lie down secure to sleep,
for no one comes to hunt them
or slaughter them like sheep.
Around the cats of Springfield
no trappers lie in wait,
for they are not as humans
who rise to every bait.
Today's News . . . Today's Poem
The New Verse News
presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Above: ongoing map of cyanobacteria watches and warnings in Lake Winnipesaukee and other New Hampshire Lakes. Cyanobacteria is a natural part of freshwater ecosystems. But under the right conditions, it can grow too much and cause harmful blooms. Those can produce toxins that are harmful to people, pets, and wildlife, causing symptoms that range from nausea and rashes to muscle paralysis. Ted Diers, the head of the water division at New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services, says people should use good judgment when swimming or letting their pets swim. “If you see an area that looks particularly gross, that has a lot of green stuff in the water, you know, you may not want to jump in the water right there,” he said. —NHPR, August 30, 2024 |
Carla Schwartz’s poems have appeared in The Practicing Poet and in her collections Signs of Marriage, Mother, One More Thing, and Intimacy with the Wind. Learn more at https://carlapoet.com, or on all social media @cb99videos.
Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters via The Guardian |
Source: Mail Online |
Photo: Kevin Bubriski, World Trade Center Series, New York City, 2001, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Consolidated Natural Gas Company Foundation, 2003.65.1, © 2001, Kevin Bubriski |
~for Nolbert
Your sanctuary hasn't been touched
in over twenty years.
Hair intertwined with bristles
resting on the bathroom windowsill
next to the porcupine plant.
The shower still smells of Irish
Spring soap bathing your body.
You thought you would be late to protect
two sky scrapers.
Blue striped sheets pushed aside
on your futon fitted your body each night.
That September
morning, running late you grabbed
a pair of un-matching socks.
One grey sock hid from you under your bed.
You looked confident
in your grey uniform,
deep pockets for hiding notes,
ready to stop crime in the towers.
Today, I peek outside the oval bedroom window
seeing the view of early Autumn that you had
that last morning. Leaves beginning to change
colors, red, yellow, violet, hugging branches
before they fell in the yard.
Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet, educator and facilitator of poetry for healing and self-expression. Her new book of prose poems is titled Coral in the Diaspora published by Abode Press (August 2024). Her writing has been published and is forthcoming in The New Verse News, Artemis Journal, Urthona Buddhism and Art Magazine, The Dewdrop, Shambhala Times, The Yale Review, Wax Poetry & Art, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Mantis, Penumbra Literary & Art Journal, The Banyan Review, Kosmos Journal, Silver Birch Press, and many others. Her collaborative songwriting and poetry are featured on the Grammy-nominated album Many Hands Family Music for Haïti.
This is not a real book. Its cover has been A-I generated at Shutterstock by The New Verse News to accompany this poem. |
I sent my boy to his fifth grade class
and he returned a girl,
apparently operated on by the school nurse,
without our permission,
just like Trump predicted.
The school also confiscated his backpack
(or her backpack? I’m not sure.
It was easier to imagine others
with this woke problem).
In his—ok, wait here while I ask
my previous son what pronoun to use.
He said she wants to play
with his sister’s dolls,
while she said he wants an operation too.
I’m confused.
And then my wife mentioned polyamory,
and I said, we already store our guns
in more than one bunker.
The book they confiscated from my son’s —
wait here—
“Terry!”
He said she wants to spell her name with an ‘i’.
The book they confiscated from Terri’s backpack was
“Trans Fats: The Real Story,”
which the school librarian,
who moonlights as the science teacher,
thought was about fat boys transitioning
into skinny girls,
and vice reversa.
Though Trump railed against
these secret surgeries as if they’re evil incarnate,
I’m not so sure.
Terri has since won All State
in her youth softball league
and her sister is on track to win gold
in boy’s figure skating.
Chris Kaiser’s poetry has appeared in Rattle, Eastern Iowa Review, Dissident Voice, Better Than Starbucks, and The Scriblerus, as well as in anthologies from Moonstone Press. His poetry also appeared in Action Moves People United, a music and spoken word project partnered with the United Nations.
My son, a newly minted freshman, regales me
with tales of high school. There are pickleball
courts and the teachers are cool and the tacos
in the cafeteria aren’t that bad. Some of the varsity
basketball players already know his name.
He doesn’t think he will ask a girl
to Homecoming this year. There’s just one thing
that’s bothering him. They take our phones
at the beginning of class. How will I say
A study in the journal PLOS ONE found that extreme temperatures resulting from climate change could cause one in four steel bridges in the United States to collapse by 2050. By 2040, failures caused by extreme heat could require widespread bridge repairs and closures, the researchers found. Photo: A bridge connecting North Sioux City, S.D., and Sioux City, Iowa, collapsed in June after flooding. Credit: KC McGinnis —The New York Times, September 2, 2024 |
Squire Whipple's careful pen strokes flickered in the candlelight. A self-taught engineer, he drew his new design, the bowstring truss bridge built of iron, not unreliable wood. From the 1870s to the 1930s, his bridges arched across rural and urban American rivers knitting together a growing nation.
(Houu-hou-wit. Mourning doves mate for life. All the tiny parts, unseen, unnamed, unloved, holding together whole worlds. Houu-hou-wit.)
Bowstring truss bridges feature sturdy arches and bracing studded with innumerable round-headed rivets set by teams of three men. A good team could set fifteen rivets a minute, all day long. The first man heated each bolt in portable coal forges cranking the fan and setting the bolts in the white-hot coals. When a bolt glowed cherry-red, he tossed it up to the next man who caught it in a tin cup, grabbed it with long-handled tongs, and set it against the milled holes. The last man formed the head with the ringing blows of a ball-peen hammer.
(Kraa-kraa. Ravens remember the faces of their enemies and teach their young. Did the ravens scold the men who brought rank smoke and sharp sounds to quiet rivers? Kraa-kraa.)
For decades, dutiful communities painted these bridges a patient flat grey, fending off creeping rust. Now, these bridges strain under the weight of modern cars and trucks delivering our endless needs and whims. Through the winter the metal freezes, draped in icicles. In our scorching days, triple-digit weather silently heats each rivet and expands each joint and slab. Rivets shear, expansion joints twist, concrete buckles, and bridges collapse.
(Tchew, tchip, tchup. In one day, hummingbirds can eat up to 2,000 small bugs and mosquitos. They are slowly disappearing. All the tiny parts, unseen, unnamed, unloved, once weaving our world together. Tchew, tchip, tchup.)
A writer and artist, Deborah Kennedy’s work has been presented in the United States and Europe. Her recent book Nature Speaks: Art and Poetry for the Earth (White Cloud Press) combines poetry and illustrations to capture the bond between ourselves and the larger natural world. Nature Speaks won several national awards including the 2017 Eric Hoffer Poetry Book Award and Silver Nautilus Poetry Book Award. Her writing has recently appeared in great weather for MEDIA, First Literary Review-East, and Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis. Kennedy lives in San Jose, California where she teaches college classes and poetry workshops. She presents poetry readings with multimedia slide lectures to poetry, ecology and spiritual groups. Kennedy lives in San José, California, and is a Creative Ambassador for the City of San José working to advance creativity in her community with her innovative Broadside Art and Poetry Project.