ETHNIC CLEANSING CALLED KATRINA

by Raymond Nat Turner

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

SOSs— frantic patterns pounded on

Pots and pans — Counterpoint

Shattering surreal quiet …

Tired hands trembled and cramped

White towels; white T-shirts; white sheets

Waved furiously. Invisible to the heart of

Dixie in confederate helicopters casually

Hovering above. Tired arms trembled and cramped

Tired voices, plaintive pleas for “HELP!” faded. 

Slipped into soup of sewage. Oil-gas-gumbo-slop.

Spewing from tanks and pipelines like some toxic

Spittle, rising to their throats from a trumpet’s spit key

Katrina square-danced ‘round New Orleans.

Went easy on The Big Easy.

So, why was the city still swamped? Why’d

The London Avenue levee break in three places?

FEMA flew over and knew on Monday. 

W’s War House knew by midnight. But

The People—salt of the earth— heard it through 

The grapevine— or on TV— sometime Tuesday

Levee built 1 and 1/2 feet lower than specs.      A capitalist

Disaster wrapped in an accident; Concealing a ticking time

Bomb. Set decades ago. Add Big Oil’s hurricane highway. AKA, MIGO—

Mississippi Gulf Outlet — 12 gauge shotgun pointing at NOLA’s heart!

BOOM! Prayers of white nationalist worshippers answered. Prayers of

Hoods concealed beneath Mardi Gras masks answered! Prayers of those

Who preyed to their god; to their profits, “Do unto Lower 9th Ward N-

Words what white sheets behind spreadsheets wet dreamed for decades.”

They’d preyed for a chocolate city bleached beignet-white … Lower

9th Ward N-words out! By any means necessary. They’d preyed to rid 

Themselves of low-wealth ones. Elderly, ill ones. The non-swimmers

Who didn’t own cars.

Their privatized Emergency Evacuation Plan was always: NOYO 

(Nigras On Your Own) Sink or swim. Water-swollen homes— “Xs”

Spray-painted on their skins. Circled numbers. Circled 3 = 3 bloated 

Black bodies pulled from bones of homes. Some pregnant. Some children.

White god was good— weaponizing water! Water raged. Rose rapidly

Ethnic cleansing Land of Louis; second line; trumpet tree roots. Made 

Martyrs of Big Chiefs, Brass band-juju Jazz conjurers. Ancestors of Blues babies

Who’d drown in their own tears with yellowed photos and decomposing dreams …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

HOW TO MAKE AN ISD*

by W. Barrett Munn

*Improvised Sandwich Device

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

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent. It was a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors who are dealing with the fallout from President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops and federal agents into Washington. —The New York Times, August 27, 2025

It's obvious I've been radicalized.
In nursing school, I was taught
critical thinking. But then, 
I attended a radical-left 
communist community college
in tiny rural Tonkawa, Oklahoma.
It hasn't helped
that I"ve had to listen to this fool spout
his nonsense day after day after day.
Like Father Karras in The Exorcist, 
I've been driven to take some kind of action 
against all these devils.
I'm at Subway. The idea pops.
I begin to make a plan. The casing
of the bomb will be critical, hard but
not too hard, and not too heavy to hold
in one hand. That means it will have to be
toasted and still have some heft.
Nothing light with a lot of holes in the crust.
Sourdough-based wheat would be perfect.
The explosive mixture must be carefully
chosen. Muscle weighs more than fat.
That eliminates a salami based explosion.
Meatballs are out automatically— 
You don't want to cause tomato sauce
collateral damage to any registered voters.
Tuna would work if it's not too wet.
This stuff is ghastly. 
I've got it: long, thin strips of lean roast beef.
I'll pay extra for a double helping, tell
the girl with the plastic covered hands
to pack it down hard.
And cheese. American is probably
best, or so my targets think, although most
have Swiss bank accounts created for them
by their oligarch handlers. 
Time to think of condiments. Screw the pickles.
Red onions and slices of jalapeno stacked
on top near the toast so they'll scatter
on impact. I'll need a fuse. Something
with a slow burn that will give me 
a head start. Dark mustard with horseradish
is perfect. After I pay, I toss the package 
up and down, feeling its heft, guessing that 
if it doesn't go off now it must be ready. 
I leave the store and see the crowd 
a block away. With renewed resolve I start 
to walk that way thinking, I really should 
have brought my toothbrush.

