STOP THE CAR!

by Craig Cowden

“Stop the car… We want dramatic change. We don't get to go to Disneyland until we figure this out.” — Senator John Curtis on Face the Nation, February 23, 2025

Climbing out our 60s wood-panel station wagon
somewhere in the wilderness of eastern Oregon,
we scurry behind Mom as Dad rages about
our whining, his money, the heat, the route.

Dad yanks the jack out of the back and liberates
the car of regulated seatbelts, warning lights,
“dem wasteful mandates,” while mumbling “CAFE”
to the catalytic converter — what is that anyway?

Out goes the spare tire unmaintained and flat.
Power steering? “When you’re a man, who needs that?”
Jettisoned is the rear facing seat where we escape,
a privilege we apparently no longer rate.

Tossed are my anime, smashed is brother’s tablet,
to the ditch goes sister’s faded rainbow jacket
followed soon by Mom’s remote workplace laptop
while the bumper with peace stickers lies on the blacktop.

Turning to his scions now in shock by the road,
he demands that we just stop, but we aren’t told
what to change in our dysfunctional family
or how to reboot the ruined car and make it to Disney.

Author’s note: On CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan on February 23, 2025, Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, repeats the metaphor of “stopping the car” to confront the disruptive kids 11 times in response to multiple oversight questions in this 8 minute interview. This poem imagines what transitions might occur during this “stop the car moment.” Margaret Brennan fails to ask, and Senator Curtis doesn’t offer, how the car gets rebooted — maybe jumper cables, heart defibrillator, Ctrl+Alt+Del?

Craig Cowden is a retired director of program management from Oracle Corporation.  With his engineering background, he thinks it quite logical that the same skills that architect efficient, elegant software can also inspire measured, meaningful verse. He relishes writing cynical poems from alternative perspectives covering current events and life in general.   Craig's poems have appeared in Lighten Up Online, Birdy Magazine, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop Anthology Collections of Poetry and Short Fiction.

JUMP TO IT

an abecedarian

by Cecile Earle

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

A grasshopper chirping and clicking his legs
by the flower pot, sees me, sits up, rolls his eyes,
“Come on,” he says to me, “A 
dictatorship is coalescing.
Even I know—Let’s call it what it is: 
Fascism. Has a stun gun turned you into statues?
Gather your forces,” he says, “Come on
humans! All of you—Yes, you too, Cecile. Now!
In this moment! Wake up! 
Jump on it! Now! You teeter! You 
know nations can explode in a flash!
Listen! All I see you doing is waving arms,
making gestures, filing papers. And still,
nothing is coming together as this 
oligarchy solidifies like a glacier. And you?
Puzzled. Positing solutions. Talk. Talk. Stuck in glue. 
Questioning as you chatter, chatter.
Rally now.
Stop them.
Time’s up! Don’t 
use now to 
veer on the side of caution!
Wake up! Democracy! Ours! Don’t let
X and his minions rule our world!
You can do it,”  the grasshopper says, as he 
zips into the garden. Waves. “See you tomorrow.”

Cecile Earle taught English at UCB and Bay Area Colleges. She also focused on Latin American affairs and social justice as editor with the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley. She has published poetry, essays, memoir, and short fiction, and she has won awards for writing on immigration, nomadic migrations in Northern Kenya, and climate change with, among others, Soul Making Keats of the National League of American Pen Women, Bay Area Poet’s Coalition, Word Peace, and the Mendocino Writer’s Conference.

THAT THING SHE SAID

by Lisa Shulman

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

when our hand clap games

were shuffled off sidewalks by boys on bikes

 

when classrooms became cages

we stammered behind

 

when our ideas were ignored

when our dreams were stolen

 

when the male gaze followed us unbidden

down dark streets, into sunny parks

 

when we said no

when we said stop

 

when we no longer said

anything

 

she said it for us

put voice back in our mouths

 

in the face of all the world

has tried to silence—

 

We are speaking now.

Lisa Shulman is a writer, children’s book author, and teacher. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Poetry Breakfast, Catamaran, Minnow Literary Magazine, California Quarterly, The Best Small Fictions, and a number of other magazines and anthologies. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Lisa’s poetry has been performed by Off the Page Readers Theater. Her chapbook Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Lisa lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools.