ON CRUELTY: RILEY MOORE AT CECOT

by Jennifer Browne

What makes human hands unique? The human opposable thumb is longer, compared to finger length, than any other primate thumb. This long thumb and its ability to easily touch the other fingers allow humans to firmly grasp and manipulate objects of many different shapes. —American Museum of Natural History 

1. 

The hand can wield a weapon. The hand can soothe the lost, can smooth a tear-streaked cheek. The hand can navigate a loving body. The hand can pull an infant from a blood-smeared body. The hand can make a meal for a child, can feed a child. The hand can lead a person away from his home by the arm. The hand can pull a hood over a head. The hand can dig a grave in which to place a body. The hand can join in prayer. The hand can hold the grey-painted bar of a cell. The hand can close and lock the door of a grey-painted cell. There is so much to carry, to hold, to grasp. The hand can hold the reins and lead a clattering cart speeding into a ditch. The hand can hold a marker, can scrawl and sign a document. The hand can hold a tool. The hand can hold the tools that crack and crumble what felt sure. The hand can shape itself into a fist. The hand can shape itself into a fist and shake out its futility.

2. 

thumb (n.)—“shortest and thickest digit of the human hand, next the index finger and opposable to the others," Middle English thoume, from Old English þuma, from Proto-Germanic *thūman- (source also of Old Frisian thuma, Old Saxon, Old High German thumo, German Daumen, Dutch duim "thumb," Old Norse þumall "thumb of a glove"), etymologically "the stout or thick (finger)," from PIE *tum- "swell," from root *teue- "to swell" (source of tumor, tuber).

3. 

"Rep. Riley Moore posted photos of himself giving a thumbs up in front of imprisoned people at CECOT, an El Salvador prison notorious for human rights violations. The Trump administration has deported hundreds of immigrants without due process to CECOT, some by mistake. Moore also praised President Trump's handling of immigration in the post." —Rep. Riley Moore Does Not Belong in Congress.” ACLU West Virginia

4. 

In its base state, the hand is empty.  

5. 

thumb (n.), ctd.—The figure of being under (someone's) thumb "controlled by that person's power or influence" is from late 14c.

6.

Look into the palm of any human hand, any primate hand, and see your own, see yourself. Interlace your fingers and feel the wealth of nerves that let you feel. Think of holding hands, holding faces, your beloved, the innocents within your care. Think of any of the harms you’ve wrought. The speed with which those harms happen, the carelessness.

7. 

We have stood at this door before, this terrifying new.

8.

"The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head…In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid." —Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker, April 30, 2004

9.

Look into these photographs. Into whose ears do you want to speak some solace? Whose shoulders do you want to wrap with care? 

10. 

I cannot hold the want of wrath that rises from a place I have no name for in my body. 

11. 

thumb (n.), ctd.—Thumbs up (1887) and thumbs down (1906) were said to be from expressions of approval or the opposite in ancient amphitheaters, especially gladiator shows, where the gesture decided whether a defeated combatant was spared or slain. But the Roman gesture was merely one of hiding the thumb in the hand or extending it. Perhaps the modern gesture is from the usual coachmen's way of greeting while the hands are occupied with the reins.

12. 

There is something that I need to say, need to sing, need to scream into the ears of any who would listen, but the ones who would listen also want to scream. I have no words. There is something I need to say about power, about influence. There is something I need to say about how power swells. There is something I need to say about bloodsport, about the merciless. There is something I need to say about what can be manipulated even out of reach of a thumb, a finger, a hand. Look into these photographs. There are so many who are also raising thumbs, who are saying good, good, who are saying they are monsters. They are monsters. 

13. 

I have too many words. I have no words.

Author's note: My grandmother was born in 1906 in Elkins, WV, a city in West Virginia's 2nd congressional district, currently represented by Riley Moore. 

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025), In a Period of Absence, a Lake (Origami Poems Project, 2025), whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023).

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ANDREW CARLOS

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

I am American

adopted 24 years ago

from Peten.

