I WILL MISS THE LARGE ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA

by Michael Brockley

Woody Guthrie in March 1943.

The bison. The grizzly bears. The jaguars that can’t leap over the wall along the border river. I will miss reading irreverent books. Novels where Jesus has a friend named Biff. Comic books where Deadpool is a hero. I will miss news reporters who know that Kansas City is in Missouri and that Benjamin Franklin never resided in the White House. I will miss the White House. The Smithsonian, the Statue of Liberty, and Yellowstone. I will wonder how Old Faithful might be disappeared. I will miss pennies. And the Beatitudes, the part of the Bible Kurt Vonnegut valued the most. I will miss voting for women. I will miss movies that tell the stories of men and women who don’t look like me. I will miss being able to see Venus and Mars on clear nights. I will miss strawberries and tomatoes and watermelons and sweet potatoes and cranberries and sunflowers and cherries. I will miss guitars with This Machine Kills Fascists scrawled across their bodies. I will miss dogs that look more like wolves than weapons of war. I will miss saying  Feliz Navidad, Fröhliche Weihnachten, and Mele Kalikimaka. I will miss finger-pointing songs. I will miss licorice. Yes, I will even miss licorice.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana, His prose poems have appeared in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Red Eft Review, and Unlikely Stories Mark V. Brockley's prose poems are also forthcoming in Ley Lines Literary Review, Seat at the Table, and Alien Buddha.

DOWN-SIDE-UP AND BACK-ASSWARDS

by Jennifer M Phillips

Bali's Tanah Lot temple being sucked down a sinkhole: AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Bali's Tanah Lot temple being sucked down a sinkhole: AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Jakarta (ANTARA) January 31, 2025 - Indonesia's special envoy for climate change and energy, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, said he considers the Paris Agreement no longer relevant for Indonesia following the US withdrawal from the deal. "If the United States does not want to comply with the international agreement, why should a country like Indonesia comply with it?" he asked at the ESG Sustainable Forum 2025 in Jakarta on Friday.

Today in the tabloids Indonesia is leaving Paris,
so many broken hearted occlusions
across the ways we fixed to meet.
Sports news has coined negative milestones.
I’m picturing
monuments earth sucks down like sinkholes
swallowing minivans. Drilling down
in our former refuge. Ignoring
acceleration
of ice-melt, diminishing aquifers, displaced bergs,
and this is just our warm-up act, witnessing
the double un-tundra.
Wondering if this might be the ending
of the beginning?

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). Two of Phillips' poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection is Wrestling With the Angel (forthcoming, Wipf & Stock)

THE REST IS STILL UNWRITTEN

by Katie Kemple

Instead of watching the inauguration,
I conduct a series of online searches
for cast members of The Hills. Because
I heard one of the couples lost
a home in the Palisades fire. Holy shit,
I thought, they're still together?!
A hot mess on the show. I guess
that's the magic of editing. How sweet
to learn they'd had kids, sold crystals,
posted socials together. Now they're
suing the city of Los Angeles. Back
in The Hills days we were new to realty
TV didn't realize playing a villain
could be profitable, a career even.
The lines blurred between villain, 
hero. I think about The Apprentice,
watching that first season with my
husband, trying to decode the language
of boardroom politics, house poor
snuggled into our IKEA sofa.    
You're fired! a phrase we parroted
for laughs. I'm nostalgic for innocence
to be honest. There's no rain today.
My skin, dry. The Santa Anas blow
fire. Who decides what happens next? 

Katie Kemple still gets choked up listening to Unwritten—its optimism and faith in the future. She hasn't lost hope in our country yet. She has contributed poems to The New Verse News in the past. Her poems have appeared in Rattle (Poets Respond), SWWIM, and Maudlin House.

