NOBODY SHOULD WANT INEQUALITY TO EXIST

by Shirley JonesLuke

Detail from “Answers to Your Protest Questions” by Chelsea Saunders at The Nib, June 12, 2020

Inequality is store security following
It’s the inconsistent punishment from
a teacher for breaking a class rule
it’s the number of times you were stopped
by the police, as you walked or drove home
It’s being fired & taking twice as long to find a job
It’s being an ex-con and no one wants to hire you
It’s having a name on a resume—Jaquita, Kamal, or Rayshawn then being placed in the circular file.  It’s listening to your grandmother tell stories about the marches in the sixties or your mom telling you about being called nigger when she was a freshman in college during the eighties or how even now you hold your child tightly as a police car rolls by, watching your every move. It’s being Black in America and bracing for battle every time you leave the house. Or it’s forgetting your roots & embracing the shucking & jiving that Society wants to see. You entertain & you live another day. You resist & they’ll kill you. It’s a living death versus death. A burden Black folk carry & they can’t carry it anymore.

Shirley JonesLuke is an activist, essayist, and poet living in Boston, Mass. She has an MFA from Emerson College. Her work focuses on culture, race, and society. Shirley has attended workshops at Breadloaf, Tin House, and VONA. She is working on a poetry manuscript.

ON THE MONEY

by Lee Patton

The Harriet Tubman $20 was a redesign plan, advanced during the Obama administration, that was supposed to have rolled out in 2020 to mark the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. That plan, like so many others for the year, has been shelved, and one of the reasons given for the delay was concerns over counterfeit security. The new Tubman $20 is now set at the earliest for 2028. Of course, Tubman enthusiasts and those supporting feminism and racial justice have been rightly suspicious that this is the actual reason for delaying the redesign, given the current administration’s lack of interest in race and gender equality, not to mention the president’s actions in hanging a portrait of Andrew Jackson—the seventh U.S. president, who currently fronts the $20—in the Oval Office while recently refusing to unveil a portrait of Obama, the first black U.S. president and his predecessor. Symbols and symbolic actions matter.Nonetheless, does a Tubman $20 matter as a symbol? There will be those who will say Harriet Tubman on the $20 would not have changed the circumstances leading to the death of George Floyd. But consider this. George Floyd was killed over an imagined counterfeit $20 in a country that can’t keep its promise to place Tubman on the $20, counterfeit security issues or otherwise. Which is the real counterfeit here? George Floyd’s $20, Harriet Tubman’s $20 redesign or a country that still pretends there is “liberty and justice for all”? —Janell Hobson, Ms., June 16, 2020

A genocidal maniac stares back at us
on our twenty dollar bill—native killer,
ethnic cleanser extraordinaire. Plans to put
a slave liberator in his place got erased—

Miss Tubman, ever poised for glory, will
not suffice. Our leader admires the killer,
even placed his portrait to grace his office.
Franklin and Hamilton, our currency’s

sole non-presidents, were at least fun guys—Ben,
teenaged runaway, Alex, Caribbean bastard—
but unlike civilized lands, we have no artists,
no philosophers, no scientists on our cash.

Our basic buck poses an honest slavemaster—
zealot of forced labor, profit, and the lash.

Lee Patton, a Denverite, writes fiction, poetry, drama and commentary.  His newest novel Every Summer Day is in pre-release from Bold Strokes Books.

THE AUCTION BLOCK

by Elizabeth Spencer Spragins

The city of Fredericksburg, Virginia, has removed an auction block marking the spot where African Americans were once displayed and sold as slaves. —CNN, June 13, 2020

Blackened gold
Smolders where the slaves are sold.
Shackles lacerate each limb;
Children whimper unconsoled

And taste fear.
White-washed faces laugh or leer,
Peer at teeth and backs stripped bare.
Captives stare at auctioneer,

Gaveled god,
Passing sentence with a nod,
Smiling when his skills inflate
The going rate for unshod

Doltish brutes.
Chattel’s role is buffing boots,
Groveling at each command,
Plowing fields and plucking fruits.

Evil’s hold
Burns the human heart with cold.
Only embers banked from pain
Melt the chains of blackened gold.


Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a poet and writer who taught in American community colleges for more than a decade. Her tanka and bardic verse in the Celtic style have been published extensively in Europe, Asia, and North America. She is the author of With No Bridle for the Breeze: Ungrounded Verse (Shanti Arts Publishing) and The Language of Bones: American Journeys Through Bardic Verse (Kelsay Books). "The Auction Block" is an example of a Rannaigheacht Ghairid.

