Thursday, July 03, 2025

NOW AT THE FOOD CENTER

by Deb Freedman

Our clients are gracious even though all we offer won’t get them through July.
Handicapped stickers hang on their cars’ rearview mirrors;
backseats are strewn with car seats, crumbs, and walkers.
They show us pictures of grandchildren or kittens.
Sometimes, they walk across the bridge.
Sometimes, they tell us they’re hungry.

Two skinny little boys ask if we have any books for them.
When my friend says they can help themselves to as many as they want,
they get so excited, they rock their car.
The older brother tells his little brother to take 4 only books.
The older boy sees one about wolves and growls at me, grinning with a wiggly tooth.
They chorus thank you as their dad drives away.

Anna walks over without her curly, gray-haired dog today.
She says Sadie has a lump on her belly and she’s worried.
The vet will see her sweet baby on the 14th.
She doesn’t know what she’ll do if it’s serious.

The blonde school bus driver, the size of a 5th grader, waves
her passport at me.
She takes it everywhere.
Born here, she is afraid to go to the store.

Now is before the “Big Beautiful Bill” passes.


Deb Freedman's poetry has been published in The New Verse News, US I/ DVP Poets Worksheets and most recently, Patterson Literary Review. The Food Center, its clients and volunteers, take up a large shelf in her heart.

AMERICA’S PRECIPICE

by Laura Boatner


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.

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

I HEAR AMERICA CRYING

by Judy Trupin




holding in their fingers the shreds of constitution
tattered perhaps beyond repair
The insurrectionists running free, absolved
I hear America crying
the carpenter and the mason being dragged away
by the chilling iceman
their families slipping on their tears
and murmuring to each other
What is this land in which we dwell?
A boatman turned pilot ferries them away to 
prisons in countries unknown
I hear America crying
as judges erase the law of the land
another pilot does not cry but grits his teeth
as he drops his bombs
preserving his president’s honor but nothing else
I hear America reeling as yes becomes no
and truth morphs into lies
I hear America whispering
too afraid to sing
to afraid to shout
huddling in their homes
uncertain what the night will bring
or when the night will end
and if they will sing 
and if they will sing
again.


Judy Trupin lives, writes, and thinks in Pittsburgh, PA. Walking, teaching and practicing yoga and singing to her plants keeps her sane.

TODO BUENO?

by Andrés Castro


New York City continues to grow and grate on me.
     Being born at Coney Island Hospital the summer of ’58, 

     after my family arrived from Puerto Rico—Borikén 
to the Indigenous—should make me a Boricua, but no.

Mi familia on the island often says I am from Por Allá, 
     especially those claiming bloodlines to native villages—

     chiefs rabid in their gatekeeping—when calling 
the post-Columbian colonizing label, Taino, inauthentic. 

My genté, speaking from por alla/my over here—
     just call me Nuyorican. My ancestral archipelago remains

a natural wonder; but why erase my mainland city tribe. 
     My adolescence was blessed with a South Bronx block 

of modest homes owned by Black, brown, and white 
families that mixed—no matter the surrounding chaos 

of the sixties. My transplanted island roots took root 
above and below concrete. So what I was born too late 

to be an OG Nuyorican—say The Young Lords or outlaw
poets Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarín, and Miguel Piñero, who

founded the Nuyorican Poets’ Café to welcome everyone. You
can’t grow up where I did and not be Nuyorican—this one, 

given my nature, still needs activism and revolutionary poetry.  
     The stakes are too high now: the world is being set ablaze 

with the U.S. the head arsonist—aren’t the U.S. bombs that made 
Gaza a wasteland and suddenly dropped on Iran enough proof? 

     I only wish my roots were not drying out so quickly. My mother
would say, “Cuídate, de los buenos quedan pocos,” if still alive.

I have gone from little boy to brittle—taking care and being good 
in 2025 is old as analog. The robotic other side is evil and reckless—

signing the Doomsday Clock will strike midnight in my lifetime—
whether I practice Yucayeque rituals in Borikén’s central mountains 

or rattle downtown on the Lexington Ave express. What I really
need to talk about is the genocide of Palestinians given the chance.  


Andrés Castro, a PEN member, is listed in Poets & Writers Directory and keeps a personal blog,
The Practicing Poet. Andrés is currently working on Militant Humanist, a project for poets, 
writers, artists, and others.

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

WISHING YOU ALL A GOOD DEATH

by Catherine Gonick


Art by Clay Bennett, July 1, 2025


Millions of low-income Americans could experience staggering financial losses under the domestic policy package that Republicans advanced through the Senate on Tuesday, which reserves its greatest benefits for the rich while threatening to strip health insurance, food stamps and other aid from the poor. —The New York Times, July 1, 2025


as the deviants' suicide hotline 
goes dead, the bad vaccines
and free food disappear
along with the women
and children, leaving
only one gender 
on the sickly green earth,
and you already too ill
to fill out new forms
are free to drop, already dust
beneath the rug of our law,
as the best deaths are dealt
out casually as cards
by we who can afford
the deep cuts
and consequent
deaths that ensure
before you can know it
you'll all be bleeding
too fast to know what's coming
for your common-good bodies
already installed in pre-paid
unremarked graves,
wishing you all a good night
and good death


Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry QuarterlyPedestal, and Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her first full-length collection, Split Daughter of Eve, is forthcoming in June from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works in a company that slows  the rate of global warming.