 

I am Guatemalan 

proud of my 

Mayan heritage.

 

I am American 

in a large family that I love 

(mom, dad, sisters, aunts, 

uncles, cousins, grandparents).

 

I am Guatemalan 

Some Americans are angry

that I am here 

in their country. 

 

I am American

work fulltime, 

attend university,

pay taxes, vote.

 

I am Guatemalan  

many who look like me

are torn from their

American lives

sent to detention centers

no due process. 

.

I am an American 

whose family 

is gravely concerned

for my welfare 

in these times.

 

I am a Guatemalan-American citizen.

Author's note: This is my grandson's life right now...I feel it needs to be shared.  

Joanne Kennedy Frazer, a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations, began writing poetry in her third stage of life, and has now been published more than 80 times in a variety of literary venues. Five poems were turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham. Her last chapbook, Seasonings (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. She lives in Raleigh, NC.

THE PASSOVER STORY: A MIDRASH

by Joel Savishinsky

 

It seems that long ago, 
there was a strong streak 
of antisemitism in Egypt. 
Something about domestic servitude. 
Lots of salty sweat; 
construction jobs performed 
by undocumented people. 
A labor leader arose—the usual kind 
of suspect: Jewish, bearded, 
an immigrant, messianic inclinations 
—and he called a strike. There were 
threats of retribution. There 
were counter-threats, something 
about nasty stuff, plagues. 
 
Death threats, sacrificial animals, 
an angel making overhead 
surveillance flights—
possible early versions of 
Jewish space lasers—
lambs' blood smeared on doorways, 
a kind of warning, a kind of sign 
to leave us alone. Then there was 
an expulsion order. Many waters to cross...
that kind of thing. The people crossed over. 
It was not the Hudson. The promised land 
was not, contrary to rumors, New Jersey. 
 
Apparently, some of the descendants of 
the people who got across the water are 
now persecuting another people 
—also Semites, as it turns out—who live where 
the former slaves’ ancestors used to live. 
It is a sad cycle. 
 
Those who have a sense of history and 
its tragic ironies now raise their wine glasses 
and say, with tears in their eyes, Oy vey. 
We should know better. 
We could do a lot better than this.
 

Author's note: Midrash: an ancient commentary on part of the Hebrew scriptures, attached to the Biblical text. 
 

Joel Savishinsky is a retired professor of anthropology and gerontology, and the author of the collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Passager, and Willawaw. His book Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, won the Gerontological Society of America’s annual book award. He has been leading family Passover Seders for many years. 

SPRING (RUDE) AWAKENING

or HANDS OFF MY SHOWERHEAD

President Trump, who has waged a long-running battle against low water pressure, signed an executive order that redefined a common bathroom fixture. —The New York Times, April 10, 2025

by Ann Weil

after Louise Glück’s “October (section I)”
 

Is it Spring again, is it green again,
aren’t we a field of four-leaf clover,
aren’t we coming up posies, 
 
weren't we promised,
aren’t we deserving,
aren’t we special, 
 
wasn’t he strong,
tougher than bullets,
 
didn’t he vow a phoenix nation,
to clean the shop
of waste and scum,
isn’t he bold, isn’t he clever, not telling
the half of his plans 
for ’25—
 
I remember our weakness, our shameful
kindness, our brotherly love, our lead-by-example,
didn’t those values drag us down,
drown us in our Gulf of America,
 
I can’t remember 
which government bloat 
I’m supposed to hate more—
park rangers or cancer researchers,
 
I no longer care
about clean air and healthcare, 
but, man, those egg prices
keep me up at night—
 
who needs allies, free-trade, or 401Ks,
who needs hurricane warnings
or Judy Blume books, 
 
down with DEI, up with ICE,
when was I young there were no illegals, 
no signs in Spanish, my grandparents spoke
only English, swept their Yiddish 
under the rug,
 
when did the taco trucks takeover
and bubble-tea shops spread like a rash,
when did a skirt 
give a guy a free pass
to the ladies room—
a scourge more worrisome 
than measly measles,
 
I blame the Fathers’ faulty foundation—
the Constitution’s lunatic creed,
 
didn’t we thrive without due process, 
without free-speech and fair elections,
 
wasn’t it great
when we were subjects
subject to
the whims of a king,
 
didn’t so-called progress
lead us to this towering cliff,
 
aren’t we jumping, won’t we bounce,
bounce back better like he said,
 
yes, we’re jumping,
isn’t it Spring?  
Yes, it’s Spring, 2025.

Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, 2024). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2024, Pedestal Magazine, RHINO, Chestnut Review, DMQ Review, Maudlin House, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. A four-time Pushcart nominee, Weil lives with her husband in Ann Arbor, MI, and Key West, FL.

FISH CROWS

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

The fish crows in my neighborhood
Are engaged in conversation
Not the sharp caws of their cousins
More of a quiet how are you I am too
In nasal tones that don’t hurt for sounding French
 
Small Andrena mining bees
Are on the wing in Rock Creek Park
Gathering pollen from peppermint striped spring beauty flowers
Then flying home to feed their young
 
An osprey pair is nesting on the Potomac
In a marriage surviving biannual journeys
Of thousands of miles
 
We too are nesting and gathering
And quietly conversing all across America
Wishing to be seen and heard
Or not seen and heard
Wishing to carry on

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and author of several nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons. Many of her poems have been featured in The New Verse Newsand Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

WHAT DOESN’T VANISH IF DENIED

by Devon Balwit

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

Department of Commerce announces the end of $4 million in funding of climate risk projects at Princeton. —Daily Princetonian, April 9, 2025

The prevailing wisdom used to be to hide 

the ailment from the ailing and, in so euphemizing,

ease their dying, like a fringe of trees beside

the road used to mask clear-cutting.

 

But the patient, intimate with tumors and waning powers, 

knew, and felt the greater pain for all 

the smiling, for all the cheery cards and flowers,

and wondered at the falsehood, and was appalled.

 

And we, too, as we hear our current leaders

asking scholars to deny how far gone

we are so we mightn’t worry—as if our rivers

weren’t in flood or our homes burned to the lawns.

 

As if insisting there’s no such thing as gravity,

makes the times we’re living in less heavy.

Devon Balwit edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.

TO THE ERASER

by Tricia Knoll

after Elon Musk’s posting on Xwitter the video of Milton Friedman’s use of a pencil to explain world trade.

Erasing seems obsolete. We delete,
Seldom switch away rubbery debris.
(Some poets cross-hatch
the words they want to keep
but know should go,
gimmick-choice.)
 
To mistakes with no reminders.
Paper without blemishes. 
 
School bus yellow
and shades of graphite
smog on a very hard day 
 
but the pencil has come of age—
icon of interdependence, 
cedar and rubber, metal tourniquet
 
around tariffs in supply chains
that bind rebounding erasures 
of migrants, protestors, equity, 
inclusion, earned retirement security,
health care and the welfare
of children. 

The pencil writes Chinese

as well as English. 

Tricia Knoll grimaces at the Trumpian erasures of truth, of people, of traditions, and promises. She writes dozens of postcards to elected officials using pens so as not to be completely erased.

IDIOT YEARS

by Thomas R. Smith

Our Mayan friend Martín says we’re sick with
a collective “unmetabolized grief.”
Civil War, Vietnam, Iraq, the list goes on.
Our response? Build higher psychic dams
to hold the tears. Those dams, ridiculously
expensive, bulge above every town, city,
and farm—few notice the supports straining,
the hairline cracks webbing the concrete poured
by profiteers grown fat on our denial.
Will it be said of us that we did not
possess the curiosity to inquire
what was being done to the world in our name
with our tax dollars? That we also were
mad to allow the mad to lead us?
Mad or, worse, indifferent? Dylan called
us an idiot, babe. When we’ve bombed
the earth to rubble, shall we then bomb
the rubble to sand? There’s beachfront property
for you rich to enjoy in your idiot years
before the dammed tears sweep you away.

