SIRENS IN THE DISTANCE

by Nancy Byrne Iannucci

Drought has parched the Northeast U.S. for weeks, draining reservoirs, priming the landscape for damaging wildfires and pushing politicians to implement water-saving measures. More than 58% of the Northeast is in moderate drought or worse, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. —NBC News, November 15, 2024. Photo: The Jennings Creek Wildfire burning behind homes in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., on Nov. 10. Credit: Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

In the name of the Bee —
And of the Butterfly —
And of the Breeze — Amen!  

—Emily Dickinson, "The gentian weaves her fringes"

                                                       

The rustling leaves 
sound more like abandonment
to me now than the innocence of autumn.
 
Tumbleweed has traveled from the West,
kicking up dust in foreign streets,
making me squint like Clint
 
in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
this time, I’m convinced,
it’s the Devil breathing,
 
tempting Grandma Moses’s
rolling fields of matchsticks
to give him just one spark.
 
I think the phrase, hell on Earth,
has been said too many times,
our words have become
 
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
the bees have warned us. 
the rains in Spain have explained
 
why Whitman’s grass is dead
and Kimmerer’s sweetgrass
 won’t braid, and now,  
 
the Earth is responding
in sirens, sirens blaring,
blaring in the distance
 
getting closer
and even closer,
are we listening now?

 
Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a librarian and poet who lives with her two cats: Nash and Emily Dickinson.  THRUSH Poetry Journal, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Eunoia, Maudlin House, San Pedro River Review, 34 Orchard, Bending Genres, and Typehouse, are some places you will find her. She is the author of four chapbooks, Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018), Goblin Fruit (Impspired, 2021), Primitive Prayer (Plan B Press, fall 2022), and Hummingbirds and Cigarettes ( Bottlecap Press, 2024). Instagram: @nancybyrneiannucci

FIRST CONTACT POST ELECTION

by Susan Martell Huebner

Yesterday, my neighbor offered cranberries, 

an ordinary gifting, one baker to another. She chanced the wet, slick grass

between our houses. I put down my anger, unlocked my back door.

Susan Martell Huebner lives and writes in Mukwonago WI. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals. She writes across the genres. Find her printed work at Finishing Line Press, Kelsay Publications, and Amazon.

REFLECTIONS ON FINDING MY MOTHER’S WARTIME CHILDHOOD HOME, NOVEMBER 2024

by Steven Kent

World War II Poster

My granddad went to fight the fascist terror;

To guard our way of life, he traveled far.

Democracy, he knew, was not an error,

Yet                            here we are.

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

NEXT MORNING TEXT TO A FRIEND

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Detail from “Morning Has Broken” (Oil and Acrylic on Canvas) by Brad Gray, 2017

I was despairing at 4 am—

 

I wrote the poem and sent it off . . .

 

I didn’t choose the illustration

 

Though I knew it was fitting a bit of a shock the bird a blue bird—something

 

Lifted—

 

My father didn’t serve in WWII

For freedom from dominance and division

For me to abandon the principle

 

The impulse—

 

That he passed away 22 years ago today on a Veterans Weekend is fitting—

 

What dawned in me this morning is what someone once called something like

 

Irregular reversal subversion—

 

What a morning like this one (not unlike the lines I wrote before these lines) calls forth or for

 

As if from a haunting (fathers poets birds)—

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds is grateful to The New Verse News. This poem was written in response to her own poem published on the site on 11/9/2024. The words irregular, reversal, and subversion are taken from a letter William Carlos Williams wrote to Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry, in 1913.

PREMONITION

by Susan Vespoli

      “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

 —Christopher

On Tuesday, all set for a victory

party, I stopped at the grocery store

and bought sushi, California rolls, seaweed 

salad, a clear bottle of pink Cosmopolitans,

Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and I tried to buy a cake 

topped with KAMALA WINS IN A LANDSLIDE, 

but the guy at the bakery counter just eyeballed me,

said no one there knew how to write on a cake.

Susan Vespoli believes in the power of writing to stay sane. Her work has been published in The New Verse News, Anti-Heroin Chic, ONE ART, Rattle, Gyroscope Review, and other cool spots.

ON MT. FUJI EXPERIENCING ITS LATEST SNOWFALL IN 130 YEARS

by Carissa Coane

AP image via Republic, November 13, 2024

At first, I think I’ll write an ode:

to the snowdrops finally

crowning this hallowed summit, 

to nature’s ineffable persistence.

I’ll envision the peak blanketed,

not merely dusted, by snow,

postcard-perfect, framed from afar

by scarlet maples. 

I’ll weave the ballot I cast

last week, my hopes fluttering

away in the crisp breeze

of the mountain’s foothills, 

into a feeble metaphor—

It’s never too late—that crumbles

like withered foliage

in my hands. 

Because the only firsts

these days

are ever-higher temperatures,

stretching up to the stars.

The only glass 

being shattered 

encases blood-red mercury.

How it oozes.

I don’t want to think

about where we’ll be

4 years from now,

yet alone another 130.

And, even when reminded

of Fuji’s majesty, 

the only poem

I can bring myself to write

is an elegy.

