AMERICA 253

by Scott McConnaha

 

 

I turned eight the summer of 1976

and everything seemed to swell

with bicentennial pride.

Even the cement trucks were painted

red, white, and blue and we waved

our flags at the fire engines

and high school band as they

paraded down a crowded Mission Avenue

buzzing with proud cheers and

Tootsie Rolls thrown at our feet.

It belonged to everyone, that time.

 

Today, there are some storefront windows

painted with America 250 and the light poles

down Main Street have banners with that logo,

but it's different these 50 years later.

Perhaps I've become too gun-shy, too cynical,

too resentful that these patriotic displays

have been hoarded and redefined

and now stand for all the wrong ideas

about what this country is and ought to be.

 

I looked online but haven't yet found anyone

selling America 253 shirts. I think it's a good idea

because most of us want to celebrate a different,

truer version of what this country is

and ought to be. But we know it’s going to take

a few more years to build a ballroom 

that will accommodate all of us.

Scott McConnaha is a veteran, former teacher, editor, and healthcare administrator. He and his wife live in Plymouth, Wis. He is the author of a poetry chapbook titled Without a Prayer, and his work has appeared in Mobius, America, Door is a Jar, New Verse News, Dissident Voice, and Moss Piglet, among other publications.

I, SYCOPHANT

by Pepper Trail

Cartoon by JD Crowe

You ask “How can you?”

You ask “Have you no pride?”

 

That just shows your ignorance, and you don’t even know it.

The first rule, of course, is never to ask a question.

 

The name and face of Our President deserves to be on every government building and document.

 

A Mixed Martial Arts cage fight on the White House lawn is a beautiful celebration of America.

 

A gilded triumphal arch is the perfect expression of our nation’s democratic ideals.

 

President Trump is the greatest peacemaker this nation has ever known.

 

There are those, maybe, who say these things but don’t believe them.

They are beneath contempt.

 

I do believe. Every day, more.  

Every day, I forget more that embarassment, my former self.

 

I was never the best.

Now, in His eyes, I am.  Or, I can be.

 

No one but President Trump could have saved us from the invasion of immigrant rapists.

                                                                                             from transgender girls playing sports.

                                                                            from electric cars.

                                                                         from Iran.

 

The perfection we see everywhere around us is all due to You and your wise leadership.

Everything I say is just a way of saying, God bless you, Mr. President.

Without You, I am only what I was before.  

Nothing.

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

EQUITY AND TOLERANCE

FOR STONEWALL

by Roberta Batorsky

 

 

Three days after the Trump administration removed a Rainbow Flag from the Stonewall National Monument, defiant activists hoisted the Rainbow Flag once again in front of a jam-packed crowd of fed-up LGBTQ community members who flooded the area surrounding Christopher Park.  Photo by Donna Aceto. —Gay City News, February 12, 2026

Bury the flag of empathy,
it no longer belongs here.
Turn its rainbow black—
disavow the pride it gave
commemorating AIDS victims,
lives lost as in a war.
and it was a war, unended, unwon.
 
Pull the emblem of suffering
of men, women and children,
renew the prejudice that killed
Oscar*, Alan** and others,
deliver it with its own symbol
of derision and weakness.
 
It wasn’t Ellen D***. that convinced us,
Matt Shepard’s death didn’t convince us:
something fundamentally changed then.
Now bathroom jokes, lewdness, shame,
insinuation, guilt and closeting
all shift to the front burner.
 
Bury the flag of concern for people
deep in the heart of the heart of this country.
 
See us now, re-emerging, colors blazing,
in freedom’s garb,
to shake off erasure,
proclaiming our unity:
Our city, our flag.
 
 
*Oscar Wilde
** Alan Turing
*** Ellen Degeneres

 

 

Roberta Batorsky, a New Jersey poet, has published this month her first book of poetry, Perihelion.

