Kate LaDew

A MAN DREDGED A RIVER

an 18-ton digger slicing through the water
sediment hurled away
leaving the salmon and trout
and bullhead and minnows gasping
the otters and mink scurrying
the kingfisher and sand martin's bellies empty
a man dredged a river
stripped every wildflower
and tree and bush
and blade of grass
to build a road to his home
and then he went to jail
ecological vandalism
on an industrial scale
and as he sat in the corner
and thought about what he'd done
nature creeped little by little
back to the dredged river
the wildflowers grew
and the trees grew
and the bushes grew
and the salmon and trout
and bullhead and minnows swam
and the otters and mink played
and the kingfishers flew
and the sand martins sang
and everything went back to how it was
the mile-long scar
down the middle of it all
covered over entirely by green
and buzzing things
and full-throated
gleaming life


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "a man dredged a river"


Kate confesses: "I came across an article online about a farmer who destroyed miles of land for his own purposes. While I don't agree with his actions, I didn't write the poem to shame him. I was simply amazed by how, when left alone, the world rights itself."

Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Arts. She grew up in Hammond, Louisiana and lives in Graham, NC with her cats James Cagney and Janis Joplin.

David Anson Lee

TAX EXEMPT

The chapel carries a donor’s name
carved deep enough to outlive theology.

So does the stadium,
the laboratory,
the business school where futures are priced
in credit hours and compound interest.

At orientation, freshmen are issued
lanyards, passwords, a map
that loops back to debt.

The university expands like a body
forgetting where pain begins:
roots descending from branches,
branches feeding roots,
a system that mistakes growth for virtue.

The adjunct teaches in the blue light
of a refrigerator open too long.

Somewhere, a quarterback signs autographs
beneath a screen the size of weather.

At commencement, caps rise
like startled birds released too early
into air they cannot afford.

Years later,
the birds return
as monthly statements
that never learned mercy.


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Tax Exempt"


David confesses: "This poem emerged from observing how moral responsibility can be obscured when harm is mediated through systems that are legally protected yet ethically ambiguous. I was interested in how language of exemption can also function as a form of emotional distancing."

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.

Robert Cooperman

ICE SOLVES THE LINE DELAY DILEMMA AT MAJOR AIRPORTS

We examine drivers’ licenses,
passports, and faces, and listen
to them talking, or if they stink
of garlic, and if the name’s
Hispanic or Arabic, or just weird,
we hustle them to a remote site,
and quietly dispose of them.

Saves a lot of time and trouble,
and gets rid of the bullshit need
for immigration lawyers: trained
to break the law on behalf of illegals,
who, by definition, are all criminals,
sneaking into our great country
like rats gnawing into flour sacks.

Of course, this info is all hush-hush.
If it ever got out, we’d be up to our asses
in bleeding heart libbos bleating,

“Murder!” And other nonsense.

And since we’re not paid
for this patriotic and civic duty,
we get to keep the confiscated luggage.
Hell, the rollies alone go for hundreds:
perfect for transporting illicit drugs
into and out of the country.

God Bless America!


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "ICE Solves..."


Cooperman confesses: "After ICE murdered three American citizens and after seeing newspaper photos and TV footage of the lines to get through security at airports, it hit me that a Swiftian "Modest Proposal" solution for the TSA bottlenecks was in order. Hence, my suggestion for ICE to do what it does best (or worst): just kill anyone who doesn't look sufficiently American to them."

ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is An Oar for Odysseus; his latest chapbook is August 24, 1957.

Susan L. Pollet

FALLING FROM THE SKY

It was March of 2026
as they sat in bomb shelters with
their families, if they were lucky
enough to have that option,
in their respective countries,
captives of the leaders making
decisions once in power,
mostly without their say,
what rained from the sky competed
with nature’s most furious storm

To those below, it felt that they had
little control whether made by man
or made by the physical world, as
they smiled through clenched teeth,
prayed in different languages for
deliverance, and told themselves
they would get through this latest
assault on what was left of
the ‘dignity of man’


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Falling from the Sky"


Susan confesses: "This poem was inspired by the tense global atmosphere of early 2026, when ordinary people in many countries felt trapped between powerful leaders and forces beyond their control. Images of families in shelters, fear falling from the sky, and fragile human dignity reflect anxiety about war, vulnerability, and the resilience people cling to during crisis."

