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Illustration by Matthew Laznicka for In These Times. |
Today's News . . . Today's Poem
The New Verse News
presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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, January 23, 2021
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WINTER
Friday, January 22, 2021
NO TWO ALIKE
Thursday, January 21, 2021
THE VIEW FROM WHERE I SIT
BREATHLESS
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
JANUARY 20, 2021 / DATE POEM
Born November 20, 1942.
Inaugurated on January 20, 2021.
Born June 14, 1946.
Inaugurated on January 20, 2017.
Ruby Bridges: Born September 8, 1954.
First day in a white classroom on November 14, 1960.
Angela Davis: Born January 26, 1944.
Became the third Woman on the fbi’s most wanted list on August 18, 1970.
Released on bail after 16 months of incarceration on February 23, 1972.
Acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury on June 4, 1972.
Marsha P. Johnson: Born August 24, 1945.
Stonewalled the nypd on June 28, 1969.
The nypd ruled Marsha’s death a suicide on July 6, 1992.
Martin Luther King Jr: Born January 15, 1929.
Had a dream on August 28, 1963.
Went to the mountaintop on April 3, 1968.
Assassinated by white supremacists on April 4, 1968.
Emmett Till: Born July 25, 1941.
Whistled at a white girl on August 28, 1955.
He was two years older than
Tamir Rice: Born June 25, 2002.
Murdered by a white man with a badge on November 22, 2014.
jim crow: Born Juneteenth, 1865.
just won’t fucking
die
I imagine that mista past president has sat
underneath palms in the Middle East
but has never tasted the warm sweetness
of a date
can’t bring himself to put his lips on
Worn Leather and Scar Tissue and Age Lines
and Exhaustion and Folk Music and Survival
classrooms shove dates down my throat
put their hands over my mouth
so I have to swallow
don’t even prepare ‘em right
leave pits in my stomach
forget the date came from the tree
came from the seed
came from the pit
came from the date
which is to say that linearity and
history are both constructed.
what is a date
without person and place?
time does not march forward
unless we do
I hold a date in the palm of my hand
sink my teeth into it
bite down into the gooey, sticky sweetness
savor the moment
write my own History
write my own poem
call this a radical act
INAUGURATION DAY HAIKU
DEAR FLAVIA
POEM FOR THE INAUGURATION
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
HERE WE ARE
Monday, January 18, 2021
THE FLAG OUTSIDE A NEIGHBOR'S DOOR
Just down the street, outside a neighbor’s door,
it reaches up and out, as if for hope
or heaven, in an effort to restore
its honor and resist the downward slope
traversed by those who lied, who followed liars,
who beat a man with those same stripes and stars,
who lit and fanned and spread murderous fires
that left some dead, the rest of us with scars.
I see Old Glory fluttering in the breeze—
but elsewhere, desecrated by a gang
of thugs, it symbolized not liberties
and laws, but rage, and justice by flash-bang.
I miss the days when I was confident
about what flags by neighbors’ front doors meant.
Jean L. Kreiling is the author of two collections of poetry: Arts & Letters & Love (2018) and The Truth in Dissonance (2014). Her work has been honored with the Able Muse Write Prize, the Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters Sonnet Prize, the Kelsay Books Metrical Poetry Prize, a Laureates’ Prize in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, three New England Poetry Club prizes, the Plymouth Poetry Contest prize, and the String Poet Prize.
AMERICAN HERO
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Officer Daniel Hodges gained notoriety after footage of him circulated being crushed by a door during the capitol riots. Photo: CNN via WCVB. |
Sunday, January 17, 2021
THINKING ABOUT LOVE DURING COVID AND COUPS
Saturday, January 16, 2021
PEOPLE LIKE US AND THE DAY YOU WERE BORN
Heading in to the Quickie Mart I can tell right away something’s wrong,
the kid behind the counter with the plexi-glass wrap-around going at it
with a customer, giving him a piece of her mind, or more. I think perhaps
she caught him stealing, or worse, but he’s a business guy, gray suit, gray tie,
and when I open the door it’s not anger at all, it’s passion I’m hearing,
passion in a Quickie Mart. She’s just a kid, early 20’s or so, hair pulled back,
masked, oversized glasses fogged up. She’s saying, …when even we can see
what’s going on, us average people, people like us, then you know something’s wrong.
And the man doesn’t speak, just nods and turns away, goes past me
like a broken ghost, back to the world again. And I turn to her in this
tiny temple where we all come and go for milk and tickets and cigarettes
and gas, and ask her what it is that all of us should know, all us average people
who gas and gulp and come and go. She says, …the Capitol, what those people did.
