January - Poem 23

Home Sweet Hellscape / Haley Bosse

telescoping arrhythmia 

from the last infection

extended to the yard,

the grackles

and the crows’ feet

seem to lift

with every frantic thump,

floodwater sloshing

over drowning grass,

erratic without moon-bound tide,

beaks bent

to drink regardless

of the airflow,

its ceaseless pulling

on every upturned face,

the water never

falling still

signal / Jess Bowe

to whistle
to whisper
to hiss.
to make a sound.
to carry a finger across the lips.
to carry love down the sidewalk,
a song unafraid of its fear.
to look a man in the eyes 
unshaken and knowing 
the blood and laughter you came from.
to slide on the belly and bite 
from underneath the rocks. 

Hope and the Second Law (1) / Joanna Lee

A conceptual, but not mathematically rigorous, summary of the Second Law is that uneven distributions of energy tend to even out over time. This is the result of the combination of chance and the conservation of energy and momentum. It is hard to prove for a general case, but it is easy to posit convincing examples. 

To take an example involving kinetic energy, if you fire a fast-moving particle (e.g. a bullet) into a box of slower ones (or a crowd), you have a very uneven initial distribution of energy. Over time, the fast-moving particle will trigger a succession of random collisions in which its excess energy will be lost and the average energy of all the other particles will increase slightly, unless they are killed.

(2) “WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives today passed an appropriations bill that would renew ICE’s excessive budget, with no strings attached, adding to the over $170 billion in taxpayer funds already allocated for immigration enforcement in July 2025.” (aclu.org. January 22, 2026)

(3)In Statistical Physics entropy is defined as

𝑆=𝑘𝐵⋅lnΩ

where Ω is the number of accessible micro-states (6)

(4) To put it another way, entropy (𝑆) is a fundamental property in thermodynamics representing the measure of a system's thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work—often interpreted as a measure of disorder or uncertainty. Crowds generally have high entropy compared to individuals, who are usually much more efficient at doing useful work.

(5) In 1850, the German scientist Rudolf Clausius laid the foundation for the second law of thermodynamics by examining the relation between heat transfer and work: Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time. E.g., A medic unable to pass through a ring of ICE guards to reach a dying woman’s body.

(6) Minnesota is generally not included as accessible

Family History.  / Thomas Page

Please mark in either column the following conditions for any conditions you or a family member have or have had in the past: 

Alcoholism / Drug Abuse what can we call excess or just librations

Asthma  when the way your lungs feel after a drink

Cancer (please define which) to celebrate the way our cells do decay 

Depression / Anxiety / Bipolar / Suicide  in the face of the prospect of death

Diabetes (please define which) do you consider the end to be a sweet light

Emphysema a crushing weight on your chest as if 

Heart Disease  your core is breaking into pieces

High Cholesterol as the fat falls off the bones

Hypertension in a display of immense implosion

Hypothyroidism like a deflated geyser of all the cells 

Migraines  or a vice wound around the sutures 

Strokes cutting all circulation to your mind?

Other (please define which) what do you call that then?

Mentor Text  / Amy Snodgrass

after reading Tess Gallagher’s “Now that I am Never Alone”  

I admit it: I rolled my eyes
at the title, expecting a cliché, 
a well-written whine 
about how having kids 
interrupts the creative process. 

Oh, my lack of faith. 
Oh, Tess. I doubted you. 
I find no strollers, no nap times, 
no pencil-flinging resentment. 

Instead: a moth 
that clings to tile and rips 
to shreds my misplaced cynicism.  

You douse my pain with water: 
first scalding hot then cold in memory. 
Your spring is the tree that roughed my arches to bleed, 
your handfuls are the hours of bedside waiting.  

I am not sure I can survive your brightest now.
I am not sure I can withstand this raw fluttering.
I am not sure I can write, ever, another word.