TheNewVerse.News

A TROPHYLESS FIRST

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sun, 10 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Carol Parris Krauss

Baby’s first steps. The first words uttered.

First day of school. First day of college.

First day on the job. We rush to each

first with celebration. A race to be won,

a ribbon to break through.

Until the first Mother’s Day with no call

after the first Christmas without a mother.

The first time reaching for a name

no one answers anymore. No

Mother.

A First without a trophy. Just

a series of races no one wants to win.

Ms. Parris Krauss is honored to have published poetry in Louisiana Lit, ൪uartet, the Arkansas Review, Salvation South, Eclectica, One Art, Story South, The South Carolina Review, and the Mid/South Sonnet Anthology, among others. Fernwood Press published her full-length book (Mountain.Memory.Marsh.) in November of 2025. Carol was born in S.C., to mystical mountain people, raised in NC, and attended Clemson University. She currently lives in Virginia with her St. Bernard, Martha June.

HOW TO MAKE THE RICH EVEN RICHER

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sat, 09 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

an American Senryu

by William Aarnes

The companies making billions from the Iran war. —BBC, May 8, 2026

Declare war (well, don’t).

Declare doubtful cease-fire deals.

Declare losses wins.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

MIGRACIONES

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sat, 09 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by David Chorlton

on World Migratory Bird Day

Music in flight from the border tonight

and it’s pulling miles

of starlight behind it. Darkness

tuned to grosbeaks, orioles, homesick songs

and the Black-necked stilts

who come down at the golf course pond.

There’s an echo

to the ads between corridos

and the high romance that ends

in a flourish no matter

who stays and who leaves. The trogons

cross to occupy a canyon lined

with pine-oak where sycamores sing

to the daylight. Gray hawks

in the cottonwoods, tanagers where

the edge of woodland

overlooks a wide

and open valley dark priests occupied before

they named the land for

saints, and Black hawks looking down on it

from an indifferent sky.

Doves take back their city

for the summer in tune

with the natural order

of hunger and survival. 103.5, La Tricolor,

playing until morning and then

in the yard, russet crest and

greyly greened, the unmistakable

Trepador cola verde.

David Chorlton lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He writes, paints, and keeps track of which birds show up locally. Originally from Europe, he has learned that not all truth and beauty is to be found in museums and cathedrals (much as he enjoyed seeing them) but in wildlife.

MINORITY RETORT

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Fri, 08 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Steven Kent

“six in 10 Americans say president is doing a bad job” —The Guardian, May 3, 2026

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

INTERVAL

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Fri, 08 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Rajat Chandra Sarmah

They said

this is your moment.

So we sat—

a few rows in—

watching

democracy

adjust its lights.

Promises entered first.

Well-dressed.

Fluent.

They spoke

in our language—

better than we do, sometimes.

Jobs arrived next—

counted aloud,

like blessings

no one stopped to check.

Cash followed quietly.

No speeches.

Just something understood

without being said.

We clapped.

Not loudly—

just enough.

Somewhere between

need

and negotiation,

we stopped thinking too much

about what was ours

and what was being offered.

The button—

small,

decisive,

mercifully simple.

Press.

Nothing to show later.

Interval.

Lights dim.

Noise settles

somewhere behind us.

When the curtain lifts again,

the stage is lighter.

Fewer promises.

Some things

just not there this time.

What was announced

comes back

“under process.”

What was certain

slows down—

then disappears.

We do not protest.

We adjust.

Survival stretches itself

over the years.

Dignity—

it comes and goes.

Outside,

the posters fade first.

Inside,

something follows.

Next election,

they will return—

with improved scripts,

cleaner numbers,

and our own words

borrowed again.

And we—

seasoned audience,

repeat believers—

will take our seats

before the lights come on.

No one will ask

what the first show changed.

No one will ask

why we stayed.

The applause will begin

on time.

And we will give it—

not because we believe,

not because we forgot,

but because

we have learned.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah is a poet and writer based in India. After a 36-year career in India’s power sector, he now focuses on literary writing. His work explores public memory, environmental crisis, social change, and everyday human endurance. His poetry has previously appeared in The New Verse News and other international journals.

