CALL REVEILLE! HE'S DREAMING OF WAR

by Darrell Petska

 

 

 

 

Peace is boring.
I’ll start a war.
Putin did it.
I can too.
Gaza’s done.
Ukraine soon.
My Department of War needs war,
a big beautiful war with bombs and booms
and bloodied bodies.

Peace is for wusses.
I’m mighty, so—
eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
shall I make war with
Mexico? Bad hombres.
Canada? Really nasty.
Minneapolis? Joking, just a warm-up.
Who said Iran?
(Thank you, Netanyahu)
I declare war on Iran!
Strike up the band!
Commence the killing!
Name it after me.

Epstein? Who’s that? Old news. I’m innocent.
Just think about war. So easy to make, I might make more.
Peace is boring unless there’s money in it for me.

(Someone pinch me when this meeting is over.) 

 

 

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry appears in 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Chiron Review, Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, and widely elsewhere online and in print (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years. 

THE CANADIAN CURRY PEOPLE

by Ain Khan

I try to explain to my coworker

the concept of a Pakistani auntie—

an older woman in the community 

who knows everyone’s business,

opines on every right & wrong, 

wonders why you’re not married 

& whose sword of judgment 

can cause your extradition from society.

 

Jamil raises a hand to interrupt me.

Jamaicans have aunties too. Really, all cultures do.  

Auntie is not a person—it’s a state of mind,

attained by anyone, at any age.

 

I throw my head back in laughter. Victor settles

across us, sets down his warmed curry, scenting

the lunchroom. All the curry people at work—          

South Asians, Filipinos, Jamaicans & Trinis—

tried his Ghanaian goat curry last Christmas 

& GOATed it unanimously. He nods vehemently 

at Jamil’s definition of an auntie.

 

Around us, TV screens are blaring scenes 

from Minneapolis. Our all-glass building 

backs into the woods. Some days a doe emerges.

Today she steps close to the clear walls 

under the flurrying sky, the sun glinting

in her calm brown eyes, the fawn

brawn of her body soft in a state of repose –

a privilege to exist, knowing she is what she is,

knowing she is not hunted. 

Ain Khan is an emerging Pakistani-Canadian poet and writer based in Ottawa. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Thimble, DarkWinter Lit, Republic of Letters and is forthcoming in CV2.

FROM THE FIELDS OF MINNESOTA

by Mike Bayles

 

an old watercolor believed to be of Grand Marais, Minnesota

 

 

Each winter fields rested

and in spring they found

new life. My uncle raised

cattle and crops with pride.

 

News played on television

during simpler times

while families sat together

and talked at the dinner table.

 

We had our dreams

of going to the moon

and in quiet times

we looked into clear skies.

 

Buildings in downtown

Minneapolis glistened

our pride, a mecca for most

 

while in St. Paul

cattle displayed at the State Fair

won ribbons while young boys

learned to farm.

 

My cousin and I walked

through pastures and we said

our uncles would never die.

 

We talked of wars,

as soldiers fought

on the other side of the world.

Little did we know that they

would be fought on our streets

 

Back then a man dressed in a cape

could leap over the tallest building

with a single bound. I long

to hold onto that dream.

 

The farm where my cousin once lived

was torn up for a highway

and we’ve fallen out of touch.

Our fathers have died.

 

Now I cry for them

and innocence lost

when the news says

we are killing each other

on the streets I once loved.

Mike Bayles, a lifelong Midwest resident, is the author of seven books of poetry and fiction. His most recent book is The Siouxland and Other Dreams, with poems about Northwest and surrounding areas, and mythology of the land. His writing is informed by his travels when he worked as a flagger/traffic control for construction and utility crews. He is expecting to publish his next collection of poetry this spring.

MOTHER’S MILK

by Jan Chronister

file photo of mother labeling frozen breast milk

When one mother was taken by ICE, another stepped in to donate breastmilk  —The 19th, February 2, 2026

Nursing moms in Minneapolis

pump, save their extra breast milk,

share it with those who have babies

left in their care, their mothers

disappeared by ICE.

The milk is frozen,

delivered when needed in coolers.

Right now there is no danger

it will thaw out on the way.