THIS TOO WILL BE OUR HISTORY

by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut




Let’s crawl out from between cracks

in Mrs. Malloy’s Social Studies class

look America square in the…  

Trail of Tears, Chinese Exclusion, Compromise


of 1877, red carpet for the KKK in troops

 withdrawal, 911, Homeland Security, ICE.

Military facing off with us — terror.


We love this country — swampy and lush; dry

and sharp; wide, wild, waking.


Echoes of past, Liberty or Death,

beg the question, Is the acrid smoke gulped 

after hollers of Freedom now

easier than silence? 


Don’t you want to fix her pockets, tuck

them in; pull her 

Fortnite shirt down over

her exposed sand-colored belly; embrace 

her and, while reaching behind, 

let loose the cuffs, like you might untie

a ribbon to free your girl’s hair?



Kristin Kowalski Ferragut is author of the poetry collection Escape Velocity (Kelsay Books, 2021) and children's book Becoming the Enchantress (Loving Healing Press, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in Beltway QuarterlyBourgeonFledgling RagLittle Patuxent Review, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others.

TREE HUGGERS

by Darcy Grabenstein





In days gone by, “tree hugger”
was used as a slur by some
to describe those granola-crunching types
who wrapped themselves around tree trunks
to prevent loggers and the like
from committing acts of deforestation
To others, “tree hugger” 
comes as a compliment,
describing devoted environmentalists
who care about the earth
about sustainability
about what will be left for the next generation
And now, “tree hugger” describes
those holding on for dear life
as bone-crunching ICE goons
commit acts of deportation
tearing innocents from their roots,
from their loved ones
Have you ever hugged a tree?
In Japan it’s called shinrin-yoku,
forest bathing, transferring
of life force from tree to human.
Native Americans hugged trees
to heal both body and soul.
Here, masked marauders
surrounded a woman seeking haven
using brute force 
to break her embrace
break her spirit
break all moral codes
I wish I could envelop this woman
in a big bear hug
tell her she is welcome here
she is safe here
tell her
she is home
 

A marketing writer by profession, Darcy Grabenstein turns to poetry as a creative and cathartic outlet. The theme of social (in)justice runs through many of her poems, and she longs for the day where her page will finally be blank.

Monday, June 30, 2025

DONALD TRUMP’S BIRTHDAY PARADE AS IF CELEBRATED IN GAZA

by Roberta Batorsky


U.S. Army photo by Bernardo Fuller • Public domain


In orderly formation 
the parade’s vanguard 
advances:
a scrawny teen carries 
a flag depicting an empty bowl,
leads a battalion of stiffly marching, 
starved children.

The main detachment 
follows. These children, 
missing various limbs, 
some aided by crutches or 
in wheelchairs sport head bandages,
slings, plaster casts or eye patches,
proceed down the fairway 
in wobbly, uneven rows.

The rear guard, made up of
several pint-sized caskets,
is solemnly wheeled 
past the reviewing station,
its tail end brought up 
by a lone small girl
soulfully bugling “Taps.”

These casualties-
heart-rending results
of senseless war;
We must break ranks 
with our generals,
blend into their procession,
embrace fully their humanity;
no other way.

Gone the sun
Thanks and praise
For our days
As we go
This we know
God is nigh




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.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

DEPARTMENT OF OFFENSE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the U.S. Navy was renaming the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment ship that had been named for a Navy veteran who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials. —The New York Times, June 27, 2025


Whitewash the walls of history,
erase names preserved by heart in print.
Cleanse the bows of ships 
so they sail free of reminders
or memorial suggestion.
Forget you heard it here, where someone 
stood for the voiceless inheritors,
crossed lines for the dispossessed,
or raised flags in mutinous colors of freedom.
Toss stories into fire pits, ashes to ashes, 
amnesia thick. Footprints embedded in truth
brushed aside like counterfeit ledgers going nowhere. 
 
Even with evidence destroyed or misidentified, 
these burials are not complete. Beneath layers of deception,
lies ferment in Earth’s volcanic depths, lives remembered 
for their audacious bravery walk from graves 
that were never deep enough to hold them down.


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.

Saturday, June 28, 2025

A NORMAL DAY IN MIDWEST AMERICA

by Michelle DeRose




A golden shovel after Frederick Joseph

 

 

The kind of news I can’t tell

Irish friends without shaking heads, asking me

how anyone sends children to school in America.

No laws in the aftermath, just lies about which

side the shooter’s on, new calls for the political will

for common sense but resignation that it

won’t happen. Here, one class of WMDs will be

free of all regulations, in homage to the

actual god who reigns above all—the gun.

To be free, great, and safe, we ask migrant or

homegrown? Stop at nothing to neutralize the

threat of brown parents who want care for their child.



Michelle DeRose is an embarrassed American who lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Friday, June 27, 2025

DISAPPEAR

by Mark Danowsky


Who? They insist
some darker other
 
We give 
the real villains 
too much rope
 
Time is on
the wealthy side
 
Don’t ignore
matters of class
 
Call out
all the horrors
& misdirection
 
If you wait just
a moment too long—
 
Knock knock knock
on your door


Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry and Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine. He is the author of several poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Take Care (Moon Tide Press).