UNRELENTING OCTOBER BLUES

by Chris Vola

I keep forgetting that this week 

is New York Comic Con  

 

earlier today I was walking down 10th Ave

chain-ripping the weed pen 

I turned onto 33rd St

& almost collided with a posse  

of axe and bow-wielding barbarians: 

fur-covered shoulder pads

leather arm bands

blood-splattered warrior tunics

white & blue face paint

one of them slugging an energy drink

 

they looked across the avenue 

& began making these terrible shrieks 

like werewolves in group therapy 

 

a pair of Roman legionnaires 

were marching toward us on the crosswalk

shields strapped to backs 

spears out & ready

they were flanked by a blaster-carrying Stormtrooper

a 6-foot-6 foxlike critter with big Looney Tunes eyes 

an anime version of Supergirl

some kind of elf/wizard hybrid with blue skin

& a tentacle monster 

wearing a see-through plastic rain jacket

 

the barbarians kept screaming

 

I stepped back as the groups converged

anticipating carnage         

but everyone just started hugging

& fist/paw bumping

the screams turned to giggles 

Supergirl took a flask & a vape out of her skirt

& they passed them around 

weapons & appendages gleaming 

in the sunlight

reflected by the skyscrapers

 

it was beautiful

 

& all I could think was…

wow

I’d somehow traveled the multiverse 

to its best possible outcome

where creatures 

from every fantastic realm & epoch 

were not only real

but could also co-exist 

in love & degeneracy 

 

then the crosswalk light changed 

& a Cybertruck veered out of traffic toward the curb

aiming to park in the space 

where the elf/wizard & tentacle monster 

were standing 

 

a pudgy guy with neck tats

& a police-friendly American flag 

trucker hat 

poked his head 

out of the passenger side window 

& shouted

“get outta the street 

ya FAWKIN GOOFS”

 

& they did 

 

there were no pithy comebacks

no volley of arrows or spears 

or laser blasts 

into the side of the truck 

or its occupants’ skulls

no threats of disembowelment 

or tentacle choke-outs 

or oaths of revenge 

just a collective look of sheepishness

& defeat

that was so complete I had to turn my attention

farther down the block 

where a skeletal woman 

in a Knicks t-shirt 

was puking hot dog guts 

into a trash can

next to 3 teenagers recording themselves

dancing like seizuring flamingos 

 

I continued walking

took a big rip from the pen

reminding myself that this is it

this is all we get 

 

this is my Roman Empire 

Chris Vola is the author of 11 books, including the poetry collections You're Going to Hate the New Apartment (Alien Buddha) and E is for Ether (Leaf Garden Press). His poems appear in places like Maudlin House, Main Street Rag, scaffold, Rat's Ass Review, New Pop Lit, and Neologism Poetry Journal. He lives in New York. 

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.

TODO BUENO?

by Andrés Castro

from Macmillan

New York City continues to grow and grate on me.
     Being born at Coney Island Hospital the summer of ’58, 

     after my family arrived from Puerto Rico—Borikén 

to the Indigenous—should make me a Boricua, but no.

Mi familia on the island often says I am from Por Allá, 

     especially those claiming bloodlines to native villages—

     chiefs rabid in their gatekeeping—when calling 
the post-Columbian colonizing label, Taino, inauthentic. 

My genté, speaking from por alla/my over here—

     just call me Nuyorican. My ancestral archipelago remains

a natural wonder; but why erase my mainland city tribe. 
     My adolescence was blessed with a South Bronx block 

of modest homes owned by Black, brown, and white 

families that mixed—no matter the surrounding chaos 

of the sixties. My transplanted island roots took root 
above and below concrete. So what I was born too late 

to be an OG Nuyorican—say The Young Lords or outlaw

poets Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarín, and Miguel Piñero, who

founded the Nuyorican Poets’ Café to welcome everyone. You
can’t grow up where I did and not be Nuyorican—this one, 

given my nature, still needs activism and revolutionary poetry.  

     The stakes are too high now: the world is being set ablaze 

with the U.S. the head arsonist—aren’t the U.S. bombs that made 

Gaza a wasteland and suddenly dropped on Iran enough proof? 

