COMFORT FOOD

by Daniel Romo

Today I finally noticed the furniture store 

on the corner has been going out of business 

for three years according to their chipped

 

window paint advertising consequential 

rock-bottom prices, and forgive me, Father, 

but the Christian radio station that keeps 

 

asking for money to stay on the air keeps 

claiming to just fall short of their need 

while staying on the air asking for money. 

 

Noah spent seventy-five years building 

the ark and I applaud the persistence of 

obedience and woodwork, but how do 

 

you determine the caloric intake between 

feeding and milking, grace and gluttony? 

And today the president ordered all U.S.

 

flags to be flown at half-mast due to the 

assassination of the political influencer, 

but he seems to like the way they always 

 

wave like taunting after each school 

shooting. Tonight ended with a movie for 

me as I burrowed my hand into the tub of 

 

popcorn because the top is always too buttery, 

and it’s like that sometimes—we show how 

much we’re willing to dig to uncover what 

 

satisfies us vs. settling for what we’re being 

fed as we forgo napkins and lick our fingers 

in satisfaction and defiance.

Daniel Romo's latest book is American Manscape (Moon Tide Press 2026). 

BEATRICE'S TURN

by Michelle DeRose

Beatrice (a Portrait of Jane Morris) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

If poets are the unacknowledged 

legislators of our world, then may

their list come out as a sonnet,

an epic, an elegy for their lost

childhoods. They have more cause

than Dante to assign names

to descending rings. Only in dreams

and nightmares have sinners paid,

limbs frozen in impotent angles

like bent wisps of straw, forced

to face forever through lids locked

on open how their flesh partook in fraud.

Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is Professor Emerita of English at Aquinas College, where she sometimes used her specialty in epic poetry in her teaching. Every new nation/kingdom/regime established in an epic is built upon or requires the destruction of another.

THE SAGA OF AN ABANDONED PUNJABI BRIDE

by Vivek Sharma

They Married for a Life Abroad. But They Never Saw Their Husbands Again. —The New York Times, June 14, 2023.

 

Thousands of brides in India are being abandoned by their British Indian husbands after they are married. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that Indian women are continuing to fall for British suitors. —BBC News, November 23, 2009.

In Candana, England, called Vilayat,
      My husband abides alone,
                   or with another,
he visits me sometimes in winter,
       some years, not at all,
                   and I live with his mother.

I am a middle-aged Punjabi dreamer,
      I practice English at home,
                tears smudge my notebook.
He promised me a visa and visits,
      but what if they were gambits
                 to freehire a family cook?

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne,                                       
         Mawan, dhiyan, khetran, gawan nu,                     
Undi raah kyun takdi aye,                                              
kyun aaun ge o tainu le jawan nu?                              

 

Those who have abandoned mothers,
         fields, daughters, villages, and gone,
Why do you wait for their return?
        Why would they take you along?

Occasionally, he calls from Vilayat,
       sweet-talker, whiskey breath,
                  I crave his love and sweat,
I rage, and he lends me an ear,
      tells me he hates it there,
                but says he hasn't made it yet,
I feel fallow, tell tales to my buffalo,
     she moos at my discontent
              and the choleric of my kith and kin,
prevents me from calling him a rogue,
     though he has left me to wither here,
             though he has left me alone.

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne…                                       
        Those who have abandoned us and gone…

Throughout Punjab, we are scattered,
        throughout Punjab, we are alone,
        why did you wed us?
        Why did you leave our home?
What good is the foreign penny,
       slavery of foreign tarts and pimps?
       Come back, o black-hearted,
       Come back to our sweet home.

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne,                                       
         Mawan, dhiyan, khetran, gawan nu,                     
Undi raah kyun takdi aye,                                              
kyun aaun ge o tainu le jawan nu?                               

Those who have abandoned mothers,
         fields, daughters, villages, and gone,
Why do you wait for them?
        Why would they return to take you along?

Your forefathers fought invaders,
       never quit, never let their land go,
kept heads high in proud turbans,
       never balked or gave their women woe.
“O Ranjheya, your banter: how do you translate it?
      Your Punjabi heart-to-heart: how do you communicate it?
Are you legally there? Are you really there?
      We are aging. We'll die. When will you ever make it?”

