BULLETS

by Andrena Zawinski

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

Bullets, 

their brassy caps 

glinting golden in the dark

ammo tray tucked under

a student study desk,

more bullets in a bandolier 

crisscrossing the chest, bullets

maneuvered across a screen

in slugs of anger and angst 

in bullet launchers, landmines 

of bullets, bullets of the slain 

in a shooting game.

Bullets,

their powder packed cartridges

of panic and fear, hollow points 

shattering identities, blasts 

sounding in sleep, bullets 

of grief from a spray hate. 

Bullets 

that silence at windows, on lawns, 

on street corners, in schoolrooms, 

supermarkets, factories, churches, 

all turned altars of flowers,

candles, placards, and prayers, 

while bullets 

fill bank accounts

of makers and regulators

dodging bullets whistling by,

shells jingling in pockets 

like loose change spent 

in puddles of blood.

Bullets, 

their full metal jackets 

dug from the corpse 

with its legacy of wounds, 

bullets that pierced the flesh, 

shattered the bone, riddled 

the heart and all the wild in it,

depositing dreams

to urns and coffins

buried in holes in the dirt,

screams smothered, 

breaths sealed.

Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. It has appeared in Artemis, Blue Collar Review, Progressive Magazine, Aeolian Harp, Rattle, Verse Daily, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. Her latest collection is Landings. She has two previous award winning books: Something About and Traveling in Reflected Light and a fourth collection, Born Under the Influence, forthcoming in 2022.

HAVE YOU ANY CLUES?

by Indran Amirthanayagam

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)

Four Muslim men in New Mexico—a grocer,

a busser, a city planner, and Friday night 

another, a worker in a refugee center—

 

have been shot dead, three over the last

week, serial killer roaming, targeting 

brown people who worship Allah, 

 

the news not breaking yet in all 

the feeds of the nation but spilling 

digitally here; and I am asking you 

 

to report suspicious behavior where 

you live. Be your brother's and sister's 

keeper, your brown and Muslim 

 

brother’s,  your brown and Muslim 

sister’s. Take care of your back,

their backs. Work with the police. 

 

Provide any leads. Find 

the killer. It takes a village. 

It takes a country.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

KANSAS

by Donna Katzin

In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise

we see it coming—a blood-red wave  

that threatens to drown us

and our rights.

 

As pundits puzzle

and suited strategists opine,            

we step out from porches, campuses, back alleys,

leave our coat hangers in our closets,

 

rags and basins in our kitchens,

knock on doors of neighbors

who have yet to come out

of the house.                 

 

A horse parade prances by

with signs, “vote neigh,”

posters of a uterus

in a cowboy hat.

 

Texts like urgent birds,

words whispered, then spoken,

fly by in flocks unfettered

as our voices and our votes.

 

Our minds, our bodies                                                  

are our own—

will not be captured

any more than the wind.       

  

 

Author’s Note: On August 2, Kansas women and their supporters mobilized voters across the state to beat back a proposed amendment that would have allowed the state legislators to restrict or ban the abortion rights affirmed in the state’s constitution.  With an historic primary turn-out of half the state’s registered voters, the 59 to 41 percent victory at the polls built on decades of activism to protect women’s right to make their own decisions about their own bodies and health.  In the process, it set an important precedent for the nation following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Donna Katzin is the former and founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

WE ARE ALL IN THE GUTTER, BUT SOME OF US ARE LOOKING AT THE STARS OF INFOWARS

by Julie Steiner

Sandy Hook parents' lawyer says Alex Jones' phone leak contains 'intimate messages with Roger Stone' —Business Insider, August 5, 2022

Though “intimate” (you naughty thing)

need not mean "prurient,"

that word makes certain thoughts take wing

along a vulgar bent.

Your conscience frowns and shakes her head.

