SUPER TUESDAY

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

$UPERCILIOU$

Oily gutter politricks sunken rainbows
Warped arc reflection scared straight
Contending with scorched soil tactics
Flying Saucer Tea Party crash-landing

$UPERPHONY

If Obama walked on water
Rancid Foxy creatures that inhabit
Polluted foggy bottomless DCeption
Would ask: “Can’t he swim?”

$UPERCHARLATAN

Barely afloat back from brink
Contrarian House craven maven power-mongers
Relentlessly diminishing disrespecting unwilling to
Act in common good-better-best faith

$UPEROPPORTUNI$T

Obstructionist Congress lobbying corporate sponsors
Casino crapshoot rolling loaded dice
Greedy unprincipled hypocrites institutionalizing avarice
Judeo-Christian-Zionist unholy crusader war
 
$UPER$CHMOOZER

Barack is who he is
Fundamentally principled reversing Bush catastrophes
Despite monumental Republican’t  naysayers bucking
Broncobama No-OK Corral rodeo champ
 
$UPERPANDERER

Left is right bipolarized chill-out
As good as it’s gonna
Get for next four years
Probably better than we deserve

 No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

NOVEMBER 5, 2012. THE DAY BEFORE.

by Sarah Kay

Today, the day before the election, I spent the day at an all-girls school
in Nashville, Tennessee. After the day’s events were finished, they held
a reception in the Headmaster’s home, and I found myself alone in a
room with three girls from the high school. Someone had a sticker that
said, “I voted!” And I asked about it, confused, because of her age.
She told me they had held a mock election earlier that day. I asked
about the results, trying to keep my tone even, not wanting my own
politics to creep into my voice. She said, 43 Obama, 54 Romney.
I couldn’t keep a wow from slipping out. That’s actually better than
I would have expected, she said. It was clear, based on the way she
said it, what “better” meant, and I started to ask more about it, now
feeling safe that we were on the same team. The Headmaster re-entered
the room with other faculty members. The girls shifted in their seats.
We raised our chins, our eyes, crossed our knees. I answered questions
about poetry, about travel, about my family back home, and their recovery
from the hurricane. I did not mention the election. Neither did the girls.
We thanked our hosts, and shuffled into our coats, bracing against the
winds of the newly minted winter air. Once outside, with a safe distance
from the house, I quietly asked what the preparation for the election had been.
Some shaking heads made it clear there hadn’t been any. A junior named Cat,
looked squarely at me. We are in the reddest of red down here. Nobody bothers
trying to explain platforms or sway votes, because it’s not going to make
a difference. All the girls in this school, we all come from conservative parents.
Conservative administration. It’s amazing Obama even got as many as he did.
We swayed in the parking lot, and the ropes in my stomach wound tighter
and tighter.  I felt like I had failed them. I shouldn’t have wasted time
on poems about peacocks and love. I should have been teaching them
about what it means to be a woman. About burden and responsibility and pain,
about how hard it was to get to where we are, how easily it slips away.
The three girls in the parking lot walked me to my car.  They were smart
and outspoken, the way girls at these schools often out-rank their peers
from co-ed schools. They left me in my car, their green and white plaid skirts
brushing their knees as they walked.  Have a good night, they said.
We’ll see you tomorrow for the middle school assembly.
Good luck, they said.  I knew they were talking about the assembly.
Good luck to you too, I said.  Good luck to us all.


Sarah Kay began performing her spoken word poetry when she was fourteen years old. In 2004, she founded the organization Project V.O.I.C.E. to encourage creative self-expression through spoken word poetry. She now performs and teaches spoken word poetry in venues and classrooms all over the world. In 2011, Sarah was a featured speaker at the TED Conference, where she received two standing ovations for her performance and speech on the “Rediscovery of Wonder.” Sarah’s first book, “B” was released in November 2011 by the Domino Project and has been the #1 top ranked poetry book on Amazon.