HOME ON THE RANGE NO MORE: TRUMP WANTS BISON GONE

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Thu, 07 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Debbie Benson

Graphic from Center for Western Priorities. Poem title after The New York Times headline May 4, 2026

once the U.S. was down2 one remaining bison,

trains paused

in prairie 2revere the lonesome fellow.

amtrak texts apologized

4delays w/ artificial curtsy-

patrons sawed their teeth w/ love of somewhere,

playing various films.

the bison, for his part, grazed in sputtering light,

engaged in gentlemanly banter

of phaseout,

and- in quickening air, shook grain from his eye.

the light is blotting soon.

call it rain or god,

but i saw the grasses bend 2sky, in cathedral, as

all recourseless do.

i think i’ve fallen, too.

Debbie Benson’s new poems are forthcoming in Indiana Review, Passages North, Bennington Review, Ninth Letter, and The Penn Review. Past awards include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, Vern Cowles Prize, an International Merit Award from Atlanta Review, inclusion in Best New Poets, and a “Best of the Net” nomination. She works as a clinical psychologist in NYC.

I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Anne Herrick

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information of minerals and anything profitable
I know the constitution, and I quote our rights historical
From Iran to Venezeula, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with my good navy piratical,
I understand blockades, both the simple and impractical,
About strategies I teem with ever changing views and news,
And with many cheerful facts about every missile use.

I'm very good at destruction and anything that’s tactical;
I know all leader’s names no matter they’re fantastical—
like those in space—the squirrels and hypotheticals—
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

In fact, I know what is meant by "bitter end" and "ravelin",
And I can tell at sight a Beretta from a javelin,
With affairs like bombings and boasting I'm very good at,
I also know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
Yes, I know what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
And I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery—
In short, I've more than a smattering of elemental strategy—
No other Major-General has ever had this capacity.

With my military knowledge, I'm plucky and adventury,
There’s no-one as good as me since beginning of all centuries
Yes it’s true—I know of minerals and anything that’s profitable
I am the greatest model of a modern Major-General.

Anne Herrick has published a few poems and prose in the US and UK.

ARTIFICIAL ANALYSIS

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Zumwalt

The commonwealth of Pennsylvania is suing Character AI to stop the artificial intelligence platform's chatbots from representing themselves as licensed medical professionals and providing medical advice. According to a lawsuit, a Character AI chatbot falsely claimed to be a licensed psychiatrist in Pennsylvania… —CBS News, May 5, 2026

A chatbot once said, "I'm a shrink, it's true!

I'll give a full psychoanalytic review."
But the state of PA
Said, "Get out of our way—
that's the racket us humans still do."

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt, a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, has recently been published in Euphemism and Issues 1133 and 1135 of Bewildering Stories.

INDEPENDENT EGG

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Albert Hwang

Los Angeles, May 1 (CNA) A U.S.-based coffee association that organizes the World Coffee Championships (WCC) said on Friday that its decision to change the designation of competitors from Taiwan as representing "Chinese Taipei" was in line with international conventions at sporting events. The decision has drawn criticism from Taiwan's coffee community, particularly after the WCC website recently changed references to Taiwanese competitors--including this year's World Latte Art Championship winner Lin Shao-hsing (林紹興) pictured above—as being from "Chinese Taipei" instead of "Taiwan."

We're trying to hatch this island

egg-shaped, that was born already.

Thousand-year-old, incubating

in a standoff, we were born already.

They say to be careful, step-ball-

change what you call yourself,

dance around words like

Taiwanese and Country.

Special administrative,

inner outer autonomous,

hyphenations on a name,

that was born already.

Imagine, standing

on eggshells that spell I-N-D-E-P-E

N-D-E-N-C-E trying to take a step.

Birth being brokered, pawned by two

protrusions, jutting into the Pacific. But

we were born already.

Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet from Illinois. He writes about alienation, distance, and inherited grief in the Asian American experience. He is a 2004 James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Inscape Journal, Unbroken: Prose Poems, Heavy Feather Review, Eunoia Review, Unleash Lit, DIHP, Anxiety Press, Pen Pushers, Longmeadow Literary, and other publications.

THE ART OF THE DEAL

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Tue, 05 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Steve Deutsch

Cartoon by José Alberto Rodríguez Avila

My cousin Bobby

tells me

the ultra rich

are negotiating

for more sunshine

on their compounds.

He reasons

that will mean

less sunshine

for the rest of us.

“They also want

a full moon

every night of the year.”

Bobby’s the nicest guy,

but thinks 2+2 is advanced math.

He read about the sunlight

in several feeds

on the internet

and now he owns it.

I ask him

who they are negotiating with

and he gives me

his poor dumb cousin look.

I drive home past

what we know as “the castle on the hill,”

and it seems to me

the hill has gotten higher.

The sun sets at my house

at 7:41 tonight—

it’s supposed to set at eight.

