Category Archives: political poem

Political poem: Melissa Balmain, ‘Evgeny and Evgeniia’s Choice’

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“Evgeny and Evgeniia faced an excruciating choice. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told the couple they could leave the United States with their child and return to their native Russia, which they had fled seeking political asylum. Or they could remain in immigration detention in the United States — but their 8-year-old son, Maksim, would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children. In the end, they chose the agony of limbo in the United States over a return to a place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family… The last time Evgeny and Evgeniia saw Maksim was on May 15” —The New York Times, August 5, 2025. New York Times photo of Evgeny, Evgeniia, and Maksim.

Sophie’s Choice seemed light-years from our time,
a fading tragedy that made us weep
for Streep.

But now with tactics changing on a dime
in brutal ways we thought could not repeat,
sick heat

pervades my belly and begins to climb:
how can we keep denying what it means
when scenes

unspool of parents, guilty of no crime,
compelled to choose the thing that they most fear,
right here?

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “As the poet Barbara Loots recently put it, what we need right now is a tsunami of truth. I contribute a few drops when I can.”

‘Evgeny and Evgeniia’s Choice‘ first appeared in New Verse News.

Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010.

Photo: New York Times photo of Evgeny, Evgeniia, and Maksim.

RHL, ‘Privelitch’

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Some suffer from a travel itch
but I call that a snivel glitch
I only want to travel rich
and love it: it’s my privelitch.
O privelitch, o privelitch!

I only go to schools most rich,
(and only eat foods superrich),
then college has to be Oxbritch,
for that’s my privelitch.
I love you, love you, bitch!

I wear the robes and coronitch,
I swear by God I’ve found my nitch,
for, be I tubby, tall or titch,
I’ve got my privelitch.
O privelitch, o privelitch,
I love you, love you, bitch!

I never on my class would snitch
(or if I do, it’s just a smitch);
I’m faithful – cept for those I ditch,
for that’s my privelitch.
O privelitch, o privelitch!

I down it nail, I up it stitch,
call me a wizard or a witch,
I’ve got it all, with perfect pitch,
for that’s my privelitch.
I love you, love you, bitch!

My life with none I’d ever switch,
I’m over all, no slightest twitch,
and even when I’m in Death’s ditch
my tomb shouts Privelitch!
O privelitch, o privelitch,
I love you, love you, bitch!

*****

Don’t think I’m unaware of my own privilege: white males with above-average education are a privileged minority in any country. But also you reading this, whoever you are, you are privileged to not be a child in Gaza or any of the other hells that humans make for each other on an otherwise beautiful planet; you are privileged to be alive during this affluent and pivotal time in human history. And of course those who in addition have cultivated a taste for poetry… is there maybe a hint of privilege there?

This poem, like Buccaneer, was recently published in Magma.

Photo: “General Election Bullingdon Club Members in 1987, including Boris Johnson and David Cameron” by Diego Sideburns is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Maryann Corbett, ‘Saturday Edition’

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Page one, above the fold: the world in flames.
A luxury hotel gapes like a sore.
In mammoth type, the headlines yell the names
of prophets stoking hells of holy war.

In Business, meanwhile, there is calm discussion
of sales rates for the sexy underclothes
pitched by Victoria’s Secret, and a fashion
for surgical revision of the nose.

It isn’t news to those who sell the paper:
their readers can take only so much hell.
They proffer me the surgeon and the draper
as pastures where my bovine brain may dwell,

ignoring, while it chews on this confection,
the screams of children from the other section.

*****

Maryann Corbett writes: “My records tell me that ‘Saturday Edition’ is one of my very earliest sonnets and very earliest acceptances, appearing in The Barefoot Muse in 2007 and included in Mary Meriam’s Irresistible Sonnets in 2014. It was among the poems that gave me the lightbulb realization that I tend to write sonnets when I’m angry.”

Maryann Corbett earned a doctorate in English from the University of Minnesota in 1981 and expected to be teaching Beowulf and Chaucer and the history of the English language. Instead, she spent almost thirty-five years working for the Office of the Revisor of Statutes of the Minnesota Legislature, helping attorneys to write in plain English and coordinating the creation of finding aids for the law. She returned to writing poetry after thirty years away from the craft in 2005 and is now the author of two chapbooks and six full-length collections, most recently The O in the Air (Franciscan U. Press, 2023). Her work has won the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the Richard Wilbur Award, has appeared in many journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and is included in anthologies like Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and The Best American Poetry.

Photo: “UN School in Gaza Attacked” by United Nations Photo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Marcus Bales, ‘A Rainy Day in Cleveland’

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A rainy day in Cleveland. I almost said
“The skies are gray.” Of course the skies are gray,
It’s raining, so — what could they be instead?
I meant to mow the rest of the lawn today,
But it’s a day to watch the garden grow.
The finches, flashing in the too-long grass,
Are pecking dandelion seeds, and glow
Their special yellow through rain-dotted glass.
The internet is off. I sit and watch
The irises and roses in the rain,
And do not read about the ugly botch
The greedy criminals in charge sustain
So they can strut around, so white, so male,
And cheat and lie to keep themselves from jail.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: “The rap against democracy has until now always been that the public, once it realized they could simply vote themselves money and benefits, would bankrupt the state voting themselves benefits and money. For 250 years the US public managed not to do that, though the reactionaries always accused them of it. It turns out the real danger is that if you have enough money you can just buy the government and operate it as a racket to benefit yourself and your cronies, even when there are laws in place that you have to break in order to do so. The problem with democracy, it turns out, is not that people are irresponsible but that the wealthy are liars and thieves.”

