Chad Parenteau

CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

Someday, maybe
in a country
that lets people
criticize other
countries openly,
there will be
a film featuring
the next Jesse
Eisenberg-type
as a wretched
tech bro with our
Social Security
numbers in a
flash drive mixing
in his pocket
full of Gold Cards
pre-paid in full
for future Trump
voters. We'll get
to witness his
Zack Snyder-style
slo-mo beating
to millions cheering.
But now, future
cheerers, disciples
ready to renounce
their lord on one
half-click of the rack,
with a lack of
irony that burns
film, they scream
Have they killed
Big Balls? Please
tell us Big Balls
is alive! What
in God’s name
happened to Big Balls?


Chad's YouTube reading of "Cutting Room Floor"


Chad confesses: This is my anti-ode for former DOGE employee Edward "Big Balls" Coristine, who was beaten for the sins of his overlords in 2025. This was very cathartic for me, if only momentarily. Save us from dudebros who may never understand the horrible ramifications of their actions.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Crossroads, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The Rye Whiskey Review, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review, and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

Craig Kirchner

WOUND US ALL

It’s there. It’s still there,
just under, seething, ready to explode,
to rise up, shed the ugly evil laminate
that has slimed over its soul like pond scum.
It wants to rid itself of the rot,
the spineless that represent it,
the inhumanity of the demons pulling the strings,
applying an agent ice that will traumatize for generations.

It’s there. It’s still there,
just below the surface of crassness,
waiting for the wind to blow away the ignorance of cult,
for time to heal the cancer of mindlessness of neighbors.
It will crack the veneer and surface
like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now,
rising from the Nung River covered in mud
and camouflage to get on with his mission.

It’s there, it’s still there,
hoping to win an existential fight with non-violence,
needing sanitizing, a purifying to begin soon,
the crowds to be big enough to win by overwhelming.
It will attempt to cleanse itself, and in so doing
realize you can’t wash away the leprosy of wicked,
it takes decades like chemical burns, to replace
the loss of credibility, allies, respect for one another.

It’s there. It’s still there.
It has a - wound one, you wound us all - attitude,
standing like sphinx in a sandstorm,
waiting for the killing to stop, the pharaohs to go to hell.
Millions will protest to celebrate that it is still there,
that marching, singing, voting, for a divine intervention
of cleansing that can bring us together
out of the muck and grift that is America.


Craig's YouTube reading of "Wound us all"


Craig confesses: "America was a republic with elected officials who cared about the oath they took to uphold the Constitution. That changed. We have a malignant narcissist bombing Iranian school children, a gestapo executing citizens in the streets, and a complicit Congress. America is still there; we need to find it."

Craig Kirchner lives in Florida because that is where his granddaughters are. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. Craig houses 500 books in his office and the same number of poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. He can be found at Bluesky.

Tonia Kalouria

JACK, THE HACK CARJACKER

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack leaped over
the gear-change stick.

Jack be bonkers,
Jack be dim:
Hotwires engine
Keys still in!

Carjacker needs money,
though should’ve rehearsed:
Shifts in a hurry —
right into REVERSE!

Carjacker be nervous;
Quite out of his gourd.
PANIC engulfs him:
A Baby On Board!

Jack flees car and babe…
Thus, in his defense:
T’was Thief —not Kidnapper!—
found fried on that fence.


Tonia's YouTube reading of "Jack, the Hack Carjacker"


Tonia confesses: "Any reminder about not leaving children or pets unattended in cars — hot weather or cold — is a Good Thing as it can get dangerously hot or cold so quickly. And then there is the added peril/crime of the car being stolen with the precious cargo within. These incidents, too, are all too common."

Tonia Kalouria is a former Spanish teacher and soap actress whose poems appear at “littleoldladycomedy.com,” “poetsforscience.org.” and “Literary Veganism,” among others. Anthologies include: A Glass of Wine With Edgar, Evermore, Quoth the Raven, Yonkers, Love, V4, Striving, Poems From the Lockdown, Purr & Yowl, Nothing Ever Happens in Fox Hollow, Cosy Romance, Tails From the Bedside, and Waywords: Habits, and Classical Poets Society, Vol. X.

JK Miller

FOREVER CHEMICALS

I suspect something in the garden
is killing me. Pulling out the dead
stalks on hands and knees. Dried
larkspur pods pour over black grains.
Poppies' big hard ovaries shake. Salt
and pepper bombs burst. Take cover.
Anoint me valley,
table, cup. Me thinks purple
as in waves of grain and deep-sleep
red—-as in fields of dorothy—
neurotoxic psoriasis.
By what authority do the finest monkey
fingers feel groin and wrist,
elbow and thigh,
aches and pains
and cause
the disjointed pearls
from lips to slip
to grounds?

Did you say let them?


JK's YouTube reading of "Forever Chemicals"


JK confesses: "I like to garden. In my garden there are larkspur and poppy flowers. When they die back, I pull them. They are so beautiful together, purple and pink, but they are both toxic to humans if mishandled. In this poem, it was fun to think about how toxicity could work."

JK Miller is a former third-grade dual language teacher. He lives on the edge of cornfields. He started submitting for publication in 2025. He is the first-place winner in the modern sonnet category of the 2025 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. His chapbook Bicycling Poems was published in October, 2025. A second chapbook, Rye & I was published in January, 2026. His poems have also been recently published, or will be, in shoegaze literary, Midsummer Dream House, Harrow House, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, THEMA, Rat's Ass Review, 50-Word Stories, Verse-Virtual, Paratextos, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Lighthouse, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Up North Lit, Eunoia Review, Borderless, As Surely as the Sun, ANTAE, Plato's Caves, Tap Into Poetry, 20:05, The Soliloquist, The Metaworker, Press Pause Press, and The Rush. In the summer of 2025 he rode his bicycle from his home to his son's house to see his newborn grandson. It was 1,335 miles.