SCALES OF JUSTICE IN THE COURT OF LAST RESORT

by Rick Pongratz

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

Let’s say there’s no judge,
it's just us, you and me,
and all of our peers, 
deliberating, pontificating, confabulating. 

Awaiting our verdict,
segregated in the balcony, sit
two made motherless in Minnesota 
next to two made fatherless in Utah,
and our children, with all of their peers.

Opposing solicitors dance before us, 
profiteers play up our fears, 
until we are hung—and together, 
pile more dead upon the plates,
to lie with all of our peers.

The left and right arms of our scales
tilt and totter with each fresh body,
the chains grown too taut, 
not made for the weight of revenge.

Rick Pongratz is an emerging poet. His poetry has appeared in Rattle and is forthcoming in Frogpond. Rick works as a mental health clinician and currently studies creative writing at Idaho State University.

SPECIAL SECRET

by g emil reutter

Posted by Mark Hamill at Bluesky

Whack-a-Mole

Jeff is still there

Throw everything against the wall

It doesn’t stick

Jeff is still there

Hammer and miss

Hammer and miss

Jeff is still there

Make crap up

Attack attack attack

Whack whack whack

Jeff is still there

What lurks in shadows

Of special secrets

Reality is creeping up

As these two creeped

Young girls.

The last one standing

Shall fall hard

And no matter how

He may try heaven is

Not calling

Virgil awaiting his arrival

g emil reutter is a writer of stories and poems. His latest release is Distance to Infinity, an anti-authoritarian poetry chapbook.

LAMENT FOR THE TIMES

by Ann Grogan

after George Eliot, “The Choir Invisible” and William Henry Channing, “My Symphony”

Primitives by Kathy

George Eliot prayed that she reach
the purest heaven;
be the cup of strength to those in agony.
I cannot seem to save myself.

I pray only to survive while
grasping at the crumbling edges 
of a giant hole into which I fall.
I cannot seem to save myself.

I try to smile, try to join in,
feed pure love, ignore the vile,
turn the world back to being kind.
I cannot seem to find the time.

What sweet luxury Channing had,
to advise we “bear all cheerfully… 
await occasions, hurry never.”
I cannot seem to find the time.

I don’t want to live in a world
where immigrants are not respected
or given dignity. 
And yet it seems I do.

I don’t want to live in a world
where women bleed out in cars because
craven doctors betray oaths to care for us.
And yet it seems I do.

Better Buddhist than bleary-eyed,
refusing the light that drives me on
to cry for help as we drown.
I cannot seem to find the light.

I try the common, I try the quiet,
I try to listen then to sing,
but stars refuse to shine on me.
I cannot seem to find the light.

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, retired lawyer, and emerging poet who lives in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age. Her poems have appeared in Little Old Lady, The Prairie Review, Querencia, the University of Vermont’s Continuing Education Newsletter, and on KAWL Public Media “Bay Poets”, and is forthcoming in Amethyst Review. She’s the author of two volumes of poetry, Poetic Musings on Pianos, Music & Life. Her music and poetry website is rhapsodydmb.com.

MATH CLASS MADE ME NERVOUS

by Nancy Byrne Iannucci

                                                for Mr. Gigliotti

except for one, 
eleventh grade, Sequential III,
with Mr. G.
 
He looked like Steven Spielberg 
with a pocket protector and chalk in hand,
a math cult leader who converted
the most atheist of math students
into a devout follower. 
 
It all made sense in his class:
Life and its angled connectivity.
It was like having a near-death experience
for fifty minutes each day.
 
He revealed math’s sacred secrets
in ways only a child could comprehend.
He took away what I hated most:
The stifled, confined view of numbers
and showed me what it was:
 a universal balance of unity and truth. 
 
Thirty-five years later,
in a world that seems like there’s no sequence at all,
we walked and slept through 9/16/25,*
the day Pythagoras was Superman,
hauling the globe back to harmony.
 
