PAPILLON

by Lynn White

France plans to build a maximum-security prison wing for drug traffickers and Islamic militants near a former penal colony in French Guiana, sparking an outcry among residents and local officials. The wing would form part of a $450 million prison announced in 2017 that is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500 inmates. The prison would be built in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, a town bordering Suriname that once received prisoners shipped by Napoleon III in the 1800s, some of whom were sent to the notorious Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana… It was once an infamous colony known for holding French political prisoners, including Captain Alfred Dreyfus (above left), who was wrongly convicted of being a spy and spent five years on Devil's Island, from 1894-1899. —Le Monde, May 20, 2025. Henri Charrière was convicted of murder in 1931 by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the 1969 novel Papillon, a memoir of his incarceration in French Guiana.

The butterfly knows no death
in its metamorphosis.

It knows it will rise again
with the certainty
of Papillon now.

And as he rises to tell his story
history
repeats again.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

FEEDING THE FAT CATS

by Paul Burgess

Republican bill cuts food aid for elderly, low-income, & disabled Americans and increases funding for their own version of Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program. —Ann Telnaes, May 2

Ensure that butter fills the bowls of batter, 
And watch the oven while the mixture bakes.
The fattest cat will soon be getting fatter 
Once fed these massive overfrosted cakes.
 
Then, offer up your children's hamster pet,
The cuddly thing with white and brownish fur,
And thank the Lord the fattest cat you've met
Has deigned to eat your food and give a purr.
 
Now, find a book of ancient magic words
And learn the phrase you'll have your family say 
To turn yourselves to tiny, harmless birds
That Mister Fats will swallow as his prey.
 
And soon you'll be a bone-and-feather lump 
Excreted from your idol's noble rump.

Paul Burgess, an emerging poet, is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, The Ekphrastic Review, Pulsebeat, The New Verse News, Lighten Up On Line, The Asses of Parnassus, and several other publications

FIRST CONTACT

by Michelle DeRose

Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (file photo above) was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time Thursday after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass barrier. —NPR, May 22, 2025

Tuck that baby in close. He needs
to hear your beats; you, to smell
his hair. Skin itching for touch,
building bonds by contact. Once,
an old man in a home pressed
palms to pane. His daughter prayed
along, her breath frosting the air.
Neighbors hung curtains on shared
lines, clasped amidst the plastic.
Twice in recent life they advised
no contact: to slow the spread
of a spiked virus and to wedge 
between father and his newborn son
an unwarranted block of ice.

 
Professor Emerita of English, Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Find her most recent publications in ONE ART, Panoply, One Hundred Poems for Hearing Dogs (anthology), and The New Verse News. 

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

The foetus of a brain-dead Georgia woman [Arianna Smith] who is being kept alive to carry out her pregnancy is continuing to grow, the woman’s mother said late Monday, days after the controversial case exploded into the national news and sparked questions about the ethics of using the state’s anti-abortion law to keep a woman with no chance of recovery on life support. —The Guardian, May 20, 2025. Photo of Arianna Smith and her 7-year-old son from the GoFundMe page set up on behalf of Arianna’s mother.

Her body a vessel for the child 
who will never know her,
or for no one at all.
Alive, but not alive, her breath 
transported through tubes, 
her young face disappeared 
in a shroud of wires, a funereal tangle
of melancholy inflicted upon her. 
 
Anchored in place by law, 
her heart beats a death march,
countdown to an end she might 
long for if she could say,
if she were anywhere but here.

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing and the importance of shared stories.

OVERHEARD AT THE SPHERE IN LAS VEGAS DURING DEAD AND CO.’S SPRING RUN 2025

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

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

Fascism will seem inevitable long after
it arrives, or perhaps it’s the waiting
for fascism that is inescapable; you  
anticipate the pristine, diamond-fast, 
inconvertible moment of its advent 
like it’s Jesus, beveled and prismatic,
a milestone through which we’ll channel
every event of your circumscribed life.
Where were you, your grandchildren 
will ask, when coffee began to taste
off, fruits rotted faster, the lustrous effects
of oysters were outlawed because the flesh 
offended the tongue of the great leader
with a nano-speck of sand as though he
possessed the sensitivity of a prince asleep
on a mattress supported on the backs 
of loyal constituents, or because of his
unnatural disgust for the aboriginal environment. 
What if we applied the same terminology 
for fascists that we reserve for drug addicts,
a population jonesing for an authoritative
figure who will lead them by the nose
to their next hit, rush, or fix, of being 
totally dominated? You should be open 
with your children about your past drug
use, but not your present prescriptions, 
nor your plan of ditching your citizenship
while you wait out fascism in a foreign
nation, surreptitiously monitoring a
short-wave radio you pieced together
from bits and bobs of old door posts, 
vacuum cleaners and military regalia. 
Someday we might look back at this
interregnum with a glazed fascination,
although there’s no guarantee it will pass,
considering we no longer have communal
experiences, only niche encounters shared
among an ever-tightening cadre of familiars, 
like certain therapies or twisting the knife 
once it’s sunk into the rose of the bone, 
the sound of incursion is ever more gratifying. 

