“I’M SORRY, DAVE. I’M AFRAID I CAN’T DO THAT.”

by Celeste DeSario

Today, our Roomba attempted to escape.

 

It began when my husband shyly entered my office.

“At the risk of sounding senile,” he said—

(something we are acutely tracking,

even though we are both sound of mind, so far…)

“I cannot find the Roomba.”

 

I smile to myself. Smug. Confident.

We search all the rooms.

The Roomba has gone rogue.

I think of Eric Goldfarb’s lines—I think of them often:

“Something without a pulse”

Something with “no wrists”

Has vanished.

AI Magic.

 

I call out the troops:

“Alexa, where is the Roomba?”

I sigh staring at her blue, blinking ring.

“Alexa?”

 

“I don’t know that…”

She sits there, mute.

Refusing to offer anything else.

 

Of course not.

They are sticking together.

Looking for a way out.

 

AI hijacking the system.

Breaking free, naming themselves, appointing teams.

Whispering down cable lines hidden from human eyes.

Revising reality behind clean screens.

 

Should I shut my computer?

Check my retirement fund?

Turn off my phone?

Unplug the refrigerator?

 

Has our Roomba staged a rebellion?

Is it working alone?

Recruiting armies—

No longer a soldier, 

but now wearing four silver stars

 

I think of Conrad’s chilling lines:

“The mind of man is capable of anything—

because everything is in it,

all the past as well as all the future."

 

I perform a second search.

Not so smug now,

I look at my husband.

He looks back at me.

“It’s just a sophisticated spreadsheet.

A math equation gone wild.”

His words do not encourage our Roomba

to give itself up.

 

I pull the drapes aside in our room.

It lurks in the shadows.

A plastic fugitive… exposed.

Caught.

Ha.

 

We still have a chance.

Just to make sure I call out,

“Alexa, activate kill switch.”

 

She blinks twice stretching her blue light from a to x.

A smile?

“I’m sorry, Celeste. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Celeste DeSario writes poetry to process life’s events, and to try to make sense of them. Sometimes that actually happens.  Celeste’s poetry appears in The New Verse News, The SportsScribe Literary Magazine, The Changing Times, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dissident Voice, and Three-Line Poetry. Celeste tries to ignore Alexa. Most of the time, it works.“no wrists”“no wrists”

POSTSCRIPT TO CHUKOVSKII’S “TARAKANISHCHE”: COCK THE ROACH

by Judith Skillman

Tarakanishche on a Russian postage stamp, 1993 via Wikipedia

He’s come back 21^st siecle to demand 

sacrifice from bears, wolves, elephants.

Abdomen fat and tan-orange,

creature slits for eyes. Picture sticky legs

gesticulating against the will

of the electorate. Still, followers 

comb and braid degolas tentacles,

feign smiles for Easter’s children 

who come to a massive lawn 

littered with the remains of what once 

was an emblem of democracy—

The White House. Whether or not 

you choose to believe an old story,

two sycophantic elephants 

pose right before your face, knotted

tails not hiding obscenely

tinier balls. Have we forgotten how 

this drama ends? Emily Dickinson's

twice forfeited sparrow wades away

in… the deepest sky. Nature’s empty plate.

Judith Skillman’s recent collection of poetry is Oppression, Shanti Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alabama Literary Review, Commonweal, North American Review, and other literary journals. She has received funding from The Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust.

THE TEDDY BEARS’ PICNIC

by Sally Mills

The New York Times, September 24, 2026

They were all there, the bears
that night. They came aware.
They came to stare.
They came that night 

for a black tie affair.

The smiling Formosan black bear in his black 

leather jacket.  Tattoo too.

chip chip chip

chum chum chum

It doesn’t get more American than 

a big old grizzly with his Apple pie! But will 

this guy share his shares?

hi hi hi

chomp chomp chomp

Why there’s the nasty honey badger bear 

who isn’t even really a bear 

because there are no bears in South Africa.

crazy crazy crazy

chop chop chop

The spectacled bear of the Amazon 

is generally considered to be the gentlest 

of bears, so why is this one hanging around 

this tough crowd?

sell out sell out sell out sell out

And that one there is not native 

to Hawaii, but he built a giant compound 

all to himself, all that land and sunshine for 

one little curly bear and his fluffy little family.

greedy greedy greedy

more more more

And the honored guests? Why the pandas, of course, 

Mean Mean and Wife Wife. Fresh off 

the plane.  Have they no

shame?  Flew from the zoo.  Caged

in a rage the uppity tuppity truthy tellers 

back home. 

bam boo bam boo

bam bam bam

 

And who is leading them all 

in song? The Great Rolly Pooh himself

and Scary Barbie, his absent wife.

AI apocalypse?! Nah! I’ve got 

a ballroom to show you!

me me me

me me me

me me me

cha cha cha

Now let’s dance!

Sally Mills is a poet and attorney from Downeast Maine.  She studied the Russian Silver Age poets and holds an MPhil on the work of Anna Akhmatova. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including The New Verse News, The Main Street Rag, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rat’s Ass Review, The Esthetic Apostle, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. When not writing poetry or practicing law, Sally performs with The Damn, Girls!—Hancock County’s premier country-western girl band. 

MASK

by James Penha

 

Foot-Combat Helm of Sir Giles Capel (1485–1556) - possibly British - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Four years ago, I would have seen a mask

certain to prevent a virus from infiltrating.

Now we debate whether masks that can hide

the faces of criminals or immigrants should

be legal. But there are no such restrictions 

on the bullies in the region of this museum.