At the very least, 
I thought of Mr. G,
and how he taught me to see.

* First, "all three of the entries in that date are perfect squares—and what I mean by that is 9 is equal to 32, 16 is equal to 42, and 25 is equal to 52," says Colin Adams, a mathematician at Williams College who was first tipped off about today's special qualities during a meeting with his former student, Jake Malarkey.

  Next, those perfect squares come from consecutive numbers—three, four, and five.

  But perhaps most special of all is that three, four, and five are an example of what's called a Pythagorean triple.

  "And what that means," explains Adams, "is that if I take the sum of the squares of the first two numbers, 32 + 42, which is 9 + 16… is equal to 25, which is 52, so 32 + 42 = 52."

  This is the Pythagorean Theorem: a2 + b2 = c2. "And that in fact is the most famous theorem in all of mathematics," says Adams.  —NPR, September 16, 2025

 

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a librarian and poet who resides in Troy, NY, 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

ROBERT, NO LONGER (AM I YOUNG)

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

 

If we are refused the right to mourn

the death by fire of children in Denver

then the words of Dylan Thomas

have perhaps become equivalent to those 

of Redford’s opponent in The Candidate

 

Crocker Jarmon who bore the farm away 

with owls afloat on half wings, their beaks 

marked for taxidermies at the hands of one 

who holds their lease in a poem of a different 

name.

 

Robert, no longer am I young.

You are not bringing dignity to the undignified

character of Roy Hobbes any longer, a figment

whose greatest sin was his appetite, especially when

it came to the manager’s niece who knew beauty 

might've wanted love 

 

Redford, you could play the occasional villain

but never scum. And in your absence I wonder

if Hobbes returns to form, to the point Malamud

makes about appetites that can’t be contained

 

By outfield fences. Or the imaginations of fine

young fans. They don’t come to see you anymore

because the game, which was always partly

of the mind, dwells today in a tiny room with poor 

lighting

 

And no natural grass. Robert, I am young no longer

because the way you made Bob Woodward a warrior 

of pen on paper is impossible when so many never learn 

to write. A confession isn’t a memoir and yet we can’t escape

the text. The text is all; not even the body can tell foot from hand

without a nib.

 

But you fought for the eagle, wild rivers, expanses of mingling

bodies. Perhaps a new generation of actors will find their agency

in florid rock, beyond the tract of human mouths, who use the tongue

as a latch to withdraw monologues into long sequences of silence.

Where physical grace

 

Which you had in abundance

 

Returns talkies to their shelves. At least for awhile. 

Time enough to hear the condor, a once great Colorado 

move alpine melt waters past sumps in cabbage deserts

end this beanfield war with gestures worthy of a grand mime. 

Marcel Marceau for our riparian rights 

 

Jeremiah Johnson for the defense. 

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. His latest book is Captain's Kismet (Alien Buddha, 2025).

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

by Phyllis Frakt

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

Let’s call them all Department of War.

I love the power in that name.

It shows what America is truly for.

 

At DOJ, HUD, State, or Labor,

offensive goals are all the same.

Let’s call them all Department of War.

 

Power, dominance, mayhem, gore

to injure, disable, cripple, maim.

That’s what each department is for.

 

Commerce, Agriculture, Interior—

old labels are so woke, so lame.

Let’s call them all Department of War.

 

A Nobel for me (if not more)

when they see aggression is my game

and what America is truly for. 

 

Defense was War in the Great Before.

Let’s Make America Great Again!

Call them all Department of War

and show the World what we’re for.

Phyllis Frakt writes poetry in New Jersey. The New Verse News previously published seven of her poems.

DEAR JUDY

a duplex poem

by Trish Hopkinson

Today, a successful assassination

happened near where you last lived.

     In Utah, where I once lived with you

     a right-wing activist was shot dead.

In Evergreen, a school shooter was shot dead

on the same Wednesday in Colorado.

