. We will
overtake your cities
if you don’t release us
to the sea.
We will pass over your farms,
we will seep through cracks
and expand them.

We do not mind your rhetoric.

We are not listening at all.

Meredith Stewart Kirkwood received an MFA in poetry from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Santa Clara Review, Windfall, and others. Meredith co-hosts a poetry reading series at the Lents International Farmers’ Market in Portland, Oregon.

PROSTITUTE

an anagram poem by David Spicer

For months I’ve watched Rose,
not a woman of ill repute
but a unique kind of poet,
a smooth blonde who’s a poster
girl for works of prose
she recites by rote
for the misogynist she touts
every morning. She doesn’t protest
when asked to produce tropes
glorifying him, writes riots
of rhetoric that possess a tinge of eros,
that she delivers with poise
to the cameras as though a tourist
familiar with any kind of ruse.
She holds a gold-sequined purse,
proceeds to tutor
male reporters who don’t trust
her to do anything except roust
questions in their heads they store
away, just to deprive them of a rest,
to convince herself she can pour
her special brand of suet
for them, and then stir
it, inducing a rise
from them, supplying enough rope
so they stop, think, and sort
thoughts in their sore
minds, the last step
before she fools them to posit
they have passed a test
which allows them to tour
her body that she’ll pose
for them, and instead she’ll step
forward to reveal her intellect’s tits,
an act she considers anything but trite,
but expected for her kind of prostitute.

David Spicer has had poems in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Gargoyle, Rat’s Ass Review, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, TheNewVerse.News, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Easy Street, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Prime Number, among others, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE DELEGATES

by David Feela






I’d prefer if you counted
the red, white and blue balloons
instead of politicos,
inhale the rhetorical helium


that transforms normal voices
into falsettos of hypertension,
words lost in the vast empty
ceiling of a Cleveland arena.


Try stabbing a finger
into the paunchy gut
of the next vacuous promise
inflated by rage.


Oh Ohio, all week you’ve built
a future on a platform of fear,
thinking it will rise
for the next four years.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

BILL OF GOODS

by Jill Crainshaw

Donald Trump was asked about his favorite Bible verse in a Thursday radio interview, and he responded by citing an Old Testament law that Jesus specifically repudiated. In the interview on news radio WHAM-1180 in Rochester, New York, host Bob Lonsberry asked Mr. Trump whether there was "a favorite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life, sir?" Mr. Trump responded with a Mosaic law rule an "eye for an eye," mentioned in several books, most prominently Exodus 21 . . . Unfortunately, an "eye for an eye" is one of the few Mosaic Law verses that Jesus singled out in the Sermon on the Mount as overcome, by the New Covenant that His death and resurrection would seal. "You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil: but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other," Jesus says in the famous sermon Matthew 5. —RawStory, April 14, 2016. PHOTO: A billboard cartoon of Donald Trump being promoted by The Community of Saint Luke church in Auckland, New Zealand. CREDIT: The Community of Saint Luke via The Christian Post.

“What am I bidden, good folks,” he cried.
“Who’ll start bidding for me?”
That’s the pitch
perfect (if we believe perceptions of perfection’s
promiscuous promise)
prophetic
perhaps
poetic.
“Do I have a deal for you!”
Rhetoric reiterated until routinized
galvanized
disguised
“sharpened to a single atom” to slice,
dice,
overprice
what’s selling today
stolen tomorrow
sold again the next day.
“An eye for an eye.”
“Who’ll make it two?”
The feverish double-edged sword flashes
blinding glint
binds unsuspecting hearts and minds on
the auction block. Never
mind the cost. “Sold to the highest bidder.”

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Her poems have appeared in *82 Review and Five Magazine and in an anthology by Wicwas Press.

HOW WE ARGUE NOW

by  Michael Mark

When my wife does something I don’t like
I tell her I'm building a wall
from the dining room through the kitchen,
splitting our bed—
that it’s going to be the best wall ever
and she's going to pay for it.
She tells me she's going to throw me out in the cold
without a coat.
When she asks how was my day at work,
I say I told my boss I want to punch her right in the face,
and you?
She says her boss was mean to her
and he looked like he was bleeding from his eyes,
bleeding from everywhere.
When we compare paychecks she calls me a total loser.
I say I have more friends than her on Facebook
and that’s like a poll proving I am a better person.
She tells me I’m sloppy and by picking up after me
she is making our disgusting awful home great again.
When I see our credit card bill—how much
she spends on heat and water, I say she is stupid
and makes terrible, stupid, horrible, the worst deals.
When the grass needs mowing, she says
I’m the lawn establishment and I get nothing done.
I say I haven’t seen our marriage certificate -
I don’t believe we are married and I’m sending her
back to her parents.
She says that my hands are small.
I say for saying I have small hands I will shoot her
with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
She says she could shoot me dead in our driveway
and our friends and family would still love her
and vote her world’s greatest, friend, mom,
daughter, even daughter-in-law.
I sulk about the small hands comment.
She slides over to my side of the bed.
We broker a deal because we are flexible.


Michael Mark’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Gargoyle Magazine, The New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Prelude Magazine, Poet Lore, Rattle, Spillway, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net.

THE ALL-TOO COMMON CORE

by David Southward

Son, you must learn to take a side
and cling to it with stubborn pride.
Your options are narrowed down to two.
Here’s a map: red state or blue?

Whichever one you pick, have fun
demolishing the other one.
Proclaim its leadership unfit;
its policies, a load of shit;
its followers, Neanderthals.
Don’t be timid.  This takes balls!

If by chance the other team
should rise in popular esteem,
insist their views are really yours
repackaged in new metaphors.
Since anything you say must be
reported on objectively,
it’s rhetoric that rules the roost.
“Truth” is any mass-produced
opinion on the internet.
And if you should misspeak?  No sweat.
The stupidest thing a man could say
can be re-spun, so spin away!

If your team drops the ball, take heart:
Employ the finger-pointing art
to slyly redirect the blame
and start a he-said she-said game.                        
When all else fails, your last resort                        
is to cry foul before the court.
And if there’s no hope in the law,
appoint a judge to find its flaw.
Pull the judicial switcheroo
and make our system work for you!

There’s just one rule you must abide:
NEVER give the other side
a speck of credit for being right.                            
It shows you’ve given up the fight.

And should your children scratch their heads
at all this dog-eat-dog bloodshed,
teach them why nobody gets along:
The other side is always wrong.


David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and is forthcoming in The Lyric.