STRIKETOBER

by Tom Bauer

William Blake (1757–1827) “Behemoth and Leviathan.” Pen and black ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over traces of graphite. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1903. The Morgan Library & Museum.

New ‘Striketober’ looms as US walkouts increase amid surge in union activity. Support for unions is on the rise as workers take action to raise pay and conditions amid booming company profits. —The Guardian, September 26, 2022

Was that ever a thing in ancient times?

Did it happen building the pyramids?

Those workers weren’t slaves but they didn’t get much.

When did unions really begin? When did

inequities of behemoths begin?

Perhaps it is a species thing. Feels old.

The feeling of, the shape of, a company,

is an old shape dragging a trench across time.

This rough beast shapes us with an owning force,

a power center employing thousands, making

us swarm to assigned tasks for minimal pay

and no share in the gains made by the few.

This behemoth of shape, this company, looming

block with a whip in hand, stands over us still.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

CORPORATE SPRING

by Douglas Richardson

Fight for $15.

Walking west on 6th Street

All the trees are green

The sun is warm upon my face

My hair is moussed and preened

 

I’m listening to Corporate Pop

on my way to Corporate Eatery

I fling my tie around my neck

a leaf among the scenery

 

My table’s cleared

My glass is beered

All the unions disappeared

The working world is free

 

 

Douglas Richardson is a poet and novelist who lives in Santa Ana, California, with his wife Jen and cat Wes. He is the founder of Weak Creature Press. He has written a fiction series, American Strays, which comprises the novellas The Corruption of Zachary R., Trust Fund Baby, and Kay Sutter Through the Ages. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Black Poppy Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Hobo Camp Review, Misfits’ Miscellany, The Nervous Breakdown, Straight Forward Poetry, Trouvaille Review, and Poetry Super Highway. In 2013, he won the Poetry Super Highway contest with his entry, “Notes from the Graveyard Shift.” 

PROPOSITION EIGHT

by T R Poulson




Who is she, the woman whose blue eyes reach
out in ads, voice strong, hair blonde?  Her clinic
at stake, she says a thousand lives beseech

me, the voter-hero, to Vote No. I remain the cynic.
Draped with red-filled tubes like snakes, a man bids me
Vote Yes! Gown-wrapped clients refer to unhygienic

rooms where unseen life forms lurk and kid me
not.  Gloves, urine, needles, machines, puddles,
fill my mind along with missing kidneys,

those pulsing beans now shriveled, blood now muddled.
I die without dialysis, a man’s voice proclaims.
My barre-toned back holds twin flesh-cuddled

organs pulsing, cleaning. This vote-luring campaign
forms paths and forks that twist and feel the same.

T R Poulson lives in San Carlos, California.  Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, along with Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, Trajectory, J Journal, The Meadow, Delaware Review, and Raintown Review.  She enjoys windsurfing, basketball, and horse racing.

AN AMERICAN WORKER SPEAKS TO THE LEADERS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

by George Salamon

This graphic appeared in various newspapers on Labor Day, 1941. The prose poem beneath the graphic reads as follows: I am Labor. I stand before you on this, my day, free and proud. I am the incarnation of Work, and Work is the foundation of modern civilization. Before the silvery bombers can take the air my skilled fingers have fashioned and serviced them. The shining shell, the precise rifle, the intricate clockwork of tank and ship, these grew beneath the trained and intelligent hands with which I get my living. Because the things I do are basic and necessary, I yeld my dignity to no man. Because of that dignity, I prize my manhood and my freedom. I Shall defend it. To those who would degrade me to an automation, make me a slave, I return loud and scornful laughter. Here in my United States I am more than a Worked, more than a Laborer, I am a Man. This manhood, this freedom, on my own Labor Day of 1941, I do not propose to yield. Source: Urania.

"Republican politicians have always been in our pocket. Now we have most of the Democrats."  Jeff Faux, "Class War: The view from the Board Room," The American Prospect, January 15, 2014

"We have set up a series of policies that work for those at the top and leave everyone else behind. And what I say is it's time to change that." Senator Elizabeth Warren, "On the road with Sanders and Warren: Will the Democrats follow them to the left?"  The Guardian, August 27, 2017


Once we were brothers and sisters. you and me,
Standing together to battle America's plutocracy.
We fought the same sweatshops, the heartless boss,
The same low wages, capitalism's cross.
You helped balance the economic scales of power,
FDR even made the cruel bankers cower.
But, Nancy and Chuck, you were skillful and quick
To get out from under, you mastered that trick.
We toiled and endured, we had little choice
While you were able to gain a powerful voice.
We trusted you, then, do you remember when?
When the New Deal gave us the right to organize,
Granting millions a fair chance in the race of life.
When your party tried to eradicate poverty,
Moving us a step closer to social equality.
Then the political wheel turned to the right,
Many Democrats abandoned our common fight.
For decades now, we've tumbled into rage and despair,
Even helped elect a huckster billionaire.

