by Alex Steelsmith

Last week Benedict Cumberbatch joined other celebrities who signed an open letter admitting they are “climate hypocrites,” but urging that attention be drawn to the more pressing issue of climate emergency. The letter says they will continue to speak out on the issue, and that their high-carbon lifestyles will continue to cause climate harm.

Wiggily piggily
Benedict Cumberbatch
makes a concession that
few will admit:

though his behavior’s not
unhypocritical,
this is a crisis; he
simply won’t quit.

by Chris O’Carroll

Donald Trump snorts lines of coke
Off Tucker Carlson’s ass.

Mitch McConnell’s bare hands choke
Poor children every day.

Zuckerberg supplies Assad
With all his poison gas.

If they were in a Facebook ad,
These lies would be OK.

by Julia Griffin

“Plan to exhume James Joyce’s remains fires international ‘battle of the bones’.”
—The Guardian

As Bloom desired his kidneys (“his”
For breakfast, not dialysis),
Or as he longed for Molly’s heart
(Her least outrageous longed-for part):
Like him, his countrymen now yearn
For Joyce’s long-delayed return.
They want to have him nicely packed
And handled with respect and tact;
The son his land so proudly owns
Is not some common heap of bones.
Will Zurich give him up? They might
At least be moved by Dublin’s plight—
This urge to honor and anoint
Which somehow seems to miss the point.
Once someone craved to kiss the hand
That wrote Ulysses. “Understand,”
Replied that literary prince,
“It has had other duties since.”

by Bruce Bennett

Do “all roads lead to Putin?” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
told The Washington Post she asked President Trump that question
before she left a White House meeting.

Do “all roads lead to Putin”?
Why, yes, that now seems clear,
as Nancy said to Donald,
and that has led to here,

Though what that next may lead to
is anybody’s guess.
The road ahead is murky,
but must we take it? Yes.

by Claudia Gary

From walking out in space
to walking out of meetings,
in elegance and grace
they soar above his tweetings.

by Ruth S. Baker

“Residents of a Sydney suburb have been warned to be on the lookout for a massive snake … after its skin was spotted at a property on Thursday.”
—breakingnews.travel

O the hubbub in the suburb!
Local panic is profuse,
For a goer of a boa
Is at large and on the loose.

If you’re certain you’ve a serpent,
‘Tis no time to act perverse.
Be not stupid, do not spot it:
Spots will only make it worse.

by Julia Griffin

“Rare Jane Austen letter to sister to be sold at auction … 
The letter, dated 16 September 1813 … is ‘a gem’, according to Kathryn Sutherland, an Austen scholar and trustee of Jane Austen’s House Museum. Bonhams, which will auction the letter on 23 October, said it is ‘full of lively detail, wit and charm’, vividly echoing the world [Austen] deftly portrayed in her novels’ and ‘written at the height of [her] literary powers’. … Bonhams believes the letter, which has been in a private collection since 1909, will fetch between £65,000 to £97,000 at auction.”
—The Guardian

Jane’s latest letter ought to fetch,
We’re told, some ninety thousand quid.
A sum so mad might make me kvetch
(And as you’ve just observed, it did).
But I would like to turn, instead,
To what I’ll bring when I am dead.

Now as for letters, done in ink,
I’m far too indolent, I fear;
For correspondence, though, I think
You’d find it hard to name my peer:
And every note, I’m proud to say,
Bears year, month, day, and time of day.

A taste, to tempt you. “Home tonight.”
(4:10) “When you’re in Bi-Lo, get
Some pasta.” (5:15). “Not white.”
(5:20). “Did you call the vet?”
(6:30). “Yes, I’m still alive,
Just late! XXX.” (9:05).

My Inbox is a treasure-pit:
Each message is, like Jane’s, a gem;
They are so full of charm and wit,
You’ll want to buy the lot of them.
So beat the crowd and order now!
My Powers In Progress: ninety thou.

by Nora Jay

“Trump defends Syria decision by saying Kurds ‘didn’t help us with Normandy‘”
—The Guardian

And why stop there? It’s just absurd
How much we’ve faced without one Kurd:
Recall the Alamo—a word
Synonymous with lack of Kurd,
And Little Big Horn—not one third
Of which proud name bears trace of Kurd.
“What good,” cries Trump, his foot-bones spurred,
“Has ever come from any Kurd?”

by Dan Campion

“Original Paleo Diet Recipe: Cave-Aged Bone Marrow“
—The New York Times

Cave dwellers savored gamy fare
Preserved in hoof and bone.
Who doubts someone will take their dare?
(I hear brave stomachs groan.)