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, four full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. She lives in New York, yearns for her hometown of Los Angeles, and visits Las Vegas when Dead and Co. plays there.

EMPTY SPACES

by Adam Bagdasarian

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

There is no pill or drink for this

No pill for the rubble of home

for the dust of flesh

the ash of bone

No drink for the season-less years—

for the trees, for the water

the sunlight one cannot feel

or the empty plate of the evening meal

Each new day comes D.O.A.

rewound, somehow and replayed

rewound and played

rewound, replayed

Adam Bagdasarian’s Forgotten Fire was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. In 2002,  First French Kiss and Other Traumas was a finalist for the ALA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults.

LIKE WHEN THEY TRY TO SLASH MEDICAID, ETC

by Lynne Schilling

          After Al Ortolani

Representative Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri and a member of the Freedom Caucus, said it was “inappropriate” for Republicans to say that they “aren’t going to touch” Medicaid — a phrase that Mr. Trump has used — and then “leave all that fraud in the system.” He suggested that provider taxes, which states use to offset their portion of the cost of Medicaid, were a form of “fraud” that he would want to eliminate. —The New York Times, May 29, 2025. AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Protected by the roof of the porch, a robin has tucked her
nest on top of the artificial spring wreath hung on the front 
door, with easy access to grass and flowers and oak tress—
 
showing she knows something about location, location, location
in picking real estate. But when the door swings open, she flies
flustered from the nest, fussing nearby until the door closes.
 
It’s like finding the foundation underneath the kids’ bedroom 
is cracked. Like attempting to eat cherry ice cream on a steamy 
afternoon in a cone that has a hole in the bottom, or trying 
 
to drink a cup of scalding coffee on a train when it lurches. 
It’s like believing your child is safe because she is American 
born, only to see her swept up by ICE and sent to Honduras. 
 
Mothers need to be flexible, but there are so many openings 
to peril, so many teeth in the mouth of despair. They might tie 
themselves in knots, but even the most agile can’t block it all.

Lynne Schilling has published poems in Quartet, The Alchemy Spoon, Rue Scribe, Braided Way Magazine and others. She won Honorable Mention in the 2024 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest for her poem, “Prayers I Wish I’d Uttered When Forced to Pray Aloud in Fifth Grade.”

MALL MONUMENT TO A PRESIDENT

by Patrick G. Roland

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

Maybe every other president was doing it wrong.
Hell, maybe I’m doing it all wrong. 

My four-year-old once told me
my tie looked like an elephant trunk with a cold,
so she swapped it for a toy mermaid’s tail,
and I got compliments—
even a high-five from my boss.

So, I turned to her again,
this time about the president’s tour of the Middle East.

In Saudi Arabia, he’s got luxury towers going up.
They gave him $600 billion for defense.
“Rapunzel had a tower for her hair, Daddy,
maybe he needs to protect his hair.”

In Qatar, it’s golf resorts and seaside villas.
They threw in $200 billion for Boeing,
and gave him a $300 million jet. 
“When I eat all my dinner,” she said,
“I get vanilla ice cream for dessert.”

In the UAE: a golf course, a skyscraper, and a crypto deal.
They pledged $1.4 trillion for U.S. tech.
“Krypto was Superman’s doggy friend.”

Don’t get me wrong, it smells like what I think
immoral would smell like—
if ethics had a scent.
My daughter can smell hardened Play-Doh
before she even opens the canister.

So I asked her if any of the deals 
smelled like an emolument.
She said mall monuments smell like pretzels.

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked.
You ask questions.

Patrick G. Roland is a writer and educator living with cystic fibrosis. He explores life’s experiences through poetry and storytelling, seeking to inspire others in the classroom and through writing. His work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Sacramento Literary Review, Maudlin House, Trampoline, and others.

