TROMPE-L’OEIL

by Suzanne Morris

Whenever I look at the

portrait of him 50 years ago

peering out from beneath

the smart billed cap

of his U.S. Army

dress uniform,

his eyes seem fixed on

grim reality:

he was drafted just before

his 25th birthday

during a war that he

already suspected

we should not be fighting,

and the casualties were

mounting at an alarming rate.

What a relief when he was made

a levee clerk in the Medical Corps,

posted at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Yet... sending others into action

while remaining safely behind

left its own set of scars.

Long after the war was over,

he suffered nightmares

of being under fire in Viet Nam.

I would lay beside him in the dark,

transfixed as he described

in terrifying detail

the first-hand experience of

a combat veteran.

This year I watched the

Memorial Day Concert on PBS,

with patriotic music and

stories of valor—

a resounding tribute to all who had died

defending American ideals

over the last 250 years.

By the time the show closed

with a haunting rendition of Taps

I was clutching his picture

against my heart,

knowing how grim

his face would be

had he lived long enough to see

the abdication of those ideals

by a President afflicted with

gilded bone spurs,

and thinking ahead to the

taxpayer-financed military parade

scheduled in Washington, D.C.

on June 14th,

a faux tribute to the U.S. Army that is

sure to make Trump’s pal Vladimir

red-faced with envy.

Anyone who dares to crash Trump’s

45-million-dollar birthday party

will be met with great force

as in the case of the protests

against his immigration raids in L.A.,

drafting U.S. troops

to engage in a war

they should not be fighting.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet. Her poems have appeared in online journals including The New Verse News and Texas Poetry Assignment, and anthologies including The Senior Class - 100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). A native Houstonian, she has resided in Cherokee County, Texas, since 2008. 

DECLARATION OF A TERRORIST

by Taylor Norris

Knee on a neck, 

Match poised to strike,

With a final exhale, 

Flames did ignite. 

 

A firestorm erupted,

Fervent movement did arise, 

Suffocated by a tsunami, 

Of "All Lives Matter" cries. 

 

Abusive power wears many masks, 

Yet speaks a single tongue,

A requiem of callousness, 

Tide of lives wrung.

 

Seized, silenced, deprived of voice, 

Crushed by tempest creed, 

As the faceless gasp for breath, 

Dragged beneath waves of greed.

 

Palestinians butchered by golem rampage, 

While leaders fiddle in their gilded bubble,

Israel's broken promises rain down,

As last dregs of conscience soak into the rubble.

 

Students denouncing genocide, 

Abducted off streets like trash,

Futures and rights vanished, 

Disappeared in a Gestapo flash.

 

Ukrainians in scorched ruins stand tall, 

Courage unwavering, despite the pain,

Their sacrifice met with jealous disdain,

As an American führer bows to Putin's reign.

 

Sudanese starve on apathy alone, 

Wasting away to hollow bone, 

While the privileged eat cake, 

Glutted, glued to their phone.

 

Immigrants condemned, banished beyond aid,

Hostages snatched to a circus cage,

Mercy extinguished; identity stripped,

Erased by those with contrived rage.

 

Tiny tots seen, once heard, now lost,

Voiceless, cast out with derision,

Birthright a farce, a due process mirage,

Dispelled with coldness and precision.

 

Judges defied, jailed with contempt, 

Justice held ransom, chained to the bell, 

As cracked scales teeter on the brink, 

Ears crane for liberty's death knell.

 

If my conviction of unity, 

Is intolerable sedition, 

Call me a TERRORIST, 

I embrace the affliction.

 

Truth-teller in an age of lies, 

Empathetic when compassion dies,

Revolutionary when liberties decline,

Relentless when cruelty is the infection by design,

Outspoken when silence is the golden law,

Resilient by refusing to withdraw,

Inclusive when others build walls of divide,

Solidarity with the denigrated caste aside,

Transformative in spirit that cannot abide.

 

The most sacred amendment, first on the parchment, 

Will withstand your calculated bombardment,

If TERRORIST I must be, in your criminalized fiction, 

I'll wear your pointy yellow badge with distinction.

 

While propaganda devours, 

Truth strikes with bolt and thunder, 

Electrified, embers take flight,

Defiance echoes, never again forced under.

Taylor Norris treads the thin verse between comfortable and the disturbed that can’t be unseen. In the stone age that was pre-y2k Taylor was a film critic for a LGBTQ publication and was published in two poetry anthologies with a poem translated for a Spanish newspaper. Taylor was also produced in Best Short-Lived 2.0 in San Francisco. After a long hiatus, she is returning back to her roots.

RIP JOHN DONNE

by Lynn White

No man is an island wrote Donne
centuries ago.
He understood the predicament
understood
that man, or woman
is one part
of a whole
which is one part
of something larger
and so on
into mind-blowing infinity.

