THE PLEASURE I’D TAKE IN THE ANY-AGE DEATH OF ONE WHO REMAINS UNNAMED

a truncated trenta-sei

by Jacquelyn Shah

Spoofing that poetic form of John Ciardi 

used for his “A Trenta-Sei of the Pleasure We Take in 

the Early Death of Keats”

“Still Life With Skull, Leeks, and Pitcher, March 14, 1945” by Pablo Picasso

I will not pretend to be sad
thinking about his death. A treat
it would be—(the species-truth? We are glad
to have a death to munch on.)
to wake some morning soon to a Tweet
reporting his demise. Why, oh why
am I so moved to pray he will die?

Thinking about his death is a treat

I allow myself. To be spared the bother of hearing,

day after day, his merely bitter, never sweet,

falsehoods, fabrications; watch his sneering

and his huff and puff, huff and puff

would constitute, for me, a quite-enough.

Re: Ciardi’s “species-truth”—yes, we are glad

to have a death to munch on. But truth to tell,

I’d forgo the munching; is snarfing up too-too very bad?

When it comes to lying, this unnamed guy does it well,

and his performances, so brash, his smear and jeer

deserve no curtain calls, despite the fools who stand and cheer.

To wake some morning soon to a Tweet 

reporting death, underscoring had he lived, my own remaining time

could be not merely dull but dreadful… how Sweet!

O beautiful, the death of one whose power-grubbing lifetime’s

gone. And gone would be, ungenerosity, extravagance, and full-

blown pretense, double-crossing, treachery, cock-and-bull!

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah, nonbinary iconoclast holds A.B. & M.A. English and M.F.A. & Ph.D. English/creative writing–poetry. Her publications: chapbook, small fry; full-length book, What to Do with Red; individual poems in various journals. Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest winner, she has now won a non-fiction book award contest and her memoir-essay collection will be published this summer. 

WOW! HE TWEETS

by Ron Riekki

When he writes “Wow!”
he really means
the opposite of Mom,
the word flipped
upside-down
like families
he’d love to drown.

Ron Riekki wrote U.P. and edited The Way North (2014 Michigan Notable Book), Here (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award), And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing (Michigan State University Press, 2017), and Undocumented (with Andrea Scarpino, MSU Press, 2019).

THAT'SA MY BOY

by Edmund Conti




When your son (what a guy!) meets a Russian and spy
That’sa politics.

When he then says “So what?” since they got diddly squat
That’sa politics.

Dems will sing "What a ding-a-ling, what a ding-a-ling"
And you’ll sing “Mar-a-Lago.”
Let them sing, "Junior Junior jerk, Junior Junior jerk"
You can all keep Chicago.

When the votes make you drool even though it’s not cool
That’sa politics.
When you dance down the street tweeting tweet after tweet
You’re on top.

When you walk in a dream and you’re fooling your team and the voters
Scuzza me, but you see, just between you and me
That’sa politics

Edmund Conti is not related to Eddie "Butterass" Conti nor is he connected. Not to anyone. Especially not the Poetry Mafia.

SPELL CHECK

by Jennifer Hernandez

Image source: REDBUBBLE

The constant covfefe
leaves me breathless,
when you voceffe
so close to me, makes
me want to run to our
special effecov and sip
a coffeev.  My evoceff—
so hip, so now—mingles
with ecoveff—so green &
environmentally friendly.
If I wasn’t suffering from
fecovef, didn’t have this
lingering evecoff, I wouldn’t
effvoce like I do. I’d be my old
voffcee self, singing voceffe
at the top of my fefevoc lungs.

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she works with immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Much of her recent writing has been colored by her distress at the dangerous nonsense that appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Recent work appears in Anti-Heroin Chic, Dying Dahlia, TheNewVerse.News, Yellow Chair Review, and Writers Resist.

COVFEFE

by Jonel Abellanosa

Image source: Joey Mancuso

If you want to wag the dog, covfefe!
If you want people to take their eyes
            off your hands, covfefe!
If you want to distract the FBI, covfefe!
If you want to distract the media, covfefe!
If you want to calm yourself, covfefe!
If you want anger management, covfefe!
If you want to enrich yourself from
            the environment’s degradation
            without people noticing, covfefe!
If you are just simply dumb, covfefe!
If you are faker than the news you peddle,
            covfefe!
If you are corrupt as hell, covfefe!