THE BRAIN RESPONDS TO THE FIREHOSE OF SH*T

by Kay White Drew

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

Pounded from all directions
by edicts of spite and hate,
words and acts of cruelty
and stupidity, the amygdala,
fear’s hangout in the brain, grovels
on the unstable ground of shifting
demands, screaming for mercy:
I’ll do whatever you want! Just
please make it stop! Meanwhile,
the cerebral cortex, where reason
and discernment reside, frowns
in puzzlement, tries to ask
the relevant question: what
course of action might be
best in these circumstances?
but cannot get a word in edgewise.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in Bay to Ocean Journal, Pen in Hand, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Gargoyle, and New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband.

THE ADMINISTRATION

by Susan Martell Huebner

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

At the kitchen table watching the birds,

a normal comfort, seeing them fly, flit, feed.

 

Jay lands on seed tray, all command blue,

tail feathers angled upward in smart salute.

 

Finches wearing winter beiges swerve

and weave, perch on metal crooks, chittering warnings.

 

Downy woodpecker's folded flat, composed

against the peanut tube, eyeing the suet lock.

 

I drink my coffee, extra cream, admiring

their careless freedom, unworried song

 

when Coopers Hawk threatens overhead

and each bird freezes.

 

On this side of the window, a sharp inhale.

I understand the instinct.

Susan Martell Huebner lives and writes in Mukwonago WI. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals. She writes across the genres. Find her printed work at Finishing Line Press, Kelsay Publications, and Amazon.

THERMOGENESIS

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 

Here in Washington, DC

Where we have some actual swamps

Glorious muddy places it would be criminal to drain

Skunk Cabbage flowers

Are bursting through the ice and snow

Generating their own heat

Their meat-red spathes

Coddling round golden spadices

Tricking carrion flies to pollinate them

Here at the Lunar New Year

Let’s make like the Skunk Cabbage

Thermogenesis!

 

Author’s note: I submitted this poem hours before the January 29th plane crash in Washington, DC. My heart goes out to the family and friends of everyone connected with this tragedy, to the city of Wichita, Kansas, and to my own city, where creative resilience is needed now more than ever.

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC 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 several previous poems published in the 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.” Her poetry has also been featured on nature-oriented websites.

INAUGURATION DAY 2025, THE PELICANS ARRIVE

by Catherine Arra

White grace floats the lake, rippling in icy torrents

of another Trump tirade.

 

A stopover in migration, a congregation

of reacquaintance-feeding-reuniting in purpose.

 

They paddle in silent choreography, know nothing

of deportations, hate-vengeance-greed.

 

Know to stay clear of marsh grass, where alligators

nest-hunt-eat more than needed.

 

Their long-bowed faces remember loss—how easy

to destroy a nest than to build one.

 

They glide into flight formation. Broad webbed feet

flapflapflap in domino percussion.

 

Snowy wings underscore the black of mourning.

They fly away. 

Catherine Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she lives with wildlife and changing seasons until winter, when she migrates to the Space Coast of Florida. Arra teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. She is the author of four full-length collections and four chapbooks. Recent work appears in Unleash Lit., Eclectica Magazine, LitBreak Magazine, Poem Alone, and The Ekphrastic Review.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BEING KIND

by Robin Wright

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News

For Mariann Edgar Budde

 

Rip off the band aid

of sarcasm, hurt, madness,

drop it in the trash,

bend down on your knees,

push that trash down deep.

Don’t use one hand,

drop both in and push,

push hard. Stand up

close your eyes, take a breath.

Now you’re ready

for those who haven’t

completed the steps, those

who will test you and flunk you.

Their grade book closed,

locked with their own

unkindness.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in One Art, As it Ought to Be, Subliminal Surgery, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Loch Raven Review, Panoply, Rat’s Ass Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets 2024 nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.

BURN ME, I TELL THE TRUTH

by Amy Wolf 

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

Burn me, I tell the truth.

In the hardwood floor, pine cool green painted wall calm

Of the yoga studios of Seattle

A battle rages.

Some say, “I am having my sound baths. I am going to reiki circle

I will not talk about politics . I am on a FAST from news media.

I am taking care of my mental well being.

I am not letting THAT MAN take another thing from me.”