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne…        

                             Those who have abandoned us and gone…

But what can I say, had you stayed back,
       I would have urged you to leave,
when destiny calls with dollar bills,
       staying back for mud-dung is grief.
But I was wrong, marjaaniyan
      how I wish he were never gone,
I know he must be more miserable,
      at least I am in my home,

What pagli is this 'lady',
      lives in a world of make-belief,
if the bride was ever worthy,
     why would the groom ever leave,
But tell me what I must do,
     but tell me where I can go,
In this dust, I must live and die,
    maybe after death, reunite in a Canadian home.

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne...                                       

Those who have abandoned us and gone…

Vivek Sharma's first book of verse, Saga of a Crumpled Piece of Paper (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 2009), was shortlisted for Muse India Young Writer Award 2011. His work in English appears in Atlanta Review, Bateau, Poetry, The Cortland Review, and Muse India, among others while his Hindi articles and verses appear in Divya Himachal (Hindi newspaper, India), Himachal Mitra, and Argala. Vivek grew up in Himachal Pradesh (Himalayas, India), and moved to the United States in 2001. Vivek is a Pushcart-nominated poet, is published as a scientist, and he lives and teaches chemical engineering in Chicago.

THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HOUSE LAVATORY

by Peter Nohrnberg

Now gather round, and ye shall hear

A tale of epic daring

About a King who tweeted lots  

But wasn’t into sharing.   

 

Forsooth it was a vile Act

That drove him into battle:

“Preserve all Records” Congress bade;

But records are known to tattle. 

 

At first he simply tore them up

But a Northern Plot took shape.

Foul thanes restored his mangled foes,

mended with Scotch tape. 

 

A vision came to aid the King

—O I fear my rhyme shall spoil it!—

To gather up his papers dear 

And take them to the toilet.

 

Now he himself sat on a throne

Of 24 karat gold,

But in the White House was installed

A porcelain commode. 

 

Notes, memos, logs, and Post-its too

In basin he did pitch.

A smirk upon his face, quoth he:

“Toilets never snitch!”

                                   

He flushed it once, he flushed it twice,

He cursed the gods above!

And with his little stubby hands

He gave a forceful shove.

 

Who knows what knowledge then was lost?

A proof of Fermat’s theorem?

Evidence of Electoral Fraud?

A Covid-19 serum? 

 

What was wiped out I cannot tell:

Mum’s the Orange Mandarin.

Destruction worse than what befell

The Library Alexandrian! 

 

The doughty deed now done he left

The toilet overflowing.

He soared above the effluvia,

POTUS the All-Knowing.

 

And yet he did not know when he

Flushed it all down the crapper,

That squatting in the stall next door

Was CNN’s Jake Tapper! 

 

Out burst the newsman, overwhelmed

By fast approaching flood,

He saw the thickening of the tide

And sensed it was not mud!

 

“Who brought on this catastrophe,

Who took this massive dump?” 

The scales then fell from Jacob’s eyes:

It only could be T***p.

 

For clinging to the leather sole

Of the shoe of Squire Tapper:

A doodle of two giant boobs

On a McDonalds wrapper.

 

It was the flush heard round the world,

Except in Mar-a-Lago.

About his deed he’ll tell no tales

Just like good old Iago.    

 

‘Tis true, ‘tis true the Don is dumb,

But everyone else is dumber;

He even one-upped Tricky Dick

By being his own Plumber!

A scholar of literary modernism, cultural critic, and poet, Peter Nohrnberg’s poems and essays have appeared in Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, Oxford Poetry, and Public Seminar. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. His essay “Joyce, Irish Photography, and the Making and Publicizing of National, Familial, and Authorial Images" is forthcoming in Joyce Studies Annual 2021.

WINTRY MIX

by Tricia Knoll

As a forecast this seems like calling for mayhem

until the front moves in and the silence of snow

licks every branch and sticks to each twig’s gesture. 

 

The goldfinch and nuthatches retreat from the feeder

to unseen hideouts. The dogs yawn, and I succumb

to a sleepiness at odds with the morning news

 

of those who call for civil war, the skyrockets

of corona deaths, projections of costs in trust

and cash. The silence of falling snow deepens

 

inch by inch above the ice slick the rain gave 

first. Slow gather and the flurry of politicians

with papers and proof seeking. Such sad news

 

in accumulations inch by inch by inch. 

Tricia Knoll is living out the series of wintry mixes in Vermont where the forecast calls of windchills of -20 in the next few days. Her new chapbook Let's Hear It For The Horses is available February 1, and the horses outside down the road during the day  are all wearing heavy blankets now.

HEARTACHE FROM THE NUMBERS

by Ken Gosse

Cartoon by Pat Byrnes at Cagle.

