FIFTY YEARS ACROSS

by Robert E. Petras




A shooting star sparks gold
Across the Ohio.
This night vein dissolves
Fireflies spark.
In the northwest clouds dry-hump heat lightning.
A storm may or may not come.
I palm a firefly and its pumping light.

The first cricket of summer chirps.

For every six bottle rockets
One is a dud,
Our seventh-grade gym teacher
Told us boys, lined up,
As he checked us,
Tight-lipped,
For groin pulls,
His hands in a V.
His eyes smiling

“Dud” I can still hear his grotto voice.

That’s the night Joey Geiger drowned.
That’s the first time I saw a shooting star
Shoot dry.

I open my palm
The firefly flits into the sequined night.
A second cricket chirps.

“Dud.”

Robert E. Petras is a resident of Toronto, Ohio and a graduate of WestLiberty University.  His poems and fiction have appeared in more than 250 publications across the globe.

THE BALLAD OF LINDSEY GRAHAM'S PICKLE

by Janice D. Soderling

Dong, dong, it pealed from each bell tower
until full twelve was said.
Cold, coverless and quivering,
Graham flopped around in bed.

He sat up, did the Senator,
and stared into the night
for at the footboard of his bed
commenced a nebulous light.

A ghastly apparation grew
and softly did it moan.
With trembling hands, it held aloft
a moss-bedecked tombstone.

"Oh, Lindsey," wheezed the ghostly guest.
Oh, Lindsey Graham, behold."
There on the mildewed stone was writ,
Orange glitter is not gold.

"And quid pro quo is not BS.
Go read the damning transcript."
A tortured moan froze Lindsay's blood,
"Far better men than you've flipped.

"Beware the traitorous pumpkin man."
The moan rose to a shout.
"I come to save you from yourself."
The frightened man cried out,

"Who art thou, apparation grim?
Who gives my blood such chill?
The Ghost of Hearings-Yet-To-Come?
Or that socialist, Joe Hill?

The glowing ghost gave mirthless laugh.
"Joe Hill has never died.
Takes more than guns to kill a man,
No matter how they tried.

"John sent me here to wake you up.
You're backing the wrong horse.
The bus is nigh. His game is rigged.
Stay off his damned golf course."

Then Lindsey woke, relieved, and said,
"Joe Hill's a loser Commie.
But that's the last time that I eat
dill pickles with pastrami."

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work was recently at Light, Better Than Starbucks, and La Libélula Vaga.

DON, JR.

by Mark Williams

“I don’t think they like me much anymore.”

           —Donald Trump, Jr., commenting on the co-hosts of The View

Just to let you know, Don, Jr.,

we have several things in common. 

Both of our fathers were in real estate,

and they took us with them on their showings.

Stepping from his car, a man once told my dad, 

“I like this house already.”

“You might like it on the outside,” young me said, 

“but wait until you see it on the inside.”

Like you, Don, Jr., the inside needed work.

And then there was the antique Steepleton slate-bed 

pool table my father was given as a bonus. 

(He’d sold a house within a week.) I spent 

many hours shooting pool on that table.

And I was good! But who wouldn’t be? Someone 

had rounded off the slate at every leather pocket.

If a ball was within two inches, it dropped in. 

Up until the day you talked to Joy, Whoopi, 

Abby, Meghan and Sunny,

it was as if you’d played your life 

on an antique Steepleton slate-bed

with generous, deep pockets. 

You were on a run. You could not miss. Please know

that when I shot pool on tables at Arc Lanes, the Y 

or the Brunswick at Brett Hart’s house, 

I embarrassed myself badly every time.

Mark Williams lives in Evansville, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the current administration have appeared in Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, and Tuck Magazine. This is his third appearance in TheNewVerse.News.

GODZILLA VS KONG

by George Salamon


Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday officially filed as a candidate for the Alabama Democratic presidential primary … Bloomberg could jolt the Democratic primary race with his late entry and a personal war chest estimated at more than $50 billion.” The Hill, November 8, 2019

If two money monsters will fight
For the nation's greatest might
Yankee Doodle Dandy  has put
A feather of another color in his cap,
The one flying for democracy will
Have given way to one celebrating
The piracy of buying and selling,
Making business the only business
Of our fading political institutions.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and has most recently contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, Dissident Voice and TheNewVerse.News.

ABECEDARIAN FOR T***P

by Barbara Lydecker Crane

T***p Playing Cards by Winston Tseng

After babbling collapses,
don’t explode. Forego
grandstanding hubris,
idiotic justifying. Know
less, Mr. Neverwrong,
of prevarication, quid pro quo,
revising spins, talking
ugly. Verbatims’ woe:
explicit. You’re zapped.

Barbara Lydecker Crane is a prize-winning poet published in Light, Think, First Things, Measure, Rattle, The Writer’s Almanac, and many others. She has published three chapbooks: Zero Gravitas, Alphabetricks and BackWords Logic, and is also an artist.

EIGHT HAIKU FALSE-STARTS

by Jenna Lê

Photo: Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar, November 5, 2019

my split ends crackle
in the dry November air

my goose-down coat’s nudged
my cheeks out of existence

my hairy calves scritch
inside my long underwear

the polling place lights
sweat yellow in the distance

the 5 PM sky’s
already blueberry-dark

voters in their booths
crouch walled apart like bento

I mouth my own name
through lips pale as pickled shark

the election judge
smiles sweetly nonjudgmental

Jenna Lê is the author of A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018), which won 2nd Place in the Elgin Awards, and Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011). She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition. Her poems appear or are forthcoming from AGNI, Bellevue Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Rattle, and West Branch.

TONIGHT IN PORTLAND

by Penelope Scambly Schott






Winds gust.
Rain slashes.
Douglas firs bend.
Pine cones pound my metal roof.
Have I mentioned how much I love my roof?

Have I described cardboard under sleeping bags?
Shopping carts heaped with wet collections?
The meager windscreen of a dumpster?
A wet dog under the only blanket?
Did I say how cold this rain?

In our whole liberal city
there is not enough
hot soup.


Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamon Seed and November Quilt.

FLORIDA MAN TO DOMICILE IN FLORIDA

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Cartoon by Dave Granlund

He's on the move
on paper
to the joke state
the harboring state
the hideout state
where he thinks
he blends in better

where the climate is better
for taxes
the climate is better
for asset protection
dodging creditors
hiding dodgy wealth
in protected real estate

—he knows more than anyone
about everything
real estate—

where the climate is better
for laundering
the climate is better
for white collar crime
for avoiding
your dues
—no cap
on deductions
no state tax
on income—
no one cares
what you've done

for a certificate
of domicile
when you live in DC
your business
in New York
you vote
for yourself

in Florida            
a thousand new residents
arrive daily
—immigrants across borders
families from cages
babies without parents—
plus Florida Man:

can we lock him up
so the climate is better
for the rest of us?

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Project XX, a satirical novel about a school shooting, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. Newest release is What I Did for Love, a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, October, 2019).

SEAN DOOLITTLE JUST CAN'T GO

a poem found in the words of Sean Doolittle

Sean Doolittle decided to decline an invitation to the Washington Nationals' World Series celebration at the White House on Monday. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

I put thought into this:
I just can’t go.

It has to do with rhetoric
enabling conspiracy theories,
widening the divide.

I just can’t go.

People with those beliefs
feel empowered, feel like
they have a path. I don’t want
to hang with somebody
who talks like that.

I just can’t go.

My wife and I
stand for inclusion and acceptance,
and we work with refugees—
people from "shithole" countries.

I just can’t go.

I feel very strongly
about race relations,
the Fair Housing Act,
the Central Park Five,
Charlottesville.

I just can’t go.

My wife has two mothers
in the LGBTQ+ community
I want to show support for them.
That’s an important part of allyship.
I don’t want to turn my back on them.

I just can’t go.

My brother-in-law has autism,
How would I explain to him
I hung with somebody who mocked
a disabled reporter, the way he talked,
the way he moved his hands?

I just can’t go.

People say you should go because
it’s about respecting the office.
I think he’s done a lot of things
that don’t respect the office.

I just can’t go.

Note: This found poem, based on The Washington Post's interview with Sean Doolittle, was compiled  and organized by the Editor of TheNewVerse.News.

HOME IS HERE

by Donna Katzin



We are the bright-faced dreamers,
pimples on our cheeks,                                            
victory in our voices.                                                  
We rally in the shadow of Lady Liberty                              
to walk her message, one step at a time,          
to the highest court in the nation.

Our siblings cheer us on.          
Juancito stretches hands above his head                          
to lift a banner that defies the wind.                                  
Kelli in cornrows sings from her father’s shoulders
as Korean dancers swirl to deep-throated drums
and brass tambourines.

We have come with parents
from Mexico, Nepal, Sierra Leone,
the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens
to keep our families together,
claim our right to live in the only land
we have ever known.

Other marchers’ chants take root
in our tongues, blossom on our lips:
I am somebody…
Keep the pressure on!
El pueblo unido -- jamás será vencido!
Sí se puede!                                    

We add our own:
Aquí estamos, y no nos vamos.
Y si nos hechan, nos regresamos!
New York One, Newsday, Radio Rebeldía
harvest footage, photos, sound-bites
and speeches for history.

We are not invisible.
We are not afraid.                                                        
We have no other country.
We are already home.


Author's Notes:  On Oct. 26, 2019, 150 marchers set out on an 18-day 230-mile march from NYC to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protection Status for immigrants seeking refuge from conditions that jeopardized their lives in their own countries. Both programs have been threatened by policies of the current administration—endangering more than 1,000,000 people in the US. The marchers headed for Washington, DC to bear witness at the November 12 Supreme Court hearings on the status of DACA.

Chants
Aquí  estamos               We are here
Y no nos vamos             And we are not leaving.
Y si nos hechan             And if you deport us
Nos regresamos            We will return.

I am somebody! A mantra led weekly by the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Operation PUSH meetings in Chicago, where more than 1,000 black youth gathered every week in the 1970s.
Keep the pressure on! A slogan from the anti-apartheid movement in the 1990’s after Mandela’s release from prison, but before the fall of apartheid.
El pueblo unido -- jamás será vencido! The people united—will never be defeated—a chant that rocked the streets of Salvador Allende’s Chile in the 1970s and after.
Sí se puede! Yes we can—a rallying cry of the United Farmworkers in the 1970s, picked up by many movements and leaders since, including Barack Obama.


Donna Katzin is the 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 TheNewVerse.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.

EN EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS: A VISIT FROM MY AUNT

by Richard Garcia

The author's Titi Rosa well before her passing.

Titi Rosa came to visit me last night. It was about time. How long? Sixty-five years? Phosh, she said, That's just yesterday. She brought me a fruitcake, the kind everyone in our mean family would make fun of. She always reminded me of one of those maiden aunts in A Child's Christmas in Wales, that sat on the edge of their chairs with their teacups in hand, alert, just in case someone would speak to them. Our old house was quite nice now, with loft-like rooms, and big windows that looked out on the river that used to be buried under concrete. We stood at the window and admired the houses of the wealthy across the river. But these wealthy people were nice wealthy people. One house was like a palace make of sea foam, and seaweed, and palm fronds and driftwood that resembled formations of pelicans. Another had a pile of boxes on its roof seemingly random, but not if you studied it. They looked like cardboard but were really a sculpture of presents yet to be opened. They spilled over the front of their house as if they were falling, but they were not. And there was a skyscraper made of toothpicks by a blind man in prison for shooting his wife. It was justifiable homicide was what he had always claimed, she was a mean wife, and would not stay still when they played William Tell in the backyard. Now you are being silly, Titi Rosa said, and pinched my cheek, which I used to hate. But it felt so nice, to see Titi Rosa, and have her pinch my cheek. Now you eat the fruitcake Richie, she said, all of it, except for one slice. Wrap it up tight in cellophane, and put it in your icebox. It will last you forever, or for the rest of your life, which, according to her, is the same thing.


Richard Garcia is the author of The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.

FROM THE GAETZ OF HELL

by Rémy Dambron

Assembled in the name
of congressional duty

three committees convened
to depose the unruly

in a secretive facility
known as a SCIF

chaired by the honorable
Adam B. Schiff

but disturbed and perturbed
formed a flock of strange men

flapping and snapping
from inside their pen

all of a feather
both orange and red

disrupting corrupting
due process instead

breeding bad eggs
with old beaks and brooding

regurgitating lies
immorality oozing

storming the doors
and mocking decorum

dive-bombing tricksters
a riotous quorum

circumventing evidence
to circle their circus

distractions by faction
so facts would't surface

crowing and showing
hypocrisy for truth

clutching their phones
such misconduct uncouth

led by none other than
Florida's finest

representative Gaetz
the indignant and spineless

breaking house rules
to demand they be obeyed

came a congress of crows
for their shameless charade.

Rémy Dambron is an activist, environmentalist, and author based out of Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in What Rough Beast, Writer's Resist, Poets Reading the News, and TheNewVerse.News, focusing largely on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social justice. Without the love and support of his wife Susan, he would not be the writer he is today.  

HOURS OF LEAD

by Susan Gubernat

                                                            This is the Hour of Lead –

                                                            Remembered, if outlived… Emily Dickinson

Lead that grazes the mouth of a child, bloodies her.

Lead she drinks down from her little cup of water.

Lead spewed at one another instead of spit

(though the spit too finds its target).

Lead they load, reload, load, reload

Lead soaring like an earthbound bird emboldened

by flight. Lead sinking to the bottom of a pan

boiling away on a kitchen fire. But can

a mother ever make the bath safe again?

As lead rains hard, can she throw her body in 

the path of the boy being eyed by lead,

stalked by lead, prey to the beast of lead?

The lead in the man’s pockets weighs him 

down like coins he thinks he must spend

to grow lighter. He pans the river for lead,

curses crowds with his shower of lead.

Underground, the dark pipes groan with lead.

Above, the air clamps shut with a seam of lead.

O lead, where is thy sting? There

and there and there.            Here. 

Susan Gubernat’s latest book The Zoo at Night won the Prairie Schooner Book Award from the University of Nebraska Press. Her work has appeared in many publications. She lives and works in the SF Bay Area.

HAIBUN IN ANOTHER FIRE SEASON

by Andrena Zawinski

The smell of ash wakes me in my bed, burning

my nostrils and throat, midnight, as I dream

of water webbed lashes and a cool, damp face.

Diablo winds sling fiery plumes all night across

grapevines, redwoods, schoolhouses, ranches,

livestock and wildlife left behind, everything

trying to catch its breath.

In the gloom of gray hours before down, I write

these words without paper or pen a half wake state,

while winds whistle and howl across the dock,

through trees, into my open window and this poem

                                    stumbling ahead

                                    as this dawn struggles for breath

                                    tears blurring the eyes.

Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. Her latest book is Landings; others are Something About (a PEN Oakland Award) and Traveling in Reflected Light (a Kenneth Patchen Prize). She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com. Her poem, “Twilit Sonnet” appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News.