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Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

BLOOD STORMS

by Judy Katz-Levine


they say a storm will come. e-mail the whitehouse on Darfur, imagine what a
young girl suffers in a camp in Darfur as the snow starts to fall. to be
raped as a child. that innocent and wounded. to be that hungry to starve.
the whitehouse e-mails me back immediately with a form letter. every night
we hear about the limbs of soldiers maimed. iraqis killed.

the news is a horror show. there's blood on the table. there's blood on
the dishrags. our ears are covered in blood, blood in the snow.
politicians plead for votes, as the ice storms rage. it is the ice of a
country numbed by war. the face of a child in Darfur a sign of the prophet.
no more. no more blood storms.



Judy Katz-Levine's most recent book is Ocarina. Her poems have appeared in The Delinquent, The Sun, Salamander, 96 Inc., and many other magazines and anthologies.