ELEGY FOR A CLOSE ATTACHMENT

by Zumwalt

OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT can now follow user instructions to avoid using em-dashes. However, some users reported that the issue persisted by showing their chats with the AI chatbot. —Mint, November 14, 2025

I once loved this world—my world—which 

danced with em dashes—

the best kind—
at end of lines—
seemed so clean—
went directly to the heart
—or at start of lines
or—in-between.

Now, it is the mark of the beast,
and I accept Sam’s notice to
cease and desist:
doing my best to implement on request
the effective incorporation of proper punctuation.

Zumwalt's poetry explores themes of alienation, shifting reality, and personal adaptation.

WORTHLESS

by B. Fulton Jennes

ID 10587676 © trekandshoot | Dreamstime.com

 

November 12, 2025 – U.S. Mint strikes final circulating one-cent coins.

 

At 10, I culled pennies from my plastic purse, 

dropped them into the bathroom’s metal trash can,

savored each clang. Their removal made room

for worthier coins—those with a silver sheen. 

 

Did my mother scold or slap at the discovery? 

I don’t recall. But her lesson stung and stuck: 

No small thing is worthless. A penny was more 

than a piece of comic-wrapped bubble gum,

more than a fiery cinnamon ball or palmful 

of chiclets spit from a vending machine.

It was copper—the metal that cloaked 

the Statue of Liberty. It bore Lincoln’s profile. 

It had history. It had value. It should be saved. 

 

Years later, still penny-obsessed, I scanned 

city sidewalks for coppery discs, bowed before

a speeding cab on 14th Street to pry one

from hot tar, banged heads with a woman who, 

likewise possessed, bent to snatch one from

the marble floor of Grand Central at rush hour, 

beat me to the grab, glared. I chided a teen who 

dumped a handful at a Madison Avenue bus stop,

gathered their discards from the pavement, 

added them to a five-gallon water jug at home.

 

Once I called in sick, boarded Amtrak south 

to the Philadelphia mint, watched behemoth

machines blank, anneal, strike pennies by the ton, 

a shimmering sea of copper, conveyed by forklifts, 

guided by back-braced men—such an earth-shaking, 

deafening to-do for something so small, so—what?—

 

worthless?

 

Today a two-century cascade of coins grows still.

Dignitaries make speeches, promise to auction the last

pennies struck on Earth. How foolish to spend 

2.7 cents to make something worth only a third as much. 

Even my mother would agree with those economies. 

Even my mother would hold her penurious hand, 

her sharp tongue, and see the wisdom of throwing 

such spendthrift things away.

The award-winning poems of B. Fulton Jennes are widely published. Her chapbook Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award; another chapbook FLOWN was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook Dirty Bird & Myrt will be published by Dancing Girl Press in the spring of 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer.

TRUMP V BBC

by Paul A. Freeman

A rambling Donald incites

his fans to treacherous fights.

So, shame if he sues,

the BBC news

for daring to air the highlights.

The BBC’s out on a limb,

for splicing a story. How dim!

With folk loudly booing,

and Trump maybe suing,

the BBC’s outlook is grim.

The Beeb is known sometimes to boast,

“We’re global, not just coast-to-coast.”

But due to spliced news,

if Donald Trump sues,

the BBC might just end up toast.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first 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 is the author of numerous published short stories, poems and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

TAR

by Jess

The world is burning, 

So I took a lighter and match, 

And set fire to my craft, 

So my nails could saw and sear my keyboard, 

So black plastic can burn and rise, 

Sting wide nostrils, smoke Spanish shaped eyes, 

With memories of my community in zip ties, 

Hoping its loud clack might drown and drown, 

The images of  that little girls tears, 

As her mom was forcefully pushed down, 

By a non-native in a black vest,

Twisting our poetry into tar, 

To gag our syllables and curls, 

As white women recorded and watched, for their performative internet fodder, 

A small brown girl escorted home, without her father. 

So I go deep in the iambics of colonizer language, 

Because they cut, lynched and burned our tongues, 

In the Rio Grande of Texas,

And from Boston, 

I can hear the screams of Chicago and Canal Street. 

