SHORT DIVISION

by Diana Morley

Must cut says the prez-elect

in one of his cozy countless buildings

 

slipping in partners in crime

all the slime that’s fit to fill the void

the bigger the fire the better, he says,

to raise foes’ arm hair along with their hackles

to bring the thrill of campfire tales

all love to chill by, hoping they’re not real.

The public mass, like plants and wildlife,

work daily, yearly, season by season

knowing dawn’s the time to rise 

for the sun to warm, to turn us all toward others—

by nightfall there’s still the rent to pay

and a plugged-in quilt at bedtime

a kitchen cold as an unplayed banjo.

Diana Morley publishes poetry online and in journals. She published Spreading Like Water (2019), a chapbook; Splashing (2020), a poetry collection; and Oregon’s Almeda Fire: From loss to renewal (2021), a documentary of photos and poems.

A BANANA, A WANNABE OLIGARCH, AND A CONCEPT WALK INTO A BAR

by Tom Lagasse

A Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur has followed through on his promise to eat the banana from a $6.2m (£4.9m) artwork he bought last week. Justin Sun outbid six others to claim Maurizio Cattelan's infamous 2019 work Comedian - a banana duct-taped to a wall - at Sotheby's auction house in New York. He ate the fruit during a news conference in Hong Kong where he used the moment to draw parallels between the artwork and cryptocurrency. The banana is regularly replaced before exhibitions, with Mr Sun buying the right to display the installation along with a guide on how to replace the fruit. —BBC, November 29, 2024

The banana would have eventually rotted
like all organic things do.  He untaped it, 
unpeeled it and ate it because he owned it.  
Of course, the banana and tape were symbols 
for the concept behind the work of art, 
the way crypto is a concept for money.  
He could have stopped on his way to the auction 
and purchased one at the bodega for half a dollar 
and not six point two mil. With the excess, 
he could have fed a school district or a senior 
center.  He probably could have purchased 
a banana plantation and eaten one every day 
for life. It was never about hunger, the way
a cigar is not always a cigar. The idea was bought 
on behalf of capitalism, its ravenous appetite 
for eating everything in its path and repackaging it, 
before selling it to a hungry public and convincing them 
there is no climate crisis; Ukraine caused its own 
invasion; or the insurrection never was an attempt 
to overthrow democracy. It is no joke   
an oligarch in-waiting ate the banana from “Comedian.” 
For the wealthy, the hoi polloi is always the butt   
of the joke. The laughter comes at our expense. 

Tom Lagasse’s poetry has appeared in Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, The Silver Birch Press poetry series, Freshwater Literary Journal, The Eunoia Review, and in numerous anthologies. He was a 2024 Artist in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood. He lives in Bristol, CT. 

GIRLY BOY

by Jean Voneman Mikhail 

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

My little boy blue, 

as a child you wore 

girl-pink, not the browns 

of circus bears and puppies. 

Not the beiges of office walls. 

Who cares about colors now?

Wear what you like. 

As a girl child, my boy snakes hung 

down in braids past my fingertips.

They had a sweaty life all their own. 

They flicked ribbon tongues at me,

struck me on the back when I ran 

away, so I cut them off one day.

I stored them in a box of magic tricks,

decorated the lid with sequins, 

like moon disks sparkling in the light.

Who would see them in a dark closet? 

I eventually got my girl groove back. 

I liked the boys, their hawk heads, 

hooded. They blinked in astonishment

that I had actually caught up to them.

Eventually, I grew my braids back,

gave up the girl I used to love. 

I opened my legs to the bedposts. 

I had you on my favorite night of all.

You were born blue and little. 

I think of you now as a girly boy. 

A ghost of a boy-girl in a mirror.

Don’t rub off your eyeshadows

with the back of your hand,  

with your desert skin, so dry and soft. 

Your eyes are the valleys you’ve left 

behind in the rearview mirror, 

where the hills float away. 

The morning moves you, 

slides a mountain aside, as you 

drive through, around the twists 

and turns of your desires. 

