Penumbra Online
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Penumbra Online
Summer 2026
America at 250:
Dreaming the Dream
Table of Contents
Art
American Jazz
Poetry
This’s Going to Fizzle Out if Something Don’t Happen
Will it be my brother? Will it be my friend?
Great Lakes Naval Training Center 1945
Bone Flute Beside the Irrigation Canal
This poem is not about the Alamo.
Beautiful Girls, Cleaning Houses
American Dream
Fiction
Tuesday
The Typist
Bone Flute Beside the Irrigation Canal
by D. Anson Lee
The old man plays only at dusk.
He sits beside the irrigation canal
where cattails lean in the wind
and mosquitoes stitch the air.
Children on bicycles slow to listen,
though none recognize the melody.
My grandfather would have.
He once told me certain songs
survive longer than nations.
This valley knows something about survival.
Beneath almond orchards
lie Yokuts villages,
buried fishing hooks,
charcoal from cooking fires
older than maps.
Now supermarkets glow all night.
Subdivisions spread across fields
where quail once vanished into wheatgrass.
Still, each evening,
the flute returns.
Its sound is thin, unfinished, nearly breaking:
like a voice remembering itself.
I think of all the ways a people disappear:
through boarding schools,
through renamed rivers,
through silence practiced long enough
to resemble peace.
The old man closes his eyes while he plays.
Coyotes answer from somewhere beyond the canal.
For one suspended moment,
darkness gathers around us
not as erasure,
but shelter.
The first stars appear cautiously
above the valley.
No one speaks.
Even the water seems to pause
to hear
what remains.
The Typist
by Thomas Healy
He sat down at one of the wobbly metal tables outside the coffee house and took a sip of his cappuccino. It was much too hot so he set it aside and opened the battered Olivetti typewriter case and began to pound away on the stiff keys. At first, he typed his name, "Rick Stedden," over and over again, then he typed what he remembered of the Gettysburg Address.
As he did, the "clack, clack, clack" sound of the typewriter ringing in his ears, he was aware of others looking at him, some even stood behind him for a minute or two. He felt like some exotic creature in a cage at the zoo.
*
In his third year in college, Stedden worked part-time at the Odd Old Ends, a collectibles shop near the school. Mostly he stocked shelves and sometimes helped the owner, Mr. Honeyman, price the inventory.
"I've got an idea that might stir up some more business," Mr. Honeyman said one afternoon.
"What's that?"
He smiled his crooked smile. "It involves you, son.”
"It does?"
Still smiling, he explained what he had in mind: "Suppose, every other day or so, you take one of the manual typewriters we have for sale and sit outside some coffee house and just type for a few minutes."
"You really think there'd be any interest in buying typewriters?"
"Perhaps, but the key thing is you'd be wearing one of our T-shirts and that might prompt some folks to pay us a visit to see what other things we have to sell."
"I've never used a typewriter."
"You've used a computer."
"Of course."
"The keyboard is pretty much the same, so all you have to do is make-believe you're typing on a computer."
*
One afternoon, instead of typing outside a coffee house, Stedden found an empty bench at Millwell Square, which was at the edge of the Financial District, and set the typewriter beside him and again began to type out the Gettysburg Address. Millwell Square was always packed with people so, not surprisingly, he drew quite a lot of attention.
"You know what century this is, friend?" a guy in dreadlocks asked as he slid by on a skateboard.
"Don't your ears hurt?" someone else asked. "Making all that racket?"
"That machine belongs in a museum, not out in public."
He ignored the wisecracks, having heard them before typing outside various coffee houses the past couple of weeks.
Just before he was about to leave, an older woman with purple fingernails sat down on the bench across from him.
"I had a Smith Corona when I was in college many years ago," she recalled. "I used it so much I wore out some of the keys."
He smiled as he put the Remington typewriter back in its case.
"I miss it," she admitted. "I know computers are faster and easier to use, but I miss the effort it took to tap the keys and even the sound they made when struck. I suppose that's silly but I do."
"It's nice not to have to plug something in all the time to get it to work."
"It is, young man. It certainly is."
*
The more often he typed on the old manual typewriters, the more he began to think of himself as some kind of street performer who entertained people with these peculiar machines. Sometimes, he even appeared on the same street corners that were usually occupied by jugglers and magicians and fire dancers and knife throwers and balloon sculptors. Rarely, but on occasion, people even left him tips.