The poems of W. Barrett Munn have appeared in print and online in Awakenings Review, The New Verse News, Sequoia Speaks, Soul Poetry, Prose, & Arts Magazine, Book of Matches, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Haikuniverse, 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, and many others.

DEAR PREZ

by Barbara Loots

Yes, there are certain legends

   you aim to stand among:

Caligula and Nero,

    Hitler and Mao Tse Tung,

Attila and Genghis 

    and Stalin, for a few—

But the dumpster of world history 

    will pile some shit on you,

Until, like all things rotten,

    you sink into the slime,

Soon buried and forgotten 

    in the lightning speed of time .

From towers and casinos,

   your name will be erased,

Your merch and memes abandoned,        

   your gold decor replaced. 

Your “legend” will be murky 

   with cruelty and vice, 

And, as you’ve often put it, 

   that isn’t very nice. 

Barbara Loots is retired but not retiring in Kansas City, Missouri. In addition to appearances in literary magazines (eg. I-70 Review, Pulsebeat) and anthologies (eg. Love Affairs At the Villa Nelle) she serves as book review editor for Light Poetry Magazine online. Three collections can be found on Amazon. 

FEEL FREE

by Nick Allison

Nick Anderson cartoon

To don a bright mask for the faithful to see
To placate the flock and pretend to believe
To drag the dead weight of unbroken chains
To laugh until laughter devours the pain

To plant the old flags and ring the new bells
To raise up the prices and see what still sells
To imagine that freedom is only a jest
To swallow your pride till it rots in your chest

To close all the windows and fasten the doors
To bury your secrets beneath the sea floor
To climb golden stairs till you stand at the top
To fall with the world when at last it all stops

To bolster your ego with glory and praise
To purchase a past with the fortune you’ve raised
To summon the fire and melt back the ice
To never look once at their sacrifice

To turn up the volume and smother the cries
To vanish in shadows and cover your eyes
To cut out your tongue to spite your own face
To put profit above the whole human race

To pull out your hair and to tear at the walls
To pave over gardens and silence the calls
To load up the cannons, the weapons of war
To never once ask who the cages are for

To dream of the faces you’ve lost all at once
To wake with their shadows and feel their cold touch
To walk through the mirror and linger a while
To shine your dark shoes and lie with a smile

To pin every failure on somebody else
To go to your grave deceiving yourself
To polish a crown and call yourself king
To scream for the stillness your riches won’t bring

To weep late at night in a bed all alone
Your palace of pleasure turned prison of stone
Surrounded by ghosts who won’t let you be
You’ll ask yourself why 
you still don’t feel free

Nick Allison is a former Army infantryman, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. “While the Elk Were Moving” is adapted from the introduction to that collection. More of his work can be found at TheTruthAboutTigers.com and @nickallison80.bsky.social.

GREEN

by John Minczeski

On the news feed this morning,

on my phone’s small screen, two

children shot dead at morning Mass

before school. Others wounded

before the shooter turned the gun

on himself. Pardon me, readers,

this is not a poem, 

I must follow Adorno’s 

dictum. And yet, how refuse 

the poem, however prosaic

and filled with reportage. How,

gentle reader, can I look at the tree

in my front window, the one 

thinking of turning yellow,

that just yesterday made me think

life and beauty fill the same page.

This is not a poem, it is an outrage.

Twenty minutes from here,

maybe twenty five from my toast

and eggs sunny side up, the dead

and wounded children. Like ones

I taught in my career, whose eyes 

brightened with poems. 

A few clouds punctuate the sky. 

My younger brother has arrived

in Wyoming to drive my reclusive

older brother to California.

This is not a poem, it is a window

to my older brother so taken

with the beauty of the Tetons

he tried killing himself. At the end

of King Kong, a guy says it was

beauty that killed the beast. 

Therefore two brothers are in a car

driving west to a new normal,

and children with head wounds

are being treated at Hennepin General.

This is not a poem, this is a treatise

on teaching theodicy to six year olds.

This is me looking out the window

watching wind flip the leaves.

The green, the verde, que te quiero

verde of Lorca. Green leaves,

green children, que te quiero.

 

John Minczeski is the author of five collections as well as several chapbooks. His poems have appeared  previously in NVN as well as The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Minczeski worked as a poet in the schools for many years, and has taught at various colleges and universities around the Twin Cities. He served as president of the board for The Loft Literary Center when it was on the second floor of a bookshop in the Dinkytown area of Minneapolis.