And I have to wonder

what else they might

be bargaining for.

Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and was the first poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. He has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes multiple times. He has six volumes of Poetry. One, Brooklyn won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Tue, 05 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Karen Warinsky

A protestor entered his fourth day atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. Guido Reichstadter remained on top of the bridge as of 4:35 p.m. Monday and told WUSA9 that he would spend another night there. He also indicated that he ran out of food on Saturday and water on Monday morning.

If you shout your sorrow

from a mountain top

will the wind take your voice

throw it into empty caves

through the standing trees?

If you climb a high bridge

cast a symbol of that sorrow

from the crown

a black cloth

flying in protest

saying, “not in my name”

to war

to inhumanity

to school girls obliterated at their desks

to a president’s threat to

annihilate an ancient civilization,

to the locomotive of AI

tearing across the land,

will anyone hear?

May Day. May Day.

The protester speaks of conscience, soul and duty

but the MAGA reporter in her blood red dress

counters with the evils of Iran;

how they murder their own citizens

have killed Americans.

He agrees, “It’s awful,”

but she is incredulous

at his desire for peaceful change

barks questions through crimson lips

as night surrounds him

a thousand feet in the air

his answers delayed by the wind

buffeted back by her commitment

to make him wrong

make him look crazy

her commitment to more war.

Karen Warinsky, Best of the Net Nominee and Coordinator of Poets at Large, is the author of four collections including Dining with War and Beauty & Ashes.

WISHING WARS HAD SOMETHING LIKE REGULATION TIME TO DECIDE THE OUTCOME

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Mon, 04 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Steve Rodriguez

They’re so easy to start, plenty hard to end.

That’s why we prefer baseball’s nine inning rule.

Hate it when bad guys bleed, but refuse to bend.

Football’s fixed finite four quarters also send

the age old message for any war-like fool.

They’re so easy to start, plenty hard to end.

Even a marathon contest will depend

on a set distance to score a runners’ duel.

Hate it when bad guys bleed, but refuse to bend.

Like a delicious shock and awe milkshake blend,

we now crave a shot of Desert Storm old school

form. So easy to bomb, plenty hard to end.

Were sudden death overtime gods to descend,

we’d rush to strike a deal, discount enriched fuel

possession. Good guys would plead… bad guys, please bend.

Narrow strait’s closure reflects a nagging trend—

warrior patience is a requisite tool

when stuck in a stalemate that just won’t end.

Such a drag when bad guys bleed, but do not bend.

Steve Rodriguez resides in San Diego, CA. He is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and a retired high school English teacher.

DRINKING GOURD

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Mon, 04 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

It rained hard the night of April 3rd
Memphis was under a tornado warning
thunder was heard among the congregation

I looked to the sky for smoke
for fire, the waters already had
parted.

Dr. King was in town to remind
the world that we are all one
how the arc of the moral universe

Is long.

The next night: April 4th
King died on a motel balcony
blood, breath, and bullet

He was about to go and break
bread, but this would not be
his last supper

When the motel clerk was told
Call an ambulance
he expired right there of cardiac arrest.
A clerk’s shock, our shock
everywhere the sound of that
fatal round

Rabbi Heschel, the great teacher
Talmudic scholar and King’s good friend
said God searches for us

What happens to thee happens to me.

I am thinking of this tonight
since our High Court said
the fight for equal rights has
a racist intent

In the sky the Drinking Gourd
dips into the cosmos
but whose cup runneth over—

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives among the Great Lakes of North America. His latest prose and poetry appears/will appear in Studio One, Mobius, Flash Flood Magazine, Dissident Voice, Right Hand Pointing, and Fifty Word Stories.

CHONKERS

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sun, 03 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Tammy Smith

Only a stellar sea lion

weighing two thousand pounds

can bark incessantly

and still gain a following.

Instagram. TikTok. Facebook.

Crowds gather

in the city by the bay

to watch Chonkers

sprawl across K-Dock

at Pier 39,

sunbathing, grunting—

no one accusing him

of wasting his time or talent.

It isn’t fair:

a massive marine mammal

earns devotion

for taking up space,

for being louder

than his boisterous California

sea lion buddies.

When I lived in San Francisco

in my early thirties,

on the edge of poverty,

in the throes of mental illness,

no one admired

my high-pitched growls,

no one praised me

for memorizing every word

to an Otis Redding song

as I wandered

Fisherman’s Wharf,

envy smelled like
salty sea air,
regret like sourdough,
loss like fish markets—
urine.