This is now, but we both need what was then.
On this day of labor, remember when.

George Salamon who lives in St. Louis, MO would love to see the "for" return to "government for the people."

RUST BELT

by Steve Deutsch

Sure, we loved the hats and hoopla
the rhythmic chants of lock her up,
but we are not a stupid people.
We know full well this patchy place
between the slag heaps
and the scrub pine--
these crumbling houses perched behind
the padlocked plant once known
for truck tires,
will never be great—
or even good.

You say rust belt
and mean the measure
of empty factories
and gutted storefronts.
The jobs bled out.
The eyesores left behind to moulder.
But the rust is mostly in us.
Too many years of children
born to little hope.
Too many years of promises
from windbags in dingy union halls
and air-conditioned buses
painted red, white, and blue.

This afternoon, I take my maul
to the wood pile
by the rusted chain link fence.
Crisp and clear,
It is a fine day to bust things up--
And the making
of that splintered shattered kindling
with a body that burns
is as near as I will ever come to joy.

Steve Deutsch, a semi-retired practitioner of the fluid mechanics of mechanical hearts, lives with his wife Karen in State College, PA.  He has published most recently in Misfit Magazine, Eclectica magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, The Drabble and TheNewVerse.News. 

WALKER MANIA

by David Southward

Image source: DonkeyHotey

Amazing, what a guy like me
can do for voters who can’t see
what’s good for them. I’ve hatched a plan
to make their state a wonderland!

I broke the unions, stripped their rights—
and though it sparked some ugly fights,      
the squawking’s dwindled to a peep
and labor now comes oh-so-cheap.

I turned the federal money down
that would’ve linked up town to town
with light rail. Jobs were lost, but hey,
it kept the socialists away.

Natural gas? Now that I’d tap.
It’s ours if we just frack the crap
out of Wisconsin’s woods (though first
her residents must be coerced).

The jobs report still sucks, the budget
can’t be balanced. Hell, let’s fudge it:
keep the taxes low by raping
schools, the poor, and park landscaping.

I passed a law that welfare queens
must view their fetuses on screens
before aborting. God will care
for those unwanted babes, I swear.

With cuts in funding, it’s a breeze
to gut state universities.
They nurture liberals, stir up minds
and threaten us with picket lines.

I’m loved by all the billionaires,
which may explain why no one dares
to question me.  If someone tries,
I’ll stare him down with my dead eyes.

If I could gain complete control,
I’d sell the public sector whole
to the highest-bidding financier—
and run it like an overseer.

It seems to me we’ve turned a page:
I’ve ushered in a bold new age
in which a scoundrel goes scot free.
An age of proud cupidity.


David Southward teaches literature in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Lyric, and Voices on the Wind.

RIGHT TO WORK FOR LESS

by Paula Schulz

Gov. Scott Walker Monday signed so-called right-to-work legislation banning requirements that private-sector workers pay union fees, prompting one business to say it will add workers in Milwaukee and another to say it will expand in Minnesota instead. --Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel, March 9, 2015

Earliest morning, the moon a mirror,
the sky that deep, hopeful blue.  And for those
few moments all plans are possible.

You feel it--to walk into the world is
to walk into a fairy tale where the king
is a good man who loves the beautiful.

All the old witches grow backward into joy,
straighten up, fly right, drop glittering
educators in Wisconsin schools.

Every child is beautiful, strong, well-nourished:
factory and government jobs pay
a living wage.  Police and protesters

carry potato guns.   After they face
off, all gather ammo, take it to their
local soup kitchen, cook up a rich

chowder, pass warm bread, talk of family.
Governor Walker goes to Washington,
takes his dislike of the arts with him where,

despite his best efforts, a new WPA
is formed and funded and we learn again
each others stories, paint new portraits

of dignity, sculpt a strong citizenry,
paint with bright colors, polka to a new
American song.


Paula Schulz is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, a recent Pushcart nominee and an educator.  She is hopeful, blue.