THEY

by Jim Hanson

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

They’re running it, ruining it
off the rails, in the ditch
sell the wreckage, get rich.

Truth killed, collateral causality
lies arise, as reality
deftly made, as cool aide.

Dollar inflated, debt escalated
hyper crypto, value to go
assets bereft, nothing left.

Empire today, for USA
Greenland now, Canada then
Ukraine to lose, Russia to win.

Love incarnate, just for the lust
Epstein teens, Trump playboy queens
sex for pay, with NDA.

Immigrants, detention camps
hit squads, brown shirts worn black
dream children here, sent back.

Justice ignored, polls soared
guilty of crime, no time
impeachment twice made, still stayed.

Troops march, mayors watch
cities, occupied
politics, on wrong side.

Money sought, elections bought
billionaires gave, taxes to waive
offices for sale, free from jail.

Republicans scared, of primary loss
all bow down, to the MAGA boss
funny money, from dark accounts.

Legacy seen, power absolute
pride resolute, for life to be
none than, the presidency.

Jim Hanson is a retired university researcher and sociologist who lives in the St. Louis area. He has published four poetry collections, also some thirty single poems, and is a member of the St. Louis Poetry Center and Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter.

FIRST BOMBLESS DAY

a tanka sequence

by Chen-ou Liu

hometown

once a place of human warmth

and safety

now a pile of stones and dust

where memories crumble

family

once a source of love and help

now whispered names

on trembling lips

with a question, "still alive?"

ruins and ruins ...

under Gaza's smeared sun

childhood memories

scatter like splintered shards

that can’t be fit together

ceasefire deal

once a sunbird singing nonstop

now a mute swan

battling the chilly winds

of hunger and despair

Author’s note: The Palestine sunbird pictured above (Cinnyris osea) is a small passerine bird of the sunbird family, Nectariniidae, and in 2015, the Palestinian Authority adopted the species as a national bird. Native to Eurasia but migrating south for the winter, the mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a rare winter visitor to Palestine.

Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards.

THE BACK ALLEY

by Shirin Jabalameli

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

The Moon

picks up a broom

and sweeps the sky clean of war’s shadows.

My dream carries me

through a back alley,

wearing a coat of dust

and a backpack of unfinished paintings.

The rusty cart on the corner

rattles with the echo of nameless days,

and the wind has tucked

passersby’s whispers

into the pockets of rain.

I, with a hand

that may not even be mine,

stir the silhouettes of missiles

into my coffee.

At the bottom of the cup,

a world exhausted by politics

fills and empties

the bowl of “what now?”

And when nothing ever ends,

only

the shape of staying changes.

---

Shirin's Poem in its Original Persian:

کوچه پشتی

ماه،

جارو را برمی‌دارد

و آسمان را از سایه‌های جنگ می‌روبد.

خوابم، مرا از کوچه‌ی پشتی عبور می‌دهد

با لباسی از غبار

و کوله‌ای از نقاشی‌های نیمه‌کاره.

گاریِ زنگ‌زده‌ی سرِ کوچه

صدای رفت‌و‌آمدِ روزهای بی‌نام را حمل می‌کند،

و باد، بوی پچ‌پچِ عابران را

در جیبِ باران پنهان کرده است.

من، با دستی

که شاید از آنِ من نباشد،

تصویرِ موشک‌ها را در قهوه‌ام هم می‌زنم.

تهِ فنجان،

جهانِ ذله از سیاست

کاسه‌ی "چه کنم" را

پُر و خالی می‌کند.

و آنگاه که

هیچ چیز تمام نمی‌شود،

فقط

شکلِ ماندن‌ها عوض می‌شود.

شیرین جبل عاملی

۲۱ مهر ۱۴۰۴

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, painter, photographer, and writer. She has authored Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, and 101 Moments. Her latest illustrated poetry collection, 25 Fell from the Frame, was recently published. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway (USA), where she was selected as Poet of the Week.

MASS SHOOTING #7

3357 E. Holland Rd, Speedway, Saginaw, MI, Oct 4, 2025

by Ron Riekki

“All random, wasted, and dispersed”

—Theodore Roethke

“Against Disaster”

The clerk inside tells me she can’t make any comments.

I ask why forty people would be gathered outside at 1:30 a.m.

The clerk tells me she can’t make any comments.  I ask

 

how we lessen gun violence in black communities.

 

The clerk says she can’t make any comments.  I ask

if the loitering signs outside are new.  No, she says,

her only comment.  Outside, the simple sound of traffic.

 

Tires on asphalt.  Tires on concrete.  Tires on cement.

 

The clerks never want to make any comments.  Outside,

a girl with purple hair exits the Speedway.  I ask how

we lessen the violence.  She uses her car door as a sort

 

of shield.  “Let’s start talking about it,” she says.

 

She makes comments: “Mental health is a real thing.”

“Everyone is going through something.”  “Yes, it is

hard.”  “Put yourself in their shoes.”  “I have a child

 

to raise.”  She has a 7-year-old daughter.  She works

 

4 jobs.  She’s also a professional wrestler.  A fan of

Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H.  Later, I watch

her win a match online, wearing all purple swimwear,

 

blowing victory kisses to the crowd.  She talks of how

 

kids now need “baseball, basketball,” that sports save

lives, give positive outlets.  Next door’s a bp.  A clerk

inside makes comment after comment.  The shooting

 

didn’t happen where he worked, so he’s an open book.

