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| Photograph: Nasser Ishtayeh/Sopa Images/Shutterstock |
I’m an expert shot.
I can hit a child’s head
every time
when I’m following orders
and sometimes
when I’m not.
I’m an expert shot.
I can hit a surgeon’s hand
every time
when I’m following orders
and sometimes
when I’m not.
I’m an expert shot.
I can hit a young man’s balls
every time
when I’m following orders
and sometimes
when I’m not.
I’m an expert shot.
I can hit a footballer’s foot
every time
when I’m following orders
and sometimes
when I’m not.
I can do other things as well
when I’m ordered
and even
when I’m not.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes
The only antidote for America
is to go outside in the freezing cold winter
and dream of the most beautiful city on earth
or even this universe (there may not be any other).
This city is Granada. Inside my house
I think only of Minneapolis, of winter.
Outside my house I dream of Grenada and spring
on the slope leading towards the white limestone caves
where the pink dusk hovers over the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada.
By day I once walked through the summer palace of the kings of Spain.
By night I listened to flamenco and the percussive shoes of dancers.
By day the stained glass of the cathedral blossomed
like the roses in the summer palace. Beauty softened the blow
of the inquisition six hundred years before
just as a memory of joy softens the blow of the shootings,
and the military on the streets of Minneapolis. Nothing
is more consoling than the dream of a beautiful ruin,
for the ugliness happening to America. I lay memory
like a wreath on the roadside
where Alex Pretti and Renee Good died.
Katherine Smith’s poetry publications include appearances in Southern Review, Boulevard, North American Review, Ploughshares, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. Her third book, Secret City, appeared with Madville Press in 2022. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.
Do I write about poets with red holes
in their forehead? Students whose eyes
have been shot out, the mother of four
small children is rotting in a cell full of other people,
excrement, wails, the sounds of metal and wood
on flesh and bone.
How can I write a love poem when
all I know is that planets no longer align,
that war has been declared on peace,
that all the crystals disintegrate into millions
of nano shards, shaken by the vibrations of hate.
How can I write a love poem when
I am no longer allowed to trust my eyes,
when blue is red, up is down, no means yes,
when, while I am hollow and starving
a blonde demon laughs and tells me I have riches
to look forward to. Perhaps even in this life.
All I have to do is believe.
And haven’t we all been taught to believe?
To believe that there is a big old man on a cloud
somewhere, an old man with a long, white beard
who has a big book and writes all your
little misdeeds in big letters,
and who they say is love and who asks you to love
‘the other’ as you love yourself.
So, for many it’s easy to believe that in his name,
in the name of love, you are being hung
upside-down by your feet until you
confess how much delicious hate you feel,
and that you never had it so good.
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026.
Bombed, shot, knifed
into silence, no more.
I will walk to the store.
I will walk to the post
office. I will send a letter.
I won’t go postal. I will
not melt down inside
or out. I will love you, brother.
I will hug you, sister.
I will get up, turn up,
count, be counted.
I will not let the darkness
triumph. I will not allow
the dark night permanence.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.
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| Hundreds of students walked off Oakland’s Skyline High School campus on Tuesday [November 18], calling for the school and district to do more to counter gun violence. They say the Oakland Unified School District needs to provide more education and better support for students who don’t feel safe on campus after shootings at two Oakland schools last week. Last Wednesday [November 12], a Skyline student was shot during the school day, and two other young people were arrested in connection with the altercation. Just a day later, Oakland’s beloved Laney College Athletic Director John Beam was shot and killed on the junior college campus. Beam, who was featured on the final season of Netflix’s docuseries Last Chance U while he was coaching the Laney Eagles, began his Oakland career at Skyline, leading the school’s football team to 15 championships over 17 years, according to OUSD Superintendent Denise Saddler. (Photo: Gustavo Hernandez/KQED) —KQED, November 18, 2025 |
Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist and retired school psychologist who has committed to writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response to current events. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press and explores family mental illness, stigma and healing.
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A baby receives treatment for malnutrition at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat on May 31, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Nader Garghon/Al-Awda Hospital via The Intercept, June 19, 2025 |
It feels like our bodies have started eating themselves.
--Sara, age 20, engineering college student, Gaza, text, June 21, 2025
The distance from my eyes to my Samsung
telephone screen is just about the same
as the distance from my plate to my tongue.
Text messages appear below a name
that could be the name of a close neighbor
across a picket fence as tall as shame.
I tap the cell phone screen, thin as paper.
I hear my old refrigerator hum.
My garden is a few steps from my door,
its pea pods swelling as thick as my thumb,
green peas inside, still tender, sweet and young,
packed in as close as can be. Everyone
is born out of the closeness of the womb,
Cindy Ellen Hill is author of Wild Earth and Other Sonnets (Antrim Press 2021), Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022), Mosaic: Poems from Travels in Italy (Wild Dog Press 2024), and Love in a Time of Climate Change(Finishing Line Press 2025). Her novel in sonnet verse, Leeds Point, will be released in 2026 from Selkie Songs Press. Her poetry has been included in Open Door Review, Flint Hills Review, Anacapa Review, and The Lyric. Her essays on sonnet elements have recently appeared in American Poetry Review and Unlikely Stories. She holds an MFA in fiction and poetry, and lives in Vermont.
Daniel Romo's latest book is Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets.