FEEL FREE

by Nick Allison

Nick Anderson cartoon

To don a bright mask for the faithful to see
To placate the flock and pretend to believe
To drag the dead weight of unbroken chains
To laugh until laughter devours the pain

To plant the old flags and ring the new bells
To raise up the prices and see what still sells
To imagine that freedom is only a jest
To swallow your pride till it rots in your chest

To close all the windows and fasten the doors
To bury your secrets beneath the sea floor
To climb golden stairs till you stand at the top
To fall with the world when at last it all stops

To bolster your ego with glory and praise
To purchase a past with the fortune you’ve raised
To summon the fire and melt back the ice
To never look once at their sacrifice

To turn up the volume and smother the cries
To vanish in shadows and cover your eyes
To cut out your tongue to spite your own face
To put profit above the whole human race

To pull out your hair and to tear at the walls
To pave over gardens and silence the calls
To load up the cannons, the weapons of war
To never once ask who the cages are for

To dream of the faces you’ve lost all at once
To wake with their shadows and feel their cold touch
To walk through the mirror and linger a while
To shine your dark shoes and lie with a smile

To pin every failure on somebody else
To go to your grave deceiving yourself
To polish a crown and call yourself king
To scream for the stillness your riches won’t bring

To weep late at night in a bed all alone
Your palace of pleasure turned prison of stone
Surrounded by ghosts who won’t let you be
You’ll ask yourself why 
you still don’t feel free

Nick Allison is a former Army infantryman, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. “While the Elk Were Moving” is adapted from the introduction to that collection. More of his work can be found at TheTruthAboutTigers.com and @nickallison80.bsky.social.

DEMAGOGUERY FOR DUMMIES: LYING WITH IMPUNITY

by Paul Burgess

President Trump’s shifting positions and outright lies have presented the American public with dueling narratives at every turn. —The New York Times, March 8, 2025

When caught in bold, apparent lies,
Just look accusers in the eyes
And flash a grave, offended frown
While digging in to double down. 
 
When people say they've gotten proof,
Declare their sources stand aloof 
From all that's decent, true, or fair 
And freeze them with an icy stare.
 
Then take their claims and throw them back
And wear them out with your attack.
Their armor takes no time to rend.
They came to charge and not defend.
 
Insist they envy all your fame
And labor hard to smear your name.
To get the mob to take your side,
Appeal to people's sense of pride.
 
Convince them that their brains are wired
To see the way your foes conspired
And other folks are not as smart
Or simply play the villain's part.
 
What's true will shortly be defined 
In only ways you have in mind.
Their truth's not worth a bag of beans
Because you'll change what “honest” means.

Paul Burgess lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the sole proprietor of a business that offers ESL, translation, and interpretation services. He speaks several languages fluently and enjoys engaging with the cultures and intellectual histories of many nations. His poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Orchards, Parody, Lighten Up Online, and other poetry publications.

ADMONITORY ODE TO MOUNT RANIER

by Joel Savishinsky

The top of Mount Rainier is no longer the top of Mount Rainier. The frozen ice cap on top of Washington’s iconic mountain—recognized for generations as the tippy top—is melting as the atmosphere warms. Now, that frozen dome has sunk below a rocky patch on the mountain’s southwest rim, crowning that spot as the new highest point. —Seattle Times, October 6, 2024. Photo: Eric Gilbertson poses Sept. 21 on Mount Rainier’s southwest rim, the new highest point of the mountain, with the Columbia Crest, the mountain’s former highest point, in the background. (Courtesy of Ross Wallette)

Perhaps it is too much 
to expect any of us to
stand tall in these times,
to measure up to what
we once were at 
the peak of our reputations.
 
Maybe this is what happens
when you’ve stood for ages
with your head in the clouds,
unaware of how each year
grinds you down a bit,
too busy looking down on
everyone else to notice
that people don’t 
look up at you quite 
in the way they used to.
 
