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Halfway up the mountain was a cavern as large as an amphitheater. The cave, which contained a dense concentration of swiftlet nests, is a sacred site for the Punan, who consider it the source of all things. Once inside, a man named Ma’ruf took a seat on the dirt floor. He was in his early 40s but appeared to be half that age, with swooped-over bangs and the youthful skin that comes from a life lived in the shade…. Ma’ruf began to hum, a deep and powerful vocalization that rose from his chest and echoed through the cave. Words took shape in a language only the elders understood. “I am like a porcupine who comes to the cave to rest,” he chanted, according to a translation of a recording of the chant made by Dr. Lansing. —“A Vanishing Nomadic Clan, With a Songlike Language All Their Own: New genetic research confirms the oral history of a small group of nomadic people living in Indonesia’s rainforest,” The New York Times, September 19, 2023 |
Today's News . . . Today's Poem
The New Verse News
presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
THE PUNAN BATU CLAN
Friday, September 29, 2023
X
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X Is The Biggest Source Of Fake News And Disinformation, EU Warns —Forbes, September 26, 2023 |
and JFK Junior flies his plane there
first across Idaho, false flags unfurled,
where Bigfoot is a forest-ranger bear.
Junior’s chemtrails stream upon 51
where the freemasons faked the moon-landing
and spaceship dismantling has just begun,
for alien tech gets swift rebranding.
Soros builds birds there, makes 5G fluoride,
listens to tunes penned by surrogate Paul
who offed Diana on that fateful ride
(9/11 sonic death-waves installed),
while adrenochrome demons mixed vaccines,
fixed birth certificates, voting machines…
Rob McClure’s creative work has appeared in many magazines—Gettysburg Review, Manchester Review, Barcelona Review, New Ohio Review.
Thursday, September 28, 2023
MEDITERRANEAN CORRIDOR
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From January 2023 to August 2023, inclusive, the UNHCR records that 2,314 people have died or been declared missing at sea on Mediterranean migration routes; the IOM similarly recorded 2,324 deaths or disappearances over the same time. —Wikipedia |
For these burials at sea
the dead are not sewn into sail cloth
No ceremony no one prays over them
Their boat converts to casket
their last refuge
Joanne Kennedy Frazer (Durham, NC) enjoys spending her silvering years writing poetry and publishing in numerous anthologies, journals, and ezines. She has written two chapbooks. Most recently, Seasonings (Kelsay Press).
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
WALKING THE PATH
Chico’s bicycle path near the intersection
of Rio Lindo without washing their backs
or dispensing medicines: she gathers their trash,
clothes, and wet-wipes with a three-foot-grabber
bequeathed by a friend. Fellow walkers along
the path say thank you while she fills plastic
bags, wears cheap plastic gloves, monitoring
her own heart with her pace-maker. Only walls
away divide her from being homeless herself,
though she worked full time since her teens.
She gives back to her country walking
amongst her brethren fallen on hard times,
some still homeless after the Paradise Camp fire.
It’s her home, her country;
in the handkerchief-sized plot outside
her apartment her tomatoes reach
the size of baseballs. You know people
kill rattlesnakes, she says, all you have
to do is walk around them. They live
here too. The Hopi consider them
to be sacred, as is the ground she walks on,
lifting another clump of trash into her bag,
just the way my father gathered litter
as he walked from the train station
on his way home, a veteran longtime gone,
planting tomatoes when he could no longer
see, counting them as round shadows
that hung in the air, sixty-seven last count.
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
GOODBYE
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work as appeared in The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, pacificREVIEW, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence, and HerWords Magazine.
Monday, September 25, 2023
MY IMPROV TEACHER CANCELS CLASS TO JOIN THE PICKET LINES
“I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.”
—Mitch Hedberg
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
—Yogi Berra
“Mary Barra makes twenty-nine million a year,” he says.
He’s sitting in front of the class. He sits, because of his back.
He says he won’t be back for possibly infinity, that this
strike might put his family out, have to leave. “And I’m from
Waterford too,” he says, “Where she was born.” A student says,
“They put Ford into everything here—Ford River, Waterford.”
“Yeah, they put it right in the drinking water,” says another
student, “Trust me, I’m from Flint.” The first day of class
he had us go around and say our names, what we do for
a living—roofer, firefighter, truck driver. He stopped us,
said, “You guys have the hardest jobs. What, is one of you
an oil rig worker?” “I used to be,” said one of the students.
“What’re you all doing here?” “We need some comedy
in our lives.” I don’t tell the class this, but my PTSD
counselor recommended improv, said social connection
is better than counseling. So I came. One day, the teacher
asked for a suggestion, and someone shouted, “War!”
I froze up, couldn’t talk. The teacher stood up, said,
“And this here’s the old town statue, unfortunately,
we’re gonna have to tear it down. Bye, Robert E. Lee.”
And then a bunch of the class entered into the scene
as townspeople and they picked me up and hauled me
in the air across the stage. Everybody was dying
laughing. After, a student said, “You make a really
good Bobby E. Lee.” More laughter. I had started
to have a panic attack, but they brought me back, tore
it down. And now we’re worried class is going to be
canceled. An EMT in the class said COVID’s coming
back. A guy who’s unemployed told us he was jealous
of our having work—and now our teacher doesn’t, says
it might go on forever, the strike, says he has to be out
on the line at 6 a.m., “but there’s no parking,” said he’s out
there in the rain. “That sucks.” “No,” he explains, “It’s
what I’ve been doing at GM my whole life. We work
outside, every day. Winter too.” We sit there and stare,
silent, at the stage. It’s empty. Totally empty. Black-
box theater. But not even black boxes. Nothing. Just us.
Sunday, September 24, 2023
DREAMING SUMMER DOWN
with domestic terror for a nightcap, home grown
it said, easy to fund, you can’t
keep bad men down. And fall begins today
even if summer still has
a scorpion’s tail. A night of interrupted sleep
with a dream of far away;
how well those friends of years ago
appeared. Good health among the living
and even better with
the dead. Who would have expected such
a fine reunion, or found
the references to erotica made in Vienna?
Outside, it’s Arizona warm
with coyotes wandering the starlit streets
and bus shelters doubling
as bedrooms for the poor. The midnight traffic
on the interstate is singing
in a sparkling monotone
and the moon hangs
like half a cup of fire between two
leaning palms. Let the past
be the past, say Goodnight
and ride a beam of dreamlight home.
Fumble for the key.
Ignore the splinters in the door where someone
must have brought a crowbar.
Imagine! The cracking wood, the aching
hinge, the next door neighbor’s
reassuring words: don’t worry,
it could never happen here.
David Chorlton has considered Phoenix home for several decades. He used to live in Vienna but rarely dreams about it. Much of his poetry comes from life in Arizona, where he has found strains of unrest and social disquiet that he can't ignore.
Saturday, September 23, 2023
TEACHER, END OF WEEK ONE
Erasing idle pencil marks on a desk
where a child’s elbow earlier rested, her face
gazing up through the newly polished glass to watch
the geese head south, a sight, of course, that was missed
by a teacher who always stands as he applies
the disinfectant spray to dirty desks.
Our funds are tight, administration says.
We let our custodians go the day we fired
all counselors and librarians. So, banish the dirt
from all those desks. Like we’ve done with books.
The teacher pauses, moves to the window, looks out,
sees caterpillars chew on poplar leaves.
He thinks about his student loan, regrets
the loss of youthful glee about this job.
Another row of desks. One hundred seventy-five
more days. He turns back to the window, notes
that outside the chewing continues. He watches, smiles.
They soon will find a sheltered spot to wait,
Jerry Krajnak gardens, writes poetry, and worries in his North Carolina retirement cabin. Recent poems appear in Star 82 Review, Rat's Ass Review, The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry, and other journals.
Friday, September 22, 2023
THE SUMMIT
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Kim pledges to back Putin’s ‘sacred struggle’ during rare summit —The Washington Post, September 13, 2023 |
See the two men smile
as they shake hands—
clean-shaven, well-dressed,
and well-fed. Comfortable
in their suits under a round
sun, blue sky. Together
they make history, sing,
ride a train. The platform
is so clean. Their shoes
gleam. Never mind that one
red spot the polisher missed,
there by the heel. It is
nothing. It can’t be blood.
W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of five poetry chapbooks: “Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father” (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Our Situation” Prolific Press, 2018), “Everyone Disappears” (Finishing Line Press, 2020), “Little Wars” (Kelsay Books, 2021), and “Watchman, What of the Night?” (CW Books, 2022). A full-length collection, “Flying to America” is scheduled for release in the spring of 2024, from Broadstone Press.
Thursday, September 21, 2023
BÉLIZAIRE
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
POPE PIUS XII KNEW
December 1, 1942
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Letter between Pope Pius XII, who served as Pope during World War II, and a German Jesuit reveals Pius knew of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust —James Gordon, Dailymail.com and Wires, September 18, 2023 |
You knew and what did you do?
The Jesuit priest wrote to you.
The SS was running death factories,
6,000 Poles and Jews killed every day.
You knew about Auschwitz and Dachau.
Did you pray on your lapis lazuli rosary
for the teenaged girl who saw her parents murdered?
Face down on her wooden bunk,
after the tan suits shaved her head and pubic hair.
Your supplicants say you worked
behind the scenes to help Jews
and stayed mute to prevent worsening
the situation for Catholics in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Your detractors say you lacked courage,
despite pleas from Allied powers fighting Germany.
Pius, Pius you knew, you knew.
The yellowed typewritten letter says it all.
Pius what did you fail to do?
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.
L’SHANAH TOVA WISHES FROM ‘45’
When I lived in the western U.S.
people told me that as a Jew
I should value how the GOP
made religion the foremost
test for American citizens.
They said Democrats and Liberals
were secularists
secular meaning socialist
a.k.a. godless
there can be no covenant
no Eretz
unless you are free market capitalist
of course, socialism was
one of Zionism’s foundations
think Kibbutz for instance
Subtext: I should become a Jew for Jesus.
There are and have long been socialists
who are religious
their political-spiritual imagination
just happens to range beyond
the Rocky Mountains
or a golf course in DeSantis land
to touch the former ghettos of Europe
the current Cheders of Brooklyn
and Buenos Aires and lots of places
lost to the amnesiac memory
of rapturists.
Recently, ‘45’ wished my people
L’Shanah Tova before telling 70+
percent of us that we voted
to destroy America and Israel.
What I want to know is
if I change my voter registration
to Trumpist, will Kanye and Elon
also send me New Year’s wishes
How about Nick Fuentes?
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes region of Canada. His most recent book is Flint River published by Alien Buddha Press (2023).