DROP THE MIC

by Steven Kent

 

 

 

"U.S. defense spending would rise $445B under Trump budget plan, with steep cuts elsewhere." —The Guardian, April 3, 2026

A budget written by a nutter
Favors guns instead of butter.
Starve the people, stoke the power?
No, said Mr. Eisenhower.

 

 

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books. 

THE LOWEST CUT

by Darcy Grabenstein

Most folks mispronounce Wilkes-Barre, PA.
While the town is actually pronounced like “berry”
it now is living up to its butchered version: “bar” 
(the Diamond City ain’t shining so bright right now…)

That’s because Luzerne County has barred
Low Cut Connie from performing at the town’s 
Rockin’ the River event for “political” reasons (wink, wink)

Methinks it’s due to his song, “Livin in the USA.”
It’s about deportations, making people disappear
and now Luzerne County has made him disappear (their loss)

The irony is that the band was banned, replaced
by Halfway to Hell, whose leader was convicted
of raping a teenager (sound familiar?)

The irony continues.
At Low Cut Connie concerts, frontman Adam Weiner
waxes poetic about love and diversity (oops, strike that word)

I’ll admit that cutting Low Cut Connie can’t be equated
with cutting Medicaid, free school lunches, and other “woke” programs
Yet it still cuts me to the core. (I am gutted)

We certainly are halfway to hell.

A marketing writer by profession, Darcy Grabenstein turns to poetry as a creative and cathartic outlet. The theme of social (in)justice runs through many of her poems, and she longs for the day where her page will finally be blank.

SHORT DIVISION

by Diana Morley

Must cut says the prez-elect

in one of his cozy countless buildings

 

slipping in partners in crime

all the slime that’s fit to fill the void

the bigger the fire the better, he says,

to raise foes’ arm hair along with their hackles

to bring the thrill of campfire tales

all love to chill by, hoping they’re not real.

The public mass, like plants and wildlife,

work daily, yearly, season by season

knowing dawn’s the time to rise 

for the sun to warm, to turn us all toward others—

by nightfall there’s still the rent to pay

and a plugged-in quilt at bedtime

a kitchen cold as an unplayed banjo.

Diana Morley publishes poetry online and in journals. She published Spreading Like Water (2019), a chapbook; Splashing (2020), a poetry collection; and Oregon’s Almeda Fire: From loss to renewal (2021), a documentary of photos and poems.

A MOUNTAINEER CAN BE A POET AND STILL FIRE A MUSKET

by Kim Malinowski

Hundreds of West Virginia University students wearing red T-shirts and bandanas to symbolize their connection to striking coal miners a century ago staged protests Monday against an administration proposal to cut 9% of majors amid a $45 million budget shortfall. —AP, August 22, 2023

I write WVU into the stars, blue and gold constellations,

my pen shimmering faculty names, even as the administration’s slash

tenure positions, promises, dreams.

I learned that my pen is a magic wand here. 

It has not been so long ago that even mountaineers could be poets

and still shoot muskets and pretend that they had a home.

I met a freshman today that I will paint as glinting diamond,

fourth day confusion, standing on the side with professors,

telling me he is the transition and the PRTs still don’t work.

But he doesn’t cower, ready to swing full into engineering and life.

My mentors are battle hardened past the traditional 10 on the Mohs scale,

fighting, worrying, fighting more. Not able to tell their stories.

I told the university’s president that I could write WVU into the skies,

either as diamonds or as coal, because each are rocks 

on their way to becoming another rock. That freshman, those faculty

can fight and worry and fight.

I can write the stories they are not allowed to.

But we have a choice if we want the story to be about diamonds or coal.

Kim Malinowski is a poet and a mountaineer. She will have six books by the end of 2024 and credits much of her success to her instructors at West Virginia University. She wore red at the August 21, 2023 Protest, lives five hours away, and fights for those that fought for her.

NOW THAT MACKY'S BACK IN TOWN

by George Salamon

"Paul Ryan wins near-party-line showdown on Health Care.”