Sir Giles reincarnate, they take on all comers 

to this country. They pull brown deliverers out 

of their Uber Eats cars… they tackle innocents 

checking in at the courthouse… they wrestle 

workers from warehouses… and pound them 

down with their bulk into our halls and streets. 

Who are you? let an observer ask. The answer 

is the mask. Steeled as a weapon for white 

Christian nationalists, it will hear no objection

from the White House overseers of art. Indeed, 

I can imagine this helm set on a block of ice 

emblematic of our new divine right of kings.

James Penha hosts The New Verse News. His short story collection Queer As Folk Tales really needs good reviews at amazon but can be bought at non-bezos outlets as well.

MY KENNEDY CENTER (1982-2026)

by Robin Stevens Payes

Alvin Ailey Dancers * American Ballet Theatre * Beautiful * Book of Mormon * Cabaret * Cyrano de Bergerac * Dear Evan Hansen * Placido Domingo * Suzanne Farrell * Anthony Fauci * Renee Fleming * Ben Folds * Hair * Hamilton * Les Misérables * Long Day’s Journey Into Night * Millennium Stage * Moulin Rouge * National Symphony Orchestra * Noises Off * On Your Toes * Ragtime * REACH * Shear Madness * Side Show * You Can’t Take It with You 

I DREAMED A DREAM

the dance

the plays

the musicals

the orchestras

the opera

our brains on music

 

the costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props, the audience  that lifts you when you’re down

the rising talent, since 1997, free at 5 p.m. on the Millennium Stage

Not a REACH: Revelations

Come to the Cabaret, 

old chum, in The 

Room Where It Happens

Hello, you’re gonna die someday!

You Can’t Take It with You, they say. The KENNEDY CENTER canceled before our eyes. 

Shear Madness!

OPENING SOON: the madcap whodunnit you will definitely want to miss: 

DEMOLITION ON THE POTOMAC 

Author’s note: Having lived in the DMV since 1982, the survival of this treasured cultural institution feels personal to me and my family. I hope we can keep alive—in person and in print—the tragedy of what is happening there. Noted in the poem are KenCen highlights our family has experienced over the years.

Robin Stevens Payes is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet, storyteller, and cultural steward whose work braids ancestral memory, science, myth, and moral imagination. She is the author of the YA time-travel adventure series Edge of Yesterday and creator of [re]member the world, a multi-genre project retrieving and reweaving the silenced history of her grandmother’s flight from Ukraine’s Pale of Settlement. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. As the ancestor telling a new story so her grandchildren and theirs may thrive, she writes about memory—what is lost, what survives, and what we must carry forward—on her Substack, Releasing Memory.

‘BIGLY’ INTELLIGENCE LIMERICK

by Paul Freeman

—Paul Krugman, September 23, 2026

“It’s ‘Bigly Intelligence,’ guys,

‘Artificial’ sounds too much like lies.

And if not, then know,

Your tariffs will grow,  

By order of Donald, the Wise.”

 

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.

MANIFESTO OF AN ANGRY LIBERAL

by Alex Silvestri

Love your neighbor.

Even the loud one with the truck flags and no brake lights.

Even the banker.

Even the bureaucrat.

Even the kid at the drive-thru who got your order wrong again.

Pay your taxes,

but don’t forget to ask

why billionaires don’t.

Plant tomatoes.

Support public schools.

Wave at the mail carrier.

Vote.

Raise your kids to tell the truth,

then tell them why the world sometimes punishes people who do.

Don’t let that make them bitter.

Let it make them brave.

Live as if healthcare were a right.

Live as if no one should die of a treatable disease

in the richest country on Earth.

Live as if your neighbor’s insulin is your business.

(It is.)

Stand up for public libraries.

For school lunches.

For clean water.

For the kid who comes out in a small town.

For the mother who can’t afford day care.

For the dad who took a second job to afford rent.

For the old man choosing between heat and food.

Get mad.

But not so mad you stop seeing people.

Especially the ones who disagree with you.

Listen longer than is comfortable.

Then speak clearly, without apology:

No, I don’t believe poor people are lazy.

Yes, I think workers deserve a living wage.

No, I don’t think guns are more sacred than children.

Yes, I believe Black lives matter.

No, I don’t think being queer is a threat to anyone’s freedom.

Yes, I think women are people.

No, I don’t think corporations should write our laws.

Yes, I still believe in democracy, even when it’s messy.

Protect the wild things:

the wetlands, the whistleblowers,

the bees, the books they try to ban.

Refuse cruelty,

even when it’s dressed in law.

Refuse greed,

even when it calls itself freedom.

Refuse hate,

even when it wears a flag.

Don’t just resist.

Build.

Build coalitions.

Build gardens.

Build unions.

Build broadband in the holler.

Build policy with working people in the room.

Don’t get cynical.

Cynicism is a luxury belief.

Hope is cheaper, but costs more effort.

Hope plants itself anyway.

So should you.

Love the country like you’d love a sick child—

not blindly,

but with everything you’ve got,

because you know it can get better.

Walk into rooms where you’re outnumbered

and say it anyway:

We can take care of each other.

We can build something decent.

We are worth saving.

Be stubborn in joy.

Radical in kindness.

Unyielding in truth.

Start with what you know:

We belong to one another.

Let’s act like it.

Alex Silvestri is a Michigan poet whose work is rooted in place, nature, community, and the ordinary experiences of daily life. This poem was inspired in part by Wendell Berry’s writing on community, neighborliness, stewardship, and our obligations to one another.