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.

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.

Jennifer Lagier

APOCALYPSE NOW

Ooh war, I despise
'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears, to thousands of mother's eyes
When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives

–lyrics to the song "War" by Edwin Starr


Morning headlines announce anti-war icon,
Country Joe McDonald has died.
We remember his name from Vietnam,
Woodstock, the Fish cheer, Veterans for Peace.
As our government mimics Nazi Germany,
pacificists mourn loss of charismatic leaders,
lament Reverand Jesse Jackson’s passing.

Targeting an Iranian girls’ school,
the U.S. annihilates students and teachers,
massacres civilians as part of a campaign
to distract from full Epstein files disclosure.
Online photos of open graves
illustrate the magnitude of our moral failures.

In the Pacific Ocean,
heavily armed military operations
burn through taxpayer dollars,
ignore due process to assassinate fishermen
they suspect to be drug runners,
deliberately slaughter frantically waving survivors.

Washington D.C. resembles a festering sewer
where the rich and powerful buy politicians,
pervert rule of law, protect their own interests.
Daily, the body count rises.
Our country’s crimes against humanity
continue to burgeon.


Jennifer's YouTube reading of "Apocalypse Now"


Jennifer confesses: "Here we go again, another senseless war based on lies, designed to distract from the corruption and malfeasance of the current administration."

JENNIFER LAGIER lives a block from the stage where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar. She has published twenty-five books and in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edited the Homestead Review, currently edits the Monterey Poetry Review, helps publicize Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Saturday readings. Website: jlagier.net, Facebook: www.facebook.com/JenniferLagier/

F.I. Goldhaber

LUNCH

Sorry to learn that your cat disappeared.
It is always best to keep felines and
other pets safe inside. Because there are
majestic Red-tail hawks circling above
who don't distinguish between fur-covered
prey. They just snatch another tasty meal;
their nature and hunger absolving their crime.


F.I.'s YouTube reading of "Lunch"


F.I. confesses: "'Lunch' was inspired by missing pet flyers constantly posted in a neighborhood where Red-tail (as well as Cooper's and Swainson's) hawks and coyotes regularly hunt. In reality, the true criminals are pet owners who allow their furry wards to wander unsupervised and thereby put their lives at risk."

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 in five states. Now paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. Almost 260 of their poems appear in more than 90 publications including What Color is Your Privilege?, their political poetry collection published by Left Fork press. http://www.goldhaber.net/

Chad Parenteau

RUDY GIULIANI MUTTERS DURING HIS LAST RITES

If I could get
building-big
like I did for
that Time Man
of the Year cover,
I could finally
get a look at
Lady Liberty’s
underpants.
That’s the one
problem being
an inside man.
No more time to
grope underneath.
I’m not finished
yet. I just want
to stay around
and do one last
act, something
only I can do
to changes lives
forever. Good
bad, does that
matter anymore?
Just give me
one last clasp
to undo before
they undo unto me.


Chad's YouTube reading of "Rudy Giuliani Mutters..."


Chad confesses: "This is my newest poem about Rudy. I’ve become obsessed with his legacy, which took less than two decades to completely shatter when it seemed like 9/11 made him forever untouchable. I don't we don't have to wait another twenty years for the rest of the gold-plated calves to collapse."

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.

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.

Peter M. Gordon

CARNY

‘Scuse me while I light up.
You want one? Ain’t a lot
of jobs that lets yiz smoke

and work. ‘Course that ain’t
the only reason this Midway’s
the best job I ever had.

When I hustled the short con,
a mark squealed and I spent
two years in the can. Here,

marks pay admission just so’s
we can take them. I’ve seen good
looking guys drop fifty just

to win their girl one of them stuffed
gorillas that cost us three bucks,
an’ when they don’t win, go get

a beer and drop another fifty.
All I gotta do is stand here
an’ hand ‘em three softballs.

We ain’t in town long enough
to get in real trouble an’ if we
got a small beef, local bulls

we pay for security just say
to leave town. Oh, this carny
life’s for me. If I gotta hit

the pie-car, say, for a snack or pack
of ciggies, another carny covers.
I got food, family, an’ a job for life.

Some say carnivals are dyin’
but I see more marks than ever
linin’ up to stuff green in our

grouch bags. I ain’t quittn’;
I’m gonna die here. Lemme light
up again. Sure you don’t want one?


Peter's YouTube reading of "Carny"


Peter confesses: "I've spent a lot of time over the years at the Central Florida Fair here in Orlando and enjoy attending county and state fairs when they're on in towns I'm visiting. I've long been fascinated by the people that work the fairs, traveling from town to town, and even though they are often suspicious of locals, some have opened up to me. The voice of this persona poem is an amalgam of several different conversations I had."

PETER M. GORDON is an award-winning poet with over 200 poems published in various journals. He's authored three collections, and is a founder and past President of Orlando Area Poets, a chapter of the Florida State Poets Association. Peter has taught workshops on writing and publishing poetry in several Florida cities. He teaches in Full Sail University's Film Production MFA program.

Charles Rammelkamp

DONALD TRUMPSKY

“I have never rated Stalin
so highly as to be able to hate him,”
Leon Trotsky once observed,
the best-known leftwing critic
of Stalinism in the world,
dismissing his rival as tawdry, unworthy,
no doubt pissing off thin-skinned Uncle Joe,
who invoked Trotsky’s name
throughout the Moscow show trials,
the Great Purge of the late thirties:
Leon the sinister source of all disloyalty, sabotage,
the classic purveyor of fake news.

Founder and commander of the Red Army,
Trotsky lost the power struggle
after Lenin’s death in 1924,
ended up in exile in Mexico,
after a year in Alma-Ata in Central Asia,
then Turkey, France, Norway.

Stalin’s agents tracked him down.
But he survived a machine-gun attack
just as he’d survived prison and Siberia
as far back as 1900,
a proverbial cat with nine lives.
But on August 20, 1940, 
NKVD agent Mercador did him in
with an ice-ax blow to the skull
outside his compound in Coyoacan.
So Uncle Joe finally got his revenge
against the fake news.
Take THAT, Crooked Hillary! Take THAT, Sleepy Joe!


Charles's YouTube reading of "Donald Trumpsky"


Charles confesses: "Donald Trump seems to have the same brutal instincts and lack of self-humor as Joseph Stalin and given the opportunity will no doubt exercise the same ruthlessness; he already has. Talk about “show trials” – Trump’s (against Letitia James, Jim Comey, Mark Kelly, etc., etc.) have basically been joke trials."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His collection, The Tao According to Calvin Coolidge, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

Tony Dawson

HEGSETH

What shall we do with the drunken “soldier”,
What shall we do with the drunken “soldier”,
What shall we do with the drunken “soldier”,
Early in the morning?
Put him in charge of the Pentagon,
Put him in charge of the Pentagon,
Put him in charge of the Pentagon,
And blow up the whole world.


Tony's YouTube reading of "Hegseth"


Tony confesses: "The military’s pumped-up fire-breathing dragon, gung-ho Hegseth, brainless head of the Pentagon and War Sec, is all for initiating Armageddon. Macho man says the rules of engagement are woke. The man’s a joke."

TONY DAWSON, an English writer, has been living in Seville since 1989 and continues to publish widely in the USA, UK and Australia since he took up writing during the pandemic. Many of his poems have been published as three small collections:

Afterthoughts ISBN 9788119 228348, published by Cyberwit.net. First edition: 2023 and reviewed at: https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/06/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson/

Musings ISBN 97819115 819666, published by Impspired. First edition: December 2023 and reviewed at: https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/12/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson-2/

and Reflections in a Dirty Mirror ISBN 9781915819949 also published by Impspired. First Edition: April 2024and reviewed at: https://londongrip.co.uk/2024/04/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson-3/

In addition, he has written a number of pieces of flash fiction, a selection of which appeared in Curiouser and Curiouser ISBN 9788119 654932, published by Cyberwit.net. First edition: 2023.

