JUDGEMENT

by Judy Salcewicz

Mariano Barbacid, who leads the Experimental Oncology Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), developed a treatment that has successfully and completely eradicated pancreatic tumours in mice, without any major side effects. The discovery was hailed as a potentially significant turning point in the fight against this disease. However, a segment of social media users mocked a birthmark on Barbacid's face and made numerous offensive and superficial comments, rather than recognizing the scientific achievement. —Money Control, January 31, 2026

Is it because we’re reading fewer books

that we forget not to judge them by their covers?

A disparagement, a quick dismissal

and we miss out on adventure, insight,

inspiration, knowledge, heroes to emulate,

and so many things that improve our lives.

Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease--

with a five-year survival rate is 13%

Dr. Mariano Barbacid,

a Spanish cancer scientist,

and his team found a triple-drug therapy

that eliminates pancreatic tumors in mice.

This remarkable discovery is cause for

celebration and hope that it will lead

to a human cure.

Instead of celebrating, many online disparagers,

focus instead on the Doctor’s birthmark.

Judy Salcewicz is a New Jersey poet and writer who believes in the power of words.

TO THE REPUBLIC

by Athena Kildegaard

It is hard, right now, to think

of America, my country, it no longer
holds together inside its borders. 
Four decades ago, every school day, 
I asked one of the twelve-year-olds
in my charge to lead us in the Pledge
of Allegiance. It was the law, this recital.
As good a way as any, I thought, to begin.
Words, words, slippery as jello cubes,
hardly join, now, to anything real.
My heart beats, my hand firms itself
to my chest—this friction, this viva—
but my tongue dare not lift, my lips
not open, my body not burst
with air, with light. America, where
have you gone?

You are in Minneapolis,
America, handing out scarves and hats,
standing beside your neighbors, lifting
whistles to your lips because your lips
have power, your breath has power,
you are teaching us how to be Americans.

Athena Kildegaard is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions), winner of the WILLA Literary Award. 

AUTHORITARIANISM

by Scott Lowery

 

No point appealing to the heart

            or soul it doesn’t have, so save

                        your breath. It needs its namelessness,

 

but name it with too many syllables 

            and it wins again, the goon squad’s 

                        tracks wiped clean by grocery lists, snow,

 

football scores. Just four words 

            on my sign: Breathe Easier—Join Us!

                        Hah! Not really! jokes the nervous

 

young marshal in his or her 

            neon vest at the busy crosswalk—

                        too cold to breathe easy here today!

 

It’s what we do at these things—

            wry smiles, weather complaints,

                        bits of chatter to pass around

 

like balm for our deeper shivering.

            Most of us have paid our protest dues 

                        before, are dressed for bitter wind,

 

giving motorists our cheerful best

            reflected back by honks and hand 

                        waves, leaning our way behind unshattered 

 

windshields. Faces like or unlike 

            ours, bright momentary smiles—

                        running to Target for toothpaste or beer, 

 

some Happy Meals on the way home, 

            trying not to see those prices rising like

                        flood water, halfway up the basement steps. 

 

Give us a good old 

            disaster any day of the week,

                        we all know how to pitch right in,

 

wade through mud and wreckage

            in our rubber boots. Same kind 

                        of summons is why we’re here, 

 

boots, signs and all. So, thanks 

            for the wave but next week join us, 

                        please—all of us breathing easier, 

 

warm bodies out in the cold to say 

            it plain and clear. Name it Wrong. 

                        Name it Not While I Can Breathe.

 

Scott Lowery is a poet, songwriter, and teaching artist, who currently lives with his wife and cats in Milwaukee near their young grandkids. More than ever, he is proud to have grown up in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Great River Review, River Styx, North American Review, Canary, and elsewhere, including several anthologies, ekphrastic shows, and podcasts. Lowery’s award-winning second chapbook, Mutual Life, observes small-town life against a looming backdrop of pandemic, climate change, and extremism. Find more, including work with young authors, at www.scottlowery.org.

JANUARY BOUQUET

by Katherine Smith

The only antidote for America 

is to go outside in the freezing cold winter

and dream of the most beautiful city on earth

or even this universe (there may not be any other). 

This city is Granada.  Inside my house 

I think only of Minneapolis, of winter.

Outside my house I dream of Grenada and spring

on the slope leading towards the white limestone caves

where the pink dusk hovers over the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada.

By day I once walked through the summer palace of the kings of Spain.

By night I listened to flamenco and the percussive shoes of dancers.

By day the stained glass of the cathedral blossomed

like the roses in the summer palace. Beauty softened the blow

of the inquisition six hundred years before

just as a memory of joy softens the blow of the shootings,

and the military on the streets of Minneapolis. Nothing 

is more consoling than the dream of a beautiful ruin,

for the ugliness happening to America. I lay memory

like a wreath on the roadside 

where Alex Pretti and Renee Good died.

Katherine Smith’s poetry publications include appearances in Southern Review, Boulevard, North American Review, Ploughshares, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. Her third book, Secret City, appeared with Madville Press in 2022. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

WANDERING INTO A DREAM WORLD

by Susan Cornelis

Art by the poet.

. . .and I’ve wandered into 
a dream world I no longer recognize,
teeming with shapes,
twisted
gone
out of bounds
dangerous,
like a cell phone
mistaken for a gun.

So many ways
to get it wrong,
to step where a trap is set.

Too much for this little guy
who sees a featureless white shape,
which seems to be slumbering, 
like Fox, who is warm around his neck,
but where is the thing’s head
where is the mouth
where the teeth?

Too much for this little guy
who knows not yet
the art of hiding.

Too much for me
and for you too,
even as we stand here
learning the shape of fear,
trying not to turn away.

Susan Cornelis is an Olympia, WA mixed media artist, workshop teacher and art blogger. Her ekphrastic  poetry is an exploration of the emotional content of her paintings. She refers to these as Conversations with the Muse, which are regularly posted on her blog by that name at http://susancornelis.wordpress.com/

AFTER READING "MINNESOTA BRIEF: THINK OF THE CHILDREN" BY BREE DONOVAN

by Laurie Rosen

this morning i read this poem 

so sad it feels like a stab 

to my heart i think 

maybe this could move 

the right people…

but the ones who need to be moved 

are heartless with nothing to stab

and empty of any passion 

for reading poetry 

"They Are All Responsible" cartoon by Ann Telnaes

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in One Art: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Oddball Magazine, The New Verse News, Minyan Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food, Zig Zag Lit Mag, and elsewhere. Laurie was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. 

THE DYING BREATH

by Rose Mary Boehm

In a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the dying breaths of the star at the heart of the famous Helix Nebula are exposed in wonder and radiance. —Good News Network. Photo: NASA, January 20, 2026

 

"As above, so below," the famous aphorism by a mythical teacher and a mythical text. 

In the Emerald Tablet the ancients already knew about the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. So, as a star dies and we see its dying breath pushing outward like a cloud of seeds to form new stars when their time has come, so the humble dandelion’s delicate umbrella-equipped seeds go with the wind to settle on another meadow and become new dandelions when their time has come, the spiders die soon after producing their egg sacs, and the spiderlings disperse into the world by ballooning: using the breeze and sometimes atmospheric electric fields to travel far, settling, mating, and laying egg sacs when their time has come.

 

"As above, so below"—instead of neurons sending electrical signals through axons, stars use magnetic field lines. Trees connect through the complex mycelia network, and we have more than 86 billion neurons in the brain, and a more or less equal number of other cells. Neurons and neurotransmitters are our mycelia. 

 

When my grandfather died, I saw a small silver cloud leaving his open mouth.

 
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026.

THINGS YOU CAN DO IN 85 SECONDS

by J.R. Solonche

The Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history. —Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 27, 2026. Photo: Jamie Christian

Boil a cup of water in a modern microwave.

Tie both shoes with a deliberate, double-knot of human certainty.

 

Empty a small kitchen trash bin and replace the liner before the infinite notices.

Hand-grind enough coffee beans for a single sardonic cup.

 

Take twelve deep breaths, measuring the air as if it were borrowed property.

Wash your hands thoroughly, scrubbing the January salt from your knuckles.

 

Read three short poems by J.R. Solonche.

Write a brief postcard to a neighbor you haven't spoken to in years.

 

Check the mail, auditing the envelopes for clerical errors.

Wind a manual wristwatch, tightening the spring against the global midnight.

Nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, twice for the National Book Award and three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of more than 50 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

MINNESOTA BRIEF: THINK OF THE CHILDREN

by Bree Donovan

A safeguard document is helping parents prepare in case of ICE arrest and family separation. —CBS News, January 16, 2026.  Click for a video explaining DOPA.

If you cannot see this as an occupation,
but you do wince about the children
(because after all, at heart, you’re kind), please know:
hundreds of adults in Minnesota are training
as DOPAs—meaning “Delegation of Parental
Authority” designees—so in the event children’s parents
are kidnapped and detained who knows where or
deported who knows where, and their children
no longer have mami, hooyo, pa, they do have,
some have, a DOPA. A someone, DOPA, if not papi.
 
If children are your occasional concern, because of course
the children of the hunted could be innocent until proven
guilty, please know: the ones in children’s hospice
(in case you’ve thought of them, yes there are
hospices just for children), each have a nurse,
so far not deported, enfermera, kalkaalisada,
and a DOPA on file in case they die
without their waalidka, their Pa-Moe holding their hand.
 
If children are a now and then concern, pro tip:
a DOPA can be an aunt, npawg, grandfather,
pu, neighbor, pii chai, or attorney. As long
as DOPA papers are signed, the npawg,
neighbor, auntie has the legal right (temporarily
but who actually knows) to decide about schools,
medical care, care in general (will they know
of allergies, asthma, bedwetting, things only parents
know?). Pii chai become waalidka, attorneys-in-fact.
 
If children cross your mind—if—carry on:
parents of disabled children, of children still at home
ages 3 days to 17 years, parents who must keep
working and worry some night as they walk
to their car out the service door they will be taken,
dread this vividly, continuously, while feeding, holding,
tucking in their children, their deepest concern, seeing 
their own abductions play out behind their children’s stories
of dinosaurs and flying tigers and apps and places
where it’s always warm and ice cream is free on trees,
these parents have pre-erased themselves with DOPAs.
DOPAs mean their children, their abiding broken-hearted 
concern, might continue to be cared for somehow for some time.

DOPAs are these parents's last best loving acts. 

So go on, monsters. The children are covered. 

Author's note: The languages here are Spanish, Somali, Karen, Hmong—just some of the languages spoken by kidnapped parents of children in Minnesota.

Bree Donovan is the pseudonym of a St. Paul, Minnesota writer who is active on Signal. A childless adult adoptee, Bree thinks often of the children.

FOR MINNEAPOLIS

by Ruth Lehrer

They don’t tell you in the morning
you will die by noon 
driving in your car
walking on the street 
 
after you are gone
you see a picture of the gun
flesh as good as ashes
blood as good as painted pain 
 
But in that morning you just know
yesterday your neighbor was brave
so today you must be too
The boundary between trust and fear
torn open
 
We are all ash
We are all brave. 

Ruth Lehrer is a sign language interpreter and Pushcart-nominated poet living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the young adult novel Being Fishkill. 

WHAT WORDS MEAN

by Michael T. Young

Cartoon By Nick Anderson

          For Alex Pretti, Nurse Executed by ICE Agents

 

They say “domestic terrorist.” 

We say “citizen.” 

They say “violent radical.” 

We say “peaceful protestor.” 

They say “he brandished a gun.” 

We say “he had a phone.” 

They say “absolute immunity.” 

We say “first amendment.” 

 

At the end of each sentence a life is at stake. It’s how 

words form in the mouth. Some unfold like a flower 

 

scenting the air with an aroma 

reminding you of a summer day 

when you knew your mother and father 

loved you and time seemed 

endless, full of light and warmth. 

 

But other words form like an ache 

where the bullet entered 

and a pain where it blew out 

the other side, red 

not just with the usual blood, 

but with speech and every other right.

Michael T. Young's fourth collection, Mountain Climbing a River, was just published by Broadstone Books. His third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including Chiron Review, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Mid-Atlantic Review, and Vox Populi.

HOW MUCH CAN WE TAKE?

by Lynne Kemen

after viewing “Continuous Form” by Nishimura Yuko (Japan) 2020—washi paper

The paper is impossibly twisted, pleated

like skirts used to be. How is it possible

that this is paper? Nishimura Yuko's washi

folding into itself, holding a shape

it shouldn't hold.

 

On the wall behind, faces

also impossibly shaped, bearing witness,

watching.

 

Tensile strength. The word makes me think

of tension, how it translates to my own body

squirming to get comfortable, no longer able

to hold erect posture. Two total knee replacements.

Back pain. Neck pain. I'm so tired.

 

Pretti is our conscience. One of the helpers

who always shows up, who cares about others,

who refuses to look away. His phone

documenting what shouldn't be happening,

what we need to see.

 

I used to protest the Vietnam war. Kent State

terrified me—that girl kneeling, her mouth open,

screaming over the body. Some photographs

are that raw, that perfectly horrific.

Once I see them, they're in my DNA somehow,

in my body.

 

I can't stand for long periods now.

And I know I cannot look away.

So many do. They don't think it affects them—

until it does.

 

The sculpture before us, still whole.

Those circular faces, still watching.

We know fabric tears.

We just don't know when.

Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She is currently working on two full-length poetry volumes. Lynne lives in rural Delaware County, New York.