Sickness Unto Death

Walter Bargen

July 11, 2022

It wasn’t blood. Too thick unless it’s been a few minutes

And events began to coalesce and coagulate,

and maybe there was again time to think about all of this

yet again, though any thinking had already come up short

and shorted out, wires crossed and touching, the sparks

of little consequence, flesh boiling with charred anger.

If he’d been on his knees he could have licked the ketchup

off the wall, maybe started a new craze like smoking banana peels,

but his anger would never be satiated, even if dessert

was red velvet cake covered with chocolate icing

and anointed with pitted fresh cherries,

but there were the assistants ready to get down

on their knees with soap and water, vacuum, disposable rags,

all brought up from the basement where all the cleaning

supplies are kept out of sight so no one suspects that

this cleanliness that is next to godliness, needs assistance,

and that means employees on the payroll

and everyone taxed to pay for his tantrums.

Walter Bargen has published 25 books of poetry including My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), and You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009). 

Catsup

Michael Helsem

July 1, 2022

And did those tiny hands conspire

To wrestle the Constitution down?

To spatter the walls with catsup spurned

Or blood that just might have to be spilled?

Bring me my box of launch codes quick!

Bring me the latest Tucker screed!

That steering wheel I’ll have to grab

Though never before have I driven.

If Pence won’t do what I demand

Pence is hist’ry & must go.

Bring me my reddest red tie now!

Bring me that shadow over there!

I said that shadow over there!!

Michael Helsem was born in 1958. Shortly afterward, fish fell from the sky.

The Hearing

Suzanne Morris

June 30, 2022

—-for Fran Levy

Who would have noticed

such a small detail

given the gravity of

the proceedings?

Not when the witness from Georgia

said she had been

robbed of her name– 

the affectionate name

known throughout her community

for many years– 

robbed of her identity by

those who would rob us all 

of the votes we cast in the

2020 Presidential election,

those who also had

accused her of nonexistent crimes

hounded her from her home and

threatened her with violence

those who seemed to regard her

as mere collateral damage

in their treacherous scheme.

No, not then, but right at the end

of the day’s proceedings:

who would have noticed

such a small detail,

when the Jewish gentleman

from California

took time in his

closing statement to

pause and smile at her

with tenderness

then restore her 

beloved name?

Lady Ruby, he said,

speaking her name intimately

yet for the whole world to hear,

in a gesture of respect

and gratitude

for all she had done

for her country,

and for the price

she had paid.

For forty years, Suzanne Morris was a novelist, with eight published works beginning with Galveston (Doubleday, 1976) and most recently Aftermath - a novel of the New London school tragedy, 1937 (SFASU Press, 2016). Often her poetry was attributed to characters in her fiction. Nowadays she devotes all her creative energies to writing poems. Her work is included in the anthologies, No Season for Silence - Texas Poets and Pandemic (Kallisto GAIA Press, 2020), and the upcoming, Gone, but Not Forgotten, from Stone Poetry Journal. Her poems have also appeared in The New Verse News.