ATTENTION SPANS

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Ten years ago, a shocking headline captured the world’s attention: “Human beings now have an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish!” This claim, though horrifying, was totally bogus. The stat in question—that our attention spans had shrunk to a meagre eight seconds—was founded on two spurious and unverified sources and widely spread by a Microsoft Ads “study” published in 2015… Even if we haven’t quite hit goldfish levels, is there some truth to the assertion that human attention spans are dwindling? The short answer is a resounding “yes”, according to research. —Independent (UK), December 14, 2025

Attention spans in humans have declined

Tremendously since tech bros honed their apps

To deluge us with clickbait that's designed

Expressly to cause frequent mental lapse,

Necessitating countermeasures that

Try earnestly to put the genie back

Inside the bottle, but a TikTok chat

Or YouTube video resists attack,

No matter how you try to disengage—

Safari, Chrome and Edge don't miss a trick:

Psychology will keep you on their page,

And amplify your brain rot as you click...

No antidote for dumbing down is known—

Save ditching both your laptop and your phone!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly, and other journals.

THE COME-ALONG

by Richard Garcia

  

For you will be lifted up. For you will be thrown down.                                                                   Frank X. Gaspar, 'September Tropical'

The eye of the storm is turning towards us, the wheel of Biblical wind approaches, and my wife is watching a YouTube video, instructions on how to use the come-along, and she says, Come along with me, watch this, and don't place your forehead down on the table and roll your head back-and-forth, as if you were saying, What has she done now. And the tall man in the plaid shirt says, don't get your fingers caught in the gears of the come-along. And I get it: what if you have to drag the water-logged sofa across the floor of your living room and it's too heavy? You have the come-along. What if your generator, filled with gas and potentially explosive, is too heavy to lift over the flooded lawn and plug into the mysterious socket? You have the come-along. So this is how the Egyptians built the pyramids. They had Hebrew slaves and many come-alongs. This is how the Aztecs built those temples. They did not have wheels, they did not have gears, but they had tortillas and they were round, and the bite marks along a crusted edge of tortilla would suggest to them the gears of the come-along. The come-along—this is how we will ride out the storm, my love and I. This is how we will drag ourselves, drag our house, drag our dog Max—one chain attached to a tree, one chain attached to our house, both chains attached to the come-along—click by ratchety click, across the swirling, god-driven hurricane, to higher ground. 

Richard Garcia is the author of The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.

THE UNIFORMED FIGURE

by Alejandro Escudé






On a YouTube video a cop
gets out of his vehicle, unholsters
his gun, just to ask the man recording him
a question. The man filming the cop
says, “Put your gun down, really?”
as the cop continues to walk toward him
and through him and through me,
as the policeman, gun in hand,
traverses the Milky Way,
the void a uniformed figure
consuming the stars.


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.

ARIANA LEAVES A BAD TASTE IN OUR MOUTHS

by Michael Mark






That empty calorie confection
can lick my 12 hour factory job.
She can take the tip of her tongue
and taste the lonely dark of 3AM
alarms to get to the donut shop,
to mix the batter, to bake the donuts,
spread the icing that she licked and
did not buy. So another customer
tasted her spit. She can suck my middle-
class mortgage. And laugh because I’m
the sucker who has to work two jobs
to pay for it. I can’t walk away. She
can show up at a donut shop and bitch
about America’s obesity issues with all
the sincerity of imitation whipped cream.
She can eat her disgusting words on camera
in front of fat America. She can slip
her tongue in her dessert dancer of a boyfriend
then slide it over the sugary icing and leave
it tasting of arrogance, of pure meanness. That
customer who brought those donuts home
had to wonder why they stunk of revulsion. “I
asked for Boston Cream and got Rude Insolent
Post Teen.” She can flip that tongue so that simple,
happy, rainbow sprinkles smack of stupidity and
selfishness. That tongue can sell out stadiums.
And she can lie with that tongue that she really,
truly, honestly loves what the camera caught her
saying she hates. She can climb to #1 with that tongue.
And the rest of us, we can take a bite of what she leaves
us and pray for a little taste of forgiveness.


Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long distance walker. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Lost Coast Review, Rattle, Ray’s Road Review, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. 

ON RAY RICE

A poem, 
found among comments on YouTube responding to the Ray Rice video,
by Melissa Fite Johnson






Dumb bitch started it.  Cunt
ruined his career.  Too bad
he didn’t break her fucking jaw off.
Act like a man, try and hit one,
get treated like a man.  This is what
equality looks like.  Girls
are as much of a threat
as guys.  She slapped him first.
She’s the aggressor.  What the fuck
do you see?  A man beating
his woman?  He defended himself
against a human being with
the potential to hurt him.
All those white feminists need to
shut the fuck up.  Period.  This is
what equality looks like.  It probably
wasn't his intention to knock her out,
but shit happens.  She should've
thought of that before assaulting
an NFL player.  A woman
deserves equal rights.
She has to take responsibility
for her actions.  She had it coming.
This is what equality looks like.


Melissa Fite Johnson teaches English at Pittsburg High School in Kansas.  She’s had poetry published in Cave Region Review, The Little Balkans Review, and Inscape Magazine, as well as in the Kansas Notable Book poetry collection To the Stars Through Difficulties. The Little Balkans Press will publish her first book of poetry While the Kettle’s On this year. Melissa and her husband, Marc, live in Pittsburg with their dog and several chickens.