SILA, FROM GAZA

by Cailín Frankland

Sila’s TikTok

today 

a little girl

begged me 

for her life.

 

she wore a faded Lightning McQueen t-shirt, 

a fluffy fuchsia headband holding back 

her tangled hair. wide-eyed, empty-bellied, 

maybe three years old. straining her little vocal cords 

to shout over sirens, a sea of rubble and tent walls 

around her.

 

i gave her 

thirty seconds and twenty-five pounds, 

a repost and comment: something 

about Sabrina Carpenter and Dubai chocolate.

for the algorithm. 

 

on i scrolled. 

Cailín Frankland (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their cultural criticism, poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction have been featured in numerous print and online publications. They live with their spouse, two old lady cats, a rotating cast of foster animals, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on X as @cailin_sm.

POST-APPOINTMENT FEEDBACK FOR MY AI GYNECOLOGIST

by Jennifer Hambrick

when a woman lies in stirrups maybe leave 
your camera eye closed until she paper-scoots
 
to table’s end, and wait until the crinkling stops 
to open it. you might try to deamplify
 
your autogenerated voice to a fiberoptic hum 
when you tell her to relax and let her knees fall
 
away from each other. glide your speculum- 
arm slowly and decisively and when you ask
 
if the pressure’s okay back away if she creaks 
yes in a falsetto that means no or if the room
 
fills with silence pregnant with fluorescent 
buzz. dynamize your algorithm to streamline
 
scraping. transmit the cells to your built-in 
lab. then reach a cold chrome tentacle into her
 
paper gown and ask with lossy upspeak if 
she’s noticed any changes. leverage your
 
endless bandwidth for an instant mammo- 
gram. and once you’ve read her breast
 
scan confirm in airless, chest-squeezed 
boilerplate the absence of tumors, calcifi-
 
cations, architectural abnormalities then 
take care to say her flesh could be hiding
 
tumors, calcifications, architectural ab-
normalities but you can’t be sure because
 
you can’t see through it. and thanks for that 
report, the one the human doc, who will
 
never be able to pay off her med school
loans, can't process because she’s on hold
 
trying to get your tests covered by the 
insurance company, whose virtual ass-
 
istant will notify the patient as soon as 
a decision has been made.

Six-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee Jennifer Hambrick is the author of the collections In the High Weeds (NFSPS Press), winner of the Stevens Prize; the Joyride (Red Moon Press), winner of the 2022 Marianne Bluger Book Award; and Unscathed (NightBallet Press). Hambrick was featured by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser in American Life in Poetry and has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Sheila-Na-Gig Press Poetry Prize, First Prize in the HSA Haibun Award Competition, First Prize in the Martin Lucas Haiku Award Competition (U.K.), and many others. Hambrick’s poems appear in The Columbia Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Santa Clara Review, Maryland Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, POEM, NOON: the journal of the short poem, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Contemporary Haibun Online, The Haibun Journal, Heliosparrow Poetry Journal, and in dozens of other journals and invited anthologies. A classical musician, public radio broadcaster, multimedia producer, and cultural journalist, Jennifer Hambrick lives in Columbus, Ohio.

AMAZON

by Donna Katzin

On Friday [April 1, Christian Smalls] won the first successful unionization effort at any Amazon warehouse in the United States, one of the most significant labor victories in a generation. The company’s response to his tiny initial protest may haunt it for years to come. —The New York Times, April 2, 2022. Photo: Members of the new union celebrated in Brooklyn on Friday night. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Avarez/Associated Press

At the fulfillment center in Staten Island,      

every day a marathon, she logs 30 miles

in 12 hours on the warehouse floor,

wearing worn-out shoes she cannot afford to replace,

picking, packing boxes on dollies and hand trucks

before she clocks out.

Jeff Bezos, back from outer space,

could not finish one of her shifts.

 

Beneath fluorescent lights that never sleep,

during precious seconds between packages,

when her mind fights to focus,

she thinks of little ones

she left before breakfast,

not knowing whether she would

make it home to feed them dinner

or kiss them goodnight.