Some, in the self-same yoga studios, aware of their skin color to the point of pain,

Say, “I am engaging in mutual aid. I am marching on Saturday. I am standing

Between my neighbors and ICE.

We all have a responsibility. First they came for the immigrants

And trans people

And I know how that poem ends so I fucking did something.”

The two sides do not meet. They do not speak. Mostly because the self-care

Sound bath socially reclusive “my mental health” crowd will not speak.

Fingers in ears, loudly chanting La la la la la at need,

They watch the ICE cars go by.

They watch their neighbors lose jobs, and hormones, security, and housing.

But they are secure in their soymilk organic mudbath facepeels and they do not despair.

“My guru tells me self-care is the very best thing I can do for the planet,

So Monday I leave for Sedona,” they say.

While Vanessa travels to the prisons to teach yoga to inmates

And Jack packs sandwiches and handwarmers to hand out to the people in tents under

the freeway

And Martha learns how to advocate for the undocumented and takes a few into her

house, her huge house, and hides them.

Amy does little but express herself to all the people who could lock her up if they so

chose,

For disparaging the regime, for insisting on rights , not just hers but other peoples.

And in the yoga studios of Seattle, the battle rages on.

Mostly in silence

Because they leave, when we tell them that the world around them is their business

And we none of us have this luxury at this time.

These are the days we spoke of, when we asked, “why didn’t the ordinary people of

Germany stop them?”

If you ever wondered what you would have done then,

Ask yourself what you are doing now, and you will have your answer.

Writers, healers, poets, musicians, humans: take care of yourself

But like the buffalo, face into the storm

Running and hiding will not protect you.

Not this time.

We will remember, when it is over, who fought

And who did not.

You might not wish to face that chill reception.

Amy Wolf is an LMT and energy worker who resides in Seattle, WA, and is studying writing.

THE GULF OF AMERICA, NÉE MEXICO

by Susan Ayres

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Friday that they will implement President Trump’s name change for the Gulf Coast.(wjhg)

 

                        I laugh at what you call dissolution,

                        And I know the amplitude of time.

                                                            —Walt Whitman

 

And yet she too is dissolved in a sea

of fears and worries. Will the rocks smash

her if the saltwater lets her go? In the muted

submersion there’s an isolation. The air

 

bubbles rise in a tickle. Small fish nibble

her toes. It’s not like she’s fallen to pieces.

She’s just lost her reason, her name.

She’s the brain mush and muscle mash

 

of dark swirls in the clear green water,

the murky way men possess women. Her particles

bond to the tickles. The waves push her

forward with the incoming tide. She laughs

 

at what they call dissolution. Floating

face down she knows the amplitude of time.

Susan Ayres is the author of Walk Like the Bird Flies (Finishing Line, 2023) and Red Cardinal, White Snow (Main Street Rag, 2024). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals. She studied Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico, practiced karate for nine years with her son, and now spends time in Texas writing, collaging, teaching, and learning tai chi.

LIFE AT LAND’S END

by Mary Eileen Knoff

In January, for thirty years, I have left behind
grey Seattle skies to sit beside the Pacific shore
at Land’s End, on the Baja’s southern tip,
seeking respite from the northern chill.

Each year, thunderous surf lashes the land,
crashing against its standing stone, La Roca,
filling the sky with mist and foam.
This year the scene turns my thoughts toward home:

there an explosion of presidential orders
overwhelms like a deluge, threatening
to reshape truth as surf reshapes the sand.
Can our country withstand the onslaught thrust upon us?

Many of us now cast about for a course
to follow through these treacherous times.

Life at Land’s End calls out to me through the fog:

Stand firm like this rock, persist like the tide
shine like lighthouses for those who ride on stormy seas.
Your words and deeds of truth and mercy will be guides,
like bright, shining stars in a blackening sky,
like rafts of life on fear and greed’s wicked seas.