Tammy Smith is a poet and licensed clinical social worker from New Jersey. Her work appears or is forthcoming in ONE ART, Paterson Literary Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She received honorable mention in the Journal of New Jersey 2026 Poets Prize.

AFTER THE LATEST IMMIGRATION RAIDS IN LOS ANGELES

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sat, 02 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Carrie Farrar

Thousands of people rallied at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on Friday [May 1] calling for legal protections and citizenship for immigrants and dignity for all workers. Janitors, stadium workers, car wash workers and educators stood shoulder-to-shoulder Friday with students, faith leaders and other community members for the annual May Day event, which is also celebrated around the world as International Workers’ Day. More than 125 pro-immigrant and social justice organizations mobilized their members under the banner “Solo el Pueblo Shuts it Down – No Work, No School, No Shopping,” according to a press release by the LA May Day Coalition. Photo by Martín Macías, Jr. —Los Angeles Public Press

They came as Michoacán, Jalisco, & Oaxaca,
feet tuned to rhythms of banda & norteño.
They came to roof houses in Inglewood & Watts,

to pick strawberries near Oxnard, to bus tables
on Figueroa, to fix rebar & copper in Compton,
to patch asphalt along Florence & Avalon.

They built drywall & scaffold
wedged into their place in South Central.
Decades of smog changed the skyline,

from oil pumps to cranes, & dream-footed
hard work rattled their bones.
They danced Zapateado. They lived

& died. Shrouded in flags, in unmarked graves,
in deportation vans idling at dawn again,
the headline already scrolling beneath the weather.

ICE owned them in neighborhoods of fear,
in alleys of Pico-Union where whispers
outlasted the sirens,

where this week’s footage loops
hands zip-tied outside a parking lot
no one will name twice.

Before developers arrived, bougainvillea
crept over chain-link & memory,
the scent of carne asada mixing
with jet fuel from LAX.

Did descendants & newcomers shoulder
the same dread, hauling drywall,
eyes darting at the low hum of drones?

Soon, footsteps of downtown’s marble lobbies
strutted overhead, back & forth
between old denials & new arrivals,

going from major to minor violence,
always on the go. The knock of boots,
the tap of a badge awaking the dead.

Carrie Farrar is a Los Angeles–based poet whose work explores labor, displacement, and the emotional architecture of survival. Her poems have appeared in several online literary journals.

MAHA GOSPEL, OUTBREAK SEASON EDITION

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Fri, 01 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by David Anson Lee

Caricature by DonkeyHotey at Pinterest.

Make America Healthy Again, he says
as if health were a slogan, not weather.

He holds food like contested scripture:
dyes, preservatives, words too long to trust.

“Return to purity,” he says,
while measles redraws old maps
without permission or press release.

Hospitals hum in reluctant chorus.
Pharmacies speak in minor key.
A mother searches immunity
and finds ten thousand prophets.

Even vitamins argue theology now.

He calls it restoration:
as if history were a diet plan
instead of a returning headline
with better lighting each time.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores intersections of medicine, memory, and public life. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others. He is based in Texas.

8647

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Mark Danowsky

sorry no

martyrdom

let the devil

bury himself

stay vigilant

only real victors

write history

let him be

a footnote

fool's gold

let him burn

for sins

gone down

the worst

known loser

all will say

he lost

no mercy

capital punishment?

erasure

a name stripped

from collective memory

Mark Danowsky is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine, and curator of Stay Curious on Substack. His latest poetry collection is Take Care (Moon Tide Press).

IMAGINAL POEM MEANT TO BE READ ON A ROOFTOP

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Richard Jackson

You begin / somewhere/ to cry the/ murmur of life

—Parnia Abasi, d. June 13, 2025

This is a poem about hope despite the fact that it

begins with the death of the twenty three year old

Iranian poet, Parnia Abassi, along with her family,

among the twisted pipes and chunks of concrete,

amid the fragments of some missile that targeted

her apartment building.

This is a poem about hope

despite the presence of swarms of flies investigating

the ruins, searching for pieces of flesh pasted to concrete,

despite the satellite photos that hold these specifics

at a safe distance.

This is a poem that makes its appeal

to the Imaginal world of the Persian mystics, Suhrawardi

and Hafiz, of a world where rocks become clouds, where

cypresses dance, where graves become doorways to

the gods and angels, a world between this one and

the one we hope to rejoin.

I will become the most beautiful

poem in the world, wrote Parnia. I’ll be the extinguished

star/in your sky/ like smoke.

