f4t issue 2.5 | poetry

Three samples from the zine

“A whole civilization will die tonight”

“I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,”
said the abuser to the victim.

Don’t be fooled, we are all the victims, some more than others.

The man
hides inside his own
ideology,
the clockwork
logicality of
A causes B causes C
all the way down to Z
and his final solution

but he is not strong enough
to follow through
to the last benzene vapors
wafting through his vision of a Chancellery.

Maybe it is the bone spurs?

In his moments of delusional clarity,
he somehow thinks he will
lead us through “one of the most important moments in
the long complex history of the World”
and all will be amazed
(there will be singing and dancing)
at his ability to play hard ball
and all will have to confess
and call him master.

But we know what he has done:
cast the spell of a carnival barker
grifting his marks
all the way to the
end of the world.

I don’t know what will happen tonight
but odds are
he will take what he can, so he can
continue the grifting.

Mashed Potatoes

Sometimes I wonder whether it is possible to experience something so traumatic that it sets a dynamic in motion, so fevered, it would consume a lifetime (and a life) trying to avoid humiliation.

But does having your family all laugh at you because your big brother dumped mashed potatoes on your head to get you to stop being a butt-head to your little brother, really qualify?

The child is the father of the man and it is almost impossible to ignore the laughter echoing from Queens down through the Strait of Hormuz.

Weak. Wounded. Evil.
Now old.
Always accountable.

taco tuesday

“This is nothing like the mashed potatoes…”

he manages to say,
his voice only breaking a little
as he storms past the secret service
up to his bedroom.

one shot | F4T | april 2026

I don’t know what this is exactly. I am not an illustrator. (I think it shows.) But I guess I applied a form of primitive rotoscoping on still images from the news as a lark. (I hate that I have to say it, but no AI was used in the process.)

I started with little old Petey. I felt there was energy in the drawing, and may be some kind of uncovering. The quotes just made sense after the portrait was completed.

The others just followed, before I had a chance to reconsider.

What you have is this thing called Central Casting.

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special issue | f4t issue 2.2 | for no kings day

This is a one sheet mini-issue in time for No Kings day across the US on Saturday March 28, 2026.

There are five poems in this mini-issue. Here are a couple examples

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Mashed Potatoes

Sometimes I wonder whether it is possible to experience something so traumatic that it sets a dynamic in motion, so fevered, it would consume a lifetime (and a life) trying to avoid humiliation.

But does having your family all laugh at you because your big brother dumped mashed potatoes on your head to get you to stop being a butt-head to your little brother, really qualify?

The child is the father of the man it is almost impossible to ignore the laughter echoing from Queens down through the Strait of Hormuz.

Weak. Wounded. Evil.
Now old.
Always accountable.

◘◘◘

Q&A

Q: How do you spend more than $11.3 billion in six days?

A: You start a war in the middle east without consulting your allies, claiming obliteration and victory (multiple times, like a Tourette’s tic.) All the while, you drive your boot into the neck of the working class, and desperately try to find a spin for quitting that does not make you look weak to your red-hatted fetishists.

Q: Why would you spend more than $11.3 billion in six days?

A: To divert attention from the child rape files.

◘◘◘

Download a PDF F4T Issue 2.2 Special mini-issue here.

Printing instructions: Print 2-sided | Flip on the LONG edge.

If you like my work, you can:

f4t issue #2 | fiction

Intro

Note: This issue is scheduled to released the week of April 6, 2026

April 2026
Vermont

This Mole’s Eye Café is properly fiction, because my eponymously named protagonist, experienced events that I never did, and am not even sure I could have. That being said, the protagonist and I do have quite a bit in common. But I am not sure how much value there is in trying to play “peek-a-boo” with the author through the story.

The story came as a bit of a surprise to me. It really is a curiosity. I don’t want to say too much about it. But I will say that in some ways it is a love song to my adopted home in southern Vermont. Imaging the events in this story taking place in the heart of southeast Vermont was one of the easiest things to do. In ways I am not sure I can even describe, my love for this place set the stage for this strange admixture of surrealism and “My Dinner with André” in a liminal, interstitial place called Mole’s Eye Café.

excerpt

Resist the algorithm. Get local. Stay connected.

This is my way of championing the importance of what people are calling the personal web. I don’t want to argue the point here, but the web of negative consequences of digital communications networks across the United States and the globe seem pretty self-evident from where I sit. Without simplifying something that should be approached with analytical discipline, I can say with confidence that reconfiguring our relationship/dependence/interdependence with digital communications technologies is of paramount existential importance at this moment in our history. I say this not because I know what is going to happen, but precisely because I don’t know what is going to happen.

We don’t know how bad it could get.

We have seen how organizing happened in Minnesota and Chicago in the face of organized, state-sponsored, fascistic thuggery. It got local. It got agile. And it got real; got real facing down irreality, and power that wielded irreality and disinformation to batter common decency and shared values.

This not to say that Forest 4 Trees is ultimately a political project. Or that only politically-like-minded people will be interested, or will be welcome. That’s not true. Civility is expected. Art and opinion will be respected, which is another way to said civility is expected.

What I was originally going to write about in this post was more of a personal history of the what the “personal web” been like for me. But as I started down that path, I realized that this may be a piece that would be better in a future issue of F4T. So consider this a trailer or a rough preview.

A work-in-progress, perhaps

The web has always been personal for me. The first web page I created was for what would becomse the famous “Andy Letter” read by Click & Clack on NPR’s Car Talk. To be truthful, I did nothing to make it famous, but I did hand code an HTML page with a copy of the letter. (I am not sure if I used any animated gifs, but I am sure that I would would have been tempted if I had thought of it.)

Andy happened to be a guy in my small Vermont town who I didn’t know well, but who would become a friend over time. I honestly don’t know if my humble page (which was hosted on a server in the science building on the small Vermont campus where I worked) ever got even one page view beyond the few times I looked at it myself to admire my handiwork. But my goodness, that was fun!

But before the world wide web was a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, there was CompuServe (CI$), Prodigy, Bitnet and Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) accessed through modems with throughput measured in bauds. I entered into those worlds when I was at the end of my first semester in graduate school in 1988. That is when I bought my first personal computer.

I tapped out fifty damn pages and what used what seemed like a gallon of whiteout. The next chance I got I was at the computer store being sold a IBM-clone, personal computer by a salesman who assured me I would never fill up that twenty megabyte hard drive.

Watch for the rest of this story in a future issue of Forest 4 Trees.

March 2026
Vermont

This is the inaugural issue of Forest 4 Trees, a monthly literary zine. Poetry is the focus this month — poetry with an unapologetically political perspective for this American moment.

“I hope, for a new language of poetry, new language that can outrun rage tweets and so-called truths that can withstand irreality congealing into a nihilistic gray paste”

-from Person, woman, man, camera, tv

Future issues will include fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, and social criticism.

F4T was originally a blog that I wrote twenty-five years ago, and I am pleased that this reincarnation is as a zine. This little zine is destined to swim against the algorithmic tide (a swamp?) that has overwhelmed digital spaces during the last twenty years. It is ready!

I have not completely figured out what I am doing. At first, I was going to try to do most of it through Substack. With in minutes of posting my first article there, I could already feel myself chasing the algorithm, and I didn’t like that feeling at all. I decided I was going to try to embrace the “personal web.” I am creating and maintaining a site called Forest4Trees.org. It will be a place where all the issues of the zine will be available for free. I will still maintain a mailing list for folks who want to be physically mailed a copy. Donations will be appreciated but not required.

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