ANTHEM

by Thomas DeFreitas

America is Bible and battery acid, Krispy Kreme and Christian soldiers, MAGA hats and “good people on both sides.” Forced birth, illegal miscarriages, classrooms from which history is deleted, whitewashed. Here we lock up refugees and confiscate their rosaries only to throw them away. Here we threaten families who display the wrong yard-signs. Here we say the Lord's Prayer at the end of twelve-step meetings, “not allied with any sect.” Liberty’s arm is tired from holding up that torch for all these bloody years. A voice-over announces the death, by embarrassment, of The New Colossus.

America is Deliverance and Don’t Say Gay. Fireworks on the Esplanade, the cannonade of 1812. Senatorial thoughts, congressional prayers. Spare the machine-gun, spoil the child. Wives submitting to their husbands, who give them black-and-blue merit-badges for overcooking the lasagna. America: a hot flat ounce of cola in a patriotic can. Plastic and persimmon. Sassafras and sadism.
 
America welcomes you if you’re One Of Us.

Thomas DeFreitas was born in Boston in 1969. A graduate of the Boston Latin School, he attended the University of Massachusetts, both in Boston and in Amherst. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Plainsongs, Ibbetson Street, Pensive, and elsewhere. His latest collection is Walking Between the Raindrops (Kelsay Books, 2025).

DEPARTMENT OF OFFENSE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the U.S. Navy was renaming the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment ship that had been named for a Navy veteran who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials. —The New York Times, June 27, 2025

Whitewash the walls of history,
erase names preserved by heart in print.
Cleanse the bows of ships 
so they sail free of reminders
or memorial suggestion.
Forget you heard it here, where someone 
stood for the voiceless inheritors,
crossed lines for the dispossessed,
or raised flags in mutinous colors of freedom.
Toss stories into fire pits, ashes to ashes, 
amnesia thick. Footprints embedded in truth
brushed aside like counterfeit ledgers going nowhere. 
 
Even with evidence destroyed or misidentified, 
these burials are not complete. Beneath layers of deception,
lies ferment in Earth’s volcanic depths, lives remembered 
for their audacious bravery walk from graves 
that were never deep enough to hold them down.

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing and the importance of shared stories.

THE MICKEY MURAL

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Murals of cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse and Baloo from The Jungle Book painted on the walls of an asylum seeker reception centre to welcome children have been removed on the orders of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick. The murals were painted over because he thought they were too welcoming and sent the wrong message. —The Guardian, July 7, 2023

The Immigration chief on Team UK 

Has ordered: Whitewash walls—kids shouldn't be

Encouraged to feel welcome here if they

Migrated in small boats across the sea.

In Dover, staff demurred at playing ball.

Cartoons of Mickey Mouse and bear Baloo—

Kind gestures in a mural on a wall—

Extended caring hands of friendship to

Young kids, alone. But now those pictures are 

Misguidedly effaced. What art will go

Up in their place? Cruella? Scar? Jafar? ...

Right minds must feel embarrassed, since they know

An action that's appalling and absurd

Lets Britain down—and no child is deterred.

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

AC-CENT-TCHU-ATE THE POSITIVE

by George Salamon

Painting by Jonathan Harris. Signed and numbered copies available.

"After heavy criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis, the College Board released on Wednesday an official curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies—stripped of much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and other conservatives.” —The New York Times, February 1, 2023

My country 'tis of thee, sweet 

land of hypocrisy, you cannot

make evil look good.

We had our own good try at a

Holocaust of the Indians, Black

slaves were privately owned

properties down home on the

plantation, young immigrant girls

were exploited in sweatshops in

Manhattan's garment district, coal

miners robbed of their meager

wages and their health, and our

bosses and Robber Barons hired

private dicks to beat up those

workers who dared to strike or

protest.

Nine decades ago our president

pushed through laws that brought

relief from capitalism's cruel rule, 

and he was called a traitor to his

class.

That class is back firmer in the

saddle than before, and the publican

politicians want keep our history washed

white of dark stains of blood, 

tears and despair

George Salamon does not think another FDR is waiting in the wings of our political theater, but he wishes one were there.