     It’s Wednesday in Utah and Colorado

     where I now live, 200 miles from the dead

no longer living: two men, shot dead,

two schoolchildren fatally wounded.

     This year, four kids dead, thirty-five wounded.

     They were not soldiers; they were students.

Murder on campus, witnessed by students,

no ear grazed: successful assassination.

Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines and journals; and her most recent book A Godless Ascends was published by Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.

THE ART OF WHAT’S LEFT

by Matthew Murrey

 

Banksy confirmed he was responsible for the work with a post on Instagram, showing the graffiti before it was covered over. It has been interpreted by some as a comment on the arrest of hundreds of people for supporting Palestine Action by holding up placards at protests. Palestine Action was banned by the government as a terrorist group in July after activists damaged RAF planes. --BBC, September 10, 2025

What was just one raging judge 

bludgeoning one poor bloke 
lying helpless on his back 
has now been scrubbed 
into anyone, anywhere where 
faceless power hammers 
the harmless: families asleep 
in wrecked schools and sad tents, 
thousands on foot, on donkey carts, 
and in cars fleeing their flattened 
neighborhoods, starving hundreds 
shot while crowding for food, 
the badly wounded and bleeding
on their backs begging for mercy.
A gray afterimage of the mural 
remains on the courthouse wall 
like a blast shadow in Hiroshima, 
like a black-gray pall of smoke 
above human beings being burned, 
like some relentless nightmare ghost 
that ought to haunt us night and day.

Matthew Murrey is the author of Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collection, Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026). Recent poems are in Dissident Voice, Escape Into Life, Tiny Wren Lit, and elsewhere. He was a public school librarian for more than 20 years and lives in Urbana, IL with his partner. He can be found on Bluesky and Instagram under the handle @mytwords.

NO MERCY

by Steven Kent

“Groyper” meme, the namesake of the group.

Nick Fuentes has denied speculation circulating on social media his followers, known as “Groypers,” were responsible for conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death, after messages on unfired casings written by Kirk’s alleged shooter Tyler Robinson appeared to be linked to the far-right movement. —Forbes, February 13, 2025

A revolution always eats its young,

Devouring true believers in its urge

To prove itself more faithful to the cause.

With cries of heresy on every tongue,

There has to come a fateful final purge,

And then the end. Same as it ever was.

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, The 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.

WE GET TO CHOOSE

by Cecil Morris

Art by Luis Ricardo

Many people, of course, feel America is broken. You can hear about the country’s many troubles—its ideological divides, its anger, its lack of civility—from conservatives and liberals, from socialist firebrands and evangelical preachers, from Democrats and Republicans. It is, perhaps, one of the few beliefs that unites Americans right now. So many seem to genuinely want those divides to be mended, for the country to be knitted back together. But the question of why America is broken, and who is to blame, and how to repair it? That’s where things get complicated. —Tim Sullivan, AP, September 13, 2025

In the choose-your-own-adventure America, 
you get to choose which expert to believe, 
which news source delivers the truth to eyes and ears, 
which problem needs solution and which solution 
you like best and think will work and ought, therefore, 
be funded beyond your wildest ability 
to count the cents one by one in your little life. 
So close your eyes and jump to page 47, 
the just say no, the walls and cages, the answer 
that puts ever more troops and officers and masks 
on your streets, the security of surveillance, 
of armed patrols—here, there, and everywhere. Or jump 
to page 76 and guns for everyone 
and self-defense in every hand and every home. 
Or turn to page 2021: the moment 
we decide which police we must obey 
and which we must overrun to guarantee our rights. 
Or, maybe, see what happens when we choose that page 
where we realize that schools and social services 
are less expensive than prisons or where we build 
villages of tiny homes for our veterans 
unhoused and struggling instead of casting them, 
so much chaff, to streets and parks, to make-shift tents, 
where they like dandelions can sprout in the cracks. 
Which America will we choose for our families?

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) came out in 2025.  He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.