TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, I’M NOT SO SURE ABOUT THE VENT

by Eric Oak

A government handout photograph showed weapon remnants displayed on a table near the ruins of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, where a precision strike reportedly killed 175 people, mostly children, on Feb. 28. The remnants have been identified by The Times as components of a modern, U.S.-made Tomahawk missile. Credit...IRIB, via Telegram

It was not the Israelis, after all,

who triple tapped the school in Minab.

It was US, according to the Times—

our bombs 

that blasted babies into doll parts, 

scattered them among the concrete-

silica dust of their classrooms.

But it was always our bombs, really–

Arab Salim and Jabalia, Biden’s

red line to Rafah. Bombs with

our names on them. Cruz and 

Haley chickenhawked in Sharpie, 

mine and yours scratched san-serif 

onto the shells in bolder relief with 

each paycheck deposited.

I read the article about Minab 

during my planning period, and

it lingers with me now around

this crater-quiet classroom.

The kids are taking a test, but I 

don’t care whether they pass it. 

I just want to talk to them.

I just want to believe that it's 

not too late to talk, that it’s 

not too late to believe.

Something about the way the 

big vent grumbles when 

the air kicks on reminds me:

the surprise lockdown drill

has to be this week or next. 

They’re quiet, like now,

the drills at least. 

The kids are used to them.

Winder and Uvalde, Gaza and Minab.

Maybe bullets stop when bombs do.

I remember now why that vent rattles—  

I took out most the screws that hold

it to the wall, and a few more outside. 

The maintenance guy showed me how

to kick and climb our way out there

in case we ever need to flee, to run

outside, unafraid as we are of a 

brush smoke sky.

Eric Oak is the pseudonym of a teacher of social studies at a middle school near Chattanooga, TN. He sometimes asks people to read the things he writes so that they may exist.

EPSTEIN WAR

by KP Liles 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

It was always about the crude.

Extracting the dark

archives out 

from under us.

A few wealthy men 

plotting to own

everything, down

to the last

liquified remains 

they groom 

to burn. Virgin 

trillions naked

for the taking.

O Power! the Power!

Unrivaled deployment—

Military, ICE, beyond oversight…

Taste Venezuela: 

lest we forget

it’s a jungle out there. 

War

drugs, law, lust

regime change

Mexico, Cuba

Minneapolis

Iran

Portland, Greenland

Behold! A politics of scandal 

heaped on scandal heaped

on scandal heaped on

morals. On truth.

Still, the trafficked girls

will not be

silenced. Drill! 

If you have the stomach for it.

It was always 

about the crude.

KP Liles desires a better, safer world for his daughter. For his son, his family, his students, his community, his fellow decent human beings. So, while he would have preferred to have spent time indulging in his newfound enthusiasm for birding, he felt obligated to put on the poet uniform for this piece.

ENEMY WITHIN

by Raymond Nat Turner

“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable"   — George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

They are the bloodthirsty! Parasitic. Anti-freedom, fascist,

Pedophile, compromised ones. The grifting, gaslighting, big-

Lying ones. Way Back Machine, return to the ‘50s —1850s — ones.

The Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, billionaire “enemy within” ones.

They are the thirty pieces of silver ones, camouflaged in stars and

Stripes! Red, white, and blue-wrapped ones — wholly-owned —

Bought and bossed. The remote-controlled ones — rolling red carpet

On bent knee — servicing strongmen. They are: “The Enemy Within.”

They are the enemy within warring on the working-class! Reich-cult.

Sadist bullies dispatching platoons of masked goons! The worst of the

Worse! J6-confederate-felons, flooding factories, fields and streets —

Redacting 1st amendment — Erasing 4th, 13th, 14th, 15th freedoms …

They are chainsaw-brandishing bandits. Looting, uprooting, destroying things

That work! Thieves turning fruits of our labor into personal ATMs.  Waste,

Fraud and Abuse disguised as Department Of Grifter Enrichment — DOGE.

Rejecting 99 Cents Store solutions — like mirrors — for detecting themselves.

They are an ethno nationalist food truck serving poisonous menu of misery: 

School Shooting Du Jour! War Of The Week! Jobless, Homeless, Hungry 

Government Shutdown Gumbo. Medical Neglect Noodles. Post-Constitutional,

Police State Pork Fried ICE. Doom and gloom, dark, death and destruction desserts.

They are warfare state “Drill, baby, drill!” dinosaurs shaking down with teargas, 

Pepper-spray, rubber-bullet reign, places we live and love. Fox-box foot soldiers

Prancing like peacocks. Transforming our cities into ‘training grounds’ 

Instead of solar-paneled, windmill wonderlands running armadas of electric busses.

WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Robust resisters riding in on white horses 

Named Mutual Aid. United Front, Mass Movement Mamas and Papas. Department

Of Solidarity. Door-knocking neighbors, meeting more than four corners. WE are the 

Ones we’ve been waiting for! Street Heat Senators/Shoe Leather Legislators muscling 

Up movements! Robust resisters refusing to slip on elephant excrement-donkey dung — Bipartisan — billionaire bullshit!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

GENESIS 2025

by Michael Dorian

Source: Seattle Times

In the beginning

He pardoned all the seditionists.

Now the nation was barren and shapeless,

darkness was upon the land

and He said, “Let there be lies,”

and there were lies.

He saw the lies were good

and He separated the lies from the truth.

He called the lies “truth”

and He called the truth “lies.”

And there was evening 

and there was morning—

the first day

And He said, "Let me stop the wildfires

scorching the pretty landscaping

and those expensive houses. 

I know some people in L.A., some 

very wealthy, well-connected people."

And He released with almighty force

from his gullet a torrent of water pressure

the likes of which no man had beheld.

