Called Up / 2025 USA
We live in a place called what’s the difference
We swim in an ocean called what’s to know
We have something to say called who cares
We fall in love to a song called who remembers
We wake to each morning called rewind
We eat meals each day called handouts
We go to a school called moving target
We work a job called two-week paycheck
We say prayers called out to anything listening
We lull asleep to dreams called binge watching
We hear the drone of breaking news called talk beast
We roll our daily dice in a game of chance called craps
As throats gag reflex this mundane patriotic song
As everything drains into a gaping nationwide hole
Mini-interview with Jonathan Memmert
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
JM: I have had many moments in my pursuit of writing that have shaped me, reconfigured my perspectives, and influenced my poetry. Most recently, as an American poet and writer, I have been struck by the current assault on free speech by the current federal administration—how precarious and dangerous that action is—to the reality of a continued open society with free expression.
HFR: What are you reading?
JM: Poetry:
A “working life” by Eileen Myles
Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima
In Search of Duende by Federico Garcia Lorca
Fiction:
Amerika by Franz Kafka
Martyr by Kaveh Akbar
Nonfiction:
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Called Up / 2025 USA”?
JM: “Called Up / 2025 USA” is a poem where I focused on the desperation sensed and experienced as an average citizen enduring the routinization of daily life in the America we are living through in these times. For me as an American, the sense of fatalism in the emptiness of patriotism, oppressiveness in nationhood, and consequent overall societal malaise.
The title of the poem is a reference to a phrase used by the US military, which reflects that you are “Called Up” when it is “time to serve.”
The form structure of this poem is like a sonnet—with its 14 lines but without the rhyme patterns of a traditional sonnet. I utilize the technique of anaphora in the poem with the repetition of the words We and called throughout the 12 lines that precede the ending couplet lines of the poem.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
JM: I continue to write poetry. I am working on a collection. I am a coeditor of an online poetry journal for emerging poets. I facilitate a poetry workshop with both published and non-published poets.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
JM: I feel we are living in a very precarious moment.
Nature as we know it on the planet is being altered drastically by climate change.
Politically we live in an ever-increasing authoritarian oppressive time in many countries worldwide, including in America.
WE are in the 21st century and yet we succumb to the yoke of the same old same old of the past—wars to resolve issues—economic inequality—power imbalances.
If we choose to remain the same, not change our ways—we are all screwed.
But I still believe that humanity has the intelligence to overcome the limitations of this precarious time if we choose to exercise and share knowledge—to and with— each other on an equitable basis to ensure our survival into the future.
It’s up to all of us. Each of us has to start somewhere. To start now.
Jonathan Memmert is a poet who resides in New York City. His poetry has been published in various poetry journals and anthologies. He has an MFA in creative writing from the City College of New York. He is an associate editor for the online poetry journal, The Marbled Sigh.
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Heavy Feather Review 