LOGIC DOWN THE DRAIN

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Burcu Yesilyurt said enforcement officers told her it was illegal to dispose of the remnants of her coffee in a road gully. —BBC, October 22, 2025

The morning joe

That you don't drink,

At home, will flow

Down through your sink

To later meet

The coffee poured

Straight down a street-

Drain when you board

Your bus. Their slime

Pollutes the same,

But one's a crime,

One gets no blame...

The law's designs

Are out of bounds—

For coffee fines,

There are no grounds!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly, and other journals.

DISS TRACK

by Daniel Romo

Drake & Kendrick Lamar’s Rocky Relationship Explained —Billboard, June 20, 2024

The origin of a hip-hop beef is seasoned 

with special sauce and 

Slauson’s finest hype men.

 

A feud rooted in accusations of

appropriation is a (rap) battle for the ages,

authenticity, and 

audience approval. 

 

Wop, wop, wop,

            wop, wop!

 

It becomes personal when a man’s 

motives, morals, and music 

are called into question

all in one.

 

Calling out and crip-walking all over

one’s (stage) name is no doubt

a slander to be handled 

because being hard 

protects a soft ego.

 

Hoodlife, my ass more like phony contrive /

Street cred, psh, boy you rep Rodeo Drive.

 

It’s a fickle world, this rap game—

where artists go from 

collaborators to haters,    

 

   from OG to enemy,

 

      from riding

           to dying.

Daniel Romo's latest book is Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023). 

BLOOM

by Annie Cowell

Songul Yucesoy's home in Samandag, southern Turkey was destroyed when a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck a month ago. —BBC, March 6, 2023

She raises soap sudded hands

from the washing bowl,

places them on her hips

and stretches out her aching back.

Behind her the house tilts,

crippled, less solid than its shadow, 

window frames sagging 

between cracks like craters.

On the table, rescued, somehow

unscathed, is a picture.

It is a shell-framed souvenir of life before,

when the table wasn’t orphaned

to the street. 

Now, the fruit bowl she hates

for its dull colours and chipped rim

sits beside the picture, uncomfortable,

with its solitary orange.

A white mould is beginning to blossom

on its skin.

She lifts the dying orange, 

cups it in her hands like a stunned bird

and walks the short distance 

to where her neighbours’ family inhabit

two makeshift tents, cobbled together

near the rubble of their home.

Her daughter’s friend, he of the wild eyes

and cheeky tongue, lowers his head

as she approaches, tamed and silenced

by the shame of survival.

The lump in her throat prevents speech,

so she dusts the orange 

bloom 

with her finger, takes the young boy’s hand

places the orange there. 

Squeezes. 

It’s the least, and the most, she can do.

Author’s note: Some of the events in this poem are imagined, but they were suggested by the facts in the BBC’s March 6 article “Turkey Earthquake: Survivors living in fear on the streets.” The suffering continues, even as the earthquake’s aftermath slips from the headlines.

Annie Cowell lives by the sea in Cyprus with her husband and rescue dogs. She has been published by Popshot Quarterly, Gastropoda Lit, The Milk House, and many others. She is a BOTN nominee. Her debut pamphlet Birth Mote(s) was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2022. Splashing Pink from Hedgehog Press is forthcoming later this year. @AnnieCowell3

THE SHOW-ME STATE GOES ROGUE

by George Salamon

"In Missouri, a new state law that took effect on 1 January makes it a crime for any person to sleep on state property. For unhoused people, sleeping in public parks or under city highways could mean up to $750 in fines or 15 days in prison for multiple offenses." —The Guardian, January 5, 2023. Photo: An unhoused person in Los Angeles. Photograph: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Homelessness is a crime

in the state of Missouri,

where sleeping on the 

street is not punishment 

enough for so capital a sin 

by those who belong in a

loony bin for the criminally

cruel and heartless, claiming

the voices in their heads

are those of God or Jesus,

without even being facetious.

George Salamon thinks he sees where this is going. As Richard T. Evans pointed out in The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in German History (1988): "The Nazis planned their first big round-up of the homeless as soon as they came to power."

BY ANY OTHER NAME: SPRING TRAINING ANGST

by Earl J. Wilcox

If some kids played it on the Pittsburgh

streets with only a Wiffle ball, a crooked

stick, and one lad to keep it from the gutters.

 

If they played it on a loamy garden patch

in an Arkansas village with a ball made

from old socks around a ball of twine.

 

If kids of any age and many sizes

played the game on a sandlot

in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic.

 

Even if the Japanese kids decided to

practice ten hours a day just to make

the team for the family’s pride.

 

If the boys of summer began practice

in winter, in a game that no longer

uses bat boys, has no fans in the stands... 

 

And if this game has no hot dogs or

peanuts and Crackerjacks and many

players wear kerchiefs and masks

 

And if they can no longer blow bubble

gum or eat pumpkin seeds or swat each

other on the butt after a terrific play.

 

And if the balls and strikes are called

by a robot squatting behind the screen

in the stands or hovering in a drone.

 

We will still call this game BASEBALL.

 

Earl Wilcox dedicates this poem to the late Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose "Baseball Canto" remains the iconic tribute to our national pastime.

DEATH OF A CHILD

by George Salamon

Xavier Usanga was about 15 hours away from a new school year as a second grader at Clay Elementary when he was fatally shot Monday, August 12, 2019, while standing near an 18-year-old who was also shot but survived. The 7-year-old’s death makes him the 11th area child killed in a shooting since June. About half of them attended St. Louis Public Schools, said Kelvin Adams, superintendent of the St. Louis Public School District. In the above photo,  provided by Alderman Brandon Bosley to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Xavier Usanga is pictured during a LINKS St. Louis Neighborhood event in Hyde Park in July 2019.

A child smiling,
A child so new.
He came out to play,
Not ready for death.
Not "in the confines
Of his home, or "on
A street not known
For violence." How
Is it we don't choke
Speaking these words?
How is it a part of us
No longer dies at
The death of a child?
We dare not ask.

George Salamon lives in St. Louis and has most recently published in Dissident Voice, Proletaria, The Asses of Parnassus, and TheNewVerse.News.

WE SIMPLY HAD ENOUGH(STONEWALL 50)

by Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.