No man, or woman can stand alone
and reach their potential 
in isolation
or when isolated
on some small island 
however grandiose
the delusion.

An island alone cannot thrive,
except here in Britain of course,
so it was once said by some.

And now,
what now
when it stands 
triangulated 
in the centre 
of three egos, 
Trump, Putin 
and Zelenskyy.
Stuck in the middle
of such super egos,
TPZ Keir Starmer.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

And now, 

BONES OF THE REPUBLIC

by Earl David Freeland

I weep.

The king didn’t take the throne.
The elephant knelt—
tuskless,
trumpeting fear,
its weight crushing the roots
of a nation it once carried.

Palms open,
backs bent,
offering the crown
wrapped in fear,
cheap flags for bows.
Will there be midterms?
Will it matter?
When power hums the same note,
ballots dusted under a golden sneaker,
lines redrawn to cut out the noise—
cut out us.

Maps don’t divide now.
They silence.
States, neat and obedient,
stacked under a crown.

What world waits for my son?
A place where truth
gets dragged—
hair tangled in fists,
paraded like a lesson.

Freedom?
Traded for chain-slick comfort.
Easy.
Cheap.

The anthem plays.
Hands rise—
not for hearts.

I see it—
the Mouth of Putin,
slick, wide, laughing.
Spitting out slogans,
black seeds rooting into
boots,
barbed wire,
burned books.

Long live the king,
they say.
And mean it.

I weep.

But I’m watching.
And if democracy dies here—
I’ll bury it with teeth.
Bared.
Fists raw.
Tear the ground open
and dig through the bones
the elephant left behind

Earl David Freeland is a mathematician, former cartographer, and teacher whose poetry balances precision with raw vulnerability. His work explores societal critique, existential themes, and human complexity with unflinching honesty. His poems have appeared in Poets Reading the News and reflect a deliberate rejection of polish in favor of visceral authenticity.

GENESIS 2025

by Michael Dorian

Source: Seattle Times

In the beginning

He pardoned all the seditionists.

Now the nation was barren and shapeless,

darkness was upon the land

and He said, “Let there be lies,”

and there were lies.

He saw the lies were good

and He separated the lies from the truth.

He called the lies “truth”

and He called the truth “lies.”

And there was evening 

and there was morning—

the first day

And He said, "Let me stop the wildfires

scorching the pretty landscaping

and those expensive houses. 

I know some people in L.A., some 

very wealthy, well-connected people."

And He released with almighty force

from his gullet a torrent of water pressure

the likes of which no man had beheld.

And the fires stopped burning.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the second day

And He said, "Let the illegal immigrants

in the land be returned whence they came."

So with a gust of His great breath

He swept them all up in a glorious gale

and blew back to homelands the vermin, 

scattered like so much feed.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the third day.

And He said, "Let me build a big beautiful wall

And He saw it was a good wall,

a great wall, better than China’s,

The Greatest Wall Of All Time

that anyone has ever seen anywhere

on Earth or any planet in our 

Solar System or even in all of Space,"

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fourth day.

And He said, "Let me stop the war in Ukraine."

And a great swathe of his carefully—

coiffed hair sent all the soldiers

toppling like toys back into their

respective sovereign countries

(with Russia gaining great areas

of formerly Ukrainian land)

and the bloodshed ceased 

like the last lilting notes 

of cherubs’ trumpeted fanfare.

And He saw this was good

(for Putin and Himself, anyway)

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fifth day.

And He said, "Let me drill, baby, drill!"

So with tremendous huffing and puffing

He had an angel, a female one, fluff

His manhood until it stood,

a tower of steel shining in the sun,

and He poked it in and pulled it out

with enduring virility

until he had poked 

many a holy hole 

deep into the Earth’s womb

and into 625 million acres

of preserved coastal seawaters

and the nation became richer with crude.

And the land and great numbers

of its people were crude.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the sixth day.

And on the 7th day

He played golf and he cheated.

Once upon a time, Michael Dorian had a collection of poems and a play in one act published by Silk City Press entitled "The Nektonic Facteur.”  He likes to think that when the going gets tough, the tough write poems. 

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.

AMERICA’S TRUE FACE

by Jon Wesick

is orange. It is gallows on the Capitol Mall,

a pile of shit on Nancy Pelosi’s desk,

a hammer to her husband’s skull.

It wears a red tie hanging below its knees

and stores the nation's secrets

in Putin’s bathroom. It is one set of laws

for the rich and heads slammed 

into police car roofs for the rest of us.

To the snobs who suggest plastic surgery

or even a little concealer, we say

Hell No! We like America’s face just fine! 

