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Fall 2025
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Poetry Samples from the Latest Issue
Thirteen Minutes
Greasy handprints on the window. A clean streak
Where my fingers knifed through dust
On the sill. A shotgun loaded, hidden
Behind the bedskirt's shadow. Susie's hair
Curling into the open end of her
Pillow case, chest rising and falling
Softly and slowly, the gaps in her rib cage
Smooth holsters for my callused fingers. Moonlight glosses
Our blue carpet and I think of Lake Huron,
Those brisk spring evenings when the walleye fishermen
cast weighted lines like spider webs
into twilight. The red digits on my alarm clock
glow like an exit sign. Thirteen minutes
before that black box starts singing,
before I tap its head with the side meat
of my clenched fist. I don't want another
shift cutting cured concrete slabs
in a parking structure off Gratiot Ave. I want
to lie here next to Susie and watch dawn
creep through the window, its warm mouth
slow crawling across the floor to leave a kiss
on her bare ankle that hangs off the edge
of our bed. I want to give her what I was too back-sore
to deliver after dinner last night, to revisit my teenage
libido, those years with nuclear power
pulsing between my legs. I'm melting, hard living
dripping like sweat down my face. I'm afraid
not knowing how she'll love me once my body can't
work the way it does now. Four minutes until I roll
out of bed and walk down the hall towards the kitchen
for a cup of coffee, a hand full of pain pills, the struggle
to bend over and lace my boots and start
the westbound I-94 commute. Two hours
until the sweet smell of fresh mortar sticks
in my nostrils, until the blades hum
in my ears, and I hock loogies
straight through clouds of dust
blowing across the jobsite.
Jeff Thomas
Office Mouse
I am frightened to squeak
I never am safe,
Despite my walls quite deep.
I huddle quite quiet,
keep my tail to myself.
Glance out occasionally --
I don't feel quite safe.
I know if I'm quiet
the giant foot won't sound
across the carpet
in these vast office grounds.
They warn me to watch cheese
and to obey Ps and Qs
in this labyrinth,
where the Fat Cat rules.
Beware the cat's claws and spit,
her malevolent glance.
She gives more work than whiskers
and delights in the mousework dance.
I must mind the paperwork,
methodically without mind,
cookie cutter mousework --
I watch for the right time.
And then I can escape,
scurry away as I please,
leaping away from mousework,
and into the safety of swaying trees.
D'Arcy Ann Pryciak
A History Ahistorism
had a grandfather who either was
enslaved or enslaver.
And then later once upon that next time --
-- call the second one "freedom" --
had an ancestor who was a judge
who sent anyone (often Black)
back to the sort of person who
bought trapped people to work for
free. Or had a trapped ancestor --
who still managed to be an ancestor.
And then the private prisons American
archipela
go, but how to get more profit?
All over America slave pens are being
built to contain people who yesterday
might have been joining a union,
(night planes sell the rest abroad).
Someone has to do the work
and so this foul institution
is brought back with enforced pride.
Not at the auction block, workers
can be traded on shopify, Amex-
the department of human resources
will lose the word human
The tax-exempt rich will get government issue.
Mary Franke
Missing Out
Why don't you go to Tijuana
or Ensenada I am told. They
have good places to eat and
good cantinas over there. I
tell them I would rather stay
here. There is good food here
too, and also good cantinas.
You don't know what you are
missing I am told. The beach
is so beautiful there. I tell
them the beach is beautiful
here too, even though I hardly
ever go. The real reason is a
long story I am not ready to
share. I am also afraid of not
being able to return. I am a
citizen, but I have not renewed
my passport. You can call me
lazy or dumb. I can bring my
certificate of naturalization.
But what if they steal it and
I can't come back. Perhaps
I have seen too many movies
of what happens to people
like me, not born in this country.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal
Jimmy Was in the Army
Jimmy used to play Army when he was a kid,
had plastic soldiers, tanks, a bridge too far.
Jimmy dropped out of high school and joined
right up. He wanted to be a good TV American,
find himself an enemy, and heroically make
that enemy pay for being an enemy. Respect
that uniform, Private, his drill sergeant yelled,
and what it stands for, you shit eating maggot!
Jimmy says: the day your term of service is up
and you walk out in your civvies, that's your real
first day of boot camp. Want a job? Siryessir!
Jimmy got a job at the furniture factory, joined
the Union, was a good hometown picnic American.
When the Union voted to strike, Jimmy enlisted
for the trenches of the picket line, saw the police
drop their civic masks and become the rent-a-cops
for the factory owners. And when the strike
began to spread, the National Guard arrived
to restore "law and order" on the orders
of their uptown and downtown Lords.
Jimmy kissed his wife goodbye at the door and joked:
Bye, honey! I'm off to walk point!
Jimmy learned that he's the enemy. He's the gook,
the dink, the raghead. He's every slur
that a crosshair ever found. He's Charlie,
whose checkpoint is everywhere, and his village
needs to be destroyed in order to save it.
Jimmy marches up to a gung-ho weekend warrior
practicing his thousand yard stare in crisp camo.
Jimmy eyeballs him, gives him name, rank,
serial number and says: listen up, soldier!
If you're standing tall here, on full metal holiday,
locking and loading in my town, on my street, who
is occupying the street where you grew up?
Who is holding a gun on your mom, on your kid brother?
Jimmy says: attention, soldier! Respect
who wears that uniform and don't let it wear you.
Then Jimmy does an about face and saunters away.
This Guardsman looks at Jimmy then he sneers
and snorts and makes a big show of readying his weapon.
And then he sees a little girl in a Disneyland t-shirt
looking at him, and a woman with a baby on her hip,
and a bent old man in a baseball cap, and a pimply
high school kid wearing a letter jacket, and someone
who looks like his dad. And they're all looking at
him, and there in the middle is Jimmy and Jimmy says:
Welcome home, Recruit.
Robert Edwards
To be a Poet
Where fascism marches in deadly order
And masked thugs bully and disappear our people
Where a laughable leader becomes a murderous ruler
Bent on turning the working class into oligarchs' serfs
To find hope somewhere
To celebrate and share
To go to the streets every time
Remaining authentic and genuine
To remember what real courage looks like
Then find beauty to write
With the call to defend our people and all humanity
Resisting the insistent insanity.
Stewart Acuff
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