The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.
after “The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens
Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images via The New York Times.
Lick the sins of countries past,
the thrown stone, and gather your pints
in unbleached paperboard, crisp waffle cones.
Sell hazelnut play on words that
signal virtue and decadence, and
slick the tongue divine, smooth on spoon.
Let slingshots rile the bull market.
The only flavor is a flavor of fear.
In the modern white freezer, vats
blister thumbs from the plastic scoop
whose spring-back lever neatly cleaves the ice.
The Green state, the Holstein cows, the fourteenth star.
Shirtsleeves cuffed, tough and chocolate stained
to show how cold we are, and numb.
Let the melting be violent and swift.
The only flavor is the flavor of fear.
Alisha Goldblatt is an English teacher and writer living in Portland, Maine with her two wonderful children and one lovely husband. She has published poems in the Common Ground Review, Literary Mama, and Burningword Literary Journal, among several others. Alisha writes whenever she can and gets published when she’s lucky.
In 2013, Daniel Hale was at an antiwar conference in D.C. when a man recounted that two family members had been killed in a U.S. drone strike. The Yemeni man, through tears, said his relatives had been trying to encourage young men to leave al-Qaeda. Hale realized he had watched the fatal attack from a base in Afghanistan. At the time, he and his colleagues in Air Force intelligence viewed it as a success. Now he was horrified. It was such experiences, Hale told a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, that led him to leak classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military. “I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenseless,” he said in court. He said he shared what “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs.” U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady sentenced Hale, 33, of Nashville, to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act, saying his disclosure of documents went beyond his “courageous and principled” stance on drones. —Washington Post, July 27, 2021
Robert Américo Esnard was born and raised in the Bronx, NY. He studied Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Dartmouth College. His work has been published by or is forthcoming in Alternating Current Press, Alternative Field, Cutbank, Glass, Lunch Ticket, New York Quarterly, and several anthologies. He is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet.
No, I won’t use my body as an ATM to cross a border
The no’s would ring out, streaming
like ribbons up and over each other
weaving an ornate shawl
a handmade rebollo
a silk sari
a second-hand skirt
a torn scarf
They’d hear No in Amarillo
No in the pueblos of Mexico
No in Iowa,
No in the middle of nowhere,
No in County Kerry
No in the Sahara
No in Angola
No in Afghanistan
The microphones would pick
up the tiniest no,
the no of infants,
the no of eight-year-olds,
the no of a mother separated
from her child
at Fort Bliss.
How famous
do you have
to be
for your no
to be
heard?
Renée M. Schell’s debut collection Overtones is forthcoming from Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and teaches second grade in a diverse classroom in San Jose, CA.
Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His poetry and fiction are forthcoming in The Cape Rock and Poetry Salzburg Review and have appeared in hundreds of magazines including The New Verse News, Thin Air, Chiron Review, The Lyric, Poetry Kanto, and The Anglican Theological Review and have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars prizes. His poetry collections include Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), 50 Acrostic Poems (Cyberwit, India), In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art, Florida), and Pan’s Saxophone (Weasel Press, Texas). He is a nature lover, with three companion dogs, and three other beloved dogs who have passed on beyond the rainbow bridge. He loves all animals.
As the Bootleg fire in Southern Oregon rages on, the massive wildfire is creating its own weather systems. "The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it's changing the weather. Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do," Marcus Kauffman, a spokesman for the state forestry department, told The New York Times. —EcoWatch. Photo: A pyrocumulus cloud from the Bootleg Fire drifts into the air near Bly, Oregon on July 16, 2021. PAYTON BRUNI / AFP via Getty Images via EcoWatch.
Smokedrift and sunblot
from the fire spreading
like deathpain, the heat
so hot it spins the wind,
pinches lightning out
of the sky. Used to be
the wind would tell
the fire where to go.
Here in the east, we watch
the fire on TV. The silhouettes
of houses falling cardlike,
the bare hands of trees reaching up
in useless prayer. The weatherman
tells us the clouds we see
in the New York sky aren’t clouds
but smoke from out west.
