By Alex Marshall

We put a man in the highest place.
Why’d we do it? ‘cause of greed or race?

He’s upended schools and universities.
The regime’s tackling medicine and academe.

But is it the power, prestige, or money that goes?
Which has us hand-wringing, crying terrible woes?

Is it the list of words or the lack of expertise
That are shifting, shaking the tower of ivory?

Where are the leaders? They stepping up?
What do you hear? Are we giving up?

What will we do to win this war-battle?
I don’t know; time will only tell-tattle.

---

Alex Marshall, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Behavior & Health Education in the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She earned her doctorate in Health Behavior at Indiana University with minors in adolescent development and human sexuality. To date, her research agenda has focused on understanding sexuality and sexual health issues among adolescents and young adults and addressing health/ healthcare issues among marginalized and underserved populations. 

By Dave Malone

The presence of noise . . .
in a non-linear system
makes the system respond better.
—Andrew Smart

My ears ring with the music
of yesterday. Static
in the cochlea

converting sound waves into
electricity
my brain loves.

But it’s the noise, the relic
from last week’s coffee
making

that still zings in tympanic
rhythm, my body’s
percussion

in abdomen and ear. There’s no
anti-aging technique,
no way back.

I hear inside the noise,
without foisting
any sound

elsewhere; here is my becoming;
here is my swimming
with Mississippi’s

paddlefish; here is my song
electrified in the floating
marine plankton.

Here is my ear divining,
chiming, finding, ascending.

---

Dave Malone is a poet and screenwriter from the Missouri Ozarks. His poems have appeared in Boudin, Slant, and Bellevue Literary Review. He is an avid gardener, long-distance runner, and sometimes quilter. He likes to read poems on TikTok: @poetmalone.

By Lynne Byler

For seven years from molded plastic chairs,
I saw what cancer consumes,
unsated by limbs or organs or hope.

So, in this place that excels at loss,
that my hair wants nothing
to do with me is small potatoes.

Today in the shower, it decamps in earnest.
My splayed fingers lift it from underneath
and large wet bunches catch in my hands.

I pull it out,
layer it on white tile,
clump upon clump upon clump.

If I pull the HELP cord,
the nearest nurse will rush in
and grab me under the arms.

In her wet embrace,
I’ll ask what drug
there is for a sorrow,

dwarfed by other possible losses,
yet unrelenting in
the comfort it devours.

---

Lynne Broderick Byler lives and writes poetry in Pelham, Massachusetts. She has had poems published in Autumn Sky Daily, Intima, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and  The Journal of the American Medical Association. Fernwood Press will publish her first collection, The Mice Are Back, in December 2026.