THE BALLAD OF 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

by Peter Nohrnberg

Illustration by Chris Riddell, The Guardian, June 6, 2020

Now gather round ye faithful Folk
For I have a tale to tell
About a righteous POTUS who
Like Jesus harrowed Hell!

When terrorists (Antifa trained)
Assembled in the Park
And cast a shadow on his House
Of White with all their Dark

He gathered up his Family
(They helped with his Election)
And said without a trace of fear
“It’s time for an Inspection!”

Down and down, far underground
Where mole rats make their home:
He ventured to an Underworld
deep within Earth’s loam.

Fathoms below The People’s House,
A Bunker built for crisis:
With plumbing, air con, freezers full
Of tea and cake and ices;

Clocks, computers, radios,
Guns and knives and tasers,
flashlights, nightlights, bowling balls,
and triple-bladed razors.

One musty room was full of shelves
That held strange leather things.
The President took one of them
And ruffled its mottled wings.

“Now what the hell is this thing here?”
He asked with scornful look.
Quoth the Secret Service Man,
“Sir, it’s called a Book.”

Behind a shelf then stepped an Aide
Whom none recalled descending:
His face obscured by sunglasses,
His jerkin needing mending.

“Some say strange powers Books possess,
Hold wisdom of the ages:
Tales of the past for future use
Contained within their pages.”

The President just gave a shrug
And dropped it on the floor.
He walked right out and asked to see
If there was anything more.

He passed through many well stocked rooms
All suitably provisioned
For the year-long nuclear Winter that
Dr. Strangelove had envisioned.

A Room much vaster than the rest
held medical supplies.
And when He spied a Ventilator
The scales fell from his eyes.

“This shithole bunker is the pits,
It’s ugly and it’s dim,
I wouldn’t put Kim Jung-un up here
Let alone my next of kin.

No Twitter, Big Macs, tanning beds:
How could I have a life?
The pornos in the home theater
Are older than my wife!”

And so with that the President
Ascended from the Cave.
He rose up from that deathly place  
Like our Savior from the Grave!

He claimed a tax deduction on
The bunker’s cancelled lease,
Then heard ten thousand Citizens
All protesting in Peace.

“What the hell? They’re still here?
I thought they had gone home!
Bring me General William Barr
It’s time to flood the zone!”

Out of a pond in Garden Rose
Hopped forth a wondrous sight:
A Bullfrog clad in Brooks Brothers,
Croaked he, “Unite the Right!”

His toady eyes betrayed no shame
From out his tortoiseshell glasses.
He whispered into the Joint Chief’s ear
“It’s time to kick some asses!

For all those gathered fail to see
Our Savior Has Arisen!
Bring me our Proud Boys with batons
From the Texas Bureau of Prisons!”

Then from Ivanka’s ruby Lips
These honeyed words did drop:
“O Big Daddy ain’t it time
For an upbeat photo op?”

Another mayonnaise-faced Damsel
(She was yclept Hope Hicks)
Recalled a hallowed Church nearby
To help Him in His fix.

The Photographer urged getting there
before the sun had set;
So they smoked and gassed those uppity Folks
In the Park of Lafayette.

Once the acrid air had cleared
The President took his stroll:
O what a wonderous thing to see
An upright walking Troll!

He stood before the ancient Kirk
In a suit that did not fit;
Ivanka from Max Mara Purse
Pulled out the Holy Writ.

She handed Him the booky thing
He did not know its function.
He held it high above His Head
Like a bidder at an auction.

He did not read a single Verse,
Nor recite a Psalm.
The cameras clicked and no one spoke;
There was an eerie calm.

The Nation watched the scene unfold
From start to finish brief.
Those who could breathe, they held their breath
In total disbelief.

POTUS tried to find his groove,
He tweeted “Law and Order!”
Around His Keep He built a Wall
Just like at the Border.

His House of White He made a Jail,
Himself its Detainee:
Like a Castaway on a desert Isle,
Or a Strongman wannabee.

But He had been a Prisoner
Before this tale was told.
His mindforged Manacles were wrought
Of twenty-four carat Gold.

The White House dark, the Streets alive;
The Pundits have their answer.
Come November our Prisoner-in-Chief
Will be awaiting transfer…

A scholar of literary modernism specializing in James Joyce, Peter Nohrnberg also writes poetry and satire. He has served as poetry ambassador to the City of Cambridge, MA, and his poems have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Wisconsin Review, Oxford Poetry, and Oberon, among other journals. He currently vents his spleen on satirely.com .

