Chemically Unbalanced by Gary Bloom

There is a chemistry experiment
Going on in my head.
The synapses are not firing
Serotonin is sinking.

I am popping Prozac
Like it’s from a Pez dispenser.
Norepinephrine is depleting
The pendulum is swinging
Toward mania.

My shrink says
It’s chemical warfare
And whips out his prescription pad
Like a weapon.

~*~

Biography:  Gary Bloom grew up in Minneapolis and attended what is now Minnesota State University- Mankato, where he studied sociology. He has been a teaching assistant in a psychiatric hospital, a driving instructor for spinal cord injury patients, and a computer programmer. His articles and poetry have been published in newspapers, magazines, and websites, including Kaleidoscope Magazine, Breath & Shadow, Serotonin, Milwaukee Magazine, The Buffalo News, The Grand Rapids Press,  Art Times Journal, and Black Diaspora. Many of his poems are about depression, which he has suffered from since his late teens.

Life and What Drives Me by Spazzy Crafter

I was born early one morning in late July in the southern part of Wisconsin. Mirroring my normal enthusiasm for life, I arrived twelve weeks too soon at two pounds and twelve ounces. The doctors didn’t give me a good prognosis; if I survived, I wouldn’t be able to chew gum or even swallow.

I spent the first month in the NICU. One of my parents stayed while the other was home with my older siblings. When I was finally released from the hospital, I weighed just barely over two pounds more than my starting weight. I wore Cabbage Patch doll clothes for the first six weeks of my life.

This year, I enter the period of life people affectionately call the “late thirties”. I survived beyond all obstacles.
~*~
I began loom knitting two years ago and had an idea: I'd donate preemie hats to local hospitals. It's my way of giving back and has helped me find a sense of purpose. It’s a way to keep the little ones warmer and more comfortable while surrounded by the bright lights and invasive tubes.

I have a whole bag of momentos from those early days, though I obviously can’t remember them. Someday, I hope my hats end up in other people’s bags and boxes of memories, and that they can hold them in their hands decades later.

The Price of Prisons for Profit by F.I. Goldhaber

First published on Tiny Tim Literary Review

You ignore millions of people of color incarcerated

for petty crimes -- some innocent -- imprisoned without hope, deprived
of contact with families, proper nutrition, medical aid.

You reject myriad mentally ill patients jailed without their
medications or psychiatric care, treated like animals
by sadistic guards who don't even allow them to know the time.

Left to psychologically rot in jail, often with no pillows
or blankets; bereft of in-person contact by monetary
setups that charge more than they can afford for video visits;

Denied access to life affirming hormones, always misgendered,
abused by both guards and fellow prisoners for daring to ask
for acceptance of identities outside binary genders;

Forced to work for pennies an hour manufacturing garments
furniture, electronics, and more, so corporations that pay
no taxes can claim their merchandise is made in America;

Caged for twenty-three hours a day, prevented from sleeping, hungry,
alone, required to pay hundreds to the governments trampling their
rights and destroying their health; these wretches escape your attention.

Until the trap of private*, pecuniary, prisons captures
someone you love, subjecting them to the tortures others endure
day in and day out across the U.S. from sea to shining sea.

Only then do you complain about corruption, assail abuse,
deride the debasement, impugn inequities and injustice,
and discover organizations that have fought this for decades.

You retain attorneys, pay for visits, purchase comfort from the
commissary. You advocate for reform, write letters to your
legislators, and sign online petitions to the president.

But those who do not have families with resources perish in
prison, expiring from exploitation, strangled by their sorrow,
succumbing to suicide, murdered via medical neglect.

Once the ordeal ends for your own victim of prisons for profit,
will you continue to campaign for those who have no such support?
Or will you forget that your loved one's journey is hardly unique?

Will you return to ignoring the relationships ravaged, the
communities crippled by losing those sucked into schemes designed
to dehumanize those who are minorities, moneyless, mad?

~*~

*Poet's Note: Although this poem refers to a specific individual's situation, the conditions described apply to all prisons (public and private) and many jails in the United States, an $11 billion industry which incarcerates more than 2 million people, many of whom have never been convicted of any crime.

~*~

Biography:  F.I. Goldhaber's words capture people, places, 

and politics with a photographer's eye and a poet's soul.

