SWITCH

by Arlene Weiner

Source: Wikimedia Commons

For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war. But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides. —The New York Times, February 18, 2025

The boys thought it would be fun
to throw the switch, watch trains
derail. It would be rich
to watch passengers tumble out,
scream. Maybe some would be naked.
 
There were deaths. The feral boys
didn’t care. Order and law
were boring. Boys would be boys
making noise, making money,
thinking it funny to upset sacred cows.
 
Watch it on Twitch, a sport
putting people through the woodchipper
the boys’ skipper, a double dipper, boasted,
who boosted his gaming scores.
Nobody came to stop the boys. 
 
Some men would be boys, breaking trust,
ghosting friends, tribal, looting, bribing,
gleeful masculine energy in a red hat. 

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh, where she is active in community poetry groups. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry, most recently More (2022).

ELECTION SEASON

by David Chorlton

Photo of Cooper’s hawk by Jason Finley at Birds of Westwood.

Midsummer heat as October begins
and a shivering cry
from out of sight signals
the coyotes’ prayer to the sun
when they give back the world
to human rule. The quiet neighbors
 
have begun setting out
yard signs to reveal
their innermost beliefs. 
One side sings, the other
screams. Some just want
a shake-up to discover
what outlaw spirit brings
while still as thought
 
the Cooper’s hawk
on a street lamp against
the orange clouds has winter
in one eye and summer
in the other. Another day the heat lasts
 
into darkness, later
than the evening news, long after
Happy Hour is over
and midnight’s face glows bright
high above mendacity,
 
doubt and the choices
to be made between line dancing
at Cactus Jack’s
or voting for the silent stars.

David Chorlton moved to Phoenix from Europe back when Phoenix still had a little provincial quaintness to it. Growth applies to the good and bad qualities alike, and it isn't always easy to adjust. Leonard Cohen's famous lines help: There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

HUMAN

by Darrell Petska

Photograph and sculpture by Yuichi Ikehata

I’m part American, part Czech, part
Israeli and Kenyan, part Russian, Swedish,
Palestinian, part northern hemisphere
and southern, part all things spawned
from stardust in the roiling sea of space,

so why does my body war with itself,
one eye peering left, the other right, one ear
denying what the other one hears, each leg
opposing the other’s direction while my hands
hammer and claw each other till they bleed?

One by one, I pare away my warring parts,
yet the battles rage on. Soon, of all I was,
only my two-sided heart shall remain.
Already, each side argues a different allegiance—
surely one will stop beating just to spite the other,

and there I’ll lie, at last a heap of bones some
beast shall drag into its lair as lesson to its offspring
of what transpires when a body’s many parts
fail to live in harmony. More fortunate stolid
stone and knobbly bark than unruly human flesh.

Darrell Petska, a Wisconsin poet, is one part of a large and loving family.

THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE IN 2020

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

i sit here
what do i say
what could i have said
with either red or blue words
but i could not     did not
i watched for how long
as if from a window
to the street below
where the red and blue 
used words as stones and guns... 
painful watching has its other side
i in my silent poem
wept    


Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

SOME YEARS ASK

by Carol Dorf

Some years ask, "Which side are you on?"
You might answer, "I'm on the side of the bees,
and the waters rising against the coastal shores."
You listen to a debate, and wonder, "Have I been
clear. Or I'm ok about reading dystopias, but
don't think I live in one, and don't want to find
myself there." I'm on the side of the kindergarten
children who tumble together on the rug, eager
for a story, after eating school lunches portioned
onto small trays. I'm on the side of the whales
who need quiet to hear each other calling across
the sea. And I'm on the side of the fat women,
and the crips, and every contractor who wanted
to be paid. "Which side are you on?" is
the refrain, while the future echoes on the screen.


Carol Dorf's chapbook Theory Headed Dragon is available through Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has been published in Glint, Slipstream, Spillway, Sin Fronteras, Antiphon, Composite, About Place, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, Maintenant, OVS Best of Indie Lit New England, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing and teaches mathematics.

THE ALL-TOO COMMON CORE

by David Southward

Son, you must learn to take a side
and cling to it with stubborn pride.
Your options are narrowed down to two.
Here’s a map: red state or blue?

Whichever one you pick, have fun
demolishing the other one.
Proclaim its leadership unfit;
its policies, a load of shit;
its followers, Neanderthals.
Don’t be timid.  This takes balls!

If by chance the other team
should rise in popular esteem,
insist their views are really yours
repackaged in new metaphors.
Since anything you say must be
reported on objectively,
it’s rhetoric that rules the roost.
“Truth” is any mass-produced
opinion on the internet.
And if you should misspeak?  No sweat.
The stupidest thing a man could say
can be re-spun, so spin away!

If your team drops the ball, take heart:
Employ the finger-pointing art
to slyly redirect the blame
and start a he-said she-said game.                        
When all else fails, your last resort                        
is to cry foul before the court.
And if there’s no hope in the law,
appoint a judge to find its flaw.
Pull the judicial switcheroo
and make our system work for you!

There’s just one rule you must abide:
NEVER give the other side
a speck of credit for being right.                            
It shows you’ve given up the fight.

And should your children scratch their heads
at all this dog-eat-dog bloodshed,
teach them why nobody gets along:
The other side is always wrong.


David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and is forthcoming in The Lyric.