Summer 2024



The Blue Collar Review is a quarterly journal of poetry and prose published by Partisan Press. Our mission is to expand and promote
a progressive working class vision of culture that inspires us and that moves us forward as a class. The work presented is
only a sampling from the magazine. Subscriptions are $20.00 yearly, or $7.00 for a single issue.
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Poetry Samples from the Latest Issue

Dancing Monkey

Oft-times I feel like an enslaved monkey,
dancing for coins to horrible, mundane music.
In front of masses of unforgiving, unsympathetic people.

My master is overbearing, lacking sincerity.
Fashioned in tasteless garb,
I'm forced to continue my song and dance
for long periods, at his whim.

It doesn't seem to end.
Fighting only to stay even, I don't get ahead.
For whatever reason, a little is never enough.
The routine completely drains me,
physically, and spiritually.

Each day's rigors are the same,
"Yes sir, no sir." Smile.
Song, dance, over and again.
Worse off, my master complains it's not enough.
He always wants more coins.

We have to meet expenses, and amplify efficiencies.
At the end of the week, there is little left for me.
Sadly, there is no other place for me to be,
I cannot afford to be free.

I'm just a poor, inexperienced monkey,
whose master needs new shoes.
So, off again I go, to dance, and sing the blues.

       Roy N. Mason


My Next Shift

I still see your face as you make
your way to the doors of the plant --
the years piled against you, food
and money rarely meet, winters that
last past the start of spring. Jobs
were jobs; careers were for the lucky
genes on the other side of those
divisional tracks. You did what it took
to put food in stomachs, no matter the
soul-suck. Get an education was for
dreamers; get a job was your mantra.
You were bent, but never broken.
Weekend poker games, gallons of booze,
anything to keep sane. Hard times call
for hard living. Shame never lit your
face, or mine. I punch the clock with
both hands, wonder how I can sneak
out early, find some sanity before
my next shift.

      Cathy Porter


Destruction

The other day I did my walk,
after the rain, when long brown worms
strayed out on the blacktop,
mindless of the Goodyear and Michelin.
By the dozen I with my cane
moved them gently to the grass,
silently, without complaint or compliment.
And I walked on contented.

     And all the while, and all the while,
       and all the WHILE

By the thousands, beyond the screams.
     Bodies being buried
Beneath hills of rubble.

     And all the while, and all the while,
       and all the WHILE

By the billion, almighty bucks buying bombs.
   Dropping infant blood on MY hands.
O dear GOD in whom we trust,
     Where is your voice? Where is your cane?

Tanks and bombs are NO toys.
Lives and limbs, the price of greed.
Cries from the ashes of children
Consume and bury the soul

       The Heart             already fled.

       Cathal Whelan


Lesson in Simile and Metaphor

A skinny little girl stands in a hospital.
Her head is down. Her hair is white,
and I'll give you that she looks like a ghost,
caked, as she is, with plaster dust,
and, yes, she screams like a banshee,
though our next lesson will be on cliché.
Don't worry about that now. Here,
we are trying to learn how to see
what is there and what is really
not there: cables hang down and water
pours from the ceiling, but on the other side
of the lobby, there is no wall: it's just outside,
and outside is just clouds, which also seem
to be screaming. Now, she looks at us
and we see that she wears a mask
of blood her father left for her when
the rocket blasted him into Jannah, Kingdom
Come, or oblivion. O.K. now, what is she
like? Or, she is what? What would you say?

      Jonathan Andersen


A Question of Numbers

There is no law being violated if you save
the life of a child from a burning building
only
    if you knock down the door?
This is the moral question --
the door
     the destruction of property
or is it the numbers?

You can save
1 child from a burning building or
36 from a school bus
about to be run over by a train or
157 from a hurricane or
498 from an airliner crash

So why not
1,000,000 from genocide or
6,000,000 from starvation"

Or, all of us

What is the matter?
What is subversive?
What is wrong?
What is undesirable?
What is illegal?

About saving all of us?

      Mary Franke


Poem for the Future

been up reading
"Future Lost, Past Found"
new book by Anthony George
beautiful & sad & inspired

Dion the tuxedo cat
on my chest purring
headbutting notebook
as I write this

worried about war
worried about Earth
the air we breathe
water we drink
the wild fires
the floods

A future without birds
is no future
at all
A future without freedom
A future without food or water
is no future

I say a future
   without oil
A future without jets
A future without fools
   selling our future
      to the highest bidder

A future with clean air
clean water & soil
honey bees
fruits & berries
birds & trees

A future without genocide
A future without famine
A future without war
A future without nuclear anything

A future without apartheid
A future without white supremacy
A future without mass incarcerations
        & prison profiteering
A future without fascism & hate

A future without bullets
A future without bombs
A future without plastic

A future without futures
A future without stock markets
A future without capitalists.

      Dave Roskos


That Old Cartoon from the New Masses

When I watch the mayor support
the hospital closing
which he had previously opposed
as being an attack on the poor
but then he was running as a Democrat
and appealed for working class support
and now he has become mayor
answering the drums of big business
and so it is he heeds a very different call
1,000 slated to be thrown out on the street
thousands denied access to medical care
in the name of fiscal austerity
our picket line and cries of "shame"
as his limousine pulls up in the rain
for a fundraiser at the Hilton
the unions there, the community groups there,
the demand by some among us
to break with the Democrats,
a demand which not a few of us are for,
yet given the lack of a
viable electoral alternative,
a reluctance to bite the hand
that presumably feeds us, a shiftiness,
and yet at the same time knowing
this embattled balancing act,
this three card monte game,
this blizzard of banker's attacks
on the poor, the workers, the most oppressed,
can't go on forever, something has to change
there has to be a better way
of fighting back,
a party of working people,
independent of the bosses,
uniting us all,
I think of that old political cartoon
from the New Masses, showing Labor,
represented by a worker being held down,
and a Liberal, appealing to Capital on his behalf,
but when that same Labor rises up
by throwing off his shackles
the Liberal joins Capital
in pushing him back down .

      Chris Butters


Revolution Must Come

We are the ones who hammer the steel and turn the wheels
Of commerce and capitalism
We care for the sick and seniors and our children
We make the entire economy work
We believe in our families, children and neighbors,
And justice, love
And the common good of everyone
We hate and chafe at corporate dominion
It riles and raises our natural rebellion
Which runs with the blood of our veins
We hate all they demand and take
To raise profits
Instead of raising wages
In our hands clasped in solidarity
Is the greatest power of humanity
If we rise from accepting scraps to demanding enough
For everyone
Revolution must come
Because they're running out of excuses
For hungry children,
Mass gun deaths,
And poisoned earth and dirt, air and water
Revolution will come when we learn and decide
Scarcity is a deadly lie
There is enough for all of us
Revolution will come when workers take our share.

       Stewart Acuff


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