TO GATSBY

by Devon Balwit

USA Today Instagram graphic, November 3, 2025

A hundred years since Fitzgerald gave us The Great Gatsby,

a man we first meet reaching into the dark.

At first, he seems sad, then sinister, then sad again.

Some people have it so easy, old sport,

he marvels in his practiced accent. We know. We can see 

their ballrooms scintillating, distant and unreachable. 

We gather at their property line and try to make sense of their hilarity.

The vast eyes of advertisements—crypto, AI, online gambling—

stand in for God’s: No matter how hard we work 

the lever, the payout goes to the next guy, to someone 

someone’s only heard about. You need cash to sleep 

with another man’s wife. Spoiler: The book ends 

with a bang—a car crash, Gatsby’s murder, a suicide.

Sycophants queued up for his parties. None came to his funeral.

When not making art, Devon Balwit walks in all weather and edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.

TUPPERWARE GOES BANKRUPT

by Jan Chronister

Tupperware Brands, whose name became synonymous with plastic food containers in kitchens across America, filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday after struggling for years with declining sales and increasing competition. —The New York Times, September 18, 2024

I was a Tupperware Lady,

stepped down in ’86,

turned in my company car

after years of demonstrating

how to burp a seal,

handing out tiny keychain bowls

to guests who brought a friend. 

I worked mostly at night,

came home to sleeping children.

During the day my kids played

in giant cardboard boxes

once full of wares

that I bagged up and delivered

to the women who helped me

make a living. 

One year I sold

$30,000 worth of the stuff.

It kept us in groceries,

paid the bills.

Now I have a drawer

full of incompatible

bottoms and tops

from a company no one

wants to support.

Plastic is out, parties take

too much time.

Women have better

things to do.

Jan Chronister splits her year between the far North and South. She gardens and writes poetry in both places. Her most recent book is Duluth: Zenith City & Beyond (Poetry Harbor).

BEFORE THE FIRE

by Marc Swan

"You say you want a revolution... " —John Lennon

Thoughts turn to the Founding Fathers—

an oxymoron perhaps. I envision 

them around the hearth,

wooden tankards, pewter mugs in hand 

contemplating the future of this new land. 

Did they foresee manifest destiny—

a two-coast country, 

French and English speaking to the north, 

Spanish speaking to the south, 

expanse of prairie, native beasts hunted 

down, more importantly 

Indigenous peoples decimated 

in the name of a united states? 

What of states, 

offshoots of a federal land grab—

thirteen to start then the quest began. 

In framing that constitution written 

so long ago— 

a two-party system 

now stuttered and stalled,

amendments sporadic, difficult 

to achieve, did they envision

blue states on edge, thick-bellied

red center, chaos, political turmoil, 

climate wracked by indifference.

Settled in front of my hearth,

feet resting on the ottoman,

thoughts turn to 2022—

rivers rise, forests burn,

a black sky holds the night.

Marc Swan’s fifth collection, all it would take, was published in 2020 by tall-lighthouse (UK). Poems forthcoming in Chiron Review, Gargoyle, Steam Ticket, Coal City Review, among others. He lives in coastal Maine with his wife Dd, a maker and yoga teacher.