ANTHEM

by Thomas DeFreitas

America is Bible and battery acid, Krispy Kreme and Christian soldiers, MAGA hats and “good people on both sides.” Forced birth, illegal miscarriages, classrooms from which history is deleted, whitewashed. Here we lock up refugees and confiscate their rosaries only to throw them away. Here we threaten families who display the wrong yard-signs. Here we say the Lord's Prayer at the end of twelve-step meetings, “not allied with any sect.” Liberty’s arm is tired from holding up that torch for all these bloody years. A voice-over announces the death, by embarrassment, of The New Colossus.

America is Deliverance and Don’t Say Gay. Fireworks on the Esplanade, the cannonade of 1812. Senatorial thoughts, congressional prayers. Spare the machine-gun, spoil the child. Wives submitting to their husbands, who give them black-and-blue merit-badges for overcooking the lasagna. America: a hot flat ounce of cola in a patriotic can. Plastic and persimmon. Sassafras and sadism.
 
America welcomes you if you’re One Of Us.

Thomas DeFreitas was born in Boston in 1969. A graduate of the Boston Latin School, he attended the University of Massachusetts, both in Boston and in Amherst. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Plainsongs, Ibbetson Street, Pensive, and elsewhere. His latest collection is Walking Between the Raindrops (Kelsay Books, 2025).

THE BOARD SPEAKS TO AN ASSEMBLY OF FIFTH-GRADE GIRLS

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

Sunday school at a Baptist church in Kentucky, 1946 

The Board has determined that fifth grade,
which may be too late for some, is the most
optimal time to inform girls that post-birth
females are not fully autonomous human 
beings. No adverse circumstances or plans
or dreams or medical emergencies trump 
your legal and moral responsibility to give 
birth should any male, whether by force or 
consent, plant his seed in the fertile ground 
of a uterus that becomes, immediately upon
conception, the sole property of The State. 
The Board, comprised of five men and two 
wholly compliant women, strives to remain 
sympathetic to how hard it must be for you 
to accept this news, having been so revered 
before birth and deceived into believing you 
have the same rights and post-delivery value 
as boys and men. Let us assure you today, 
that you do not. Indeed, should you become 
pregnant and experience a life-threatening 
situation, the continuation of a fetal heart-
beat is all that matters. Furthermore, there 
are many government agencies dedicated to 
ensuring that, under penalty of death or life 
in prison for all involved, no pregnancy is
unlawfully terminated. No questions? Then 
you are, as will often be the case, dismissed.

 
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of an International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA,Poet’s Market, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Third Wednesday, and many more. Other awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award.