What kind of people

abduct a nursing mother?

Leaves behind an infant,

sometimes alone?

What happened to dry up

the milk of human kindness

in their hearts?

Moms in Minneapolis hope

when the weather warms up,

and the ice melts, 

they no longer need to worry.

Jan Chronister is a retired educator who splits her year between the extremes of northern Wisconsin (by Lake Superior) and southern Georgia. She has authored three full-length poetry collections and twelve chapbooks. Jan edits and publishes the work of fellow poets under the imprint of Poetry Harbor.

TO THE REPUBLIC

by Athena Kildegaard

It is hard, right now, to think

of America, my country, it no longer
holds together inside its borders. 
Four decades ago, every school day, 
I asked one of the twelve-year-olds
in my charge to lead us in the Pledge
of Allegiance. It was the law, this recital.
As good a way as any, I thought, to begin.
Words, words, slippery as jello cubes,
hardly join, now, to anything real.
My heart beats, my hand firms itself
to my chest—this friction, this viva—
but my tongue dare not lift, my lips
not open, my body not burst
with air, with light. America, where
have you gone?

You are in Minneapolis,
America, handing out scarves and hats,
standing beside your neighbors, lifting
whistles to your lips because your lips
have power, your breath has power,
you are teaching us how to be Americans.

Athena Kildegaard is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions), winner of the WILLA Literary Award. 

JANUARY BOUQUET

by Katherine Smith

The only antidote for America 

is to go outside in the freezing cold winter

and dream of the most beautiful city on earth

or even this universe (there may not be any other). 

This city is Granada.  Inside my house 

I think only of Minneapolis, of winter.

Outside my house I dream of Grenada and spring

on the slope leading towards the white limestone caves

where the pink dusk hovers over the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada.

By day I once walked through the summer palace of the kings of Spain.

By night I listened to flamenco and the percussive shoes of dancers.

By day the stained glass of the cathedral blossomed

like the roses in the summer palace. Beauty softened the blow

of the inquisition six hundred years before

just as a memory of joy softens the blow of the shootings,

and the military on the streets of Minneapolis. Nothing 

is more consoling than the dream of a beautiful ruin,

for the ugliness happening to America. I lay memory

like a wreath on the roadside 

where Alex Pretti and Renee Good died.

Katherine Smith’s poetry publications include appearances in Southern Review, Boulevard, North American Review, Ploughshares, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. Her third book, Secret City, appeared with Madville Press in 2022. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

FOR MINNEAPOLIS

by Ruth Lehrer

They don’t tell you in the morning
you will die by noon 
driving in your car
walking on the street 
 
after you are gone
you see a picture of the gun
flesh as good as ashes
blood as good as painted pain 
 
But in that morning you just know
yesterday your neighbor was brave
so today you must be too
The boundary between trust and fear
torn open
 
We are all ash
We are all brave. 

Ruth Lehrer is a sign language interpreter and Pushcart-nominated poet living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the young adult novel Being Fishkill. 

OLD AND FAMILIAR

by Dick Altman

A preliminary review by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog office found that Alex Pretti was shot by two federal officers after resisting arrest, but did not indicate that he brandished a weapon during the encounter, according to an email sent to Congress and reviewed by The New York Times [January 27, 2026].

We were both

ten years old,

and best friends,

the colonel’s

daughter

across the street

and I,

when he said

I think

you’re old enough

to see these

army newsreels,

from my days 

back

in World War II.

 

Down into 

the basement

we went.

Before he turned

out the lights,

we watched

as he took out

a giant reel

of sixteen millimeter

black and white film,

he fitted

to his old army

projector.

 

The two of us

watched in terror,

as people were

dragged from shops

and apartment

buildings,

thrown

to the ground,

and beaten.

With the same

fright in our voices,

we asked

what they

did wrong.

 

The colonel

stopped the film

and turned

on the lights.

What did they

do wrong,

he repeated.

Hitler—

a name

we knew barely

at a distance—

hated Jews,

he said.

The people

pictured here

were Jews.

In that quiet

fatherly tone,

I knew so well,

he looked at me

and said,

you’re Jewish,

aren’t you.