SAY HER NAME: BREONNA TAYLOR

by Peter Witt

The Painting of Breonna Taylor was done by Linnea Tobias, a Spokane artist. It is used with the permission of the artist.

Eight bullets riddled her young body
in the dead hours of a Louisville night
she didn't have to die that way

When demanding police reform
remember to say her name
she didn't need to die that way

Police refuse to release their files
yet from all we know to date it's clear
she didn't need to die that way

Search revealed no suspected drugs
men police sought were already in jail
she didn't need to die that way

Another mother is left to ask why
a young EMT was killed in a spray of bullets
she didn't need to die that way

Charged boyfriend with shooting at police
thinking they were home invaders
she didn't need to die that way

Now three officers under investigation
charges against boyfriend dropped, police chief fired
she didn't need to die that way

Add Breonna's name to the list we chant
at endless rallies demanding change
she didn't need to die that way

Peter Witt is a retired University Professor and 2020 Poet Laureate for the International Poetics Foundation.

THERE'S NO SPITTING IN BASEBALL

by Michael Mark

The Major League Baseball Players Association informed MLB on Saturday night that they are done negotiating and want an answer by Monday on how many games they’ll play and when to show up for work. —USA Today, June 13, 2020

In earlier news:
Baseball released a thorough health and safety protocol to help protect its players during the 2020 MLB Season. But there’s one new rule that will certainly be tough to follow: No Spitting.
—Fansided, May 22, 2020

Crude are the subtleties of the double play
compared to the majestic hock and graceful spray
of spittle professionally spurt. Slaver to

mound, slicking home plate—wet thwack
of saliva oiling well worn mitts. See that!  I’d say
after a bulky loogie—caught on TV

back in the old days (last season). Leaping
from the couch, I’d grab the remote, hit
playback and slow-mo

the slobber projectile. Freeze frame
itsemergence, rising flight and Pollack splatter.
“See that cheek suck, check out that lips purse,
that thick tongue flick—that bountiful gush!”

O beautiful for spacious fly!

If you don’t understand the spit you don’t understand baseball.
If you don’t understand baseball go back to the shithole
you came from—to toss around today’s cheap seat
banter from the trash talker in chief.

Let the bowlers groan, yuk, eww, gag, groan, gross!
If you ban spittin’ seeds—you might as well outlaw outs,
strikes, fouls, hits. What’s next, Commissioner?
Crotch grabs and sack realignments?

It’s an American fan’s right to recount celebrities of sputter
and spew: Why, have a seat my child, I’ll tell ya
about Legendary Lefty the Lip
who could launch a loogie further than the Bambino’s

most prodigious rip and was every bit as accurate –
pointing out his expectorant’s dart, arc
and splash-down. O yes! To the very speck
of red dirt he’d swamp

with juicy Tennessee chaw—outta
both sides of his maw.
Not to your taste? Take a walk.
Good as a hit in the score book.

So, when you see a crappy pitch, take it, kid.
Like the old timers said, “just spit on it.” That’s how
the greats played this hard-scrabble, historic game.
It’ll be sad not to know shit about spit—

soon just a dried-up old asterisk. I for one
will rise from my chair - let the chips fall—
sing proud our national hymn
and hum a prayer:

Play ball againboys! But please take care—
we don’t want anyone hurt by squirt
in dirt or thin air. And remember it’s still legit—
here, my heart does thump—
behind your MLB approved Covid masks –
to holler, Kill the ump!


Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Salt Hill Journal, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Waxwing, The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily. He’s the author of two books of stories including Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). @michaelgrow

TWO OLD PROTESTERS STILL READY TO PROTEST

by Jane Yolen and Peter Tacy

1965

JY:

So, sit down on this stoop,
not that close,
I can hear you through your mask.
The words are familiar,
that hoarse enthusiasm,
your passion for the cause.
Even old legs can march,
though not run away.
Do you have your water bottle?
City map?
Inhaler?
Tissues?
My cell phone number?
The lawyer’s?
I have yours.
Remember:
the arc bends towards justice.
It’s not what we stand against.
It’s what we stand for.

PT:

I learned early—close to home;

What’s wrong—what we all know
To be wrong—can’t be accepted.

My grandmother said it:
Accepting doesn’t just mean
You agree, either; it means
You’ve done nothing to stop wrong.

Wrong, she said, is not static, or
Passive; its impulse is to grow,
To add mass and momentum.
So we have to stop wrong, she said.

If we don’t stop wrong, then
Wrong will grow like a cancer
And consume us all, even if we
Hate wrong. That’s what she said.

