DID YOU SEE AN INFANTILE, JUVENILE FLIGHT OF FANCY?

by Raymond Nat Turner

"The List Is Long" by Nick Anderson

Did you see signs by victims of 

One Big Beautiful Bank Job

Showing up in mighty millions, 

Flexing Power Of The People?

Did you see frightened juvenile, AI-generated content—

In response?

Did you see the fecal Führer’s fascist flight of fancy—the

Diapered dictator dropping dreck, Making America Grate Again?

Did you see them go from Government Shutdown 

To government shit-down—lousy, loose stool 

Luftwaffe flooding the Zone with elephant excrement—

Making America Grate Again?

Did you see power of the numerically mighty People

Scare fascists shitless—into fertilizing

New crops of activists, militants and revolutionaries

Growing robust—exponentially and urgently!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

by Tammy Smith

Art by Clay Jones

One of the slyest tricks
the mind’s eye knows:
to seal itself shut.
Save face.
Mask up.

Some say good can come
from a shutdown.
Maybe true for the sleep-deprived,
near collapse, knees buckling—

but for the rest of us, harder
to measure the loss:
empty offices, national parks,
stalled paychecks,
parties brawling over healthcare
without fanfare,
without conscience,
in crowded waiting rooms,
filling out the same damn forms.

Blank spaces, blank stares.

A shutdown is an ill-timed rest—
every blink, another verdict
against the people forced to sleep
without the aid
of their American dream.

Tammy Smith is a New Jersey–based poet and licensed clinical social worker. Her poems have been published in ONE ART, The New Verse News, Grand Little Things, Merion West, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

ORANGE LINE SHUTDOWN, DAY ONE

by Chad Parenteau

Now comes the latest upheaval for the [Boston’s] weary commuters: a complete 30-day shutdown of the Orange Line, the area’s second most-traveled subway line, which typically provides 101,000 passenger trips a day from Boston’s southwest neighborhoods through its downtown core and into Somerville, Medford and Malden, three cities to the north. Transit officials announced the shutdown after a series of safety problems on the T, as the region’s transit system is known, including an Orange Line train that caught fire in July while on a bridge, prompting one rider to jump into the Mystic River below. —The New York Times, August 23, 2022

First of trainless

thirty days, possibly

preluding forever.

 

Slower busses

bound for Mattapan

might have chance

 

to shine, if not for

oversized shuttles

to Copley Square

 

pushing commerce

first, blocking last

gasps of commute.

 

Newspaper calls it

“Orange Crush’

because if officials

 

could tighten belts,

poke extra holes,

make new notches,

 

stretch bodies further

from city’s center,

they already would.

 

Forrest Hills remains

quiet as crematorium,

ashen holdovers already

 

gone from benches.

Nobody wants to be

left further behind.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

SPACE AVAILABLE

by Sharon Olson

They call it the landscape of fear,
the sense that humans are near,
ears pricked to catch the menace
of car engines, commerce unabated.

So the deer were always nearby,
watching for safe spaces, as if
they might be able to read
the stickers on library doors.

The map has now been redrawn,
if the foxes can come out of hiding,
say the deer, then so can we,
nobody seems to be stopping us.

We are now hosting a family of deer,
our yard a new venue for outdoor dining,
our menu of specials features straight-up
hostas, day lilies, rosehips for dessert.

In dark of night, though, a new creature
has joined the neighborhood menagerie,
squirrels and mice beware, the fisher cat
pierces the silence with its strangling call.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian who lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

AT A CONCERT BEFORE THANKSGIVING

by David Chorlton

Security forces stood guard on Rue des Bouchers, a street famous for its restaurants, on Monday in Brussels. Credit Stephanie Lecocq/European Pressphoto Agency via NY Times, Nov. 23, 2015

What happens far away
is audible in the pause
between movements:
                  the silence
of a transit system stilled, the rustling
curtains when somebody looks out
at troops in the street, asking
       does anyone appear suspicious?
              does anyone not?
The world stretched taut as a wire
ready to snap,
            ready to snap,
with cities shut down
and the news ticker telling us
to stay calm,
           stay calm,
the bomb is in our minds,
and it is,
      where nobody knows
               how to defuse it.


David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book, A Field Guide to Fire, is his contribution to the 2015 Fires of Change exhibition in Flagstaff, Arizona.

