Tag: political

To the Lost Flowers of Minab by Valentina Gnup

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To the Lost Flowers of Minab

— for the 160 young girls killed at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Iran

          Here is the beeswax candle
you took turns blowing out at bedtime.

          Here is the faded blue quilt,
stitched in your family a century ago,
the quilt your sister and you curled beneath each night,
your bodies, a warm treble clef of skinny limbs.

          Here are blessed milk thistle and the cherished lily.

          Here are roasted aubergine, pomegranates,
and the crispy rice that stuck to the bottom of the pot.

          Here are marbles, a jump rope, your favorite doll.
And here, your strictest teacher and the poetry
you learned to recite.

          Swinging in the park with your best friend,
sorrow of returning home at sunset.

          Scarlet orchids and white hyacinth.

          A setar perched on your thigh,
the way one finger coaxed music from the instrument
as your mother listened from across the hall.

          Here are pink damask roses, your shattered childhood,
your whole future returned to you—

          quiet mornings of old age,
and the long, long river of memory.

*

Valentina Gnup’s poetry collection, Ruined Music, was published by Grayson Books in 2024. In 2023 she won the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for Poetry and second place in the Yeats Prize for poetry. In 2019, she won the Lascaux Prize in Poetry; in 2017, she won the Ekphrastic Challenge from Rattle; and in 2015, she won the Rattle Reader’s Choice Award. She lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit at valentinagnup.com

Broken Sonnet by Susan Rich

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Broken Sonnet

How do you begin a poem when you know
How the story ends? Even with a dog,
Joule! who traveled everywhere with him,
Even with his student whom he taught to listen
To each human heartbeat, to open a central line;
Even caretaking U.S. Veterans and with just one
Small camera curled in his right palm like a charm, he—
A kind man (in each account) an activist, Minneapolis—
Light-skinned, bicycle fanatic, in a resonant voice he keeps asking
Are you okay? helping the woman being pepper-sprayed
up from the cold street, making sure she can breathe.
Even then.

                                            for Alex Pretti, 1988-2026

*

Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor/editor of three anthologies. Her recent books include Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds,  Blue Atlas,  and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems. Susan co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems with Kelli Russell Agodon and co-edited, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders with Ilya Kaminsky and Brian Turner. Her other poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award. A winner of the Crab Creek Review Prize, Times Literary Supplement Award (London), and a Fulbright Fellowship. Rich’s poems appear in the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. 

Outpouring by Alison Luterman

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Outpouring

A bucket of water tossed on the frozen streets of Minneapolis
for the ICE agent to slip on while running at the crowd of protesters;

a river of souls streaming through the avenues
chanting Renee Good’s name, waving posters of her sunflower face;

a tsunami of people all over the world sending money and encouraging notes
to the ones buying groceries for the ones who are hiding,

afraid to go to work, or school, or the store;
everyone marching together in zero degree weather, scared

and defiant, weathered activists arm-in-arm with new-to-this Gen Z kids–
those with nothing to lose, those with everything,

blowing their whistles, following the black SUVs,
banging pots and pans outside the Hilton where the agents are trying to sleep,

saying No, not in my neighborhood, saying MacBeth
shall sleep no more, crying Murder most foul, sleep no more;

What is this outpouring? Where’s the source? Will it be enough?
Today, we’re all Minnesotans, from California to Maine: we’re tired,

hoarse, footsore, at the ragged edge of endurance from getting up before dawn
to protect our schools, our neighbors; still, there’s no stopping this

outpouring of people, in all the states and every weather while the sky itself
pours snow and sleet all over the blasted heath they are trying to make

of our country. Outpouring of disgust at the mad king and his masked army,
a united swell, an upsurge, a tsunami of courage and outrage

flooding the streets and highways and byways
with humanity declaring itself human in the face of the faceless,

singing Hold On in four-part harmony, testimony rising up
and pouring forth in faith; a cascade, a deluge, a torrent of love.

*

Alison Luterman’s five books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life, See How We Almost Fly, Desire Zoo, In the Time of Great Fires, and Hard Listening. She also writes plays, song lyrics, and personal essays. She has taught at New College, The Writing Salon, Catamaran, Esalen and Omega Institutes and writing workshops around the country, as well as working as a California poet in the schools for many years.

Stick to Poetry and Art! by Donna Hilbert

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Stick to Poetry and Art!

A lady in my neighborhood
screams at me, when I rain fury
on the New Regime. He’s your President!
Get Used to it! Stick to Poetry and Art!

It would please me to stick to poetry and art.

Perhaps the screaming lady has a point.
Perhaps she’s read John Keats:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,— that is all ye need to know

Sadly, it’s just not true.

We are not mere figures etched upon an urn,
but living creatures watching beauty burn.

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Cholla Needles, TSPoetry, VerseDaily, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love Is For All Of Us, What the House Knows, Poetry Goes The Movies. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California.

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.

*

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.

*

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.

*

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.

