Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Sunday, February 09, 2025

A TIDAL WAVE POEM

by Gil Hoy




in my dream, the strongman threw my pages 
of poems into a wastebasket and told me 
not to write another poem about democracy. 
no more poems about human rights 
and fundamental freedoms, free and fair 
elections, independent branches of government, 
freedom of expression and press, 
constitutional guarantees of civilian authority. 
no more poems about democratic principles 
that fashioned my poems, they, that turned chaos 
and madness into people power, would no longer 
have permission to enter my poems. so instead, 
I wrote a tidal wave poem about a tidal wave coming.
not an about-democracy or about-democratic principles 
type of poem, not a poem about diversity and inclusion, 
one man-one vote, international law, or equal justice 
under the law. no, this poem was about a tidal wave. 
a tidal wave so strong and so powerful, 
so potent and so heavy, it could destroy evil 
in its path. a tidal wave thousands of miles long 
propelled by the strength of the sun, 
the moon and the earth. a tidal wave so 
demanding so dominant that his eyes 
and his lungs looked drowned. 
a tidal wave that yelled
don't ever fuck with my country again. 
a tidal wave so powerful, so so heavy
and strong, that, yes, it deserves its own poem.


Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who is studying fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously at Boston University. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer and a former four-term elected Brookline, MA Selectman. His poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review,  Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News and elsewhere.

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

by Jim Burns

with echoes of Buffalo Springfield


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


it can’t happen here 
they say
and go on 
with their day, 
but are they sure,
do they remember a time 
way back in their prime 
when they raised voices and sang
that something’s happening here,
it’s not exactly clear,
but we’d better beware
and look what’s goin’ down
what’s that sound, 
it ain’t exactly clear, 
but something for sure 
is happening here, 
the Constitution, institutions, 
are biting the dust, 
like used up metal 
they’ll dissolve into rust 
while we whistle 
in the dark, 
take a walk 
in the park, 
say it’ll be alright
and forget 
that what follows
the dark 
is the night


Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana, received degrees from Indiana State University and Indiana University, and spent most of his working life as a librarian. After retirement he turned to an earlier love of writing and has been fortunate to have seen over 20 of his poems and prose published either online or in print. He lives with his wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.

MAGA SAGA... OR PROJECT 2025 CONTRIVED

by Gilbert Allen


Fear queers.
Ban trans.
Hire liars.
Bring on Elon!

Pardon felons.
ICE raids
housemaids
nurse aides.

Prez sez
"I buy
Gaza Plaza!
Bombshell hotel!

Max tax
Canuck crooks!
Vex Mex!
They pay

duty booty!
Hate great!
True Blue?
Screw you.

Gilbert Allen has tried to live True Blue in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, since 1977. For more information about him and his work, check out the interview here.

Saturday, February 08, 2025

MISS-SPOKE

by Adele Evershed




I Google the name of the new White House
Press Secretary—Karoline Leavitt—
and find she’s young—27,
the youngest press secretary in history.
This, and the fact she is a woman doing a difficult job,
should make me like her,
so I start to listen. 
Her manner is abrasive,
like a loofah on your ear,
rubbing my skin the wrong way.
But sometimes an album is more than its cover,
so I persevere.
She cycles through her talking points:
Egg prices—blame sleepy Joe Biden,
Trump’s visit to North Carolina—
like the hand of God.
a plane crashing—DEI policies.
Round and round,
like a malevolent Barbie News Anchor.
All the while the cross at her throat
bops about virtue signaling
like a protest outside an abortion clinic,
‘I’m only doing what Jesus wants.’ 
But on someone who has no virtue,
it’s just another fashion accessory,
the same as Madonna’s
when she sang, ‘Like a Virgin’
(and Karoline—definitely no virgin,
 married a man 32 years her senior,
 had a baby six months after the wedding—just saying). 
Her fake smile is as nauseating, 
as her ‘Make America Blonde Again' t-shirt.
Then she tweets about education— 
how it should only clothe a child
in those below the knee old fashions— 
Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmetic
AND NOTHING ELSE.
As a teacher I think—
maybe she has a point
because if she knew her ABCs,
she’d spell Karoline with a C.


Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. You can find some of her work in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press), The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press) and an upcoming chapbook, In the Belly of the Wail, with Querencia Press.

Friday, February 07, 2025

IN PRAISE OF SMALL THINGS

by Michelle DeRose


Things too small to hold
today’s news: the fingernail
of a newborn, sharpened
tip of this pencil, a candle
flame, our old Tom’s purr.
The last breath of a dissolving
mint, the dog’s white brow
curling in her brown patch.
The chip of slate my six
year-old once passed me.
Hold it in your hand and it will soothe
you, he said. And it does.


Michelle DeRose, Professor Emerita of English, lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her poetry won the Chancellor's Prize in 2024 and the Faruq Z Bey award in 2023 from the Poetry Society of Michigan, and her chapbooks were finalists in the 2023 and 2024 Michigan Writers Cooperative Press competition.

MAKE ARITHMETIC GREAT AGAIN!

by Philip Kitcher


In the first two weeks of his return as president, Trump has, like his first term, to issued orders to open up more American land and waters for fossil fuel extraction and started the process to yank the US from the Paris climate agreement. “We will drill, baby drill,” said Trump, who has promised to cut energy and electricity prices in half within 18 months. But Trump has this time also launched a blitzkrieg against renewable energy, with his department of interior temporarily suspending all clean energy development—but tellingly not oil and gas—on federal land. —The Guardian, February 3, 2025. AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.


Author’s noteI was inspired by an old Bill Clinton quip—“What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic.”


Philip Kitcher has written too many books about philosophy, a subject which he taught at Columbia for many years. His poems have appeared online in Light, Lighten Up Online, Politics/Letters, Snakeskin, and The Dirigible Balloon; and in print in the Hudson Review.

Thursday, February 06, 2025

THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK

by Hallie Dolin




Last Tuesday the pointer moved one second closer 
to destruction. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight.

Around the world, our weapons wait for our command:
all vigilant, sitting patiently through midnight. 

We hear reports of ever-growing plagues passed on,
although information blackout's our new midnight. 

No one draws wheat from chaff, facts from alternative,
or musters effort like we used to do. Midnight 

and its stifling, sleepless depths—no rest for us—
is a bruise seeping blood, this black and blue midnight.

We snipe over who deserves to rain their revenge 
on whom, whose forfeit lives should dim out to midnight,

but we've missed the point. Your fate is mine, my blood is
your bloodstain. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight. 


Hallie Dolin is a pathology resident in Cleveland, Ohio and has been writing for fun for nearly three decades. Her work has previously been published in The Case Reserve Review and the now-defunct Flashes in the Dark. When she isn't trying to discover novel cures for frightening microbes, she spends her time working on an actual novel. She also enjoys knitting, playing the guitar, and spending time with her cat. 

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

GOOGLE EARTH GAZA

by Robinson Terry




Before:
Bright white roofs greet the camera.
Square irises shaped like a city,
orderly rows of houses, 
neat columns of streets, and 
thin shadows that hug the edges of so many homes. 
Green trees scattered about
in no particular pattern—
though there are parks
just as surely as there are people—
even if the picture can’t catch or corroborate their existence,
they exist. 
 
After: 
leveled earth 
devoid of shape and structure
every building reduced to a basement
every basement staring up
at a sky that will never reach down far enough 
to grant them light 
fat shadows like a smattering of so much blood 
no design to the destruction
label it hazardous and call it a target
to justify wiping it from the surface:
a target has no depth 
a target is always flat 
a target only exists on a screen
no—human beings were not the targets
a target can only be a building
not who built the building
they are not on the screen
they are not seen—
never were 





Robinson Terry is an English teacher living in Syracuse, NY. He has previously been published in Better Than Starbucks and The Broadkill Review. 

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

I WILL MISS THE LARGE ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA

by Michael Brockley


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.



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.

Monday, February 03, 2025

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: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.