The largest tip he received was a ten dollar bill that an older man dropped into his typewriter case.
"In its day, that was a very valuable machine that you have," the older man declared as he watched Stedden type out Lincoln's speech.
"I believe it still has some value."
"Not like it did."
"Probably not."
"You know, when people were evacuating Saigon at the time it fell, they were only allowed to bring one item with them when they boarded the helicopters," he recalled with a faint grin, "and some reporter from Time decided to take his typewriter instead of his bag of clothes."
"Is that so?"
He nodded. "Which shows you how valuable such machines were then."
*
Not quite a week later, about halfway through the Gettysburg Address, Stedden got up from his table and went back inside the coffee house to get a refill. He was only gone a couple of minutes, but when he returned the typewriter was not on the table. He was stunned. Wondering if he was looking at the wrong table, he glanced at the three other tables, but the typewriter wasn't there, either.
"This can't be," he muttered, after setting his cup on the table. "It just can't be."
At once, he asked a couple at one of the other tables if they saw what happened to the typewriter, but they were so engrossed in conversation they said they didn't have any idea.
"None at all?"
They wagged their heads in unison.
"Someone took it," a bearded guy at another table informed him.
"Who?"
The guy shrugged. "Never seen him before and I'm here almost every day."
"Damn it."
"He dropped something in your case."
Stedden looked down at the case and saw a small white envelope and inside it was a wrinkled one hundred dollar bill. He could not help but smile. He had made his first ever sale for the shop.
Southern Flights
by Schuyler Becker
Cypress trees contain
the darkest night
only broken apart
by shards of lightning
or the occasional
Waffle House
What a rush
of lost planes,
lost luggage,
and time spent
crossing state lines
in a mini van four too many
for our size
When life gives you lemons
I guess
you get the hell out of Texas
and brace the sticky
Georgian dusk
with a dream and a
melatonin
ready to go
Gorge
by Timothy Dodd
Tracks of hot rolled steel slice through
this valley. Almost Eden. New River.
Hillsides steep and dark angle up away
to the sky, hiding thin waterfalls, morels
in April, and winter deer licking icicles
off rusting coal cars. Coke ovens line
the bases of these mountains, furnaces
deserted mining towns disappeared.
At dusk, limestone outcroppings loom
above like giant outstretched hands, pale
and sure. So little is seen, and even that
passes in a flash: wildflowers pop up in
spirited colors, dotting the slopes until
sitting down again, retreating to the soil
like us, like comets and planets whirling
into, out of infinity. I’m here in a little box
with an engine, little man for a little time,
while the people sit around asking when
the cafe car will open, wanting coffee
and cans of Coke, hamburgers and chips
as we zip through mountain core, a soon-
to-be-forgotten blip of the cosmic mundane.
American Jazz
By Yailin Gutiérrez
Medium: Colored pencils and water color
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Elegy for the Penny
by Jonathan Fletcher
Forget the quarter.
Forget the nickel. Forget the dime.
Forget the dollar.
Hand for lure, search inside
your seams for what can mean
the small difference
between having enough
to pay for a single pack of Spearmint
and the sour look
from the surly cashier as they fish out
a newly minted coin
or reel in the gum from your hopeful hands.
If your catch is instead
larger than most, consider giving
something extra
in the Take a penny, leave a penny.
With intentional finger,
trace the copper-plated zinc,
cherish the cost of 3.7 cents
of metal in your open palm.
When it turns to Mars
in look and feel, don’t spend it,
don’t exchange it.
Make proud America’s Quaker,
worth $100 since 1914.
Deceased, like the penny, in Philadelphia.
His words about the coin
as timely now as was then.
In the folds of your pocket,
keep Mr. Lincoln safe.
In between thumb and forefinger,
clinch 238 years.
In the creases of your hand,
hold a little bit of Revolution.
With resolve as firm as fist,
protect the undervalued.
For my country I grieve
by Corey Mesler
For my country I grieve.
It colors the everyday.
Yet, when Cheryl takes
my hand, just that, I
know a peace that is
fulsome. People, we all
need this. And we need
to feel that we’re not
losing, just losing, every day.
Beautiful Girls, Cleaning Houses
by Keith Melton
I often wonder where you come from.
