TRIOLET ON A CADENCE FROM ELIZABETH BISHOP

by A. E. Stallings

Arugga AI has created Polly, the first AI-powered pollination robot. It can recognize 97% of all plant specimens.

We’d rather have the robot than the bee 

Although it meant the end of honey 

And honey’s aureate anthology. 

We’d rather have the robot than the bee. 

Greenhouses, hushed, far as the eye can see:

No buzz sweeter than money! 

We’d rather have the robot than the bee, 

Although it meant the end of honey. 

A.E. Stallings is an American-born poet and translator who lives in Greece. Her most recent volume, Like, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A selected poems, This Afterlife, is forthcoming in December from FSG in the US and Carcanet in the UK.

THE STAIRS, THE BED, THE LAUGHTER

by Jennifer Davis Michael

Drawing by Ann Telnaes, The Washington Post, December 5, 2017 

The stairs, the bed, the laughter,
the hand over her mouth.
The silence that came after
the stairs, the bed, the laughter;
the faces that looked past her.
The mockery, the doubt.
The stairs, the bed, the laughter.
Fifty hands over her mouth.

Jennifer Davis Michael is Professor and Chair of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Mezzo Cammin, Southern Poetry Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Leaping Clear, and previously in TheNewVerse.News.

MUSINGS ON A LINE BY REDD FOXX

two triolets
by Julie Steiner

"Trump finally calls Waffle House hero." —Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2018

"'I'm Not A Hero,' Says James Shaw Jr., Acclaimed As Hero Of Waffle House Attack." —NPR, April 23, 2018

"Trump on Florida shooting: 'I really believe I'd run in there, even if I didn't have a weapon.’" —CNN, February 26, 2018


Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
They say, “I wasn’t brave!
I had no choice,” when honored.
Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
What accolades they’ve garnered,
they claim they don’t deserve.
Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
They say, “I wasn’t brave.”

That puffed-up politician
who claims heroic courage
and lack of hesitation—
that puffed-up politician—
has trademarked truth-distortion.
Disgusted, I disparage
that puffed-up politician.
(Who claims heroic courage?)


Julie Steiner rolls her eyes in San Diego, California.

TRIOLET TO A RAINMAKER

by Robert West




                                  “ . . . a society awash in gun violence . . . ”
                                                                    – Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2018


If only you could get this through your head:
   we’re drowning in a bloody flood of guns.
We need to stem the torrent, count the dead;
if only you could get that through your head.
You call for more guns, everywhere, instead.
   Who knows whose daughters might grow up, whose sons,
if only you could get it through your head
   we’re drowning in a bloody flood of guns?

Robert West lives in Starkville, Mississippi. His poems have appeared in Light, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Alabama Literary Review,  American Life in Poetry, and other venues. Co-editor with Jonathan Greene of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013), he's also the editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, published in two volumes in late 2017 by W. W. Norton.

FIRST 100 DAYS TRIOLET

by Marjorie Maddox

Cartoon by STEPeHEN

Ridiculous standards to hold me
to standards. Huuuge mistake
to mistake me for me.
Ridiculous. Standards can’t hold me;
I’ll flip-flop alternate news. Bigly
mistake by media to mistake
standards for ridiculous me. Hold me
to standards? Huuuge mistake!

Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry—including True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series and Illumination Book Award medalist), Local News from Someplace Else, and Wives' Tales as well as the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press) and over 500 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies.

A TRIOLET REFLECTING ON CAMPAIGN POLITICS WHILE ATTENDING THE SYMPHONY

by Jo Ann Steger Hoffman

                             I
Why is the oboe so hidden from view,
browbeaten by brass and the bossy bassoon?
Fluttered by flutes and that viola crew,
why is the oboe so hidden from view?
Do the others snatch solos to try to outdo
the pitch-perfect oboe that tones the first tune?
Why is the oboe so hidden from view,
browbeaten by brass and the bossy bassoon?

                             II
Trumpets blare answers that ring of the truth
that those who shout loudest get heard.
The others, well-practiced, are dry as vermouth,
while trumpets blast answers that seem like the truth.
Their noise is pretentious, it’s strident, uncouth.
They signify nothing.  Can they be cured?
Trumpets blare answers that bear out the truth
that those who shout loudest get heard.


Jo Ann Steger Hoffman is a writer, editor, teacher and former communications director whose publications include a children’s book and a variety of short fiction and poems in literary journals.  Her 2010 non-fiction book Angels Wear Black recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley.  A native of Toledo, Ohio, she and her husband now live in Cary and Beaufort, North Carolina.