CHONKERS

by Tammy Smith

Only a stellar sea lion

weighing two thousand pounds

can bark incessantly

and still gain a following.

Instagram. TikTok. Facebook.

Crowds gather

in the city by the bay

to watch Chonkers 

sprawl across K-Dock

at Pier 39,

sunbathing, grunting—

no one accusing him

of wasting his time or talent.

It isn’t fair:

a massive marine mammal

earns devotion

for taking up space,

for being louder

than his boisterous California

sea lion buddies.

When I lived in San Francisco

in my early thirties,

on the edge of poverty,

in the throes of mental illness,

no one admired

my high-pitched growls,

no one praised me

for memorizing every word

to an Otis Redding song

as I wandered

Fisherman’s Wharf,

envy smelled like
salty sea air,
regret like sourdough,
loss like fish markets—
urine.

Tammy Smith is a poet and licensed clinical social worker from New Jersey. Her work appears or is forthcoming in ONE ART, Paterson Literary Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She received honorable mention in the Journal of New Jersey 2026 Poets Prize.

I'M TIRED OF CONFUSING WHAT I WANT WITH WHAT I DESIRE

by Michael Brockley

Bibles with cherrypicked scriptures highlighted in red lay scattered along the culvert on my way to Casa del Sol. Border songs play on my radio. In a decade all the rock-and-rollers will turn out the lights after their final encores. No more rockin’ in the free world. No more trouble in the heartland. No more Ruthie in her Memphis honky-tonk lagoon. The waitress who serves a whiskey sour with my aroz con camarones is beautiful with her black widow tattoo inked down to her wrist and in the way she outsmiles Halle Berry. She wears a diamond stud in her pierced nose. Rides King’s Island’s Invertigo and Banshee without a safety net. When music award shows play on the television behind the bar, she roots for Drake or Cardi B. Says her mother bought records by Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. Remembers wearing out a 45 of I Heard It Through the Grapevine one summer. I listen to sharecropper songs on the drive home. To songs by a singer named for a woman who rings like a bell in the night. A woman of constant sorrow who walks the freedom highway. I toss my dashboard Jesus out the window. The white Messiah. No one sings we won’t get fooled again. No one is running on empty tonight.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Jokes Review and TheNewVerse.News.