BLESSED BE THE CHEESEMAKERS

by Tricia Knoll

May Day Rally, 2025 in Williston, Vermont organized by Green Mountain Democratic Socialists of America one of 12 in the state

 

We showed up to listen and march to the ICE Law Enforcement Support Center. Seniors carried signs about social security, flaming images of President Trump, and due process. Palestinian flags waved. Folk singers warmed us up. The Nonviolent Medicaid Army handed out invitations to events featuring soup and healthcare stories. We received playbills printed with the chants for the marching. 

                  Workers united will never be defeated. 

                  Show me what democracy looks look

                  This is what democracy looks like. 

 

Handbills from the activists for migrant justice and labor rights: 

From the fight for the eight-hour day to the Civil Rights Revolution…

the decisive factor that turns the impossible into the inevitable. 

 

We walked for eight dairy farm workers, ages 22 to 41, from the Pleasant Valley Farm in Berkshire, Vermont. A farm whose owners are relatives of Elle St. Pierre, the Olympic 3,000 meter runner that all of Vermont cheered for – including Senator Bernie Sanders (who ran the mile in high school and college) and called Elle “Vermont’s Proud Dairy Farmer.” These men have names – Jesus, Juan, Luis, Urillas, Diblaim, Adiran, Jose, and Dani. In Vermont dairy farming is the primary source of agricultural income. We like our cheddar white. We mourn the ongoing loss of family dairy farms. 

At the head of the march, a drumming band. Banners and signs.  Old folks with walkers and canes. Babies in strollers. We stood outside the ICE center where three white cars with Homeland signs parked. Three stout officers stood in the driveway. We chanted as if walking gave us new breath. As if we could blow the house down. 

Our prayer: Blessed be the cheesemakers. 

Tricia Knoll lives in Vermont, the state with the second smallest population. She likes her cheddar white.

THE DEAD WAKE

by W. Luther Jett

The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country. —The Guardian, April 11, 2025

The dead brush their teeth,
drink coffee, stare
at the morning news screen.
The dead are the lead feature.
The dead take the crosstown 
bus to the factory, the fast
food place, the office. 
They send their children to school.
Are their children also dead?
No-one is certain. The dead
Call up their doctors, their
lawyers, their graduate advisors.
All the lines are dead.
The dead go back to work.
The dead receive paper cuts
and bleed. Their blood is red.
The dead walk among us.
The dead sit beside us
in the restaurant, on the 
underground, in the park.
You would not know,
to look at them, that they are dead.
The dead go home for supper.
The dead shower and go to bed.
There is a ship in the harbor, waiting
to sail away in the morning.
The dead will not be on it.


W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of six poetry chapbooks. His full-length collection, “Flying to America” was published by Broadstone Books in 2024, while his most recent chapbook, “The Colour War”, has just been released by Kelsay Books. 

YESTERDAY'S WREN

by Al Ortolani

My feet are cold. My financial
value is diminishing. I am baffled
by the future, except for my
demise, which is guaranteed
by the history of birds like me.
Birds who sing as if today
is forever, as if all we need is 
enough seed, a few twigs for
a nest, and the egg we share
with its speckled shell, protected
by Social Security, by Medicare,
by whatever we gave ourselves
yesterday when we planned for 
tomorrow, which is cracking today.
I am memorizing country codes
so I can use my phone to call for help.
Hello Portugal, this is an American 
wren speaking, can I rent a birdhouse? 
I am a Boomer. I won’t sing for long.

Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review.

DONALD TRUMP BLUES (CLOWNS DON’T BUY YOU KLEENEX)

by Judy Juanita

To the tune of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold Em”

Craiyon graphic

What have you got to lose?

Dude, the Donald Trump blues

& his one-man wrecking crew

Only wall he's built is the wall

between me and you

We been disagreeing since his first run

And that’s been half the fun

Going to bed mad

Waking up glad

But this clown's not buying Kleenex

For the tears that'll fall like rain

When he slices up Social Security

Makes the US Post Office history

Gives those gainful jobs to red state Billy Bobs

But you going behind my back

To vote in this crackerjack

Saying what we got to lose?

The Donald Trump blues

In 2016, we knew he was talking smack

Bout Mexicans taking jobs from blacks

We knew Sporting Life ain't picking cotton

Ain’t going back to the lowly bottom

We know he pits the po' against the po'

The fear of being po'er than po’

A fire-breathing dragon ready to gun

Down the country, the Constitution

He already lit the fuse

On January Sixth

What you got to lose?

