TRUMP INAUGURAL

by Paul Hostovsky

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

The day Trump takes office

I’m quitting sugar

to protest the irreplaceable

place of sweetness in the dark

world. I mean look

around. The ice is melting into everything and the levels

of pain are rising worldwide with alarming

silence seeping into everything 

and there’s nothing

I can do about it. I need

to do something about it. I’m quitting

sugar as an act of solidarity, 

a way to keep the sweetness 

holy. Kind of like the sabbath, only

secular. Kind of like a hunger strike, only

healthier. Of course the symbolism

will be lost on Trump, whose own

blood sugar levels are a state 

secret—if it weren’t

lost on Trump he probably wouldn't

have won. Hell, he wouldn’t have 

run in the first place if he understood 

the irreplaceable, unimpeachable,

inexpressible place of sweetness 

in the dark world, which is growing 

darker and more bitter apace, 

and is just as irreplaceable as it ever was.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best of the Net. He has been published in Poetry, Passages North, Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, The Sun, and many other journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart Prize, the Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Award, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, Split Oak Press, and Sport Literate. Paul has thirteen full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being Pitching for the Apostates (2023). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. He lives with his wife Marlene in Medfield, Massachusetts.

EIGHT FAT OLD WOMEN

by Susan McLean

      Overheard in Southern California

“I can’t believe we have to wear masks again

just to save eight fat old women,” one

hipster, walking past me, told the other, 

staring at me, no longer young nor thin.

Which crones would she gladly jettison? Her grandmother?

Her eighth-grade English teacher? Did she imagine

a merciful weeding of homeless crazies or

the clutter of ghosts at care facilities?

Of one thing I felt sure: she couldn’t picture

herself at seventy, softened by loss and sadness,

weighted with aches, regrets, lost fantasies,

and wanting nothing from life except some sweetness.

Susan McLean, a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University, has published two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and a book of translations of the Latin poems of Martial, Selected Epigrams.  She is the translations editor at Better Than Starbucks.

INSURRECTION MALAISE

by Tricia Knoll

Image via Getty Images.

I watched that mob with confederate flags 

use their poles as stabbers. I thought we could never

get beyond this, never heal, and their coiled timbersnake

curled all too ready to deliver poison. Threat 

on glaucous yellow background. 

 

I thought we would never get beyond this.  

My stomach seized. Like when the towers fell. 

How tear gas billows as if the theater director

called for high-tone smoke and no going home

with a program in my pocket because warplay 

has no script apparent to the watchers 

even if the actors think it does, yell

bad dialogue in murder tones. 

 

I thought we would never get beyond that. 

The next morning’s coffee bittered as if exposed

to air too long and even the cream wasn’t enough

to settle me. Then sugar dumped from a big spoon,

and more sugar from the same spoon, same mug.

It was not the same as getting through this. 

One minute of sweetness at the bottom. After 

in the morning joe. One at a time. 

Tricia Knoll is busy writing letters to Republican Senators about why they should vote to impeach. The fear on insurrection day was built on lies.