As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, they produced news stories, feature articles, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. Left Fork press published What Color is Your Privilege? -- a collection of political statements in poetic form -- in September. http://www.goldhaber.net/

Where the Road Ends (Shutting Down HUP)

After May, I'm closing this space. I will keep it as an archive (and will continue the Twitter account). I thought things would improve both in my personal life and HUP in general by now, but our seventh year will be our last.

I'm so grateful to everyone who mentored for the program, trusted me with their work, or helped me run things (definite props to Val). One of the best parts of all the time, money, and spoons I put into this was meeting some amazing folks. You made this ride worthwhile.

Submissions remain open until I get enough content to send everything off in style. I have one book review (apologies for the delay, Allegra) before June.

To those of you who said you could do things better than me: I hope you do. I hope you start amazing shit for our community that rivals any idea I've ever had. I want to see crips skyrocketing to where they want to go because of your efforts. I'm cheering for you.

And I'll still be cheering for every reader, submitter, and creative crip until my voice gives out. Thank you for everything. 

Shot by Cameron Morse

Do I have more in the barrel
the cannon or
could it be my time here

is spent? My left hand is shot
I know that for sure
but I keep firing off footsteps

despite the abnormal gait I keep
patting the back
of an inconsolable baby.

Her cries shrill each cell
of my body
into string beans.

The grind of teeth in the dark
bed beside you
are two rocks rubbing

themselves into particles
of themselves.
Craggy faces smoothed out

featherdusted until featureless.

~*~

Cameron Morse holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City-Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife and three children. He is the author of ten collections of poetry and serves as Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and a reader at Small Harbor Publishing. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award.   

Visit his website here: https://cameronmorsepoems.wordpress.com/

Two Poems by Jyothsnaphanija

Saccharine

coldness and glitter
Filled solution reaching the throat
Listening when nobody speaks,
We find pleasure in cutting paper into fine uneven
Shapes of
Big and small
cucumber sticks
hair,
slabs.
Infusers.
Fire in us
wilting sleep
frozen speaking, hating clean love.
Even in the depth of a game, we were obvious to trace ourselves.
In our possession,
thesaurus of cracked glitter
handfuls of blur.
We check time in a hurry and leave.
Dizziness as shadow
Chewing us.

~*~

Plain song of snow

Whenever I go to a new city

I listen to a bird.

Then I try to figure the notes,

keys and scales.

Fresh and unstable geographies.

I count till the date of departure

I often get calculation of lines in a sonnet wrong though.

~*~

Biography: Jyothsnaphanija teaches English Literature at ARSD College (University of Delhi), India. Her first poetry collection Ceramic Evening was out in 2016. Her poems most recently have appeared and are forthcoming in Quail Bell Magazine, Plato’s Caves, Wishbone Words, The Hopper, Bosphorus Review of Books and others. She blogs at phanija.wordpress.com

Two Poems by Mark A. Murphy

Poet's Statement: I have always thought that poetry can change lives, and still do. I believe artists have a responsibility to step up to the mark, and say the things, others, perhaps less privileged, would like to, or are unable to say. If humanity is to survive the current and impending ecological disaster beyond the next generation, we must learn new ways of living together.

~*~

Murphy’s Law

When the money lender closes her door,
displacing any sense of association
or good relations, you wonder
if the old woman will pause long enough
to take any account of the dislocation.
When the proverbial nose
is put out of joint for the last time,
you wonder if the filter tip
burning like a Roman Candle
belongs to the long litany of anything

that can go wrong.
ii
When the father of the bride concludes
she will not buy the book
you spent a lifetime writing, you wonder
if the planet without a visa
really is just another excuse for killing
as the homesteader expands

across the prairie
like stars in a night of passing buffalo.

~*~

Homecoming

What’s sought is no more tangible

than river sounds.

      The shoots of stars.

So, we wait in the dusk, half-blind.

Our destiny temporarily on hold.

As we saw fallen oak and ash.

Hagg Wood trembling

      in hail and snow.

Two brothers driven

by Siberian winds. Collecting logs.

Unaware of the moon. Frozen holly.

Frozen mud.

Unaware of each other. But for love.

~*~

Biography: Mark A. Murphy has had work published in 18 countries. He is a three-time Pushcart Nominee, and has published eight books of poetry to date. German publisher ‘Moloko Print’ published his latest collection, The Ruin of Eleanor Marx in the summer of 2022.