It makes me think of other weathers,
the ones that weren’t weathers,
the storm of my father leaving so fast
the windows quaked, and then, the quiver
of hospitals filling up again, the rain
in the eyes of the left-behind.
The quiet drought of a man,
somewhere, shaking his head
sending the word “hoax” into the
air like a butterfly.
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press), The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction), and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books). Her chapbook The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ in Fall 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.
Judy Juanita's latest book is Manhattan My Ass, You’re In Oakland, a collection of poetry. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul chronicled a black female coming of age in the 60s who joins the Black Panther Party. Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland examines the intersectionality of race, gender, politics, economics and spirituality as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." The collection was a distinguished finalist in Ohio State University's 2016 Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Her seventeenth play, “Theodicy,” about two black men who accidentally fall into the river of death, won first runner-up of 186 plays in the Eileen Heckart 2008 Senior Drama Competition at Ohio State University.
The map above, based on modeling from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows how the smoke from Western wildfires spread across the country. —The New York Times, July 21, 2021
High in the sky
the gibbous moon blushes pink—
distant wildfires.
Geoffrey A. Landis is a poet, science-fiction writer and scientist. His poetry appears in places from ArtCrimes to The Year’s Best Fantasy, and he is the author of two poetry collections: Iron Angels from VanZeno Press and The Book of Whimsy from NightBallet. In his spare time, he fences épée, because he likes to stab strangers with a sword.
A satellite view of the Bootleg Fire burning in Oregon last week.Credit: NOAA, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CIRA via The New York Times.
While flash floods hurl
muddy torrents elsewhere,
this NYC-sized fire lets loose
its own brand of torrent,
floods the drought-dried mountains
with its hungry spill.
I broadcast a cruel variant
of prayer: that the destruction
wreaked by the last big fires
is still stark moonscape enough
to refuse this newest ravaging;
that the forest hasn’t recovered enough yet,
that the masochistic cheatgrass
hasn’t sprung up enough in between
the skeletal remains of the trees,
that the Winter Ridge—awful wish!—
might still be more barren wound than healed;
that it can’t offer enough fuel yet
to carry such a conflagration further
or to deliver its blazing deluge all the way
to the shrinking shores of the lakes
or, somehow, beyond.
That we won’t have to wait or pray
for the too-late balm of October rains.
That this ongoing ruin
might have some use against itself.
Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2017), as well as several chapbooks of poetry. Much of her recent published work was composed or revised during visits to the Playa Artist Residency Program, on the shore of Summer Lake, currently threatened by the Bootleg fire. She lives in Holderness, New Hampshire.
Monica Mills is a Jamaican-American writer and poet. She is from Maplewood, New Jersey and has a bachelor’s degree in political science and English from Rutgers University. Monica’s work appears in journals such as The West Trade Review, The Anthologist, The Normal Review, and The Quiver Review among others. She enjoys rainy days and ginger tea.
Amid a widening partisan divide over coronavirus vaccination, most Republicans have either stoked or ignored the flood of misinformation reaching their constituents and instead focused their message about the vaccine on disparaging President Biden, characterizing his drive to inoculate Americans as politically motivated and heavy-handed. —The New York Times, July 20, 2021
O beautiful for spacious skies
America I speak no lies
Although I wish no harm to none
He who holds his arm back
dies
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
that tread upon the soil that’s blue
a thoroughfare
for arms that ache
while you over there
vacillate
prevaricate
until
real soon
it’s just too late
You who claim our fruited plain
is really red
and complain
and caterwaul
that this hoax is live
and science is dead
woe be to you
in twenty-two
You’re going to those halcyon skies
twice as fast as us guys
your electorate
is shrinking faster
than a speeding myth
count the votes
do the math
your crimson retreats
are no longer alabaster
In twenty twenty two or four
there will be more of us than you
your votes have shrunk
so go get drunk
and raise a toast
two years hence
or maybe four
our purple mountains
will all be blue
sad but true
sad for you
your selfish gain no longer stains
from coast to plain to turquoise coast
Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has traveled all over the place and met lots of people. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. His poetry and fiction have been published in Convergence, Packingtown Review, Literary Orphans, TheNewVerse.News, and other lit mags.
