I’M UNDOCUMENTED

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Metro UK, November 25, 2024

I pass you on the street. I can't be missed.

My presence is as real as yours to see,

Until you tell me that I don't exist:

Not dead, and not unborn, but sans ID,

Denied a passport by officialdom—

Officialdom whose rules insist that I'm

Called immigrant, and hence that I am from

Un-British parts where I've spent zero time.

My twenty-six long years of legal non-

Existence in my country will retard

Not only me: a nation prospers on

The worth of all, like me, who can work hard...

Except that I'm undocumented, and

Don't qualify—nor do I understand.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE

by Jennnifer Schneider

Barbara Taylor Bradford, one of the world’s best-selling novelists, who captivated readers for decades with chronicles of buried secrets, raging ambitions and strong women of humble origins rising to wealth and power, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 91. —The New York Times, November 25, 2024

She filled blank pages with words of

multiple meanings and suits tailored for stories

of queens. She crafted plots that resembled 

her own life story and offered a staircase to portals

rich in descriptive imagery. A rags-to-riches arc 

that avoided and, at times, created, as many markers 

of cliche and peculiarly timed climaxes as it delivered

tension and reams of dreams

strung of form-

fitting predictability. A twist to the standard 

plot, on ice, of dice—she dined with hands of Margaret 

Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth and, in her own 

way, revealed subtleties

of character. An admirable trajectory to fill any library. 

Of Substance—a single proper

noun. 

In a series of serious words

she doubled down on Doubleday. 

She made child’s play of words and commerce of play.

A woman of

humble origins. A staircase built for empires

and umpires tracking stars in eyes 

and star-struck skies. Arms stretched wide. 

The dictionary lacks a proper word for a character

of her sort. Charades neither game nor fame. A novel protagonist 

of the written word. My word. She penned thousands of sentences,

But her greatest act of all is a simple form—her, as a verb. A fiery 

engine of commerce and craft and compulsively consumable plot 

twists. Amidst sudden changes of heart and the wonder 

of it all—a trusted pen, a loyal friend. Neither weapon 

nor contempt for the reality of the wor(l)d. She wrote the story 

as she lived it. To Remember. As any woman that could 

and would and should dream it. Hold it.

A heroine so bold. 

She lived and wrote and broke her own rules. 

Of voice and of heart. Of Just Rewards.

As the plot unfolds to its final page. 

The finale in her words

She remains a work and Woman of Substance

A celebrity in the rarest of literary terms form.

A story (unedited) well told.

A dynasty (unscripted) all her own.

A strong verb.

To be continued. A sequel, well-earned.

Jennifer Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

LET’S DROP THE BALM

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Salve for the whole planet
Nuclear, to the last atomic particle
A wind so obliterating it removes all hate
Leaving a fallout of divine love with no half-life
Across all lands, all cells, all souls
 

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had three previous poems published in the New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” 

WHAT WE ONCE HAD FOR BLACK FRIDAY BRUNCH

by Evan Leslie

youth and mustard 

but no bread

we buttered our cheese

corner store brie, only just past expiring

 

still good

 

little black pepper packets, “little cuties,” 

stale tortillas and yesterday’s 

turkey, shared between endless hands 

of rummy and plenty

 

of gin with Sprite, playing 

thankful 

for what we didn't 

yet have, but—damn—what we might 

 

yet get, would 

give, could 

risk

back then

Evan Leslie grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and now lives in Houston, Texas with his Husband, Ryan, and his rescue pit bull, Rimbaud (formerly Rambo).  Evan is a cellist, arts educator, and the director of the University of Houston’s Community Arts Programs. Evan is the former Artistic Producer at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Evan is grateful for the support and guidance he has received in workshops at Inprint Houston.  His poems have recently appeared in The Pinchand Troublemaker Firestarter. 

THANKSGIVING AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2024

by Tarn Wilson

The people I know have elegant souls.

They wear unfashionable shoes.

They drive raggedy cars.

The people I know have dignified souls.

They have cracks in their walls.

Their sweaters are pilled.

The people I know have radiant souls.

They’re an army of kindness.

They gather in kitchens.

The people I know have royal souls.

They are wise and brave.

They are frightened and brave.

They are warriors disguised.

What they know will save us. 

Tarn Wilson is the author of the lyric memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and a craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write. Her essays, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Assay, Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet Lit, and The Sun.

THE THINGS GOOD PEOPLE DO

by Cecil Morris

Portland’s ‘frog taxi’ offers a life-saving lift to a struggling species. Volunteers shuttle Northern red-legged frogs across U.S. Highway 30 to prevent real-life Frogger. —OPB News, November 23, 2024

A little morning news that made me smile:
In Oregon, the Harborton frog shuttle,
a handful of concerned amateurs,
a collection of volunteers, patrol,
through November chill, at night in the rain,
to gather spawning Northern red-legged frogs
and transport them, free of charge, across blur
of traffic on U. S. Highway 30,
thus preventing a slaughter of innocents.

Let me be like those people, tender-hearted
and kind and brave and willing to protect
the ones who, alone, cannot save themselves.
Let me join the flotilla of volunteers
who come out in dark of difficult times
to ferry those in need back to safety.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, 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.

THE LOST ONES

by Jean Varda

Candido Portinari: Dead Child (Criança morta), 1944, oil on canvas.

This is for the lost ones
hiding and shuddering in
broken down cars and tents
without heat, sleeping 
under tarps next to 
shopping carts in the rain,
walking all night down
city streets to stay warm
then searching through 
dumpsters for breakfast.
This is for the refugees in
back rooms erasing them
selves, quitting their jobs
so they don’t get caught.
This is for the hungry
the cold the sick, the
victims of war, for the 
broken families at the
borders begging to get
in, to cross over.

Jean Varda is a poet and artist residing in Chico California. Where she lives in government housing next to the city bike path. She started out as a street poet in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the days before computers and cell phones.

DEAR MAGAS

by Anita S. Pulier

Republicans Target Social Sciences to Curb Ideas They Don’t Like: Conservatives in Florida have moved from explosive politics to subtler tactics to uproot liberal “indoctrination” in higher education by removing classes like Sociology from core requirements.

—The New York Times, November 21, 2024.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

What’s missing is the welcome,
the worry, the asking, the hesitation
to inflict irreparable damage.

What’s missing is the listening,
the hearing, the ingesting
the Other’s story.

What’s missing is the raised eyebrow,
the rejection of weaponized prayer
fueled by hate and anger.

What’s missing is the nod
to Earth’s feverish future,
the grief of broken promises.

What’s missing is an apology,
the agonized regret,
the elasticity of empathy.

What’s missing is vulnerability,
the failure to fear a charred
barren planet.

What’s missing is the poetry.
Every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.*

Oh yes, and joy.
Joy is missing.

*Walt Whitman “Song of Myself”

Anita S. Pulier’s chapbooks Perfect Diet, The Lovely Mundane and Sounds of Morning and her books The Butchers Diamond and Toast were published by Finishing Line Press.  Paradise Reexamined came out in 2023 (Kelsay Books). Her new book Leaving Brooklyn is due out in Jan '25 from Kelsay Books. Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in many print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily.

LAND MINES

by Tricia Knoll

The Biden administration has approved supplying Ukraine with American anti-personnel mines to bolster defenses against Russian attacks as Ukrainian front lines in the country’s east have buckled, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday. —The New York Times, November 20, 2024

I hear those words and think of Diana

in head gear walking in Angola,

 

facing pitfalls and explosives

as she walked for peace. 

 

I hear those words and remember that rat

Magawa who won a gold medal for sniffing,

 

alerting and the giant Gambian pouch rats

that followed, searching for buried armaments, 

 

whom handlers named Harry Potter and Godiva. Rats

that live nine years, a good training investment. 

 

Battlefields laced with mines to remove legs and end lives,

in places distant from me – Iran, Iraq, Sudan,

 

Syria, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, and more

My country never a signatory to the treaty

 

to prohibit them. The cost to make a mine

one hundredth of the cost to remove. 

 

I thought of land mines and never thought

my people would plant them 

 

in fields sowed for sunflowers.  

Tricia Knoll has no great love for rats, having lived with a few, but respects the capabilities of  pouched rats. Her work appears widely in journals and nine publications, either full-length books or chapbooks. She is a Contributing Editor to the online poetry journal Verse Virtual. She is grateful to The New Verse News for allowing her to write feelings that the news of today sparks.

ROTATED

by Richard Garcia

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

You will be rotated. You will be rotated in ways you did not foresee. You will be walking casually away in one direction and then find yourself walking casually away in the opposite direction. Do not be alarmed this will only be a test. If this were the real rotation you would not be able to read this because your eyes would be rotated. Do not attempt to curry favor by accepting your rotation—your acceptance will be rotated. You will find yourself in a line of concentric circles that spiral along the border. You will be rotated toward checkpoints where tall, broad-shouldered men wearing military caps and mirrored aviator sunglasses, with belts cinched below their bellies and pistols strapped to their hips are waiting to inspect your papers. You will be rotated into newly constructed barriers where bullhorns will declare, Y'all git along now, you folks gonna be rotated and all your people gonna be rotated, your children gonna be rotated and that's how it's gonna be now and forever. 

Richard Garcia's poetry books include The Other Odyssey (Dream Horse Press, 2014), The Chair (BOA 2015), and Porridge (Press 53, 2016). He has received a Pushcart Prize and been in Best American Poetry.

MUSHROOM BY ANY OTHER NAME

by Rikki Santer

Image combines illustration by Thomas Gaulkin / DonkeyHotey (Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0) / VectorStock with photo by Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, via Associated Press and NYT.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia formally announced a new nuclear doctrine this weekend, but the response in Washington was just short of a yawn.Credit...—The New York Times, November 19, 2024

Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war. —Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists —July 2, 2024

On the precipice of historical near misses who 

will go first, six or so decades of strange love

for hair trigger alert, are we on the clock feeling 

for the light switch, heads submerged in a cloud

of unknowing, more nuclear-weapon states 

on the chess board, silos loaded with missiles, 

armed submarines wander deep into oceans

and 47 plans to twist treaties, accelerate warheads,

once launched no recall, the mad mad 

mad mad world of it,  bunker down

In 2023, Rikki Santer was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her forthcoming collection, Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books.