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his ’51 Poems’ is available from Amazon. He has been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks – Form in Formless Times.

Photo: Danny redd Photography https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1605166609548538

Political poem: A.E. Stallings, ‘An American Wakes Up in Athens, Greece After the 2024 Elections’

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I wake up in the dark.
In dark I went to sleep.
There is a kind of stark
Accounting of lost sheep.

The day breaks with a dawn
So much like yesterday’s.
I turn the kettle on
And brew a dark malaise.

Things go from bad to worse,
Let’s call it entropy.
The blessing is a curse,
And treachery goes free

Or something. Never mind,
Here in the cradle of
Democracy I find
There’s history enough —

There on the shining rock
The entasis of state,
The subtle curves that lock
The crooked to the straight.

The centuries were slow
Where stood its solid scenes,
It took one night to blow
The roof to smithereens.

It boasts of Marathon,
It boasts of Salamis
Five generations on,
Of hemlock’s bitterness,

Between, the city nations
Of Greeks warred tribe with tribe
Why trouble with invasions?
It’s easier to bribe.

We still read Athens’ versions,
As though the Spartans lost,
As though the prudent Persians
Did not know what they cost.

Pericles died of plague,
And Phidias in prison.
Division’s sown, and vague
Suspicions have arisen.

It took nine years to build
Those columns in the air,
But half its marbles spilled,
Over fifty to repair.

It’s like a foundered ship,
That ruin on the hill.
It makes my heartbeat skip.
I’m afraid it always will.

*****

A.E. Stallings writes: “I [wrote this] poem the day after the elections. It was written on the fly, and has not been revised.”

‘An American Wakes Up in Athens, Greece After the 2024 Elections’ was originally published in Liberties Journal.

A.E. Stallings is the current Oxford Professor of Poetry. This Afterlife: Selected Poems was published in 2022. Her forthcoming book is Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon

Photo: “Parthenon” by R~P~M is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Jerome Betts, ‘Lines On A Lady In Bronze’

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(The statue of Boadicea and her Daughters by Thomas Thornycroft was erected in 1902 near Westminster Bridge London.)

Set up, the civic skyline Shardless,
A proxy late Victoria then,
She charges, rein-free, grim, regardless,
Towards the Gothic giant, Big Ben.

Just what is known about this fiery
And long ago wronged ruler’s life?
Such fields for scholarly enquiry
Are now churned up by toxic strife.

For some, her Roman power rejection
Makes for a memory well kept green,
While others mock as myth-confection
Their proto-Brexit British queen.

Remainers, Leavers, play Have at you!
That chariot and rearing pair
Of  horses make a super statue.
Whoever wins, she’ll still be there.

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “I find statues fascinating with their largely unchanging nature as the people and scenes around them change and they make an obvious target for revolutionaries, rowdies and rhymers. Boadicea, unveiled without ceremony in 1902 because of Edward the 7th’s appendicitis, strikes me as a splendid piece of slightly unhistorical sculpture and useful landmark for visitors. Amusement at her lack of reins and apparent charge towards the Palace of Westminster blended with the Brexit debate when the piece was published in Better Than Starbucks. Whether this dooms the last two stanzas to the archives remains to be seen.”

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

Photo: “Boadicea Statuary Group” by Rafesmar is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Political poem: Michael R. Burch, ‘Not Elves, Exactly’

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after Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”

Something there is that likes a wall,
that likes it spiked and likes it tall,

that likes its pikes’ sharp rows of teeth
and doesn’t mind its victims’ grief

(wherever they come from, far or wide)
as long as they fall on the other side.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “Many people misunderstand the most famous phrase in Robert Frost’s poem ‘Mending Wall.’ In the poem Frost’s neighbor quotes his father’s adage that “Good fences make good neighbors” as they work together to repair an unnecessary wall on the border of their properties. Talk about a misunderstanding: this phrase has even been used by politicians to justify apartheid walls and similar barriers! But Frost did not share his neighbor’s belief and compared him to a stone-armed savage who moved in primitive darkness and could not go beyond his father’s saying. Frost’s own belief about such walls was expressed in the poem: “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out / And to whom I was like to give offense.” At the end of the poem, Frost considers teasing his neighbor with the idea that mischievous elves are responsible for the wall falling down, but decides to hold his peace. My title questions who builds such walls: ‘Not Elves, Exactly’ but something much darker and more ominous.”

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 22 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 61 times by 32 composers. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts.

“The Wall Has Spikes” by Kevan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Political poem: Janet Kenny, ‘Broken’

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The pig smashed the music
and turned off the sun.
As the pig couldn’t use it
nor should anyone.

O remember the time when the violins played
and the meadows were blooming and we, unafraid
dared to splash in the river and lie in the grass.
But they’re mowing the field now and scattering glass.

The mother in China,
the daughter in Spain,
must learn to design a
new habit again.

The athletes are anxious, the singers are dumb,
the children are fractious and calling for Mum.
Now Dad is in futures and selling his shares
and his foreign computers are yesterday’s wares.

Who let the pig loose
in the garden? and why
have we cooked our own goose?
I await a reply.

*****

This poem was originally published on Facebook. Concerning the trigger for creating it, Janet Kenny writes: “The only event was the world economy being interfered with by the folly of one awful man. One ignorant bully can dismantle the world.”

Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993.

Her poems have been published in printed and online journals, including Avatar, The Chimaera, Folly, 14 by 14, Iambs & Trochees, The Literary Review, Mi Poesias, The Guardian, The Spectator, The New Formalist, The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, Snakeskin, Lavender Review, Soundz ine, Victorian Violet Press, The Susquehanna Quarterly and Umbrella. Her work is in the collections The Book of Hope and Filled With Breath: 30 sonnets by 30 poets and in the Outer Space anthology, Cambridge University Press. She shared an anthology of bird poems, Passing Through, with Jerry H. Jenkins. She has received three Pushcart nominations.

Her latest book, Whistling in the Dark (2016, Kelsay Books) can be ordered from https://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Dark-Janet-Kenny/dp/1945752092. Her previous book, This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press), can be ordered from http://www.amazon.com/This-Way-Exit-Janet-Kenny/dp/0615615937. You can read several poems from her books at https://janetkenny.netpublish.net/

Photo: “Pig-hog” by Kusukhtak is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Weekend read: James B. Nicola, ‘Pair of Kings’

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All Clark Gable had to do
was sit where Hattie sat
the night she won her Oscar®. He
might not’ve thought of that:
but how the angels would have chimed
and cheered the noble cause
of basic decency, and broken
out in wild applause.
 
Benny Goodman would not sleep
where his Brothers could not stay.
He paved the American way before
it was the American Way.
For the color of music’s the color of God:
the color of his quartet!
So I hold no truck with movie stars,
but I play the clarinet.

*****

James B. Nicola writes: “Hattie McDaniel was the first American woman of African ancestry to win an acting Oscar. It was for Gone with the Wind, Best Picture of 1939, which starred Clark Gable, the #1 movie star at the time, known as the ‘King of Hollywood’. McDaniel was not allowed to sit with her fellow nominees. Her acceptance speech, nonetheless, overflowed with grace and gratitude.

“Benny Goodman, clarinet player and band leader, was so popular he was known as the ‘King of Swing’. His quartet included two players of African ancestry. When on tour, Goodman, true to his name, only booked overnight accommodations that accommodated all four of his players. The film The Green Book gave us a good look at these hotel policies in America. It won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2018.”

James B. Nicola’s poetry has appeared internationally in Acumen, erbacce, Cannon’s  Mouth, Recusant, Snakeskin, The South, Orbis, and Poetry Wales (UK);  Innisfree and  Interpreter’s House (Ireland); Poetry Salzburg (Austria), mgversion2>datura (France);  Gradiva (Italy); EgoPHobia (Romania); the Istanbul Review (Turkey); Sand and The Transnational (Germany), in the latter of which his work appears in German translation;  Harvests of the New Millennium (India); Kathmandu Tribune (Nepal); and Samjoko (Korea). His eight full-length collections (2014-2023) include most recently Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award.

‘Pair of Kings’ has just been published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Photo: “jazz ill Benny Goodman 1955” by janwillemsen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
 

Couplets: Richard Meyer, ‘The Benighted States of America’

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now we, the people, willingly obtuse
and largely satisfied with self-abuse

elect a narcissistic psychopath
who rules with lies, incompetence, and wrath;

accept a healthcare system that’s a mess
and limp from life to death with less and less;

continue to dismiss without a care
the shit we dump in water, land, and air;

allow the filthy rich to have their way,
to run the world, to bleed us day by day;

abandon logic, reason, vital news
and swallow whole all sorts of crackpot views —

we piss away our brains, our soul, our nerve
and get the fucked up country we deserve

*****

Richard Meyer writes: “Current cultural and political circumstances have me feeling ornery, so I hammered out this verse about the great American democratic experiment. My caustic verse was partly inspired by the comments of various prominent writers throughout history, including Thomas Jefferson who said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve”.”

Richard Meyer, a former English and humanities teacher, lives in Mankato, MN. A book of his collected poems, Orbital Paths, was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone” and was the recipient of the 2014 String Poet Prize for his poem “The Autumn Way.” His poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals and has also received top honors several times in the Great River Shakespeare Festival sonnet contest. His most recent book, Wise Heart, is a memoir of his mother Gert who was born in poverty, came of age during the Great Depression, enlisted in the army during World War II, served overseas, and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service performed during the Battle of the Bulge. His books are available through Amazon.

Photo by Fort George G. Meade is licensed under CC BY 2.0.