LOST HIGHWAY

by Steven Kent

It will not be an easy process [to rename streets called after Prince Andrew]. Details on residents’ bank accounts, credit cards, driving licenses, utility bills, property deeds, even pet microchips, will have to change, as will business letterheads and cards. —The Guardian, November 29, 2025

The cost is high to change a roadway's name,

But those which honor Andy (some now claim)

Should be rechristened, each and every mile,

To spare us walking single-pedophile.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

COLOR OF THE YEAR

by Pepper Trail

“A shade of white will be the defining color of the next year.” —The New York Times, December 4, 2025

 

“A lofty white 

whose aerated 

presence acts 

as a whisper 

     of calm 

          and peace 

               in a noisy world.”

 

Let us blank

out all the noise

the alien rhythms

the clashing, chaotic colors

of the needful, striving world

 

The many shades of browns and blacks

(containing all colors, muddled, mongrel)

are too confusing to distinguish

so let them be bleached or thrown away

leaving us uniform, monotone, pure

 

This is our ideal: nothing at all 

no mark upon your page

no disturbance in your minds

the white of the vaporous clouds

of the snow, burying all in stillness

 

Do not call it blindness

it is merely the absence of anything to see

and so this is our choice for the Color of the Year

and the next, and the next, this white

ever more perfect, more perfectly… nothing

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

A RECOLLECTION ON PEARL HARBOR DAY

by Katherine Leonard

It's blotchy the past

the silent man

in his uniforms

 

the child knows his withdrawn presence

but sometimes he would play

with her    for short bursts       when she was very little

 

he lived in a world of diesel and flame

oil and water mixed on the destroyer deck

bomb dropped where he stood 5 minutes before

 

gun turret melted metal and pieces of arm

face blood leg and black smoke

his men faceless except in his memory

 

daily    weekly            yearly the men lay 

submerged in his South Pacific 

they were with him through his submarine assignment

 

in the mouth of the River Kwai          bands of broken brothers

breaks the hearts of the survivors

breaking broken like metal shards 

 

until one day

that fragile plank holding those shiny dress

officer shoes broke

 

And he with that plank and metal splinters

sank too

consumed by the black rolling sea

 

of his mind now in command

of his hand

on the rope

 

Author's Note: Poem for my father, Commander Robert E. Leonard, USN Ret. who served in the South Pacific in WWII at a time when PTSD was unknown and silent men and women were numerous and all rejoiced mightily at the fall of fascism in Germany, in Japan and in Italy.

Katherine Leonard is the author of the chapbook Requiem for the Beekeeper (Bottlecap Press 2024). Her poems have been published in Sonora Review, Querencia Press Anthologies, Hole in the Head Review, Speckled Trout Review, FERAL, Allium and Stone Canoe among other journals and anthologies. She is a graduate of the Syracuse YMCA Writer's Voice (formerly Downtown Writers Center) Pro Program in poetry. She has been a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse/nurse practitioner. Her writing has been deeply influenced by time spent in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado for space and heat and Vermont and Maine for ice and clarity and by living in Washington, DC for lies and redemption. She is married to the woman with fire in her guitar.

LETHALITY

by Nan Meneely

His father taught him how to enclose a spider
so gently in tissues he can carry it live from his room
to a better place outdoors.
 
He grieves when a chipmunk lies mid-road, 
as exquisite as alive, forepaws stretched 
toward the brambly green safety ahead.
 
Knowing he might be too soft, he signs
with the Army to muscle up. But he didn’t bargain
for lethal, a word the recruiters never said.
 
He’s as certain of this as anything:
if he killed those named his enemies—
Venezuelans in fishing boats oceans away,
 
brown men working shop floor or field for minimum wage,
protesters armed with sandwiches shouting truth
to power, Somali immigrants fleeing hate—
 
he would kill the important part of himself,
the part he would fight for in anyone else.

Author's Note: This matter matters to me. My father, a doctor with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII, joined up enthusiastically but came home with a hatred of war and what we now know as PTSD. Eventually he killed himself. So Hegseth's lethality can be lethal in too many ways. 

Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

HUNTING SEASON

by Alessandra Foster

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

It starts around Thanksgiving, 

a feast of treats

focused on the corpse

of a large dead bird 

who's been gutted, re-filled, roasted.

No thanks there.

Meanwhile, fleet-footed deer

frantic and fearful,

run for dear life

across roads, across farms,

through woods,

without their normal caution,

sometimes tricked and tempted, 

stilled long enough to be killed

by a human with a gun.

Or a car with blinding lights.

So much beauty to be grateful for,

so much thriving diverse life to be part of, 

yet we offer up gratitude for the deaths

of fellow creatures who might, like us,

be thankful just to be alive.

 

Soon we segue to Peace on Earth,

greeting card words that aren't for real.

Not while our hearts and minds,

right here, right now, right at home, 

every day, every holiday,

accept violence and killing as normal, 

as celebration,

as having no season.

 

 

Author’s note: There are environments too harsh, and/or humans too poor, to sustain a non-violent diet. They may need to hunt or fish or farm a couple of domestic animals in order to survive. This poem is not for them.

Alessandra Foster - lifelong and long-lived reader and writer of poetry. Forty-three year vegan. Published: The New Verse News, Literary Veganism, Verse-Virtual, Moss Piglet, Rat's Ass Review.

DON’T MAKE ME REPEAT MYSELF

by Karen Greenbaum-Maya

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

I dreamt DT was my high school government teacher. Definitely him. Had the waddle in the walk, wore the oversized blue suit (not in the cool David Byrne way), that weird long tie. He’d lecture us, shout at us, breathe like a dragon, then sit sniveling behind his desk. Feeling sorry for himself, I guess. He’d get all red in the face, jump up and down or stamp his feet, and his combover would flap. It was too scary to be funny. The grades he gave totally depended on how much you sucked up to him. I knew I needed to pass this class to graduate high school so my other three degrees would count. I was afraid of what he might do to me, but one day I just lost it. Shouted back. Shouted even louder. Spoke truth to blowhard. You’re wrong! Just plain wrong! About everything. Everything you do is wrong. The only true thing you ever said was that you’d date your daughter. Everyone decent hates you. You are a bad bad boy. People looked at me like I was crazy, fighting him, but I felt like I could finally get some air.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya, retired psychologist, former German Lit major, and restaurant reviewer, has spent much time on both sides of the doctor-patient relationship. She is widely published. Collections include Burrowing Song, Eggs Satori, and Kafka’s Cat(Kattywompus Press), The Book of Knots and Their Untying (Kelsay Books), and, The Beautiful Leaves and Eve the Inventor (Bamboo Dart Press). She co-curates Fourth Saturdays, a long-running poetry series in Claremont, California.

HEGSETH THE ADOLESCENT

by Sharon Olson

Source: Autodesk Instructables

Senator Mark Kelly: "He runs around on stage talking about 'lethality,' warrior ethos, and 'killing people'... that’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense… And instead he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army." —Yahoo!News, December 2, 2025

Before computer games, we each chose

a sheaf of white paper, scoring it with lines

going this way and that, and assigned letters

and numbers so each square would be, for 

example, B1 or D2, and then we specified 

where our boats hung out, be they cruiser, 

submarine, destroyer, carrier or battleship. 

You only called out one square at a time 

and one hit could not sink a ship. 

There were no sailors on these ships, 

the losses not serious, the arsenal only 

pen marks on a grid. But armed with a 

computer now the tempo rises, especially

when it's the War Department striking

in the Caribbean, no marimba music or 

swaying palms, a techno-hit in a made-up 

war can end the game, but if survivors cling 

to the side, no need to ask mother's permission, 

we double-tap and send them on their way.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian and native Californian who now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

HAIKU FOR TORY MEDLEY

by James Penha

Tory’s death declared

suicide but his hanging

reprises strange fruit

James Penha edits The New Verse News. His latest book is Queer as Folk Tales.

THE LAST JEW IN VINNITSA

 by Roselyn Kubek

Detail showing the murderer now identified as Jackobus Omnen from the photograph known as "The Last Jew in Vinnitsa" Warning: Viewers will find the original photo at the link provided disturbing.