Yes, your admirers will still
grapple with your magnitude,
admire your posture and
profile, but as the decades 
wear on and wear you down, 
like the rest of us you will
probably need to learn
to get over yourself.
 
If not, you’ll only get more
upset, lose your cool,
blow your top, and
shrink even more
in our estimation.
 

Joel Savishinsky moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2014 at the age of 70. In the years since then, he has lost at least 1 ¼ inches of height. He is a retired professor of anthropology and gerontology, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and author of Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s book-of-the-year prize. In 2023, The Poetry Box published his collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. His work has also appeared in Beyond Words, Blink-Ink, The Decolonial Passage, The New York Times, The New Verse News, Passager, and Willawaw.

GRAB-'EM-BY-THE-PUSSY ℞: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

by Steven Shankman

The former guy and a detail of “Oedipus and the Sphinx” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, part of the collection at the Louvre in Paris. (Trump photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images; “Oedipus” image by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images via The Los Angeles Times) 

King Oedipus was certain he alone

Could fix it. When he heard his Thebans groan,

Then die en masse, he offered his expert

Advice. Blame Creon, blame the seer! Hurt

By the grim news, he vowed to find the cause

Of the great plague, to act at once, not pause

To look within himself. It soon was clear

He was himself the cause, his pride, his fear

Of self-examination. Sophocles

Saw Oedipus as Athens, her disease

A plague of arrogance. Our former leader

(Unlike King Oedipus), a bottom-feeder,

Has none of the ancient king’s nobility

But like King Oedipus he fails to see

He is the plague. Devoid of empathy,

Obsessed with money and celebrity,

He feeds red hats to haters. USA!

USA first! We’re winners, led the way

In COVID-19 deaths! The plague will stay

Until the voters make it go away. 

 

Steven Shankman holds the UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor of English and Classics Emeritus. His poems have appeared in a number of journals including Sewanee Review, Literary Imagination, Tikkun, Literary Matters, and Poetica Magazine. He is one of the co-editors of The World of Literature (1999), an anthology of world literature from a global perspective that contains some of his own poetic translations from Chinese, Greek, and Latin. His Penguin edition of Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad appeared in 1996. His chapbook of poems Kindred Verses was published in 2000. His book of poems Talmudic Verses (Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2023. He is the author of many scholarly books, including Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies (SUNY Press, 2010), which contains some of his own original poetry, and Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison (Northwestern UP, 2017).

THE BETRAYAL OF TIKKUN OLAM

by Beth Heller

art by Nina Bonos

To repair the world, they said,

was our duty and our privilege
and the reason for our continued existence
 
Israel was supposed to be
the place where this work was embodied
and my body was put to use in its garden
 
I carried water in buckets
My 15 year old arms reaching toward trees
planted in the name of hope

We looked across the border
into barren desert and felt pride
And this was the mistake

This pride in green fields on one side
and desert on the other
We thought it meant they didn’t care

or couldn’t do the hard work of growing
We thought we had the right
and the power

And that THEY did not
And that THEY only wanted bombs 
and rage
 
This pride is the killer
the border, the dividing line 
between right and wrong

When all we had to do was step over 
a nonexistent line in the sand
drawn by meddlers and offer a hand
 
Now it is too late
The healing has flipped to genocide 
in no other name than power
The thing that was planted
was hate
on both sides of the fence
 
Tikkun Olam is for all of us
A responsibility and
a privilege

And the path is a walk
through a rain of blood
nurturing nothing

Same as it ever was
in this desert where humanity
has wandered far too long
 
Blame us
Blame them
Blame everyone

Or not, but walk
Walk that path 
towards oasis

The one fountain
contained in our bodies
everywhere

The same blood pumps through all of us
The same blood stains the ground
on either side of the fence

