Winter 2024-25



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

Working Class Blues

You have to work all
week to pay for the
concession of being
nickel and dimed, man-
ufacturing thoughts of
violence for above and
beyond simply punching
some goddamed time-
clock sixty hours
a week, dying to
live paycheck to paycheck,
making products you'll
never manage to afford,
minimum wage to keep
a world moving, though
you're sure it would spin
around just fine without
you, just one more
easily replaceable worker --
bee slaving for a lost
colony and nothing seems
to soothe the sting of
knowing that, even making
$20 an hour flipping burgers,
your lot in life would be
to go to bed hungry.

       Dan Grote


Work Debt

The average house-
hold credit
card debt is over
$8000, as of
Inauguration day, 2025.
Like rent, the interest rates
are too damned high!
Debt, in fact, is rent.
One is renting money,
and the landlords
of wealth appreciate
how hard you work
to stay in penury
as they invest
your minimum monthly
payments in climate
changing stocks;
Like justice deferred,
credit extended is
credit for all
that you get done
on your job denied

      Bill Mohr


American Dream Electronics

Have you heard the one about the guy
who comes into the electronics store.
Demands to see only American products.
Makes some kind of stupid anti-Asian remark.

“Oh, this is one you might like,”
the salesman says.
So he shows him a Lenovo ThinkBook,
high speed RAM and solid state drive,
4-core Intel processor with touch screen display.

“Is that an American product?”
It doesn’t look like an American product.
You don’t understand,”
the man says.
“I said American products!”
“Oh, American products,”the salesman says,
though, truth be told, the Chinese ThinkBook is
an American product, assembled in U.S,
what is more, backed by Wall Street banks.

“Oh, an American product,”the salesman says,
so he shows him a red blooded American laptop,
Macbook Pro,16 GB RAM,
M4 Max processor —

only thing Apple Corporation
to avoid paying union wages,
fine print says manufactured
in Vinh Phuc, Vietnam—

“Okay”, the salesman says,
steering clear of the darkness,
“here is your American product,”

— as if it weren’t after all
a one world economy —
and then he holds
the gleaming computer
in his outstretched hands,

“Okay — here, guy,
is your American product.
Now, which one

      Chris Butters


Who Are You?

Who are you reading this page
Or not reading so much
As dreaming
Of individual glory
At the expense of everyone
Who works for a living

Who are you running a machine
Or not running so much
As being run and giving up
All sense of what it means
To be human to own feelings
Of worth of awareness
Of beauty of wonder
And godliness yes
I do mean godliness
No less than the sole
Nexus for living
Clean and free of
Totalitarian malarkey
And retail's uniformly
Slippery smile

Who are you staring at the TV screen
Or not staring as much as
Being steered into compromising positions
With naked materialism
While humans are pursued by drones
And the fate of children is determined
By repetitive testing trauma
As the free market sells futures
In human organs and wares of destruction

Who are you driving on the highway
Or not driving so much as
Being driven by the pursuit of happiness
At any cost
And speeding to your destined exit
Where toys are expected to exceed
Your most reckless fantasy
Of what life should be
Ore else some asshole will have to pay

Who are you looking in the mirror
Or not looking so much as
Reflecting on the fear
Of receding images of yourself
As you reappear
Rehearsing one question
You could never answer
When the teacher called
On you to deliver
And your peers
Turned in the chairs and waited
Wide-eyed for you to remember
Who you were and what you stood for.

      Gregg Shotwell


Alone

In the dead of the night,
we can't escape our minds,
can't escape the truths & lies
we tell ourselves.
When alone with our thoughts
we must think about the future
and ask ourselves.
Will it be good?
Will we have a job we like or
be forced to work
for the corporate overlords
who commit murder
to fund their obsession with space,
while workers get pennies?
Will we eat the rich or make do
with the scraps they feed us?
Will we have shelter from the shitstorm?

