Tag: news poem

Between 0 and 1 by Sharon Tung

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Between 0 and 1

For Savannah Guthrie

Somewhere, a field holds the hollow shape of a grave
with no body.

I dug it in my mind the day masked men tore
my brother-in-law from his storefront and dragged him into a waiting car—
the sky unwoken, streets folding tight around him.

Then the silence—thick as swamp mud, closing over my breath.

Why does the mind refuse an empty room?
It furnishes the dark: a mattress thin as paper,
a rope knotted to a chair, bruises blooming
across his thinning body, a single bulb swinging its tired moon.

In the shadows, Schrödinger’s cat curls beside him, both alive and dead.

My phone remains on full volume; each ring clicks against my skull,
a cylinder spinning—one bullet in its chamber, one fragile chance whirling in the dark.

Hope whittles down
to one percent—
the rest swallowed by shadows.

But between 0 and 1 lies infinity—
0.1,
0.01,
0.001…
each decimal holds endless probabilities
between two realities.

So I wait in the space between 0 and 1,
until the field yields:
        a grave returned to earth,
        or a body to fill it.

*

Sharon Tung is originally from South Africa and now lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two children. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Mama.

An Enemy Within by Marc Alan Di Martino

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An Enemy Within

Each of us has an enemy within.
For some it’s that voice in back of the mind
rehearsing our shortcomings, assuring us

we’re not enough for this world. For others
it’s the barber, the shopkeeper down the block,
their esoteric powers of endurance

hinting at some gross imbalance in the scales.
For others still it’s both at once—an inferno
of adversaries unfurling with each uneasy step.

You disappear into a restroom, splash
your face with water but there’s no escape
from yourself. The ghoul in the glass is you,

the enemy that pollutes every breath.
The mosquito in your ear will never
cease its drilling, a torment worse than death.

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Inspiration for this poem is addressed in Heather Cox Richardson’s post from September 30, 2025. Hegseth’s unprecedented demand that large numbers of America’s top military personnel meet on short notice and at great expense to the American public.

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A Note from The Author

When a person sees enemies everywhere they look, one must come to the conclusion that their true enemy is in the mirror. America does indeed have ‘an enemy within’, but it isn’t the one the current regime thinks it is. The call, as they say, is coming from inside the house.

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Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Levels of Concern by Stephanie Frazee

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Levels of Concern

Late summer.
We stay inside,
though the house is an oven,
because the outside air
is damaging.
The sky—
dystopian-future orange.
Air seeping
under the doorframes
smells of campfire, bonfire.
I’m ashamed
to want
a marshmallow.

The chickadees are silent
as they flit to the feeder,
the same color red
as the AQI warning.
Beneath feathers, muscles, breast bones,
particulate matter
deposits itself
in a system designed
for lungs the size
of peanut halves
to find oxygen at high altitudes.
But here they are,
low,
gleaning oxygen from smoke,
dropping seeds
from the feeder
onto the wooden porch rail,
furred with rot,
and hopping down to eat them.
I’ll hold my breath
if I refill
the seeds.

Spring again, and
the chickadees nest
in the laurel hedge.
I’m still waiting to hear
the hungry shrill of chicks.
One daffodil, bent over,
half yellow,
half brown,
half dead already.
The hydrangea
is all brittle wood.
I forget the last year it bloomed.

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Stephanie Frazee’s work is forthcoming from The Evergreen Review and Bayou Magazine and has appeared in Third Wednesday, Juked, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Juked, American Short Fiction, and No Contact, and she lives in Seattle.