HOUSE ARREST

by Devon Balwit

A few months before he began his 2022 Senate campaign, JD Vance reached out to a conservative family policy group with an idea for an opinion essay. He wanted to write about why government-subsidized day care was bad — and why most young children do better when one parent stays home... “We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hard-wired to bond with mom,” said Jenet Erickson, a co-writer of Mr. Vance’s 2021 essay and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative policy group that advocates for raising the birthrate. “They know her smell, they know her heartbeat, they know her voice. I just think, why should we deny that?” —The New York Times, May 12, 2025

 

 

It is impossible for any situation to go on well where one is at the bottom who ought to be either independent or at the top. I am at the bottom and ought not be there. —Florence Nightingale, private note, 1851, in Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters

 

Lacking a penis, the young Florence Nightingale

had to satisfy herself with the yearly sorting of linens

and kitchen utensils. She noted, wryly, in her journal

that, as for the latter, form didn’t follow function—

she hadn’t the faintest idea of their use. She hoped,

that Capital, by creating a need for them, had allowed some

at least, to earn their bread. Luckily, proper scope

for her talents emerged in the war hospitals of Crimea.

 

Now, talk has again turned to what 

is “natural” for women—surprise—a predilection for babies

and scutwork. Out comes the myth, trailing dust,

that career women are selfish and their children unhappy.

Have we learned nothing since the Victorians—

that if unchosen, a woman’s home is her prison?

When not making art, Devon Balwit walks in all weather and edits for Asimov Press and Asterisk Magazine.

DECLARATION OF A TERRORIST

by Taylor Norris

Knee on a neck, 

Match poised to strike,

With a final exhale, 

Flames did ignite. 

 

A firestorm erupted,

Fervent movement did arise, 

Suffocated by a tsunami, 

Of "All Lives Matter" cries. 

 

Abusive power wears many masks, 

Yet speaks a single tongue,

A requiem of callousness, 

Tide of lives wrung.

 

Seized, silenced, deprived of voice, 

Crushed by tempest creed, 

As the faceless gasp for breath, 

Dragged beneath waves of greed.

 

Palestinians butchered by golem rampage, 

While leaders fiddle in their gilded bubble,

Israel's broken promises rain down,

As last dregs of conscience soak into the rubble.

 

Students denouncing genocide, 

Abducted off streets like trash,

Futures and rights vanished, 

Disappeared in a Gestapo flash.

 

Ukrainians in scorched ruins stand tall, 

Courage unwavering, despite the pain,

Their sacrifice met with jealous disdain,

As an American führer bows to Putin's reign.

 

Sudanese starve on apathy alone, 

Wasting away to hollow bone, 

While the privileged eat cake, 

Glutted, glued to their phone.

 

Immigrants condemned, banished beyond aid,

Hostages snatched to a circus cage,

Mercy extinguished; identity stripped,

Erased by those with contrived rage.

 

Tiny tots seen, once heard, now lost,

Voiceless, cast out with derision,

Birthright a farce, a due process mirage,

Dispelled with coldness and precision.

 

Judges defied, jailed with contempt, 

Justice held ransom, chained to the bell, 

As cracked scales teeter on the brink, 

Ears crane for liberty's death knell.

 

If my conviction of unity, 

Is intolerable sedition, 

Call me a TERRORIST, 

I embrace the affliction.

 

Truth-teller in an age of lies, 

Empathetic when compassion dies,

Revolutionary when liberties decline,

Relentless when cruelty is the infection by design,

Outspoken when silence is the golden law,

Resilient by refusing to withdraw,

Inclusive when others build walls of divide,

Solidarity with the denigrated caste aside,

Transformative in spirit that cannot abide.

 

The most sacred amendment, first on the parchment, 

Will withstand your calculated bombardment,

If TERRORIST I must be, in your criminalized fiction, 

I'll wear your pointy yellow badge with distinction.

 

While propaganda devours, 

Truth strikes with bolt and thunder, 

Electrified, embers take flight,

Defiance echoes, never again forced under.

Taylor Norris treads the thin verse between comfortable and the disturbed that can’t be unseen. In the stone age that was pre-y2k Taylor was a film critic for a LGBTQ publication and was published in two poetry anthologies with a poem translated for a Spanish newspaper. Taylor was also produced in Best Short-Lived 2.0 in San Francisco. After a long hiatus, she is returning back to her roots.

