SAVE YOUR BREATH

by A J Dalton

 

 

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

They    put   tariff    words now
So   ll use 10% less
God help     hyperverbal
–they    probably end    homeless
 
Marketing    all visuals now
Cos   picture paints   1000
Or strange performance pieces
    actions speak louder,      say
 
Some took   vow    silence
There are fewer arguments truly
   , it   wasted breath
Yet   never hear ‘  love you!’
 
  fear     proposed tariff    space next
As immigration needs controlling
This poem   gone    too long though
And cost      flaming fortune!


A J Dalton is a UK-based writer. He’s published the Empire of the Saviours trilogy with Gollancz Orion, The Satanic in Science Fiction and Fantasy with Luna Press, the Dark Woods Rising and Green Man Ascendant poetry collections with Starship Sloane, and other bits and bobs. He lives with his monstrously oppressive cat named Cleopatra.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD IN THE DICTIONARY

by Arlene Weiner

“Tariff,” Donald Trump has said many times, “is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” —The Guardian

Tariff?
More beautiful than cerulean? 
Than mother? Than home?
 
Something Arabian
about tariff: a perfume. 
Something elaborate: a fringe. 
 
Certainly more beautiful
than beautiful, bee-yoo-tiffle.
Related to giraffe? To sheriff?
 
A herd of tariffs, say, gathers
high-hanging fruit. A tariff
with a posse protects. 
 
And yes, Arabian: Wikipedia: 
The English term tariff
derives from the French: tarif…
 
a descendant of the Italian: tariffa,
from Medieval Latin: tariffe…  
from the Ottoman Turkish…
 
borrowed from the Persian…
The Persian term derives from Arabic:
 تعريف, ta rif.
 
To riff on tariff: What if 
the English, the French, the Italians, 
the Turks, the Persians
 
had taxed foreign tongues,
policed the borders of language,
put up walls?
We’d have no tariff, no beautiful tariff.

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh. She has been a copy editor, a den mother, a Shakespeare scholar, and a member of a group developing computer-based instruction. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry: Escape Velocity, City Bird, and More. She also writes plays.