MINT CONDITION

by Steven Kent

I s'pose we shouldn't be surprised.

Supporters gonna hoot and holler

Seeing homeboy on the dollar,

MAGA Caesar monetized.

In Trump We Trust—they sing his praise.

The real world knows, of course, he's lying;

Still, there's little point denying

Just how fast he coins a phrase.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

WO IST MUTTER

by Jon Wesick

In the final days of the Third Reich, Magda Goebbels poisoned her six children. The Goebbels family in 1942: (back row) Hildegard, Harald Quandt, Helga; (front row) Helmut, Hedwig, Magda, Heidrun, Joseph and Holdine.

 —Wikipedia

 

Two girls, blonde hair, blue ribbons, bare feet caked with dirt. 

Their nightgowns smell of diesel, breath tastes of bitter almond. 

“I want momma!” Little Heide says.

“She’ll put us back in that basement.” Helga drags her sister 

past masked men deporting former allies to the Taliban.

 

“Have you seen my Helga, meine Heide?” 

Magda staples a poster to an almond tree.

FBI agents in blue jackets don’t reply. 

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

“I want cake. I want Blondi,” Heide says. “I want Hilde and Helmut 

and Holde and Hedda. I want to sing the Leader a song.”

Show trials, lawsuits, rubber stamps in judges’ robes, 

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

After an anti-anti-fascist salute at the inauguration,

billionaires bankrupt the sick, starve the poor.

Magda joins the president in the Horst Wessel song.

Ay! von mir, Wehklagende, Wehklagende

Wehkalagende, in himmelblau 

Green fruit, pink blossoms, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

Tanks in D.C., Predator drones over Portland, Gaza on Beale Street, 

iron lungs, broken test tubes, enemies within,  

“Why is your neck bruised?” Heide asks. 

Serrated leaves, green fruit, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

Partisans burn their rifles, mail excuses with requests for donations. 

“Hush, children.” Magda feeds her daughters poppies and marzipan.

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

Hundreds of Jon Wesick's poems and stories have appeared in journals such as the I-70 Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, and Unlikely Stories. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and host of the Gelato East Fiction Open Mic. His latest book, Reductio Ad Absurdum, is a collection of parodies. He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and longs for gene editing to bring giant wombats back from extinction.

JANE

by Terri Kirby Erickson

“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference.”  — Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope (2021)

 

Jane Goodall traveled alone in Gombe, save for the man who 

filmed a young Englishwoman slipping into the African land-

scape as easily as a ray of light between the sparse canopy of 

 

an acacia tree. Clad in a khaki shirt and shorts, she could have

been Eve exiled from the Garden of Eden, aware but uncaring 

of venomous snakes that slithered around her, the bitter taste 

 

of forbidden fruit, all but forgotten. Doing what she was meant 

to do, Jane believed nothing could harm her (as she often said)

and nothing did as she moved through grasslands, woodlands,

 

steep valleys, and rocky slopes, crossing streams and climbing 

trees while trying to find the chimps. Instead, she saw brightly-

colored birds and butterflies, bushbucks and other wildlife as 

 

she searched, month after month with no chimpanzees in sight. 

But finally, her patience was repaid by a male dubbed David 

Greybeard. And after him there were others, Goliath, Flo, and 

 

Fifi, defying scientists who claimed chimps were incapable of 

empathy, happiness, or grief, labeled them by numbers instead 

of names. But let’s not travel just yet, to what Jane would learn 

 

and what good she would do in the future, this kind and gentle 

woman, as brave as anyone ever born. You have only to see her 

lovely face on film as David, rather than running away, ignores 

 

her presence while eating figs—to know this moment was the 

apex of her young life, a dream that began with a toy monkey 

her father gave her instead of a bear. For now, I’d rather think 

 

of Jane Goodall sitting still as a hill or a stone while watching 

the chimps—her expression of joy and wonder akin to Eve’s 

if she’d been welcomed back to Paradise and at last, forgiven.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

by Tammy Smith

Art by Clay Jones

One of the slyest tricks
the mind’s eye knows:
to seal itself shut.
Save face.
Mask up.

Some say good can come
from a shutdown.
Maybe true for the sleep-deprived,
near collapse, knees buckling—

but for the rest of us, harder
to measure the loss:
empty offices, national parks,
stalled paychecks,
parties brawling over healthcare
without fanfare,
without conscience,
in crowded waiting rooms,
filling out the same damn forms.

Blank spaces, blank stares.

A shutdown is an ill-timed rest—
every blink, another verdict
against the people forced to sleep
without the aid
of their American dream.

Tammy Smith is a New Jersey–based poet and licensed clinical social worker. Her poems have been published in ONE ART, The New Verse News, Grand Little Things, Merion West, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

PUBLICITY STUNT

By Matt Witt

Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, on X.