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, I-70 Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Space and Time, and Unlikely Stories Mark V. His most recent books are The Shaman in the Library and The Prague Deception.

THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE THAT MATTERS

by L. Lois

the chill in the air

means the glacier ravines

running down the peaks

jutting above the treeline

to the north

are vertical cuts of white

this bench sits low

comfortably leaning back

with the lake at my feet

the surface broken

by the gentle rippling

of the wind

 

a lone eagle circles

on early spring's

thermal winds

and the cherry blossoms

I passed on my way

are holding fast

in the lingering crispness

distant blue skies are lighter

overhead

coloring is calm

painted solid for peacefulness

rounded white clouds

perch as if to tell

the mountains where they should be

ducks scatter

when the Canadian geese

come in for a noisy

landing

two herons fly by

to the west 

and their rookery's young

New York and Washington on fire

Trump's on criminal trial

Netanyahu plays chess with Hamas and Iran

Putin threatens Ukraine’s future

while Congress dithers on the eve of chaos

everything here

ignores our foolishness

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.

SMALL VICTORIES

by M. Benjamin Thorne

Two Russian poets have been handed long jail sentences for taking part in a reading of anti-war poems in Moscow. A Moscow court gave Artyom Kamardin seven years and Yegor Shtovba five and a half years for "inciting hatred" against Russian troops and making "appeals against state security". Both had pleaded not guilty… A third poet who had taken part in the poetry reading, Nikolai Dayneko, was given a four-year sentence earlier this year after pleading guilty and co-operating with the investigation. —BBC, December 28, 2023. Photo: Russian poets Artyom Kamardin (L) and Yegor Shtovba (R) stand inside the defendants' glass cage as the verdict against them is announced at a court in Moscow, on December 28, 2023 [Alexander Nemenov/ AFP via AlJazeera]

Artyom Kamardin, the scuttling hands
of Putin’s comrade army clutched you away.  
Yegor Shtovba, they broke you in prison, brutally 

shoved their weakness inside you. 

Today they sought to silence freedom,
and tonight Akhmatova’s ghost screams.

 

All for the crime of poetry. A few words
that sat heavily in public, burning
like Chernobyl rubble, glowing in the dark.
What will their half-life be?
Already the rallied crowd shuffles
back into quiet anonymity.
Who bows their head lower now                  
in shame, them or Pushkin?
Where are the souls so moved
reciting Eugene Onegin from memory?
Where the fierce courageous applause
that followed Shostakovich and Yevtushenko?
Freedom is still a young and starving child,
will you like Tsvetaeva give her to the state to die?
Why grieve for fallen soldiers
when you murder them at home?

Perhaps their poems were as meaningless
as Soviet ration cards for milk past 10 am,
or victory claimed in a burned-out village.
One poem may not change the world.
But words are radioactive and once heard
can decay the most calcified mind’s
defenses. Perhaps the sense of resistance
is not to succeed, but inspire others to resist.
A poem may change the world for one person.

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. As an historian and poet, he is interested in what—and how—societies choose to remember and forget traumatic episodes from the past. He has poems forthcoming from Topical Poetry and The Main Street Rag.

RUSSIAN MOTHER’S DAY MESSAGE

by Bruce Bennett

As anger over the drawn-out invasion simmers in Russia, President Vladimir Putin on Friday held his first public meeting of the nine-month-long war with mothers of soldiers who had been fighting in Ukraine, a move likely aimed at quelling discontent. In a clip broadcast by Russian state media, Putin is seen sitting down with a group of women around a table adorned with ornate tea cups and fresh berries for a talk coinciding with Russian Mother’s Day. “I want you to know that I personally, the entire leadership of the country, we share your pain,” Putin said, pausing and clearing his throat. “We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child, especially for the mother, to whom we all owe the birth.” —The Washington Post, November 26, 2022

“I share your pain,” says Vlad the Great 

to mothers grieving loss. 

He reassures them that the State 

appreciates the cross 

 

They have to bear. To lose a son 

“that nothing can replace….” 

He’s clearly moved. When he is done 

there’s nothing on his face 

 

To indicate he has a clue 

this has to do with him, 

or that there’s something he could do 

to alter what the grim 

 

And vicious plans of godless foes 

have caused and cruelly wrought. 

Grim faces testify to woes 

that reinforce his thought 

 

And make it clear he’s in control. 

The Dark Night’s not near dawn. 

This glib ghost of the Russian Soul 

decrees the War goes on. 

Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty poetry chapbooks. His most recent full-length book is Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems New and Selected, 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017). From 1973 until his retirement in 2014, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at Wells College, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. He predicted what we were in for in his November 2016 YouTube video, The Donald Trump of the Republic.