At Last, a Name for the Murderer in a Holocaust Photo. —The New York Times, November 28, 2025

Now he has a name.

Or we have it—

Finally we know what to call the person 

whose ennui pulled a trigger in front of:

     one photographer

     two dozen standing-bored

     so many piled bodies

We learn this murderer 

was once a school teacher

who still teaches though armed 

with a different lesson

      Jackobus Omnen

How pleasant to roll that 

off history’s tongue

to store in the sepia of then

It’s a name full of roundness 

like the anonymous circle 

of witnesses

like the shallow pit where 

a man sits on the edge

perpetually anticipating 

the end

Chin raised

he watches us all

from the bottom 

of a photograph

and waits to become the last.

Roselyn Kubek is a teacher and a New England poet whose work has been featured in a number of publications and venues including, most recently, Mass Poetry’s Hard Work of Hope series and the Maine Poets Epistolary Poetry Exchange. 

HURRAY FOR HAIRY SNAIL HUNTERS

by Jerome Betts

Search is on for the German hairy snail in London:

Conchologists and citizen scientists team up to seek

out endangered mollusc species along River Thames.

—The Guardian,November 24, 2025

  

Hush, hush, chortle who dares,

At people out looking for shells growing hairs!

They’re along by the Thames under pieces of  wood,

Only fingernail-sized, though they may have withstood

A break from old Europe worse than Boris’s Brexit

As Doggerland sank and sea rose to annex it.

So here’s to conchologists, clean-shaven or hirsute,

As they seek tiny molluscs encased in a fur suit!

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online.

THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT

by Constance Stadler

Tall cedars

emanate earthen aromas

with musky incense

cinnamon and mint.

A solitary oud

plucked by

ornamented fingers

sings a sad

uncertain song

to the scarlet dying sun.

The calm opacity

of old Lebanon

burns red

with fire

as dark eyes

Cry

behind silken veils

The olive tree burns black.

Constance Stadler is the author and co-author of eight compilations of poetry and has published more than 200 poems magazines and journals. She was awarded honors in the International Erbacce Prize competition for her collection Sublunary Curse. Constance dates the beginning of her relationship with poetry to early teenage years, when she was given a volume of the Collected Works of Dylan Thomas which still sits, dog-eared, on her bookshelf.

TOM STOPPARD EXIT STAGE LEFT

by Paul Lander

Tom Stoppard is dead.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
await him in the wings.

Paul Lander has worked as a writer and/or producer for shows on ABC, NBC, Showtime, The Disney Channel, ABC Family, VH1, LOGO and Lifetime. In addition, he’s written standup material that’s been performed on ‘Fallon,’ ‘Maher,’ ‘Daily Show,’ etc. His humor pieces have been accepted at American Bystander, Light: Poetry, Weekly Humorist, McSweeney‘s, and Humor Times. He has won awards from the National Soc. of Newspaper Columnists, London’s Blogger's Bash and Univ. of Dayton’s Bombeck Workshop.

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE CEASEFIRE

by Bonnie Naradzay

More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in   their intent, said Amnesty International today [November 27, 2025].

after Ilya Kaminsky

We were so satisfied with our stuffing recipes

and so when they bombed tent encampments

blocked entry for prosthetic limbs

for child amputees

blocked machinery for uncovering corpses

from the rubble

blocked doctors who’d earlier been given

“permission” to enter Gaza

 we (forgive us)

looked the other way again

as Israel violated the Cease Fire

over and over again with the slaughter of hundreds more,

atrocities committed with impunity

how easily we looked the other way

as Israel asked us for billions more in aid today

from our house of money

we (forgive us) lived happily during the Cease Fire.

Bonnie Naradzay has been leading weekly poetry sessions for homeless people at Street Sense and at Miriam’s Kitchen and also at a retirement community, all in Washington, DC.  While at Harvard University in the late 1960s, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize–-a month’s stay in Northern Italy–-in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. A 2017 graduate of the St John’s College (Annapolis) Graduate Institute, her book of poems Invited to the Feast was published by Slant Books in October 2025; three of the poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.