IF THIS IS THE POEM YOU READ WHEN I'VE BEEN MURDERED BY ICE

by Hailey Elles

Cartoon by Dennis Goris.

This is survival. 

My friend says 

“we are at war

with our government.”

We also discuss

her new winter boots, 

which hold snugly 

as she walks her dog, 

clipping her prophecies 

and beaming them to me. 

This disjointed 

correspondence

is how she is with me 

as my studded tires grip 

these switchbacks 

like a prayer– 

I am praying 

there will be no children

waiting by the doors 

of the middle school 

I was supposed to open 

five minutes ago–oh, 

I am tired. It is not possible 

to go faster. And anyway, 

every tree is sparkling 

on this cold morning, 

almost invisible 

against the sunrise, 

as red as the drag in blood-

shot eyes. All the plowmen 

are out, salting the roads,

trying to preserve any

beautiful, useful thing.

Hailey Elles is a writer, teacher, and literacy organizer who lives in Bridgewater, Vermont. She has a masters in secondary English education and is currently pursuing a masters in English as a Breadloaf Teacher Network Fellow at Middlebury College. Her writing has appeared in various journals and publications, most recently in Half and One, the BLTN Journal, and Poet's Choice.

WHIRLS

by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Click to read article and view video.

1: California Driveway

 

The unfurling of the calla lily

Like a white dress whirling

 

When fully open with the day

Orange pistil elicits pollination

 

2: Minnesota Video

 

Masked man’s bodycam sees driver:

“I’m not mad at you, boy.”

 

Nearby woman wielding cellphone:

“You want to come at us?”

 

3: Reflecting Poet

 

The whirl of wheels

The whirl of a weapon

 

What makes a mind whirl

What made our minds whirl

Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA Antioch University L.A., taught at USC and Occidental College Upward Bound, board member California Poets In The Schools, publisher Four Feathers Press, host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading and workshop series in Pasadena, California.

A NOTE FROM US

by Marshall Begel

Art by Ann Telnaes

We hope Venezuelans will value the respite
that comes from abducting your self-serving despot.
We, too, love our country and venture to save her—
so, won't you consider returning the favor?

Marshall Begel became a serious poetry hobbyist when he found that bad jokes are better received when presented in meter and rhyme. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin and has had many pieces in the journals Light and Lighten Up Online.

AND SO IT BEGINS

by Imogen Arate

Art by Ann Telnaes

I.
The video stunned
The spin followed

An award-winning poet
has been silenced
by the shrill bullets from a
21st-century fast-drawing
cowboy on the man-made
frontiers of the new wild West

Yet we’re subjected 
to the lies of a rapist

Another man trying 
to justify violence
against women

A bad remake
of another family 
forced into mourning

another community
thrown into chaos

II.
Yet we still think in terms
of elephants and donkeys

while neither will draw down
on the military budget

sunset high-tech toys
hardware for the police and

other testosterone-charged 

angst-driven angry boys

tear down boundaries
that gate-check
investments in decency
beyond the borders
of “me and my”

Repulsive successive local waves 
reinforce the national and the 
global of political expedience 
and small and large lies stack 
upon one another to enrage
as the bodies of the sacrificed
emit the noxious gas
of corruption to explode
in a tsunami of grief and fury

III.
He who became
a millionaire at eight
nursed on government subsidies
bailouts and tax breaks
feeds us the fast-food diet of rancor 
while he grabs a pussy a plane 
a tanker a president oil fields 
Greenland and lusts after resort money
built on a still-hemorrhaging mass grave

But he’s just another opportunist
a symptom mushrooming on the 
advantages of Eugenicist 
elitism ripened by everyday
brand ambassadors gladiating
for a piece of the imaginary pie

IV.
Our pens may ink mighty words
but their impressions are paper thin 
against the hurried tunneling
of semi-automatic street artillery
bump-stocked by the political will
of fuel-guzzling AI overtaking human 
value as they peel away with the 
breeze blasé over endless shootings
grown accustomed to washing away 
anguish with yet more agony while 
prayers whistling show tunes 
to soundtrack the cha-ching
of firearms outstripping humans

V.
But she was a white citizen
Why should that be the red line
when we don’t let spilt blood
rust before sacrificing more lives
to our inane judgement of worth 

This social engineering
was never meant to end well
when chaos has no red line
maelstrom cannot be reined in

The hunger of greed 
self-perpetuates
in unchecked growth
to unleash the pandemonium
of a self-fulfilling prophecy

Imogen Arate is an Asian-American poet in search of hope: that humanity will overcome our self-destructive tendencies to work together against the onslaught of the climate crisis. She's also the Executive Director of Poets and Muses, an award-winning multimedia artist platform that has featured diverse contemporary poetic voices from around the globe. She believes that we will only be able to value lives equally when we lend our ears and hearts to the life stories of those we don't readily recognize as our kin and stop requiring the presence of certain socioeconomic trappings to recognize people's right to a dignified existence.

WHAT REMAINS

by Karen Warinsky

Good was taken out of the world

but goodness remains.

We will stand together

strong as trees

arms linked

hearts synced

a living memory

of all that is good,

all that remains of decency.

 

We will preserve goodness

keep it safe among us

use its weight to break this chain

of unlawful despair,

get out from under

these low hanging clouds

trying to cover us with

foggy confusion.

 

We have seen goodness.

We have lived with goodness,

and though Good was taken

goodness remains.

 

Karen Warinsky is the author of four collections including Dining with War  (2023 Alien Buddha Press), and her new release Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books 2025).  An award-winning poet, she is a  Best of the Net nominee and a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest.  Warinsky coordinates spoken word events in MA and CT under the name Poets at Large. Find her on Facebook or atkarenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com.

ANOTHER DEADLY ONE

by B. N. Faraj

If God decreed the Book to be revised

to make the seven eight and add a sin

with which do you suppose he would begin—

the deadliest, the one that's most despised?

Do you believe there is a bigger vice

that tramples decency and butchers grace

and puts to shame our fumbling human race

than what is being committed by ICE?

B. N. Faraj is a writer and poet living in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Detroit and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. His work has appeared in Transference, the anthology Mother, a Title Just above Queen, and elsewhere.

SEA OF DESPOND

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Israel clears final hurdle to start settlement construction that would cut the West Bank in two. —PBS, January 6, 2026. In the video above from four months ago, Israeli minister Smotrich explains the plan.

From the river to the sea,

Palestine won't come to be.

Bibi's stance is very clear:

Arabs aren't welcome here.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has around 360 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, Light Poetry Magazine, and Lighten Up Online.. She has also had fourteen previous poems in The New Verse News.

STOP THE KILLERS!

by Raymond Nat Turner

The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September —PBS, January 4, 2026

Burlap bags stuffed with tuna and blue marlin.

Catch of a lifetime! Juan’s already counting the

cash in his head. Visualizing pawn shop guitar

for Gabriel, his 10-year-old son, graduating to guitar

from ukulele. Gabriel’s greeted morning rooster-

like—since age 3—with “Let’s practice, Papa!”

Before pushing off to sea Juan bought the computer 

Rosario wished for from a journalism student he met

at the fish market training fishmongers to compute. He

also bought the bicycle Maria longed for and stashed it

at a neighbor’s house. Juan was out to make his young

family’s Christmas the best ever.

BOOM!

Bloody mess below his waist. Juan’s a strong swimmer. But

he can’t feel his legs. He quickly grabs on to fiery flotsam.

Is that Javier hanging on for dear life across from him?

He hears his children’s joyful shrieks. Sees them jumping

Up and down with joy. He kisses Lourdes long and tenderly…

BOOM!

A pomade man has amplified orders of

his demented Don into “Kill them all!”

Laughing, they dub it  a “double-tap 

strike—”

like some cool dance step

signaling mad moves to come… 

Author’s notes:

This poem is a puzzle I put together based on backwards, savage, lethal headlines and loving holiday memories I hold. The puzzle pieces are as follows:

1. The two men who were infamously ordered summarily executed by a pomade man sucking up to his Don.

2. When I was around 10 my dad took me deep sea fishing in Ensenada. And, as beginner’s luck would have it, I caught both a 21lb Yellowtail and a 21lb Bonita.

3. When I was eighteen or nineteen, my dad who'd played trombone in high school, purchased a pawn shop trombone for me.

4. Our JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge! purchased a $300 kids' drumkit for a bandmate’s 3-year-old. And from then on the child woke up every morning saying, "Papa, let's practice!" His dad obliged him. Now that 3-year-old is the 23-year-old drummer for John Coltrane's son, Ravi!