My Theory of Everything About the ‘Houthi PC small group’ by Marc Alan Di Martino

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My Theory of Everything About the ‘Houthi PC small group’
My personal TOE is that this was an SOS,
a holler for help so dire it could only come
from inside the house, from someone
so paralyzed that their only hope of escape
was to cc the editor of The Atlantic
in a group chat on an unsecured app
and…let the tape roll. Maybe in this way
the outside world could intervene, call
their bluff, do something. My TOE is sound
and has been vetted. It has been confirmed
by the Senate. It has survived multiple
hearings and a couple of jittery visits
to the Supreme Court, where it won
in a 5-4 decision. My TOE is foolproof,
bulletproof, hundred proof grain alcohol,
Occam’s Razor-sharp, capable of shaving
the false beard off the baby face of Truth
revealing a lean, mean fact-checking machine.
These days it seems the Truth is under attack
from all sides—not unlike the Houthi pirates—
and many have come to the sad conclusion
that “truth” is merely a personnel [sic] opinion,
and that to lord one’s truth over another’s
is tantamount to flying your war plans [sic]
into the World Trade Center, which of course
was already destroyed by illegal immigrants
flooding our borders, and even J.D. Vance
giving a thumbs-up emoji is really just his way
of saying
I’m trapped
in a deep well please
somebody help—
*
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.

America, We Hope This is A Mammogram by Alison Hurwitz

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America, We Hope This is A Mammogram
America, it’s clear you’ve gone without deodorant,
driven into inquisition, arrived on time and tried
to find distraction in the waiting room.
America, we know you are half hoping they will never
call your name, hope that they forget to lead you
to a cell and strip. They don’t. You fold your bra,
try to tuck it underneath your shirt and sweater,
as if anyone would check, or for that matter, care.
America, you’ll tell yourself that this is routine screening,
discomfort best endured with equanimity. In the
examination room, a politician helps insert your tender parts
into the rack, the press, the radiation squeeze, then drape
your uterus away from inconvenient expression. They say
some soreness now prevents ineptitude or populist disquiet from
becoming angry subdivision. We hope this is your method here:
that after you are 3D screened and hold your breath, you will exhale,
emerging bruised and blotched with red, contused but cancer free.
We hope it isn’t already too late, hope you’ve not metastasized beyond
the reach of intervention. We’ll wait for your results. Fingers crossed.
*
Alison Hurwitz is a former cellist and dancer who now finds music in language. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2024, and for Best of the Net in 2023 and 2024, Alison is the host of the monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Published in South Dakota Review, SWIMM, Sky Island Journal and others, her work is forthcoming in The Westchester Review and Poetry in Plain Sight. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings and memorial services, walks in the woods, and dances in her kitchen with her family. Find her at alisonhurwitz.com

Three Poems by Catherine Gonick

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Why I Couldn’t Believe in Revolution

The young just want a revolution, total change,
a young man’s mother explained. When I was young
I couldn’t answer Revolution’s call, but didn’t know
why until I first heard Bernie, his Brooklyn accent
so familiar from my college days in Berkeley.
It was the accent of young men who gathered
in the sun daily on the terrace of the Student Union
to drink coffee and who never stopped talking
about the coming Revolution, in that accent.

As a Californian I had no accent, only the same
Russian Jewish revolutionary grandparents
as those men. I had no idea what they even meant
by Revolution, only that it involved a lot of meetings,
at which silent women made and served the coffee
and did a lot of cranking of the mimeograph machine.
Out on the terrace where the men talked, I sat alone
and read not Che but Roethke. Like the rotund poet,
I liked to take my waking slow, but overhearing
those men I couldn’t help thinking of The Terror,
of what happened to Marie Antoinette and my relatives
who had listened to Stalin way too long.

I waited to hear What Came After the Revolution’s
joyful, violent climax, which in a play or bed,
must be followed by dénouement, and perhaps ennui.
I was already there, sad and bored since that time
my father, a longtime ACLU supporter, remarked
that, alas, female citizens were still second-class,
in a tone that showed he wouldn’t fight for me.
Decades later, I had nothing against Bernie,
even liked him and what he had to say.
I just couldn’t take his voice, the same way
some people hated Kamala’s laugh, and others
believed whatever Trump promised.

*

Into the Woods

Once when a friend and I were out in the woods,
stoned on LSD, we saw a man looking at us
as he played with himself, and discussed
how we should react. I’m trying not to laugh,
I whispered. My friend asked whether
we should say something to him.

I wasn’t afraid, because the man
was on the other side of a wide creek
and my friend was also a man.
A woman and a man, really high,
we looked at the other man showing us
his goods and could not think what to do.

In patriarchy, it’s said, what a woman
fears most from a man is being hurt,
while what he most fears from her
is being laughed at. It’s said that a man
is either a woman’s rapist or her defender.
These two men were neither.

My friend and I couldn’t stop looking
at that bird-in-the-hand, as it asked
to be appreciated, and seemed delighted
to be noticed, from a safe distance.
Freud said civilization began with upright
posture, which made genitals visible.