Video: Britney Spears’ full opening testimony during her conservatorship hearing. She speaks directly to Judge Brenda Penny and asks her to end the conservatorship.
“I want to feel heard, and I’m telling you this again so maybe you can understand the depth and the degree and the damage that they did to me... ” —Britney Spears
Hysteria was said to be cured
by having sex. Or giving birth.
Or having the Devil cast out
of a woman’s body.
Or being touched by magnetic hands.
Or hanged from a tree until dead.
“Don’t worry your pretty head, take this pill”—
and they danced as fast as they could,
then wound up shaking and quivering
in hospital rooms, sweating in bedrooms,
and dazed in the dark rooms inside their heads.
“No one did that to you—the therapist put it
in your head.”
“It’s your imagination.”
“Why would you say those things about our family?”
“Stop acting like a child.”
Crazy women make good stories,
good movies, good punchlines,
good alibis.
You can drug them, wind them up,
watch them dance, and steal their money.
All you need is a judge, a doctor, a lawyer,
some nurses, and the right genitalia.
The court declared you a protector—
of a mind, a uterus, a woman.
But crazy women everywhere know
that what is protected
are your bank account,
your delusions, and your secret desire
to cast the Devil out of all of us.
Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books) and two forthcoming chapbooks. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world.
Cartoon by Nate Beeler (Cagle Cartoons) via Tulsa World.
Let them face the insecurity of not knowing
if home will remain haven
in the hours separating dawn and dusk
Let them taste the bitter metal of cruelty
that tosses life into uncertainty
while hiding behind secured gates
Let them be exposed without retreat
to ready canines famished for sinking
into the bleeding of abused flesh
As empathy could not sway
the concrete heart
let them be cast into the weight
of lead shoes drowning
without fail in the muck
below the azure of waterlines
Let the stirring chaos made
by unsympathetic hands
swallow their owners
into the whirlwind they
conjured with others in mind
Let this ouroboros birthed
in ill intent latch onto
its diseased umbilical tail
and ensnare those who
envisioned its callous trap
in its tightening coil
Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She proudly hails from an immigrant family whose previous undocumented status and associated economic burdens nearly robbed her the opportunity to pursue higher education. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published on the Global Vaccine Poem Project and Documented Experiences and in The Opiate. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.
Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian. Her work has been published in many print and online journals including The New Verse News, Prune Juice, and Modern Haiku. Sari and her husband are weathering out their storms in the Catskill Mountains/Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State.
Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and forgetful mind magician who can’t find the rabbit or his hat. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.
Scientists Still Searching for the Pathogen Behind the East's Songbird Epidemic: In a new report, experts ruled out a range of causes, but they still recommend taking down feeders until the source of the disease is identified. —Audubon, July 8, 2021. Photo: A young Blue Jay admitted to the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Virginia with an unknown illness. Credit: Blue Ridge Wildlife Center via Audubon.
Songbirds stumble,
crusty eyes gunked shut
with conjunctivitis.
Out of an abundance
of caution, we remove
feeders where they cluster
like us to cluck about
the latest scuttlebutt.
Hands gloved, we dump
the double-bagged dead,
muttering that it’s redundant.
We who have too much
do not fund hungry children
but grumble when unable
to fuss over cardinals
in lush gardens. We suffer
from an abundance
of abundance.
Erin Murphy’s latest book, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, The Normal School Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review and Professor of English at Penn State Altoona.
Mike Hoffman, 27, was ejected from a Jeep and killed by a drunk driver in New Hampshire Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. Photo Credit: Facebook/Mike Hoffman —Middlesex Daily Voice, July 7, 2021.
When I woke today, someone had died.
A driver drunk.
The car rolled over and the others are alive,
but not the son of the gym teacher.
Mr, Hoffman.
Mr. Hoffman does not write poetry or songs
far as I know.
He’s not Shakespeare but who's to say
who loved more?
