Tag Archives: New Verse News

Political poem: Matthew King, ‘Incendiary Song’

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Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire
You no longer represent me
I’m immediate desire
Our constitution is suspended
on a fence of barbed wire
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire

I’ve cancelled your election
I’ve exposed your fatal flaw
Trapped in your reflection
we argued to a draw
The people want perfection
they love to be in awe
Baby you’re the Reichstag
my will is the law

Our union needs annulment
our wedding was a sham
The preacher stole the word of God
now he’s on the lam
He said he’d bless the devil
he didn’t give a damn
Baby you’re the Reichstag
who do you think I am

Like lightning this befell me
not you but I self-crowned
No court can now compel me
my power is unbound
I dare you try to tell me
my methods are unsound
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’ll burn you to the ground

I’m rounding up your lovers
each one of them a liar
They tell me they don’t know you
say it’s me they most admire
Now I alone can save them
or throw them on the pyre
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire

*****

Matthew King writes: “Many, not on only one side of the political divide, have been watching for a “Reichstag Fire moment.” The thing about historical echoes is you’re never sure what you’re hearing is exactly what it sounds like, but with some things sounding like them at all is bad enough. A hat tip to Leonard Cohen, whose shade I seem to be channelling in this poem, and who would have turned 91 on Sept. 21. Leonard! thou shouldst be living at this hour; lucky for you you’re not, I guess.”

‘Incendiary Song’ was first published in New Verse News.

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called “the country north of Belleville,” where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighboring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. His photos and links to his poems can be found at birdsandbeesandblooms.com.

Photo: Reichstag Fire, 27 February 1933, public domain.

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.