One researcher had just a taste:
“Bland sausage.” Age of Stone,
Though some may try your marrow paste
I’d leave that stuff alone.

by Nora Jay

“[Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez] spent nearly $300 on her hairdo at a pricey salon she frequents in downtown Washington… Her high-dollar hairdo stands in stark contrast to that of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions … who is a regular customer at Senate Hair Care Services.”
—The Washington Times

AOC, that pampered dullard,
At a place which charged top dollar
Had her tresses cut and colored,
Filling Fox’s Friends with choler.

“Fraud!” they clamored. “How improper!
What a slave to mere impressions,
When so near and cheap a chopper
Coifs the brow of grave Jeff Sessions!”

by David Hedges

The Don believes that he should win
A Nobel Prize, or five or six.
In Physics, he has shown that spin,
When issued from a looney bin,
Can pulverize our politics.

In Chemistry, he’s proved that air
Can hold more carbon than we thought.
In Medicine, the wear-and-tear
He’s heaped upon Obamacare
Gives private plans a booster shot.

In Economics, he has shone,
Imposing tariffs left and right
For reasons only he alone
Can fathom (if he has a bone
To pick, you’re in his line of sight).

In Literature, no one alive
Or dead and in his grave competes
In volume or in hyperdrive
With Prexy Number Forty-five
When he taps out his fearsome tweets.

The Peace Prize looms just out of reach.
He’s asked dear Vladimir to dance,
And they’ve found novel ways to breach
Time-honored protocols; impeach
The Don, and peace will stand a chance.

by Dan Campion

“… BULLSHIT …”
—Donald J. Trump on Twitter

Our president knows how to curse.
Like Coolidge, would he were more terse,
Like Hoover, had at least some wit,
And knew, like Nixon, when to quit.

by Nina Parmenter

Rumors surfaced recently that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been backed by hedge fund managers who stand to make “billions of pounds” from a disorderly Brexit. 

She married a doctor who paid all the bills
and they settled in England’s impeccable hills.
Her bushes were trimmed and her borders pristine,
she was quite the big deal on the tea party scene
where she wowed with her baking advice,
did Juniper Bilberry-Bryce.

She read all the papers the dear doctor bought—
it was so much more simple than forming a thought.
“The country’s in chaos!” they told her. “It’s time
to slash immigration! To crack down on crime!”
“These mean streets have never been meaner,”
she said to her Latvian cleaner.

Now, meanwhile, in London, a leader arose
whom the editors feted with toadying prose.
He promised the people a piece of the pie
as he dined with the damned and the succubi.
“I hear that he’s awfully nice,”
said Juniper Bilberry-Bryce.

He doubled the army and armed the police,
he sold off the forests for five pounds a piece,
he schooled the achievers, excluded the rest
and the papers declared he was simply the best!
But then, from the earth and the skies,
his sponsors appeared for their prize.

As the hellmouth spilled over with demons and brutes
who trampled all over her runner-bean shoots,
thought Juniper, “What would the editors say?”
So she picked up a pitchfork, joined in the fray,
and sent England to hell in a trice,
did Juniper Bilberry-Bryce.

by David Hedges

“We had twenty mountain climbers. That’s all they do—they love to climb mountains. They can have it. Me, I don’t want to climb mountains. But they’re very good, and some of them were champions. And we gave them different prototypes of walls, and this was the one that was hardest to climb.”—Donald Trump, Leader of the Free World

When twenty climbers went to test
My wall, one section proved the best;

This was the prototype I chose,
The one that snookered alpine pros.

My message here is crystal clear:
Only the most skilled mountaineer

Can scale my wall’s imposing face,
My tribute to the master race.

(If you believe this latest tale
You’ll love the bridge I have for sale.)

by Julia Griffin

“Author Simon Hewitt has unearthed a little-studied image held in Germany, a “comic strip” design made in 1495 to illustrate a poem, that showed how Leonardo was once ridiculed. In one of its colourful images, An Allegory of Justice, a ginger-haired … court lawyer is shown seated at a desk, mesmerised by other young men, and represents Leonardo da Vinci. ‘The identity of Leonardo as the red-headed scribe is totally new,’ Hewitt told the Observer…” —The Guardian

Does everybody know the star from Vinci,
The naughty genius with the Judas hair—
The one whose face is sort of puffed and pinchy?
I found him in a comic strip. So there.

I spied him scrawling rubbish on a table,
Too stunned with lust to regulate his pen;
Meanwhile his father stuck him with a label
About his taste for better-looking men.

Who says he doesn’t look exactly lustful?
Who says the label might be just a text
To copy, and that no one seems distrustful
Around a court-recorder over-sexed,

And steamy as the quattrocento sewers?
His ginger hair revealed it at first sight!
They all look ginger? Maybe, to mere viewers;
But not to learned clerks with books to write.