This here’s your Wanted

Dead or Alive moment

Don't kill true love waiting on

A rich man to keep his promise

Clowns don't buy Kleenex

What the hell he gon do next?

That’s the for real Donald Trump blues

This clown ain't buying Kleenex

What the hell you gon do next?

We all gotta lot to lose

It’s no if-and-or-maybe

What the hell we gon do

Baby?

Judy Juanita's latest book of poetry Gawdzilla equates the filmic Godzilla to US imperialism, racism, and sexism. Her first collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the American Book Award 2021. Her short story collection The High Price of Freeways won the Tartt Fiction Award and was published by the University of West Alabama [Livingston Press, 2022]. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul [Viking, 2013] follows a naive college journalism major in the 1960s who joins the Black Panther Party and ends up editing its weekly newspaper.

TWISTED OLIVER

by Geoffrey Aitken

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

“Please sir, can I have some more?”

Cartoon by Alan Moir. Twitter: @moir_alan

Note: The Australian Tax Office has opted not to pursue $180m in jobkeeper paid to ineligible businesses due to “honest mistakes” by employers claiming the money. At a Senate inquiry hearing on Friday, independent senator Rex Patrick said the decision contrasts with the government’s approach to social security recipients, with thousands of individuals asked to pay back money they received during the Covid pandemic. —The Guardian, September 10, 2021

A minimalist industrial signature drives Geoffrey Aitken away from the scene of mental unwellness for the eyes and ears of those without voices. Widely published locally (AUS), and internationally (the UK, US, CAN, CN & FR), he chases ongoing congeniality.

LIFE AFTER THE DECREE

by William Aarnes

“I Have a List of Replacements for the CDC’s 7 Banned Words” —Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, December 15, 2017

The first weekend after the decree
that public norms and preferences
should determine what we know,
my wife and I jokingly wondered
what we should call
the life she’d been carrying
(the sonogram doesn’t show
much of anything).

That Sunday my gleeful parents
skyped to ask us to fly down
to celebrate how the country
was returning to its senses.
They were overjoyed to think
that those unwarranted Social Security
deposits could finally stop
(the wealth that Mom inherited
is just the coolest thing).

By that Wednesday I’d concluded
that my—what would be the right word?—
changeling research assistant  
had stopped coming in to work
(not that I minded,
since any fool could see
that the data we’d been collecting
on the social causes of indigence
didn’t prove a thing).

Now, on the subway, on the streets,
in the building corridors,
on TV, at the gym,
at the construction sites,
in all the classrooms,
even in the military,
everybody’s become a white heterosexual
(thank goodness my DNA test
and particularly my father’s
don’t mean a thing).


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

ELIZABETH SCANS THE BUSINESS SECTION

by Terese Coe

How do I loathe thee? See to these:
I despise the slithering maze
of investment bankers’ plays,
their derivative devices
and manipulated prices,
the calculated connivance,
the jacked-up stock contrivance,
the GMO mutations,
the cryptic appropriations
alive with codes and ciphers
engorging weasels and vipers;
the Social Security fix,
the felonious politics,
the safety net protections
lost in mystic elections
where every connected clod
claims to be one with God,
but lives in fear of the Order
of  the Cellphone Vid Recorder.
I condemn thee with robust
expressions of disgust,
I loathe thee like the flood
of Mississippi mud,
I despise thee till obsessed,
disquieted, possessed—
and even for thy perjured shibboleth,
I pray thy greed will sicken thee to death.

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, Agenda, Ploughshares, Poetry, Threepenny Review, New American Writing, and many other journals and anthologies. Her recent collection is Shot Silk.

SWINDLED

by George Held



The handsome President
Wears his black suit gracefully;
Articulate, suave but earnest,
He is the paragon of a graduate
Of the homeland’s finest schools.

The President promised to repel
The Mammon, the Bain brain who
Would lead Capital’s raid on “entitlements,”
To which we are entitled because
We paid for them every paycheck.

But now the President offers our
Social Security and Medicare
As bargaining chips
While the croupier with “GOP”
On his green visor methodically

Rakes in profits for the house,
Which never loses at gaming
The system and we, the losers,
Broke and broken, limp from the table
Dimly aware we’ve been swindled.


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