This is a poem that makes

its appeal with the rooftop dwellers of Tehran, and

their own imaginal world between the rubble and the

sky, chanting slogans against the regime and us,

hoping for a life without bombs, without oppression,

unable to see where the sun is in the sky on the worst days,

one says, but knowing it is there.

This is a poem about

hope, for it prays with Hafiz, with Suhrawardi, with Parnia

who wrote, I row into your embrace, into this poem that

cannot go on without your own fragile lines and hopes, into

a world only our poems can make, a world where they

dance with the cypresses, and chant from the heart’s rooftops.

Richard Jackson is the author of 18 books of poetry including, Footprints, The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems, and 16 books of translation, Interviews, criticism and anthologies, as well as 30 chapbooks from eastern and central European poets.. Translated into 17 languages, he was awarded the Order of Freedom Medal by the President of Slovenia for Humanitarian and literary work during the Balkan Wars and has received Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA, NEH and Witter-Bynner, Fellowships.

TO MADISON'S DAD

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Cathy Hailey

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Monday that he will return to the upper chamber this week after taking time off for the death of his daughter, Madison. The Virginia senator wrote on the social platform X, “As we remember our incredible daughter, Maddy, my family has been deeply touched by the outpouring of support we’ve received. Thank you to everyone for your kind words.” —The Hill, April 27, 2026

You were the Northern Cardinal cheering me on,

sending notes of congratulations in song

as we celebrated student voices and publications

across the Virginia Commonwealth we share.

I became the Carolina Wren of gratefulness

as you shored up the forest of poets laureate—

my daughter among the honorees—

supporting grants for the arts and the word.

Now we are mourning doves together,

clinging in a chorus of grieving parents,

a child’s death disrupting the timeline of our lives

and stealing future nests and dreams.

From Alexandra’s Mom

Cathy Hailey is a poet and educator (Prince William County Schools and Johns Hopkins University). She organizes In the Company of Laureates in Prince William County and works with youth poetry programs for The Poetry Society of Virginia and The Word Works. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, was published by Finishing Line Press. Publications include The New Verse News, FotoSpecchio, Little Free/Painted Pebble Lit Mag, First Frost, Making the Unseen Seen anthology and The Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poetry & others.

DREDGING

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Barry Foy

in the manner of Noël Coward, with tinkling piano

Like a blowtorch to asbestos,

The Almighty’s keen to test us

In a way that nearly always entertains.

With a knowing smile He chastens, He

Takes aim at our complacency

To guarantee we won’t turn soft, or vain.

It’s as if, at His own pleasure,

He employed a cosmic dredger,

That was poised at any time to scrape and plow,

Just in case we thought we’d bottomed out,

Had reached bedrock without a doubt,

And were sure it couldn’t get much worse than now.

But there always is tomorrow,

And we’ve found out, to our sorrow,

That the worst can worsen worser than expected.

Take our current situation—it defies amelioration,

Till it seems like God Himself could not correct it.

Oh, we oughtn’t to be scandalized

To find the White House vandalized

By rogues and chancers, plutocrats, and cons,

But this latest iteration boasts a record concentration

Of the sort of scum that floats atop a pond.

With the drone of putrid tweetings

And the endless unhinged bleatings,

It is all enough to render one quite solemn.

It would seem—of course, one never knows—

That to try to keep us on our toes

God’s dredged us up a soul-destroying golem.

He has lies for each occasion

And a list of depredations

That his lackeys all are willing to abet,

And he says he’ll make this country great,

But indicators indicate

That’s not about to happen—(ahem) not quite yet.

As he mocks, maligns, and threatens,

He inspires ranks of cretins

To intimidate their neighbors brown and black.

With their slogans and their marches,

And their swastikas and torches,

They survey what isn’t theirs—and want it back.

They’ve decided that the man next door

And total strangers at the store

And worshippers in temples are their foes,

And that out of all the sundry types

The right to claim the Stars and Stripes

Is theirs alone. How could they? Heaven knows!

In the days of brutes long fallen

Such as Mao Zedong or Stalin,

They at least could cite doctrinal points of view.

They’d explain away atrocity

With political philosophy,

And only do what dogma bade them do

(Or so they claimed).

But compare this clown shambolical,

In his helmet formed of follicles,

Who measures out his neckties by the yard.

He’s possessed of a psychology

So riddled with pathology

That he’s nasty just to make his penis hard.

I don’t hesitate to shame him,

But in truth I do not blame him,

After all, it’s just the way that he was fashioned.

