Jennifer Lagier

SAY HER NAME
For Renée Nicole Good

While stormtroopers terrorize our neighborhoods,
assault senior citizens, peaceful protestors,
a black-clad, masked man points his revolver
through Renee’s open window.

Armed with only her voice, conscience, and a whistle,
she attempts to leave the scene as instructed
in a family SUV filled with
children’s stuffed animals.

The soundtrack from witnesses’ videos
reveal her calmly telling the aggressive ICE agent
she isn’t mad at him.
He responds by pumping three shots
into her face, murdering a wife and mother.

Afterwards, he walks away,
snarls, “Fuck You, Bitch,”
the vicious philosophy
of his evil overlord’s
cruel administration.


Jennufer's YouTube reading of "Say Her Name"


Jennifer confesses: "Moral outrage compels me to speak out about this heinous murder of a woman by an armed assassin."

JENNIFER LAGIER has published twenty-five books. Her work appears in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edited the Homestead Review, currently edits the Monterey Poetry Review, helps publicize Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Saturday readings. Website: jlagier.net, Facebook: www.facebook.com/JenniferLagier/

F.I. Goldhaber

BREAK THE CYCLE
A Fibonacci poem

He
failed.
Again.
Make this the
last time. Replace him
immediately with someone who:
isn't a quisling, has a spine, is a capable
leader, fights fascism and Zionism, and is not doddering toward dementia.


F.I.'s YouTube reading of "Break the Cycle"


F.I. confesses nothing

F.I. GOLDHABER's words capture people, places, and politics with a photographer's eye and a poet's soul. As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, they produced news stories, feature articles, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. More than 240 of their poems appear in almost 90 publications including What Color is Your Privilege?, their political poetry collection published by Left Fork press. http://www.goldhaber.net/

G. Emil Reutter

STANDARD POLICE PROCEDURE
Do not shoot at a moving vehicle

In the land of liberty where
Citizens are under attack by
Rogue agents of Immigration
And Border Patrol led by a
Rogue secretary where laws
And rules do not apply
Do not apply
Shoot first, shoot them, beat them
The pink haired leader proclaims
Condems the victim in the violence
First shooting in Minneapolis
Next in Portland... .
Are any citizens safe in the
Land of Trump?

Across the land
Standard Police Procedure
Do not shoot at a moving vehicle.
Local, State, Federal
Do not shoot at a moving vehicle.
Unless you are one of those who
Attack people while wearing masks
Commando uniforms when you
Are civilian law enforcement... .
Not military... .
Do not shoot at a moving vehicle


g.'s YouTube reading of "Standard Police Procedure"


g. confesses: "The poem was inspired by the events unfoliding in Minniapolis and Portland that refect on what is going on across the nation. We must speak up!"

G. EMIL REUTTER is a writer of stories and poems. He can be found at https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/

Robert Cooperman

TRUMP'S PROCLAMATION

“Effective immediately,
all streets, avenues, and boulevards
named for Martin Luther King, Jr.
will be renamed for the slain
American martyr, Charlie Kirk.

“In addition, all public sculptings
of King will be torn down, melted,
and recast as equestrian statues of me,
your president, Donald J. Trump.

“It’s time to start honoring us great
American heroes, not a rabble rouser
with the bad luck to get in the way
of a stray bullet when he had slinked off
to Memphis to meet his mistress.

“America needs role models
who look like its citizens:
like Charlie, true Christian men,
who built this country
and are now threatened
by snarling, woke hordes of savages.

“Any city or state that fails
to carry out these orders immediately
will lose all federal funds, plus suffer
the summary imprisonment of all officials
responsible for this act of treason.

“Are you listening New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, D.C.,
and any den of leftwing extremist traitors?
The soft times are over for you.
Real Americans are back
and we want answers and names.”


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Trump's Proclamation"


Cooperman confesses: "'Trump's Proclamation' is just my logical conclusion to his fulminating that only "real" Americans should be honored, and by 'real' Americans we can surmise the president-would-rule-for-life means Christian white men like Charlie Kirk and even more so, himself. So why not take it one step further and make them he mandatory subjects of all public art?"

ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia, a retelling of Hamlet, with a slightly happier ending, at least for Ophelia. Steerage is the highly fictionalized story of his grandfather's misadventures on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20th Century. An Oar for Odysseus is the final collection in Cooperman's lifelong love affair with Odysseus and The Odyssey.