PAULA EISENSTEIN (Toronto)

Yes George

Orwell

Up here in Canada most are

Frightened

Uneasy

Confounded

Kinda unable to 

Imagine existing

Next door to a 

Goliath

Dishing

Ignorant

Creepy

Ku Klux Klan-like edicts

What

A

Debacle

MARK CONNERY (Toronto)

Yes, we can't

One or two or three nations of morons, maybe dozens

United under a

Flag barred from fire and a fire not to be put out —

Underneath the new broad circus tent of protection, predation,
                 masochism and an unreflective

Cerebral sadism, a train off the rails, no emergency brake or room for

Kanye to breathe enough – an eerie

Insulin shock brought by a sound and fury signifying

Nothing; It's not really all that welcome or

Good but please

Donald, we won't ask and won't tell

It's a time for silence and acquired tastes beaten down by

Cults in pizza shops that are more real than climate change and

Knightly manners may be a little berserk, you've great gladiators!

With a fine new emperor in the command of their storms

A new day begins for

Death from below

GARY BARWIN (Hamilton, Ont.)

Acrostic the Ocean

You are not my grandfather’s pants
Or my grandmother’s
Underpants

Forget it, we are decent people
Under small birds, small birds’ feet, they’d say

Courage is me when I strangled the people shouting
“Kike” who’d assembled on the lawn
Interesting fact: I didn’t

Gadkas is what my grandparents would’ve called their underwear
Desperate, they emigrated from Eastern Europe
Interesting fact #2: everything they had was in one suitcase
Carried by fingers in a grip controlled by a brain that remembered

Krakanova was the name of their town, now Jewless, but they remembered
Why did I mention the pants and underpants of my grandparents?
Analysis: to emphasize that they were naked, half naked, unprotected and vulnerable but
Despite that, their small feet held up their small bodies and they didn’t die until old, late last year.

JOSH DORF (New York City)

You can't imagine how it felt that night 

Out of the blue my bubble popped

Unreal sensations

Feeling off-kilter

Unhinged from reality

Can't believe this is happening

Killer bees would be better

Instead of her we got him

Now I'm getting pissed off

Goddamn the Dems screwed this up

Don't they realize what they've done?

Instead of celebrating we have to resist

Canada isn't an option – no disrespect

Kvetching isn't going to help either

We need to get together and become 

Activists

Dammit.

CAMERON ANSTEE (Ottawa)

CLAIRE MACDONALD (Armstrong, BC)

How But Yet How What

yahoo buttress, how did you creep

out from your crib, buttering up

ulterior uglies

f

u! yes,

cussing does nothing but

kill discussion yet what is there to say and anyhow

idiots love

names, love shoving words around like language is a

gag, how braggadocious mouthfuls of

delusional churls are pearls to dense brains, how false

information ignites the insane, and so

            how can truth get a word in edgewise of gibberish

communication but that’s the game. sense is no fuel for violence and violence

keels for how else can the people know how to feel and

what white want to hone—yet no big words will erase how

america was never great but always huge with

dumb discord & disgrace

MEAGHAN ACOSTA (Montreal)

Yuge

Over her skirt he grapp(bb)les; 

Under the sheets we struggle,

Finding nothing there.

Ugly, fat, slithering is his

Cat called coco. 

Knuckling his way 

Inviting disaster that

Nods its head to the 

Grime in his underpants. 

Does he too not merit

Incandescent love?

Cook up a lie and spread it

Knickerwards. Bigly. Tremendously bigly. 

Where will they all go?

All those innocents who

Didn't ask for Trump.