 

And he seconds everything about sports, telling me

“the kids have nothing to do.”  Wearing a XXL black

t-shirt, “Dee,” his nickname, says “recreation” is key.

 

He says there’s no “swimming pools,” “no budget,”

 

that “the new generation is left with nothing.”  Later,

I find out the shooting was a 32-year-old and a 38-

year-old exchanging gunfire.  Two sisters, also in

 

their 30s, were shot.  The assumption is that these

 

shootings are being done by kids.  I find this out

later, though, can’t ask them what to do if it, really,

is adults shooting at adults.  I ask if it’s dangerous

 

being a clerk.  He says no, that people mostly come

 

in and play the lottery, do scratch-offs.  A woman

comes inside and does just that.  36 different options

for scratch-off tickets, names like STRIKE IT RICH,

 

LIONS, $2,000,000 LUCKY, JUNGLE CASHWORD.

 

Driving home, the billboards keep flashing GRAND

BLANC STRONG with a white lit candle to remember

the 5 killed and 8 injured at the September 28 shooting.

 

I drive to the church, where the shooting happened.

 

There’s a black-and-white sign there saying GRAND

BLANC BETTER TOGETHER.  To my surprise,

the church seems to be untouched, the front doors

 

fixed.  Online, it says the church is “permanently

 

closed.”  The church is lit up with lights.  I park.

I can’t believe how quiet it is.  I sit there, staring

at the nothing.  Between Grand Blanc and Saginaw,

 

both of the mass shootings, is Frankenmuth.  I go

 

there.  To decompress.  I’ve never been.  The town,

I find, is sort of Disney Euro.  Simulacra.  Hyper-

reality.  I get food at a restaurant with chalet-style

 

architecture.  Staff are dressed in lederhosen and

 

alpine hats, Oktoberfest dresses.  The entire time

I eat, a young boy sits at the front to greet guests.

Later, I realize the boy is actually a statue.  Near

 

the bathroom they’re selling strange small signs

 

saying: HUNTING: IF A MAN IS ALONE IN

THE WOODS, WITH NO WOMEN TO HEAR

HIM...IS HE STILL WRONG?  A toilet flushes.

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

PLEASE, AMERICA, DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON ME

by Cecil Morris

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

I remember breaking up with my first real girlfriend, 
the one who surprised me with earthly delights 
and let me touch the promised land, again and again, 
the one who did not push my hands away as if 
they were impertinent puppies, maybe cute 
but mostly annoying. I loved everything about her, 
her hair on my skin, her mouth, her own wild eagerness, 
her eyes turned up to me, the way we enjoyed 
the American River on sun-burnished afternoons, 
even how she dropped the great, immovable river rock 
on my naked heart and made me beg and cry 
and empty myself in stupid, sprawling letters. 
I thought she loved me and then she didn’t love me. 
 
That was almost 50 years ago—1976— 
and this is it again exactly, another love 
rejecting me, lifting her marbled foot and stepping 
on me with all the gorgeous, colonnaded tons 
of her, repulsing my advances, saying keep 
your nasty science off of me and covering 
her liberal titty. Her voice, that smile and kiss 
of democracy, has turned to bray and bawls 
and claims that I misunderstood, that she 
doesn’t even know me. And, again, I am left 
in tears to beg my heart’s case in postcards 
and signs, my own voice now raw with the ache 
of what I thought I had and now have lost. 
Please, America, please. Please come back to me.

 
Author’s note: The epigraph comes from Chris Banks, a line in his long poem “Core Samples of the Late-Capitalist Dream” in Alternator, Nightwood Editions, 2023. I borrowed the “liberal titty” and the imagery and language of the line “Her voice, that smile and kiss / of democracy” from e. e. cumming’s “Thanksgiving (1956)”

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground 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.

2025

by Susan Vespoli

It was the year the garden

wouldn’t grow. Only a few cupped 

palms of sour tomatoes, never red. 

Lettuce leaves limp and bug laden. 

It was the year my ocotillo cracked in half, 

crashed to the ground with a thud. The year 

the U.S. seemed to follow suit. The year of no 

sunflowers in the long rectangular bed stretched 

beneath my office window, (okay, one spindly 

stalk sprouted, then leaned over and croaked), 

the plot where the previous year’s crop had risen 

basketball-player high, a community of petaled 

faces so prolific, neighbors would stroll their babies

past to point and smile. It was the year I bought five

packets of vinca seeds and a big bag of rich mulch,

spread and sprinkled everything over the barren earth, 

and every couple days, through hell-hot summer temps 

and nightly nightmare news, I dragged the hose to the dry

dirt, drenched it until little green arms poked through. 

And the arms grew bodies topped with buds folded

first like origami stars, then unfurled into coral, 

purple, and fuchsia 1960’s-peacenik flower-power 

blossoms that bushed out and flourished like hope.

Flower Power by cressida_carr

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ and believes in the power of poetry to stay sane. Her poems have been published in The New Verse News, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Rattle, and other cool spots.