MOUTHPIECE IN CHIEF

by Mickey J. Corrigan

To be the scribe and whitewasher
changing slurs into diamonds
To edit out the coal dust, replace
with gold nuggets for all who believe
in the fraudulent intents
retro-disrupted and revised
so the world sees only the glitter
To lead the ruby-throated herd
to the edge of the flatland
let them jump, fall, moo
from burnt fields we insist
are green, lush, ready for bloom
To punch first, punch hard
blacken eyes that see the clarity
through the oil slicks
the choking smog
the hurricane winds
the historic floods that sweep away
rolls of paper towels, single serve
plastic soup in a hot bath
bubbling up
to engulf the debtors
the disenfranchised
the multitaskers
and hungry fat kids
listless on empty playgrounds
in the unyielding sun
To not speak of this
we use the magic cups
bait and switch-hunt
To lead with foaming mouths
red-faced faux outrage
at the shadows that must lurk
under the surface of greatness
To promise to those crushed
by the enormity of lies
if they continue to believe
if they continue to not see
the sleek black limo
nudging them
off the very edge

of the democratic abyss

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Project XX, a satirical novel about a school shooting, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. Newest release is What I Did for Love, a twisted psychological thriller (Bloodhound Books, October, 2019).

DOING THE LAUNDRY WITH WILLIAM BARR

by Mary K O'Melveny

Cartoon by Randall Enos for The Nation.

Today, our local laundromat

was very crowded.  Lots to do.

My clothes are filled with dirt, was what

she said.  This muck goes through

and through. But he was not

concerned at all. Rinse and repeat,

he counseled.  No matter what you’ve got,

my formula is hard to beat.

The worst stains vanish like magic.

At first, there’s slime, then none.

Even when it all looks tragic,

rinse and repeat.  Soon it’s all gone.

Out damned spot, said she.

There’s nothing there, said he.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

“STRANGE FRUIT” SINGS ON

by Renea McKenzie

Nia Wilson Had Big Plans. Then She Was Killed in a BART Station. —The New York Times, July 25, 2018

When I get up in the morning and see the news. When I get up in the morning and see the same, not-new news. The same horror. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. God. WHERE IS JUSTICE? WHERE IS PEACE? How do we carry on. Make sense of the world. Speak light into darkness. When there are no words or strength left for already-been-said, tired-of-being-on-repeat disquisition

we need the steel, stone, wood, and fiber forms of those who create. Bridge to what ought to be. With gates made of mirrors. Help us to see. Look directly at reality we’d rather romanticize, rationalize, make up: blackface or whitewash.

We white-wash to hide. Same old shame-pride. We don’t know our own story. We don’t know. We don’t know we don’t know. We question the wrong things. Why do they still sing that same old song? Billie, Nina, Diana, Dee Dee, Jill. Sing on.

Will we learn to listen? Learn still. Like a seed that lies in blood-soaked ground. Dies to grow.

I hope. I hope.

I hope so.

Renea McKenzie holds an MLA in Literature from Dallas Baptist University and an MA in Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. A Texas native, Renea’s work often reflects the intersection of faith and protest and, somewhat similarly, the way north-Texas wildlife stubbornly adapts to the sprawling city.

THE GREEN CITY

by m.nicole.r.wildhood

Shell Arctic Drilling Fleet OK'd To Use 'Green' West Seattle Port. —KUOW.org, January 14, 2015

Boxes clickclack like LEGOS
escorted by confident cranes over
fragile veins to keep the whole world
up and racing.

The city, from their point of view
a sidebar, has enough year-round jade
for mercantile satiation
if only it were capital

and not growing things.
Traditionally, the city has guarded
all its life – it would rather
articulated bus jackknife all over the highway

than salt the roads during a snow
because of the tainted runoff
into the salmons’ stream.
This city that cares so much for its fish

is the same city that is making room
for an armada of royal oil drillers
to station among the blocks and birds.

Every green movement
can be whitewashed;
every commitment to fish
can be watered down.


m.nicole.r.wildhood is a Colorado native who has been living in Seattle – and missing the sun – since 2006.  She has been a saxophone player and registered scuba diver for over half her life.  In addition to blogging at http://megan.thewildhoods.com, she writes poetry, fiction and short nonfiction, which have appeared in The Sun, Lodestone and Ballard: A Journal of Street Poetry, ditchpoetry.com and Café Aphra.  She and her husband, who is gifted both as a structural engineer and as an artist, often collaborate on poetry/painting pieces.  She seeks to be an advocate for those experiencing mental and emotional suffering and celebrates the misfits, the non-conventional and the bold.