Carissa Coane's poetry has appeared in Body Odyssey (Heroica), Proud to Be (Laurel Review), and various journals. She is on staff at Asymptote Journal and #FemkuMag. She is 21.

OUR PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES

 The New Verse News celebrates our nominees for the next volume of The Pushcart Prize:

Published March 24, 2024

UNAUTHORIZED VERSION by Julie Steiner

Published April 8, 2024

TOTALITY by Mary Turzillo

 

Published August 17, 2024

RITUAL HAND-WASHING by William Nelson

 

Published August 27, 2024

HEAT DOME FORECAST AS A SCENE FROM A ROMANCE NOVEL by Laura Shovan

Published November 9, 2024

CRISIS AT THE HEDGES by Lisa Seidenberg

 

Published  November 10, 2024

BARK, BITE, BEG, FIGHT, ROLL OVER by Gabriella Brand

THREE CROWS AT DAVID GILMOUR’S LAST CONCERT ON HIS 2024 WORLD TOUR

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Sitting in front of us at David Gilmour’s Sunday night

show at Madison Square Garden, is a family of three—

mother, father, and teenage son. I have never seen hair 

so glossy and black, as if they are enchanted crows that 

will fly out of the stadium once the concert is over and 

the spell is broken. But for now, mother and son look 

like a painting called Madonna and Child, so close they 

are, so intricately bonded. He keeps laying his cheek 

against her shoulder, one dark head against another—

while his father gyrates and headbangs in his seat, fully

immersed in his experience of the incredible music, the 

multicolor lights. There is a tenderness to their boy, an 

innocence, as if he is a beloved only child not yet ready 

to leave the nest or mingle with other kids his age who 

would, by now, have toughened him up or damaged him 

in ways he cannot imagine. His parents will keep him

safe from anything that can cause him harm, or so they 

may believe. But my parents lost their only son when 

he was a few years older. I can still recall my father’s 

stoic façade, my mother’s decades of grief from which 

she could not be saved nor solaced. Meanwhile, David 

Gilmour goes on singing and playing his guitar while 

the boy splays his fine-boned fingers like talons on his 

mother’s arm, and his father belts those haunting lyrics 

like he wrote them—as if his body was never covered in 

feathers, his mouth an open beak crying caw, caw, caw.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Rattle, The SUN, and numerous other publications. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize among many others. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

ODE TO A MAGA FUTURE

by Peter Witt

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

I don't care if 
Ukraine ends up a satellite of Russia
Israel annexes all Palestinian lands
Poland goes the way of Ukraine
NATO goes defunct

as long as egg prices go down.

I don't care if 
all judges are Trump appointees
gay marriage is outlawed
trans individuals are discriminated against
raped women must still have their babies

as long as bread prices go down

I don't care if
rich people get huge tax breaks
oil and gas wells are drilled on pristine national lands
regulations allow polluting rivers and waterways
steps to reduce climate change are abandoned

as long as the cost of a gallon of gas goes down

I don't care if
things I buy that are made in China become more expensive
illegal immigrants are rounded up and sent home
people to harvest the nation's crops become scarce
workers who build housing and infrastructure disappear

as long as Christian nationalism becomes the law of the land

Peter Witt is a Texas poet, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News and other online poetry web-based publications.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

by Phyllis Frakt 

 

Millions out of work, bellies empty.

Penniless war veterans in rags.

Men out on streets sell apples

or wait in line for bread

as the president’s limo sweeps by.

The ins go out, the outs come in.

It’s always the economy.

 

Always, ever, and now

 

Prices ease down, growth up,

while demagogues drone

down is up, up way down.

Voters wait in line to decide.

It’s still the economy.

But which one do they buy—

the real one or the lie?

Phyllis Frakt writes poetry in New Jersey. She has published three poems in Worksheets. Her previous poems in The New Verse News are "Teach to the Test," "Caught in Between," "Not in Our Star...," "Believing is Seeing," and "The Original Truman Show."

HOW DO I, A SOLDIER, DESTROY THEE?

by Lavinia Kumar

            Based on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)”

Surge in Russian drone strikes test Ukrainian defences and devastate families

New wave of mass killings in Sudan alarms UN

 
How do I destroy thee? Let me count the ways.
I kill thee by bombs, and drones from great height—
my mind out of reach, yes, I stay out of sight
for the ends of being in this race
to destroy, to level thee and thine, each day
where there’s no quiet, and only candle-light.
I destroy thee freely, as you strive for what is right.
I destroy thee completely, and I am praised.
I destroy thee with passion and put to use
my grievance, so with my childhood faith
I destroy you, with a will I shall never lose
with my bullets. I destroy thee with each breath,
each gun—with all my might; and if God choose,
I shall destroy thee even after death.


Lavinia Kumar is author of poetry and flash fiction. Her latest book is a reprinting of her short book Beauty. Salon. Art.

DOG HOUSE ODE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

I branded you old and tired, sleepy,

your sex unable to rise. I called you 

fool, idiot, champion of dog and cat 

eaters, and I defeated you in these 

elections; and in January I will 

return to the White House. I have 

achieved exactly what you feared. 

And now your country’s in my doghouse. 

And I am about to sit down to eat.

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil).  He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.