El Salvador, Mexico, Panama.
It doesn’t matter
our good fortune, your nose to the grindstone,
doing the thankless jobs.
And I remember the Bible verse
“That which you do to the least among you,
you do also to me,”
and I shudder at what we have become,
for all is not well.
A madness in the country now
each day, another fiasco.
The gulags spreading across the landscape
the gerrymanders stealing votes,
cops in black masks kidnapping refugees.
And I think of the lady in the harbor
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,”
and it no longer fits.
We the people, subdued. The stooges
carving up the Constitution. Chaos. Corruption.
The troops in the street.
The Courts, on life support.
So, I try to learn a bit of your language
when you come, shy, reserved
ready to work. For it is hard to fathom
the courage to find a new life
to hold it; cherish it.
Before a darker Amerika,
a 19th century Amerika, rises
in jack boots and riot gear, to crush your dreams.
Great Lakes Naval Training Center 1945
by Carl Landauer
The photo I inherited had begun to bend
so I had it framed to preserve it
at the same time preserving
111 newly trained naval recruits
just finished with their basic training.
“July 16, 1945” the photo says
already two months after V-E Day
still three weeks before Hiroshima and Nagasaki
What was going through those minds
in rows like any class picture?
And there was my father
having raced through Harvard in two years
to join the Navy following his brother
His is the head most lowered
the shyest face among the recruits
many with broad American smiles
just off football and baseball fields
unlike my father
who never knew how to play catch with his son.
Was there another enemy alien,
a Jewish refugee
beaten bloody by his German school teacher?
But my father did feel very American
having eaten hot dogs
all the way across the Atlantic when he was eleven
and doing his homework with his older brother
in their Manhattan kitchen
with the jazz turned up
loud.
Three Fifths
by Joe Coy
this Union intended
on paper at least
to be formed more perfect was
flawed from the start
our words and our actions
never aligned and
we never went back and
fixed what was imperfect
not all the way
sure we’d plug a leak or
try to appease some when
it looked like things were
getting serious
boycotts or riots or marches
but we never acknowledged
the harm caused by design
we made our bed but
refused to lie in it
said we'd rather
sleep out in the cold and
refuse and filth than
ever admit what we did and
continue to do today
that's why we're still here
all these generations later
still saying things are equal when
they've always been anything else
from the very first words to the present
Justice hasn’t been established
general Welfare not promoted
and the Blessings of Liberty unsecured
still so out of reach for
three fifths of all other Persons
Tuesday
by Denz Isidro
It’s Tuesday Di Ba?? Or was it Tuesday yesterday?
I don’t remember. I know today is my 5th day working.
Good thing there is a lot of over-time this month.
Something about the “building being behind on shipments.”
I don’t really care. As long as there is over-time, I’ll keep working.
Ok Class! What’s today?
Tuesday Po!!!
What do we do on Tuesdays?
Reading day Po!!
I remember how I would read to the kids.
Their tiny hands rush to grab their favorite books.
The books were in English. It was my idea.
An English teacher should teach kids how to read, write AND speak in English.
Daniella would always tell me how much she loved to read in English.
“It helps me understand the words on the chips and candy Papa sends me from America!”
Raulo always struggled to read out loud in English.
“If I can’t speak English, then I can’t go with Nanay to San Francisco!”
Ok Class, what’s today?
Tuesday po . . .
What’s special about this Tuesday?
Ms. Uminga’s last day as teacher po . . .
I still remember that Tuesday. All the hugs and letters from my students,
Wishing me the best of luck in America.
Joaquin told me he would visit me in America in 3 years.
Karlo wrote me a letter. He told me to read it out loud to my American Class.
“This letter will tell them how you’re the best English teacher in the world!”
I remember it was a Tuesday morning.
The morning I boarded the plane from Manila to San Jose, California.
That Tuesday morning I was finally going to chase the rest of my Dream.
I was already a teacher; I just needed to be in America
Ok, class, what's today?
Today is Tuesday
I know that! We ready for our first day here at an Amazon Warehouse?
Yes . . . (po)
I thought it would be easy when I came here.
Like reading to the kids every Tuesday.
But I was wrong. Life in America is harder than it looks on T.V.
I was told my BSEd in English was not enough to teach in the U.S.