The same blood
calls out for 
peace

Beth Heller’s poetry has appeared in a variety of chapbooks and anthologies, including those of the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Houston Poetry Fest, Wild Word: Poets of the Gunnison Valley, and Fools Court Press, Houston, as well as newspapers and journals such as the Mountain Gazette, Fungi Magazine, and most recently and after a decades-long absence from public poeming, Medicine for Minds & Hearts: a MycoAnthology of poems inspired by a love of mushrooms, Fungi Press.  She moves around but is currently nested in Western North Carolina

PRIDE

by Marion Evalee

Carrying a jumbo rainbow flag onto the Salem Common under the rainbow arch are Ken Elie, left and Ed Hurley, right of the group Boston Pride, who turned out to support the North Shore Pride group. Joe Brown photo via The Salem News, June 25, 2023

The great Arc-en-ciel
Is colorless,

Not on the wing.
A heart needs something,

Color needs light,
A flag needs the wind—

Whoever’s eternal
Rebounding breath

Has deadened with the night,
As it often does.

I keep walking
Over what was

The parade grounds
(What will be the Commons

By the time we celebrate
Our independence)

Like an old vet,
Though it’s getting dark.

Marion Evalee, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has appeared in The Amethyst Review, Willows Wept, Survivor Lit, The Boston Compass, Neologism, and Montage. A selection of her poetry is featured in the anthology 14 International Younger Poets (Art and Letters, 2021). She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

LET HER WEAR GREEN

by Tricia Knoll

Did the ‘Barbie’ Movie Cause a Pink Paint Shortage? The film recreates the famous doll’s brightly colored world—with the help of one specific shade of pink. —Smithsonian, June 8, 2023

Witness a shortage 

of pink paint

from the set design

of a Barbie movie. 

 

Let her wear green

for chlorophyll,

eco-warrior for a hurting

planet short on good sense

 

as cancer drugs are hard

to come by. This rainbow

month colors fly

 

on flagpoles and banners. 

I’m so sick of pink. The only

Barbie I have sits in a wheelchair;

she is a woman of color

 

beautiful color. 

Barbie Fashionistas Doll #166 With Wheelchair & Crimped Brunette Hair

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet well beyond Barbie years. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and seven collections—the most recent being One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which brings together poems about about trees she has planted, loved, or worries about due to climate change.

ORLANDO GOES SHOPPING AT TARGET

by Susan Cossette

CLAIM: Target’s Pride collection features a bathing suit for kids that is labeled “tuck-friendly.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The “tuck-friendly” swimsuits are only offered in adult sizes, according to a spokesperson for the company and Target’s website. Kids’ swimsuits in the collection do not feature this label.

He was young, rich, handsome.
 
Exiled from court,
robbed of his coronet
and robes of the garter,
he left the rancid nodding mass 
of stiff lace and ceremony—
the Lady Purity, 
the Lady Modesty, 
the Lady Chastity,
terrifying diadems of lightning and ice.
 
There was no truth in their dreadful den.
Avant. Begone.
 
While Orlando slept
the scarlet trumpeters circled and blared 
TRUTH
 
and she awoke naked, unashamed
in the dressing room of the Nicollet Mall Target
among scattered plastic hangers 
and clothing of every color cast
on common grey carpet.
 
With the money left from
the sale of her pearls
she procured vivid dresses, paper fans,
butterfly socks, even a tuck suit.
 
Ecstasy, ecstasy, 
wild plumed goose loading rainbows
into a red plastic cart,
on her way to the self-serve checkout.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.  

BIGOTS SHOWED UP TO PRIDE WEARING KHAKIS

by Chad Frame

Authorities in northern Idaho are leaving open the possibility for more criminal charges against 31 white nationalists accused of planning to riot at a weekend Pride festival. Members of a group known as Patriot Front face misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to start a riot. —NPR, June 14, 2022

and it was tacky. So, you want to send 

a message to the gays? Don't do it dressed

like you're about to solicit us all 

to open Best Buy credit cards. Don't rent 

a gas-guzzling, garish orange U-Haul 

and blare Skynyrd out the rolled-down windows

on the Interstate (I want to say I-

eighty something—which, by the way, is how 

old you look. Do you even moisturize?) 

