Craig Kirchner

PROCRASTINATION

I put everything off, stack it,
restack it, move it to another room.
I’m particularly put-offish,
sometimes rude, when told I need to,
have to or must do something.

Pondering emptying the dishwasher,
maybe after lunch,
thinking of the guys in the trenches
in World War 1, with a helmet, a rifle, the rats
and being told to go over the top.

I’ll just be a moment here,
y’all get started without me.
Nobody knew why they were there,
what they were dying for,
or if they would ever see home.

I might have jumped up in WWII,
an inglorious bastard wanting to kill Nazis,
knowing it needed to be done and why,
willing to roll through Europe with Patton,
thinking of myself as Vic Morrow.

But once again, I’m holding off
on the Bhagavad Gita and my reread
of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I’m building momentum though, reminiscing
about the wars I didn’t have to be in.

Pulled a good number in the Nam lottery,
wasn’t in New York for September 11,
and was too old to be needed
looking for weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq
or Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Fortunately, we’ve all seen enough of such things.
Take the trash up, get the mail,
can all wait until tomorrow,
and there is no possible way anyone not Russian,
would start another war in my lifetime.


Craig's YouTube reading of "Procrastination"


Craig confesses: I have missed serving in all of America’s wars but have often thought about what it would have been like. I’ve been opposed to all in my lifetime, Vietnam, etc. I would have thought after the idiocy of Iraq that no one would consider a war in the Middle East.

Craig Kirchner loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. He has been published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. Craig has an interview up at Spillword and can be found on Bluesky.

F.I. Goldhaber

STOP

Stop identifying them as Christians.
They follow none of Jesus Christ's teachings
including his instructions to love all,
welcome strangers, feed the poor, share their wealth.

Stop confirming as conservative those
reactionary by definition.

Stop calling them phobic when it's just hate.
Gender critical is just another
form of misogyny, to vindicate
imposing their bigotry on others.

Stop accepting claims to patriotism
when they despise, undermine, and assail
any who appear, believe, speak, or love
outside their narrow range of acceptance.

They may belong to a traditional
party, but they have no interest in
governance, seeking only to extract
and steal labor, land, resources, and wealth;
fouling water, soil, air needed for life.

Stop listening to liberals excuse
ableism, trans vilification,
contributions to climate catastrophe,
genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid,
complicity. Believe votes not their words.


F,I,'s YouTube reading of "STOP"


F.I. confesses: Words have meaning. Those meanings matter because they give words power. But authoritarians pervert language to serve their own agenda. As someone who's always made my living using words, who carefully chooses words to most clearly communicate my meaning, I find the abuse of words in service to fascism offensive.

F.I. Goldhaber's words capture people, places, and politics with a photographer's eye and a poet's soul. As a reporter, editor, and business writer, they produced news stories, feature articles, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits across the country. Now paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. More than 265 of their poems appear in 100 publications including What Color is Your Privilege?, their political poetry collection published by Left Fork press. http://www.goldhaber.net/

Thomas Piekarski

IMPOSTOR

He slithered from a crevice amid deep Alpine ravines,
Some incalculable aberration and proprietor of death.
It’s claimed he was sent by an almighty power known
Only to those who believed in an invisible holy spirit.

Wholly immoral, this con came by many names often
Cited in scriptures. But he was always the same twit,
Uncannily able to draw a following among the duped
Population for which adulation was a virtue and habit.

Blowing things up was his primary passion, exacting
Pain and suffering among those he felt inferior, weak;
Savage and seething, spewing lies like insidious lice,
Thinking to sin is to win, his crimes well documented.

When considering one like Braveheart, great warrior
And liberator, yet was drawn and quartered, and then
To witness this foul impostor and scourge of history
Spewing his venom, makes the soul ache, skin crawl.


Thomas's YouTube reading of "Impostor"


Thomas confesses: "This poem alludes to our current president as an historical figure."

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of publications, including Modern Literature, Poetry Salzburg, Creation Magazine, The Museum of Americana, South African Literary Journal, Home Planet News, and California Poets Anthology. His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures, Mercurial World, Aurora California, and Opus Borealis.

David Anson Lee

STANDARD OF CARE

The denial arrives in a language
designed to resemble grammar
without ever becoming speech.

The patient waits.

Inside the body, time keeps working
like a clerk who never leaves his desk.

The physician submits records:
scans, codes, proofs of damage
translated into acceptable doubt.

The insurer replies:
additional documentation required.

Winter requests the same of trees.
The ocean, of drowning.

Weeks accumulate without permission.

The medication sits behind a digital gate
guarded by an algorithm
that has never held fevered skin
or counted breath in a dark room.

When approval arrives, it does not arrive as mercy:
only as delay that learned to sign its name.

Too late is still a category of coverage.

The ambulance appears
after the fire has finished speaking.


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Standard of Care"


David confesses: This poem reflects on the quiet violence of procedural medicine: how adherence to protocol can sometimes blur the boundary between care and detachment. It considers the tension between clinical language and lived vulnerability.

DAVID ANSON LEE is a retired ophthalmologist, educator, and poet born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A former endowed chair and professor of ophthalmology, his poems explore medicine, ethics, identity, history, and the hidden costs of institutional life. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies.