RESISTANCE

by Christine Piatek 

Nature in its resilience and beauty

flies in the face of evil

and tethers to us hope that change

is possible even when,

day by day,

by cruelty, careless words, sheer indifference,

change looks impossible.

This is resistance.

I choose nature. 

I choose the tethers it offers. 

I choose hope. 

I choose the possible.

Christine Piatek  is a retired public sector lawyer who enjoys writing in many forms, including poetry. She has  had poems published on Spillwords.com, in the Summer Fiction and Poetry edition of US 1 in various years, and in Volumes 69 and 70 of US 1 Worksheets. 

TURKEYS

by Matt Witt

Photo by Matt Witt

I’ve been observing wild turkeys for a long time.

 

At mating season, the males try to attract a willing female.

I’ve never seen one try to rape a hen.

 

They have their conflicts 

but I’ve never seen a murder among them. 

 

Some are dark and some are white

but they are all part of the flock.

 

When a storm comes they seek shelter under a big tree

And if another turkey shows up there is always room for one more.

 

I’ve never seen one hoard acorns or seeds or grubs 

while other turkeys have none.

 

I’ve been observing wild turkeys for a long time.

I wonder if they have been observing us?

 

 

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com. His latest book is Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

PLANET EARTH WEATHER REPORT, JANUARY 2026

by Mary K O’Melveny

Icicles weep from each rooftop corner 

dangle from windows   cast steep shadows

Temperatures keep falling  falling 

It’s so cold we could be residents of Uranus

 

Our mailman likens this winter to Old Times

This morning a thick-coated doe licks away

heaps of rock salt from our asphalt driveway

snow and ice have buried grass for weeks

 

In Minneapolis, snow sweeps past protesters

Renee Nicole Good’s last words—That's fine, dude. 

I'm not mad at you—a study in poetic irony

Someone should re-name ICE Murder Inc

 

In 2025 thirty-two people are known to be dead

from ICE detention   At least sixteen people shot

four killed   by Trump’s [bleep]ing storm troops

carrying sleek weapons of war to US city streets   

 

Tasers  rubber bullets  white smoke  pepper balls 

swirl whirl like Saturn’s wind-blown gases 

Space station astronauts are returning to Earth

The gravity of the situation will soon be evident

 

This week there is a stargazing party in an upstate

New York park  Peeking at stars is often best 

in darkness while others sleep  There is also

stormy weather on Jupiter  Venus  Mars

 

This month’s Wolf Moon beamed   brayed

its afterglow stayed chill until  dawn

The wolves are scowling  howling  prowling

We are all in danger   We are all afraid

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird, is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.

UPENDED, UPDATED

by Phyllis Frakt

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

The West Wing cast 

upholds the Age of Reason

as credits start to roll

to end the third episode

of the second season.

 

Josh asks, What do you say

about a government 

that goes out of its way

to protect even citizens 

who try to destroy it?

 

Sam, C.J., Donna, Toby

solemnly intone in turn,

God Bless America,

defender of liberty,

tolerance, rule of law.

 

But now in dim twilight

we slide into an inverted age,

the age of no reasons,

only whim and might,

divine blessings upended.

 

What would the cast say

about a government 

that protects itself

while its own leaders

try to destroy it?

 

God Help Us, they’d sigh,

then invoke the words

of a slain commander:

Here on earth God’s work 

must truly be our own.

Phyllis Frakt was inspired to write poetry after hearing Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of Joe Biden. Since then, she has written nearly 250 poems, about a dozen published in The New Verse News and elsewhere. She lives in New Jersey.

MY FASCISM

by Elizabeth Rose

I could live in a fascist country.

I see that—now that I live in one.

It’s easy to be left alone

once you master a talent

for being quiet, maybe best

called silent. It’s easy

to turn off news

and just

listen for owl calls.

Easy to not see

when you only look

at trees and sunsets.

 

I’ve been practicing this

for a while now

and so far

my only problem

is looking in the mirror.