     I only wish my roots were not drying out so quickly. My mother

would say, “Cuídate, de los buenos quedan pocos,” if still alive.

I have gone from little boy to brittle—taking care and being good 

in 2025 is old as analog. The robotic other side is evil and reckless—

signing the Doomsday Clock will strike midnight in my lifetime—
whether I practice Yucayeque rituals in Borikén’s central mountains 

or rattle downtown on the Lexington Ave express. What I really

need to talk about is the genocide of Palestinians given the chance.  

Andrés Castro, a PEN member, is listed in Poets & Writers Directory and keeps a personal blog,
The Practicing Poet. Andrés is currently working on Militant Humanist, a project for poets, 
writers, artists, and others.

MAMDANI

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Boffed, bumped, beaten, 
bled and bleeding I have 
lurched everywhere 

seeking to straighten up, 
to get on with the business 
of making and conserving 

while seeing fellow 
migrants rounded up, 
shackled, jailed, flown 

to foreign jails, 
to foreign countries, 
on this once blue 

and green earth. But 
was it always greener? 
Surely princes 

of darkness weaved 
their scythes through 
the pitch-black flesh 

of history to be 
countered then 
by a bearded man

who threw 
moneylenders
out of 

his father’s temple
manifest now 
in a young 

mayoral candidate 
of hope from 
the city of NewYork.

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published his translation of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books, 2025). Other recent publications include Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

PARTNERS IN GENOCIDE

by Steve Bloom

New York City,
Israel Day Parade,
June 2 2024,
I see the flag, take a photo,
tell myself I will write
a poem titled:
“Partners in Genocide.” 

Find, however
that no additional words
by me
are needed.

Steve Bloom is a New York City based activist, poet, and composer. He is curator of the Poetry of Protest and Struggle video series that comes out three times a year and can be found on his YouTube channel.

LET GO THE HEAVY HANDS OF HATRED

by Eliot Katz

The Massacre of the Innocents by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael ca. 1512–13, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hamas has taken Israel by surprise and undertaken immoral, large-scale 
terror attacks from Gaza, breaking national gates, sending hundreds 

of deadly missiles into populated towns, riding rifled motorcycles and flying 
machete gliders, brutally murdering more than 800 innocents, including 

at a kibbutz and a music festival, injuring thousands, kidnapping over 
100 civilians to bring into Gaza for human shields or prisoner-exchange 

ransom. Under its most extreme far-right government yet, Israel has quickly 
begun ruthless retaliation, cutting off all electricity, food, and water to Gaza, 

bombing high-rise apartments, schools, hospitals, killing and injuring entire 
families, creating a district of thick post-explosion gray smoke through which 

there is no ability to distinguish between Palestinians who support Hamas 
violence or not, in such a small, densely populated strip of land. The targeting 

of civilians by both sides is a violation of international law. Netanyahu says 
his army warns civilians in Gaza to leave before the bombs fly, but Gaza’s 

exits have been blocked years by Israel and Egypt. Netanyahu warns 
of the kind of devastating destruction that will “reverberate for 

generations” and that he secretly hopes will make Israeli voters forget his large 
intelligence failure. I have long written and demonstrated to support 

an end to oppressive occupation of Palestine and a peaceful two-state solution 
that looks to be moving further into the distant horizon with every bullet 

shot. Even here in New York City, there have already been physical fights 
between supporters of each side, each group carrying their heavy 

nationalistic flags of anger and war. Doesn’t it begin to hurt one’s shoulder
muscles, low backs, fragile necks on both Israeli and Palestinian sides 

to carry such heavy flags of resentment and revenge for so many decades 
now? Wouldn’t it be much easier on the body to carry the much lighter 

flags of international peace and cooperation, and to hold them upward 
toward the skies for the next two hundred years?