I had to go back to school for something I already know how to do.
The last registration day for the spring semester was on Tuesday.
I arrived to the U.S. on Wednesday evening.
Ok Class! What’s today?
Tuesday, Ms. Uminga!
Are we ready to read?
Yes, Ms. Uminga!
Today is Wednesday, but it feels like Tuesday.
Every day feels the same.
Wake up, get dressed, go to work.
Scan this box, scan that box.
I don’t even remember what day it is anymore.
The only day I remember is Tuesday.
It’s the only day where my dreams, my ambitions,
The only day where I remember who I am.
Today is not that day.
America, Warehoused
by Cynthia Gallaher Chicago
Warehouses full of expired mascara,
solidified greasepaint,
warehouses loaded with broken tile samples,
frayed roof shingles and tag-less Beanie-Babies,
warehouses of Latino immigrants
in triple bunk beds
covered in DNA woven millennia
before Columbus arrived
inside a drained indoor pool
used auto parts eight feet deep
dusty fallout shelters
penning up dated canned pork
basements rife with
Andy Warhol Interview magazines
featuring pages of 15-minute celebrities
everyone has forgotten
and Playboy issues with centerfolds
whose supple flesh now resemble stalagmites
new wars recycle old wars
its many dead compost in pesticide fields
old enemies morph into new allies
former allies into alleged enemies
warehouses of signed legal documents
undergo redaction or simply disappear
AI creates new visual evidence
to the contrary
everything has developed
a thin veneer of degradation
thin as phyllo dough
which thickens with each plot
even this new nation
250 years old
a warehouse of once united states
shuffled like bins of mismatched
puzzle pieces.
Will it be my brother? Will it be my friend?
by Richard Rubio
Maybe they will put me in a camp,
Or maybe they will fake my suicide,
Or have me disappear without a cause.
I tell myself these days
That I’m simply not big enough to kill,
But maybe I’m so small no one would know.
Maybe one of you will turn me in
And guarantee yourself immunity.
Maybe it will be my closest friend
Or maybe it will even be my brother.
Maybe I will come across success
And even see my voice affect the many
Before the agents show up at my door
To carry out their orders, nothing more.
And maybe it will be my countryman
Who can not stand to look me in the eye.
And maybe they will put me in a camp,
And maybe I won’t get to be so lucky.
Fish
by Jonathon Fletcher
When little grows in native soil,
when metal sheen in the shape
of wings has yet to mar the skies,
what’s sometimes needed
is the firm step of a hesitant toe
on a crowded deck, the lift
of anchored doubt, more than 4,000 miles
of salt and foam, and a mental list
of names as long as the manifest for the ship
on which you’ll ride toward a towering,
stoic, still-mostly bronze lady,
a list from which you’ll choose the name
by which you’ll be thereafter known,
one to match the new kind of life you’ll have.
But until you make it to the teeming shore,¹
feel the press of passengers
sardined with you, finger your papery,
rectangular identity, the printed numbers
above your chest, hug yourself
as tight as the grip of loose sand
by the first fish that walked
on land over 360 million years ago.
Then immerse yourself in this peopled sea.
Swim, grandfather, swim.
________________________
¹the phrase “teeming shore” taken from Emma Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus” (1903)
On U.S. 1 In Saugus, Mass.
by Dan Berick
This occurred to me, last winter:
An enormous metal cactus
has held its prefab arms
spiked with LED glochidia
imploringly to heaven by
this stretch of U.S. highway
through so many cast-off decades, that,
crawling past it in the traffic,
going from somewhere to somewhere,
I hardly even notice that
it ought to seem incongruous
to see it piled with snow.
Three snow-capped, bright green arms
of a giant, phony cactus
should look strange and otherworldly,
near the donut shops in Saugus,
not just one more thing to look at,
going from somewhere to somewhere.
Like a kitschy green reminder of
the strange and lovely things that
we see and never notice.
And the things we never see.
The American Dream
by Kareli Gutierrez
To be sitting on our beds
Typing these words
Is not a foreign concept
It is part of the American Dream
Our parents wished for us
As they crossed land
To be consequentially free
And reach our dreams.
Oh, to be a part of the American Dream.
Friendsgiving
by Michael Chin
After the last of the kids cleared out of school the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the teachers headed for the cafeteria.
