SPIT IN A TUBE

by Roberta Batorsky

As soon as the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy on March 23, 2025, concerns about what would happen to the personal information contained in its massive genetic and health information database were swift and widespread. A few days after, a U.S. judge ruled that the company could sell its consumer data as part of the bankruptcy. —Gizmodo, April 7, 2025.

23andme is out of cash
but they have all my DNA
Boy, would I like to settle their hash
get my stuff back from them today

Someone could cook a clone of me
build a murderer or pedophile
I could turn out more horrible
morphed into a raptor or reptile 

Would they use my letters
to cause harm to me and mine?
Or, could it work out for the better
to improve the basic design

A version thinner prettier funnier
someone proud to wear my name
Or, the duplicate only in veneer,
my identity would claim

So, if they have people’s recipes
a new world could they create 
of peace, tolerance tranquility
a universe free of hate

Where Trump and his minions
Bannon Rubio Musk Vance and Waltz
are on a garbage scow due north of Greenland
ice-bound ‘til they express remorse

23andme is out of cash
but they have all my DNA
Boy would I like to settle their hash
get my stuff back from them TODAY

Roberta Batorsky is a Biology teacher, poet and freelance science writer. She has published poems in Fine-lines and Heron Clan and is working on her first poetry book. Her science blog is https://solipsistssoiree.blogspot.com and her instagram is RobertaBatorsky_poetry.

EXPANDING OUR KNOWING

by Akua Lezli Hope

Listen to the waltz at The New York Times, October 27, 2024.

new Chopin waltz found

unearthed discoveries heal

fix our view of truth

 

new Chopin waltz found

other discoveries heal

reframe our old truths

 

fix our view of truth

unearthed discoveries heal

new Chopin waltz found

 

new discoveries

heal our discordant truths

new Chopin waltz found

Akua Lezli Hope is a paraplegic creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, and peace.  Her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, &  Rhysling awards. She created the Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series. Editor of NOMBONO, the first BIPOC speculative poetry anthology, she is working on an anthology of disability focused speculative poetry.

THE ARTHUR MURRAY STUDIO IN MOSUL

by Christopher Woods

Has gone dark and quiet and sad,
But still the dancers come,
All ages, both sexes, sit in chairs,
In circles, or in lines facing each other,
No longer allowed the art of movement.
But imagination still breathes deeply
As they imagine dancing a polka,
Foxtrot, recall the smiles of partners
Taking each other’s hands, or holding
A lover close as a song ends.
No music here now, but who can forget
A glorious Strauss waltz, a sensual samba.
Still, they cannot, will not, surrender.
So in the ballroom gloom,
They silently, defiantly,
Hum Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
Over the din of madness
In the street outside.


Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Texas.

QUEER MUSIC

by Tom Lennox

In the ice dancing competition in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Russia’s bronze medalists Nikita Katsalapov and Elena Ilinykh “brought down the house with their performance to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.”

They chose the queer for their music
to dance upon the ice
queer ice
deep and Russian
dense with dreams
with the thrill of passion’s thaw
a triumphant heart
beating beneath the ice
Russian heart
queer heart
within the swan
black swan beset by
the magician
black heart
his veins too
Russian passion
queer passion
that slices
through the ice
lifting the heart like a waltz
queer waltz


Tom Lennox’s poems have appeared in Miriam’s Well and The New Verse News. He has published two chapbooks, Aerial Acts and Once Twice. He lives by a creek in a wildlife region in southwest Florida.