Called “another classic New Jersey bard” by the late Allen Ginsberg, Eliot Katz is the author of seven books of poetry, including Love, War, Fire, Wind and Unlocking the Exits, as well as a prose book, The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg. His most recent poetry book was a free pdf volume posted on his website before the 2020 presidential election, entitled: President Predator: Poems to Help Make America Trump-Free Again. He was a co-founder, with Danny Shot, of the long-running Long Shot literary magazine, and was a co-editor with Allen Ginsberg and Andy Clausen of Poems for the Nation. Katz, whose late mother was a Holocaust survivor, has worked for many years as an activist for a wide range of peace and social-justice causes, including helping to create several housing and food programs for homeless families in Central Jersey that remain ongoing. He currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

NOT TODAY, PINKO!

by Steven Kent

"Rightwingers say 'pink-haired liberals' are killing New York pizza"

—The Guardian, 29 June 2023

A plot, a plot, a plot's afoot;

   These commies can't deny it.

They claim they want to cut down soot,

   But patriots don't buy it!

Our ovens they will never take

   And leave us in the lurch here.

Clean air's a ruse, a hoax, a fake—

  We did our own research here!

Editor’s note: Here’s what’s really happening.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and Oxford comma enthusiast Kent Burnside. His work appears in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and OEDILF, among others.

ELEGY FOR LOST CITY

by Katie Tian

Two 13-year-old boys are under arrest for allegedly setting an 89-year-old woman on fire in Brooklyn. The victim said the pair never spoke a word to her before slapping her in the face and setting her clothes ablaze on the night of July 14 in Bensonhurst. —WABC, September 9, 2022

i. 

new york city / this city / your city / our city / home city / city of flightless ghosts & dreams turned fossil /  of dynamite rain / of mothers / who have swallowed debris / patchwork syllables / tissue-stuffed tongues / of the english language / so they may sit alone on the subway / earbuds of radio static / red-faced strangers shouting / go back to / hollowed embers of red lantern skies / where you / arms gathering fortune-cookie prayers / came from / contusions of memory like overripe plums / heard over the din of steel traintracks & shuttering constellations

ii. 

chili oil & raw scallions / one empty placemat at dinner / red-glazed pork belly / diffusing into smoke & rain-perfumed city / peanut oil fumes beaten into asphalt / beaten into muted sleep / sunday morning channel 5 / bleached blue light of the tv screen saying / 89-year-old / jade cracked like limbs on concrete / chinese woman / soot dusted off supermarket receipts / set on fire / iron melting pot america / suspects at large / teal skies of manhattan ashing themselves

iii. 

I had dreams too, when I was young. Before my grandmother cried trying to piece together a clumsy accent, before the sound of bodies hitting the pavement, before—I had dreams staring out at a sea so beautiful I could cry.

iv.

All the while, the carousel of death spins giddy like a top, our names scrubbed clean from its cratered streets. The sky scabs and bleeds over this land of the free. Take your time: peel this elegy ripe off the tarmac and cram it down your throat—

v.

elegy for lost city / gone city / city whose name we’ve unlearned / city thirsting / for love

Katie Tian is a sixteen-year-old Chinese-American writer from New York. Her work is published in Frontier Poetry, Polyphony Lit, Rising Phoenix Review, and Kissing Dynamite, among others. She has been recognized for her writing by Hollins University, Smith College, the Adelphi Quill Awards, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Apart from writing, she enjoys collecting stuffed animals and consuming obscene amounts of peanut butter straight from the jar.

STOLEN CHILDHOOD

by George Salamon

“114,000 Students in N.Y.C. Are Homeless. These Two Let Us Into Their Lives.” —Written by Eliza Shapiro; Photographs by Brittainy Newman, The New York Times, November 19, 2019

There'll be no marches or protests.
The homeless are a dreary cause
With no identity to extol or protect.
The lives of two reveal dark spots
On America's soul, for they live like
The rest. in squalid, unsafe spaces.
Sandival shares a bed with her mother,
Studies on subway rides of an hour-
And-a half, her lunch a bag of cheese
Puffs, collapsing into bed for a few
Hours of sleep in the room where
Her brothers sleep on a mattress on
The floor, all for $700 a month.
Darnell and his mom live in a
Shelter, attends a school where
Half the students are homeless,
With one social worker to help
Them cope with their quest to
Get a decent education in the
Big Apple.
For both, school stands out as
The one stable oasis in their
Lives of running, moving, scraping
By with bodies malnourished and
Minds exhausted from the daily
Marathon to escape from a dark,
Life-long tunnel of poverty.
There's no time, there are no
Means available to engage the
Mind, to stir the imagination, to
Shape vision and place in life
In the light, on America's sunny
Side of the street and shake off
The grim yoke of poverty's cruel
Rule.
Few escape and claw their way
Out and up, and we are lucky if
Few of those left behind will not
Do what we pretend not to
Understand: "Those to whom evil
Is Done/Do evil in return."