SUSAN L. POLLET is a published author of books in multiple genres and a fine artist who is a member of the Arts Student’s League in New York City. Susan’s poetry and art have been published in multiple literary publications and in on-line shows.

Robert Cooperman

TRUMP'S PROCLAMATION

“Effective immediately,
all streets, avenues, and boulevards
named for Martin Luther King, Jr.
will be renamed for the slain
American martyr, Charlie Kirk.

“In addition, all public sculptings
of King will be torn down, melted,
and recast as equestrian statues of me,
your president, Donald J. Trump.

“It’s time to start honoring us great
American heroes, not a rabble rouser
with the bad luck to get in the way
of a stray bullet when he had slinked off
to Memphis to meet his mistress.

“America needs role models
who look like its citizens:
like Charlie, true Christian men,
who built this country
and are now threatened
by snarling, woke hordes of savages.

“Any city or state that fails
to carry out these orders immediately
will lose all federal funds, plus suffer
the summary imprisonment of all officials
responsible for this act of treason.

“Are you listening New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, D.C.,
and any den of leftwing extremist traitors?
The soft times are over for you.
Real Americans are back
and we want answers and names.”


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Trump's Proclamation"


Cooperman confesses: "'Trump's Proclamation' is just my logical conclusion to his fulminating that only "real" Americans should be honored, and by 'real' Americans we can surmise the president-would-rule-for-life means Christian white men like Charlie Kirk and even more so, himself. So why not take it one step further and make them he mandatory subjects of all public art?"

ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia, a retelling of Hamlet, with a slightly happier ending, at least for Ophelia. Steerage is the highly fictionalized story of his grandfather's misadventures on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20th Century. An Oar for Odysseus is the final collection in Cooperman's lifelong love affair with Odysseus and The Odyssey.

Robert Plath

TO MY 5-YEAR-OLD SELF AS I APPROACH 55

today i go thru an old door
behind my eyes
arriving back
beneath that terrible roof
& i pick you up
& we slip away
from the monster
who doesn’t notice
as he slumps
watches boxing on tv
in the den
we cross splintered
door jambs
before his fists
begin itching
& drive until we reach
a bright field
we get out
& walk
i pause to pick
a bouquet of violets
my hands touching yr hands
in a benevolent exchange
the same hands
you smile
pressing blue petals
to yr heart
like defibrillator paddles
beneath june sun


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "to my 5-year-old self..."


Rob confesses nothing.

ROB PLATH has been prolific in the underground lit. scene since 1995. His most recent poetry collections are Walking Across The Shards Of My Soul, 2021 and Batter the Keyboard Like A Raptor Is Behind Your Back, 2022. A long awaited full-length collection is due out in 2025.

A.C. Perri

THE MAKING OF A SOLDIER

Passionately stubborn,
Spoke your mind like you were
Born to, while others remained
Silent; not that you wanted to—
You had to; watched the earth
Turn in the opposite direction,
The blue above to crimson—
For what? A system that died?
Your voice, strong, carried
A song, named Freedom;
Liberty was castrated, equality
vanquished; it seems overnight,
The world was caught, you
The victim, the scapegoat, a
Prisoner, the escape artist—
And, they clipped your wings;
You saw the unjust, couldn’t
Stand for it— Your mind, a
Fortress, every ounce of Spirit
You had, you fought them;
Life, like vinegar and oil, turmoil
Your home, a beautiful, dismal contradiction;
Your thoughts and theirs on
Separate ends of the spectrum,
Yet, you charged straight ahead
On a steed called Determination,
Used words as spears aimed
Straight for the enemy; your
Words made a difference, you
Showed them… a good poet
Makes the best soldier.