Elizabeth Rose, MFA, MS, LICSW,  is a psychotherapist, writer, and poetry therapist. She has published essays and opinion pieces in The Boston Globe, Anti-Heroin Chic,Valiant Scribes, Escape, and The Shanti Arts Review. You can find her poetry in BarBar, Verdad, and The New Verse News. She received her MFA in creative non-fiction from Lesley University in 2019. In addition to a psychotherapy practice, she offers “The Poetry of Gratitude: groups to enhance well-being through poetry and community” in Massachusetts.

THE WOMEN

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

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

David Marcus of Fox News warned that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.”  —Fox News, January 11, 2026

roving gangs of wine women

terrorize my neighborhood

brandishing corkscrews

and Prosecco

weirdly disrespectful

they have book club paperbacks

under their arms

multi syllabic words 

on their glossy lips

with their illegal varietals 

and their unlicensed vaginas

they imagine they could

turn back regiments

make the world safe

for children

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a psychotherapist, poet, and potter.  Her poems have appeared in Calyx, District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Voices: Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists, NewVerseNews, Ekphrastic Review, Lighten Up Online and elsewhere.  Her first chapbook, Out of Order, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.   Having been raised in a family of political junkies and activists in the Washington DC area, political and cultural issues infuse her poetry.  She lives in Bethesda, Maryland where she alternates between sputtering outrage and gob smacked wonder. Her latest book Watching from the Bleachers (Finishing Line Press, 2024) unites these two tendencies.

BOARD GAME

by Tricia Knoll

Trump threatens to sideline Exxon from Venezuela’s oil: ‘They’re playing too cute’  —CNBC, January 12, 2026

Favored tokens in Monopoly are still Top Hat and Scottie Dog. Today the Battleship gets new attention. A miniature assault rifle and tankers with modifiable flags have appeared in our box thanks to wise-ass teenagers in my house. They used AI to make genius modifications to the board too. Players can build pipelines on Venezuela’s Carabobo, Intercampo, Tia Juana and Lagunillas oil fields. Rolling penalties: go to Cuba, jail or Greenland. Suffer bankruptcy. The young designers ditched the rail lines and Water Works in favor of oil companies though the Electric Company has some cachet. Plaza de la Candelaria and El Centro have replaced the outdated landings of Oriental and States Avenues. The dollar is the paper currency unless you decide to gamble, flicking a spinner to take advantage of or risk fluctuating exchange rates for Bolivars. Names of docks replace the red properties. Park Place and Boardwalk are too iconic to change. The kids kept Vermont because we live there. I dug out Miss Scarlet from Clue as my piece. A woman token. What never changes in Monopoly is the marching. Around and around, never knowing if or when the game ends. Or what the battleship will do next. 

Tricia Knoll's family had a Monopoly game set up in the basement of their Illinois house to play during times of tornado warnings. She never liked the game. After 18 years of writing free verse published in dozens of journals and nine collections, she now focuses on prose poems.

INAUGURATION IN NEW ORLEANS

by Elizabeth Larose

They are taking our roofers

our window washers

our builders

our preschool teachers.

They are killing white women

our poets 

our mothers 

our neighbors.

In my intestines the knots

have knots.

But last night was the Inauguration

Mass for the new mayor of Nola

beautiful Latina

Helena

and the new City Council:

a white woman

a black woman and 

five black men.

In the Cathedral-Basilica of 

St. Louis, King of France,

the queen, Irma Thomas sang

How Great Thou Art—I felt it.

We still have street lights 

that don’t work, so many,

potholes the size of small lakes

and tremendous inequality

still the knots have let go a bit

and my chest feels a little bigger

to hold my heart.

I heard Kamala Harris and Steve Scalise

were at the inauguration. 

And the lion lay down with the lamb.

Peace be with us

and with our Spirit.

Inaugurate that!

Elizabeth Larose is a visual artist from New Orleans with shows worldwide, including in NYC, The San Francisco Bay Area, Istanbul and Cartagena. She has also worked in education, from teaching to administration at international schools in Columbia, India, Turkey, and the U.S. Her poetry has been published in Leas Lit, Resilience in Writing, A Poetry Anthology, and The Ekphrastic Review (as of Jan. 22)