Mary Eileen Knoff spent the first two decades of her professional life as an English teacher, editor, and freelance writer. In the mid-1990s she studied for pastoral ministry and then served as a spiritual companion and small group facilitator since the early 2000s. She has lived in Redmond, Washington near the foothills of the Cascades for the last thirty years. For the last decade I have been crafting a collection of poems about life on the pond that I call Ponderings. I am in search for a publisher of that collection these days. In 2012, as part of a doctoral program in ministry, she collected, edited, and published writings by myself and others, now in a second edition, called Seasoning the Soul: Meditations for the Celtic Year.

TODAY THE SKY BLED RED

by Kyle Hina

Today the morning sky bled
red with memories that I can
only imagine from a far, all
caught up in the air beneath
the hazy sun. Wisps of a thing 
infinitesimally small in size but
of infinite magnitude, summoned to
one last sail across heaven’s sea.

Somewhere in there, I’m sure,
is the country blue farmhouse 
that grandpa built, with the tan
guitar in the corner that turned 
him into Johnny and grandma 
into June when he played it. 

There are the skinny emerald
pines that dotted the trail of
a friend’s first date.  And the 
silver and rust car that caught
her sobs when she found 
that love isn’t always evergreen.  

There is the ivory wedding gown, 
all bejeweled and moth-balled, 
that hung in the closet, still 
awaiting its turn to renew a
couple's love. And the matching 
aqua tie that the husband was 
too scared to wear, for fear it 
might find that brown tea stain 
to match all of the others.

A teal blanket that went home
with the baby and the yellow
cleats he wore when he kicked
his last goal. Violet flowers, 
magenta scrapbooks. A faded 
purple skateboard and greyscale
photo of the family reunion, 1989.

On and on, memories too 

numerous to count rise in a 
prism’s worth of colors, but 
carry too much despair to 
form a rainbow. Instead they 
coalesce into a crimson blanket 
that covers the city like a car 
too old to ever be used again. 

In another world, white men 
in black suits point fingers and
shout names, maneuvering for
attention like children at a funeral.  
But my eyes are on the horizon,
where tonight the sky bleeds red.  

Kyle Hina is a husband, father, software engineer, and musician living in Zanesville, Ohio with his wife, two sons and dog. He has one published short fiction work on 101words.org .

DISPATCH FROM GAZA

by Carolyn Martin

Palestinians make long trek back to their demolished homes in Gaza —USA Today, January 28, 2025. Photo by Mahmoud Issa (Reuters via USA Today)

The father writes he’s home again 
with wife and three kids.
Ceilings, walls, and floors still here, he says.
Our souls were kept safe.
The garden is green, he says: 
a color gone from their eyes for years
and his three-year-old is confused.
She falls on stone pathways and, rising up,
can’t find sand to brush away. 
His sons lie in bed at night 
where ceilings block stars
in the cloud-curated sky. 
He asks them if they’re afraid.
They dig up bravery and ask,
Our tent. When are we going back?
After their lifetime away, the father wonders,
How will I ever teach children of war
to live in a house again?

Author's Note: This poem is based on a message I just received from a contact in Gaza.

Carolyn Martin is a recovering work addict who’s adopted the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards” as her daily mantra. She is blissfully retired––and resting––in Clackamas, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in more than 200 publications throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

LEFT

by Margaret Rozga

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

What is left?  

The word could mean

an abandonment,

or a departure from,

as left a warm bed

as when your love departs for a new love

 

But, no.

I refuse to leave us in this land of negativity.

because that’s not all that’s left.

There’s left as a direction

as in turn left at the corner…

 

There’s left as remainder, what is still there

as in a winter coat left

on the back of a dining room chair,

or as in leftovers,

as in sometimes chicken soup that’s leftover

tastes better the 2nd day         

 

That brings us to where we want to go—

the positive

 

Left as positive—

We have ideas left.     

We have time left.

We have energy left.

We have truth and respect for truth left.

We have values left.

We have a left left.     

We are that left and

we are left growing here, growing stronger.

Margaret Rozga, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha Professor of English Emerita, served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. She has published six books, most recently Restoring Prairie (2024) and Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (2021).