BUG

by Gil Hoy

I know it's not
what you want,
but I can't live
if I can't get
inside of you.
To be precise,
I'm not really living
at all. I have no cellular
organelles, no DNA.
I can't grow on my own
and require your genetic
instructions to survive.
I can't continue to multiply
and thrive outside of you. Soap
and water are my kryptonite. Is it
selfish of me to want to exist?
I pray you don't really think so.
Even if  what I have is not much
of a life. Please consider things
from my perspective. If I could,
I'd organize my fellow contagions.
Get us all together to create
a super Pac. I long to keep
the status quo. Both Biden
and Sanders, they scare me.
They listen to scientists. That
nescient man in the White House
doesn't understand what I'm about.
Which is fine with me. Think of me
as a microscopic, infective agent
just looking to blossom. Be kind,
be compassionate come November.
Let's keep our arrangement of quiet
indifference intact. Let's just leave
well enough alone.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet, Democratic political activist, and semi-retired trial lawyer. He studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared, or will be appearing, in TheNewVerse.News,  Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, MisfitMagazine, The Potomac, The Penmen Review, One Sentence Poems and elsewhere.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Image source: Connect the Dots

Don’t tell me there isn’t any pattern.
It can be seen over and over. Here
It is: divide  and conquer, us and them,
Left and right. An agenda based on fear
Of who the others are, could be, might do...
Creating dread that everything could crash
If its own system is not stretched -- here to
There -- to shield the modern world from the rash
Interests of that post-modern other (which
Has no interest in the universal,
Does not like the status quo, is not rich
From global loans, and does not care, at all,
About you). The pattern’s clear: it connects
Those dots of doubts it makes while it protects.

 
Juleigh Howard-Hobson has simultaneously written literary fiction, formalist poetry and genre work, along with non-fiction essays and articles, purposely blunting the modern ‘brandable’ concept of artistic obligation to any single form or movement. Her work has appeared in such venues as The Lyric, Trinacria, The Flea, The Raintown Review, The Best of the Barefoot Muse (Barefoot Pub) and Caduceus (Yale University). She is the Assistant Poetry Editor of Able Muse.