JUDGEMENT

by Judy Salcewicz

Mariano Barbacid, who leads the Experimental Oncology Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), developed a treatment that has successfully and completely eradicated pancreatic tumours in mice, without any major side effects. The discovery was hailed as a potentially significant turning point in the fight against this disease. However, a segment of social media users mocked a birthmark on Barbacid's face and made numerous offensive and superficial comments, rather than recognizing the scientific achievement. —Money Control, January 31, 2026

Is it because we’re reading fewer books

that we forget not to judge them by their covers?

A disparagement, a quick dismissal

and we miss out on adventure, insight,

inspiration, knowledge, heroes to emulate,

and so many things that improve our lives.

Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease--

with a five-year survival rate is 13%

Dr. Mariano Barbacid,

a Spanish cancer scientist,

and his team found a triple-drug therapy

that eliminates pancreatic tumors in mice.

This remarkable discovery is cause for

celebration and hope that it will lead

to a human cure.

Instead of celebrating, many online disparagers,

focus instead on the Doctor’s birthmark.

Judy Salcewicz is a New Jersey poet and writer who believes in the power of words.

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

PROVE THAT YOU MATTER

by Paul Burgess 

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz defended President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” over criticism that millions of people could lose health coverage, saying those who would face new work requirements should “prove that you matter.”… Close to 11 million people would lose health insurance coverage if the House Republican tax bill passes in the Senate, mainly due to cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, according to analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. —The Hill, June 5, 2025

To prove how much you truly matter, folks,

You might attempt the art of sneaky sales 

And master phrases used to slyly coax

The world to buy a "cure" that always fails.

Perhaps you'll never get a cabinet post 

By selling useless pills on sketchy shows,

But every friendly ratings-chasing host 

Ensures your market value swiftly grows.

So, get to work and earn your Medicaid

By hawking tonics made from oil of snakes 

And pills containing rhino horns and jade

Or tiger kidney anti-aging shakes.

You've been so useless from your journey's start, 

But here's your chance to really do your part. 

Paul Burgess, an emerging poet, is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky 

that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and 

interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, 

The Ekphrastic Review, Pulsebeat, The New Verse News, Lighten Up Online, The Asses of 

Parnassus, and several other publications.

WHAT A HORROR MOVIE REALLY LOOKS LIKE

by Gil Hoy

Nightcafé graphic

I got up Wednesday and saw 

She won Vermont. 

Which led me to believe

There was still hope.

 

But then I saw she lost

Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas

California, Colorado, Massachusetts

And all of the rest

 

Which led me to believe 

He must be

A Master Hypnotist.

 

Which led me to believe 

Vermont is special. 

I love Vermont.

 

I thought about Massachusetts. 

 

Which led me to believe 

Maybe the one state that 

Voted for McGovern 

Had changed over the past 52 years.

 

Which led me to believe 

Maybe it was a good thing 

I moved to Arizona.

 

To get a better handle on things

In a swing state.

 

Which led me to believe 

Maybe I should be talking to as 

Many of his supporters as I can 

To try to understand

Where their brains have gone. 

To look for a cure

Before it’s too late.

 

Which led me to believe

That this kind of thing 

 

Has happened before 

In democracies and the results 

Weren’t pretty. Pretty horrific in fact. 

 

Torture, genocide, politicide. 

 

Which led me to believe 

November might be the most 

Important election in history. 

Do or die we might say.

 

Which led me to believe 

We ought to work like hell 

To protect what we have. 

 

Which led me to believe 

We ought to fight like hell 

‘Til the fight is done. 

 

Which led me to believe 

The good guys need 

To keep on believing.

 

 

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who studied fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio and at Boston University. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a semi-retired trial lawyer and a former four-term elected Brookline, MA Selectman. Hoy’s poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, Third Wednesday, The Galway Review, Right Hand Pointing, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review,   Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

LIZ THE TERRIBLE

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Liz Truss is Brits' prime minister du jour.

Inquiry's overrated in her book.

Zetetic minds were offered Liz's cure—

The Trussonomic leap before you look.

How Kwasi's top-rate tax cut tanked the pound

Escaped her, since she didn't do the sums

That would have shown her growth plan was unsound—

Except for Liz The Terrible's rich chums.

Research on trickle-down had long debunked

R. Reagan's fantasy. Though not for Liz.

In Economics One-Oh-One, she flunked,

Believing if you just say growth, growth is...

Liz did not last: her hare-brained stratagem

Exemplified how not to be PM!