TRICK OR TREAT

by David Feela

“My my, and what are you supposed to be?”
“A congress people.”
“That’s precious!  And how did you come up with such a cute idea?”
“My daddy told me to say it.”
“Wouldn’t your daddy help you make a costume?”
“He didn’t do nothing.”
“What a wonderful way to inspire creativity!  How old are you?”
“Eight.”
“How funny!  I know members of congress that won’t survive half as long.”
“Why?”
“Well, little one, it’s because they’re like your daddy.”
“Are they fat?”
“I suppose some are, but mostly they’re just lazy.”
“What’s lazy?”
“Lazy means they want candy for doing nothing.”
“I want candy.”
“Of course you do.  Here, take all you can grab with your grubby little hands.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.  Better yet, take the entire bag.  And here’s my wallet, my credit cards, plus the keys to my house and car.  Take it all.”
“Gee, you’re a nice lady.”
“Yeah, now scram!  I’ve got to shut off the lights and pretend I’m a Democrat.”


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.

THE STRANGENESS OF PARTS WE DID NOT SEE

by Tricia Knoll

What did we not see when
he bought a simple rope,
at very large box store
   testing hemp for stretch, for breaking point?

and when he took it home and wound it
   around the brass bedpost, then around the newel
   on his stairway and leaned
   back as if water skiing on carpet

or when he showed it to his neighbor
   bragging about what a good rope
   it would be for all kinds of purposes
   at a fair price

and when he scolded the dog for chewing
  the end of it before he wrapped
  that end in duct tape to preserve integrity

then when he climbed the stairs
  to the dusty attic and shook his
  head at the wicker bird cage and
  the gray luggage his mother carried
  for thirty years,  filled with yellow
  linens and birth certificates

and he pushed that all aside,
  and took out the maple stool
  his sister had used for milking
  or said she once used for milking
  he wasn’t sure

and then he hung the noose
   from the debt ceiling, bragging to the dog
   that he could hang him too
   if the mutt didn’t stop nipping heels
   and scratching at the door

and how was it that the first responders
   arrived seconds before he kicked
   that stool out from below his noose?


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.

WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE OWNED BY

by David Plumb

Slip on the Bible of your dreams
The organ will play and for a few short minutes,
perhaps America can fake attentiveness
between the wafer and the wine, the signs,
the blessings, perhaps a sacred universe,
a digression to quieter times,
of ruthless crucifixions,
promises of renewal, awakening,

While today fades in newsworthy bombs,
the theft of America’s wallet,
change chanted again and again
with working, unemployed Americans,
reaching for something, somewhere
beyond the weekend off, or the howling,
drooling, speculating, electrically magnified news,
wheedling, and gnawing at the remotes,
the hearts, the very strings of the sweet harp
we thought we heard in the clouds.


David Plumb’s latest fiction book is A Slight Change in the Weather. He has worked as a paramedic, a cab driver, a, cook and tour guide. A long time San Francisco writer, he now lives in South Florida . 

THANKS FOR YOUR SERVICE, SUCKER!

by Tim Connelly

Image source: CNN

The head guy at the VA says
he won’t be able to send checks out
if Congress doesn’t end the shutdown.
Overwhelmed with fear.
It turned into an angry day.
I don’t like angry days.
I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
PTSD is an anxiety disorder
and the anxiety is in full bloom.
Republicans (yes, republicans) have created a stressor,
and I don’t appreciate it.
I called my doctor at the VA
and told her I’m being used as a pawn
in this political game.
A pawn in Vietnam,
and again expendable.
Don’t "Thank me for my service."
on one day
and then screw me
on the next day.
What are you going to say to me on Veterans Day
when I can’t pay my bills?


Tim  Connelly has been a soldier, a reporter, and without a home. He now has a home and has discovered poetry as a way of expressing his feelings about war, poverty and the human condition.

SHUTDOWN

by Sara Berkeley

Image source: nationalparks.org

The day the government shut down
the ocean showed up for work.
They put some barricades up
but waves kept coming in, unfazed.
The toilets were locked
and the barricades went up
to stop the people coming in to the park
but we went early, before they closed
the National Seashore, and I can attest
that the seals and the pelicans
and the small fish and the birds that eat them
kept coming back for more.

The waves were giving it their all,
rending the heart of the beach in two,
throwing their violent weight around
while Congress ran aground;
the rush of foam and fuming toil
of the wind blowing spume back
from the crests as loud as the silence
along the corridors of power,
the sand hot beneath our feet,
the water silvery gold, the gulls
laughing and crying as we were
laughing and crying too.

Pelicans flew as low as they dared
we reckoned they hadn't heard
that the government was hung -
hoist by its own petard -
that they'd put some wooden barriers up
to stop the tourist cars
from visiting the National Seashore
while well beneath the roar of the breakers
tearing up the shale
and the keening wail of the gulls
the day was a good day, ungoverned,
lovely, full of miracles.


