SHORT DIVISION

by Diana Morley

Must cut says the prez-elect

in one of his cozy countless buildings

 

slipping in partners in crime

all the slime that’s fit to fill the void

the bigger the fire the better, he says,

to raise foes’ arm hair along with their hackles

to bring the thrill of campfire tales

all love to chill by, hoping they’re not real.

The public mass, like plants and wildlife,

work daily, yearly, season by season

knowing dawn’s the time to rise 

for the sun to warm, to turn us all toward others—

by nightfall there’s still the rent to pay

and a plugged-in quilt at bedtime

a kitchen cold as an unplayed banjo.

Diana Morley publishes poetry online and in journals. She published Spreading Like Water (2019), a chapbook; Splashing (2020), a poetry collection; and Oregon’s Almeda Fire: From loss to renewal (2021), a documentary of photos and poems.

POST-THANKSGIVING 2020

by Barbara Schweitzer

“Only Human,” painting by Judith Dawson.

We are such little twisty things

protoplasm and cell productions

who eat turkey in November

and hotdogs in July

who love intensely our neighbor-in-bed

then plot coups with the Deplorables.

We are unthinkable most times

and dumb the rest

yet we climb and hope

and endure so that we might

not cascade into the smarmy oceans

we have made. We pick our way

so that we might reach an alp

and spread our small intelligences

like faraway stars into a universe.

We are just enough bare-boned and starving

to go on and on and on though we remain

still closer to slime than to god.

Barbara Schweitzer is still writing poems and plays and Cyjoe Barker mysteries in upstate RI.

VIRUS

by Barbara Crooker

Cartoon adapted from and image illustrating "The Trump Virus: A Daily News Brief" by Gabe Capone.

As I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, I found
I had been transformed into a quivering sack of mucous.
Slime oozed out of every orifice, a glaze of yellow-green
the exact sheen  of Vaseline exuded from my pores.  Someone
was churning slugs into smoothies and they poured out
of my nose.  I began to watch Fox News.  I swallowed
huge globules of misinformation, and switched my vote
to Donald Trump.  Everywhere I walked, I trailed a ribbon
of glistening lies.

Barbara Crooker is the author of six books of poetry, including Small Rain (Purple Flag Press, 2014) and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry," and on The Writer’s Almanac.