I’ve found ever since that she
Was right. So—when I see wrong,
I don’t just sit there. Like she said,
Good intentions don’t equal good.

But what she didn’t say, and I
Know now, is that fighting
Wrong doesn’t establish good.

You’ve got to let your living
Teach you good. Live with the pores
Of your soul, your empathy, open —

Your sense of wonder and awe
Open like a trawl-net, to find good.

And whenever you find some good,
Hide it in your heart.  Because with it
Hating wrong no longer equals hatred.
A miracle happens—and hate

Transmutes to love. My grandmother
Never said that to me; but now
I know she lived it. How? My grandkids
Have taught me—as I did her.

JY:

Or as I always said
to my kids
and grandkids:
Leave the world
a better place
than you found it.
Not so hard now.
Or maybe harder.
You dropped your inhaler.
I’ll help you stand.
It will be a long walk.
But we’re used to them.
And the company—
all those young people—
the best.
In case enthusiasm
distracts them,
we’re here to remind:
it’s not what we stand against,
but what we stand for
‘cause the arc of justice
doesn’t just bend itself, you know.

Jane Yolen is a Hatfield writer with over 389 books published. 10 of them books of adult poetry. Peter Tacy, Yiolen’s fiancé, lives both in Hatfield and Mystic Ct and has been an educator and writer/poet for most of his life.

NOTES FROM THE WEEKLY MEETING OF THE 75-YEAR-OLD ANTIFA PROVOCATEURS

by John Hodgen

Welcome back, Martin. How’s the noggin?
(Laughter.) (Applause.)
You really used your head this time, big fella. Careful when you log in.
Taking one for the team, Martin. Way to go. One for the cause.
And great job with the Fake Blood Pellet in the Ear trick.
And the old Backwards Trip and Fall Stutter Step. Worked like a charm.
All that practice paid off. A perfect 10 from the Russian judge. Terrific.
Wall to wall on OANN. And you got the CNN and MSNBC crowd alarmed.
You’re a meme now. More people have seen you fall than watched the Towers.
Score one for ANTIFA. Talk about defunding the police. Fight the power.
And you even got all the police scanner info with your secret decoder ring.
Proud of you, big guy. Let’s get started now for your next gig.
Mar-a-Lago. The old swan dive under the golf cart. Do your thing.
This is going to be big.

Editor's Note: The 75-year-old man hospitalized after he was pushed by a police officer during a peaceful protest last week in Buffalo, New York, suffered a brain injury as a result of the incident, his lawyer revealed Thursday. Kelly Zarcone said her client, activist Martin Gugino, "is starting physical therapy," which Zarcone called "a step in the right direction. As heartbreaking as it is, his brain is injured and he is well aware of that now," Zarcone said in a statement. "He feels encouraged and uplifted by the outpouring of support which he has received from so many people all over the globe. It helps. He is looking forward to healing and determining what his ‘new normal’ might look like." The New Verse News offers this poem to cheer him and those who have come to know and love Martin for his work and sacrifice. We wish him all the best.

John Hodgen is the Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University in Worcester, MA.  Hodgen won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).  His fifth book The Lord of Everywhere is out from Lynx House/University of Washington Press.

IN THE PICK 'N SAVE PARKING LOT

by Lisa Vihos

Looking over
the top of my mask
my glasses already steamed,
I meet your eyes, stranger,
and we smile.

We cannot see these smiles
but we know we are smiling.
The twinkle in the eye tells all.
We raise our hands in silent salute.

Nothing could have prepared us
for this moment, or maybe
everything did.
If only our hands could meet,
right here, we’d become a prayer.

We know we are members
of the same tribe,
fighting an insidious evil
that flourishes on the breath,
on the wind, and has run
unchecked in all the lies of now,
and in all the lies past.
Let it be unchecked no more.

In the journey towards justice,
there is just us, essential prophets
seeing beyond the mask.

Lisa Vihos has four chapbooks and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, both print and online. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the poetry and arts editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal. Just this past week, Vihos was named the poet laureate of Sheboygan, WI—the city's first—where she also serves as an organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change.  

