OUR FREE UNION

by Zumwalt

with respect to André Breton

Image by the poet using Nano Banana Pro

My country with the hair of embedded fiber-optic cable
With the thoughts of a backed-up four-lane freeway at dusk
With the waist of a redwood in the center of a scenic bypass;
My country with the lips of algae and silt from the Great Lakes

With the cheeks of a ticker tape parade on celluloid stock
With the teeth of a picket fence on a shifting, slumping shoreline;
The tongue of a cracked bell that just rings and rings on command
Of a televised courtroom, a satellite that spies in dark silence;

My country with the eyelashes of high-tension wires
With brows of the upper seats of a sold-out stadium
Of the blue light under the sheets
And of the steam rising from an executive sauna fifty stories high.

My country with shoulders of interstate concrete
And of a hydroelectric dam holding back the stars;
My country with the sticky, messy fingers of a contested ballot box
Of a strewn deck of plastic cards;

My country with armpits of coal dust and scented bubble tea
Of suburban sprawl and the nest of a bald eagle in a cell tower
With arms of Mississippi tributaries and of a thousand assembly lines
And of a mingling of the cornfield and ambushed migrant workers;

My country with legs of elusive wildfires
The movements of a swing state and a jazz festival
Calves of sequoia bark, feet of broken treaties and numbered amendments
Toes of subway tracks and tourists flicking coins into canyons.

My country with a neck of unharvested wheat
A throat of pulsing fiber and high-powered cooling fans
Of a protest stage shrieking in the bed of a dry river
With breasts of the Appalachian night;

With the ribs of a multi-story shopping mall
Of a ghost town shadowed by the noonday sun;
My country with the belly of a thumb-scrolled digital map
With a back of an abandoned silver screen;

My country with a nape of red clay and cooling asphalt
And of the threads of a smudged napkin on a diner counter at 3:00 AM.
My country with hips of a barreling NextGen Acela
With hips of a county rodeo and of Friday night tossed penalty flags

Of a pendulum swinging between fairground stand food and Michelin-rated dining.
My country with bones of Civil War reenactments
With the ligaments of uncirculated library books
With the tendons of a buffalo nickel gifted to a grandchild.

My country with the loins of an offshore drill and the grocery store pharmacy
Of prairie grass and vintage baseball cards.
My country with ears full of rotating sirens
Of eyes of parabolic, steerable radio telescopes.

My country with eyes of a flatscreen TV left on at night
With eyes of a forest gasping for breath…

My country that vowed to love us always:
Our hands held out for answers, trembling within rusty handcuffs.

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt is a repeat contributor to The New Verse News.

WORLD CUP

by Amy Jean Bailey

The stadium is filling with red

and white striped shirts, a swimming

zigzag. What was left of the potential

rain has melted now into pure light. 

Voices in unison singing 

Seven Nation Army 

by The White Stripes could be heard 

by a barista all the way in Lower

Queen Anne and I want so much

to love it here—the depth 

of our coffee, the sparkle in our sea. 

I want to point to the eagle’s nest 

by the walking path, maybe even have you 

over, where I’ll slide open the closet door

to display my colorful collection

of rainboots of varying heights,

before I gesture towards the Locks 

and explain how salmon 

swim upstream and might still make it—

as if they didn’t need a ladder,

as if we don’t.

Amy Jean Bailey is a poet and educator who has a PhD in anthropology from UCLA. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Timberline Review, Clockhouse, in the anthology The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona Press), and elsewhere. Born and raised in Chicago, and then living all over the U.S., she now resides with her dog in Seattle, Washington.

TRAFFIC JAM TRYING TO REACH THE “FIGHT OLIGARCHY TOUR”

by Susan Vespoli

Photo by Kanishka Chinnaraj, The Daily Wildcat,  March 24, 2025

“Don’t become a monster fighting monsters.”  —paraphrased Nietzsche quote

Stuck on the Mill Avenue Bridge in Tempe

a mile (Siri says an hour) from the stadium 

Bernie and AOC fill to capacity with voters

in tee-shirts that say “Resist,” “Tax the Rich,” 

“Hope Persists,” and 1000s more line up outside,

circle the arena, live stream speeches on their phones;

us trapped in the car, the woman behind us melting 

down, honking, gesturing through her windshield

for us to MOVE and my date is the kind of driver

who smiles, waves other motorists into the flow,

but she is blasting her horn, mouthing epithets,

as his jaw clenches, middle finger twitching to flip,

and I get it, but we’re gridlocked here.

My granddaughter once said, if we had a flying car, 

this wouldn’t happen, but we don’t,

so I unbuckle my seatbelt, turn around and rise

so she can see me and I give her the peace sign 

and the namaste hands, and then shrug, what can we do?

And her face looks like it might explode off her neck—

until eventually the logjam loosens and she zooms 

into the next lane, passes us, her back bumper 

stickered with peace signs.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ and believes in the power of writing to stay sane. Her work has been published in The New Verse News, ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gyroscope Review, and other cool spots. She is the author of four poetry books.