by Laura Boatner
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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
It starts with one stone
a chipping away, chiseling of sorts
digging to China as my mother always
said
In China it was pounded into sand
and their people have known it
for seven decades or so
Here, babbling brooks, once slick as silk
have rough edges now etched
into fifty pieces, maybe fifty-one
A carnival barker yelling;
flushed face, eyebrows furrowed
the color of honeydew, or more
fluorescent than that
Stones and bricks in a road leading to Oz
because this doesn’t feel quite real
and the curtains are pulled back
Judges, legislators,
one at a time acquiescing
out of fear, reprisal
is this really happening?
to us of all people?
right now?
like we’re scarecrows or something?
In one-hundred days
the rocks have become boulders
on shoulders of complacency
David threw a rock at Goliath
hitting the target
unlike we do at the strongman
A mountain of stone
penetrated upon and fissured
and it’s on this precipice that
we now stand
Laura Boatner is a registered nurse by day and an aspiring writer by night. She has been published in scholarly nursing journals, but finds it much more fun to write fiction. She has been accepted into the MAPW program at Kennesaw State University in Fall 2025. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and her two rescue pups, Birdie and Pepper.