Although she’s tsked and clucked,

you hope these bad boys’ texts, when read,

show both completely fucked.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

ON ART, LINES & EARTH(LINGS)

by Jen Schneider

in honor of James Longenbach (1959-2022)

“Hold the line, please,” the hospital operator says

and all i can think

/ while waiting, wondering, worrying

—mostly wanting

is this must be how poems get made

Longenbach teaches poetry as the sound 

of language (organized in lines)

while physicists teach sound as a type of pressure 

/ a wave & not physical matter 

& that non-physical matter can’t be held  

—but consumed / like a sunburn, a shooting star,

a child’s cry, a first kiss 

/ two people at the end of a dock

/ a gust of wind (of a sea) 

            i inhale / then try

            to hold the line

cup my palm / & imagine

            coiled elastic compressions

            

            pressure creases 

            shadow / then settle

i pull / the line pushes

            all springs (& senses) engaged

Longenbach writes on a poem’s life & death

in concerted arrangements of syllables / patterns 

broken or reinforced

/ line, meter, & rhyme all tools of construction 

/ danglers & run-ons distanced / some say decried

            

            i cry—unexpectedly / 

            poetry is like that / “the sound 

of language organized / in the line”

 

with punctuated breath & cupped palms, 

i consume syllabic beats 

for what feels like forever knowing forever 

is neither a state of physical matter nor finite

/ despite earthling’s desires / all spiral cords 

(& choruses) prone to tangle. all moons cyclical

 

The operator returns & says, “I’m sorry.

We can’t locate the clerk,” at the same time

an overhead speaker buzzes / sound waves press

i hear, “We can’t locate the lyric.”

—& hang up, wishing to continue to hold the line

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

HINT OF AN ELEGAIC SUMMER VOICE

by Earl J. Wilcox

for Vin Scully (1927-2022)

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.

THE FIRST RULE OF COMEDY

by Thomas J. Erickson

Monkeys are always funny.

 

Remember when Sergeant Bilko inducted the little scene stealer into the Army

or when Ronnie Reagan put Bonzo to bed?

Lance Link Secret Chimp did a helluva Ed Sullivan imitation.

 

We all have Neanderthal DNA. Someone must have shtupped a Neanderthal

on a dare or maybe it was some type of prehistoric performance art

or the drunken jerk did it for laughs apparently before there were any

rules of comedy.

 

Should we get another dog after Edie dies, my wife asks.

Yes, let’s get two. 

One for me and one for you.

Yours can have the booties and the rain coat.

 

How do we know when something is over?

Why are we so slow to realize the death

of a plant or a season or a library

or a democracy?

 

Even so, Senator Hawley’s mad dash through the hall broke me up

which reminded me of the second rule of comedy: 

Always leave them laughing.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His latest book is Cutting the Dusk in Half by Bent Paddle Press.

EARTHLINGS

by Peter Witt

If earth was my father, he’d sit me down

for the talk, about how the birds and bees

are under threat, how humankind has polluted

its nest, and how our actions may doom us

to the inevitably of a rage of forest fires,

hurricanes, tornadoes and other

devastating weather events.

 

If earth was my mother, she’d send me

to my room, cut off my social media

for a month, make me eat green vegetables

and fresh fruit instead of junk food

that comes in non-degradable packaging.

 

If earth was my mentor, he’d tutor me in ways

to live a life that respects the planet, take on

advocacy roles that can reverse the holocaust

of degradation that human greed has wrought.

 

If earth was my lover, she’d touch me in ways

that reach deep in my being, hold me close,

look into my eyes and beg me to love

her forever for the sake of every rock, ocean,

mountain, turtle, rabbit, snake, and ladybug.

Peter Witt is a Texas poet, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News and other online poetry web-based publications.

A STRENGTH & BEAUTY RARE

by Dick Altman

Flying jewels I thought they were

as a child.  To entice one onto

a finger, to bring it up to the nose,

as the black-bordered tangerine

wings slowly opened and closed—

could a little boy be any more

smitten?

                        *

Thirty-five years later, on a lake

in upstate New York, I rediscover

Monarchs—beguiling not of fragile

sweetness, but ferocity almost beyond

the syntax of belief.  I’m transfixed

at how they tilt against late summer’s

gusting head winds.  As if they had

no choice.  As if wings were oars—

as if boats launched from shore

into raging tidal seas—as they press

forward, only to be repulsed—again

and again.  As they fight, tirelessly,

to stay aloft above the aqueous grave

awaiting any that falter.  Fight as if

drowning in air, frantic to surface

in northern Mexico’s Mil Cumbres hills. 

Frantic to give birth, after voyaging

twenty-five hundred hectoring miles,

until they all but drop.

                        *

The vision of embattled, desperate

fleets returns, when I drive into

the Cumbres, dumbstruck by forests

black and orange, pulsing, folding,

unfolding, eager after winter to create

a new generation. One destined

to traverse, like their forbears, lake’s

grueling flyways north to Canada.

                          *

I pee as a kid on a log bordering

our cabin’s path to the water.  What

of my essences lures Monarchs

to the spot in droves, I’ll never know. 

Part of me evolves into part of them.

An entwining of winged and bipedal,

one bound to earth, the other to air—

a lifetime ago, and I behold it yet

with a child’s wonder un-frayed.

                            *      

Days of Monarchs’ madness pass.

The lake’s autumnal transit

a fragment of memory.  Gales black

and orange out-fought, out-flew

the winds.  When Milkweed,

their caterpillars’ favorite food,

their only food, succumbs to man’s

punishment of earth, winged courage

proves no match.  But when

imagination wanders back to those

bejeweled days on the water, I conjure

soaring, gliding gems of fortitude. 

Pray for the day skies confetti again

with their dancing fury. Odysseus

takes twenty years to sail home.

Monarchs, but a few months.

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where,at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

A MONARCH BUTTERFLY POSES SOME QUESTIONS

by Mary K O'Melveny

Do you remember the noise of my wings?

A lace veil as it flirts with a summer breeze.

A blade of grass as it shakes off morning dew.

 

In Mexico, a million of us sound like waterfalls.

At rest, we cling to tree limbs like gold, onyx,

ivory jewelry that has been hidden from thieves.

 

We fly high above sleeping migrants everywhere,

whose hopes pirouette in zephyrs and exospheres

as they dream of flight patterns to safety.

 

Do you recall the first time you saw one of us?

How you were awed by our delicate wings, how

we landed like a first kiss on a purple cone flower? 

 

How you imagined what it would be like to float,

unfettered, without apology? Without accountability?

How it takes so little to ignite imagination’s fiery call.

 

Our journeys from your garden to jungle sanctuaries

span generations. Some days the ground is littered

with bodies that resemble coins from Spanish galleons.

 

I have been airborne for 2,500 miles. I have traversed

obstacles my ancestors never knew: poisoned fields,

droughts, drones and planes, wildfires, clearcut forests.

 

Still, think of that moment of lift, when air currents

lick your skin as a lover might. Always optimists,

we remain your ardent guides to Elysian Fields.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

DROUGHT SONG OF THE ELEPHANTS

by Orel Protopopescu

 

We lumber along and sway  

closer to death, stirring dust

like the skirts of the women

eternally searching for water, 

jugs on their heads, 

their children like bundles

of sticks on their backs.

 

We are searching for water,

but keep finding death

in the soot of the grasses 

that once waved to us.

Who took the rain clouds, 

the green from the trees? 

We walk a parched path

where leaves crack and fall

 like birds from the sky.  

            

We remember the pools,

the pools where we played

before days dried in blood

left a burnt orange haze

of dust in our eyes. 

What drives us, who hunts us, 

what beast made of heat?

 

With the children like sticks

we keep drinking the dust.

We drink and they drink

until tongues turn to ash

and milky eyes close.

 

And now we’re forgetting

the clouds and the grasses,

the haze of the heat

with no name and no face.

We’re forgetting the children

who fell on this path 

where our tongues turn to ash

and our clouded eyes close.

Orel Protopopescu has written prize-winning works for children and adults. She won the Oberon poetry prize in 2010 and 2020. Her first biography Dancing Past the Light: The Life of Tanaquil Le Clercq (University Press of Florida, 2021) received a starred review in Library Journal. 

AERIAL VIEW OF CATASTROPHIC FLOODING IN EASTERN KENTUCKY

by Pauletta Hansel

Quicksand, Bulan, Neon, Hiner, Martin, Fisty.