Some of them did, anyway.
Mrs. Clenderson, the Family and Consumer Sciences teacher who’d hung around Tree Town High since the course was known as Home Economics, remembered how Friendsgiving used to be. No encouragement from administration necessary, no guilt-tripping from the longest tenured teachers. The faculty genuinely enjoyed spending time together. Even the parents to young children only left long enough to pick up their kids from daycare or another school and come back. Friendsgiving was a family affair then, and Mrs. Clenderson remembered how her daughter Zoey’s eyes went wide as silver dollars when she saw the vat of mashed potatoes the lunch ladies hauled out, big as Zoey herself.
Nowadays, Zoey was in college, not due back until Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs. Clenderson only brought one sweet potato pie to school, plenty for the dozen or so faculty and staff who’d stick around, half of whom didn’t eat sweets. Last year, it was Ms. Dunnoway’s
sugar-free pumpkin torts that got cleaned out first, and Mrs. Clenderson railed against it to her husband when she got home, because how can a dessert be sugar free? until he said, Enough about the pie, your head’s gonna explode! At least he ate the rest of her pie while she silently stewed about lost tradition and faux treats.
Mrs. Clenderson tried to put herself in a better mood, humming a song about turkeys Zoey and her friends had taken to in elementary school one November while she made her way down the darkened hallway, tin-foil wrapped pie in hand. That’s when she found the girl, seated
at the top of the stairwell, her head in her lap, crying.
Mrs. Clenderson’s first instinct was to feel annoyed with this gawkishly tall girl in a white dress with skinny arms impractically exposed for the November chill. Had she missed the final bell? The principal’s loudspeaker announcement wishing everyone a happy holiday and saying all students must vacate the school? The collective efforts of teachers and hall monitors to sweep the halls? Had she hidden a bathroom stall? And for what? A failed test? More likely her boyfriend had dumped her or meaner girls had started a rumor about her. She’d get over it, Mrs. Clenderson would promise, but she had to get out. What’d they used to say at bars? You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
But all at once, Mrs. Clenderson found a wave of kindness. The holiday spirit. Because it was hard getting dumped or gossiped about or—for all Mrs. Clenderson knew—to not have a home. Wasn’t that grounds to feel sorry for oneself at Thanksgiving break?
So, Mrs. Clenderson made her voice soft. Are you all right, sweetheart? No response. A little shake of the girl’s head, Mrs. Clenderson thought, and before thinking anything else, she asked, Are you hungry?
That did the trick and the girl—she was a pretty girl—came with Mrs. Clenderson downstairs and crossed the main thoroughfare of history and English classrooms on the way to the cafeteria. The girl didn’t speak, but Mrs. Clenderson was pleased with herself just the same, because she could feel the holiday spirit in feeding someone who needed it, and maybe one of the teachers at Friendsgiving would know this girl and break the ice—get her to talk, broach the subject of calling her parents. And if no one knew her? Food itself was a conversational lubricant, wasn’t it? That’s why people broke bread together—the very spirit of Friendsgiving.
When they arrived, Principal Blanchard wasn’t even there. He hadn’t provided a turkey either, but rather a platter of premade sandwiches—turkey and lettuce on croissants, a half dozen on a neon-pink platter identifying them as gluten-free. All of it on disposable plastic trays, clear dome lids set aside, not even a pretense he’d made anything by hand, packets of mayonnaise and mustard scattered in haphazard piles. Not like Principal Longcore who took Tuesday off to baste a sixteen pounder in his home oven. The golden days of Friendsgiving, he’d be carving up a storm as faculty arrived, portioning out light and dark meat, pieces with and without skin, Tupperware on hand for leftovers to foist on the young, single folks who didn’t have big family meals awaiting them Thursday.
Haggarty’s not even here? Mrs. Clenderson asked and Ms. Dunnoway, with her sugar-free apple crisp explained, with her CrossFit muscle-y arms (had no one at this school heard of sleeves?), that Principal Haggarty caught a flight that afternoon to reach his family in Chicago. The most dismal part of all may have been that those present didn’t care that he’d skipped out or about the turkey, or sparse attendances. They sat, munching on sandwiches and Doritos, half of them not even talking, faces aglow in the light of iPhone screens, as bad as teenagers.
Ms. Dunnoway looked the girl up and down, but didn’t say anything, which Mrs. Clenderson took to mean she didn’t recognize her.
Mrs. Clenderson went straight to the lunch ladies, Doris and Gert, who’d already hauled out the mashed potatoes, who understood the value of tradition. When had Mrs. Clenderson started relating more to lunch ladies than colleagues? Probably when she grew closer in age to
these women who’d worked at the school since she started, who still worked because no pensions awaited them.
Do you like mashed potatoes? Mrs. Clenderson asked the girl and she brightened, her eyes gleaming like Zoey’s had when she was young. So, Mrs. Clenderson had them pile two plates high with complex carbohydrates and was heavy handed with the gravy.
They ate at their own table. No one joined them. The teachers who weren’t on their phones stood around as if they were at a cocktail party. The lunch ladies, too eager to serve, remained at their post by the potatoes. It’s where they felt comfortable, where they belonged.
Mrs. Clenderson understood this dynamic, like the way she belonged with this student, setting her at ease, even if the girl didn’t say much. Mrs. Clenderson had plenty of thoughts, mostly memories, like the time Mr. Schmidt the old football coach had invited his whole team to Friendsgiving and they’d started a food fight, or the canned food drive Mrs. Phillips, the kindly old Physics teacher, used to organize. It had been so successful one year they’d positively filled the bed of her husband’s pickup and still had cans left over and a dozen teachers caravaned to the donation site to help unload it all. Why hadn’t anyone taken up that mantle when she retired? There was the year Friendsgiving had been such a success it had rolled over to a potluck complete with a Secret Santa game before the December break. Those days when the school was a family.
Mrs. Clenderson had given up trying to calculate how many students had made their way through her classroom some twenty years back. When last she’d counted, she’d cleared a thousand. People didn’t think much of Home Ec, but she took pride in everyone who’d learned how to use a sewing machine, or preheat an oven, or understand the food pyramid under her tutelage. She still remembered running into Darcy Jones from her very first class a decade later at JCPenney, a gaggle of kids in tow. Darcy thanked her for teaching her how to use a washer and dryer—skills she used every God-blessed day of her life now.
Mrs. Clenderson had tears in her eyes. How long had it been since a student, past or present thanked her?
And Mrs. Clenderson realized the cafeteria had cleared out. It was just her and the girl. Even the lunch ladies had gone.
The girl took her hand. It was sudden, and the girl’s skin was much colder to the touch than Mrs. Clenderson was prepared for. She must’ve been freezing in that dress. Mrs. Clenderson should’ve offered her the cardigan she kept in her office.
The girl held on, not warming a degree, but squeezing the back of Mrs. Clenderson’s hand gently. You’re a good teacher, she said, her voice thin and reedy. Thank you.
Mrs. Clenderson knew she couldn’t well invite the girl home in this day and age, boundaries being what they were. School boards and parents assumed the worst intentions. She did offer the girl a ride, though, wherever she needed to go. The girl shook her head.
Mrs. Clenderson didn’t know what became of the girl past that point, only that as soon as they stepped out the front doors of the school, she disappeared, like wisps of snow, like the ghost of some Thanksgiving past, like a memories of cranberry sauce and wishbones and homemade stuffing and warm hugs all gone too fast.
Ravenswood
by Timothy Dodd
is a regal name for our town
lost on industry’s slow dissolve
and the failed love of Master
Edgar who died in quicksand
en route to his duel. President
George first owned this land
whose most famous inhabitant
today is a two-year-old baby
in the cemetery—hollow-eyed,
horned and fanged: aluminum,
John F. Kennedy, and the Ohio
have all floated away. Remains
are the tiles of an art deco floor
next to a cracked sidewalk, brick
walls long divorced and married
to another, leaving the capital
letters “BANK” etched in blue.
This poem is not about the Alamo.
By Beulah Vega
It is not about shootouts at the O.K. Corral
The Gettysburg Address or Johnny Appleseed.
It is not about John Smith Freedom
Apple pie
Baseball
Or Paul Bunyan.
Nor is it about
Betsy Ross
Bigfoot
Opportunity
Democracy
Pecos Bill
Or presidents
who can’t tell lies.
It’s not about
Lady Liberty standing in the harbor
so close to the promised land
her torch an artistic illusion
providing no light to a refugee's path.
It’s not about myth or history, legends or lies
as if there were divisions between the two.
It’s not about speaking softly and carrying
A big stick
Tomahawk missiles
The Enola Gay
It doesn’t seek to criticize or proselytize or ask too deeply why
Myth America
Is important.
It can’t look too deeply at the space between
Rosa’s Cantina
And Sacagawea
to ask where
American born
Immigrant bred
Brown girls
Fit
Because that might mean
Rethinking
The need for a myth.
Sacrifice
by Richard Rubio
one crucial component
of the American dream
is the very necessary
act of sacrificing
children go to school
to learn the act of sacrificing
in America if you sacrifice
properly you are rewarded
with sashes and plaques
and titles of recognition
and a memorable speech
that leaves an impact on your classmates
if not there is still hope
you can embody the concept
of sacrifice beyond metaphor
and offer your strong
and youthful body
earn the title of hero
in the eyes of your countrymen
and aid in sacrificing
children in Iran
over a hundred unsuspecting
schoolgirls to be precise
sacrificed on the night of a blood moon
you can fight to defend
those who sacrificed the most
(the ones who fed the bodies
to the sharks)
They Put Us to Shame
by Diana Woodcock
They put us to shame,
made us proud – the university
students chanting long and loud,
finally making their voices heard.
Did we elders learn nothing
from Vietnam and Cambodia?
From Columbia to Southern California,
Virginia Tech to UT-Austin, they built
encampments, took a chance they’d
be expelled. The groundswell’s
exciting – they breathed new life
into a country too long stalled in apathy.
Oh, to be have been there with them,
helping them hold their ground,
not letting anyone turn them around.
May Day, Beltane, halfway
between Spring Equinox and Summer
Solstice, Earth at the point of fertility
and beauty, but not in Gaza.
Surely by now all birds have fled,
the trees all have fallen or been blown
to shreds. How can any of the heart-
breaking beauty remain when all hearts
have stopped beating? *
They found children in those mass
graves beside two of Gaza’s destroyed
hospitals. So here I go again,
standing mutely on a desert dune,
daring to recite the fatiha for the dead. **
So many are perishing, too little
is flourishing this season of spring.
But let us sing the praises of the students
all across this fractured land
who took a stand for peace and justice.
*a reference to Robinson Jeffers’ lines in his poem, “Credo.”
**opening chapter of the Qur’an, recited as prayer when
passing tombs of learned or pious men (so reciting it for dead
women would be considered blasphemous)
Off Exit 137 Past Vantage
by Nathan Bakkan
Small birds: finches, sparrows, chickadees, wrens
flock song the barren cherry orchard.
Canadian geese ripple the dammed Nch'i-Wàna,
the Great River, on their great migration.
The highway big-rigs whir in conversation
beneath the red-tail hawk’s screech.
The bald eagle harbors a silent attention
as a raven circles her nest.
The river pelicans embark out towards Kooyooe Pa'a Panunadu,
Cui-ui Standing Water, to breed this February;
— — —
I sip my coffee & read:
“A glacial dam broke 18,000 years
ago and the Columbia River Gorge
was carved in a single week.”
A catastrophe so fast, I day dream
of doomsday in fresh water tidal waves.
The water drumming &
cutting & carrying
the earth out of existence
& into the ocean.
Leaving this in the wake of ice age floods turned
Wanapum stewardship turned
colonial invasion
turned
two dams flooding a canyon into a lake
turned
no-treaty signed but invitation to
work
the dams in perpetuity
turned
river banks to apple orchards
turned
plutonium production
turned
nuclear weapon development site
turned
fruit basket of america
turned
nuclear power plant
turned
reservation for migrating elk & wild horses
turned
arena for imitation iraqi war games
turned
big-ag migrant town
turned
republican vacation destination
turned
a home
that holds my family
& held me
for a summer.
The river clam shells in my pocket crack
a fragile porcelain drum
& leave calcium carbonate
shards in the overcast polyester
of my sweatpants.
The land layers history
in the ribbons of basalt
canyon walls
as the hills window out onto the river a promise,
a future for Wanapum children.
— — —
The Washington sage brush mirrors Nevada, as I set the book down to
walk along the lake. I imagine the waters singing in sunken rapids;
the elk cracking river clams beneath their feet as they bow
to drink along the edge; the eagle clawing a raven feather;
the dams breaking water into a river
and the same flock of small birds.