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "The Making of a Soldier"


A.C. confesses: "The current malaise inspired the words to Making of a Soldier; English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote: The pen is mightier than the sword, the words were included in his 1839 play Richelieu, or the Conspiracy. I believe words have power over any given physical force, at any given moment."

A.C. PERRI has been writing creative works for over three decades; her works have been published in local and international journals including Bootleg Magazine, Gems Zine, Brilliant Flash, and several Moonstone Press titles.

Robert Cooperman

TRUMP REHIRES FIRED FEDERAL WORKERS: THE VOICE OF TRUTH

In a bold move, President Trump has proclaimed
federal workers from the Parks Department
will be rehired to man the nation’s farms, formerly misrun
to the point of collapse by now-deported illegals.
Since these Park workers have experience with the outdoors,
they will be ideal for their new, necessary assignments.

To ensure that they report for work punctually and ready
to serve in any capacity needed to guarantee
the nation’s food supply, they will be rounded up
by the Armed Services, local police forces, and FBI agents
who have publicly vowed loyalty to the President.
The pay will be minimum wage, the President declared:

“Far more than what those lazy bastards deserve,
for finally doing an honest day’s work.”

They will be housed in simple wooden structures
and purchase provisions at Company Stores on site,
to prepare healthy meals after their daily assignments
have been completed to their overseers’ satisfaction.

They will not have access to automobiles, thus
saving money for themselves and for the country
on what they would squander on gas and maintenance.

We applaud President Trump’s foresight
in remanning farms to save the nation’s food supply
and to reduce unemployment levels
that have exploded of late: workers, especially
DOJ traitors, spitefully walking away from their jobs.
to sabotage the President’s plan to Make America
Great and Moral and American Again.


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Trump Rehires..."


Cooperman confesses: "When Trump announced all the layoffs and firings, I thought he'd cause massive unemployment and inflation, and just utter disruption and ruin to good, hard working people's lives. So I put myself in Trump's head (not a pretty place to be) and came up with the 'solution' presented by this poem. If it sounds like something once perpetrated in America's ignominious past, that's intentional."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia, a retelling of Hamlet, with a slightly happier ending, at least for Ophelia. Steerage is the highly fictionalized story of his grandfather's misadventures on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20th Century. An Oar for Odysseus is the final collection in Cooperman's lifelong love affair with Odysseus and The Odyssey.

Sarah Das Gupta

MIDSUMMER MISCHIEF!

Milk stands in wooden basins
A fly crawls along blackened rafters
an escape from the midsummer heat
I have many names in the villages and fields
Robin Goodfellow, Puck, Hobgoblin
Spirit of mischief, trickery and jokes
I trace my fingers over the clotting cream
in the evening twilight.
I chuckle to see it turning sour.
In the herb garden, parsley, thyme,
sage, rosemary, burdock,
I touch them so softly –
they wither and droop.
Out in the pastures, the sheep graze.
I ride on their woolly backs
in the dim light I leap
from one to another
In the farm pond eels twist and turn,
through the green, darkening water
I sprinkle a tincture of dried yew
In silver, moonlit meadows
I dance in the magic fairy circles
I creep into lovers’ chambers
strewing heartsease, wild pansy
over the linen pillows
As the horizon lightens
I sleep in a buttercup


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Midsummer Mischief!"


Sarah confesses: "This poem centers on the 'crimes' committed by the spirit Puck or Robin Goodfellow in the 16th century and famously in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'."


SARAH DAS GUPTA is a retired school teacher living in Cambridge, UK. She hastaught in UK, India and Africa. Her work has been published in many magazines/journals - 'Paddle', 'Dipity' 'Waywords', 'Little Seed', 'Bar-Bar', 'Bull', 'The Chamber', Intrangience', 'Dorothy Parker's Ashes', Green Ink' and others. She is interested in equestrian sports, politics, history, the environment, old churches, and ghosts.

Robert Cooperman

VALENTINE'S DAY BLIND DATE - PAULIE

She was waiting in front of her house,
with a bottle of champagne, so I thought,

“Wow, this is going to be so cool!”

