THE BLUE-STATE HERON

by Barbara Lydecker Crane

Artwork: a paper collage by the poet.

Flapping hard all day and night,
these herons grapple with their plight: 
a large right wing distorts their flight. 
 
Bi-coastal, Blue-states can be found
Virginia Beach to Provincetown,
San Diego to Puget Sound.

They have lost their rural southern range;
midwest statistics now look strange;
and poachers threaten further change.

Not yet in an endangered fate,
they step with slow and measured gait,

biding time. Blue-states wait.


Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Sonnet Crown category of the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest, Honorable Mention in the 2024 Frost Farm Poetry Contest, and was twice a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Able Muse recently published her fourth collection, ekphrastic sonnets entitled You Will Remember Me.

ARMED AND DANGEROUS

by George Held

A pro-Trump mob interact with police after storming the US capitol. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images via The Guardian, January 6, 2021

Sure, the Jew-boy and the black preacher

Saved the leftwing bacon in Georgia last night

But they ain’t gonna stuff us back in the dirt

Or the bottle or wherever we came from

 

To make America great again. We’re white

And proud of it. We’re armed and dangerous,

As the sheriffs’ posters say it, and we might

Have us a little Civil War to settle things,

 

Only this time we win, ‘cause we’re armed

And dangerous, you bet, and ‘cause

The North is a bunch of mongrel cowards,

So this time we win behind General T****

 

And with our militia in defense of Red MAGA.

Don’t you play shocked or angry at my words

When you know I’m right: we are gonna’

Win this time and set up our new capital

 

In Tuscaloosa, where our footballers

Are already Number 1 and we can beat

Any fake students in other uniforms

Like Ohio State or Clemson and be champs

 

Again. Because the South she is rising

To be great again. We’re red from Texas

To Canada and lots of other states

Between the coasts. So join the movement

 

While you can and make us great again

Forevermore: in football and politics

And the military we’re the best

And soon we will really rule the roost.

George Held is a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

CROSSING THE LINE

by Jill Crainshaw

Source: Inter-Korean Summit Press Corps/Pool via Bloomberg.

How do you cross a line
Drawn in nuclearized sand?

Lift one foot and then the other
From the bony grip of history

Even if movements are awkward and
Bodies petrified from standing still

Too long estranged from heart-beats
That keep muscles supple;

Ancient enemies hand in hand
With clumsy unfamiliarity

Step north and then south
Step south and then north

Limbering up and stretching out—
Dance.


Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC.