and our country was never so full with lies
I will count the minutes until we live
no longer in a post-truth country
where inviting despots to black tie dinners
is normal and where every day
the government is laced clear through
like bad pot with logical fallacies
Bad Hombres is only cool
as a license plate or bumper sticker
or a teenage bedroom door sign
and I will not give in
to the vortex of rancid hate
sucking up the good men and
women and children of this country
even as Big Bird and breakfast
for school kids might be next
the polar bears have to stand
on one leg now but
what about how much oil we need
we could melt down all the
polar bears, cut the middleman
out that way
and will we build another mother
for all the bombs that are orphans now
like every little child they lie down on
until the movement stops
~ Tyler Robert Sheldon
Tyler Robert Sheldon is the author of First Breaths of Arrival (Oil Hill Press, 2016) and Traumas (Yellow Flag Press, 2017). His poems and/or reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Quiddity International Literary Journal, Coal City Review, The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, and other venues, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the AWP Intro Journals Award. Sheldon holds an MA in English from Emporia State University. He lives in Baton Rouge. View his work at tyrsheldon.wixsite.com/trspoetry.
James Benger is a father, husband and writer. His work has been featured in several publications. He is the author of two fiction ebooks: Flight 776 (2012) and Jack of Diamonds (2013), and two chapbooks of poetry: As I Watch You Fade (EMP 2016) and You’ve Heard It All Before (GigaPoem 2017). He is a member of the Riverfront Readings Committee in Kansas City, and is the founder of the 365 Poems In 365 Days online poetry workshop and is Editor In Chief of the subsequent anthology series. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and son.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 