WHAT WHITE PEOPLE STEAL: AN (INCOMPLETE) SURVEY

by Sarah Haufrect

Trump administration won’t say who got $511 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus loans —The Washington Post, June 11, 2020

Home base
Soundbites
Roman antiquities
Registered handguns
Textbooks about history
Rx drugs from the bathroom cabinet
Extra sample-sized cups of self-serve frozen yogurt
Bitcoin
Borders
Jury selections
Boards of directors
Acceptance letters to elite universities
Higher scores on their kids’ SATs
Streaming television services
National elections
Little packets of Splenda from the coffee kiosk
Years off their ages with fillers and Botox
Intellectual property
Internet porn
Venture capital
Overpriced gourmet popcorn
Foreign passports
Someone else’s taxi
Personal identities
Supreme courts
Nuclear arsenals
Corn subsidies
Workers risking their lives to feed their families
Presidential pardons
Computer algorithms
Jewelry at Nordstrom
Detroit techno
Rap
(Never crack)
Always cocaine
Copyrights
Indigenous land
Basic civil and human rights
Living wages
Immigrant children still locked up in cages
Bars and dance clubs alive with innocent bystanders
Black lives that matter that matter that matter

Sarah Haufrect is a 2020 graduate of the MFA Writing program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Medusa's Laugh Press, Lucky Jefferson, and others.

TO BE EQUAL

by CeCe NeQuai

Photo by SOLIDCOLOURS via Louisville Business First, June 12, 2020

My People stand
in the streets with masked faces
and painted signs,

to rage against,
not the “dying of the light,”
but the dying of our kind.

My Brother stands
eleven years old, holds
my hand when I

cry, because
the tear gas and bullets are loud,
and we can’t hear the chants of the crowd.

My Grandma stands.
Watches at the door when I go,
because the people

in our town that
she doesn’t know
look too much like they might call me
something.

The system stands
on the backs of its people.
On those who scream proud that

We want change.

That we want chains gone.

To be equal.

CeCe NeQuai is an Ohio based creator of poetry, fiction, screenplays, and films. She is a writing, film, and media student at Bowling Green State University. Keep up with CeCe NeQuai via Twitter at @nequai_

ZOOM COURT

by Thomas J. Erickson

It’s confounding having a hearing while I’m sitting
in my living room. I have a pandemic beard
and unruly bangs and am wearing boxer shorts
while I position the camera just so to catch
my face and my coat and tie.

Within reach are framed photographs,
books I have loved on the bookcase,
my poetry journals.

My client is on video from the jail. A young
black guy wearing a white mask that gleams
out of the grain. The symbolism is so heavy
it makes me want to reach for my pen.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His fourth book, The Lawyer Chronicles, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press this fall.

MOURNING GEORGE FLOYD

by Marilyn Peretti

A boxy white truck with the blue eagle
pulls up to the curb, the postal vehicle
I observe most days.

Today I’m absorbed in tv, at the same time
view the driver through my window—
her pale blue clerk’s shirt, a billed cap,
and the blue-gray summer shorts
showing her shiny brown legs
through the open door.

Fleetingly I wonder what mail she’ll
bring me. But back to the Houston
funeral of George Floyd, victim
of city police brutality.

The choir, distancing themselves
due to the pandemic, the speakers,
the pastors lowering their safety masks.
The organ, the hymns, the brothers.

Then Rev. Al Sharpton, “‘I can’t breathe’
he said, and was choked for 8 minutes,
46 seconds — Breath is how God gives
you life, it is sanctified, it is sacred.”

She’s still sitting in the truck
looking down intently at her device
it seems. I watch the congregants,
hear sad and glorious words, lifting
George up, praising his honesty,
his leadership, his faith.

After 15 minutes she climbs out
of the truck, opens the rear door,
lifts the mail tub out for our building,
interrupting her concentration—
she our civil servant, an essential worker,
experiencing this near-personal funeral
on the job.

More songs, more lifting up of George.
She returns to the truck, empty tub
over her head, protection from the
sudden June downpour.

In her seat again, she stares at the device,
mourning in the postal truck. After
some time, I see the red brake light
come on, and she pulls away.

Marilyn Peretti of Glen Ellyn, IL, does too much thinking. And probably feeling. She has been published many times before at TheNewVerse.News.

MOURNING IN AMERICA

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

I.
no vaccine for this condition

ever present     sucks out life
      soul      erases biographies

one knee
8 minutes, 46 seconds
   Momma, I love you

II.
lifeless daughters, sons of God

our grief       anger
   guilt       emptiness

ache    
to resurrect
     to re-breathe you

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations at state, diocesan and national levels. Her work has appeared in several Old Mountain Press anthologies, Poetic Portions anthology, Soul-lit Spiritual Poetry, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Panoply Literary Zine, Snapdragon Journal, Whirlwind Magazine, Kakalak, Red Clay Review and Gyroscope Review. Five poems were turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham.  Her chapbook Being Kin (CreationRising Press) was published in 2019.  She lives in Durham, NC.