In the car we toasted the fizzy volcano,
then she nuzzled beside me, her lips
nibbling like I was an Andes Mint,
my head a spinning dreidel.

At the restaurant, we tore through the courses,
her fingers playing inky-dinky spider
under the table, so I didn’t know
which way was up, and didn’t care.

But just as I was reaching for my Visa card,
she whipped out a piece the size
of the big guns on the USS Missouri,

took my wallet, everyone’s cash,
emptied the till, then grabbed my car keys,
and was gone like smoke blown
off a battlefield by a stiff wind.

After the cops grilled me
like a cheap cut of meat, I phoned
my brother’s wife Cindy, with murder
in my heart: her setting me up
with Bonnie and Clyde’s granddaughter,

though if Crystal had asked me
to go on the lam with her,
or even taken me hostage,
I’d have been out the door faster
than a steel rabbit at the dog track.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Valentine's Day Blind Date...":



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Bob confesses: "Believe it or not, I read about this in the local paper; I may have embellished a tad, but the bones of the story were right in the small article. Sometimes art does follow life."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are Go Play Outside (Apprentice House) and Reefer Madness (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A Nightmare on Horseback.

Robert Cooperman

GEORGE SANTOS, REPUBLICAN REPRESENTATIVE-ELECT FROM NEW YORK'S THIRD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

So I embellished? Like that gimp Libbo,
FDR, never embellished, but to Dems,
he’s a greater warrior than Robert E. Lee.

Like The Rail Splitter never embellished?
Talk about career padding! Show me
his callouses, and still that RINO’s
as close to Jesus Christ
as this country’s ever seen.

And who says I didn’t work at Goldman Sachs?
No record of my employment? Off-book, baby,
looking discreetly into irregularities
by their traders and the execs.

And claiming to be Jew-ish: incredibly brave
in this age of anti-Semitic white nationalists,
Neo-Nazis, and violent Holocaust deniers.
Believe me, any contributions from Jews
didn’t come close to the hate raining down
on me like fire and brimstone.

And if you think I’ll say where the 700 thou
came from to finance my campaign,
there are things a gentleman doesn’t talk about,
and I’m nothing if not a gentleman.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "George Santos...":



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Bob confesses: "Since Republicans are brazen, never-back-down liars, I thought Santos' response to his accusers should be one of unabashed chutzpah (Yiddish, for unmitigated gall), not only proudly crowing he did lie, but dragging the decent name of better men into the mud with his."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are Go Play Outside (Apprentice House) and Reefer Madness (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A Nightmare on Horseback.

Clay Thistleton

WHERE DONALD J. TRUMP HAS BEEN JUMPING THE SHARK

storming the Capitol for a Facebook-tagged selfie
live-streaming on Insta in a bison-horned helmet
Rambos in the Senate cosplay with their zip cuffs

when in insurrection please do not touch the statues
where Donald J. Trump has been jumping the shark
the flayed skin of democracy as a casual jacket

a mortal last stand in the crush at the Speaker’s Lobby
a star-spangled thread count in Brian Sicknick’s lifeblood
the teargas hangs heavy with airborne diseases


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Where Donald J. Trump..."



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Clay confesses: "As a long-time student and an occasional teacher of American literature I was emotionally affected by the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. The U.S. is not just a country, it is a grand, shining idea and it was that idea under attack that day."


CLAY THISTLETON has taught creative writing and literary studies in universities, community colleges and not-for-profit organisations for over two decades. He is the author of Noisesome Ghosts (Blart Books, 2018): an Elgin Award-nominated collection of found poetry that investigates the phenomenon of ghosts and poltergeists that have the ability to speak or write. His current project, ‘Never Mind the Saucers’ (Stranger Press, forthcoming), examines documented instances of alien-human sexual contact. Along with his son Dylan, Clay lives in New South Wales, Australia with a fluctuating number of feral cats.

Katherine Heil

AFTER PARTY

You should clean up, darling.
Lipstick—that’s all. It’s on your teeth,
I can see it when you smile.

Clean up, before anyone sees.
Tuck that pistol away, darling,
pull out the mirror and ‘kerchief.
I’ll do it for you, if you like.
Your hands are rather dirty.

We’ve got time, darling,
don’t fret about it. I know,
but in a house like this,
it’ll take hours before they care.
The chandeliers will blind them.
They’ll look in the basement first.

You should clean up, darling.
Put on the fresh make-up—
we can’t have anyone recognizing us.
Give me the mirror when you’re finished.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "After Party":



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Katherine confesses: "I was inspired by the glamorous image murders can take on when the victim is rich or famous, that jarring combination of elegance and violence. It's what I think can power the intrigue of the public, alongside the draw of co-conspirators working together, even when they risk implication and betrayal."


KATHERINE HEIL is a Michigan writer who can be found writing anything she likes and listening to music at almost every waking moment. With a fondness for books that she can read in a flash, she is currently getting into mystery novels.

Robert Cooperman

THE HUSNOCK

A Star Trek: Next Generation episode
featured The Husnock: a race of highly
intelligent, incredibly brutal creatures;
but when they tried to destroy a small planet,
they faced the wrath of a previously pacifist
omnipotent being, and when they killed
his mortal wife and everyone else on his planet,
he confessed to Captain Picard
that he’d wiped out all the Husnock.

“What do you mean by all?” Picard,
with growing dread, demanded,
“all of the attacking ships?”

“No,” the being answered, “every last one
of them in the universe, all 50 billion.”

Forgive me, but I’d be tempted: starting
with Putin, his pals, his lick-spittle generals,
then the Russian army, which can't
defeat Ukraine, so is rendering it
into a giant, rubble-strewn body bag;
then every Russian who fell for
Putin’s bullshit propaganda, and then...

“You’d be doing,” you’d accuse, “exactly
what psycho-Putin and his goons did.”

If I were a better man, I’d agree.
But I’m not, so allow me my impotent
fantasy-rage, because at this point,
good riddance to bad fucking garbage.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "The Husnock":



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Bob confesses: "A few days before I wrote this poem, I was talking to a likewise Star Trek: Next Generation loving-friend and I remembered the episode with The Husnock, a race of utter brutes who really get theirs. I'd mentioned in passing that I wished someone would do a Husnock on Putin and his cronies and generals and the Russian army and all of them. The idea for a poem about the Russian invaders as present-day Husnock, and what Russia deserved, percolated in my head until it hit me how the poem had to go. It's kind of a riff on the thought game we played as kids: if you could go back in time and had total omnipotence, could you bring yourself to kill Hitler? Hell yeah."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are Go Play Outside (Apprentice House) and Reefer Madness (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A Nightmare on Horseback.

Kelly Sargent

HER SHADOW

War-torn moon,
craters, sunken, through the lens:
Shadows that cannot Be, Papa had said, without the light.

An abandoned, skinned-knee teen follows her shadow,
fingers unseen that once fastened a golden charm on her bracelet:
a crescent moon, its craters in the dark.

Greasy bangs grown over her eyes—
hazel-flecked eyes, sunken like craters—
filter unspent sunlight.

Fingers, unseen and callous-tipped, grope her wrist and
pin it down—tender and bared—
one before the other onto the unsparing tar
that scorches her shadow’s edge.

Without light—her papa’s voice, now recalled—
your own shadow cannot Be.

She turns her head, her cheek pressed against the tar.
“My shadow, they cannot capture,” she whispers,
and my shadow is me.”


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Her Shadow":



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Kelly confesses: “The invasion of Ukraine reminded me of the heinous, often unspoken casualty of war - the rape and ravaging of women and children. I wanted to speak to the evil act of control perpetrated by conquering soldiers and authority figures that has been shamefully overlooked through the ages.”

