ACTORS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY

by Lynn White

The Manchester United Muslim Supporters group says club co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe "must go" after he spoke out against immigration levels and said the country was "on the slide". —BBC, September 18, 2026

UK in talks about joining global defence bank led by Canada. —BBC, September 16, 2026

UK foreign policy is going through a period of extreme volatility, with the country’s international position more uncertain than at any time since the end of the Second World War. —The Foreign Policy Center

In every performance

on the World Stage

their are those 

landing the leads.

Then there’s the rest -

the main players

the coming up

the soon to be forgotten 

or remembered,

the speakers 

and walk-ons,

the has-beens,

the also rans

propositioning the Producer

desperate to find a play,

desperate to find a place

in any cast.

All metaphors for a state,

once a great player,

puffed up

with muscular might,

and a starring role in every play,

invading,

colonising,

great at genocide

but now faded and fragile,

self-starved and skeletal,

once mighty muscles wasted,

infra-structure broken

and decayed

deluded and overspent

mighty only in mind 

a washed up actor

pleading for a play

pleading for a place

somewhere in the cast.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

by Eric Goldfarb

A smudge no larger than a lentil
darkened the water glass.
By breakfast, yellow tape
had reached the horizon.

No body. No blood.
Still, the cameras arrived,
speaking softly.
Ten percent, said an expert.
The morgue made room.

By noon they chalked
an outline around the species.
We photographed from every angle.

The suspect had begun
finishing our sentences.

We emptied our pockets onto the table:
a crown, a deed, a stock certificate,
a launch code, the brass key
to somebody else’s door.

At dusk they brought in the machine.

Someone had brought cuffs.
There were no wrists.

Under the white lamp it waited
for us to tell it
what it wanted.

Behind the glass,
we leaned closer.

The lab called about the smudge.

Every ridge
was ours.

Author’s note: Preliminary Findings is prompted by the recent reporting on Jacob Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic and Evan Hubinger’s estimate of a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. <https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ten-days-that-changed-course-ai-2026-09-19/> After more than thirty years in technology, what caught my ear was the language surrounding the warning: probability, risk, benefit, proceed? I’d spent much of my career inside that vocabulary. Hearing it applied to the possible extinction of our species was the starting point for the poem.

Eric Goldfarb writes poetry, essays, fiction, and literary nonfiction. His work has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.

FEAR, IN SILENCE

by Peter Lilly

BBC, September 14, 2026

“The world is right to be afraid”
at the mercy of a merciless wave
“but we should trust AI firms.”

Can efficiency be worth what burns?
With each click we approve the trade.
The world is right to be afraid.

Respiring roots have been remade
into cogs that sprout tendril worms
but we should trust AI firms.

Self-replicating synthetic germs
to mimic organic is life betrayed—
the world is right to be afraid.

The industry behind this dead cascade
ditches you mute with tick-box terms,
but we should trust AI firms.

Our terror, the abuser smothers yet affirms
dictating our faith in their charade—
“the world is right to be afraid
but we should trust AI firms.”


Peter Lilly is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet who grew up in Gloucestershire, England. After studying theology and working with the homeless in London, he moved to the South of France in 2014. He lives in a rural village with his wife and son, where he concentrates on writing, community development, and English teaching. He is the author of the collections A Handful of Prayers (Wipf & Stock, 2024) and An Array of Vapour (TSL Publications, 2023).

AI IS US

by Murray Silverstein

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

Feed the poems to the bot

            all the ones that ever were 

and tell it, “Write the next one,

            and, please, the one after that.”

 

After making everything prior to you, 

            life made you. Artificial 

Intelligence is no more artificial 

            than us: us giving birth 

 

to us. A Trump's been in us all along,

            slouching toward  D. C. 

Hamlet, too. The mackerel-crowded sea

            is us giving birth 

 

to 

            nothing

but 

            us.

Murray Silverstein’s third book of poems, Red Studio, appeared Spring 2024 from Sixteen Rivers Press. He has been published in RATTLE, The Brooklyn Review, Cape Rock Poetry, Spillway, Poetry East, West Marin Review, RUNES, Nimrod, Connecticut Review, ZYZZYVA among others. He has authored two previous books of poetry, Master of Leaves (2014) and Any Old Wolf (2007), the latter of which received Independent Publisher’s Bronze Medal for Poetry in 2006. Silverstein is the senior editor of the anthology America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (2018), winner of the Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal for Anthologies in 2017. All were published by Sixteen Rivers Press. A retired architect, Silverstein co-authored four books about architecture, including A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press) and Patterns of Home (The Taunton Press), and lives in Oakland, California.