Sara Berkeley was born and raised in Ireland. She has had five collections of poetry published, one of short stories, and a novel. She has been widely anthologized, including in the Harvard University Press An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, daughter, dog, cat, guinea pig, and varying numbers of fish. When she is not writing poetry, she is a nurse for traumatic brain injured patients. She is well ready for the shutdown to end.

THE CRISIS 2013

by George Held

Safe in gerrymandered districts
House Tea Partiers vie
To end the democratic process
Through calumny and lies.

Hateful of our President
And much in love with Cruz
Tea partiers set new precedent
For filibustered schmooze.

Ask not what to do for country
But just for Red State views –
Pro-gun, pro-life, and anti-tax
And poor and migrant crews.

Safe in gerrymandered districts
Untouched by Reason
And wed to right-wing cliques
Tea Partiers foment treason

And call it Constitutional;
While liberals quake and quail
And cry, “Delusional!”
The nation lies derailed.


An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com

THE DIMINISHING MONUMENT

by Daniel Patrick Roche

An ivory mockery of King erected
in the shadows of two slave owners
and the Great Emancipator.
Carved in a foreign land
erected with scab labor
it is a monument--
to Establishment ignorance
rather than to the man himself.

The misunderstanding of its subject
carved upon its walls.
"I was a drum major for justice,
peace and righteousness.”
And then later chipped away,
corrected, like a poor student
unwilling to parade his ignorance.

King died defending workplace dignity.
He is not memorialized by hard white rock
hewn from the earth by exploited peoples
working in unsafe working conditions
for substandard pay, if the pay ever comes.
His legacy is diminished by it.
Go, shutter the Mall.
Hide this porcelain disgrace
from the eyes of workers
furloughed during the pissing match
after five years of frozen wages.
Perhaps they will remember the man
when this graven image is out of sight.


Daniel Patrick Roche is a political organizer and writer living in Northern California. An alumnus of UC Berkeley, he has worked for Nevada for Change, Joe Sestak for Senate, and Diego Bernal for San Antonio City Council District 1.

I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU

by Rick Gray




                               
                       for Tony Hoagland


When real people shut down
their children go hungry
their lovers split
and they die or beg
between the simmering gridlock.

Or maybe they go rogue and
Invest in the promising heroin boom
to keep people fine with
Shut Downs.
But I've got news for you, Mr. Cruz,

even the junkies on the clogged riverside
here in Kabul----remember there?-------
know things shut down don't stop, they rot
and you'll need to score soon, brother, or feel
the shut down in your aching nerves

every fiscal second.


Rick Gray teaches in Kabul. He has work forthcoming in Salamander and the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock.

MIDNIGHT

by Catherine McGuire

They stand at their podiums –
empty voices in empty chambers –
they might as well be on different planets.
Maybe they are.
The words spoken earnestly
repeated, re-tweeted, their mantras
pass through each other like fumes,
like dogs barking, like that chill
of someone walking on your grave.
Meanwhile, the country folds flat
like a house of cards collapsing.


Catherine McGuire has had almost 300 poems published in venues such as: Adagio, Avocet, Folio, Fireweed, FutureCycle, Green Fuse, Main Street Rag, New Verse News, Nibble, Portland Lights Anthology and Tapjoe. Her chapbook, Palimpsests, was released by Uttered Chaos in 2011. She has three self-published chapbooks.

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN LOOMS UNLESS AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE CRIPPLED

by Frederick Shiels





Through mists of battle high on Capitol Hill,
a light emerges from Republican troops,
2014’s budget may be passed, government
Not shut down, with one small caveat:

“We’ll ‘Defund’ Obama-care and leave
the government to do its other work this next fiscal year,”
Healthcare held hostage, passage of this charade
has not a prayer, we know,

The Senate will not pass it,  if they do,
Obama’s veto pen comes crashing down
upon this hoax so patently designed
to waylay not the government this time,

But rather out the Senate Democrats who vote
to kill a bill that strangles the Affordable Care Act in its crib,
“Too clever by half” experts-- some Republican-- say
Washington Will shut down if this drama plays out,

Perhaps Lord Cantor and the Earl of Boehner forget
the lessons of 1995 and ’96 when,
Lord Gingrich took the hated Feds to the brink
to spite King William and then sank,

In 1996’s elections, the public, not amused
did vent its wrath upon the GOP “abused.”


Frederick Shiels has taught public policy and U.S. politics at Mercy and Baruch Colleges, and at Cornell (teaching assistant). He has published with New Verse News and is working on a book on Obama and America’s Progressive Future through his blog.