I GOT NEW RULES (I COUNT 'EM)

by Steven Kent

Governor Ron DeSantis has made voting easier in certain Florida counties battered by Hurricane Ian—but only Republican-leaning ones. —The Guardian, October 14, 2022

Election time? Let's break out brand-new rules

For my supporters, yes, but not for fools.

Indeed, I know exactly what to do:

I'll let you vote, and you, and you (not you).

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and Oxford comma enthusiast Kent Burnside. His work appears in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and OEDILF, among others.

THE DIVIDED STATE OF AMERICA

by Anna M. Evans

I wonder how they sleep at night, those folk
who disagree with me. Although their views
are driving current policy, the joke
is on them when they watch the nightly news
and see the protest rallies everywhere—
each witty hat, each cutely-worded sign.
Aren’t they ashamed? Do they not even care
the country will remember them as swine?

But then I see they think the same of me:
that they're the strong, while my kind are all flakes.
Impossible for either side to see
the other’s merits or their own mistakes.
By day, we all shake our self-righteous heads;
at night we lie uneasy in our beds.

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan University at Burlington County College. Her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans, is available from White Violet Press.