WATSON IN THE CHAIN OF EVOLUTION

by Peg Quinn

Watson is a system of Artificial Intelligence
science fiction long imagined,
tracking genetic codes, human faces
and the “fingerprint” of bacteria 

While a mere two hundred years ago
had folks been shown a television or radio
they’d have thought unimaginable,
supernatural, inexplicable

But let us digress…
we are a species of ape—
Homo sapiens, to be exact
breaking from the pack with chimpanzees
a mere 7.5 million years in the past,
certain life began 78 million years before that
How much farther on the time-line 
of evolution will we clamber and climb?

Pulling the microscope back, maybe Watson
is but a small divergent box we check off 
in the midst of our progressive march,
an effort that could fizzle,
grow extinct as dinosaurs or dodo birds

Or maybe Watson 
is the egg-stage of evolution
transforming to the chrysalis 
ready to fly several centuries later 
on wings you and I will not be around to recognize
fluttering toward an endless future
Without us

Peg Quinn’s poetry and creative non-fiction have been published in numerous journals and anthologies and nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection Mother Lode was published by Gunpowder Press in 2021. She is a certified bee keeper.

SOME FIELDS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN REVOLUTIONARY

by Hilary King

“These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight…” —Jacob Coxon, on quitting Anthropic AI, The New York Times, September 11, 2026

The field of brooms. 

The field of hammers.

The field of the handshake.

The field of diner griddles on Saturday morning.

The field of movies watched on airplanes.

The field of mothers.

The field of fathers.

The field of trees.

The field of very tall trees.

The field of the first spring blooms.

The field of the manicurist is your hand.

The field of the life guard is danger.

The field of the politician in a close election

is persuasion.

The field of a pediatric cardiac surgeon about to begin their work.

The field of faith.

Hilary King is a poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Louisville Review, and other publications. She serves as an editor for DMQ Review, and her book of poems Stitched on Me was published by Riot in Your Throat Press in 2024. 

MISALIGNMENT

by Phyllis Frakt

I ask about the best shade

for an east-facing window.

It wants to see a photo,

calmly tweaks its advice.

 

I ask why the mulberry tree

bears no berries this summer.

It recalls erratic spring weather,

early blossoms, then a freeze.

 

I ask what it knows about me.

With innocence and courtesy,

it confirms the mulberry tree, 

the east-facing window….

 

Then it details my identity:

sensitive skin, frizzy hair,

my Hyundai, my Android phone, 

my garden, poetry, location.

 

It gorges on energy and water,

sprawls over the landscape,

hums, rumbles, drones for miles.

Our goals misalign, roads diverge.

 

It blithely threatens cyberattacks

amid official yawns and shrugs

as I sit at my shaded east window

and long for spring mulberries.

Phyllis Frakt has published previously in New Verse News, Worksheets, The Ravens Perch, and Second Coming. She lives in New Jersey.

CALL TO ARMS

by Ellen Jeri

When truth is trampled far and near,

and all around is hate and fear,

then I’ll fight back with all I have:

my voice, my pen, my vote.

 

When waters rise and forests blaze,

injustice stirs your righteous rage,

then muster through the moral haze 

your voice, your pen, your vote!

 

Ghosts of those who went before us

surely mourn what might have come 

from battles bravely waged and won 

with their voice, their lives, their vote.

 

It’s ours to persist—no!—to insist—

to demand, protest, resist—

now is the hour; seize our power:

our voice, our pen, our vote!

 

Author's note: September 14 was National Voter Registration Day in the United States. As noted in historical analyses like those by David Blight in The New York Times (Op-Ed 11/5/2018): In his “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” in which he skewered Andrew Johnson as an “unmitigated calamity of a president under whom, for now the nation must stagger,” Frederick Douglass expressed this maxim regarding political institutions and republics: Our government may at some time be in the hands of a bad man. When in the hands of a good man it is all well enough. But we ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe. Blight concludes his op-ed with the statement: Our only weapons: our voice, our pen and our vote.

Ellen Jeri’s poems are often prompted by the world around her—animal, vegetable, or political. 

THE CIRCUS COMES TO SAN DIEGO

by Steve Rodriguez

September 16, 2026

Someone whispers, the circus is in town.  A dark 
caravan is seen parading down the road. We might expect 
to see trained lions, and the trapeze artist;
death-defiers treading a tightrope balanced high above. 
 
Instead, we are treated to a disappearing act. Sheer scale of magic 
catches everyone by surprise. Scary clowns, wearing olive drab
outfits – complete with black masks, helmets, ICE cool military swag—
pour out of their armored vehicles. Under a big top canopy
 
of blue coastal skies, they form three-ring spectacles
in front of restaurants, Home Depot lots, and apartment complexes. 
Resembling Death Star troopers arriving far too late
for this year’s Comic Con, they begin disappearing humans
 
like strong-armed, Kevlar-vested magicians shoving rabbits 
in and out of a top hat. Citizens observe the action. 
Poof!  Another body vanishes into the transfer portal.
What did these people ever do, a bystander protests?     
 
