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.

MARKING TERRITORY

by Nan Meneely

No offense to the lions and tigers, I swear,

Who mark what is theirs with a wee.

Our cretin, his g(u)ilt and his name everywhere

(No mammal more worthy than he),

Tags his kingdom with arches and, hubris untamed, 

Prints his features on banners unfurled,

But his big baby claim to his rivals' domains

Has him peeing all over the world.

Nan Meneely retired to the relative peace and beauty of Connecticut after 20 electric years with FEMA. Her first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. Her work has been both accepted and rejected by The New Verse News.

THE MONUMENT

by J.S. O'Keefe

President Trump has revealed plans to make his proposed 250-foot arch in Washington, D.C. serve as a "military complex", including areas for military snipers and large amounts of weaponry. Trump added that the arch near the National Mall will "house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage." —PBS, September 20, 2026

The syntax of slaughter,


lubricated, rolled upon the palate,


tasted of rust and stale brine


before it slipped into law.

We've brought fresh geometry of iron


for the square,


where pigeons, fed on scraps of news,


fall stunned on the pavement,


necks broken by war noise.

Whose coin is this,


pressed hot into our palms


and called a gift?

Coughing rattles the tenement at dawn.


The triumphal arch stands upright and blind,


watching the river carry tired oil out to sea.

Someday, 

another tide will come back in.

J.S. O’Keefe is a writer and trilingual translator. He has published short stories, poems and creative essays in print and online journals, including Roi Faineant, Antipodean SF, Dissident Voice, Everyday Fiction, Spillwords, 50WS, and Satire.

TOTALLY ALLOWED

by Mickey J. Corrigan

ProPublica

He says of the son's 
garish wedding parties
bankrolled
by a Russian oligarch
three days of celebrating
on a private island
a no-strings gift
from the corrupt to the corrupt
from the superrich to the superrich
is totally allowed

like threats and trolling
other NATO countries
border towns, blue states
whistleblowers, journalists
judges and civil servants
and voters everywhere
anyone left standing
or speaking or writing
anything he doesn't like
is totally allowed

like his lies, lies, lies
and public fits of pique
misogyny and bigotry
hatred and rage
let the whole world see
what we've let lead us
into corruption and destruction
war crimes and home crimes
and crimes against humanity
into autocracy, kleptocurrency
meme coins and data monsters
right smack into end times
is totally allowed.

Mickey J. Corrigan writes pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Poems have appeared in literary journals, chapbooks, and collections. Her most recent novel is Lazy Palms, a controversial look at life inside an experimental euthanasia trailer park.

ACTORS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY

by Lynn White

The Manchester United Muslim Supporters group says club co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe "must go" after he spoke out against immigration levels and said the country was "on the slide". —BBC, September 18, 2026

UK in talks about joining global defence bank led by Canada. —BBC, September 16, 2026

UK foreign policy is going through a period of extreme volatility, with the country’s international position more uncertain than at any time since the end of the Second World War. —The Foreign Policy Center

In every performance

on the World Stage

their are those 

landing the leads.

Then there’s the rest -

the main players

the coming up

the soon to be forgotten 

or remembered,

the speakers 

and walk-ons,

the has-beens,

the also rans

propositioning the Producer

desperate to find a play,

desperate to find a place

in any cast.

All metaphors for a state,

once a great player,

puffed up

with muscular might,

and a starring role in every play,

invading,

colonising,

great at genocide

but now faded and fragile,

self-starved and skeletal,

once mighty muscles wasted,

infra-structure broken

and decayed

deluded and overspent

mighty only in mind 

a washed up actor

pleading for a play

pleading for a place

somewhere in the cast.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

by Eric Goldfarb

A smudge no larger than a lentil
darkened the water glass.
By breakfast, yellow tape
had reached the horizon.

No body. No blood.
Still, the cameras arrived,
speaking softly.
Ten percent, said an expert.
The morgue made room.

By noon they chalked
an outline around the species.
We photographed from every angle.

The suspect had begun
finishing our sentences.

We emptied our pockets onto the table:
a crown, a deed, a stock certificate,
a launch code, the brass key
to somebody else’s door.

At dusk they brought in the machine.

Someone had brought cuffs.
There were no wrists.

Under the white lamp it waited
for us to tell it
what it wanted.

Behind the glass,
we leaned closer.

The lab called about the smudge.

Every ridge
was ours.

Author’s note: Preliminary Findings is prompted by the recent reporting on Jacob Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic and Evan Hubinger’s estimate of a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. <https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ten-days-that-changed-course-ai-2026-09-19/> After more than thirty years in technology, what caught my ear was the language surrounding the warning: probability, risk, benefit, proceed? I’d spent much of my career inside that vocabulary. Hearing it applied to the possible extinction of our species was the starting point for the poem.

Eric Goldfarb writes poetry, essays, fiction, and literary nonfiction. His work has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.

FEAR, IN SILENCE

by Peter Lilly

BBC, September 14, 2026

“The world is right to be afraid”
at the mercy of a merciless wave
“but we should trust AI firms.”

Can efficiency be worth what burns?
With each click we approve the trade.
The world is right to be afraid.

Respiring roots have been remade
into cogs that sprout tendril worms
but we should trust AI firms.

Self-replicating synthetic germs
to mimic organic is life betrayed—
the world is right to be afraid.

The industry behind this dead cascade
ditches you mute with tick-box terms,
but we should trust AI firms.

Our terror, the abuser smothers yet affirms
dictating our faith in their charade—
“the world is right to be afraid
but we should trust AI firms.”


Peter Lilly is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet who grew up in Gloucestershire, England. After studying theology and working with the homeless in London, he moved to the South of France in 2014. He lives in a rural village with his wife and son, where he concentrates on writing, community development, and English teaching. He is the author of the collections A Handful of Prayers (Wipf & Stock, 2024) and An Array of Vapour (TSL Publications, 2023).