TheNewVerse.News
Today's News . . . Today's Poem
The New Verse News
presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Guidelines
Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Monday, August 15, 2022
SALMAN
Sunday, August 14, 2022
FIELD OF DREAMS 2022
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The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-2, on Thursday, but that was hardly the point. Major League Baseball had once again found its way to Dyersville, Iowa, for its Field of Dreams game, and a sport that sometimes struggles with its technological future got a reminder of how great the game can be when it is broken down into its simplest form. “It’s really magic,” Cubs catcher Willson Contreras told reporters of the field, which is a short walk from the one used in “Field of Dreams,” the 1989 film starring Kevin Costner. “It has some kind of energy that I think is real.” —The New York Times, August 12, 2022 |
We gather as to a shrine
as to a place where prayer
has been valid, not to kneel
but to play or to observe
a sacred game. Sound of our
own wheels drove us crazy
but the year Matt Carpenter
rose from the dead and flashed
across the great white way like
a comet there was still America.
There were still the boys of summer
men playing a boys’ game dressed
in the holy garments of acolytes, dressed
in gladiatorial splendor, stadiums
full or empty still arrayed about
a plate we still called home.
Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, and Litbreak Magazine.
Saturday, August 13, 2022
IN MEMORY OF ALBERT WOODFOX
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Albert Woodfox, who is thought to have been held in solitary confinement longer than any individual in US history, having survived 43 years in a 6ft x 9ft cell in one of America’s most brutal prisons, has died aged 75. Woodfox’s death was made public on [August 4]… Woodfox was a member of the so-called “Angola Three”—prisoners who were wrongfully convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller, in Louisiana state penitentiary. The prison was built on the site of a former slave plantation and was commonly known as Angola, after the country from which most of the plantation’s enslaved people had been transported. —The Guardian, August 4, 2022. Photo: Albert Woodfox after his release from prison in 2016. —Credit Brian Tarnowski, The New York Times, August 5, 2022 |
Friday, August 12, 2022
TERRITORY
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“El Jefe,” a jaguar last seen in Arizona nearly seven years ago, was spotted in the Mexican state of Sonora last year, researchers confirmed recently, reviving hopes that the species can thwart the border wall that bisects its natural habitat. Above: El Jefe in the Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona on April 30, 2015(AP). Below: El Jefe is seen in the central area of Sonora, Mexico in November 2021(AP). —The Washington Post, August 10, 2022 |
Thursday, August 11, 2022
SOMETHING ABOUT WOLVES IN LOUISVILLE
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
REBOUND
Tuesday, August 09, 2022
TEACH TO THE TEST
EXTENDED MAGS FOR KING GEORGE III
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Source: For the Sake of Arguments |
Monday, August 08, 2022
BULLETS
by Andrena Zawinski
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Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School's 1200 building has been sealed since the massacre on February 14, 2018. On Thursday, jurors in the sentencing phase of the school shooter's trial walked through the undisturbed scene, where the blood of the victims still stains classroom floors. Bullet holes also mark the walls of the Parkland, Florida, school where Nikolas Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members. A lock of dark hair remains on a floor more than four years after the body of a victim was taken away. Valentine's Day gifts and cards are strewn about, as shards of glass crunched beneath of the feet of visitors. These are the unsettling notes from a group of reporters allowed to enter the building after jurors completed their walk-through to provide details to media outlets across the country, including CNN. —CNN, August 5, 2022 |
Sunday, August 07, 2022
HAVE YOU ANY CLUES?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today responded to the murder of another Albuquerque Muslim by a serial shooter who has allegedly been targeting Muslims for nine months by raising its reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible to $10,000. Photo: People spread dirt over Aftab Hussein's grave at Fairview Memorial Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Aug. 5, 2022. (The Albuquerque Journal via AP) |
KANSAS
Saturday, August 06, 2022
WE ARE ALL IN THE GUTTER, BUT SOME OF US ARE LOOKING AT THE STARS OF INFOWARS
Friday, August 05, 2022
ON ART, LINES & EARTH(LINGS)
HINT OF AN ELEGAIC SUMMER VOICE
Some say his dulcet tones
Soothed the raucous hard ballers.
Some say his mellifluous vocals
Quelled the rabid Dodgers horde.
Others say his soothing cache
Of insightful swag saved the day.
The wonderful horde of baseball
Lore and treasure allured us forever
the day he arrived in Brooklyn &
the era he shined in his city of angels.
We shall not hear again his storied
Trove of love for our nation’s game—
Our man with a voice for all seasons.
Earl Wilcox writes from his retirement balcony in upstate South Carolina. A collection of his poems—It Goes On, Life Poems—will be published in 2023.