WE’RE RIGHT, BEHIND YOU

by Steven Kent

"Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani's supposedly radical policies as 'normal'" —The Guardian, November 6, 2025

It's Communist, beyond the pale

Of all our freedom-loving norms,

To look at European forms

So goshdarned guaranteed to fail.

Free healthcare? Transport? Daycare, too?

We ain't about to spring for those,

Since everybody 'round here knows

They can't succeed--oh wait, they do?

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.

IT’S SUNRISE IN AMERICA

by Michelle DeRose

Click here to see video Bradley posted on X.

Federal agents detained an immigrant woman with a pending asylum case and a work permit inside [Rayito de Sol] a Chicago children’s day care on Wednesday morning, local officials said. —Newsweek, November 5, 2025

The men are large, clad all-black,

balaclavad like ninja costumes

four year-olds wore last week.

Stiff flinty edges vest their chests. 

They wield the only guns.

 

Two-on-one they seize the teacher,

batter-ram the door with her head.

Toddlers stare, she screams, parents 

shake. The sun barely up for the day,

care kidnapped, spirited away.

Michelle DeRose wants to return to writing poems about her recently departed cat and the spot on her dog's back. Too many images from her original home town, Chicago, block that these days.