MS MAXWELL AND THE ART OF THE DEAL

by Raymond Nat Turner

Cartoon by Jean Gouders posted 9 August 2025 on X by Iroon.

For her silence she wants the Ruby

Slippers back—along with her broomstick—

The Lolita Express… Better yet…  she

Wants the jet Qatar gifted grifter Boss Tweet.

She wants all alphabet agencies who

Spy on the American People

Mobilized/weaponized to find out which

Hedge fund flipped a house on her sister.

She wants ICE rounding up a million Munchkins a month

For her pleasure. She wants scores of other peoples’ babies.

She wants impunity to work Quinceañeras, Bat Mitzvahs,

Sweet Sixteens with former father figure, Jel-Low Puddin Man.

She wants a new psyop to co-opt left language.

She wants to use “What’s the call? Free ‘em all!”

To Free Harvey! Free Diddy! Free R. Kelly! And

Allow Russell Simmons to sing, “I believe I can fly!”

She wants Slick Willy notified that honeypots and

Sandwiches will return shortly. She wants Cuomo

To know he can come and go. She wants Papa Cop

To know that he can fly—free—to Turkey.

She wants baby oil tariffs removed. She wants

Diddy as mixologist aboard the Love Boat her

Father fell from and drowned in waters off the

Canary Islands.

She wants use of some 800 plus bases run by

Greasy-thumbed generals. Preferably, those

Named for confederate traitors. She wants to erect a new

Headquarters. A station. A secure location for predation.

She wants to “steal” reich-cult blondes for weekly workouts.

Smoothie-fueled saunas, steam baths and mani-pedis in secure

White supremacist, settler-colonial, tropical paradises. Built on

Profaned bones of indigenous ancestors.

Finally, if she’s found “unresponsive.” Entangled in sheets. Tumbled from

10th floor window. Or, reciting autopsy, a coroner crows, “A little poison!”

Bury her atop her triple-agent Pop. In Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives Cemetery.

With international intelligence community elite turnout—With 21 gun salute...

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

THE THIRTEENTH MORNING AFTER

by Lyndi O'Laughlin

Image source: Loyal White Knights

Someone put an Amazon box
with a dirty bomb
under the Wizard of Oz’s throne,
blowing millions of barefaced replicas
into a blameless wind,

some lined-up right now
outside the local tattoo parlor,
needles buzzing over the raw flesh
of “Stars and Stripes Forever”.

The Victory Klavalkade Klan Parade is
planned for December, pale guys
and the women who love them
will wave from the beds of
pick-up trucks slithering down
a slick shiny boulevard in
North Carolina, and light will try to glint
off the gun metal barrels of dusty rifles
hanging on racks in back windows;
confetti and balloons will thrill
the children of the children and
maple trees along the parade route
will blow backwards into
the indifferent faces of crows,

and there is so much joy
around me that I turn away,
walk myself into the ocean,
breath salt water and fish scales,
stroll by anemones and sea stars
hiding under vast islands of
Huggies, Big Mac wrappers,
condoms and water bottles.

I’ll nap in a kelp bed, wake to
my own whimpers and howls
bubbling forth like the bays of
a three-legged red bone hound
tethered underwater to a coral reef,
head straight back, mouth an open gash,
seven billion balls of air bubbling forth.

It’s a comfortable enough seat,
this rocky outcrop, and I hardly
have to crane my neck at all
to see the soft underbelly
of that great white shark,
circling the shipwreck on my left.

Nothing to be done today
but keen bad poems,
let them rise in bubbles that
break the surface with a feeble crack
like the chipped edge
of a flat oar,
knowing I will never again
have to wonder—
how the Holocaust was
able to happen in the first place.

Lyndi O'Laughlin has a degree in nursing, but spends her time writing poetry from her home in Kaycee, Wyoming. As a progressive living in a rural, conservative area, poetry has become her way of expressing views that question the status quo. 

SELF-MADE MAN

by Tom Russell

I gave birth to myself.

I discovered fire so that I could eat
whatever I, alone, produced.

I didn’t read your books,
you read mine.

I coined all the phrases.

I invented the wheel
and built all the roads
that wheels carry my money on.

I did all this with no help from anyone.

I created the dial tones and cyberspace
and made all the deals.

I forged all my own tools,
and that includes you.

Now you want to abuse me
with your regulations and taxations.
Blathering about responsibility
and shared sacrifice.

Suck it up, weasels.
Next you’ll be wanting your own bootstraps.

I don’t care who among you
gets sick or dies.
It pleases me
to see the spite you have for each other.

You are blind and weak.
Even if you could see my curtain
you wouldn’t be able to move it
and know that I am there.


Tom Russell works for the Omaha Public Library in Omaha, Nebraska. His poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Shot Glass Journal, and Crab Fat Literary Magazine.