When 500 leaders from 40 countries formed a flotilla to try to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Israeli government arrested them and said the flotilla was a “publicity stunt” and against the law.

When auto workers sat down in a General Motors plant in 1937 and refused to relinquish the factory until the company recognized their union, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When young Black people challenged segregation by sitting at whites-only lunch counters, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When suffragettes chained themselves to the White House and went on hunger strikes in jail to win the right to vote, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When protesters in India led by Gandhi boycotted British goods as part of a campaign for independence, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When South Africans deliberately violated apartheid rules like curfews in Black townships, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

So many laws. So much power. So many publicity stunts yet to come.

October 4, 2025

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com. His latest book is Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

CANNIBAL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

On 9/11/2001 guns were turned 

on us as aeroplanes Noam Chomsky 

explained before a crowd 

at the University of Madras. 

Now, twenty-four years later 

guns are again pointing at us, 

dropping down from 

the Blackhawk hanging in the sky 

over a building full of citizens 

and migrants, brown-skinned, 

shivering in the night air, ziptied, 

naked, in bedclothes, stolen from 

sleep and asked to produce birth 

certificates, passports, doors 

to their apartments bashed in 

by three hundred masked

and camouflaged men showing

no search warrant, wearing 

Infrared shades, an operation 

to neutralize a migrant, deliverer 

of food, driver, store clerk,  

runner for the exchange of milk 

and eggs, not the gang member 

the Department of War Propaganda

deems reasonable cause for 

the night raid on the South Side 

against bona fide Americans

in these United States.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. His publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

THE WAR WITHIN

by Donna Katzin

                        

Art by Ann Telnaes

Standing at attention, a silent sea

of the nation’s glittering medal-chested top brass

face the self-named “Secretary of War,”

who demands they trim their waistlines and words

as their ranks are filled by monochrome commanders

and uni-gender generals

required to speak in the single voice

of their Commander in Chief.

No longer facing foreign wars,

they will now be ordered to enforce martial law

on the families that raised them,

children like their own, neighbors

who shared their burdens and blessings,

compatriots with sons and daughters,

ancestors like theirs seeking shelter

and a future in a new land.

The statue in the harbor hangs her head.

“We the People” have become

“the enemy within.”

The future trembles in our hands.

Donna Katzin has worked for more than three decades with South Africa in its struggle to defeat apartheid and advance the new nation's  democratic development.  She also continues to partner with vulnerable Nicaraguan communities and mothers struggling to feed their children.  She is the author of With These Hands, a book of poetry and photos of South Africans struggling to give birth to a new nation, and a published poet honored to have been included in New Verse News.

MASS SHOOTING #6

14201 2nd Ave, Gabrielle Apartments & Townhomes, Highland Park, MI, Sep 28 2025

by Ron Riekki

“the war speaks at night

with its lips of shredded children,”

—Tyehimba Jess,

“Mercy”

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

I ask where he’s working.  He says, “Illegally.”

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

 

He says he can’t move his hand, he’s doing poorly.

Says, “We need more jobs.”  Leaves, says I’m too “cop-vibe”-y.

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

 

Inside a car, a man crying.  Not quite payday.

Says it’s been a long day, his face all teary.

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

 

2 adults, 2 teens shot on this property

2 days ago—foot, foot, shoulder, chest injury.

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

 

I ask if he’s OK.  He says, “yeah,” politely.

He says the problem’s “gun stores.”  They’re making money.

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

 

White community’s answer is to “pray.”

I worry I can only think binary.

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

WOKE

by Bradley McIlwain

Burial of the dead after the massacre of Wounded Knee. U.S. soldiers putting Indians in common grave; some corpses are frozen in different positions. (Wikipedia)

Native American communities that had long wanted the removal of military honors for the soldiers involved in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre had their hopes dashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his effort to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces. “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, ‘don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings’ leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said Tuesday to hundreds of military officials at a ceremony. The defense secretary announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness and painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies. Hegseth had announced last week in a video on social media that Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor, part of a wider Trump administration move that Indigenous leaders and historians on Tuesday called part of a culture war against racial and ethnic minorities and women’s rights. —AP, October 1, 2025

Warriors whisper in the willows

Odyssey of blood and ochre 

Unheard under cannon fire:

No surrender—

Dancing ghosts raid the dawn;

Eagles still soar at Pine Ridge

Drums of the ancestors

Keep the fires of knowledge

No medals, no song, no glory;

Evergreens slope to the South—

Elders rise in the heart of the sun.

Bradley McIlwain works as a Teacher-Librarian, where he strives to provide meaningful and inclusive spaces for knowledge exchange and advocacy. He believes that poems and poets can be agents for social change. Bradley’s latest book Dear Emily was published by Roasted Poet Press last year.