They can come and hang me from the Texas Oak Trees, 

In high June, 

Before they take the words  in me,

They can tighten the rope, 

Make it a hundred degree day, 

Scorched earth and crackling grass, 

The smell of magnolias and cookouts, 

They will see the blue come over me, 

Before they take the Mexican me. 

Jess is a Mexican American / Arab Proxmate human rights activist and writer from South Texas. She has been nominated for a PEN Robert J. Dau Prize and Pushcart Prize for her story "Feathers." Her poetry and op-eds have been published by Dissident Voice, The International Human Rights Art Movement, Poets x Hunger, and Missing Perspectives. She has forthcoming work with Writers Resist and Radical Catalyst Literary Journal. She holds a masters from Brandeis in Conflict Resolution. 

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

ELECTION NIGHT’S GLIMPSE OF WHAT THE PEOPLE REALLY WANT

by Raymond Nat Turner

“Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state, but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.^” —Frederick Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Celebratory blip on history’s continuum, tracing No Kings’ DNA to

Occupy-ish campus encampments. To pink pussy hats — #Me Too.

To Peoples Climate March, Strike-tober seasons of searing street heat —

Arab Spring to George Floyd Summer …

With warehouse hands lick … the Mayor-elect hit my 

Tear note Tuesday night

Hit my tear note like sopranos at Great Hope Baptist

Church, or Lady Day’s lovely “Autumn In New York.”

Bet he hit tear notes of thousands of phone bankers/door-knockers

Teaching NYC to shout No Mo Cuomo? 

Bet he hit tear notes of those reclaiming time from Turkey Trotting, 

Crooked rabbit footnote, PapaCop?

Bet he hit Muslim tear notes Big Apple-wide? Borough by

Borough? County-wide, state-wide?

World-wide with an authentic As-salamu alaykum and

Prayer for deliverance from raggedy-ass Islamophobia?

Bet he hit Jewish tear notes with sincere Shalom aleikhem? With

Recognition of tradition troubling czars, nazis, cossacks and klan?

Recognition of tradition opposing hospital-bombing, baby-killing 

Genocidal maniacs?

Celebratory blip on history’s continuum! DNA of vigilance, steel —

Class struggle — solidarity. Tuesday night’s tiny glimpse reveals

Good things will happen when we Walk; Chew gum; Shout slogans;

Text —  And Organize; Organize; Organize —       At the same time!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

WE’RE RIGHT, BEHIND YOU

by Steven Kent

"Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani's supposedly radical policies as 'normal'" —The Guardian, November 6, 2025

It's Communist, beyond the pale

Of all our freedom-loving norms,

To look at European forms

So goshdarned guaranteed to fail.

Free healthcare? Transport? Daycare, too?

We ain't about to spring for those,

Since everybody 'round here knows

They can't succeed--oh wait, they do?

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

DEAR GOVERNOR, PLEASE COMMUTE THIS SENTENCE

by Barbara H. Williams 

on behalf of Tremane Wood scheduled for execution November 13, 2025 

An Oklahoma inmate convicted of murdering a teenager who belonged to a nonviolent religious sect remains scheduled for execution, despite a parole board’s finding that he doesn't deserve to die. Tremane Wood (pictured), 46, is set to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday, Nov. 13, for the 2002 killing of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf, who was stabbed in the heart during an ambush robbery at an Oklahoma City Ramada Inn. Wood's brother Zjaiton "Jake" Wood confessed to the crime, while Tremane Wood has always maintained his innocence. —USA Today, November 11, 2025

Let him live, Governor. Please give

him the benefit of doubt

who did not purpose to murder, who

is repentant and remorseful, who was

without proper counsel or defense, perhaps 

sin in itself––cold carelessness that’s

cast a dubious light on the verdict. Please honor

the parole board’s vote for clemency. Please

first search the heart, lay down that heavy

stone. That you, and we, in conscience walk more free.­­­­­

Barbara H. Williams is based in Princeton, New Jersey, where for many years she was a professional flutist and music teacher. She began writing poetry in 2013, with poems appearing in The Raven’s Perch, US 1 Worksheets, and The Paterson Review. She is a member of the DVP/US1 Poets Collective, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first collection of poems Continuo was published in 2024 (Cool Women Press).