The mountains widen, deepen 

their despair then disappear, 

the further into this self-love thing you go. 

Jean Voneman Mikhail has published in One Art: a Journal of Poetry, Sheila Na Gig Online, The New Verse News, The Northern Appalachian Review, and other journals and anthologies. She was recently nominated for “best of the net” by Eucalyptus Lit. 

WE LOVE GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE

by Cecil Morris

Supreme Court seems ready to uphold ban on gender-affirming care for minors. —NPR, December 4, 2024

Here’s gender-affirming care in my hometown: 

We give our boys some guns—long guns like ARs 
and shotguns and semi-auto handguns—
which, at first, are really just pointer fingers
and sticks and trigger-controlled hose nozzles
and, really, anything vaguely phallic.

We give our girls baby dolls and plush toys
and encourage them to hug and comfort,
to placate and coo, and, later, aprons
and play kitchens with miniature pots and pans.

We give our boys hammers and nails (of course)
and drills and fucking big four-wheel drive trucks
and dump trucks and fire trucks with screaming sirens
and teach them privilege and damage control
and the righteousness of conquest and noise.

We give our girls sixty watts of light and need
and teach them the virtues of silence and grace
and a thousand and one ways to cook a chicken,
to make repairs, and to turn tears on and off.

We teach them all manifest destiny.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) will come out in 2025.  He and his partner, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CYNICISM

by Michael Mark

The doctor looks at the x-ray 

of my little toe and notices

a dip in his 

Money Market fund. 

 

He recommends surgery.

 

The authorization request 

is forwarded to the insurance 

company examiner who'd

been warned by management 

about being too liberal with 

approvals.

 

She reviews the doctor’s 

diagnosis, carefully 

considering her job security.

 

After reading the denial

my wife

asks why we pay so much

for insurance if we can’t

use it.

 

And why doctors go

to medical school to get 

all the knowledge 

when the insurance 

companies

have all the power.

 

And why do I 

go around without shoes 

all the time

because that’s what caused

the bump on my toe?

 

I go for a ride to blow off

steam and my car breaks down.

 

Bending over the engine, 

the mechanic 

glances at my expensive shoes

and I say,

Yeah, I know, this is going to be a big job.

Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, awarded the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Prize. Poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, The Sun, The Best New Poets 2024.

ON THE DEATH OF A CEO

by Lori D’Angelo

We don't trade one life for another or

a thousand. With every loss, the universe

cries out and also keeps on. Nothing, not 

yet, stops it. So, yes, whether your mother

just found out she has cancer or your father

has just entered hospice, the clock still tick

tocks, minutes go by. Every year, around this

time, we watch Dickens' A Christmas Carol

and think, Ah yes, even a miser had a soul. 

But yet when a man whose company did 

some shitty shady things dies, don't join in

the chorus of he deserved it haters. It's not 

much different to do that than it is to weigh

worth by a claim denied algorithm. If you say

all of them, mean all of them, even the maybe 

he deserved it bastards. In earth, their bones, 

our bones, all rot the same. The minute you 

forget, you become what you thought you’d

never be: callous, jaded, alive but also dead. 

Instead,                                      mourn it all. 

Lori D'Angelo is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, and an alumna of the Community of Writers. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including BULL, Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Moon City Review, and Rejection Letters. Her first book, a collection called The Monsters Are Here, was recently published by ELJ Editions. 

ALGORITHM

by Elaine Sorrentino

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

I’m no statistician
but I wonder if UnitedHealth factored in

the percentage of declined subscribers
who would rejoice over deadly revenge

when calculating risk for the most vulnerable─
a system predisposed to dollars over lives,

one with a ninety percent error rate;
what ailing patient is up for that legal battle?

I question where my claim would land
in the roulette wheel of computations;

having dipped into this well twice,
would my ball stop in the red DENIED pocket?

Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Haiku Universe,The New Verse News, Sparks of Calliope, Gyroscope Review, Quartet Journal, The Raven’s Perch,and Panoplyzine. She hosts the Duxbury Poetry Circle, was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. Her first collection of poetry, called Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit is in production at Kelsay Books.