They laudit, applaudit,

and so many boughtit—

the Big Lie the former guy nurtured—

they taughtit.

Eschewing all facts,

praising mutinous acts,

so many fools caughtit

and none of them foughtit,

the great pumpkin’s pie in the sky—

AZ Fraudit.

Ken Gosse generally writes light, rhyming verse. First published in First Literary Review-East in 2016, since then by Pure Slush, Spillwords, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years with rescue dogs and cats underfoot.

LINES

by Diane Vogel Ferri

People lined up in their cars at a food distribution site in San Antonio, Tex., in April 2020.Credit...Credit: William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News, via Associated Press and The New York Times.

My wall calendar helps me to visualize

my life, the plans I hold dear, the people

I must see so they also see me

At first the lines were through the

scribbling on my calendar,  an oddity,

disappointing at most—a temporary month

Sometimes there were two lines,

an X-ing out, a permanent loss

I catalogued the failures in my journal

Then the lines were of standing humans

waiting to vote, car-lines of hungry children

waiting for the food school had denied them

lines circling the parking lots for tests,

lines at the border, lines at the shelters,

lines at the unemployment office,

lines in the streets to confront the wizard 

behind the curtain, asking when we will be normal? 

But he was a fraud, a canceler of science, of truth

Freedom was not taken by a government

freedom was not taken at all, only

innocent lives, their coffins in orderly lines

The lines are now for a miracle,

for we who are left, whose lives have not

been crossed out, who are free to live.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her newest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Raven’s Perch, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Wend Poetry, Her Words, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel).

PARDON ME

by Michel Steven Krug

Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

We cross a bridge of shadows

when perjury is presumed forgiven

by a nation fighting for its lives,

this faintly boastful oligarch

who asked us to spritz Lysol like Binaca

to kill unwary opponents on contact.

 

He urges his confederates:

scatter the statistics, turn the numerals

Roman, so the national news reports the

toll like snowflakes in Viet Nam.

Say: the fraud is in the mail, in the

machines, then the rule of loyalty prevails.

 

The oval office birthed an infection

the careless insistence like shells on furlough

Flynn no longer in jeopardy.

He’s given a mask to take wherever it’s needed

the plague of Turkey behind him,

a reserved suite in Fort Mar-A Lago awaits.

 

Coerced truth is just a ploy,

Another plea for alchemy answered,

sent at the highest twitch:

the pardon has come, Papadopoulos,

the pardon is coming, Manafort,

resonance for an imperfect union.

 

We live in an era of broken pleas and oaths.

We cross a bridge of shadows tonight

While others debate a return to openness.

Who waits on the other side,

Reveals the bobbing

of a constitution on the margin.

 

Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. He also litigates. His poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Poetry24, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review, and others. 

RUNAWAY COVID AND THE HAVE NOTS

by Terese Coe

"Did Trump Say More COVID-19 Testing Makes the US Look Bad? The president has been accused of forgetting the people behind the coronavirus case numbers. True." —Snopes

With the poor, poc, and seniors dead,
the Dotard and Bojo are raking in bread.
Few testing sites means few revivals,
no masks or meds, then no survivals.

The people spoke, but they were clawed
by racist, ageist dotard frauds.
The people spoke, the people died.
Covid was oversimplified.

Did Vladimir think of everything
for the cliques of the turkeys à la king?
It’s hardly a story you’ll find is new:
more for the toffs and nothing for you.

Terese Coe's poems and translations appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, The Moth, New American Writing, New Scotland Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Threepenny Review, and the TLS, among others. Her collection Shot Silk was short-listed for the 2017 Poets Prize, and her poem "More" was heli-dropped across London for the 2012 Olympics Rain of Poems. Her most recent book is Why You Can’t Go Home Again, and her black comedy Harry Smith at the Chelsea Hotel was recently presented at Dixon Place, NY. 

HAVING BEEN CATTLE-HANDLED BY THE MEDIA AND MY OWN PARTY

by S. Siegel

DonkeyHotey

 I'll cast my vote as though I am
 electing an Interim President. She will have four years to
 articulate and hopefully deliver a progressive agenda.
 In the process, congressional seats on both sides
 of the aisle will turn over, removing the last of the Tea
 Party dregs and moving the Democratic Party (or a new
 party) in this direction. Some public officials, including
 local D precinct leaders, will be indicted on election fraud
 and the primary system will shift toward something more
 coherent and democratic, something that resembles an
 ethical vision of America.



