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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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, April 27, 2019

FARM AID

by Denise Sedman


Above: Screenshot from the Farm Crisis Center webpage. See also PewTrusts Stateline.


Cows have been milked
and chickens fed.

Daddy’s awake since
before a light’s been
switched on Wall Street,

All this talk about commodities.
Finances flopping,
unmanageable stress.

I heard the neighbor tied a rope
on a beam in the barn.
Hanged himself.

He tried the suicide hotline,
but the phone rang off the hook.


Denise Sedman is an award-winning poet from the Detroit area. Recent work has been featured in San Pedro River Review, Nassau Review, Gravel Literary and Poets Reading the News. She has a poem in the 2017 Nasty Women anthology by Lost Horse Press. Her signature poem “Untitled” was the source for architect students at University of Detroit Mercy to build a temporary environment in Detroit. The original poem was featured in Abandon Automobile, Wayne State University Press, 2001.