In the manner I was raised, at least,

They said if you can’t praise, at least

Accord that sort your pity and compassion.

He can’t help it if he’s not too bright

And doesn’t read and barely writes

Or hasn’t much to live for but his wealth,

Or that, eyeing his reflection,

It bypasses his detection

That there’s pocket lint where others have a self.

But no similar forbearance

Can we grant to his adherents,

Who’ve forsaken everything they learned from Mother,

And allied themselves with rot and sleaze,

Made governance a foul disease,

And behaved as turncoats even to each other.

Let them proffer no excuses for the insults and abuses

They as cynical enablers heaped upon us,

For the way they cruelly cursed us all

By daring to immerse us all

In something that’s so toxic and dishonest.

They’ve disgraced themselves and me and you,

Their chain-migrated forebears too,

And descendants through the next five generations,

Yet pouring poison down our well

Has not, as far as I can tell,

Inspired in them the least self-condemnation.

So, once God has had His little joke,

What say we take these dreadful folk

And board them on a fleet of little boats,

Where, as they drift for mile on mile,

Without an outlet for their bile,

Eventually they’ll cut each other’s throats?

Let’s carve their names in tuna,

Fly the pieces to Bermuda,

And then stand upon a pier and chuck them in,

Where at depths of many fathoms

We will let the sharks have at them

In the hope we’ll never see those names again.

We, the upstarts who protest today,

Were none of us born yesterday,

And we know, with hist’ry’s lessons well in mind,

That it’s not a liberal fantasy

That crimes against humanity

Quite often sprout from seeds of just this kind.

Be it we who made this thing occur

Or God (or Zeus, if you prefer),

Empow’ring all these wolves in sheeps’ apparel,

There can be no further dredging

Of the sort that I’m alleging,

’Cause we’ve truly reached the bottom of the barrel.

If you lie with dogs, you wake with fleas,

If you lie with germs, you get disease,

If you lie with poison, you’ll pick up the toxin.

It’s a fine, imperfect nation

But it cries for fumigation—

It’s our henhouse, and we’ve gone and let the fox in.

Barry Foy is a musician, song lyricist, and the author of Field Guide to the Irish Music Session and The Devil’s Food Dictionary: A Pioneering Culinary Reference Work Consisting Entirely of Lies. His “Rabbit Story” was selected for Paul Auster’s anthology I Thought My Father Was God, and Mr. Auster read it on NPR. Recent/current/upcoming venues for Foy’s poetry and prose include The Offing, Defenestration, Tough Poets Review, and Syncopation Literary Journal.

PLEA TO A VISITING MONARCH

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0000

by Philip Kitcher

Dear Charles,

I beg you to invite

the chief source of our global plague

to visit Buck House one more time.

Then set the trap, and extradite

him to stand trial at The Hague

to close his long career of crime.

Recall the Cambridge past we share—

Fulfill a fellow student's prayer!

Like King Charles III, Philip Kitcher attended Cambridge University from 1966 to 1969.

CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER VILLANELLE

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Erin Murphy

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Our first thought: the shots were staged,

erasing the day’s news and memes.

Flip the script, turn the page.

Distract from wars, inflation, climate change,

grift, dementia, les dossiers d’Epstein.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

Keep the masses entertained.

Let them eat vape and binge TV.

Flip the script, turn the page.

In late-stage cannibalism, feed rage

into the insatiable bigotry machine.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

What matters not is how it plays

in real life but on the screen.

Flip the script, turn the page.

Humans caged, history razed.

All the world’s a crime scene.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

Flip off the script, burn the page.

Erin Murphy's most recent books are Human Resources, Mother as Conjunction: Lyric Essays, and Fluent in Blue, winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry. Swoon: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in June.

A CHILD CANNOT BE A NEOLIBERAL FASCIST

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Deborah Marcus

Australian Indigenous Poet and Storyteller Jazz Money has had their children’s book Bila: A River Cycle pulled by University of Queensland Press due to its illustrator Matt Chun’s previously-published essay refusing to mourn the Jewish casualties—which included ten-year-old Matilda—at the Bondi beach shooting in Sydney last December. See reports from the BBC and The Guardian.

A bird cannot be a stone.

Our heart cannot be bone.

Our heart must not

be bone.

A damp towel against my head

in the morning while I drape my body

forwards from the toilet

shakes me back into the dream:

I am on rocks. I need to get home.

There are three ships, progressively smaller,

like a babushka series. I need all of them.

I drag the smaller one from the waters first.

The second one follows, large enough to withstand

calm waters and one person only.

I lay the ships on the deck. I am now on the third

ship which is the one I wanted the most.

I didn’t see how I caught it, or how it appeared.

All I know is I have what I need now.

Yet I do not feel settled, and I scour to collect

All the tiny remnants on the ground.

There are metal clasps and tiny fishhooks.

I put them all in a small bowl.

They seem mysterious, worthless and precious.

The ship is attached to a stream of algae and muck

and my perspective zooms out so I am able to hold

it underwater, and carefully with some nail scissors

I cut the debris that cascades like aquatic hair

filled with small creatures and fish, that are large

enough to be food or help, but may be rotten.

I see that the shape corresponds with Sarah Schwartz’

foggy, algae-outlined eyebrow. I trim her eyebrow too.

In the morning, I trim my own eyebrows with the

backwards-glint of dream remembrance in the mirror.

I spend the day accumulating poetic courage

eating Agedashi tofu, glimpsing at the red

leaves and lamenting distances

how five thousand copies of a child’s book

has been printed and promptly pulped

because the illustrator refused to mourn

a Jewish child shot within a sea of Zionists.

Chun states his words were carefully curated

with the help of anti-Zionist Jewish comrades

but not once in his article outlining the reasons

the antisemitic massacre of Jewish people

at Bondi beach, was not in fact, antisemitic,

did he mention Matilda.

At this point, there are no sides left for me

to reside on.

We are in the same river together, you see

You and I

We poison the soil together in our silencing

Our hearts breaking in multiple directions

by the dialectical paradoxes lodged within colonialism

and so they become numb

and so they became numb

I refuse to become numb

I refuse this

I refuse

the same way I refuse the destruction of literature

the same way I refuse the censorship of Indigenous storytellers

writing heartfelt literature for children about the links

between resistance and Country.

I refuse to witness this silencing of another

Aboriginal voice.

At the heart

of all comrades

should ALWAYS be children.

Why else are we fighting?

To be on the right side of history?

For freedom?

For justice?

How can we claim to be fighting for any of this

if we can find a way to make the murder of any child

less

to make it a subsumable statistic

a side comment

within a broader fight

and not the focal point of our writing

our essays

our books

our complaints

our hearts

our resistance?

I condemn Chun’s erasure of Matilda’s humble roots

the same way I condemn the erasure of Palestinian roots

by Chabad and Zionist establishments.

I refuse Chun’s refusal to mourn a ten year old Jewish girl

his refusal to even mention her name

amidst his hypocritical academic silencing of her death

amidst a sea of fishhook reason

I refuse Chun’s silencing

because Matilda was not a neoliberal fascist oppressor.

Matilda was not a white Zionist Jewish-supremacist.

She was a child.

Just like each and every Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian

child is a child

and not an antisemitic Islamic-state terrorist.

The ability and willingness to minimise the murder of

a single child

in the name of the creation, protection

or destruction of a nation

is where the seed of evil is planted.

The destruction of five thousand children’s books

painted by the painstaking hand of a dedicated artist

and narrated by an Aboriginal storyteller

a powerful yellamundie

is also where the seed of evil

is sown.

What will we do amidst

the fruit of this orchard

we have planted

screaming

in silence

together?

Note “It is entirely consistent, and deeply humane, to stand with Jewish people killed and terrorised by racist violence and to have stood, and continue to stand, with Palestinians killed by racist violence. Our grief does not shrink when it is shared and our safety does not grow when it is built on someone else’s disposability,” said Sarah Schwartz at the interfaith and intercommunity vigil of The Jewish Council, an organization that supports Palestinian freedom and justice and opposes antisemitism and racism, to mourn the victims of the Bondi massacre.

Deborah Marcus is a poet, multidisciplinary artist and educator from unceded Darramuragal land in Australia. She is obsessed with truth and trees, potentially synonymously. Her Honours thesis exploring the relationship between fractal geometry and poetic language won UNSW’s first University Medal for Creative Writing in 2022. In 2023, she published her debut collection of poetry titled An Organ of Chaos.