EMPTY HORIZONS

by James Schwartz 

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." —Ephesians 2:8-9

Prayers heard 

Or unheard,

Spiritual delusion 

Per authorities, 

Summer's end

She could not, 

Walk on water

As the voices, 

Had commanded 

She had failed,

He had failed 

A test of faith,

As the voices 

Grew louder,

After the lake 

Recieved them,

Highly emotional 

Surfacing diver,

As the voices 

Grew louder. 

Submerged prayers for

A salvation.

Cast into

Empty horizons.

Authors Note: The Amish communities can have a lack of access to professional mental health care and resources. Two mental health crisis resources are 988 and www.nami.org. My condolences to all affected by this tragedy. 

James Schwartz is a poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (Kindle, 2011) and most recently Big Island Beatnik (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). @queeraspoetry. 

ONE INTERPRETATION

by Erika Takacs

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under public fire for publicly endorsing the misogynistic views of Idaho pastor Doug Wilson (above) and his colleagues in a CNN interview… What sparked the latest round of worry is CNN’s interview in which [Wilson] says “women are the kind of people that people come out of”… Hegseth reposted the CNN interview link on X and wrote, “All of Christ for All of Life.” —Baptist News, August 10, 2025 

Oh—like the crone who strides forth 
out of my skin (wise, bossy, bolder)
whenever I see a young woman try
to tuck herself into a smaller, smaller,
smaller space. Or the diner waitress
who can’t help calling everyone Hon,
the school nurse whose eyes catch
on every helpless child, like the gawky
teen in line at the airport who needs me
to tell him when he’s allowed to board. 
There’s my grandmother, when I use salt
(never measure, more is better), 
and my dad, when I cry at commercials 
(Christmas morning, someone is home 
from college, or the army, and has brewed 
coffee). My brother when I am truly selfless; 
my mother when I’m just lucky. I’ve coaxed
wizards from this old body, vixens
and virgins and vamps. So many people
have come out of me, though not one
is my child. Or maybe all of them are—
every one a new creation, a dazzling
refraction of an infinite heart. 

Erika Takacs is an Episcopal priest, teacher, musician, and poet originally from Wilmington, Delaware. Her writing has been published in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Earth & Altar, The Christian Century, Braided Way, and Thimble Literary Journal. Outside of her work and her family, her three great loves are the music of J.S. Bach, books, and baseball. She currently resides in North Carolina, where she and her husband serve at the pleasure of their very spoiled beagle. 

BLACK ICE

by Lavinia Kumar

In Edison [NJ], thousands of immigrant workers toil in hundreds of warehouses, sorting millions of boxes arriving from nearby ports before being sent by trucks across the United States. But this summer has delivered something else. Immigration raids a few weeks apart at two warehouses have unsettled the daily rhythms of this busy corridor, where Amazon, FedEx and UPS have a large presence. The second raid happened Wednesday, [August 20] and resulted in the arrests of 29 workers, among the largest sweeps in the region since President Trump took office. Warehouses have been left short-staffed and behind schedule as detained workers were sent to immigration jails and others stopped showing up. —The New York Times, August 22, 2025

Oh, those winter mornings,

that fresh brisk air,

you go for a walk, spot a deer,

forget to look at the path,

and down you go—black ice.

Yes, black ice, its face invisible,

not like real ice, like white ice, 

in sweet slushies soothing a hot day,

or like crackling ice dropped

into an evening cocktail.

Yes, black ice, its every feature

disguised so you cannot not see danger.

 

Like tinted car windows to hide

the dark man in handcuffs taken by

Black ICE, this working man

taken from his family, from his work.

Black ICE seizing this man,

counting on a bonus award,

adding to the number 

for the White House 

Black ICE tally.

 

Black ICE in black masks,

Black ICE with tinted windows

Black ICE in unmarked vans

Black ICE with no warrants

Black ICE taking husbands,

mothers, fiancés, wives,

Black ICE taking dark men

who pay taxes, who love,

who have children

to Black ICE cages,

to who knows where

to crowded Black ICE jails.

 

And yes that young deer you saw

before you slipped on black ice

danced on its ballet hoofs

into bushes, into hiding,

hiding from you,

like a neighbor, like a friend,

hiding from Black ICE.

See Lavinia Kumar’s three food stories in Issue Five of Ruby Literary Press, The Monsoon Rain winning a 2024 Pushcart nomination.