KELLY SARGENT is the author of Lilacs & Teacups (Cyberwit, 2022) and Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, 2022), a Cordella Press Poetry Chapbook contest finalist. Her poems and artwork, including a 2021 Best of the Net nominee, have appeared or are forthcoming in more than forty literary publications, including Typehouse Literary Magazine, Stone Poetry Journal, and Newfound. She serves as the creative nonfiction editor of The Bookends Review, and has written for a national newspaper for the Deaf. She also reviews for an organization whose mission is to make visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors. Visit her at www.kellysargent.com

Sharon Waller Knutson

BLACK-EYED SUSAN

After the Garden of Eden prophet dies,
two men in suits carry her out
of the commune down to the road,
her long goldilocks waving in the wind.
yellow dress dragging in the dirt,
dark eyes darting like a rabbit
as they deposit her outside the gate
and she yanks on the chains, Let me
back in, she calls, I can’t breathe.

The prophet taught us to stay inside,
that the air outside was poison gas.
She takes a deep breath of the ocean
air as we walk along the beach
near the Encinitas weekly newspaper
where she writes headlines instead
of making them and I write stories
a decade after the scandal broke.

In pantyhose and skirt to her knees,
her hair its natural brown, Jeanette,
her birth name, recalls the day
she meets the prophet and her life changes.
His hypnotic green eyes stared
right into my soul, and she boards.
his Volkswagen bus for Laramie
right after graduation from Colorado State.

He names female followers after flowers.
I was his favorite, she says, which is why
his widow had her cast out. The cult leaves
Escondido shortly after that for Des Moines.
I would have done anything for him, she says.

Two decades later, I wonder if she
would have ingested a Euthanasia cocktail,
lay down on her bunk and waited
for a spaceship to beam her up
to Heaven in the Rancho Santa Fe
mansion like the thirty-eight followers
of another prophet with hypnotic eyes.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Black-Eyed Susan":



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Sharon confesses: "After watching documentaries of the 25th anniversary of the mass suicide of Heaven’s Gate, I recalled a fellow journalist I worked with who was thrown out of a cult and wondered if she joined another one."

SHARON WALLER KNUTSON is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014) and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021) and Survivors, Saints and Sinners forthcoming by Cyberwit. Her work has also appeared in Black Coffee Review, Terror House Review, Trouvaille Review, ONE ART, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, and The Song Is...

Robert Cooperman

DEATH BY VENDING MACHINE

"Thirteen people a year are killed by vending machines." —Charles Rammelkamp

What about us? How many of us
are killed each year by thugs?
Every time someone stomps up
with a fistful of change or bills,
I cringe, fearing if I don’t spew out
the candy or soda or condom
in a nanosecond to the horny bastard,
I’ll be beaten and stomped.

I have cracks in my window, dents
in my casing where I’ve been brutalized,
though so far, lucky not to be junked for scrap,
like so many of my brothers and sisters.
But I dread that day is coming.

No wonder we lose it and strike back: the thief
trying to steal a Mars Bars or scoop out
all the change and bills in our bellies?
Call us Old Testament, but shouldn’t
he lose a hand because of his thieving fingers?

The thug who shoves us like a bully
threatening a scrawny, eye-glassed kid
toting a load of library books?
We’re justified in falling on the cretin,
and if the ambulance shrieks up too late,
or not at all, well, vicious should hurt.

And if our attacker fumes our chocolate
looks older than a redwood, drier than the Gobi
is that our fault? Blame the greedy stock-guy
holding back fresh bars and letting sodas go flat
as dinner plates kids ruin their appetite for,
by scarfing the crap we’re made to dispense
and wouldn’t, if we had any say in the matter.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Death by Vending Machine":



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Bob confesses: "I thought why not take the beleaguered vending machine's point of view and complain about the abusive treatment the machines are subjected to by humans, how we take out our frustrations on inanimate objects and how'd we like it if they decided to get even."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collections are REEFER MADNESS (Kelsay Books) and GO PLAY OUTSIDE (Apprentice House). The former is partly about Cooperman's misspent youth and partly inspired by a news article that stated the Girl Scouts of Colorado were cool with troop members selling cookies outside of pot shops; the latter is a love letter to Cooperman's lifelong unrequited romance with basketball.

J.M. Jordan

NOCTURNE

The signs have flickered off.
The trains have settled in the dark,
and unmarked police cars slumber
in quiet corners of the park

The pigeons have found their minarets.
The bats have left their towers.
Machinery slows and stops in these
quiet unoccupied hours.