What will he do now? What will he do?
I know. Be still
kinder to the children.
He will eek it out, give more, and mark
the joy in open eyes. The rain will cover
the windows covered with metal bars
but not enough.
So funny, but before that, during the night,
I spoke of my parents
in the past tense
as if to convince myself I will survive.
Author's Note: Mr. Hoffman is a teacher at my son’s new school which serves kids with special needs. Although I have yet to meet Mr. Hoffman, I can tell from the staff’s grief that Mr. Hoffman is beloved.
Greer Gurland is a graduate of Harvard College (‘91) where she was Managing Editor of The Harvard Advocate and lucky enough to study with Seamus Heaney. She recently returned to writing and earned her MFA. She has two chapbooks: It Just So Happens …Poems to Read Aloud (Finishing Line Press 2018) and In the crowded future (Finishing Line Press 2021). Most recently, Greer was a finalist for the Moon City Book Prize.
giving their lives to see they live or die a notch better.
For the law to be your friend. Or for anything that may
well feed your spine. With the contraband fruit of justice.
3. Do Not Plead Not Guilty. You are, for the matter. Guilty
of unlawful actions unheard and unseen of. Till one evening
men and women in uniform storm your doors, seizing you
by the collar. Or wait till you survive the guilt
once your child points at the face of an old grandfather
permeating all over the news.
Let them ask you then, “aren’t we taught to respect our
Elders”?
4. Do Not Feel Shame. For watching over typed phrases, statements
and words supposed to inform you. Of an octogenarian’s contraction
of something the world understands as pandemic. But within custody
of course, disease runs trivial. What’s Parkinson's anyway?
Just another condition, neurodivergent, doesn’t kill eh!
So, up to you to believe or refuse if the octogenarian
had his share of sippers, straw, medicine and treatment
in custody! Lucky if you believe, sad if you do not!
5. Do Not Think. Let your cognitive power focus upon
your yoga sessions, parallel world of a post pandemic vision.
Trips to catch up, the how to of a self-reliant nation. Who cares?
of UNDP rants on sustainable development, inclusivity of the
indigenous population? There are governments for that, honest
and fair. Meanwhile sleep peacefully, Human Rights often fear
the ivory towers.
Author's Note: Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy breathed his last in judicial/government custody after spending his entire life working for the uplifting of the Adivaasi community in India (especially in Jharkhand). He prepared a report titled ‘Deprived of Rights Over Natural Resources’ highlighting the plight of the Adivaasi landless population. He had been implicated in a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) still pending in court and kept in jail despite his age and other pre-existing health conditions. His death in custody speaks volume of the present situation of democratic dissent/treatment in the country.
A. C. writes from India. Her work has appeared in The Alipore Post, Life and Legends Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a contributor in an anthology titled Narratives On Women’s Issues In India: Vol 1 Domestic Violence published by the IHRAF, New York and a global feminist anthology, Looking Glass Anthology Vol. 2.
Corey Weinstein is a retired physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He is an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band.
the delicate hope of asylum for whatever that is worth.
Asylum acquired narrow connotations
as in insane asylum, not a refuge
but a silencing, an abandoning.
I should be able to write
with the insistent beat of a heart on fire,
the passion of Whitman’s barbaric yelp,
the precision of an accountant
totaling the debt to be repaid.
Airlift Afghani allies to the Field Station
where I write of black-eyed susans
counting their thirteen brilliant petals
flower after flower, utterly dependable.
We should. I should. What is power for?
What are words for?
If they do not set deeds in motion,
if they do not celebrate good,
if they do not open up space,
if they allow moral failure
if they do not uncover names
of the unnamed who throw up
obstacles to justice,
then
be forever silent.
As 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Margaret Rozga co-edited the anthology Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems (Art Night Books, 2020) and the chapbook anthology On the Front Lines / Behind the Lines (pitymilkpress, 2021). Her fifth book of poems is Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press, 2021).
Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announces her appointments to a new select committee to investigate the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 1, 2021. From left are Rep. Elaine Luria, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, Rep. Pete Aguilar, Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Bennie Thompson. Rep. Liz Cheney also accepted Pelosi's invitation to join the committee. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP via abc news.
A singularity occurs but once in time
and space: the Big Bang, for instance;
or at a point of infinite mass density
where gravity distorts such time and space
into the final state of matter as it’s
black hole bound;
.
or when the derivative of a given function
of a complex variable does not exist, but
every neighborhood of which contains points
for which the variable does exist.
And now comes a new singularity:
a select committee to investigate
whether a house divided against itself
can stand, or if the point at which all
concepts that give life meaning
become irrelevant.
Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Northern University, Claude Clayton Smith is the author of eight books and co-editor/translator of four others. His own books have been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese.
Art Goodtimes was an Earth First! poetry editor before getting elected to five terms as a Green county commissioner in Southwestern Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle) now represents the Third Congressional district in Congress. Art is co-director of Talking Gourds, a local and regional poetry program under the non-profit aegis of the Telluride Institute.
Digital rodents and abandoned Pokemon presided over the streets of Bagram Airfield on the day news broke that U.S. troops had left the base. All U.S. forces have left Bagram, which for much of the past 20 years was the largest military base in Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials announced Friday. But the animated critters and some of what’s left on base are visible in digitally animated form through the game app Pokemon Go. The game allows players to walk to real-life locations and catch or battle digital monsters, who can be found using the app’s barebones version of Google Maps. Some of the Pokemon left by U.S. soldiers remain at their posts. —Stars and Stripes, July 2, 2021
1.
at the Pink Palace
our old brigade headquarters
Jigglypuff awaits
2.
in a clamshell gym
sweating in treadmill safety
I was Wartortle
3.
old Russian minefield
where I caught my Charizard
best day of my war
4.
after deployment
I can speak more Pikachu
than I can Pashtu
5.
farewell, Poké-stan
we leave you a ghost army
stardust and candies
Randy Brown embedded with his former Iowa Army National Guard unit as a civilian journalist in Afghanistan, May-June 2011. A 20-year veteran with one overseas deployment, he subsequently authored the 2015 poetry collection Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire. He also co-edited the 2019 anthology Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War. He is a three-time poetry finalist in the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards administered by the literary journal Line of Advance. His poetry and non-fiction have appeared widely in print and on-line, including most recently in the graphic anthology True War Stories published by Z2 Comics. As “Charlie Sherpa,” he blogs about modern war poetry at www.fobhaiku.com, and about military-themed writing at www.aimingcircle.org.
“Taliban Try to Polish Their Image as They Push for Victory: The insurgents are trying to rebrand themselves as effective governors as they capture new territory. But there is more evidence that they are unreformed.” —The New York Times, July 6, 2021. Photo: Members of the Taliban in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan last March. Credit: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times.
American stuff. Artificial Christmas trees. Humvees.
Boots that mark the Afghan soil with the treads
of Americans. Little shops sell discards
like aluminum mugs. No longer sell the body armor.
They do sell Jif peanut butter, alarm clocks,
backpacks festooned with swooshes,
instant coffee, exercise stretch ropes,
hand sanitizer and tea bags.
Bagram first the pulverized Soviet airfield,
turned burgeoning American stronghold
with Pizza Huts and Subways, field hospital
and a prison gifted to the Afghan defense ministry.
Then the women left behind. What will they be asked
to wear, to think, to learn? What will divide urban
women from rural? Will medical care advance?
What happens to the voices of the poets, activists,
radio DJs, victims of domestic violence? What music
will they hear? What input to the terms of peace?
Will electricity return as swiftly as sharia justice?
When women hold up half the sky,
never leave behind the hope of soaring.
Tricia Knoll is a feminist poet who never takes for granted the freedoms she has enjoyed while advocating for the role of women in our world. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies.