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

ARE WE THERE YET?

Ode to Passover

by Anita S Pulier

Painting by Frans Pourpos the Elder (c. 1565–1580) depicting God showing Moses the Promised Land. Source: Wikipedia.

Celebrate forty years of wandering.
Forty years of searching.

Read Haggadah to the children,
give thanks,

sing praises
for the tribe surviving.

Focus on the ancients,
not the news.

Ignore ICE, as it issues
this warning: if officers

view you as Other,
hear a foreign accent,

take notice of tatoos,
you will be wrangled

like cattle into pens
and, paperless or not, deported.

To where? Weep, explain
you have lived here

since you were two,
this is your home.

Your wife, your children,
your aged mother

may never see you again.
Glory be to what?

Listen! Angry screams nurtured
by hatred, drown out the cries

of kids in Florida, or Texas, or next door.
How many more will be force fed this poison

in the name of a merciless God
punishing the sin of survival?

and Gaza
and Gaza

Tonight, we Jews co-opt words;
suffering, pain, freedom.

I imagine the day that
anyone’s God

will deliver enlightenment,
angels will sing,

heavenly light will shine
on the cruel irony of the self-righteous,

the day each of us will be revealed
as the supplicant,

each of us the Other.
The day our ancient journey,

our Passover celebration,
will not fall so woefully short

of the promised land.

Anita S Pulier's newest  books are Paradise Reexamined and Leaving Brooklyn  (Kelsay Books). ). Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in nine print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily.

THE DEAD WAKE

by W. Luther Jett

The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country. —The Guardian, April 11, 2025

The dead brush their teeth,
drink coffee, stare
at the morning news screen.
The dead are the lead feature.
The dead take the crosstown 
bus to the factory, the fast
food place, the office. 
They send their children to school.
Are their children also dead?
No-one is certain. The dead
Call up their doctors, their
lawyers, their graduate advisors.
All the lines are dead.
The dead go back to work.
The dead receive paper cuts
and bleed. Their blood is red.
The dead walk among us.
The dead sit beside us
in the restaurant, on the 
underground, in the park.
You would not know,
to look at them, that they are dead.
The dead go home for supper.
The dead shower and go to bed.
There is a ship in the harbor, waiting
to sail away in the morning.
The dead will not be on it.


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 six poetry chapbooks. His full-length collection, “Flying to America” was published by Broadstone Books in 2024, while his most recent chapbook, “The Colour War”, has just been released by Kelsay Books. 

SPIT IN A TUBE

by Roberta Batorsky

As soon as the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy on March 23, 2025, concerns about what would happen to the personal information contained in its massive genetic and health information database were swift and widespread. A few days after, a U.S. judge ruled that the company could sell its consumer data as part of the bankruptcy. —Gizmodo, April 7, 2025.

23andme is out of cash
but they have all my DNA
Boy, would I like to settle their hash
get my stuff back from them today

Someone could cook a clone of me
build a murderer or pedophile
I could turn out more horrible
morphed into a raptor or reptile 

Would they use my letters
to cause harm to me and mine?
Or, could it work out for the better
to improve the basic design

A version thinner prettier funnier
someone proud to wear my name
Or, the duplicate only in veneer,
my identity would claim

So, if they have people’s recipes
a new world could they create 
of peace, tolerance tranquility
a universe free of hate

Where Trump and his minions
Bannon Rubio Musk Vance and Waltz
are on a garbage scow due north of Greenland
ice-bound ‘til they express remorse

23andme is out of cash
but they have all my DNA
Boy would I like to settle their hash
get my stuff back from them TODAY

Roberta Batorsky is a Biology teacher, poet and freelance science writer. She has published poems in Fine-lines and Heron Clan and is working on her first poetry book. Her science blog is https://solipsistssoiree.blogspot.com and her instagram is RobertaBatorsky_poetry.