NEW ERA
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by Brian O’Sullivan
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Recreational marijuana is officially legal across the state of Maryland. This means anyone 21 and over now can purchase marijuana products as long as they show their ID. —CBS News, July 2, 2023
Photo shows a young Maryland waterman holding a traditional crab pot.
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Brian O'Sullivan teaches rhetoric and English literature in southern Maryland. His poems have appeared in or been accepted by The New Verse News, Rattle, One Art, and other journals.
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6 HAIKU ABOUT 4 JULY
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by Jeffrey Bryant
The signing of the Declaration of Independence, depicted here in a lithograph published by Nathaniel Currier. Photograph: Corbis/Hulton via The Guardian.
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Fifty-six wigged men Conceived the United States On land that they stole. Fifty-six wigged men Complained about tyranny After whipping slaves. Fifty-six wigged men Scribbled out their grievances Without irony. Fifty-six wigged men Used the word equal without Having looked it up. Fifty-six wigged men Lived liberty in pursuit Of more native land. Fifty-six wigged men Need no pyrotechnics now Down where they reside.
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Jeffrey Bryant lives in Los Angeles. He has been published in the L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Poetic Diversity Literary Journal and in the anthologies The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha/Northwestern University Press, the 2020 Altadena Literary Review from Shabda Press, and Shadowplay from the University of Arkansas.
Fifty-six wigged men
formed a country where now men
who wear wigs are shunned
I love “without/ having looked it up.”