Researchers in Australia have confirmed the discovery of Australia's largest dinosaur species ever found. Australotitan cooperensis was about 80 to 100 feet long and 16 to 21 feet tall at its hip. It weighed somewhere between 25 and 81 tons. For comparison, the Tyrannosaurus rex was about 40 feet long and 12 feet tall. Photo: Scott Hocknull and Eromanga Natural History Museum Director Robyn Mackenzie hold a model of what the humerus of the dinosaur would have looked like next to the fossilized remains of the humerus. Credit: Eromanga Natural History Museum via NPR,June 8, 2021.
What is the price for a puppet show with
fewer puppets but more stories? Always
the same story endlessly staged,
every age’s marionettes and the same
tired tale, a shifting cast of shadows
behind the age-old screen.
Study any desert, and behold
that same sun blistering their backs,
baking their bodies and bones, the breadcrumbs
of immigrants, their grim trail markers and that same
the docile plodding rhythm, a drumbeat of footsteps
from the fossil record ringing through time.
Here is another variation.
They walked, shielding their young
with their own bodies, their necks
like cracked leather, craned high
toward new skies, the breath
of hunger, thirst, and danger fogging
each footfall, their scaled feet disturbing
the dust, scattering already ancient rocks, stale
wind whistling faint melody in the world’s eternal
fugue.
The news reports these dinosaur bones came
from creatures as big as basketball courts
whose Patagonian ancestors crossed connected
continents and arrived in Australia.
No boats to be turned back, no papers to be denied,
no armed agents or bureaucratic barriers to halt them—
only land in stretches longer
than even their tales and necks,
and vengeful heat, and hungry earth
whispering Not to worry, not to worry,
even if they never find all of your bones
the story of your journey
will always be retold.
Faith-based groups are working to protect migrants and honor those who have died while attempting to cross the southern border from Mexico into the United States. Humane Borders is an organization that sets up water stations in the Arizona desert on routes used by migrants to cross the border. The group also works with Pima County chief medical examiner Dr. Gre Hess to document the discovery of bodies of those who died on the journey. According to the Associated Press, Hess's office received the remains of 79 border-crossers this year as of late May. In 2020, Humane Borders documented 227 deaths, the highest in a decade after a record hot and dry summer in Arizona. Activists fear this year will be even worse. —Newsweek, July 5, 2021. Photo: Unidentified bones found in the desert and suspected to be that of a migrant are assembled together for examination at the Pima County Medical Examiner's forensic labs in Tucson, Ariz. Credit: Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press via The Journal, July 5, 2021.
Dustin Michael lives in Georgia and teaches college writing and literature. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and his favorite dinosaur is stegosaurus, not that anyone asked.
Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, 3 Moon Magazine, and U-Rights Magazine.
As a tribute to the first responders, victims and families of those missing in the partial condo collapse, Miami Beach announced Thursday it will replace its originally planned fireworks celebration with a moment for residents to “shine a light in a symbolic gesture of unity,” according to a city press release. ... Miami Beach residents will have the option to mark Independence Day in a way that may feel more reflective of the ongoing tragedy and families’ grief and hope. —Miami Herald, July 2, 2021
Digging into the smoldering
ruins, looking for lost people,
their ashes have drifted into
the crushing water by now,
the rescuers are seeking
shadows, do their souls
enter the spirit of our
language, will we hear
them inside any thought
we utter?
George Salamon survives in St. Louis, MO and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, and The New Verse News.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Prosecutors in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery's accused murderers filed a flurry of new motions in recent days, including 15 in just the past 24 hours. Among them, the state's District Attorney's Office is asking the judge to allow a three-hour closing argument (an hour longer than allowed) and to show jurors cell phone video of Arbery's killing during opening statements. Arbery was shot to death on Feb. 23, 2020, after three men chased him through the coastal Georgia neighborhood of Satilla Shores. Travis and Greg McMichael are charged with first-degree murder along with their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, who joined the chase and recorded the incident on his cell phone. All three have pleaded not guilty. … The state has filed previous motions seeking to keep out evidence of Arbery's diagnosed mental illness or his prior run-ins with police. The judge has not yet ruled on any of the motions. The next court date is July 22 at 10 a.m. —First Coast News, July 2, 2021
1. I Sing For Ahmaud
I sing for my sanity
At night when I cannot sleep
When the darkness plays an endless loop
Of yesterday’s tragic news
And I sing for the young black men
Daily dying in our bleeding streets
And I sing and pray for the mothers
Whose tears stoke the flames of justice
Now I sing and I pray
Try to understand the fear the killers feel
Why they grasp the coward’s last line of defense
The trigger of a gun
Yes I sing and pray that they’re something more
Than the heartless, mindless head at the White House door
Greeting millions marching for justice
With tear gas and vicious dogs
I sing for my sanity
And pray for a savior like Dr. King
To heal this deeply wounded world
With wisdom, peace and love
Yes I sing for the martyrs
That their blood will finally cleanse this world
And slake the thirst of hate
For now and all-time
Now I sing and I pray
Try to understand the fear the killers feel
Why they grasp the coward’s last line of defense
The trigger of a gun
I sing and pray that there’s something more
That the mindless, heartless head at the White House door
Greeting millions marching for justice
With tear gas and vicious dogs
Yes I sing, I sing, I sing
I sing for this country’s sanity
2. Chanty For Ahmaud
The sunbeams and shadows thread through the Spanish moss
As the young men run under the live oak trees
It’s 1820 and all is well
Cause young black men know where they should be
At work for the master crushing shells from the beach
Making tabby all day, yes that’s their play
Hang your head low and shuffle your feet
Building master’s big house on Satilla’s white shore (and they sing)
“Ho, Ho. Scrape and pound.
Happy at work for the master
Ho. Ho. Yes scrape and pound
Crushing shells for tabby to build Master’s house.”
Now it’s two thousand twenty, see what we’ve lost
Young black men forgot their place in this world
They dare to run on Satilla’s white shore
Without a white man to set their course
Sorry to say it had to be done
Lesson well-taught with an old shotgun
Soon we’ll forget and go back to our ways
When young black men knew their place (and they’ll sing)
“Ho. Ho. Scrape and pound.
Happy at work for master
Ho. Ho. Yes I scrape and pound
Crushing shells for tabby to build Master’s house.”
3. Black Lives Matter
Black lives matter
Finally a cause worth dying for
Black lives matter
Finally a chance to do what Jesus would do
Do you know Jesus
He used to run every Sunday down in southeast Georgia
Then one day two white men shot Jesus dead in the street
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Do you know Jesus
After dying in Georgia, she moved up to Kentucky
Asleep in her own bed the police shot her dead
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Black lives matter
Finally a cause worth dying for
Black lives matter
Finally a chance to do what Jesus would do
Do you know Jesus
Dead in Kentucky, on up to Minnesota
Policeman put a knee on his neck, he died
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Black lives matter
Do you know Jesus
4. Little Jimmy’s Eatin’ Some Crow Now
Awake this morning before the cock crowed
I worry, worry, worry bout my battered soul
I can’t stop seeing that black child’s blood
Puddled neath his body and his toy gun
2020 air still stings my eyes
It’s summer 21, now who will die
Don’t know why some folks continue to hate
And take delight in passing it along
It’s the damnest way to live in this world
Bowtie man telling cute jokes
“Why’d the little negro bring his toy gun to town?
To give police some target practice.”
“Whooowee,” says the bowtie man, “...that little Jimmy’s eatin some crow now.”
Why? Why? Why?... Hell, I don’t know
And he laughs and laughs into the online sky
Bowtie man with the crazy eyes
Living to spread hate as far as he can
He’s the darling of every other Christian man
“When should a black man jog down the street.”
“If he’s in south Georgia... never. “
“How do you celebrate Black History month.”
“Watermelon, breakfast, supper and lunch. Whooo Weeee.”
It’s the damnest way to live in this world
Bowtie man telling cute jokes
“Why’d the little negro bring his toy gun to town?
To give police some target practice.”
“Whooowee,” says the bowtie man, “...that little Jimmy’s eatin some crow now.”
The work of Richard Lawson of Brunswick, Georgia has been published in Fine Lines.
