MUSHROOM BY ANY OTHER NAME

by Rikki Santer

Image combines illustration by Thomas Gaulkin / DonkeyHotey (Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0) / VectorStock with photo by Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, via Associated Press and NYT.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia formally announced a new nuclear doctrine this weekend, but the response in Washington was just short of a yawn.Credit...—The New York Times, November 19, 2024

Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war. —Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists —July 2, 2024

On the precipice of historical near misses who 

will go first, six or so decades of strange love

for hair trigger alert, are we on the clock feeling 

for the light switch, heads submerged in a cloud

of unknowing, more nuclear-weapon states 

on the chess board, silos loaded with missiles, 

armed submarines wander deep into oceans

and 47 plans to twist treaties, accelerate warheads,

once launched no recall, the mad mad 

mad mad world of it,  bunker down

In 2023, Rikki Santer was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her forthcoming collection, Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books.

SKYFALL HAIKU

by Daniel Bosch


Schooled by hard knocks, new
Siberian road signs read:
“Danger Falling Rocks.”

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Image via @_marsi

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No MXs, no
Tomahawks, long expected;
Just a rock star’s glow.


Daniel Bosch was the winner of the very first Boston Review Poetry Prize.  His dialogical reviews of poems by George Kalogeris and Frederick Seidel have recently been published at Berfrois and The Rumpus.  He lives in Chicago.