S. Siegel lives in Oregon. His most recent book is The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2016)

THE RALLY

by T R Poulson

Image source: Snopes.com

Crowded around the gleaming
convention center, protestors light flames
and collect bottles, in piles

as the candidate inside talks and shouts
about how much he loves coal mines
and beauty salons, the people of New Mexico

and dollars donated to tall towers.
Outside, the haze forms leering ghosts
as the protestors sway and swarm.

The mounted police appear, helpless
against the storm, and then the renegades,
passionate as the politician they hate,

single out one of the horses, a dark bay
with an upside down white heart
beneath his forelock.  Later, we learn

his name is Stryker.  I once bought
a horse, from a woman who’d rescued him
from the track and tried to love him,

but when her husband found her
wrapped in his best friend’s arms
he took revenge, every night

by flinging rocks at her thoroughbred.
At least this is the story I heard
and believed, because when I bent down

to pick up a dropped brush or carrot,
he would tremble like cornered prey.
So, when I heard about Stryker,

and the mob of haters, snarling
like lions, who reached out to take
bottles and rocks to hurl, hard as fists,

at at him until he fell down,
his cannon broken as a politician’s
promise, the vet finally able

to penetrate the sea of humans
and prick his damp, dark neck
with that final, merciful injection,

I wanted to punch those protestors
in the face.  Except, that Stryker’s leg
was never broken, he wasn’t euthanized,
and nobody knows why he fell.

via Snopes.com

T R Poulson lives in East Palo Alto, California, and takes writing courses through Stanford’s continuing studies program.  She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Reno.  Her work has appeared in Verdad, The Raintown Review, The Meadow, Trajectory, and Alehouse.

FACT CHECK

by Dorothy Baird

generosity suffocates
under the weight of incivility
the tongue bludgeons
with fudged facts and loud voice
slips like reality from smiling lips
snippets of sound bites
recast a person’s words
gives the crow’s croak
to the nightingale
the cloak of honesty
does not conceal intent
nor does it disguise
the will to mislead
fraudulent films damage
before they’re found out
editorials emerge as rants
headline news stories
turn print yellow
truth sacrificed
to emotions unrestrained


Dorothy Baird has taught writing and literature in both high school and college. After frequent relocations took her family zig-zagging across this country, she considers herself a corporate tramp. Now happily settled in Chapel Hill, NC, she is busy with poetry.

HIDING IN A HOODIE

by Howard Winn

Hiding in a hoodie
like some small-time drug
dealer the Big Pharmy CEO
is marched to his booking
between two large deputies
as he proclaims his innocence
of the Ponzi scam he used
while running his nearly
bankrupt hedge fund with
no auditor and not much
cash left in the bank as
he funneled dough from his
company on the edge of
going under to hide his
duplicitous inability to
find the right investments
for his fund even with
illegal Insider info it seems
from the evidence noted
that this most eligible bachelor
of the year is perhaps the
phony loser of the year
and the major drug dealer
of our double-dealing time


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), Galway Review (Ireland), Antigonish Review. He has been recommended for the Pushcart Poetry Award three times.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University   His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

TITUM ARUM

by Joan Colby



  The "corpse flower" at the Chicago Botanic Garden was manually opened Sunday morning after it failed to bloom, but the flower did not emit its trademark odor as expected. —NBC Chicago, August 31, 2015


At the Botanic Garden,
The corpse flower was getting ready
To bloom—a once in a lifetime affair.
Fifteen feet high, its vast hulk bulged
Ready to release the stench
That dung beetles adore,
That maggots desire.
But at the seminal moment
Spike decided it could not
Compete in a state rotten
With the stink of politicians:
Four of the last seven governors
Did time—fraud, bribery,
Racketeering, corruption.
The putrid fly leaves in the book
Of their chicaneries
Overwhelm any official flower.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

HORSE MEAT LESSON

by B.Z. Niditch

Meat industry under scrutiny as horsemeat scandal spreads --CNN, London, February 15, 2013
Image source: Cream Bmp Daily

Ordering for four
at our table
but unfortunately
for our sandwich
there is no label
now smothered
in ketchup
and pickles beside,
one does not want
to be snide or rude
but why does the food
taste funny
when we asked
for our money back,
and what stealth
is involved
for the meat rack.

Here's to your
good health,
no great deal
that buys
what they advertise,
we expected no trick
like-wise, scandal
stealth or treat,
for it's no hearty meal
that makes their wealth
only a steal,
as we learn a lesson
while we eat,
it was not hamburger
but horse meat!


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Kadmos (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.