If you want to covfefe the planet, enjoy!
If you want to covfefe NATO, enjoy!
If you want to covfefe yourself,
            don’t bring the rest of us
                        with you!
Just covfefe yourself !

We don’t give a covfefe!

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Marsh Hawk Review, Anglican Theological Review, Star*Line,  Poetry Kanto, Spirit Fire Review, Carbon Culture Review, The McNeese Review, GNU Journal and Dark Matter Literary Journal.  He has two chapbooks, Pictures of the Floating World (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and The Freeflowing All (Black Poppy Review).  He is a Pushcart Prize and Dwarf Stars Award nominee.

MR. T***P GOES ABROAD

advice for his aides
by Mare Leonard

Prepare as if dealing with a child
Surround him with people who smile
Do not leave him alone, ever
Fear what he might say or surrender
Keep his name in all your briefs
Give him all the help he needs
Make sure he pockets his candy
Doesn't give away Yosemite
Be careful, tiptoe, offer treats
Flatter him, coddle him, praise him
Remind him what country he's in
And above all, promise he can tweet

Mare Leonard's work has appeared in A Rat's Ass,  Perfume River, The Courtship of Wind,  Bindweed,  Forage, TheNewVerse.News, The Chronogram.  She lives in an old school house overlooking the Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches writing workshops for all ages through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.

THE DEVIL OF A DILEMMA

by Regina Vitolo

Image by Matt Chase, The New York Times, February 17, 2016.

the mistress of the universe has deigned to immerse us
in the devil of a dilemma
as complex as puppet strings intertwined dancing
on a papier-mâché platform
the planets collide, missiles leave silos, gravity reverses,
earth trembles
nonsense makes the best sense, nonetheless, so say
the pundits of the day
the wrecking ball swings, misses the gringo living yuge
in the capitol—
claims Andrew Jackson could have resolved the Civil War
but for a few facts
be damned, like the Constitution (no longer relevant) and
the NINTH CIRCUIT
to be mission accomplished with a tweet or two or more.


Words fascinate Regina Vitolo and ignorance in a leader shivers her liver. She has been published, but is willing to absorb more.

THE CONSPIRACY SURROUNDING THE 2016 WORD OF THE YEAR

by Howard Richard Debs

Merriam-Webster has succeeded in its attempt to stop “fascism” being named its word of the year: the dictionary publisher’s word of 2016 is “surreal”. —The Guardian, December 19, 2016

They sat at a table
outside of Clary’s Café
the free lance journalist
and the book editor of
the New World Post.
It was early in the morning
the literary buffs who visit
Savannah usually show up
after noon to see the place
featured in Berendt’s Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil
so it was mainly a few locals eating
breakfast fare hot buttered grits
and the house special egg
concoction hoppel poppel.

“The Morning News squashed
my story. Too sensitive right now.
My source is reliable. She says the word
was number one in searches. She says
Merriam-Webster got a call,
I quote her in the piece:
‘Pick something else, we don’t
care how you get it done’ that’s what
they were told to do. So
they put out that tweet begging
people to look up other words.
It’s a cover-up for sure.
‘Surreal’ trumps ‘fascism’—
no way.”

Howard Richard Debs received a University of Colorado Poetry Prize at age 19. After fifty years in communications, and an Educational Press Association of America Distinguished Achievement Award, he resumed his creative pursuits. Finalist and recipient 28th Annual 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards, his work appears internationally in numerous publications including Yellow Chair Review, Silver Birch Press, Syzygy Poetry Journal, Dime Show Review, The Clear Poetry 2015 Anthology. His essay "The Poetry of Bearing Witness" appeared in On Being - On The Blog, and his photography in select publications including Rattle online where he served as “Ekphrastic Challenge" artist and guest editor. His full length work Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words is forthcoming from Scarlet Leaf Publishing in early 2017.

AM I DREAMING?

by Gil Hoy

Cover by Barry Blitt, The New Yorker, October 10, 2016.

Am I dreaming?
Having a nightmare?

Is the man
who would be
commander in chief
in 6 Weeks

in a Tweet-Fight
with Miss Universe
at 4 AM?

America's birds
can all be seen,
flying south.

Every living thing
that can,
is hibernating early.

Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer currently studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program where he had received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as Brookline MA Selectman for 4 terms. Hoy's poetry appears or is upcoming in Right Hand Pointing-One Sentence Poems, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News and The Penmen Review.

PIGGY BACK

by Robert Carr 

Mommy, I’m frightened, Sunday morning
as I reach for my pretty, the beaded strings
I hide in a jar. Mommy I love you
There’s a noise rat-tatting in my head.

It pops, repetitive, like skulls beneath a tire, a 911
voice compressing sound into solid. I hold
a steering wheel caught up in a Pulse, In club they
shooting, in broken maricόn light, in butterfly wing

soft eye-shadow – I imagine two toddlers
wobbling, one pink, one blue, diaper-clad,
running a median, dysphoric in Orlando
along a broken – white – line. U ok

If I wasn’t fucked for being pussy I would slam
my break, hit hazards, drop to a knee on asphalt, hold
them equally, urge them gently – Trapp in bathroom

Set your burned soles in the squat of my hips,
climb on my shoulders, together we’ll make
a larger shadow as we stand.

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, a chapbook published in 2016 by Indolent Books. His poems are published in Radius: Poetry from the Center to the Edge, Pretty Owl Poetry, White Stag Journal, The Pickled Body, The Good Men Project, Dark Matter Journal, Canary Literary Magazine, Bewildering Stories and numerous other publications. 

JE SUIS CHARLIE

by Mary R. Finnegan

Cartoon by Tom Tomorrow at The Daily Kos

I stand outside Notre Dame

quietly, for a moment of silence,

after a lifetime of silence.

Je suis Charlie

I write my rebuke in 140 characters

for the hashtag 

is mightier than the sword.

Je suis Charlie

I unite with all mankind

to strongly condemn

this horrific shooting

or whatever the masses are saying.

Je suis Charlie

I do all these things from over here,

and not too loudly, and only

among friends and infidels 

on the internet and possibly

with the saucy courage of alcohol

in a dark bar 

on a flag draped street somewhere 

in an undisclosed location

because I am only 

looking at blurred cartoons

and pixelated slaughter.

I am only in my pajamas

complaining of the cold

and the price of oil,

keeping my head 

below the parapet.

I am only 

wearing these boots

to wade through

the frigid streets because

Je ne suis pas Charlie.

For when the liar speaks

I do not wish to agree

so I say nothing

Je ne parle pas

when the threat is made

I do not wish to disagree

so I remain silent

Je me tais

for when prayer is called

I do not wish to offend

so I believe nothing

Je ne crois rien

because when the scimitar is raised

above my slender white neck

I do not wish to lose the head

that has done nothing

said nothing

believed nothing.

Non, Je ne suis pas Charlie.

I do not agree 

or disagree.

I do not offend.

I do not blaspheme.

Can you not see

I am on my knees?

Je ne suis pas Charlie.

Je ne suis personne.

Ça va.

Ça va, oui, ça va?

Mary R. Finnegan is an operating room nurse in the Philadelphia area who also writes poetry and short stories.

WHEN FACEBOOK CRASHES

by Peg Quinn

A number of Los Angeles residents  . . .  actually dialed 911 – the emergency helpline number used in the United States to report crimes, medical emergencies, fires, and the occasional cat-in-tree crisis – after [Facebook] crashed for nearly 30 minutes at 9:30 pm IST Thursday. --Business Standard (India), August 2, 2014

Let's see a line-up
of the users who called 911
or the Sheriff’s Department
when Facebook crashed
for just one hour.

A Sheriff twitting,
This is not a law enforcement problem!

though Facebook lives were ravaged,
swept asunder.
Let each step forward,
explaining to the world
what they had lost.


Peg Quinn, a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee is a mural painter and teaches art at a private elementary school in Santa Barbara, California.

CYBER LIPS

by Susan Vespoli

            (after Lucille Clifton)


....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\...

watch out for online lips.
they need no face
to move around on.
they speak in virtual blips
from keyboard
cell phone screens
they tweet and twitter
spit. those lips

are chicken clicks
they snap their words like whips
flip posts like middle finger.


Susan Vespoli lives mainly in Phoenix, but sometimes in Prescott, with her partner and dogs. She is a teacher, poet, and born-again-bicyclist.