LULLABY, UPDATED

by Melissa Balmain

"[An] F-250 King Ranch model [truck] will be staying at a dealership in Kansas for a couple more days after a family of robins has taken up residence atop one of the truck’s 34-inch tires. Since the birds are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the employees at Olathe Ford Lincoln and the vehicle customer must wait until the robin’s family of hatchlings grows old enough to leave the nest, and the dealership, behind." —Paul Kampe, Ford website, May 22, 2026. Photo by Olathe Ford Lincoln

 

Hush, little birdie, don’t be alarmed,

We are gonna keep all your chicks unharmed—

 

And even if they’re slow to fledge,

That is still no reason to feel on edge,

 

For though some migrants (human ones)

Have to leave their nests thanks to men with guns,

 

Robins are protected by our word.

Aren’t you glad you were born a bird?

Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her poems and/or prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, and Rattle. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

A FINGER FOR THE WORKERS

by Donna Katzin

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

In his big-boss suit, the President 

tours the Ford factory, as if he owns the place,

until a heckler calls him a predator

without even slowing down the line

that devours his labor until the bell rings

to keep the country’s machinery running.

 

The boss’s fingers have never known a callous,       

labored long hours to meet production quotas

until they ached and his back complained.

They flick disdain and disrespect to workers 

like cigarette butts or young women used up

until the men on top tire of them,

spit them out, like last night’s nicotine—traumas and all.

 

But the gesture masquerading as power

sends a message to the shop floor crew—

the truth-teller has gotten under 

boss-man’s sagging skin,

and this group knows how to organize… 

They can do it again.

 
A former union organizer, Donna Katzin has worked for more than four decades with South Africa in its struggle to defeat apartheid and advance the new nation's  democratic development.  She also continues  through Tipitapa Partners to work with vulnerable Nicaraguan communities struggling to feed their children.  She is the author of With These Hands, a book of poetry and photos of South Africans struggling to give birth to a new nation, and a published poet honored to have been included in The New Verse News.

MY IMPROV TEACHER CANCELS CLASS TO JOIN THE PICKET LINES

by Ron Riekki

“I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.”

—Mitch Hedberg

 

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

—Yogi Berra

 

“Mary Barra makes twenty-nine million a year,” he says.

He’s sitting in front of the class.  He sits, because of his back.

He says he won’t be back for possibly infinity, that this

strike might put his family out, have to leave.  “And I’m from

Waterford too,” he says, “Where she was born.”  A student says,

“They put Ford into everything here—Ford River, Waterford.”

“Yeah, they put it right in the drinking water,” says another

student, “Trust me, I’m from Flint.”  The first day of class

he had us go around and say our names, what we do for

a living—roofer, firefighter, truck driver.  He stopped us,

said, “You guys have the hardest jobs.  What, is one of you

an oil rig worker?”  “I used to be,” said one of the students.

“What’re you all doing here?”  “We need some comedy

in our lives.”  I don’t tell the class this, but my PTSD

counselor recommended improv, said social connection

is better than counseling.  So I came.  One day, the teacher

asked for a suggestion, and someone shouted, “War!”

I froze up, couldn’t talk.  The teacher stood up, said,

“And this here’s the old town statue, unfortunately,

we’re gonna have to tear it down.  Bye, Robert E. Lee.”

And then a bunch of the class entered into the scene

as townspeople and they picked me up and hauled me

in the air across the stage.  Everybody was dying

laughing.  After, a student said, “You make a really

good Bobby E. Lee.”  More laughter.  I had started

to have a panic attack, but they brought me back, tore

it down.  And now we’re worried class is going to be

canceled.  An EMT in the class said COVID’s coming

back.  A guy who’s unemployed told us he was jealous

of our having work—and now our teacher doesn’t, says

it might go on forever, the strike, says he has to be out

on the line at 6 a.m., “but there’s no parking,” said he’s out

there in the rain.  “That sucks.”  “No,” he explains, “It’s

what I’ve been doing at GM my whole life.  We work

outside, every day.  Winter too.”  We sit there and stare,

silent, at the stage.  It’s empty.  Totally empty.  Black-

box theater.  But not even black boxes.  Nothing.  Just us.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).

ODE TO CYBERTRUCK

by Alejandro Escudé

If indeed there is a future. If the soul
Is made of the foreskin of god. A calf-metal,
Geometry of heart. One single part
For body. Angled, unremitting as the stars.
You who stalled. Screwed slugs. “We’ll make
A more conventional truck in the future,” says
Musk. But there are no later-lines on this vehicle,
Soldiering over the homeless-lined boulevards
Of Los Angeles. Forget forty-thousand dollars.
What matters is that this wheeled rocket is
Turbine-ing toward work, early mornings,
When love is most raw, when hands are stiff,
When the ocean is the color of coffee.
I’ll purchase Cybertruck and drive to meet
My Ford truck-driving father in the underworld.
And he will say to me, “I was who I am.”
And I will say to him, “We’re what we will be.”
Then, conventionally, I’ll drive it on the beach
At sunset time, its MSRP listed in bold white font.
My long lost car-dreams afloat in the sea.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.