*

Merging

Now you have lost the sight of one eye
as well as the hearing stolen

long ago from one ear
on the opposite side

Your losses are symmetrical

and I can’t stop imagining your head
full of holes

Sometimes I feel that I am you

the way I did that day we met
by surprise in a clothing store

and in that first moment thought
you were me and I you

Now I am a waterfall that can’t stop
falling and I feel you falling too

I remember how as children
we sometimes dreamed the same dreams

wondered in the morning if they began
with me or you

You hadn’t wanted to see me
for a long time

but emailed to let me know
because, you said, You’re my sister

I cover one eye with one hand
use the other to stop hearing in one ear

*

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in a wide range of journals, including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Pedestal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She has a book forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in the spring, and lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, with whom she works in a company attempting to slow the rate of global warming.

Today, I Am Not Kind Because I Love Love, by Abby E. Murray

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Today, I Am Not Kind Because I Love Love,

I am kind because I hate hate.
If viciousness drives a luxury car,
I am scratching my initials into its paint
using only the ragged edge
of my tenderness. This may be
the age of distance and shame
but I am kissing the hands of my friends
while I can. I am making it weird.
I am confessing my commitment
to the bumblebee who spent her last calorie
mistaking the palm of my hand
for a buttercup, curling up inside it,
and dying. Sometimes you’ve got to piss
in apathy’s coffee, antagonize the hell
out of indifference. You become
furiously nonviolent, wild with love,
hurling small mercies into your life
like you’re pitching stones
at the closed glass windows of cruelty.

*

Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington.

Watching Cabaret by Jacqueline Jules

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Watching Cabaret

Forty some years ago,
I saw Cabaret in a college theater.

The female lead was barely five feet. Her lover
hardly a head taller. Both beautiful with big voices,
just toy-sized against the backdrop of 1930s Berlin
and the Nazi rise to power.

Brilliant casting, I thought, getting up
from my seat, though I’ll never know
if the student director chose lopsided
stature to make a political statement
or if our small private school didn’t have
a bigger pool of actors to choose from.

But these days as I worry my country
is dancing away from democracy to march
in goose step, it feels as if I’m a petite actor
surrounded by taller figures
noisily crowding the stage.

*

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Two Poems by Shannon Frost Greenstein

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I’m Not a F*cking Superhero Just for Raising My Autistic Son

I just don’t know how you do it, she says, marveling,
her eyes wide like prey to express
just how awe-struck she truly feels.
You’re a Superhero.

My son, stimming, cavorting happily around the room;
neurodiverse, a bright ray of sun, simply delightful,
and brilliant like a savant;
she sees his meltdowns
his struggle to use the bathroom
declares me to be the Ubermensch
and I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

There is consolation in her voice;
like she is sending up a holy prayer
of thanks
her own children do not have special needs.

It is really condescension, though,
because I am someone to be pitied; because I am someone
with something broken.

But hold up for a second there, Miss Becky Home-ecky.

My son is perfect precisely as he is; he is a joy to nurture and get to know.
There’s no need for heroism,
because loving him
requires nothing superhuman at all.

After all, it doesn’t take an Avenger
to be an Autism mom;
it just takes
a mom.

So save your pity
when you meet my child on the Autism spectrum
because we are both doing just fine.

And I am not a f*cking Superhero
just for raising my autistic son.
I raise my autistic son
because I am his f*cking mother,
and that is just
what mothers do.

*

I Blame George Balanchine

I blame George Balanchine
for decades upon decades
of the most vicious kinds of eating disorders;
for veneration of the waif
at the expense of growing old;
for the toxicity and abuse
that defines professional ballet
and the pervasive legacy of exclusion
that still persists to this day.

I blame Saint Augustine
for the devaluation of women
and the marriage of church and state;
for back-alley abortions
and unresearched stem cells;
for the stigma of sex
just for the sake of sex
and the pervasive legacy of judgement
that still persists to this day.

I blame Nancy Reagan
for propagating systemic racism
as the face of the War on Drugs;
for equating addiction
with weakness of character;
for commanding us all to Just Say No
as crack ravaged the Black community
and the pervasive legacy of an epidemic
that still persists to this day.

I blame Donald Trump
for his epidemiological illiteracy
and killing one million Americans;
for misogyny and bigotry and prejudice and hate
because he is just the worst kind of person;
for humiliating our nation
on a geopolitical scale
and the pervasive legacy of intolerance
that still persists to this day.

I blame them all for the damage they’ve caused
and for reinforcing the otherhood of people like me
and if you agree with anything they have to say
then, you prick, I fucking blame you, too.

*

Shannon Frost Greenstein (she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things”, a full-length book of poetry available from Really Serious Literature, and “Pray for Us Sinners,” a short story collection with Alien Buddha Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Litro Mag, Bending Genres, Parentheses Journal, and elsewhere. Follow Shannon at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre.