THE FOOLS ON THE HILL

by Steven Kent

"'You have imprisoned our democracy': Inside Republicans' domination of Tennessee"

—The Guardian, April 5, 2024

Despite what y'all were taught in school,

Democracy is not that cool;

We merely use it as a tool

To institute one-party rule.

Folks come to Nashville, see our sights,

While up the hill we're locked in fights*

With Tennesseans claiming rights

They don't deserve now, by our lights.

Theocracy's the goal we've set,

And though we haven't reached it yet

The hour is coming, never fret.

Can't happen here? You wanna bet?

*The state capitol sits four blocks up from Lower Broadway, Nashville's busy tourist district.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and resident of Nashville, Tennessee Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Journal of Formal Poetry, Light, Lighten Up Online, New Verse News, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and Snakeskin. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

KENTUCKY COUNTY CLERK'S MANIFESTO

by Chris O’Carroll

OWENSBORO, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky county clerk may have again defied a federal judge's order regarding gay-marriage licenses by altering license forms to remove her name, an attorney who represents one of the clerk's employees told the judge Friday. --AP, September 18, 2015

Taxpayers pay me 80 grand a year,

And I serve all of them – unless they’re queer.

Damn all the courts that trifle with my rights

When I say no to rights for sodomites.

Unfurl the Stars & Bars!  Secede again!

No weddings for two women or two men!

My God, pro-slavery back in the day,

Now says you’re less than equal if you’re gay.

I am a champion of liberty,

But not for sinful homos, just for me

And true believers like Mike Huckabee,

Who share my righteous animosity

Against Americans who don’t agree

This nation should be a theocracy

Where the elect dress up our bigotry

In vestments of divine authority.

I flout the law because my God is great,

So great that He hates everyone I hate.

Chris O’Carroll is the featured poet in the current issue of Light.  He is anthologized in the recently published Poems for a Liminal Age and in The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, due out in early 2016.

WASHINGTON AND THE REDSKINS

by James Penha

The Map Is Not the Territory: Parallel Paths—Palestinians, Native Americans, Irish

Fleeing European horrors,
God's chosen landed at a great rock
on which they built their havens,
their temples, and their theocracies
and squatted the nomadic tribes
ignorant of salvation and so damned
(if human enough to have life
after life at all). Settlers made
manifest their destiny
to exploit, expropriate,
disease, enslave,
blanket, and reserve the savages.
And when the natives resisted
eternal occupation, the settlers,
republicans by then and democrats,
made war and baubles
of redskins.

And now Washington mouths
itself agape in the mirror of the middle east.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.