 

The next images,

forever fixed

in my mind,

showed mounds

of dead bodies 

being bulldozed

into trenches,

at what he called

“the camps”.

A vile end,

I later thought,

for a people

doing nothing 

wrong,

but approaching

their god,

in the Fuhrer’s eyes,

from the wrong

testament.

***

I can’t pick up a paper,

or see a newscast,

that doesn’t remind me—

as ICE grabs individuals

off the street,

or wades into crowds

with smoke bombs,

to break up protests—

of those images

the colonel

shared with us,

that day long ago.

 

We were still

too young

to understand

when he told,

how Hitler came

to control the truth

proclaimed 

by print

and radio.

As truth today

seems to reincarnate

with each sunrise,

the colonel’s films

begin to feel

eerily familiar.

Have America’s

once welcome

immigrants,

incarcerated now

at every turn,

I ask myself,

become

yesterday’s

vilified Jews,

our government

more Hitlerian

by the hour?

And more

terrifying?

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, and others here and abroad.  His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 290 poems, published on four continents.

THE LIVING

by Tina Williams

by Argo at Fine Art America

“Fuck you, fuck you"
he said to the poet 
and nurse 
as sure as he said it 
to the autoworker
shouting “pedophile protector!”
Every day, 
he middle fingers
the command
to clear the streets
one way
or another
but the living
come back.
They arm
themselves
with poster board
and their children’s 
future.
They return
on the shoulders
of the dead. 
They dress
for the cold.

Tina Williams lives in Round Rock, Texas. She wants to be part of the solution.

THE ICE STORM

by Susan Cossette

Leave this city, black ice.

These roads are unusually treacherous.

 

Snow, thaw, then refreeze--

a polar vortex roars in from Manitoba.

 

This four-wheel drive offers

little protection from icy roads.

 

One bad tap of the brakes

will send me crashing into 

a graffiti-adorned delivery truck

which states simply,

ICE out.

 

Or worse, 

into the protestors on the corner 

of Penn Avenue and 17^th Street 

in north Minneapolis

on this foggy subzero morning.

 

Whistles shriek in feverish shrill 

in crazy unison with car horns,

and phone cameras rolling, 

recording truth suppressed.

 

Ten black SUVs skulk 

on each side of the pitted street,

curbs piled high with sooty snow.

 

Polished obsidian flanks of fear--

ICE has rolled in.

 

Unmarked men stalk door to door

in a Latino neighborhood near,

faces shrouded, shadowy brute army.

 

The salt has not made the roads safe.

The protests change nothing.

The passport I keep 

on my front seat means nothing.

 

We do not leave our homes

because we are too cold, 

too afraid, or both.

 

We are cyphers, faces pressed 

against cold glass, 

hands zipped tied, hog tied—

frozen blood stains dirty ice.

 

I pray for the brother and sister

I almost wish were my children

after two years of seeing them holding hands

each morning at the bus stop on 17th,

backpacks with smiling stuffed toys 

clipped to the straps.

 

For their mother watching 

her babies climb into the yellow vessel,

and the door close tightly behind.

She scurries up frozen sidewalks 

to the food pantry.

 

Jesus, get me to the next corner,

keep my small clenched hands visible 

on this cold steering wheel.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.

IN THE AGE OF NIXON

by Alan Catlin

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

An I.C.U. nurse shot by federal agents was an American citizen with no criminal record, the city police chief said. A New York Times video analysis shows he was holding a phone, not a gun. —The New York Times, January 24, 2026

after the shootings at Kent State
a national student strike shut down
the colleges

Led to massive protests in the streets

Everyone could see that
shooting unarmed college students
was wrong

Under Trump
shooting a mother of three
with stuffed toys in her glove compartment
and a mutt in the back seat of her SUV
was okay

They called her a domestic terrorist
as if those stuffed toys were IED’s

And now a gang of six ICE agents
beat down an ICU nurse and shot him
dead on the street

And that’s okay too

His job was to save lives
not to take them

Blood on the mother’s SUV airbag
and on the sidewalk where the nurse
died tells us all we need to know

Alan Catlin is the poetry and reviews editor of Misfitmagazine.net. His next full-length book of poetry is Still Life with Apocalypse from Shelia Na Gig Editions.