Spring 2025



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

These Are the Ones

These are the ones, the poor, the laboring unaffected
     unsophisticated salt of the earth agonized ones
These are the people, Ma Joad's people, the blues
     singer's people, the backwoods & back alley ones
The ones who put one foot out at a time
     one day at a time & go on & on & on
These are the ones the wealthy artists can paint
     describe portray photograph
These are the people Whitman knew & believed in
These are the honest losers of the money game
The ones who share their last
     travel by bus & hitchhike & walk
These are the broken back shovelers, the black
     lunged menials, these are the fodder
The ones crucified next to the savior
     the ones dumped into mass graves
These are the mothers who must read of son's
     death in foreign land

These are the ones computer society will leave behind
These are Blake's sunflowers
Guthrie's One Great Big Soul
These are the people I love

The unglamorous ones
The mothers with too much work to do
The toddlers who don't know they're poor
The teenagers who know poverty too well
These are the children of sharecroppers The ones who laugh in spite of all the bad
These are my chosen people

My love will give birth to our first any time now
And I like them nervously finger keys to an old
     wreck as if they were worry beads
I like them wait for my name to be called
Yes, these are the ones

       Andy Clausen


My America

here we practice sardine-can sorcery,
stretch our mayonnaise longer
than the lines for payday loans.

we tan the hungry hides of our stomachs
with barely there food stamps,
hang dollar-store jewelry

on the church of our bodies
to feel holy. we know we are prey,
and your chasing us

has happened for so long
it feels natural. until the earth
calls our names, we'll belly up

to your billionaires' bar, a reprieve
arriving when we're finally
dirt-ready. this welcome break

like soap to sore hands, our
fingers no longer blackened
by coupons and coal mines.

      Carlee Wilson


How the Worker Becomes the Servant

In the little video you show me
the tug boat skirts around
seen from above again and again
and nearby the box from the ship
is dropped by the crane
again and again        see the bananas move
this photography
lets us see in seconds
the work day        the repetition
of shifting cargo        again and again
on this last day, the bananas move,
for a hundred years in the
Port of Galveston so close to
where they grow.        From where
they grow to where they don't grow
Like wine and olive oil once traveled
in amphorae on ships with sails.

Now the cargo is human, mundane.
On cruise ships, dream palaces,
baterial migra-urbias, tourists.
And they who saw to the moving
of our food will see to the luggage
of those who go (not) to see the sea, but the
sights, the peoples, and before it disappears
the world going out of business.

Will organized labor stand with
hands out for tips?
will bananas grow legs?
What passes for money always moves.

Off off shore an unbuildable pier

feeds no one. Where are the workers
who build piers?

A container ship drifts, like toothpicks,
a bridge collapses. It's repairers are killed.

Supply chains teach those who do not
know about chains,
when the worker becomes the servant
the fruit of labor.

      Mary Franke


All You Can Eat

Remain hungry.
Stomach growling.
Upset..
Regurgitating
everything other than dense calories..
Like a liver filters inhibitors
that are nothing more than flattery.
Fatigue fueling energy.
Date night with destiny,
Pen in constant movement like epilepsy.
To seize the world in one stroke from irrelevancy.
With a gigantic appetite for the extraordinary.
Skipping redundancy and mediocrity.
Dishing out a plate full of eloquent colloquy.
Seasoned progeny of a resilient ancestry.
The fact served Hot N Ready.
Prepared for discrepancies.
Boiling point stirs mutiny.
Escaping the taste of animity.
Flavorful invisibility.
I show my facev
after I devoured my true history

      Thot King


No Country for Brown Skin
  deportee

     shoes . . .
full of
holes
filled with
dirt ridden
bodies
taken and
held until
deported.
     stomachs . . .
still empty,
never filled
with so
much as
texas dust,
washed down
with
indignation and
half a promise.
        borders . . .
where flags
once welcoming,
now signal
          "keep out!"
fencing and hands
of "roca'
point to
a ghost town
called
     "limbo"
and      "adios amigos"
its only
greeting to
"go back to
where you
come
from!"

      Mitch P. Valente


I Feel Furious

Is it better to have been giddy
with hope that was shattered
like a beloved plate thrown down?

Or to have foreseen disaster,
neck bowed waiting for the blow?
The result is the same.

A country full of anger, hatred
of everyone not just like you.
How dare they speak Spanish

eat different foods, want to
worship a different god,
marry their lifelong partner?

Burn the place down, they
shout. We've been robbed.
We want the 50's back, Those

times were good for us, and you
were kept nicely in your place just under our feet.


      Marge Piercy


Them and Us

What money does to a person --
not the pittance it takes to squeak by
but wealth        the driven addiction
for more      always more
the erosion of connectedness
          of empathy
the commodification of others
reduced to clients
     hands      "losers"
useful
   or not
in the obsession of accrual
like poor Gollum and the ring
the warping delusions
        of power
Behold their grimacing visages
their soulless
        derisive eyes
seeing us all as disposable marks
and now more empowered and brutal
          than ever

It's them against us --
and nothing terrifies them more
than us --
than our power
when united

      Al Markowitz


Torrent Rising

Old-timers say they've never seen the river rise so high

Flooding roads and rising to the top of old bridge abutments

Current running hard frothing in the water that flowed from the mountains

Gathering power with every spring, creek and tributary joining the flow

Till gentle flowing water turns into rage that can't be controlled

As our people realize the worst

The president intends to become a dictator

His mad king manner interested only in his wealth and power

Thinks the lives and deaths of the rest of us don't matter

He would make us all poor, high tech serfs

But with every mad executive order and every brother or sister disappeared

More join with us

We are the water that once was a trickle from a spring

But we are bound to become a raging wall sweeping the evil before us

Maga sows the seeds of movement and revolution

May we grow those seeds into the fruits of righteous labor

Till we reap the harvest of justice, solidarity and compassion.

     Stewart Acuff


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