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

AN ODE TO SILPHION

by Maryanne Hannan

This miracle plant was eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago—or was it? Silphion cured diseases and made food tasty, but Emperor Nero allegedly consumed the last stalk. Now, a Turkish researcher thinks he’s found a botanical survivor. Photo: Professor Mahmut Miski cups a handful of flowering Ferula drudeana near Mount Hasan in central Turkey. The scholar of plant medicine believes the species is silphion. —National Geographic, September 23, 2022

Oh you slice of yesteryear 

Stalk of ferula drudeana

Last seen dribbling down

Nero’s chin, he of Roman

Emperor fame, wildly

Pursuing immortality 

To enhance his lifetime

Omnipotence appointment.

Now a thousand miles away

And two thousand years later,

You sway alone and majestic

In a field, high above your

Gnarly root, insects feasting

On your pearly sap.

And loving it, they say.

Could it be you, and if so,

Where have you been 

All this time? When we too

Needed your balm, the way

You cure baldness, epilepsy,

Maybe even cancer. When

We too needed to season

Our lentils, our fish sauce.

Look deep, to the earth, 

You say, the hidden fields, 

To the dirt, the goats, 

The lowliest. 

What was lost, now found?

More like, you say 

What’s old is ever new-ing.

A retired Latin teacher, Maryanne Hannan lives in upstate New York and has been writing poetry and watching the world evolve for many decades. 

ALOPECIA

by Annie Cowell

My friend’s hair fell out.

Head, brows, lashes, body; every single hair.

One day she was lustrous, the next day naked. 

No explanation and no cure. Of course 

she will not die; there are 

far worse things to endure.

But for a while she could not face her world.

The daily chores, so simple and routine

became an endless round of hows and whys,

of sympathetic nods or stifled smiles.

And she felt lost, stripped bare;

her confidence destroyed.

And so she had her brows tattooed,

glued on false eyelashes,

bought wigs in different styles.

Found ways she could disguise the 

bald and brutal fact that

she would never feel, or look the same again.

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

RISKY

by Colette Tennant

People walk past a crater from the explosion in Mira Avenue (Avenue of Peace) in Mariupol on March 13. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP via The Washington Post, March 15, 2022)

streets filled with rubble,

a bombed maternity hospital, pregnant women

bloodied, lying on gurneys in a swirl of confusion,

Sasha, a baby goat with broken front legs,

trying to nurse a vet tech’s ear.

Her owner promised she’d return for her

because she loves her.

 

We watch the news from Ukraine –

refugees bundled against late-winter cold,

In between these stories, news channels

run commercials for various cures –

Nucala for severe asthma sounds great,

but it might cause shingles.

Trelegy treats COPD yet increases

the risk of thrush, pneumonia

and osteoporosis.

Farxiga, for chronic  kidney disease,

could lead to dehydration, fainting, weakness,

genital redness and swelling, and hypoglycemia. 

 

It’s a tricky balance,

the cure and its reaction, so

military experts sit with newscasters,

their hands folded on the studio table.

They discuss various scenarios

for how to help Ukraine, each one

peppered with what ifs.

One possible cure – establish a no-fly zone

unless Putin reacts with chemical weapons.

Supply warplanes to the Ukrainians,

order an airstrike on that 40-mile-long convoy,

but any of those moves might start World War III.

It’s a terrible quandary,

this war we watch between commercials –

trying to find a remedy for this devastation,

knowing the reaction may be awful.

 

Colette Tennant is an English professor living in Salem, Oregon. She has two books of poetry: Commotion of Wings, published by Main Street Rag, and Eden and After, published by Tebot Bach. Her most recent book, Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide, was published in September, 2019 to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in various journals, including Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Ireland Review, and Southern Poetry Review.

HAIR AND THE HEALTH OF THE WORLD

by Kit Zak

the doctor clips
a few strands of my hair—
the adrenal fatigue test

I think about all that stresses
my gray head
            (not so many now that my children are fledged)
it’s their turn. Still

thoughts of hair seize my brain
            (not just the mineral deficiencies the test might show)
but candidate Trump’s coif
floating over his head
like a gold hairball
            (WHO has hair like that?)
Or like his devil-

interlocutor, Megan,
her honey tresses and
the talented stylists who make hair
their calling (card) and fortune.

Oh style
and the making of a President
while really
it’s Boeing and Lockheed Martin
dictating our future

such a  three-ringer
(circus): the Hawks’ war path
and the Republican guardians for coal plants

I stress
over the rising tides in coastal cities and
the killer storms (my kids in Norfolk and Miami)

American politics: it’s just entertainment and imagine
what the Europeans must think of our clowns

I await test results
and wonder about the cure


Kit Zak lives in Lewes, DE. She’s an activist who has published in various journals and anthologies.