THE MAN WHO WANTED IT TOO MUCH

by David Spicer 

        From the age of five the man’s ambition was to be President of the most powerful nation on earth. This desire burned so intensely he acquired a swarthy, handsome demeanor that attracted beautiful women. He chose the loveliest and they worked together to fulfill his dream. He graduated from the top business school and felt that since government was the biggest business, he was uniquely qualified. His successes mounted and his family of five sons thrived. He craved leadership like a man desperate in a desert. He sweated desire and ambition. When he mounted his campaign for President after serving as savior of the Olympics and governor of a small state, the people did not trust him. They called him a liar and a fraud. His party renounced him and then slowly accepted him without passion. His opponent grinned and charmed people, his eloquent intellect a coin that dazzled. One pundit branded the man whose lifelong ambition dangled within reach a clumsy buffoon who wanted it too much. Voters agreed. On election day they chose the stunning intellectual by the slimmest margin, and the handsome businessman flew into the desert and disappeared.

Author of one collection, Everybody Has a Story, four chapbooks, and six unpublished poetry manuscripts, David Spicer has previously published in The New Verse News and also has work in Alcatraz, Nitty Gritty, Aura, Brown God, Hinchas de Poesia, Crack the Spine, Dirtflask, Spudgun, Mad Rush, Used Furniture Review, Fur-Lined Ghettos, Spudgun, Bop Dead City, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Resurgo, and elsewhere.

THE CANDIDATE TAKES A DAY OFF AFTER WRESTLING THE ARCHANGEL OF TRUTH

by Michael Brockley

The candidate is plucking the creases of his stone-washed jeans after his wife has crossed the hall to iron a pair of Neiman-Marcus socks when the archangel of truth trumpets his battle cry behind him. He turns to this challenge against his honesty to find feathers fluttering above the floor around a vanity table. The grim creature is naked as a G. I. Joe doll. Fragrant as brown sugar. It crouches in a sumo stance while the nominee rolls the sleeves of his white oxford and snugs an Ayn Rand cravat against his Adam’s apple. He circles the archangel, calculating angles until the vanity is behind him and he can grope for the bayonet in the miscellany drawer. A fusion of fog and fury attacks the candidate who stabs at the bald dimple of its crotch. The beautiful mouth. The monstrous, hallelujah eyes. A chandelier crashes around them as the politician flails at wisps of feathers. A whirlwind ransacks the room, shattering windows and mirrors. The daemon materializes behind the standard bearer to slam him to the floor in a half-Nelson. Vipers breed in the contender’s brain. In triumph, the archangel seeds a halt in the candidate’s hip, vanishing at the click of the wife opening the door to investigate the commotion. She helps her husband with his socks. Asks how he stubbed his toe. When she knots the laces of his Italian shoes, he retrieves a paper from his pocket with the day’s lies erased.

Michael Brockley is a 63-year old school psychologist who has worked in special education in rural northeast Indiana for 25 years. He has poetry publications in Wind, The Windless Orchard, Spitball, The Indiana Review, The Indiannual, The Spoon River Quarterly, The River City Review and The Ball State Literary Forum. Tom Koontz’ Barnwood Press published his chapbook Second Chance in 1990, and Brockley has lately placed work in Indiana publications such as Maize, Country Feedback, Flying Island, The Tipton Poetry Journal and Facing Poverty. A video of Brockley reading his “Hollywood’s Poem” which was published in Facing Poverty can be found on YouTube. His poem “When the Woman in the White Sweater Asked at the Cancelled Charles Simic Reading Asked If I Was David Shumate” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Barry Harris of the Tipton Poetry Journal.

STATE OF CONFUSION

by JC Sullivan

she’s visited before
but no one paid much attention, unlike Father Time
she gives everyone a second chance

so again she nudges
asks greed, propaganda and violence to please
take a back seat and when they refuse, she turns
to her female wiles

snatching up electric power, along the Eastern seaboard she dances
her full moon transforms into a terrifying tidal wave
her winds make Atlantic City a personal play thing, she
darkens Broadway
causes public transportation to cease and
beats the billionaires as she forces Wall Street to close!

Sandy
in a cacophony of travel advisories and evacuations,
burst through this crucial Election year
besting both Obama and Romney                                     uniting red states and blue states

reminding us that
Mother Nature

is stronger ... than us all.

Having been a featured poet in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires, JC Sullivan fled the cubicle in 2007. A backpacking addict, she's in Mexico practicing life as an adventure to be explored. Reach her at Poetrybyjc(at)yahoo.com.

THE REPUBLICANS

by Martin Rocek

In Wile E. Coyote reality,
just look straight up if
you run off a cliff,
no need to heed science or gravity.

In Wile E. Coyote reality,
the stork only comes
to eager raped mums,
there's never unwanted gravidity.

In Wile E. Coyote reality,
if you're sick and can't pay
try the Tea Party way:
emergency room hospitality.

In Wile E. Coyote reality,
if God guides your path
there's no use for math,
the deficit's paid by divinity.

In Wile E. Coyote reality,
the poor pay the tax,
the rich just relax
and let Bain take care of their equity.

In Wile E. Coyote reality,
don't bother with truth
--it's a folly of youth--
the facts are a dull technicality.


Martin Rocek teaches and studies theoretical physics at Stony Brook University.

LIES THAT BIND

by Susan de Sola and Ed Shacklee

"They brought us whole binders full of women."

All lies aside, this tart reminder:
It wasn’t Mitt who built the binder.
Massachusetts women – tired
of being courted, but not hired –

approached both camps. The deal was done
long before Mitt Romney won;
and though the old boys called them girlies,
they had Mitt by the short and curlies.

The governor listened, nodded, flattered,
and gave them posts – but none that mattered:
despite that firm, self-serving pledge,
he side-stepped and began to hedge,

to keep his comfy male preserve
where those who reign pretend to serve,
till gifted women started guessing
that they were only window dressing,

and each year watched their numbers drop.
But hey – perhaps they loved to shop,
gossip, have some babies, nurse –
employment only made things worse;

or so the governor suspected.
Oh, well – by then he'd been elected.
Déjà vu: like them we’re finding
how little Mitt considers binding.

Again he wants the votes he lacks:
again he says he’s got their backs,
laminated, perforated,
reproduced and regulated,

for they’ll be hired when times are flush,
otherwise there is no rush.
He condescendingly reminds them
how their domestic duty binds them.

Moral:

Those fillers and binders are relevant
since Willard's amok on an elephant.
Ironic, isn't it? They found
that Mitt prefers his women bound.


Susan de Sola is an American poet living in the Netherlands. A winner of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize, she has work published or forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, American Arts Quarterly, Measure, Light, Ambit and River Styx, among other venues.

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia. His poems have appeared in Angle, Contra, The Flea, Light and Lucid Rhythms, among other places.

TO GET MY MITTS ON HER

by Matthew Quinn



No gal I know
is qualified
for the tricky task:
please bring me
binders full of women.

I search in Bain
for a dame
to fill this open slot:
please bring me
binders full of women.

I spin the rolodex,
I check the agencies,
I search my hanging files.

It's all for naught.
Though I have sought
I do not find:
please bring me
binders overflowing,
chock full
of proficient women.


Matthew Quinn is a freelance writer, editor and genealogical researcher. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri, with his muse and a menagerie of disembodied voices.

OBAMA’S FIRST STAND

by Gershon Hepner



Though his blah-blah made him a blockbuster;
as debater he seemed most lackluster,
by Romney so flustered,
he turned into custard,
while making his stand against Custer.


Gershon Hepner was born in Leipzig in 1938, came to England one day before the Second World War, became a doctor in 1963, emigrated to the US in 1968, and has been living in Los Angeles since 1976. He has four children and nine grandchildren, and a wife who is a talented poetess. He has been writing an average of five poems a day since 1992.