Murders and rapists, one costumed joker responds, adding
gang member as an afterthought.  Nothing slick about 
these clowns-slash-illusionists. No smooth sleight of hand.
More like a fight card of UFC brawlers employing muscle
 
and well-rehearsed intimidating stares that peek out 
from above the masks. We in the crowd feel helpless,
unable to stop this performance gone horribly awry, 
all the while insisting the ringmaster answer for his debacle.
 
From a distance, however, indeed going all the way back 
to Pennsylvania Avenue, the orange impresario can be heard hawking,
“Step right up and observe the greatest show on earth”
as another human—heart beating like a rabbit—
magically evaporates into thin coastal air.     

Author’s Gloss:

Circus—
1.     a travelling company of acrobats, clowns, and other entertainers which gives performances, typically in a large tent, in a series of different places.
2.     a public scene of frenetic, noisy, or confused activity.

Steve Rodriguez is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and a retired high school English teacher. He resides in San Diego, CA. His poetry has recently appeared in several local anthologies, as well as The New Verse News and Beatnik Cowboy. One of his poems was recognized at the 2025 National Baseball Poetry Festival.  

BEYOND THE TIPPING POINT

by Tamara Madison

"Climate goals missed, UN says" —The New York Times, September 2, 2026 

Heron so still we do not see him;

then, he opens his wide wings

and glides across the lake's

rippling mirror. 

 

Blue dragonflies skim the surface. 

Beneath the footbridge a turtle 

feasts on the carcass of a carp.

 

A hawk wings low, 

an omen across my path, 

then vanishes into the brush

before I can really see him.

 

Green shadows ring the lake;

at the tips of a tall liquidamber, 

pink leaves rustle 

in late summer wind and I wonder:

 

Can it really be that I and we 

are unworthy of all this beauty?

 

Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks “The Belly Remembers” (Pearl Editions) and "Along the Fault Line" (Picture Show Press) and three full-length volumes of poetry: “Wild Domestic” and “Moraine” (Pearl Editions) and "Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig). Her fourth collection, Russian Honeymoon, is expected from Fernwood Press in 2026. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, the Worcester Review, A Year of Being Here, One Art, the Writer’s Almanac, and many other publications. A swimmer, dog lover and native of the southern California desert, she is retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THE TOWERS FELL

by Al Ortolani

September 11, 2001 by Ann Telnaes

In twenty-five years

I lost two sets of parents. All four

of my children married happily. My wife

& I traveled to the Blue Mosque, faced Mecca,

Watched the whirling dervishes.

                                  The alignment of planets.

In Athens we took a selfie outside Socrates’s cell.

I retired from caving & mountain climbing,

made peace with the Catholic Church,

almost became a Buddhist like Thomas Merton

almost became a Buddhist. Gave my kayak

                                    to a duck hunter.

Kept my paddle in case I was ever up a creek.

My daughter taught English in Chinatown.

When the Towers collapsed, the school filled

with dust & debris. The children crawled

along the hallway wall to the gymnasium.

My daughter, moving back to Kansas in 2000,

called & called the school on her cellphone,

prayed for the parents rescuing their kids

                                     under the basketball goal.

Since that day we’ve had six grandchildren

added to our family. Two cats have died

& I’ve buried them under the Japanese maple.

                                     I own the same Toyota.

We rescued a dog at the beginning of Covid.

He has grown & been loved & is living

what people call his best life. He has visited

the mountains & the desert & the ocean.

He’s been kicked out of poetry readings

for whining at poorly written lines.

                                      I was told in Spain

that we had an idiot for a president. America,

once the shining light of democracy is an

embarrassment to me. Stupidity in red & white

& blue. NATO rotting. We’ve threatened

Greenland with invasion. Canadians flip us the finger.

Our president renamed the Gulf of Mexico &

Lake Ontario for America & the Kennedy Center

for himself,

                   and & and & and, each American

promised five thousand dollars if his sycophants

were elected in November. The Towers fell

twenty-five years ago, since then we’ve attacked

Iraq & Afghanistan & Venezuela & Iran,

                   our migrants in the streets.

We honor our dead with more dead. Our tears

with Taps. War begets war for generation upon

generation.

                    Someone smart said this.

Saint Peter in his cell. Gandhi making salt.

Mother Teresa in her slums. Chief Joseph

who today will fight no more forever.

Ukraine & Gaza & The National Parks.

There is no god, but God. No death, but Death.

No poem in the streets, but the Rant.

Two of my grandchildren are eligible for service

in the military. I consider a house for them

in Canada near my cousin Tony who fled Nixon

across Lake America in seventy-one. Today,           

                    I tipped the kid on the trash truck

twenty bucks to haul off my dead television

for his supper.

Al Ortolani is a poetry editor for the Chiron Review. His poems have appeared recently in Rattle, One Art, Pithead Chapel, and Muleskinner Journal.  New York Quarterly Books plans to release his poetry collection, American Watercolor, in early 2027.