Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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

Sunday, April 04, 2021

SPRING (IS THE SEASON)

by Jeremy Nathan Marks


A row of flowers with tags of the victims’ names are tied to a fence at the site of a shooting at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo., on March 24. (Alyson McClaran/Reuters via The Washington Post) "Over the past three weeks, 22 people have died in three major mass shootings in the United States, according to a Washington Post database that tracks those events." —The Washington Post, April 4, 2021


Again, 
spring comes around 
and people talk of hope 

The coming of columbines 
daffodils and hyacinths
the way the greening willows
weep 
 
Squirrels, 
working in the dark
moved many bulbs 
so no one knows where 
they will sprout this year

But who is speaking 
about spring as the season 
of mass shootings 

The ammo crop that is ever ripe  

When young men emerge 
from the long, dim winter 
and find themselves 
deathly pale 
in the too brilliant sun

Who is watching out for them?


Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears in Dissident Voice, Jewish Literary Journal, Bewildering Stories, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Chiron Review.