by Julia Griffin
“Coronavirus: Joe Biden signs executive actions aimed at ending pandemic
—The Guardian
Let’s put these four years of promiscuous harm
Where yesterday’s horrors are put,
For now we may hope for a shot in the arm
Instead of a shot in the foot.
by Brian Allgar
The button’s been evicted from
The Oval Office desk!
No, not the one to shroud the world
In radioactive smoke,
But something far less sinister,
Though laughably grotesque—
The one that Donald Trump would push
To summon Diet Coke.
by Chris O’Carroll
“Jane has never met [MyPillow founder] Mr. Lindell. She is not and has never been in any relationship with him, romantic or otherwise. She is, however, in full-fledged fantasy relationships with Brad Pitt, Rege-Jean Page and Kermit the Frog and welcomes any and all coverage on those.”
—Jane Krakowski representative denying a Daily Mail story.
Mike’s a fan of Donald Trump.
Jane hangs out with Tina Fey.
What could gossip junkies make
Of their rumored pillow-play?
Hipster wokester lefties wailed
A bewildered whatthefowski!
Picturing the crackhead pillow
Squeezer squeezing Ms. Krakowski.
Heaven’s groupies on the right
Scorned a starlet bound for Hell
As unfit to pillow down
With God’s servant Mike Lindell.
Turns out we can all relax.
Jane’s word gives us cause to smile.
She and Mike have never met.
She’s more into froggy style.
by Ruth S. Baker
“Giant worm’s undersea lair discovered by fossil hunters in Taiwan
Scientists believe 2-metre-long burrow once housed predator that ambushed passing sea creatures”
—The Guardian
Passing creatures of the sea,
Lend your inward ears to me!
Shelled or scaly, be aware
Of a deep, subsaline lair,
Where no flounder dare set fin,
Where no eel will slough its skin,
Where no squid elects to squirm,
Where awaits the GIANT WORM.
Ocean creatures, as you pass
Over this concealed crevasse,
Summon all your squamous skills:
Block your blow-holes, guard your gills,
Keep a close parental eye
On your small and tasty fry!
Nets grow loose and hooks unfirm;
Nothing worsts the GIANT WORM.
by Bob McKenty
Legacy-megacy
Peevish Ex-President
Exits the White House, and
Now that he’s gone
Someone will ghostwrite his
Autobiography.
Tentative title? The
Art of the Con.
by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
An iPhone tweets. A giant safety pin
Secures a nappy bigly round a rump.
Lips snarl in anger through an orange skin:
It’s London’s famous blimp of Baby Trump!
Museum owners bought it to deflate,
Perhaps because—well, who’s had no such urge?—
And stuffed it in a suitcase to curate,
So history does not forget the scourge …
Across the Pond, at dawn Trump flew the coop
Because he could not face his loss with grace.
Limp like his blimp, he skulked off to regroup
In Mar-a-Lago’s self-affirming space,
Made mute as well as squashed—and all Joe’s mates
Pray daily that Trump never reinflates!
by Stephen Gold
O say did you see, how on Capitol Hill,
We made off with the lectern of Nancy Pelosi?
We weren’t taking no knee, and this weren’t no damn drill,
For the doors opened wide, and the cops they were dozy.
That there count was a con! Swampers stole it from Don!
Maybe they got the brains, but we got all the brawn!
O say is that QAnon banner still raised,
Where the fantasy’s free, in the home of the crazed?
by Bruce Bennett
A prototype? No need to search that shelf.
Trump isn’t Ahab. He harpooned himself.
by Iris Herriot
“Members of the Church of Satan are grieving the destruction of a historic ‘Halloween House’ north of New York City that authorities say was set ablaze by an unidentified arsonist.”
—The Guardian
(to be set to any tune that works for Isaac Watts)
Members of the Church of Satan,
Summon all your evil will!
Soon we’ll be redesecratin’
In a home more loathsome still.
What though all around seem cheerful,
Bright with sunlight and with soap?
While our hearts are vexed and fearful,
There is always anti-hope.
In despite of all that’s holy,
Have no faith and we shall see
That dark place foretold by Crowley,
Worse, far worse, than NYC.
by Julia Griffin
Disavowing to the sky
Come the rats, with tails held high!
Mick Mulvaney “cannot stay”:
See him nobly run away;
Grisham goes, and after her
Pads a little Pottinger.
Ever-elegant DeVos
Tiptoes past her fallen boss;
Once again from Lindsey Graham
Beams the courage of a clam;
While with outrage William Barr
Notes how nasty riots are.
In the ruins of their fame
Mark the architects of shame:
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from Mitch McConnell’s face;
And, laid low by evidence,
Pale, impermeable Pence
Learns inside his hidey-hole
Just for what he sold his soul.
by James Higgins
Gil-Scott Heron got it wrong.
Today I realized
that, after all, the revolution
will be televised.
by Bob McKenty
Trumpity-dumpity,
Anarchist hooligans,
Maskless seditionists
Venting their spleen,
Follow their leader, the
MAGAlomaniac,
Spreading Trump’s falsehoods and
Covid-19.
by Ruth S. Baker
“This is not who we are.”
—President-Elect Biden after the assault on the Capitol
You say this isn’t who we are,
But I suspect, though this may jar,
That who we are is what we do;
And if this isn’t we, then who?
by Dan Campion
Let’s note that dogs came with the cops and sniffed
for bombs. The vandals didn’t bring one hound.
Of all the signals of a seismic shift,
this stark asymmetry was most profound.
We’ve all heard that canard “the dogs of war,”
but everybody knows dogs are our friends.
The K-9s checking out each nook and door
let Congress reconvene and make amends.
The Lassies, Baltos, and Old Yellers side
with civil order every time; what dog
does not take rescues as a point of pride?
Campaigns without them drift in moral fog.
Some humans howl and bay the round world’s flat.
But facts are facts, and every dog knows that.
by Bruce Bennett
“… To be clear, these are very different people. Macbeth is an utterly absorbing, troubling, tragic, and compelling figure. Unlike [Trump]… he is physically brave. … He is apparently faithful to his wife, has a conscience (that he overcomes), knows guilt and remorse, and has self-knowledge. He also has a pretty good command of the English language. In all these respects he is as unlike Trump as one can be.”
—Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,…”
The eloquence, the grandeur, the despair,
The sense of life’s futility, the sorrow,
Remorse, the ruined nobleness that’s there—
All alien, of course. The “dwarfish thief”
Is what we have, in remnants of a robe,
And we can only gather in relief
And thank our lucky stars! Nor is he Job,
Though he would have us think so, in his rage
At the injustice, cruelty of his fall
And his abrupt removal from the stage.
We watch in fascination. Is this all?
Or will the Powers That Be consent to bring
Just retribution to our Would-Be King?