So step into the vacant street,
look both ways and stand
there in the night as still and cold
as the pistol in your hand.

Now pull your hood up tight,
hunch your shoulders and go
into the unmade world where silence
blankets the streets like snow.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Nocturne":



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J.M. confesses: "I first wrote this piece without the third stanza as a kind of open-ended urban lyric, but it seemed a bit insubstantial. So I added the third stanza to give it a strange, darker tint - like Chekhov's gun with the second act unwritten."


J.M. JORDAN recently began writing again after a twenty-year hiatus. A Georgia native and Virginia resident, his poems have appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, Image Journal, Louisiana Literature, The Potomac Review, Carolina Quarterly, Smartish Pace and elsewhere.

Nancy Scott

OR SO IT SEEMED

He was a fine raconteur, drawing applause
for his stories about growing up
in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania.
How easy to tattoo hayseed on his forehead
had he not been a scholar and colleague.
Or so it seemed.

While others were harassed into producing
what amounted to intellectual trash
or chastised for tribal squabbles which, in truth,
were no more than penis envy,
his outlier star shone brightly.
Or so it seemed.

How could one find fault with a colleague
who, as a child, ate onion sandwiches for lunch,
shared one teacher with six grades
in a single room schoolhouse, and took turns
chipping ice in the privy on cold winter days?
Or so it seemed.

His father died of black lung disease; his mother
heart failure because they could not afford
a doctor. The sons delivered papers for pennies.
Yet, all three managed to earn PhDs.
What an amazing story!
Or so it seemed.

Alas, when the skein of lies began to unravel,
he was hard-pressed to explain.
Whatever our goals, how many of us wish
we could inhabit a different history?
Sure, go ahead and improvise,
but pray no one steps forward to debunk it!


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "Or So It Seemed":



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Nancy confesses: "Identity theft is not a rarity. This poem is actually true, I think. I want to believe it happened that way but I am not sure. I am not a suspicious person, but I’m afraid to answer the door to a woman with child asking if Bennie lives there."

NANCY SCOTT has been managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets for more than a decade. She is also the author of nine books of poetry and a novella, Marriage by Fire (Big Top Publishing Company, 2018). Before she retired and turned to writing, she had a long career as a social worker for the State of New Jersey which informed and inspired many of her poems. Originally from the Chicago area, she has resided in New Jersey for many years. www.nancyscott.net

Robert Cooperman

AN OPEN LETTER FROM A FUNERAL DIRECTOR TO THE ANTI-VAXXERS

I thank you all! Business is booming,
cases rising like Hurricane Katrina
from so many refusing to wear masks,
claiming they’re immortal, or the virus
is a hoax, so a big shout-out to the crew at FOX,
from Murdoch down to good ole Tuck.

Don’t go blaming me: I haven’t
infected anyone, just taken advantage
of imbeciles who had no problem
taking the flu seriously enough
to get vaccinated, but Covid?
If their god, Donald, tells them
it’s nothing to worry about,
they’ll believe any crap
that flim-flam artist shovels at them.

When I was a kid, I loved Bugs Bunny.

“What a maroon!” he’d smirk
after befuddling Elmer Fudd.
Now, enough maroons get wheeled
in here for me to send our kids
to the most expensive colleges.

And Marie can go on the shopping spree
of a lifetime: but online, no way I’ll let her
into a brick and mortar Nieman-Marcus.
Fools believe it’s safe to mingle; I know better.


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "An Open Letter...":



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Bob confesses: "It struck me that mortuaries must be making out like bandits, during the pandemic. So this poem was my paean to human idiocy and fecklessness. If you don't believe in Covid, Covid believes in you. And if you think the government shouldn't tell you what to do, sometimes the government, like Mom, knows best."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Aldrich Press). Forthcoming from Apprentice House is Go Play Outside, which chronicles Cooperman's lifelong one-way love affair with basketball. Also just available is the chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells from Finishing Line Press.