THE DAILY BRIEF

by Michal Rubin

Counting backwards. Day 318 of a war. 

Yesterday the yard flooded,

an email hollered at me-

“317 days of slaughter”.

I apologized.

 

Counting backwards. Day 303 of a war.

Ishaq starved to death. His motorcycle

remained under the rubble,

he loved it. The motorcycle. He didn’t holler.

I apologized.

 

Counting backwards. Day 300 of a war.

West of the city, carrying food on his

bike, Khaled rode too close 

to the missile. Burial site unknown.

I apologized.

.

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Counting backwards. Day 36 of a war. 

I am at a conference. Unseasonably warm. 

I brought the wrong clothes. Elham 

dropped the embroidered bag when 

a sniper’s bullet reached her.

I apologized.

 

Counting backwards. Day 13 of a war.

In a poem Hiba wrote “We are not just

transients passing”. Her poems rippled

through the world, she was killed. 

At home. An airstrike.

I apologized.

 

In a beginning. Day 1 of this war.

Clear sky, a small pond, 

a gentle fall in SC. Horror

surges afar. No flutter in this pond.

I call home—

I don't apologize.

Michal Rubin is an Israeli, living in Columbia, SC. The impetus for her writing came from the years-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a  psychotherapist, a Cantor and a poet, she brings forth the challenge of distinguishing truths from myths, awareness vs. denial, conformity vs. individuation. Her work was published in Psychotic Education,  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Wrath Bearing Tree journal,  Rise Up Journal, Topical Poetry,  Fall-Lines,  The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Waxing & Waning: A Literary Journal,  South Carolina Bards Poetry Anthology 2023, Palestine-Israel Journal, Critical Muslim, and a chapbook published by Cathexis Northwest Press.

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE (TAYLOR’S VERSION)

by Diane Elayne Dees

Taylor Swift attends the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards. PHOTO: 

JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE

Publicly acknowledge your peers
and show pleasure in their creations.
Make little girls happy at every opportunity.
Everywhere you go, stock the food bank 
for a year, and send emergency money
to our states before the government 
can even fill out the forms.
Show women and girls how to take 
ownership of their own lives.
Show little girls that tears and rage
and poetry and making money
and red lipstick and ass-kicking
are all feminine pursuits.

Don’t cheat your vendors, defraud
your customers, or insult your fans.
Don’t incite violence wherever you go,
and don’t endanger the lives of others
because they are black, brown, female,
government officials, or journalists.
Don’t sexually abuse anyone,
don’t pretend you don’t know
anyone or anything connected to you,
don’t threaten people.

And do whatever it takes to guide 
us out of this Cruel Summer.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). 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. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

THE CATS OF SPRINGFIELD, OHIO

by Gail White

The cats that live in Springfield
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.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Paper Cuts, Asperity Street, and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

A WEEK AFTER YET ANOTHER CYANOBACTERIA WATCH ON THE LAKE

by Carla Schwartz

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

It’s been days since I’ve been here, where the weather is cooling, swum 
here, a dish left on the counter, encrusted with old breakfast. I step outside. 
The sun, bright. The wind bites my skin. It’s a strong wind with harsh gusts 
thrusting leaves, acorns a-scatter, but I suit up for the cool, tap on my music, 
and step out onto my paddle board to face what the lake presents: a disorganized 
wind, flags pointing where they shouldn’t—into the forecast direction rather 
than against. I paddle with and against the swirling wind. I can’t help think about 
Francine, the latest named storm, drawing its strength from the warm gulf waters
as I ignore the chill wind and slide off my board, leashed to my ankle, to swim. 
I take off against the current, waves wanting to turn my body, to go where I hadn’t 
intended, so every so often I check my bearings to unstray. You might think I swim 
for punishment, punishment for not working the booths for the vote, for not 
dragging people’s asses out to vote, for not acknowledging there’s this hurricane
mounting in the gulf, building toward crescendo tomorrow to crash the Louisiana 
shore, and there will be one more and another and another unless we temper 
the warm waters, but I continue on my swim, not punishment, but passion,
to stroke against the waves, to keep myself from swallowing what the climate 
has begun to spoil, to keep myself afloat.

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.

MORAL CLARITY

by Julie Steiner

Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters via The Guardian

    Asked by CBS News [on Friday] what he would advise a Catholic voter forced to choose between a candidate who backs abortion rights and one who has said he would have 11 million migrants deported, the pope said: “They are both against life—the one who throws away migrants and the one who kills children.” 

     ...Asked whether there were any circumstances under which it would be morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who does support abortion rights, Francis said when considering political morality, “one must vote.”

    "One must choose the lesser of two evils," he said. "Who is the lesser of two evils, that lady or that gentleman, I do not know." 

 

One has to vote,
declared Pope Francis with a sigh.
One has to vote.
Dilemma’s horns are at one’s throat.
Abstention’s not an option. Try.
Although both options cast a “Die,”
one has two. Vote.

Choose the lesser
evil. (Both are bad, in short.)
Choose the lesser,
quoth the pontiff at his presser:
Pick either A (Deport! Deport!)
or B (Let those who could abort
choose.) “The lesser

of two evils”
assumes they’re not equatable.
Of two evils,
which brings fewer lives upheavals?
Choose the not-as-hateable —
“And which is that?” “Debatable.” —
of two evils.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared in the past year include Literary Matters, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

GOING DEEPER

by Cecil Morris

Yellow No. 5 food dye. (Matthew Christiansen/U.S. National Science Foundation)

“Scientists use food dye found in Doritos to make see-through mice.” —The Washington Post, September 5, 2024.

I had seen her naked—more than once—
that was fun for a while—and arousing too—
but now I wanted more—more than surface—
more than skin-deep knowing—superficial titillation— 
Armed with tartrazine—good old Yellow #5—
in truth a bag of pulverized Doritos—I massaged
and massaged my beloved—the bony plain
between her breasts and then the smoothness of her scalp—
a slow and steady knowing entering my hands—
and just like the Stanford scientists said
in their Science article—all became clear—first
my own hands’ knobby bones and tangle of tendons, 
my rushing blood—then my beloved’s off-white sternum,
her ribs, her elusive peek-a-boo heart—the clench
and release of her love—and through her scalp
and skull her brain at work, her thoughts a mist
on sea breeze borne, a mesmerizing swirl
in which I fell— It was so good—sublime—
old Spock’s Vulcan mind-meld—and overwhelmed
I collapsed and hummed my sated sound—
and she sat up—her chest, her head aglow—
and asked if it worked— 

Full disclosure: neither my beloved nor I have
attended Stanford not even for a swim meet
or football game and neither marijuana

nor LSD were directly involved in this.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. He and his partner, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

POST MORTEM: THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

The history of a planet in sixteen lines

by Greg McClelland

Source: Mail Online

It all began when a molten mass,

boiling within,

battered from without,

barreled through a gaping void.

 

Peaks of solidity surfaced;

tectonic hands and burning digits

designed antediluvian bone:

basalt, sandstone, granite, schist.

 

Through five hundred million years,

from Ordovician to Cretaceous,

our mother birthed and killed five litters

of living tissue.

 

Then she birthed a sixth,

which brewed its own poisons—

digital, solid, nuclear, microscopic—

leading to the first synthetic holocaust.

Greg McClelland is a retired government ethics attorney. He has published poetry in Ancient Paths, The Road Not Taken, All Around the Mulberry Bush, and his college alma mater newsletter. Besides writing poetry, he spends his retirement working in political activism, helping to ensure that Trump will never see the inside of the White House again.

HAUNTING SEPTEMBER

by Jerrice J. Baptiste

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. 

PRACTICING FOR THE BIGLY DEBATE

by Wayne Scheer

No one ever saw a debate like this.

They tell me seven billion people

will watch me,

maybe more.

So I have to prepare bigly.

First, I’ll mispronounce her name.

Ka-MAL-a, 

Then I’ll call her 

Kamrade.

She’ll try to laugh 

And I’ll remind people how only low IQ people

laugh like that. 

I never laugh.

I smirk, sometimes I sneer.  Mostly, I grimace.

That’s manly.

She opens her mouth when she laughs.

That’s a girlie thing.  

My father once hit me in the mouth for laughing.

I hate people who are happy.

I have more money.  Money makes a person happy.

My father taught me that, too.  

Ka-MAL-a doesn’t have as much money as I have,

so her laugh is a lie.

It has to be.

My father said.

And stop feeding me all those facts and statistises.

No one wants to hear that.

My rating will drop with my followers if I spout facts.

They want red meat, not kale salad.

Do you know how much red meat has gone up

since Komrade Ka-MAL-a and Obama have been in power?

Neither do I.

But people tell me it tripled, quadrupled.

People have to feed their children sawdust 

because they can’t afford

prime rib for their babies.  I hear that all the time.

I teethed on filet mignon and lobster,

(this was pre McDonald’s) 

but children today suck on little plastic thingies.

It’s all Obama’s fault.  And Hillary’s.

Lock them up! Lock them up?

What’s that?  I’m going to debate Kamala Harris, not Obama or Hillary.

Since when?

Oh, that’s right, Ka-MAL-a.  

I get them mixed up.  Ka-MAL-a. O-BAM-a. Frederick Douglass.

Ka-Mal-a? Isn’t she the one who sat in the front of the bus

when she isn’t even black?

What? Why should keep that to myself?

You don’t know anything about ratings.  

It’s time to let me be me.

I’m President of the World and a black belt in Karate.

I trained as a Navy Seal, you know.

They say I was the best recruit they ever saw.

I would have gone to Vietnam and stopped that war in one day,

but my father had bone spurs... 

Wayne Scheer lives with his wife in Atlanta. After twenty-five years of teaching writing and literature in college, he is trying to follow his own advice and write. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his stories have appeared in such varied publications as The Christian Science Monitor, Sex and Laughter, The Pedestal, Flash Me Magazine, Cezanne’s Carrot, The Binnacle and The Better Drink.

TRANS FATS

by Chris Kaiser

This is not a real book. Its cover has been A-I generated at Shutterstock by The New Verse News to accompany this poem.

Trump falsely claims children being forced into gender transition ops at school in rambling fantasy-filled rally speech. —The Independent, September 9, 2024

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.