LEVERAGED BY BRAIN ROT

by Mark Danowsky

Following a public vote in which more than 37,000 people had their say, we’re pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 is ‘brain rot’… ‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”. —Oxford University Press, December 2, 2024

I remember the landscape 

before chatbots 

 

After all, it was

only two years ago 

 

My mind is a limited 

large language model 

 

I take in material

I share material

 

I forget if I took time

to synthesize the material 

 

My biases and missteps 

are not about extra fingers 

 

I fear The Paperclip Problem

less than I fear the race

 

This race has been trending 

towards the bottom 

 

We know major players 

but consider a dark horse 

 

It could all go sideways 

except for the 1%  

 

Meantime, we’re burning 

all available fuel 

 

The deafening buzz—endless 

noise on my mind

 

All I can talk about 

is what I consume 

 

While I remain aware 

I contain stories 

 

The storyteller in me

is trained by misdirection  

 

I mean the need to hold

irreconcilable truths 

 

While seeking the answer 

to some nebulous void within 

 

I know this brain rot

as a weak pulse 

 

I fear mediums 

and messages 

 

The troubling satisfaction 

of pulled attention 

My hacked mind 

knows susceptibility

 

Everything is content 

and I am a heavy user 

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of four poetry books. His fifth book, Take Care, is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press.

THE BISON, THE PASSENGER PIGEONS, THE FORESTS WARN THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

by Cecil Morris

They think these invaders cannot kill us all, will not,

if we stand together, shoulder to shoulder, in ranks

like sunflowers or stalks of corn, benign and unarmed.

They think these invaders will see we are good people.

We know better and would tell them but they don’t listen,

or, if they do listen, they do not comprehend

the languages of destruction, forget the beige

indifference of words and how they camouflage

a red intent. They forget, on both sides, the quiet way

surprise waits in them and their sad myopia.

Still we do try to tell them true. We send the breeze

of our ghost wings over them, the distant rumble

of our ghost hooves spooked across plain and steppe, the sound

of our falling, a whole forest of calamity

that echos around them and they don’t hear. We try.

We try to tell them: no boundaries in the hearts,

the minds of men, no lines limit devastation.

If they don’t want to end up like us, they must run.

Cecil Morris lives in Roseville, California, where he taught high school English for 37 years. In his retirement, he has turned his attention to writing what he once taught students to understand and (maybe) enjoy. He has poems appearing in Cobalt Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hiram Review, Hole in the Head Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poem, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines. He likes ice cream too much and cruciferous vegetables too little for his own good.

POISON PIXELS

by Jerome Betts

Dominic Cummings, sacked special adviser to Boris Johnson, has been releasing embarrassing WhatsApp

messages exchanged with his former employer. Cartoon by Howard McWilliam.

Internal emails, swift to write, 

Whose speed can spread more heat than light

And tempt a PM in too deep

With words the media used to bleep,

You cheer us when we note with glee. 

His post in peril from D.C.

 

O linen stained with dog-eat-doggery

Put on display in public bloggery,

May you prove fatal in the end

To both buffoon and faithless friend

So evermore we shall be free

Of  Tweedle B. and Tweedle D.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

LINES

by Bonnie Naradzay

Sculpture depicting a Great Depression breadline at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C.

This has been done before, standing in line for a long time.        
Think of Soviet women who queued for hours for bread.              
And I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression:        
men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines.                

Think of Soviet women who stood for hours for bread                
or Akhmatova outside the prison waiting for news of her son.    
Here, men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines.    
These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online.        

Akhmatova outside the prison waited with women for news        
and the chance to send a loaf of bread, or a note, inside.              
These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online.        
Still, Camus said the plague is within us, here to stay.                

I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression                
where hope envisions a loaf of bread, a note from inside.              
Camus wrote that the plague is within us, here to stay,                
as it has always done: waiting in line for a long time.      

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, EPOCH, the Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, and Ekphrastic Review and are slated to appear in Kenyon Review Online, AGNI, and others.  For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.