This is our place in Hueysville.

This was my Mother’s house before she passed.

Samantha’s sister’s house is by that blue bridge.

Anyone know anything about Fugate’s Fork Road?

Stringtown, Ajax, Isom, Pinetop, Dwarf.

This is my cousin’s house. 

My Mamaw’s house is on the left.

That bridge is about 8 feet above

where the creek’s supposed to be. 

Isn't this Mary's house?

This is the mouth of our hollow,

the red arrow was our road in.

Nix Branch, Jakes Branch, Trot.

If you zoom in to where the white car hood is,

my home is there.

Rowdy, Wayland, Noble’s Landing Cowan Creek.

OMG that is Pigeon Roost.

Y’all this is my hometown.

This little tree, and God, kept us alive this morning.

My daughter swam with her dog to a neighboring rooftop.

Caney, Possum, Ary, Lost Creek, Hardburly, Trace.

Dad and my nephew are neck deep

they need help

please.

Are you all safe??

We lost the farm animals and 5 cats.

Lost my chainsaws so I can't even work.

Hindman, Buckhorn, Chavis.

You need to understand the nature of the topography.

Add to that strip mining, climate change, political neglect.

Krypton, Garrett, over toward Pound.

Does anyone know about Kite, KY?

We have lost everything

again.

We have warm beds, clothes, and toiletries available.

We have hot showers and food.

Anyone trapped in downtown Whitesburg is welcome to come.

We need help and I'm willing to help anyone

in the same shape we are.

Your prayers are good

but we need to get federal and state assistance ASAP.

Don’t cry for Appalachia, work for change however you can!

Let's use the internet to tell our story.

Thank you for posting.

Much love and many blessings to you all

from what's left.

 

Poet Pauletta Hansel writes “This poem is made up of direct quotes from posts about the devastating flooding in eastern Kentucky. Appalachia tends to hit the news briefly, if at all, during disasters, and is soon forgotten. If you haven’t heard of any of these places, you’d better get on Facebook quick, before we disappear again. Want to help? Go to Appalshop.”

CLIMATE DENIER

by Neil Shepard

by John Deering | September 24, 2021

You slept badly last night—

stuck in a Houston oil slick, coughing coal dust

from your West Virginia mines, lapping up

recycled water from fracked shale be-

cause it was the last water on earth –

and woke up speed-dialing the senator

from New York to nail down a deal

on climate change and health care.

Never tell me dreams and symbols

have no power! They’re the right kind

of power, drilled into your rock-bed

politics, reorienting your moral

compass, mesmerizing, magnetizing,

leading you by the nose like a horse to water,

which is how you find yourself at sun-up

ambling down your backyard lawn to Paw

Paw Creek, where you bend to drink,

and rising, look over a green ridgeline

to see your smokestacks black

with coal-ash, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, and

last night’s dream suddenly flashes

in your brain like a stroke and flushes

your gut with acid and forces

your resolve—to call that god-damn

senator from New York before the morning’s gone.

Neil Shepard is an award-winning poet who has published eight books of poetry, most recently, How It Is: Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2018). He has published essays, book reviews, interviews, and poems in numerous literary magazines, among them, AWP Chronicle, Boulevard, Harvard Review, New England Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and TriQuarterly. He founded and directed for eight years the writing program at the Vermont Studio Center, and he edited for a quarter-century the literary magazine Green Mountains Review. Shepard has been a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Outside the literary realm, he is a founding member of the poetry and jazz ensemble, PoJazz. 

WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

by Bunkong Tuon

Lightning lit up the night sky

Thunder crashing the world.

My bedroom walls shook.

Windows felt like they were about to explode.

And my foundation crumbled.

I was again back in the jungles.

The fighting happened mostly at night.

The moon hid behind the smoke and branches.

Trees stood still. Everything was quiet but the sounds

Of rifles and rocket launchers and the screaming 

Streaming out of the mouths of children and parents.

There are no winners and losers in war.

There are only civilians who didn’t ask for any of it.

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of three poetry collections and a chapbook. His prose and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Lowell Review, Massachusetts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, carte blanche, among others. He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.