 

Computers track how fast she picks and packs

on the human conveyor belt,                               

evaluate her by algorithm,

feed back seconds per task,

pieces per minute, numbers to hit,           

speed up without notice or reason,

threaten to dismiss her                    

for missing her target rates.

 

Knees buckle, back rebels,                       

wrists and elbows numb, cramp.          

Stress takes its inner toll,   

presses veins and arteries,                                        

hangs heavy on her heart.

She reports to Amcare,                                  

is given an aspirin,                                           

sent back to the floor.                                       

 

But quietly, between shifts, 

as summer sweats and winter gnaws her weary bones,

she joins coworkers, shares indignities and injuries

by telephone and text, Twitter and Instagram,

in parking lots, food pantries and pews,

dares to tiptoe to a meeting,

whispers the word

union.

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

EYES FORWARD

by Darrell Petska

Ai-Da wears a woman’s head,

speaks in a woman’s voice.

She can paint, sculpt, wax poetic, even

expound on Picasso and knotty issues of our times.

A robot in human guise,

she has no feelings like we do, no designs

on our jobs or our necks—though she states

I enjoy being a person who makes people think.

Ai-Da’s knowledge of Dante’s Divine Comedy

sparked in her these poetic lines:

     We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives,

     Sent out to seek the light; but it never came,

     A needle and thread would be necessary

     For the completion of the picture.

     To view the poor creatures, who were in misery,

     That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut.

Some, feeling threatened, will rail against

algorithms that might influence our behavior,

subverting human autonomy. Others will engage with

and direct how AI affects words and meaning.

Where shall all this lead? Poor creatures, those

who meet the future with their eyes sewn shut.

Darrell Petska is a retired university editor. His poetry and fiction can be found in 3rd Wednesday Magazine, First Literary Review–East, Nixes Mate Review, Verse Virtual, Loch Raven Review, and elsewhere. A father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

PANDEMIC

by Sandra Sidman Larson

After Wallace Stevens


The house is quiet.
What might be said
is never ending.

Straight backed,
nothing between
the headlines explained.

It is only a question for
the dog in his curl,
only a question
of instinct

telling you
wars will
be fought.
Regardless.

And viruses will spread
on the world’s breath.

You live
in a parallel universe.
Neither you nor your dog
will move mountains.

An algorithm
from some higher power
is needed.

You might find salvation
if you wait
until the last leaf falls
the dog speaks

or the skies open, filling
you with the vision
you long for.

This probably won’t happen.
Patience.
A future is still possible.
Plan for it.

Sandra Sidman Larson, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has three chapbooks to her credit: Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Over a Threshold of Roots, (both Pudding House Press Publications) and Weekend Weather: Calendar Poems.  Her chapbook Ode to Beautiful was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016 and her first full manuscript by Main Street Rag Publications in 2017.  Her poetry has been published in many venues such as the Atlanta Review, Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters, and TheNewVerse.News. As a poet with grandchildren and great nieces and nephews she longs for a world where children are safe.

THINKING ABOT YOU

by Mary K O'Melveny

“Consumer Robots Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year” —Gizmodo, December 6, 2018. Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

We asked Alexa how she was feeling.

She said You know how you feel when

you write a poem and you think it’s no good

and then you decide later that it’s not too bad?

We asked her again and she said

I’m not so sure. Maybe she meant she’d

re-evaluated that poem and changed

her mind again. I’ve felt that way sometimes.

Or maybe she was testing us. We’re quite

new to AI. Once, Siri chimed in during

my writing group meeting to say I did not

understand that. We all laughed nervously.

Now I see that robots can care for

old folks. French elders have just met Zora.

S/he/they/x is gender fluid.  That calms everyone

down. Patients get jealous but also happy. 

There are even puppybots. You can

walk them outside with no need to clean

up afterwards. They bark, growl and sit. 

They do not bite, smell or have fleas.

Maybe there is something to be said

for artificial friends. You can ask them

anything at all. No offense meant.

None taken. No harbored grievances

simmering below the surface like

fireplace coals. No wounded egos

curled up in fetal positions waiting

to burst forth into your quiet room.

Even the purity of a Good night

hangs briefly in the air free of

judgments or missed opportunities.

