HEGSETH THE ADOLESCENT

by Sharon Olson

Source: Autodesk Instructables

Senator Mark Kelly: "He runs around on stage talking about 'lethality,' warrior ethos, and 'killing people'... that’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense… And instead he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army." —Yahoo!News, December 2, 2025

Before computer games, we each chose

a sheaf of white paper, scoring it with lines

going this way and that, and assigned letters

and numbers so each square would be, for 

example, B1 or D2, and then we specified 

where our boats hung out, be they cruiser, 

submarine, destroyer, carrier or battleship. 

You only called out one square at a time 

and one hit could not sink a ship. 

There were no sailors on these ships, 

the losses not serious, the arsenal only 

pen marks on a grid. But armed with a 

computer now the tempo rises, especially

when it's the War Department striking

in the Caribbean, no marimba music or 

swaying palms, a techno-hit in a made-up 

war can end the game, but if survivors cling 

to the side, no need to ask mother's permission, 

we double-tap and send them on their way.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian and native Californian who now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

LITTLE TOMMY TUBERVILLE

by Ralph LaRosa

Was Tommy Tuberville
from Nowherville
deprived of lovely rhymes
in childhood times?
 
He thinks that hearing verse
makes sailors worse!
Is his little cry, 
meant to imply:
 
Soft sailors in collusions
of “woke” confusions
are fighters made Lambs
by rhymes and Iambs?

Ralph La Rosa’s poetry appears on the Internet, in print journals, anthologies and the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length collections Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse.

IF YOU SHOULD STUMBLE ACROSS ME IN THE BARREN WOODS

by Amna Alamir

“Barren Wood” by Mindy Newman

Hooded and lonesome, untie 

the shrouds and the clouds that 

walk among you and I will 

gently open inviting you in.

Reach out with tender curiosity 

your fingertips, feign a lasso out 

of heartstrings and I will share 

the taste of the ocean, the many 

travels I have bottled up and 

tossed at perturbed sailors.

Where they turned their backs on me: 

this is night country 

this isn’t right country 

in the blackness I am suffocating 

this isn’t my country. 

My body is changing 

has taken on your culture 

and become momentarily ill. 

There are parts of me 

I had to give up, I lost 

gave to you in exchange 

for your acceptance. 

I covered myself in barberries 

ginger root, cardamom. 

I am a rare sighting, now

beyond the star-shaped stars 

that float like lucid ribbons 

when it is time to die 

the earth shivers. 

 

Amna Alamir is a Kuwaiti writer who currently studies and resides in the UK. She is finishing up her MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is pursuing further research on silence, the female voice, and somatic practices. 

SEVEN SAILORS

by Eric Weil

TOP, FROM LEFT: Xavier Alec Martin, 24; Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25; Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19; Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: Ngoc Truong Huynh, 25; Noe Hernandez, 26; and Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37. (U.S. Navy via AP via The Washington Post, June 19, 2017.) Their snapshot stories from the AP can be read in The Star-Tribune.

The president disparages immigrants.
My great grandfather Bernat stepped off the boat
about 1880 with no papers, before Ellis Island.
Seven US sailors died when a container ship

T-boned their missile destroyer. Bernat fled
southwest Germany’s pogroms, local tornados
to the future’s hurricane named Holocaust.
Seven sailors bunked in friendly seas. Bernat

sold shoes. The seven ring the watch-bell
of America’s immigrant present and past:
Douglass, Hernandez, Huynh, Martin, Rehm,
Rigsby, Sabayan. Bernat raised a son

drafted for WWI, who raised a son drafted
for WWII, who raised a son whose number
just missed Vietnam. The seven volunteered.
Bernat’s citizenship paper, dated 1885, adorns

our guest room. Photos of the seven line
America’s front pages and will hang
as memorials in seven American homes
while the president disparages immigrants.


Eric Weil teaches at Elizabeth City State University, in North Carolina.  His poems have appeared in journals ranging from American Scholar to Poetry and from Dead Mule to Sow's Ear.