Ed Robson

NOLO CONTENDERE

Your honor, I just want to say, it isn’t right, what’s happening.
We’re getting so PC, I can’t find anyplace to have a smoke,
not even in my car. That’s what this case is really all about.
I’m not a reckless driver; how the officer got that idea,
I don’t know, when everywhere I go, I see folks driving on
the sidewalk, in the ditch, but they don’t see them, no, it’s me they stop
the minute I light up a smoke.

But that and coffee in the morning, what could be more natural?
This one day, I’m just finishing my breakfast on the morning drive,
and punching buttons, trying to play a CD on the stereo.
The car is new, you see, and so I have to ask my wife, “Where’s that
danged owner’s manual?” She goes, “It’s in the glove box, duh.” I’m like,
“Where it belongs? Who knew?” And she texts me right back,
“Well, I did, duh,”
which makes me laugh so hard I almost drop my chopsticks. But the
traffic’s getting heavy on the pike, which always makes me nervous, and
the owners’ guide’s in Japanese. (Can you see why I’d need a smoke?
And it’s my own car, after all.)

But then I notice that I’m running just a wee bit late, so I
start shaving while I listen to the lesson on irregular
verb forms—I guess that’s most of them in Russian—but while scrambling
for exact change so that I won’t have to slow way down to pay my toll,
I slosh my coffee, which if I don’t wipe it all up, Bernadette
will kill me, cause it’s her car, too, and the upholstery’s still pristine,
(well mostly, anyhow), but then I change lanes kinda sudden, cause
my left arm’s caught inside my sleeve, and wind up at the wrong booth,
where, would you believe, the girl just quit? I guess the stress got to her, all that honking, cursing, screeching brakes. So it’s her fault I broke the gate.
But if I put my shirt on first, before I shave, I end up with
my collar full of shaving cream.

So now I’m asking Bernadette, “Do we have band-aids?” And she’s like,
“They’re right there in the console, duh,
and don’t you bleed on my new car."
I say, “It’s these damned Russian verbs, they make my Adam’s apple bob
just when the straight blade’s on my neck.” But by the time I staunch the
bleeding, finish up my kung pao chicken, gulp the last swig of my coffee,
get the knot right on my tie, and—finally!—start to light that smoke,
just as I pull into the lot of Angus Elementary,
all them blue lights in my rear-view get me so freaked out, I choke
and spill bong water in my lap, so when I get inside, all my
first graders think I wet my pants. Now, what’s that gonna do to their
respect for my authority? I realize right then, it’s time
for me to start my new career.

So, dasvidaniya, Judge; you won’t see me again. The agency—
oh yes, you know the one I mean—they’re sending me to Moscow, where
I hear the cops just do their job and keep the crazies off the road,
instead of writing tickets on a good, hardworking citizen
who only wants the right to catch a nice, relaxing, morning buzz
while driving in his OWN DAMNED CAR!


Ed's YouTube reading of "Nolo Contendere"


Ed confesses: ""Nolo Contendere' was inspired by the rising numbers of accidents caused by distracted drivers. Most prominent in the statistics are cell phone users, but we all see people eating, applying makeup, and doing many other activities incompatible with keeping their eyes on the road."

ED ROBSON retired after 30 years practicing psychology so he could write full-time. He earned his MFA from U. of Central Arkansas in 2021, suffered a heart attack in 2023, and got his groove back in 2025 paragliding in Guatemala. Now he spends his time restoring neglected houses with his wife, winning poetry slams, cooking for his friends, singing in his UU Fellowship choir, and writing like his life is on the line. His first poetry collection, Carping Every Diem, will be published in May 2026 by Bramble Press.