BE BEST

by Beth McKim

I am the most bullied person on all the world.

And so is my husband, your President.
We are more bullied than the gays, the trans people,
 the blacks, the rapists and murderers from Mexico, the Jews,
(like my step-daughter and her husband.)
We are even more bullied than the mentally handicapped,
than those who aren’t beautiful models like me,
 the poor without pretty clothes or houses,
and people who speak only one language, not like
me who speak five and make my husband proud.

All of you watch me, every move I make.
You don’t like what you saw
when I went to see the immigrant children
in cages at the border of Texas, I wear a coat that say,
I don’t care, do you? Or when I wear my Manolo Blahnik
stilettos to Houston to say hello to the victims of the flood .

Or my white safari suit and stylish Pith helmet
when I go to Africa to visit the  children in one of the shithole
places my husband doesn’t like. You say I look like Imperialist.
I don’t know what that is and I don’t care.
I went to do good and look good.

You see me when I slap my husband’s
hand away, when he won’t open my car door, when
he keeps his umbrella only for himself when it rains, when I
don’t ride in car with him to State of the Union address.

I don’t think it’s fair I should live like this when I never wanted
this job, just like my husband. We should not be bullied
or made fun of. And that is why I have made my only job
to Be Best, stop the hate on social media, make all bullies
stop doing it except for my husband.
He has the right to do this because he is your President.

Beth McKim watches our world with daily astonishment as to what our country has become. Unlike the lady in her poem, Beth is neither wealthy nor a beautiful model and only speaks one and a half languages. She is, however, an actress and a writer and her work appears regularly in niche publications, including on a couple of occasions, the TheNewVerse.News. She reads NVN religiously and is amazed on a daily basis by the insightful poetry that helps us all weather the storms of politics today.

BEYOND THE NEW WORLD

by Mark Tarren

Image Source: Africa Geographic Magazine

"Shithole' remark by Trump makes global headlines—but it doesn't quite translate” —The Guardian, January 13, 2018

The old man sits before
the night sky,
a canopy of tiny crystals.

His grandson seated beside him
this small boy,
a jewel in his ancient shadow.

His wisdom speaks before him
like dust to the stars,
the boy was born
in the land before language
before the tongues of men
where a dune or a palm
was called after a lover
or a neighbour’s house
something loved from the past,
where there was no word for dawn
no words for the moon or the stars
or tears on skin
or eyes on maps

or country,
nothing to lose in translation.

The old man answered the boy’s silence:

I have seen many kings from the west fall,
their thrones crumble
and drift out to sea
the ripples from their empty voices
never reach our shores.

My son, we live in the land without words
this dull ache, this darkness
they call fear
sank into the ground like rain
an age ago
a forgotten song that only sometimes
wails in the winds.

Hate is a roar that was silenced
in the smile lined eyes
of our fathers.

Hunger is a song thief;
we dance in the bounty
of our one shared heart.

The word for our people
was birthed inside your mother
like birdsong,
before you were born,
before there was a word for
the colour of our skin,
before the word for memory,

before she left for The New World.

Mark Tarren is a poet and writer based in Queensland, Australia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals  including TheNewVerse.News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press and Spillwords Press.