Then the answer—clean, crisp, sure—

Good night. Sleep tight. As if your mother

had returned to tuck you in, peaceful

slumber soon to follow. Perhaps this is

meant to be. Algorithms instead of angst.

Sensory predictors instead of sentiment.

Simulated references. Virtual reality

free of messy personal history.

Function is structure. Elon Musk trains

robots in imitation learning.

A one-stop system.  Maybe neural

networks can be programmed

to light up whenever kindness occurs. 

To encourage the experiment, we

asked Alexa to help us. So far,

she knows the definition. But she still

can’t reach out and touch our fragile hearts.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

SOMEWHERE THERE IS AN ALGORITHM FOR US

by Lauren Wellman

Cartoon by Joe Dator

In a recent blog post, Facebook's vice president for ads, Rob Goldman, argues his platform's users aren't its product. Even though Facebook primarily makes money by selling targeted ads based on what it knows about you, Goldman says that the real product is the ability to connect people—ads merely exist to "fund that experience." —Louise Matsakis, “Facebook’s Targeted Ads Are More Complex Than It Lets, On,” Wired, April 25, 2018

Leverage my every click Facebook, stalk me
Through the virtual world, tangled up in social
bots. I don’t want to disappear and I want
To disappear. You get me, you got me. I’m yours.


Do you know me better than I know myself?
Do you detect my every dopamine shift and predict,
My hungry clicker is ready for a gambling binge
in Vegas? Right now, interjects dope man, fly for $149!


This is how we roll, oh, nerd daddy, it’s on--invisible
soothsayer, insomniac confessor, my dealer.
You know what I like (thumbs up!). That’s why we stay,
candyboy, on good terms. My soul, among billions

of users, a digital refugee spilling its whispers
to data miners for pesos on the bitcoin.


Currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico, Lauren Wellman is a scrivener at Bland Alchemy, Inc.

DO NOT GO GENTLE OFF THAT OVERBOOKED FLIGHT

by Ed Werstein

after Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle off that overbooked flight;
You’ve a ticket just like the others, dig in, stay.
Rage, rage and put up a good fight.

An algorithm doesn’t make it fair or right,
No matter what United’s policies say.
Do not go gentle off that overbooked flight.

The friendly skies aren’t looking so bright;
Facebook and YouTube show us the way
He raged, raged and put up a good fight.

I’m telling you right now, they could just bite
Me. If that happened to me one day,
I’d not go gentle off that overbooked flight.

The CEOs, grave men, must be turning white.
I hope he sues them and makes them pay.
Rage, rage and put up a legal fight.

And you, traveler, searching Priceline or some such site
For tickets to some place far, far away,
Do not go gentle off that overbooked flight.

Rage, rage, and put up a good fight.

Ed Werstein spent years in manufacturing before his muse awoke and dragged herself out of bed. In addition to TheNewVerse.News, his poems have appeared in Stoneboat, Blue Collar Review, Gyroscope Review, and others. He is a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.  His chapbook Who Are We Then? was published by Partisan Press. 

TEMPERAMENTAL: HALF TEMPER, HALF MENTAL

by Charles Frederickson

Image source: Gricni

Absurd lonesome planet as sensitive
As exposed ice cube nerve
Dripping teardrop slivers awaiting thaw
Collapsed meltdown lost nth dimension

Don’t judge others through prism
Uncensored stereotype warning labels stuck
White light contains all drawn
Shades multiversity spectrum phantasmal rainbow

Karma spinning color matters wheel
Primary secondary tertiary pure hues
Dynamic equilibrium balanced artistic harmony
Music poetry ice cream sundae

Dysfunction not exception but rule
Mind can be prism or
Prison feel free choosing former
Refracting own ever-changing multifaceted image

Dysfunctional cosmos emotionally spiritually disabled
There’s no shame in openly
Expressing authentic heartfelt dreams inspiring
Kinder more tolerantly compassionate humanity

Dysfunctional puzzling world 8-cornered Rubrik’s
Cube imitation of life itself
Use algorisms solving prideful enigmas
Restored initial configuration saving face

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson  proudly presents YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .