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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

FROM THE DARK

by Karen Warinsky


Top: Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda. Bottom: Screenshot of Bisan’s Instagram post referenced in the poem.


A voice from the dark

speaks quietly to the living light,

a soft, devastated voice

without tears or trembling

because the woman of this voice

has seen too much

traveling through this beast’s belly

for more than a year

and now knows what

humankind can do

to children

to hospitals full of elderly, ill 

and injured people,

to entire towns,

knows the outcome of bombs

the smell of death and garbage.

“The world is complicit in this.

No one must be silent in this,” she states.

 

She expects nothing now, 

after her year of messages

cast upon the online sea,

her Emmy, her fame,

but wishes the world would march

to the borders of Gaza,

call out, shout, pray

make a presence that would

stop the madness,

“What next?” Bisan asks, “what next?”



Karen Warinsky is a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest and a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee. She is widely published in anthologies, journals and E-zines. Her books are Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby, (2022) (both from Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023, Alien Buddha Press). Warinsky coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large in CT and MA.