PATRIOT

 by A.M. Silvestri

“They could take out a city,” he said. “Let them take—Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” 

Graphic generated by AI; words generated by DJT.

There was a time

I knew what the word meant.

A flag on a porch.

A hand over the heart.

A uniform folded away

after the wearing was done.

Patriot.

It was not a threat.

It did not need to be shouted.

It did not belong

to one man.

Now the word comes dressed

in red hats and anger,

printed across shirts

beside the face of a politician,

as though love of country

required love of him.

And the flag follows.

From truck beds,

from rally stages,

from poles crowded

with the name of a man

above the name of a nation.

Until sometimes

I hesitate to raise mine.

Imagine that.

An American

made uncertain of his own flag

because someone else

has wrapped himself in it.

Then I heard a president say,

Let them take out Los Angeles.

Let them take out San Diego.

I heard those words

and looked at my flag.

Fifty stars.

Not red states.

Not blue states.

States.

Los Angeles is ours.

San Diego is ours.

Detroit is ours.

The small town.

The crowded city.

The farmhouse at the end of the road.

The apartment window

six floors above the street.

The people who agree with me

and the people who do not.

All of them.

Patriot.

I keep turning the word over,

trying to find the thing

I remember.

Not obedience.

Not a red hat.

Not loving a president

more than the country

he was elected to serve.

And not the accusation

hurled at anyone

who refuses to follow.

You do not get to tell me

that dissent is disloyalty.

You do not get to measure

my love of country

by my love of you.

Maybe patriotism

was never the shouting.

Maybe it was always

the quieter thing.

The hand over the heart.

The uniform folded away.

The flag on the porch

moving in the morning wind

with no man’s name beneath it.

There.

That is my flag too.

It belongs to the protester

as surely as the parade,

to the one who questions

as surely as the one who salutes,

to every American

unwilling to confuse

a man with a country.

Maybe the flag does not belong

to the loudest man

who wraps himself in it.

Maybe it belongs

to whoever refuses

to surrender a single star.

So I will keep flying mine.

Not because of him.

In spite of him.

Because he does not

get to have it.

Patriot.

A.M. Silvestri is a Michigan writer and retired professional firefighter whose poetry often draws upon nature, place, memory, public life, and the ordinary moments that reveal something larger. His current work includes ROOTED: A Year of Haiku.

IN GAZA, FLYING A KITE IS AN ACT OF WAR

by Claire Zoghb

With thanks to Murad and Mustafa at Wear The Peace for the beautiful T-shirt.  

Author’s note: On Monday, August 24, 2026, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared Palestinian children’s kite-flying “an act of war.” I couldn’t help but think of “If I Must Die” by Dr. Refaat Alareer, the prominent Gazan writer, poet, activist, and professor of English literature at the Islamic University in Gaza, who was targeted and assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on December 6, 2023. His poem was widely circulated after his killing and was translated into more than 250 languages.

Available at Wear the Peace

Claire Zoghb’s collections include Small House Breathing and the chapbooks Boundaries and Dispatches from Everest. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize and appear widely in print and online journals and anthologies. When not graphic designing, Claire may be found wandering among beach roses. 

WARNING

by Jacob Richards

Dangerous air today
they say,
as if i could hold my breath
or turn back the industrial revolution.

Dangerous air today.
Forests burn all around us
old growth turned sunlight 
into sugars
a strange alchemy
now turning sugars into 
a carbon haze
and air quality alerts.

Dangerous air today.
An “I-told-you-so moment”
if only I could catch my breath.
Ed Abbey laughing–
he tried to warn us–
that we were falling and not flying.

Our fears lulled by PR firms 
and impossibly cheap plastic baubles.
“Please put your seat and tray into the full and upright positions.” 
Falling not flying.
Dangerous air today.
Red flag warning,
no burns,
red-eyes
impossible heat.

Dangerous air today. 
Can’t see the mountains–
might as well live in Kansas–
a long nothing.
Without mountains
how can one tell which way is north?
The cardinal directions
are all mashed potatoes–
featureless like a cartoon heaven–
a special kind of hell.

Dangerous air today.
People breath it in
and hate–
as if
that will clear the skies.

Jacob Richards is a writer, editor, activist, and wilderness guide in Western Colorado.

WHO WANTS TO FIND AMELIA EARHART?

by Barbara Simmons

Since Amelia Earhart disappeared more than 85 years ago while attempting to fly around the world, people have been searching for her plane with hopes of solving the mystery behind her final flight. Now, an underwater exploration company says they may have found it about 15,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Deep Sea Vision says it captured a sonar image [above] of a plane that matches the dimensions of the Lockheed Electra aircraft Earhart was flying on July 2, 1937. —The Washington Post, January 31, 2024

We love the story, her setting off
to circle the globe, her route 
marked cleanly on the map, 
as is her disappearing point.  
 
We’ve loved the stories since, scenarios
not yielding happy endings, 
but ways to keep Amelia alive, perhaps
as prisoner, spy, or living out a secret life.
 
We’ve climbed with those aboard Itasca, 
signaling hope along with charts,
shedding tears enough to fill the oceans,
not knowing where she lay, nor why.
 
The sonar image we see now, sent from
a depth much deeper than full fathom five,
resembles what she flew, now resting
far below, scant hundred miles from where
 
she’d chosen to refuel.  And if this proves
to be the place her coral bones and pearl eyes rest,
her story has its ending.  We’re left with answers,
not with mystery. We miss the question
 
we maybe wish unanswered, embedded
forever as you’ve been, still flying,
seeking wide and open and free, beyond
a world of narrow, closed, and occupied.

Barbara Simmons, is a Boston-born Californian, a Wellesley College and The Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins) alumna, a retired educator. She savors life with words to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, and understand. Publications include Boston Accent, The NewVerse News,  DoubleSpeak, Soul-Lit, Capsule Stories, Journal of  Expressive Writing, and Writing it Real publications.  She was recognized with First Place in the last two annual San Jose Library Spring into Poetry contests, and has published a book of poetry, Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums (Friesen Press), 2022.

REPORTING IN FROM THE SKY

by Kristina England





Last night, I forced myself into slumber
as a nine alarm fire left my State in grief,
two Boston firemen perishing in the ashes.
Now, sky-based for five hours,
I click the internet icon on my phone
receive no connection.
Too cheap to pay for inflight service,
I know nothing of the ground,
of my family, my country,
only of what I see -
the periwinkle sky,
my unfinished seltzer,
aircrew maneuvering the aisle,
and my travel buddy, one Deb Fisher,
her head tilted to the right,
arms crossed,
the soft breath of sleep
moving her forward in time.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Gargoyle, The New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other magazines. Her first collection of short stories will be published in the 2014 Poet's Haven Author Series.

LOST AND WITHOUT A WALL

by Simon Perchik

Image source: Mirror (UK)

Lost and without a wall you are unsure
what stays dark, what will move
once a flashlight is waved in front

and the plane in the picture begins to flicker
taking hold one hand all these years
dead, smothered under the frame

half dry wood, half morning
and though there's no sky yet
you are flying again

wobbled by winds no one sees anymore
making room in the fleece-lined glove
that can't tell where your fingers are.


Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013).  For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website.