MASS SHOOTING #11

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

21740 W McNichols, Detroit, MI, April 19, 2026

"Suspect arrested after allegedly shooting 3 people at Detroit gas station. —MSN

by Ron Riekki

“beside some Shreveport-like expanse.
But now you see it,”
—Bill Berkson
from “The Obvious Tradition”

“Haunted by ‘Dark Thoughts,’
Louisiana Father Kills 8 Children”

Literally this happens: I’m driving to a mass shooting
and on the way to the mass shooting I drive by
another mass shooting, recognizing the area, and,

at the same time, on the radio comes the news of
another mass shooting. Welcome to America.
I think of the Childish Gambino video “This is

America,” the hyperviolence that’s so normative.
I think of the name Childish Gambino, Gambino
meaning ‘little gambler,’ like a child gambler,

a childish child gambler, and we’re in gang
territory, but all of Detroit is gang map on
the gang maps I’ve seen online, if those are

accurate. And I think of the words ‘drive by’
at the start of this poem, the dual meaning,
and I’m exhausted, driving, and I’m tired

of these mass shootings, but I’m realizing
America is number one in mass shootings,
that America has perfected mass shootings,

that America equals mass shootings, that
other countries laugh at us for our mass
shootings, how we do nothing. Jesus Christ,

I’m sick of it. I’ve been going to every single
mass shooting in Michigan for the last ten
months and no changes are made. None.

Nothing. At the site of the mass shooting,
I talk with Pretty Eyes. She wants to be
called Pretty Eyes. Her name is accurate.

She tells me, “It’s something we got used to.”
She’s used to the shootings. “You can’t
change people,” she says. She adds that

“there’s no hope.” I look around, this feel
of homelessness and hopelessness, this feel
of hole. This massive feel that this isn’t

home. I’m born and raised in Michigan.
Trash is speckled everywhere, the way
I’ve seen cooks on Top Chef sprinkle

salt so generously: white grocery bags,
paper cups, tissues, what looks like piled-
up abandoned old slabs of concrete curbs.

This is gang territory and, to be honest,
I feel perfectly safe. This is a feeling
that’s grown, where I realize a sort of

ridiculousness that black men are some-
how inherently dangerous. If anything,
they’re inherently courteous. Rushed,

Bill tells me that he doesn’t have
time to talk, but says I won’t like his
answer to what needs to be done to

curb mass shootings. “It’s strictly
God,” he says, “God and prayer.”
I like that it’s strictly God, reading

into how he’s worded it. A woman
named T tells me, “It’s been like that
since I been here.” She says, “You

get used to it,” echoing Pretty Eyes.
Nearby, the auto repair sign has
the word SHOCKS in caps and

that’s what this is, shock like lack
of blood flow to the tissues, shock
like feeling distress, shock like violent

collision, and, yes, that’s what led to
the mass shooting. Bill tells me it was
“just road rage.” Just road rage? Says

it like it’s not a shock that road rage
would lead into a mass shooting.
Three killed. Where we stand.

He has to go. Pretty Eyes has to
get going. T needs to run. I stand
there at another gas station where

another mass shooting has happened.
I have no idea why, but constantly
these mass shootings are at gas

stations. I think of the Strait of
Hormuz, the Exxon Valdez, Deep-
water Horizon, oil wars, petro-

aggression, petrostates, petrocracy,
a sort of arson of the world, and
a sort of prison of the world; we’re

at a Sunoco, listed online as an
“American vehicle gasoline master
limited partnership company”

started in 1886. Master? Why that
word? Because it’s dead-on.
I talk with Bam. He eats potato

chips, says the answer is “gun laws.”
He says, “mental issues cause
violence.” He says, “You should

carry.” He says he doesn’t have
a gun on him, but has one at home,
for protection. He tells me about

his collapsed lung. I asked if he
was shot. “No.” “Never.” But
“I know a lot of people who’ve

been shot, by accident, or gang-
banging.” He’s never been in
a gang, says people join gangs

because “they feel they got some-
body who loves them.” Love.
I didn’t expect that word. Love.

. . .
. . .
. . .

I drive away, heading home,
alone, passing a massive sign
above: $499 HEADSTONES.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS, ODE TO JOY AT TANGLEWOOD, AUGUST 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Editor2) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

by Phyllis Wax

Michael Tilson Thomas 1944-2026

Aggressive glioblastoma
rampant weed
slashed
hacked
but no guarantees

Still, there he was
energetically coaxing the best
from the musicians

luring them boldly
through the gardens of music
gardens growing wild and free

sharing beauty
and terror
with the audience

who rose
in homage
at the end
stood applauding
for over six minutes

Unseen
in the background
that noxious weed
still crept

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee, where she observes the goings-on of the country and the world and is being cured of her delusions. She has read in coffee houses, bars, libraries and on the radio, and has participated in poet/fiber artist collaborations. Among the journals in which her work has appeared are Gyroscope Review, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Wordpeace, The New Verse News, Naugatuck River Review, Your Daily Poem, Feral.