      Ayler Roskos


Bleak Dawn

Bitter chill of a polar vortex on
the coldest corner of Norfolk --
our federal edifice

Martin Luther King Day amid
the installation of corporate gangsters
vomiting bigoted threats and promises
     of violence      of retribution
a rolling back of rights won
our tinder-box world already spinning into a new
      and terrible epoch
of climate collapse, war, refugees
              atrocity

On the corner,
we huddle together alone trembling
     against freezing winds
to stand with immigrants and others now targeted
to stand for each other    all of us
old -- aged beyond our time? Still standing resolute
     against the injustices of self serving capital
standing for a future for a better world achievable
      always against the odds

Under the dome of power, the grift and graft of
angry fascists unleashed   celebrating
amid "zig-heil" salutes and the welcoming smiles
of corporate heads, politicians, presidents once
public adversaries but always
             in the same club

      Al Markowitz


In Front of the Federal Building

The confederate statues went away
I sort of missed them, they were
landmarks (turn left for the P.O.)
but they were bad celebrating slavery.

Now the federal building is going away
(and becoming high end rentals
for those with high ends)
We used to demonstrate there when
the government did something bad
and go there for help with our taxes.
Only the IRS is going away. But not
taxes? But the jobs are gone away
so what to pay taxes on?
And Social Security is a ponzi scheme.
So be ready for missed checks (save up!)
since the workers went away
forget health care if you haven't already
food
schools are bad, Are our enemies feeling
safe? Porn is in.
Its a golden calf moment
Gaza to be the Riviera of the middle east
(and the bodies still moving)
Have you seen the film?
Only nobody went up to the mountain
and mountains are mine pits for poison

And it's government out of a truck
don't try to phone the pings are phony

And is it in yet?
The big screw
that let us loose from our hinges
a door in space

hold on

      Mary Franke


Demigods and Demagogues

Long before smart phones brought the world
to scrabbling thumbs, we forgot everything

important: geometric formulas, cursive,
generals and the wars in which they fought

for independence, for conquest, for jingoistic pride.
So easy to remember toothbrush-mustachioed tyrants

but not their subtle beginnings, the cowing
of masses to mob mentality, collective will

bending like broomsedge before a coming storm.
History recedes to vague outlines of a teacher's face

before a chalkboard in a stuffy classroom
where we doodled margins of textbooks

with superheroes and dragons, ink hearts
inscribing hopeless infatuations.

We don't recall specific lessons, just
the constant reminder to pay attention.

Outside wildflowers swallow fields
where we once sprawled, imaginations

sharp as pitchforks, carving fauns
and centaurs from clouds, demigods

whose names have long since vanished
into gray matter. Yet something tickles

in the backs of brains as news feeds stream
across our phones. The president's hair flops

as he screams about division and subtraction,
making us great by kicking them out,

brick stacked on xenophobic brick until a wall
looms so large that even memory is repelled.

It's not until his arm jerks outright in triumph,
the saluting palm flat like a blade,

that the subconscious tickle coalesces
into images of goose-stepping boots,

dive-bombing stukas, blitzkrieging tanks.
We're curious how one man's rise to power

could wreak such destruction, such horror,
but faster than our thumbing ignorance,

Loki appends Wikipedia entries, skews
search engines to divert our queries

with beckoning autocompletes that send us
from one titillating amusement to the next,

circumventing walled-off camps with ovens
and the ever present smell of burning flesh.

     Bill Glose


What If

The flat pop pop pop echoed in the predawn darkness of a
New York street

The healthcare insurance CEO fell from the marked bullets
of a 9mm ghost gun

He died as certainly dead as those denied critical care because
of his corporate policies

And we cheered, first for self preservation for healthcare when our families need it

The gun's bullets were scratched with the words deny, delay, disrupt

Some of us cheered for our hatred of unnecessary pain and death and those who cause it

Some of us cheered for accountability for a system designed
to take everything we have to get critical care

And some of us cheered for our private ache for vengeance

It is how a violent world works where death matters only when those dying are rich and powerful

It is what happens when a match is scratched starting a fire in the trash

There's no obligation to judge Luigi Mangione's action

It stands as what it is: one of the inevitable reactions of people who refuse to be abused
By those who suck the blood and life of our lives, hearts and spirits

But there is another way

We are weakest when we act alone

What if we decide to act with the strength of one another

To begin where we live and work not waiting for anyone
to tell us what or how to do it

What if we learn that the life of child is worth more than
every fortune in the world?

What if we decide to change what we can no longer abide

Not waiting for elections and politicians but starting right now

To give the gift of a free and just country to those who follow us

It all begins with conversation as matter of fact as the weather

Or a question

Why do we let corporations run our lives?

       Stewart Acuff


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