To Be American
by Schuyler Becker
We are Plymouth wings
and baseball sunsets
Peanut shells
and drunk on the subway
We are spuds and spurs
a NASCAR uniform
We are soldiers and
sweet tea in a hundred degrees
We are mustang land
and cattle brands
a Stetson coated in
dust like cake frosting
We are rifle ranges
and protest stages
We are monuments of
copper and stone
We are firecrackers
and boating trips
A hook on the line
and Cajun shrimp
We are mountains to climb
and languages to learn
We are boxing rings
and redwood trees
We are boardwalks
on the beach
and fighter jets
over stadium seats
We are rock-n-roll
and the Hollywood Bowl
We are Harlem jazz
and Brooklyn Art
We are the Appalachian
mysteries and Salt Lake City flats
We are volcanic ash
and ceremonies of our past.
American Dream
by Logan DeMorgan
What do you mean? Are you in
The ketchup and mustard of my hotdog
Mingled in your vibrant way, full of integrity and traditionality, dancing with sweetness and tang
Like the jukebox at a diner, bouncing up and down until the whole place is buzzing
Are you in
The water droplets on the windows of my car door
Left by my neighbor’s sprinkler
Refractory, full of earthen beauty so big, as though I could dive in
And ride around in it, viewing America from my bubble
Until the wind streaks me across, and blows me away
Are you in
My walls?
Maybe those who built it
Held you in their arms, in their hearts and minds
Left behind is a trail of optimism,
Embodied by sweat, built into the beams behind the drywall,
Dripping a path
Too-well traversed
Are you in
One of your daughters, found weeping on her doorstep
For the present; for her poor children
Who also will not be able to silence your delusory antics, nor follow the path
Of your footprints in the snow, as you hastily sweep up behind yourself
With the intricate, golden broom
Pausing your sweeping only to show it to those “lucky” few.
Full and prideful once, now you are
The maggots at the very back of her brain
Writhing with worry and whispering in her ear
Until they find something to munch on.
What do you mean?
This’s Going to Fizzle Out if Something Don’t Happen
by Carl Landauer
James Franco’s In Dubious Battle (2016) after
John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle (1936)
I have no memory of apple orchards
or the setting
only a drive away
from a Freshman English class,
but there are memories
of a Serbian Marxist,
his leading a class in the quad
and vague images of a strike
and violence,
my hazy memories matching
the film’s trailing off
with the unmistakable voice of Pete Seeger
accompanied by a chorus voicing
familiar labor refrains
Which side are you on?
as we learn
printed across the screen
of the Wagner Act of 1935.
Not Steinbeck’s unsentimental organizers
Don’t you get lost in a lot of sentimental
and the mob passions they exploited
working with emotional
inflation and deflation
once
a little fever had started
they could tell
lymphatic glands are shooting in reinforcements.
What could they do to keep
up the momentum against
the weight of leaky tents
not the crisp,
white REI tents
of Franco’s film?
Even the fury had its ups and downs
Now that the fury was past
their strikers were sick
poisoned
we learn
by the flow from their own anger glands.
Yet Steinbeck cleaves close to his Mac
and his Jim,
each thought, each move
too closely followed for us
not to care.
This writer of the valley
sent off letters,
tutored his editors
to reproduce
an exacting orthography
to mimic the speech
of Central Valley men
The use of the final “g” in “ing”
is tricky, too.
when it should be used
and when not,
but how could his readers
even those of 1936
gauge his careful ethnology,
his close study
All-American
by Jonathan Fletcher
February 19, 2026, Milan, Italy
On unforgiving ice,
Liu dances as much as skates,
turning herself into a top,
delighting with faceted joy to a voice as trained
as her legs.
Sing, Donna Summers, sing.
Twirl, Alyssa, twirl.
Remember your first steps
on the rink.
Remember your father’s last
in post-Tiananmen China.
An old authoritarian, a defiant crowd.
The falls, the leaps,
the losses, the wins.
Daughter of immigrants, stand.
As “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays,
gently palm your heart,
behold the flag they raise. Take pride
in your striped hair.
Clothe yourself in it all:
Gold for a necklace,
Red, white, and blue for shawl.