by Eddie Aderne

“2,000 year old book about Roman emperors enters bestseller charts”
—The Guardian

Julius Caesar destroyed the Republic.
Divus Augustus dodged fighting,
But boasted at staggering length of his triumphs.
Tiberius liked to ban writing.
Little Caligula flipped off the Senate.
Claudius’ wives clearly laughed at him.
Nero: a gold-loving, self-proclaimed genius.
Galba was old. Otho shafted him,
And daubed himself orange. Vitellius’ reign
Was chaos. Vespasian’s first rule
Was: money smells sweet! Titus banished
Judaeans. Domitian? Plain cruel.
Now why should a book about rulers like these
Be trending today with the bestsellers, please?

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

“Trump administration cuts reach FDA employees in food safety,
medical devices and tobacco products”
—Associated Press

Trump is cutting far and wide.
Workers simply cannot hide.
Trump has made the future grim.
What a shame we can’t cut him!

by Meesh Grass

Who am I? I’m a fed.
I work hard to earn my bread.
I am skillful and well-read.
But I’m told that’s best unsaid.
Soon, I fear, I’ll be unfed.

by Neil Doherty

“[R]esearchers sniff ancient mummies to study preservation… Spicy, woody and sweet:
it sounds like a description of a fancy air freshener.”
—The Guardian

I’m swaddled in cloth from my head to my feet,
anointed with oils and waxes and balms;
my fragrance is woody and spicy and sweet,
cinnamon, cloves, eucalyptus and palms.

With Isis, Osiris and Horus and Set
guarding the gates to my netherworld quest—
with all of these fidgety daemons, you bet
I’m off to the afterlife smelling my best.

But what if the ending the gods have in store
is cruel, debasing and temporal, if
some dour archaeologists pummel my door,
pry open my coffin and take a great whiff?

Heaven forbid, in my sacrosanct tomb,
they sicken and retch and they foul up the room.
Better by far that they do not recoil
but savor embalmer’s ambrosial oil.

by Steven Kent

“Canadians get chance to feed rodents named after old flames to owls”
—The Guardian

I’d like to think I’m too mature concerning my ex, Pat,
To wish her harm now (never mind the rumor),
Yet gladly I bestowed her name upon a hapless rat
And paid to watch a spotted owl consume her.

by Erika Fine

We do not like you, Mister Musk.
You purge and threaten, dawn to dusk.
And Orwell—he predicted you!
Dystopia is coming true.
Corruption, chaos, blatant lies—
“Efficiency” is just a guise
For gutting rules you do not like
So you can have an Elon-Reich.

by Julia Griffin

“French far-right leader cancels US speech after ex Trump aide Bannon appeared to make ‘Nazi gesture'”
—The Guardian

“Elon Musk appears to make back-to-back fascist salutes at inauguration rally”
—The Guardian

In Democracy’s Last Chance Saloon,
They appear to be giving salutes;
But none should too swiftly impugn
These seeming saluters as brutes:

Though they’re lifting their arms in a pose
We once understood how to name,
We cannot be sure why they chose
A move that looked rather the same,

For anyone might do Sieg Heil!
In front of a crowd by mistake;
So let’s not despair for a while,
Because (though the air is opaque

In Democracy’s twilight, or dusk),
We’ve noticed no goose-stepping boots,
And thus we say only, of Bannon and Musk:
They appear to be giving salutes.

by Chris O’Carroll

Conservative Bigwig Matt Schlapp
Caused a bit of a flap
When he was accused (again) of groping the crotch of another guy,
Which for the GOP is way too DEI.

by Marshall Begel

“[Normally territorial] hummingbirds nesting and roosting together in Ecuador’s High Andes…
may be the first documented example of hummingbirds that nested and roosted communally.”
—The New York Times

Seemingly, teamingly
Ecuador’s hummingbirds
could be uniting in
communes like ants.

Researchers looking for
Oreotrochilus
Interdependency
ask for more grants!

by Bruce Bennett

“Mr. Trump views Air Force One as a symbol of power and prestige,
and he is infuriated that he begins his second term flying around in the
same aging planes that once transported President George H.W. Bush.”
—The New York Times

My Air Force One can’t be the same
as his, an aging crate so lame
no viewer could be conscious of
the Majesty that soars above!

by Steven Kent

“Trump’s Revenge Now Includes His Takeover of the Kennedy Center”
—The New York Times

No Mozart, no Bach,
Just Nugent and Rock.
No drama today—oh,
Book Sorbo and Baio.
No humor that’s deep
(Rob Schneider works cheap).
No opera—too tragic;
Get card tricks and magic.
No art in this hall;
No artists at all.

by Paul Lander

Just one thing’s whiter
Than the city’s roadways now:
House Committee chairs.

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

“Depending on how you read it, New Zealand’s latest tourism tagline can be a well-meaning plea
for people to visit—or a threat to kick Kiwis out. ‘Everyone Must Go!’ reads a slogan printed across posters
of people in New Zealand’s majestic landscapes—part of a NZ$500,000… campaign unveiled on Sunday.”
—BBC

Enticing more Australians to buy
Vacations in New Zealand, as a must
Experience to have before you die,
Requires a catchy slogan you can trust
Your natives not to ridicule and razz
On-air or otherwise. And yet (it’s true!)
New Zealand’s answer to this challenge has
Epitomized how not to ballyhoo
Majestic landscapes: “Everyone must go!”
Unwowed by half a million dollars blown
So dumbly, Kiwis want the state to know
The slogan is tone-deaf … Yet, could its tone
Get Aussies so intrigued, they long to come
On over, just to see who’d be so dumb?

by Bruce Bennett

“White House Bars Reporter From Event Over A.P.’s Use of ‘Gulf of Mexico’…
[The A.P.’s executive editor said] they were informed by the White House that the news organization
would not be allowed to attend the event if the outlet did not start using ‘Gulf of America,’
the name President Trump decreed… “
—The New York Times

It’s not “the Gulf of Mexico.”
To interview the Prez,
you’ve got to toe the party line
and follow what he says.

So if tomorrow he decides
he’s calling it “Trump Bay,”
then that is what it’s going to be,
and that is what you’ll say.

by Steven Kent

“Thieves steal 100,000 eggs from trailer in Pennsylvania as prices spike”
—The Guardian

We’ll crack the case real soon, you’ll see;
We plan to fry such folk.
These hard-boiled crooks belong to me,
And I’m not blowing smoke.
They run a shell-type company;
They’re poaching eggs (no joke),
But in the penitentiary
They’ll bear a heavy yoke.