Okay, we get it—you hate us. Still want

to get your point across? Let's start with names. 

No gay will ever repent at the sound

of the name Patriot Front. How about

Patriot Daddy? Patriot Power 

Top? Or Patriot You've Been a Naughty

Prideful Little Piggy and Here We Are 

to Set You Straight? Now we're getting somewhere.

Now, let's talk about that slogan—Reclaim 

America. We already did that 

at Stonewall, remember? That is so June

1969. You'll need something fresh, 

catchy—a real earworm. Might I suggest

Hey, Girl, That Look's Fire, and We Mean Hellfire?

Or consider Stop Trying to Make Fetch 

and Your Alternative Lifestyles Happen. 

Look, I don't know. Workshop it a little.

Christ. Do I have to do everything?

Chad Frame is the author of Little Black Book (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program, and Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, PA, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry improv and performance troupe, Poetry Editor of Ovunque Siamo, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival and Retreat. His work appears in Rattle, Pedestal, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere, is available on iTunes, and was sent to the moon.

WE DIDN’T ASK FOR ONLY

by B. Fulton Jennes

We don’t ask the flowers to all be daisies,

or dogs to be only dachshunds.

 

We wouldn’t want all flags to be red, white, and blue,

(although some people would, and that’s a sad truth).

 

Valentine’s Day would disappoint

if those heart-shaped boxes

contained nothing but nougat,

and we’d suffer if orchestras

were nothing but bassoons.

 

Think what we’d miss

if all songs were sung in D minor,

all rooms painted Chantilly blue.

 

The nights would be darker

if heaven held only blue dwarfs.

A forest planted with nothing but maples

would be stark in winter.

 

If all roads led south,

wouldn’t we miss east and west?

 

Imagine…

 

A childhood of puzzles and no other toys,

schools of sturgeon filling the freshwaters

and exclusively stingrays at sea,

libraries with shelves stacked solely with sci-fi,

rom-com the only choice in new film fare,

all eggs, runny, sunny-side-up,

all coffee, decaf, black,

all shoes, brown leather, size 7,

all towels green, all sheets unfitted,

blue ink only in non-retractable pens,

no choice but Times New Roman

to write an essay, eulogy, or epistle…

 

We didn’t ask for only.

We don’t want only.

 

We weren’t born only.

 

We were born blonde, brunette, jet-haired, red,

oval-faced, round, square and pear,

thick-thighed and thin, tall and petite,

in a rainbow of skin colors,

a hodgepodge of histories,

a symphony of sexualities,

a jumble of genders,

with loves gifted by God, not governments.

 

So don’t ask a rainbow to be only red.

 

We will not be only.

B. Fulton Jennes is Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, CT, where she serves as poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Night Heron Barks, Limp Wrist, Tar River Poetry, SWIMM, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pareidolia Literary, Extreme Sonnets II, and many other journals and anthologies. Her collection Mammoth Spring was a finalist for the 2021 Two Sylvias Wilder Prize and the Small Harbor Press Laureate Prize. Her chapbook Blinded Birds (Finishing Line Press), released in April of 2022, was named Winner of the 2022 International Book Awards in the Poetry: Chapbook category. 

FOR KAMALA

by Stella Graham-Landau

We will be your mama’s eyes,
smiling and glistening
as you raise your hand.
We will clap and nod,
place our hands
over our hearts,
whispering, “That’s our girl.”
We will stand shoulder to shoulder with you
when you hold the Bible.
We will call our friends
and say,
“Isn’t she something!”
We will weave our arms
through yours
and march boldly down the street.
We will save a piece of broken ceiling,
wrap it in a sentimental scrap
and store it in a box
where you will find it some day
and know how proud we were.


Stella Graham-Landau is a poet and artist living in Richmond, VA where things are finally changing.