FEBRUARY 28, 2026

by Alice Hartley

Photography & Reporting by Zohreh Saberi, Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2026

Frankenstein’s monster,

from parts lived before.

I wonder,

if we made a monster from

the little ones' parts

left unburied,

would its limbs

remember they wanted to run,

with nowhere to go?

If muscle remembers,

will our monster,

be doomed to flee,

to arms

too weak to hold?

Alice Hartley is a public health nurse in Milwaukee. She has been writing since she was five years old, starting with picture books about her friends. As an adult, she mostly writes poetry and horror stories. She has a found family that includes two cats who don't get along...but four adults that do.

CALL FOR OBLITERATION

by Jerome Betts

 

 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

“Donald Trump’s mental state called into question as Democrats demand White House evaluation after Iran threats.” —The Independent, April 10, 2026

 

Crackpotus thinks that war is fun

(Of course, he never fought in one)

And so he bombed his little heart out…

Oh, chuck the cruel crazed old fart out!

 

The 25^th amendment’s what

Is needed, not a sniper’s shot,

Until, his time come, all can cry

Damnatio memoriae!

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online.

WHAT GROWS

by D. Dina Friedman

“Rising Cairn” by Celeste Roberge

from grief, the prickled ball in my heart

The tank imprinting the sands in Gaza.

The baby on the kibbutz, snatched from its mother’s arms.

Grief as breath and breath as grief

pictures of the dead, the missing

slapped on our bland screens. We might know

this child, his laugh. This teen. She worked for peace.

Grief for the plume of smoke outside the window

of the hospital, for the doctor, searching her pockets

as if she might have stashed a pill she’d forgotten,

that could save the life of a patient, writhing, dying. 

Grief, the crevice in the land split by the river

where you think you might walk down and disappear. 

Grief, a drained lake, a parched throat, a bombed city, 

a soldier singing O Sole Mio in the desert at night

because, sometimes, there’s nothing else to do 

but raise your head to the moon 

and sing as if your life depended on it.

D. Dina Friedman has published in over a hundred literary journals and anthologies (including Rattle, The Sun, Calyx, Lilith, Negative Capability, Chautauqua Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, and Rhino) and received four Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the author of two young adult novels: Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), a short-story collection: Immigrants(Creators Press), and two  chapbooks: Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press) and Here in Sanctuary—Whirling (Querencia Press). 

YOUNG GIRL WITH CANDY

by Michael Brockley

“Girl with a candy,” photo by Oleksii Kyrychenko of his daughter to draw attention to the war in Ukraine. (Photo: Facebook/Oleksii Kyrychenko via Zyri, March 12, 2022)

You sit on the ledge of the wreckage that was once a window. A pose much like Audrey Hepburn’s while she sings “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or Marilyn Monroe’s reading a book in a black-and-white glossy. Your back braced against the window frame so you can look over your right shoulder. A young sentry, perhaps, or an auburn-haired sniper. In your arms you cradle a pump-action rifle. And nurse a lollipop, like any nine-year old deciding between a stuffed dog and a doll in a market. Between bread for yourself or your sister. The glass has been bombed from the window that landmarks your vigil, but a mask that is fixed in an expression that is neither frown nor smile leers from the graffiti on the scarred wall behind you. The future holds your gaze along the horizon where courage is measured. Where invaders reduce schools and maternity hospitals to rubble. You are not an actress flirting with glamour in your fur-lined boots, new winter coat, and jeans. But the capri blue and traffic yellow of your nation flow through your ponytail like an anthem being sung around the world.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana where he is looking for a dog to adopt. His poems have appeared in The Parliament Literary Journal, Young Ravens Literary Review, and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan. Poems are forthcoming in RockPaperPoem, Lion and Lilac, and Of Rust and Glass. 

SHE SAYS IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE

by Margaret Rozga

She was once her daughter’s age and that inscrutable. I was

once her age but already a widow. In Kyiv mothers

are brought near to tears, but who can cry, who can

anticipate having a daughter the age she now is?

Who has any room in her thoughts for anything more

than the backpack, the train station, the fear

of being separated, the maybe at the other side

of the border?

So fear takes a hiding place deep

in the chest but not as deep as the dream of a calm

and secure old age. Or deeper.

 

Here the three-year-old cries for a biscuit, begs

her to play. She sends the older brother to play

with the younger. Her daughter, my granddaughter

stays in the kitchen to listen

for the sound of dreams rising above worries

about prices. There is no war here,

no fear of bombs hitting this neighborhood. The war is

not that close to us. Not yet. The war weighs

on her mind even as she serves us fried fish and denies

biscuits. She worries about money in her non-war.

She cannot imagine. She can imagine.

This is how ghosts are born.

 

The succulent fish warms our bellies, relaxes

our conversation, shrinks the ghosts, makes room

for imagining a future for her family, my family,

hope for the Kyiv mother. Mothers.

Hope is what I, you, she

cling to when good is being bombed.

 

 

Margaret Rozga’s fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press, 2021). As 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, she co-edited the anthology Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems (Art Night Books, 2020) and the chapbook anthology On the Front Lines / Behind the Lines (pitymilkpress, 2021). Twitter: WIPoet @RozgaMargaret