CHRISTA PIKE GAINS CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVA MARIE SAINT DIES

by Alex Stolis

I want to believe these two things

are not related. Want to believe Christa 

was reliving what she had done. 

I want to believe Eva believed 

she was dreaming. Was on a train—

Cary Grant reaching for her hand. 

I want to believe they both saw 

the same white light, felt the same

magnetic tug. 

I believe in science—the brain 

an electrical circuit of neurons 

triggering images. 

Trees lose chlorophyll. Leaves turn,

fall. Ground freezes then hardens 

as earth tilts away from the sun. 

Still, it’s nice to think they passed 

each other—a flicker of knowing

what each of them lost. 

Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections, Pop. 1280 and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife was released by Louisiana Literature Press, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres in by Bottlecap Press. He lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.

LIVE EXECUTION LIMERICK

by Paul A. Freeman

Cartoon by Gary A. Huck

December! We are gonna see a

livestreamed execution; ’twill be a

more obvious sign,

of US decline—

behaving more like North Korea.

 

Paul A. Freeman is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States of America. The book is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His debut book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul Freeman is the author of numerous published short stories, poems, plays and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

by Steven Kent

The Guardian, October 7, 2026

Imagine all the crony moola

I'll acquire when I beat Lula.

Got to get the courts controlled here;

That's a bill of goods I've sold here. 

Right away I'll pardon father.

Legal channels? Yeah... why bother?

Democracy is what we're after—

Yanqui, you've no room for laughter!

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, The Asses of Parnassus, Blue Unicorn, The Dirigible Balloon, The Hypertexts, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, Well Met, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last(2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

THE UNITED STATES OF BRAZIL

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

I throw up my hands. I cannot 

understand how half the country 

votes for stepping off the cliff 

of righteousness, the rule 

of law, protection of the weak 

and the other; how so many 

can see only belly button,

door lock, money swirling

on line, quick payments 

and the roaring feijoada, 

caipirinhas flowing 

and no more focus

on that favela up the hill.

Pied Piper and the Bible,

holiness and the puritan’s

American dream, wealth 

equals God’s blessing,

but aren’t we in Brazil…

the evangelical globalized,

localized, homogenized, 

two frontier myths become one, 

the United States of Brazil,

at least half the residents

singing hymns, marching 

to the sea to build beach-

front property, marching 

to the forest to burn it down.

Indran Amirthanayagam received Sri Lanka's State Literary Award for White Space Sonnets.  He won the Paterson Poetry Prize for The Elephants of Reckoning. His Lettre aux residents du monde is forthcoming from L'Harmattan. Amirthanayagam edits Beltway Poetry <www.beltwaypoetry.com>publishes at Beltway Editions >www.beltwayeditions.com>. He writes indranmx.substack.com

PATRIOT

 by A.M. Silvestri

“They could take out a city,” he said. “Let them take—Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” 

Graphic generated by AI; words generated by DJT.

There was a time

I knew what the word meant.

A flag on a porch.

A hand over the heart.

A uniform folded away

after the wearing was done.

Patriot.

It was not a threat.

It did not need to be shouted.

It did not belong

to one man.

Now the word comes dressed

in red hats and anger,

printed across shirts

beside the face of a politician,

as though love of country

required love of him.

And the flag follows.

From truck beds,

from rally stages,

from poles crowded

with the name of a man

above the name of a nation.

Until sometimes

I hesitate to raise mine.

Imagine that.

An American

made uncertain of his own flag

because someone else

has wrapped himself in it.

Then I heard a president say,

Let them take out Los Angeles.

Let them take out San Diego.

I heard those words

and looked at my flag.

Fifty stars.

Not red states.

Not blue states.

States.

Los Angeles is ours.

San Diego is ours.

Detroit is ours.

The small town.

The crowded city.

The farmhouse at the end of the road.

The apartment window

six floors above the street.

The people who agree with me

and the people who do not.

All of them.

Patriot.

I keep turning the word over,

trying to find the thing

I remember.

Not obedience.

Not a red hat.

Not loving a president

more than the country

he was elected to serve.

And not the accusation

hurled at anyone

who refuses to follow.

You do not get to tell me

that dissent is disloyalty.

You do not get to measure

my love of country

by my love of you.

Maybe patriotism

was never the shouting.

Maybe it was always

the quieter thing.

The hand over the heart.

The uniform folded away.

The flag on the porch

moving in the morning wind

with no man’s name beneath it.

There.

That is my flag too.

It belongs to the protester

as surely as the parade,

to the one who questions

as surely as the one who salutes,

to every American

unwilling to confuse

a man with a country.

Maybe the flag does not belong

to the loudest man

who wraps himself in it.

Maybe it belongs

to whoever refuses

to surrender a single star.

So I will keep flying mine.

Not because of him.

In spite of him.

Because he does not

get to have it.

Patriot.

A.M. Silvestri is a Michigan writer and retired professional firefighter whose poetry often draws upon nature, place, memory, public life, and the ordinary moments that reveal something larger. His current work includes ROOTED: A Year of Haiku.