Issue #33.2 Jason Kerzinski, Nicholas Skaldetvind, Richard LeDue
A Poem by Jason Kerzinski
Interest Keeps Spilling Over
student debt Jason sits at a coffee shop
sipping a latte with the finest latte art
made by a fellow student of debt
a student of debt named Mathew
who has been preaching unions to
his coworkers who look at him
not as a leader or a voice for change
but as a lukewarm cup of coffee
student debt Jason stares at the clock in anticipation
the hour of the daily call from the resolution group
who call only because they've been told
by the higher ups to make a daily phone call
with no intention of collecting a debt
a monetary debt that is now
accumulated 9863 dollars in interest
for a grand total of 29863 dollars owed
and the daily begging will begin
promptly at 6 PM
to not take 15 percent of student debt Jasons paycheck
where student debt Jason will lower himself to his knees
the coffee shop lowering to their knees
in solidarity with student debt Jason
because they are also debt holders
and nearly all of the population
are student debt holders
the coffee goers and the call center
employees who sleep in a cubicles
until their contract concludes
who will share a bathroom with 46 employees
until their contract concludes
who will be on a strict shower rotation
until their contract concludes
who will not see the sunshine
until their contract concludes
who will write detailed notes
about each student debt holders psychological states
until their contract concludes
hello student debt Jason
how are you to today student debt Jason
student debt Jason we can hear your nervous breathing
hello student debt Jason
how are you today student debt Jason
Good day student debt Jason
we will contact you promptly at 6 tomorrow
have a great night student debt Jason
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Jason Kerzinski is a photographer, journalist, and poet known for his intimate street portraits and social justice storytelling. He began his artistic journey as a painter before transitioning to medium-format photography, capturing human experiences with depth and empathy. His work highlights systemic inequities, including projects like "Wrongful Convictions," which profiles recently exonerated individuals.
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A Poem by Nicholas Skaldetvind
The Blue Rider
It is true that I have worshipped olive trees, have been praying to whatever I can get.
I trust in the birdsong to open the window, in music to untune the sky.
I came here on a cloudy day asking what is the closest I can come in body to the conceptual.
Exhaling. Giving up by trusting in the dim homeostatic hum. It changed my breathing, this
constant waking on the stairs of trees before the green window
of dove song I fashion my closing eye to.
Dreaming of a still world where space looks like the sound doves make at dawn,
the song of owls my pillow. And still, to become a machine that hugs olive trees.
With the scent of coming and going. A bipedal machine becoming commandeered by details. To become the vent drawing the outside in. The inside out’s cloudy caress.
This is why silence threatens its own balance. Does not everything depend on the interpretation of the silence around us?
I read there is a boy in Owasco, New York and a boy in Ojai, California breathing in each other’s ear.
In my two hands I hold the trees that protect these boys from the supervening
silence until they find their footing before an errant ending of the always in shadow
the dark blue of deep shade through which they notice the seasons change by
a geometry of their echoes.
To continue the metaphor, there is a man in Waiheke, Aotearoa.
We are all named Hank.
When you ask me if I found them, I turn my face
neither powerful nor powerless in an amplified space of reception
and filling your vision as you circle around it.
Resplendent in its opening I say no
I rescued them.
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Nicholas Skaldetvind lives in Albuquerque.
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A Poem by Richard LeDue
“The Secret of the Stars”
I’ve accepted my poems will probably die, while Brahms hollers into the night like drunk Christmas carolers, and the silence is okay with all of this, knowing the secret of the stars is that they believe in an immortality that’s really a morbid fact about their deaths and the speed of light, but if I’m lucky, my books will find a place in the fluorescent light of a thrift store tomb, where the cookbooks are in worse shape than the complimentary bibles.
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Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, “Existential Drunk,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2026.
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