And the fires stopped burning.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the second day

And He said, "Let the illegal immigrants

in the land be returned whence they came."

So with a gust of His great breath

He swept them all up in a glorious gale

and blew back to homelands the vermin, 

scattered like so much feed.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the third day.

And He said, "Let me build a big beautiful wall

And He saw it was a good wall,

a great wall, better than China’s,

The Greatest Wall Of All Time

that anyone has ever seen anywhere

on Earth or any planet in our 

Solar System or even in all of Space,"

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fourth day.

And He said, "Let me stop the war in Ukraine."

And a great swathe of his carefully—

coiffed hair sent all the soldiers

toppling like toys back into their

respective sovereign countries

(with Russia gaining great areas

of formerly Ukrainian land)

and the bloodshed ceased 

like the last lilting notes 

of cherubs’ trumpeted fanfare.

And He saw this was good

(for Putin and Himself, anyway)

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fifth day.

And He said, "Let me drill, baby, drill!"

So with tremendous huffing and puffing

He had an angel, a female one, fluff

His manhood until it stood,

a tower of steel shining in the sun,

and He poked it in and pulled it out

with enduring virility

until he had poked 

many a holy hole 

deep into the Earth’s womb

and into 625 million acres

of preserved coastal seawaters

and the nation became richer with crude.

And the land and great numbers

of its people were crude.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the sixth day.

And on the 7th day

He played golf and he cheated.

Once upon a time, Michael Dorian had a collection of poems and a play in one act published by Silk City Press entitled "The Nektonic Facteur.”  He likes to think that when the going gets tough, the tough write poems. 

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL OF TEARS

by W. Barrett Munn

In four days, it will be November, 
and the expected temperature for today
here in Tulsa is 88 degrees Fahrenheit—
an obscene number so near Halloween.
The good news is we have no water to drink,
this I read on a sign 
held up by a thirsty lawn whose brown 
is this season’s fashion statement.

Drill, baby, drill says the untrained actor, 
the miscreant trying to get us to self-destruct.
Avoidance is a technique of psychological 
origins, a thrill for the adoring crowds
who no longer care how much damage
is done as long as they can hurt someone else
more—like a dentist without gas or Novocaine—
Drill, baby, drill. 

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature where he studied writing under Larry Callen. His adult poetry has appeared in The New Verse News a number of times, in print editions of Awakenings Review and Copperfield Review Quarterly, a printed edition of Sequoia Speaks, and online in Volney Road Review, Speckled Trout Review, Book of Matches, San Antonio Review, and many more. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

SOUND AND FURY FROM UVALDE

by Suzette Bishop

I hear it from a two hours’ drive north,

From just below the scenic Texas Hill Country,

The scream of first getting the news

Their loved one was gunned down

Merged into one long, piercing, repeating sound,

Before a storm barrels southward,

Hail starting up slowly,

Then shaking the cathedral ceiling,

Our windows,

Animals running for cover.

We’ve driven through the small town,

Stopped to get gas,

Know a couple people who went to the junior college

On barrel racing scholarships,

Heard the grandson of someone from work survived.

A heart-stopped moment in class once

With the popping sound down the hall,

Two students, a veteran and FBI agent, meeting my eyes,

The veteran immediately slamming the door shut.

He always sat next to the door,

One leg jiggling, ready to escape.

Do you know what to do if there’s a shooter?

The agent asked me, asked the class.

Everybody nodded. 

The lectern and desks our only hope

Of keeping that door closed since there is no lock,

And I’m not given the key,

I am forced to tell them.

That time, it was just some backfiring or mechanical sound,

And we got back to what we were supposed to be doing,

Our hearts re-starting,

Still, I see us rocking the lectern from its moorings,

Pulling up the tape covering the wires to the computer,

Pushing and dragging it to the door,

The wires sparking, desks piled around it,

Some of us smashing desks into windows.

In one scenario, we get this done before

The shooter appears at our classroom on the second floor,

In some scenarios, the students jump two stories down,

Breaking bones, cut by glass, but alive,

In another scenario, the shooter enters at our end of the building

And sprints up the stairs, bypassing the first floor;

The veteran, some of his classmates

Sitting near him, try to keep the shooter out

By leaning hard against the door, but can’t,

The agent pulls out his concealed gun and shoots most times.

In many scenarios, the lectern is too heavy,

Too stuck, to move,

The desks too flimsy and small,

Their tabletop hinges squeaking loudly,

Drawing attend, wasting precious time.

In a few scenarios, the shooter is one of my students,

Already in the classroom,

Like the one who lovingly wrote poems about his gun,

The one having a meltdown and yelling at me

During the final,

Another ranting so loudly, another instructor looked in on us,

The one writing about hurting a classmate,

The one who mailed me a threatening letter,

Whoever left a knife at the lectern.

With the sound of hail ringing like deadbolt locks,

I use the knife to cut the wires.

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks, including her most recent chapbook Jaguar’s Book of the Dead. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. In addition to teaching, she has given workshops for gifted children, senior citizens, writers on the US-Mexico border, at-risk youth, and for an afterschool arts program serving a rural Hispanic community. She lives with her husband and two cats.

A RUSTED SCREW

by Richard Matta

forgotten will be the steel

grip, the battering the head 

and threads took as it 

held fast to secure and preserve

as best it could under relentless 

stresses seen and silent

for a rusted screw won’t 

leave in peace—

it bleeds and stains without

regard, it’s red head strips

leaving stubborn shaft, requires 

special tools to drill it out

and that’s all we’ll remember

Richard Matta grew up in New York, attended the University of Notre Dame, and is now living in San Diego, California. His work is found in San Diego Poetry Annual, Dewdrop, Little Old Ladies (humor), and Healing Muse.