5. One Christmas Eve my Mom and Dad hid a brand new bicycle from me at the next door neighbor's house.

6. Lourdes was a beautiful curly-haired Mexican Jack In The Box worker I had a huge crush on.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

I LIVE IN A COUNTRY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

"Oil and Distraction" by Ann Telnaes

I live in a country
Proud to invade
Proud to destroy
Proud to kidnap and murder
The leaders of other sovereign nations
 
I live in a country
Too brutal
Too lacking in a sense 
Of our shared life on the planet
Too impatient and inarticulate 
To negotiate its aims
So it vociferates instead
Using bunker-busting bombs.
 
I live in a country 
With an embedded elite
That controls massive amounts of wealth
And leaves millions
Lacking in the wherewithall 
Necessary for a decent 
Productive and creative existence.
 
I live in a country without leaders
Only capos
Without a vision of a better world
Only hackneyed slogans
And faded old Batman comics
Without the music of hope
Only the cracked ballads of despair
Played on one-string shoebox guitars.
 
I live in a country
That fervently worships
Only itself
Mad with the fear
That it is rapidly losing its place
As the hegemon
A country that is 
Flailing away hysterically
Demanding that the rest of the world
Keep paying tribute and obeisance
And endlessly fawning
Like a Hollywood lacky
Assuring the fading star
“You are still beautiful.”
 
I live in a country whose mountains
And prairies and woodlands
Rivers and lakes and streams
Are beautiful
Whose ordinary citizens
Are still mostly good and kind
But whose leaders
Are a pack of craven 
Crooks and scammers and parasites
Who use their positions and powers
To bully the populace
And upholster their own pockets.
 
I live in a country whose leaders
Make it a very difficult land
To love
But let us all keep standing 
With our neighbors against
The cruelty and criminality
The self-absorption and toxic greed
That prevails in high places
And raise another banner on the flagpole
The banner of universal humanity.
 

 Buff Whitman-Bradley podcasts his poetry at thirdactpoems.podbean.com

LIBRE VENEZUELA

by Chris L. Butler

Art by Clay Jones

Animus aggression
unhinged & unchecked.

Jet propulsions
accompanied by
mass explosions.
Convicted felons
claiming criminality.

An ironic eruption.
Manifest destiny?
No, even worse.
Manifested violations
of international law.
A cruel collective
giving dangerous
directions to gain
crude investments.
Got other nations
quaking each time
he utters the word

liberation. Cabinets who
claim to be peacemakers 
yet the traits exhibited
are the total opposite
of Quakers. Some see

a circle of friends.
To us? We see a circle
of dictators. Perpetrators
of neo neo colonization.
It’s like we learned nothing
from Iraq, Afghanistan,
Vietnam, Libya, or Syria.
Forget our issues in America
if oil money is on the table.
Copy & paste a country name
here enters Venezuela.

How is this any different?

Chris L. Butler is a Black American-Canadian poet from Philadelphia, PA living in Southern Ontario outside of Toronto. He is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Melodies of the Oppressed (Ethel Zine, 2026) and four other chapbooks. Chris' work has been featured in Variety Pack, Poems for Persons of Interest, Ghost City Review, Pinch Journal, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and more. He is a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee, and a 1x Best of the Net nominee.

ATTENTION SPANS

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Ten years ago, a shocking headline captured the world’s attention: “Human beings now have an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish!” This claim, though horrifying, was totally bogus. The stat in question—that our attention spans had shrunk to a meagre eight seconds—was founded on two spurious and unverified sources and widely spread by a Microsoft Ads “study” published in 2015… Even if we haven’t quite hit goldfish levels, is there some truth to the assertion that human attention spans are dwindling? The short answer is a resounding “yes”, according to research. —Independent (UK), December 14, 2025

Attention spans in humans have declined

Tremendously since tech bros honed their apps

To deluge us with clickbait that's designed

Expressly to cause frequent mental lapse,

Necessitating countermeasures that

Try earnestly to put the genie back

Inside the bottle, but a TikTok chat

Or YouTube video resists attack,

No matter how you try to disengage—

Safari, Chrome and Edge don't miss a trick:

Psychology will keep you on their page,

And amplify your brain rot as you click...

No antidote for dumbing down is known—

Save ditching both your laptop and your phone!

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.