THE JOB INTERVIEW

by William Aarnes

AI graphic by NightCafe for The New Verse News

Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test. —The New York Times, December 7, 2024

The dinner was ample, pretty good,

the service obviously obsequious.

I had the third-best seat in the room,

at his table, just to his left, Musk on his right,

Melania nowhere in sight. He kept telling me

I was ideal for the office he had in mind.

I kept saying I’d do whatever he’d want.

How often did I repeat, “Just say the word”?

I heard myself echoing, “Got to innovate... got to disrupt...

got to get the government out of everybody’s way.”

Kind of glad I told that joke about my wife.

He didn’t laugh but showed his teeth.

I was all deference, nodding my head,

mumbling, “It would be an honor,”  

as he listed the scores I’d help him settle,

all the haters I’d help him put in jail.

He was pleased with himself, telling me again

I was the top guy for getting the government  

out of everybody’s way. Before turning back to Musk,

he said he was sure that I’d enjoy dessert.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

DRONE SIGHTINGS REPORTED OVER NEW JERSEY

by Michael T. Young

They arrive as it gets dark and hover there
looming through night, leaving by morning. 
No one can explain them, not even those 
in official suits talking to the cameras. 
And for days before they were noticed
people dreamed of large bees pollinating
their minds like open flowers. But the memory 
of those wonderlands wilted in the mystery
that consumes their sleep. Now they spend 
their nights watching and listening,
the drone of their suspicions growing
larger than all the wishes on all the stars 
that they no longer wish on or even 
take notice of. It’s all about the drones
and why they’re hovering. Although, 
the exhaustion and fear is not
because their faults will be discovered, 
that we’re being watched—we already know 
there’s no place that does not see us, 
though Rilke never imagined it so literally 
as we do: cameras buried in Apollo’s hip, 
relaying messages about what we mortals 
are up to. No, we know we’re being watched
and by nothing numinous, but just people 
as flawed as we are, and just as mistaken as us 
that there are things we can keep to ourselves.

Michael T. Young’s fourth collection, Mountain Climbing a River, will be published by Broadstone Media in late 2025. His third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including I-70, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Rattle, and Vox Populi.

MELTING OF ARCTIC SEA ICE

by Ron Shapiro

    a

A polar bear stands on floating sea ice in the Arctic. The bears rely on sea ice to move throughout their hunting grounds. (Image credit: SeppFriedhuber via Getty Images via Live Science.)

'Ominous milestone for the planet': Arctic Ocean's 1st ice-free day could be just 3 years away, alarming study finds —Live Science, December 4, 2024

Another warning,

Red flags up in the scientific

Community, sea ice melting

Faster than an ice cube on

An Arizona day. Polar bears

Shifting their weight on legs

The size of tree trunks while

Balancing on the moving chunks

Of frozen water over a million

Years old. With each piece

Of ice shrinking over time,

How will the polar bear find

Food if he can’t travel far

From his glacier home?

 

Meanwhile, land torn up,

Only a commodity in a world

Based on capitalism. Imbalance

Between humanity and the earth

Causes the dis/ease of fear, anxiety

And consumerism. What comes

From the ground is a commodity,

Something to sell, to buy, to use up.

 

The air warms the melting masses

But so far away from here, how can

Anyone care about this? No plans

For the future. Carpe Diem without

The seizing. Brain rot eats away at

Sanity and intention. Useless images

And misinformation to distract, to

Entertain, to confuse. Abstract words

Populate the language resulting in

Generalization, stereotypes, prejudice,

Bias, and ignorance. Not enough time

To think. Only to react. Tik Tok goes

The Earth’s clock. The air polluted,

The breath compromised, the ice melting,

Polar bears weeping in a cold puddle

Of water swishing at their feet.

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, currently mentors college essay writing as well as teaches Memoir Writing through George Mason University. He has published writings in Nova Bards 23 & 24, Gatherings, Poets of the Promise, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine and two chapbooks: Sacred Spaces and Wonderings. He lives with his wife and Shanti the Cat in Reston, Virginia.