And I tell her I agree, it’s a sacred place, that they call it the People’s House,
that Lincoln ended slavery there with the 13th Amendment in the Capitol,
that when you’re actually there it feels more like a church. And then I can’t stop.
I tell her it’s good what you did, speaking up like that. I tell her Siddhartha
says your birthday isn’t really the day that you’re born. It’s the first time
you stand up to your parents, to anyone with power over you, and tell them
the truth. That’s the day when you’re truly born, when you first come alive.
I want to say she was smiling, gleaming like a newborn held up to the light,
but she was wearing a mask. I gave her a twenty for pump number five.
John Hodgen, Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University, won the AWP Prize for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press). His new book is The Lord of Everywhere (Lynx House/University of Washington Press).
IN-SUH-REK-SHUHN
WILDER MANN
IT'S THE EXOTIC, THE FOREIGN...
BELLY OF THE BEAST
Friday, January 15, 2021
NOW THE DYING WHO ARE ALMOST DEAD, ARE DEAD
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“The end of the earth,” acrylic painting by Tobi Star Abrams |
Thursday, January 14, 2021
THAT IS NOT WHO WE ARE
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“Oh, Really” by Keith Knight via Kottke.Org |
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
THIS DAY WILL NOT JUST LIVE IN INFAMY
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Shutterstock |
SERMON FOR THE SIRENIAN
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State and federal wildlife authorities were investigating after a manatee with “Trump” on its back was spotted in Florida on Sunday. Credit: Hailey Warrington, The New York Times, January 11, 2021. |
DON'T MOCK HITLER'S MUSTACHE
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
AFTERMATH
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“No Mercy” by Mariusz Kozik |
It’s turned me
into a steel blade,
cutting people from my life
without hesitation, without doubt,
just a quick slice and they are gone.
I’m not a heartless man. Rather,
the opposite: forgiving, understanding.
But not this time, not this time.
Some things are too sacred.
The Constitution, for one.
I believe. I defended it
my entire career. If you choose
to denigrate, or violate, or ignore
it, you face the blade that my life
has taken on: it will cut you
out, send you into the outer darkness
of my life where I may never see
you again, never think of you again.
I’m sorry—no, strike that.
I do not apologize. I am steel,
on this, I am steel. And the blade
YEAR OF THE RANT
In a year in which only personal realities
are consulted by humans,
in which only over-sized creatures are heard
and they merely grunt
In a year in which the hogs that grunt
are only human,
in which it can be seen that
their blinkered eyes are rightly suspicious
and monitor the intrusive attentions
of folks with cameras,
who are neither journalists nor tourists,
but uniformed executioners bearing witness on themselves
In a year in which the words of the truly reproachable
bear witness against themselves,
in which the words of the prophets
are everywhere and too numerous to recall
amidst the blinding lights of the next enormity,
too large for even the wiser among us to believe,
or the most gullible
In which even the loudest of unsanctioned mouths
fall silent,
for there is simply too much to say
and no lack of overpaid oath-breakers
clamoring to bear witness against themselves.
HAWLEY
One sworn to shield you soon would die,
but you, your cynic’s fist held high,
proclaimed your solidarity
with those for whom the thought they’re free
now trumps all law and love and reason.
You spurred them on, then cheered their treason.
Robert West is the author of three chapbooks of poems including Convalescent (Finishing Line Press, 2011); the co-editor of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013); and the editor of both volumes of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons (W. W. Norton, 2017).
HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON
Monday, January 11, 2021
MY NAME IS AMERICA AND I'M GOING TO GET YOU VACCINATED
She said it without irony, then asked
for my name and date of birth.
She then directed me to the room
where I would wait for my turn
to get the long-awaited needle stick
in my arm. As I sat, visions
floated through my troubled mind:
My name is America,
and I’m going to get you infected with Covid.
My name is America,
and I’m going to turn my eyes
when business owners
and government leaders
ignore rules that could save your life.
My name is America,
and I’m sick to death of quarantine.
My name is America,
and I can’t even get you a Covid test.
My name is America,
and I’m looking out for illness
in the stock market.
My name is America,
and I’m going to wear my mask
It took only a breath of a moment,
the life-saving prick of the needle;
I didn’t feel anything at all.
In three weeks, I’ll return and do it again.
Maybe America will guide me
through the final stage of protection.
Maybe America will remember me,
my face half-covered by a mask,
but my eyes filled with grief and fear.