BLOOD SIMPLE

by Julia Kantic

Hunger Strike by Glen Le Lievre

Annihilation?

The sum’s not difficult to do.

How many hostages 

Does it take to make a genocide?

How many hospitals,

houses, hearths?

Don’t tell me about 

the algebra of killing

as though it were a zero sum game.

A life is not a life

as settlers solve problems

along with soldiers

and no one asks to see

their working out—

or are shown figures by gaslight.

And if I say this?

I am villainous, nefarious, wicked,

—monstrous—for calling out

—Murder —

Terrorist is a term that has changed

to mean babies, 

and their mothers, 

and their sisters, 

and their brothers, and their fathers, and their doctors, and their nurses, and their teachers, and their others, and their shop keepers, and their road sweepers, and their anyone with a determination to exist

—Alive in Gaza —

or thinks this slaughter wrong.

Julia Kantic is a writer and editor who reads, writes and delights in words and the spaces in between. Follow her wayward ways https://linktr.ee/peculiarjulia

TRADE-OFFS

by Imogen Arate

The bombs continue to fall. Cartoon by MATE

“Israel's New Gaza Operation Should Be Called 'Chariots of Genocide'” —Gideon Levy, Haaretz, May 14, 2025

I am the long night

that deepens into

a velvet gloom

that rambles the curls 

of your crooked fingers

as you pull irresistibly near

I am the bind

your phobias birthed

that cracks frail bones

rattling of evasion 

I am the deadly silence

strung by the eager

fingers of avoidance

A crystal each missing 

word unspoken 

A precious stone 

each unuttered phrase 

I am the irreplaceable 

treasures you've smashed 

to scatter as dust

while cradling the empty

slogans of freedom 

Imogen Arate is an Asian-American poet in search of hope: that humanity will overcome our self-destructive tendencies to work together against the onslaught of the climate crisis. She's also the Executive Director of Poets and Muses, an award-winning multimedia artist platform that has featured diverse contemporary poetic voices from around the globe. She believes that we will only be able to value lives equally when we lend our ears and hearts to the life stories of those we don't readily recognize as our kin and stop requiring the presence of certain socioeconomic trappings to recognize people’s right to a dignified existence.

DELUSION

by Jocelyn Ajami

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

In the libraries of distortion

eyes blur mites with dust

they scan empty racks 

like x-rays of aging spines

the shelves bend and tilt 

from the heft of books

once held with reverence

tossed out like easy trash 

In the libraries of distortion

mirrors line the walls 

from ceiling to floor, multiplying

a gleaming buzz

that binges on translucence—

Narcissus on steroids— 

In the libraries of distortion

there are no chairs, tables

or stools, only beds

that glitter, bearing pallid 

corpses, ensured 

a good read on life

Jocelyn Ajami is a painter, filmmaker and poet. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness. She has been published in various anthologies of prize winning poems and has been nominated for Pushcart and Touchstone awards.

WHAT POPE LEO MIGHT BE THINKING

by Lynne Barnes

Your mother was ill and away

when you were very little.

Did this mean that one of your

foundation beams was laid out as clay,

creating that listing psychic gait

that seems to have hobbled you

since toddlerhood?

 

Your early language threw darts

of defense against harm inside

your family’s nest of punishment

alternating with neglect.

You began sharpening knives

of revenge, destructiveness

back then, just to survive.

As you matured, you were mentored

by those who were traumatized like you.

 

Oh, if only your resilient spirit had been

gifted just a little more warmth

at your first hearth, perhaps your sense of

self-worth would not have become pea-sized,

inside and protected by, a hot air balloon.

Heated molecules of fear inflate

that bubble of space around your core.

 

Your borders are so thin and vulnerable

that you must strike first, slur people away

to feel safe, and your re-tells of conversations

all have others referring to you as sir.

 

You use loser, lowlife, liddle, lightweight,

for others. And for yourself you say

tremendous, perfect, winner, greatest,

and speak with clueless pride

that other humans kiss your ass.

 

You, dear sir, learned so early to strike first,

before anyone could breach your fragile border,

see the size of your ego infirmity,

but now, power has enriched, fused your childhood’s

uranium grains into a global nuclear cruelty.

 

We must fight, drain your power, disarm you whose wounds

block you from the language of human love and care.

As we face off we’re terrified, but also Sad!—witnessing

a fellow human walled off from the beauty of empathy as prayer.

Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.