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). 

FLY IT AT HALF-MAST ALWAYS

by Rick Kempa

"The New Normal" by Pat Bagley

A few AP headlines, January 27, 2019:

Search on for Louisiana man suspected in 5 deaths

1 dead, 1 wounded after shooting near Atlantic City

Police: 5 people shot overnight at Indianapolis bar

Teen arrested in shooting death of another Blue Springs MO teen

MSU police: Woman shoots herself at campus shooting range

Reno police: Man killed when shot multiple times in vehicle

New Haven Police investigate shooting of pizza delivery man

Fly it at half-mast always
because we are never done grieving,
because, one by one by one,
we are killing each other daily.

Fly it at half-mast
to declare our permanent sorrow,
the holes in our hearts, the horror
that we are no longer horrified.

Fly it to mark the fallen,
yesterday’s, today’s, tomorrow’s,
ten thousand exes on the streets,
a million feet of crime scene tape.

Because we are willing to sacrifice
our neighbors, our children
to defend our right to own,
to be killing machines,

because we fall so short of what we
could be and refuse to be, because
our numbness is complicity,
fly it at half-mast always.

Poet and essayist Rick Kempa lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he has recently finished his thirtieth and final year of teaching at Western Wyoming College. Other work of his on the themes of social justice and the lack thereof has appeared in Haight-Ashbury Review, Los Angeles Review, Little Patuxent Review, The J Journal, and elsewhere. His latest poetry collection is Ten Thousand Voices (Oakland: Littoral Press). 

THE LOOP AT NEHALEM STATE PARK ON SUNDAY

by Tricia Knoll

Brandon J. Prescott (U.S. Army photo)

I had to get out of the shore wind.
I’d eaten so much of it this week.
I choose the woods loop, where hawks swirl,
overseeing the weekend wind-down,
families packing pots, kites, kids’ bikes.
Shivered mist chased out two days of sun
and tastes of rain tomorrow. One unattended
campfire smolders sugar smoke.

Running the bike trail, I notice
how huckleberries grow best
cuddling up to pines and song sparrow
melodies dip below the ocean undercurrent
lullaby to blue lupine and white
strawberry blooms. Grandparents recover
on log benches from childcare stints,
the low tide laying slime flats open,
a smell of old sea.

I stop at the park ranger’s shack
to chew the fat about the bald eagles
circling the bay. I report the fire
smoldering. He says he'll put it out.

The park flags lie limp inside the
tree buffer. I ask the ranger why
both the U.S. and the Oregon
fly at half-mast. An Oregon boy
died in Afghanistan. Silence
without a voice in the wind.

I head out the only way
to a soft path through dunes
turn north on hard-packed beach.
The stiff wind finds my back.
That lost boy follows me home.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who lives some of the time in Manzanita, Oregon on the windswept northern Oregon coast. Her poetry appears in local and regional poetry journals as well as haiku publications.

NEWTOWN EPITAPH

by Alan Catlin

A circle of flags
lowered to
half-mast;

someone has been
killing our
children.

Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose, the latest of which, from Pygmy Forest Press, is Alien Nation.