THE NEW NORMAL

by Lawrence J. Krips 

This morning I tossed an empty toothpaste tube

into the toilet bowl instead of the basket.

 

Later, the just simmered Marinara sauce

went from the stove into the everything drawer.

 

You see, the system I relied upon, 

has taken an unapproved vacation.

 

My friends insist dictators will save the world

and that being independent is an unnecessary burden.

 

My children are beginning to wonder not at the barking 

but by the preternatural scratching with my left foot.

By overwhelming minority opinion, The Supreme Court

declared the United States null and void.

 

The stairs took me up to the basement, while 

the dump sink in the attic overflowed to the roof.

 

The President has ordered all new maps 

eponymously rename the Western Hemisphere.

 

Who knew vaccinations cause fleas or 

cameras can substitute as hearing aids?

 

From now on, men’s votes are the only ones counted

in all the elections we will no longer have.

 

For as a woman seweth so does a man reapeth,

the oceans tideth and space-time discontinueth.

 

Nothing does lead to something 

and a stitch in mine is yours in time.

 

I no longer need to study all those tedious details for elections,

the decisions have been and will be made for us.

 

Do not fear this upheaval.  The old normal 

is just the new normal calling a time out.

Lawrence J. Krips is an evolution coach  and poet.  A founding member of Ocean State Poets and contributor to the Origami Poetry Project, Larry's poetry has appeared in such publications as Tifferet, Writers' Circle, Rhode Island Writers' Circle Anthology, The Open Door, 50 Haikus, New Verse News, The Best of Kindness II Anthology and Under the 13th Star Anthology.  His poem, Yahrzeit, received a Pushcart Prize nomination.  Mr. Krips' first book, A Soul's Way . . . Soulspeak, was published by Hallowed Abyss and is also available as a cd.

CHOSEN

by Linda Parsons

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

You, yes, you. On the porch glider of memory, 

thinking again of your grandmother’s grease-

stained kitchen and how she saved you. You, 

in the first snow of the year, the burdened photinia 

limbs, the night’s blue note. I mean you. You 

who’ve been griping and gnashing your teeth 

in the constant upheaval—not just our country’s 

bruised fist, but the world entire, its tectonics adrift. 

It was your idea, when the roll was called up yonder, 

to take up your pallet, to rise like Lazurus, 

his winding sheet of myrrh and aloe trailing behind. 

To say, Me, I’ll go. I’ll go to that time, that cliff 

and split sky, that rage of brother against brother 

against sister, unfriending right and left. 

Left from right. It’s my time. My time to be 

a lighthouse, to shine far and wide over veined 

stones and broken vows alike, though my heels 

bleed, my steps falter. My time to march 

on the winter streets and hold high my sign: 

God is watching you kill.

 

Remember 

your Ecclesiastes: Time and chance happen 

to us all. And what will you do with this time, 

this chance to sweep your beam along the rocky 

shoreline, to pull whoever outlasted the nor’easter 

back to breath? This is your time—to spend 

like a wastrel or shower the heavens with a gracious 

plenty. You engine of steam and plow. You 

shoulder to the squeaky wheel. You asked for it. 

You volunteered to help turn the tide 

and guide this mother home. 

 

Linda Parsons is the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, Tennessee. She is also the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and many others. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville.