SWAMP THING

by Mark Hendrickson

Kermit the Frog grew up in a swamp  
before he moved to Manhattan  
where all the rats still skate on butter. 
He tried to warn us that rainbows are only illusions,  
back before his voice changed,  
back when swamps seemed quirky and cute. 
 
Speaking of swamps, a story came out today  
about the 2010 discovery by Felisa Wolfe-Simon  
of a low form of life that lives in the muck  
and somehow thrives on toxic arsenic; 
she has now discovered other seemingly mindless creatures  
that appear to thrive on sheer magnetism alone. 
 
I live in the blue center dot  
of a tidal pool made of salt and Windex  
surrounded by organisms that live  
on all that is poisonous, microbes that live  
by breaking down all structure,  
that thrive on decomposition.  
 
People cheer as every potentate since Saint Reagan  
swears to finally drain the swamp; yet instead  
we see it is the swamp that drains us. 
We are mangroves surrounding ourselves with mangroves,  
all standing up to our knees in it, 
mired in marsh and methane. 
 
We all know swamps smell like corrupted flesh,  
yet our nostrils are so saturated we can’t tell anymore. 
Complacency is a swamp we think is stagnant 
even as it spreads to engulf us, and Canada, and Greenland. 
We have become swamp things: reluctant heroes twisted by the world, 
trying to save what we can; a show too implausible to endure for long. 

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a gay poet and writer in the Des Moines area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Variant Lit, Vestal Review, The New Verse News, Spellbinder, and others. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician in a locked psychiatric unit. He has advanced degrees in marriage & family therapy, health information management, and music. Follow him @MarkHPoetry.

MARSH GAS

by Martha Deed

“The court will set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned.”

—Hon. Tanya Chutkan, Groundhog Day 2024

Usually the worse it is

the longer I take

to say anything about it

but today

is not one of those days

Today is not a shock

Today rests upon absence of surprise

after decades of seeking fruit from the tree of justice

and finding only sick worms and fungi

feeding upon the softened spoiled

core of a tree failing to thrive

in a rotting swamp

that exploded long ago

as anyone knows

who was wronged in a lower court

say—family court

where a child’s future

was dangled over

the bubbling glop

so that even when

a rotten judge was later removed

it was too late for the child

and for at least one parent

or from a class

(yes, “class” in the United States)

whose voice is smothered in the court

while the other is entitled

(yes, “entitled” in the United States)

to call the shots in wars designed

to defeat the weaker class

through unequal monetary weaponry

and finding oneself trapped at the bottom of a bog

while the wealthier ones walk away

Justice like rich organic matter

sinks to the bottom

then deprived of oxygen

rises to the top

forms a hard crust

that leaves justice

trapped below

for the bottom feeders

Anoxic gases bubble to the surface

and singe the air

A thick crust of contaminate

preserves deep destruction

as marsh gas in the court grows and stinks

So it is that spoiled judges

rise through the judicial system

and prevail

We who have seen the lower courts

stood close enough to smell the smell

we knew this would happen

that it would lead to a decision that

rots to form a crust that prevents

oxygen from reaching

the organic material trapped below*

i.e. unthinkable

not merely spoiled

Poisoned

*Marsh gas.

Martha Deed’s third poetry collection Haunted By Martha was released by FootHills Publishing, July 2023. She has published ten books (poetry, mixed media, non-fiction) and ten chapbooks along with inclusion in more than 20 poetry anthologies. Individual poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Earth’s Daughters, First Literary Review—East, Shampoo, Gypsy, and many others.

KAKISTOCRACY

by Susan Terris

THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE ABOUT THIS IS TO USE ALL

CAPS FOR THE RAGE I FEEL ABOUT HAVING A GOVERNMENT

 

FILLED WITH INLAWS. EX-LOBBYISTS, STOOGES AND A PRESIDENT

WHO IS UNQUALIFIED FOR THE JOB. IT’S THE WORST OF

 

THE WORST. My husband, who has left this world, used 

to say what we needed as a president was not 

 

a politician but a businessman. I may have to dig under

the birch tree to find his ashes and try to tell them 

 

just how wrong he was.

Susan Terris’ recent books are Familiar Tense (Marsh Hawk) 2019; Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn) 2017, Memos (Omnidawn) 2015; and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She's the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and one play.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest chapbook is Dream Fragments, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

THE MOCK TURTLE: SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL

by Ed Shacklee

Famed for toxic prattle and gelatinous physique,
combining theft with battle, it assails the poor and weak
while herding mulish cattle with its games of hide and seek.

Exhibiting surprise if folk decry its sly venality,
it mocks with blatant lies. Its crooked, looking glass morality
enables wolves’ disguise of greed with sheepskins of frugality.

Partly turtle, partly snake, a spineless omnivore,
the terror of Kentucky, this dystopian dinosaur
has lined its nest with feathers but is always plucking more,

and creeps through halls of power like a sleepy Southern breeze.
Its purse-lipped, goggled glower bringing cowards to their knees,
it stalks a fatal hour or a moment it can seize.

But piles of cash are paper thin and make for flimsy armor,
and miles of rural roads can never daunt the brave reformer,
and while the trail has gotten cold, I’m told it’s getting warmer;

for babies vilely kissed in past campaigns will not forget
the rabies it has spread, or tears we’ve shed—which are still wet—
and maybe time will tell us why the Russians play roulette.