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 4, 2017

Mack the Knife

Has found new life

As cuttin' Paul Ryan.

Obamacare must burn in hell

So insurance companies do well.

The people? Who cares if they survive

As long as the wealthy continue to thrive.

Democracy has been sold for its market price

As the necessary national sacrifice.

George Salamon is in reasonably good health for a curmudgeonly senior citizen.

BASTARD GHAZAL FOR THE DEATH OF SNAP

by Lauren Schmidt

Photo by James Mollison, via NPR,  from his book Where Children Sleep: Portraits From Around The World. Alyssa, an only child, lives with her parents in Kentucky, in Appalachia — a beautiful, mountainous region that is also one of the poorest parts of America. Their small, shabby house, heated only by a wooden stove, is falling apart. Alyssa's grandmother, uncle and orphaned cousin live close by.

At the start of [November 2013], low income recipients of SNAP throughout the country experienced a reduction in their SNAP benefits due to the expiration of a temporary increase provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to help families through a difficult economic period. A family of four saw their SNAP benefits fall by $36 a month, or 5 percent, as a result of this change. All SNAP recipients were affected, including nearly 22 million children (10 million of whom live in “deep poverty,” with family incomes below half of the poverty line) and 9 million people who are elderly or have a disability. Additionally, nearly 900,000 veterans and 5,000 active duty service members experienced benefit reductions, according to estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities. --- White House Report, November 2013

Without the Recovery Act’s boost, SNAP benefits will average less than $1.40 per person per meal in 2014.”
                                                —Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 2, 2013


The sound a whip makes on the hide of a steed—SNAP!—
to keep the needy in need, enough to believe: SNAP.

They just changed the name, “Food Stamps” to “Assistance.”
An Act renamed to stay the same. The “reconceived” SNAP.

Not Recover as in restore, but cover again.
Not Act as in action, but as in make-believe: SNAP.

To remove all the shame, the stigma of need.
To say no blood in bleeding when skin has been cleaved: SNAP.

Instead of stamps, plastic cards, what the public sees,
but separate bundles at the checkout, the public is peeved: SNAP.

Because EBTs don’t cover diapers or cleaners,
or soaps or toilet paper or Christmas Eve: SNAP.

In 2014, only $1.40 per mouth per meal.
A heavy burden for young mothers to heave: SNAP.

This is a poet’s plea to Senator Reid.
Benefits will bleed.  It’s time we all grieve the SNAP.


Lauren Schmidt is the author of three collections of poetry: Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing; The Voodoo Doll Parade, selected for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; and Psalms of The Dining Room, a sequence of poems about her volunteer experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, Nimrod, Fifth Wednesday Journal, New York Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Review and The Progressive.  Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, and the Bellevue Literary Review’s Vilcek Prize for Poetry. Schmidt is an Instructor of Development Reading and Writing at Passaic County Community College and she volunteer teaches creative writing at a transitional house for homeless mothers.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

by Llyn Clague





Friends, Americans, countrymen, hear me out.
I come to praise Christie, not criticize him.
The good that men do lives on after them,
While their mistakes typically die with them.
He is an honorable man, who has at heart
The welfare of the people.  His critics cry,       
He has ambition.  But did he not embrace
Even Obama, prince of the other party,
After Sandy?  Ambition should be made
Of sterner stuff.  Did he not excoriate –
Excoriate, I tell you – John Boehner,
Leader of his own party?  This is not
A man who puts his own ambition Ahead
Of the people’s weal.  His enemies complain
He’s costing the state $24 million
For two special elections to fill Lautenberg’s
Senate seat.  To save the people’s money,
Did he not cut pensions and health benefits,
Slash $8 million in college tuition subsidies,
$10 million in after-school programs
And $12 million more in charity care?
Would a man of overweening ambition so flaunt           
The common people’s needs?  Just to “win big”
In his own re-election and impress the fat cats             
Who dominate presidential politics?
Chris Christie, my friends, has the people’s good
At heart, and he is an honorable man.


Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, Ibbetson Street.  His sixth book, The I in India and US, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.