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

A COLLECTION OF SHORTS ON CHURROS

by Jen Schneider



Handcuffed for Selling Churros: Inside the World of Illegal Food Vendors —The New York Times, November 12, 2019


Salt and Tears

Tears of sweet
salty goodness
wrapped
in a 99 cent
pastry
served hot
on a cold
city corner

Tears of sour
salty numbness
wrapped
in a 99 dollar
fine
served hot
in a cold
city jail

Small Change

I’ll take three. Please,
keep the change.

Sweet, heavenly steam
on cheeks
as flaky pastry
with a hint
of cinnamon and sugar
melt in my mouth.

A small taste of heaven
on Earth, purchased
daily for a mere 99 cents.

Suffocating Fines

My simple
guilty pleasure,
her lifeline—dough for
milk, denim, rent—
silenced
with fines
that tally
a month’s worth
of churros and
violation of a permit
system
that permits no entry.

Seeking
a seat—if not
at the table—on the subway.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Coil, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, 42 Stories Anthology (forthcoming), Voices on the Move (forthcoming), Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

BROKEN WINDOWS

by Alan Walowitz

The New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death in 2014 was fired from the Police Department and stripped of his pension benefits on Monday, ending a bitter battle that had cast a shadow over the nation’s largest police force. Commissioner James P. O’Neill’s decision to dismiss the officer, Daniel Pantaleo (pictured above in May), came five years after Mr. Garner’s dying words—“I can’t breathe”—helped to galvanize the Black Lives Matter protests that led to changes in policing practices in New York and around the country. Photo: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Associated Press via The New York Times, August 19, 2019.

Some more fake news from the great American fable:
a baseball shatters the neighbor’s window
into a bullseye of splinters
as the old guy emerges, face on fire,
newspaper rolled into a cudgel clutched in his paw.
But a pussy cat at heart,
he’ll remember when he was young and will smile.
Or a doughy lady gets launched like a pinball
after too much slow-baking,
and more than a little tippling,
her apron aflutter and rolling pin awag,
but she’ll offer cookies to the kids.

In our tale, the window always heals itself
or gets forgotten in the false fever
of our Mayberry dreams—
We’ll make America great again.
Turns out it never was about the window,
only a way to get our next episode rolling.

If you attend to a broken window
the whole neighborhood’ll get fixed
and America made great again.
Tompkinsville on Staten Island’ll
become Short Hills, Grosse Point, Scarsdale,
or even Lake Success, right near me,
where the cop who pulls you over
doesn’t know from loosies—
what a lustrous word for a dark occupation,
a guy trying to make a buck on the street.

But just the same the cop might be thinking,
I’d like to strangle this guy,
as he writes you up for driving distracted
by that cracked windshield
you haven’t found the time or money to repair.
But he’s friendly enough
for all his formality
about rights and recourse.
See you in court, he says,
sneering in your rearview mirror
as he waves you on.
We’ll make America great again, alright,
Just be sure you’re white and bring plenty of cash.
We don’t take credit cards or checks.


Editor’s Note from Frontline: The 1980s-era theory known as “Broken Windows” . . . argues that maintaining order by policing low-level offenses can prevent more serious crimes. But in cities where Broken Windows has taken root, there’s little evidence that it’s worked as intended. The theory has instead resulted in what critics say is aggressive over-policing of minority communities, which often creates more problems than it solves. Such practices can strain criminal justice systems, burden impoverished people with fines for minor offenses, and fracture the relationship between police and minorities. It can also lead to tragedy: In New York in 2014, Eric Garner died from a police chokehold after officers approached him for selling loose cigarettes on a street corner.


Alan Walowitz has been published various places on the web and off.  His work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2018 and he is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love is available from Osedax Press, and his full-length book The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press.