Resist, my heart! and choose, so there may be a morning when you
wake to light a fuse and then demand a change of venue—
that longed for, lucid day when turtle soup is on the menu.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who lives on a boat in the Potomac River. His first collection, The Blind Loon: A Bestiary, was published by Able Muse Press in 2017.

CHIP IN TO SUPPORT AMY McGrath

WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN

by Buff Whitman-Bradley




We should have known
That crisis evokes
The best in ordinary persons
That of course
People on balconies
Would sing opera
To each other
That of course
People standing in windows
Would applaud medical workers
On their way home after another
Horrendous shift
Of dangerous and unprotected caring
That of course
Silly songs and tender messages
And goofy jokes
And sublimely cute puppies and kittens
And baby elephants
Would proliferate on the internet
That of course
Neighbors would be even more conscious
Of checking in with each other
Of offering help and encouragement
Of wishing each other
The very best
That of course
Compassion and humor and generosity
Among everyday folks
Would abound
We should have known

We should have known
That crisis would evoke
The worst in the powerful
That of course catastrophe would mean profit
For those who claim the planet
As their own
That of course the plutocratic miscreants
At the top of the heap
Would find a way
To pillage the public treasury
Rather than provide all the life-saving aid
That is so desperately needed
That of course they would continue
Robbing from the poor
And giving to the rich
That of course
Those shameless, indecent
And despicable narcissists
Would resist any and all attempts
By the common folk
To prioritize the common good
Over personal gain
And if that means millions will die, well
That’s life

We should have known

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California. He podcasts at: thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

SOCIAL DISTANCING

by John W. Steele

Not knowing who is shedding Novel Corona,
it’s not so bad to huddle in our caves

plugged into our phones and laptops, Zoom.
As for lining up in bare-shelved stores

who needs toilet paper, food and drink,
soap and sanitizer anyway?

Meanwhile the crocs have stopped their bellowing,
called a truce. They’ve reached across the swamp

and offered one another bite-sized hunks.
The old-bird alpha-male has softened his tweets

and started to squawk about how he is going to kill
the virus. November looms large. The other crocs,

afraid he’ll chase them from the swamp, are cowering,
hoping he won’t snap and spill their blood.

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Ernest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Boulder Weekly, Blue Unicorn, Copperfield Review, Heron Clan Anthology, IthacaLit, The Lyric, Mountains Talking, The Orchards, Society of Classical Poets, Urthona Journal of Buddhism and the Arts, and Verse-Virtual. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize, won The Lyric’s 2017 Fall Quarterly Award, won an award in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and was awarded Special Recognition in the 2019 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. His book reviews have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Raintown Review.

NO ANSWERS

by Marsha Owens

The poet said she was born “to look, to listen.” I envy her self-awareness, her certainty. Still night lifted, and I languished under warm morning blankets, listened to my breath coming and going, remembered each day’s name, not marked by miracles, yet reliably present after the darkness. Warning-less, reality tromped the sunshine. I felt dragged like trash into the ugliness, the unholiness of the day. “Let them get loans,” the rich man said, “let them find food if they can and insulin. Let them struggle like I’ve never had to. Let them work for a living, like I’ve never had to. I will feed at the trough off of their backsides, a flagrant godfather with not a shred of good intent. Let them be content.”

I screamed into my soul asking what am I supposed to do? For what was I born, dear poet? I’m sure she answered in the silence folding down around the dawn.

Marsha Owens lives and writes in Richmond, VA.

DRIP. DRIP. DRIP.

Dixie J-Elder’s family moved forty-eight times before Dixie turned thirteen, due to her father’s job as a cartographer. Dixie spent her teen years protesting frequently in Washington, D.C. (for civil rights, against the Vietnam War). Dixie wanders often with her husband, investigating archaeological sites. They’ve trekked around Iceland, Austria, Skara Brae, and other fascinating locations. Dixie’s work has been published in anthologies such as the true crime collection Off the Cuffs. Dixie lives in Colorado with her husband and two formerly feral cats.

SWAMP CREATURE

by Howard Winn

Emerging from the slime
accumulated over past time
it rears its frightening head
licking its lips preparatory
to swinging its massive
posterior shaking off the
gunk which never the less
clings as if a growth on
this beast of the slime
out of the past seeking
a future in the muck of
self-satisfaction at being
an organism that knows
without knowing that it
is the future unless we
eradicate it in its present moment
as it rises out of the self-
serving stinking quagmire








Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

A FLOCK OF WILD TURKEYS

by Tricia Knoll

You’d pull off the road for that,

wouldn’t you? Beside Pigeon River?

A flight of forty landing.

Thin and sleek, running.

Watch their heads bob

and thin legs pedal.

You’d forget news

of feathered nests

and overstuffed breasts.

Tweeted by Bill Kristol.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has only seen one wild turkey in Oregon but many, many more in Vermont.

"HAHA, NAZI, SCHMAZI," SAYS PRESIDENT T***P

by George Salamon

"The president of the United States is now a neo-Nazi sympathiser.” 

—Richard Wolffe, The Guardian, August 15, 2017

"Haha, neo Nazi, neo Schmazi,"
Says President T***p.
"All I care about is cleaning up
Washington's putrid swamp."
T***p is a man of business,
Not given to humanist prissiness.
Don't wait for a rite of sacrament
To wipe away Fascist contaminents
He made White House inhabitants.
If you seek to rejoice in his defeat
Your resistance will have to march
To a truly heretical American beat.


George Salamon escaped the Nazis in 1938 and watches their neo rebirth from St. Louis, MO.