THE ROCKS HAVE MEMORIES

by Celeste DeSario
 

Chief Wallace, from the Unkechaug Indian Nation,
We came to your talk, enthusiastic,
Ready to roll up sleeves,
leave our cashmere sweaters home,
Ready to hike through the brambles
To learn about the Sacred Stones.
 
We arrived early to grab front- row seats,
Sipping coffee and sampling cookies,
Ready to learn
About a history we are finally ready to hear.
 
We hope you notice we are here,
Ready to help you.
Sorry for the past, we whisper,
But it was not our fault.
 
We pull out our notecards heavy with questions,
Pens ready to jot down names and places—
Where we can send our checks.
 
The Chief appears in front of us,
No magic there.
His voice soft.
People stand and demand he use the mic;
He pauses.
Looks over the crowd and begins.
“Your homes are built over my grandmother’s bones.
 
We shift in our seats, uncomfortable.
 
He says the stones are not relics.
Not artifacts, waiting to be harvested
Or displayed in a museum.
They are a bloodline.
A heritage.
They are his grandfathers, his grandmothers—
They are living, breathing entities,
Alive, present, watching, waiting.
Braiding our pasts and present.
 
The rocks have memories,
They know.
They have absorbed all the prayers,
Accepted a single stone added to the mound—
An acknowledgement of all those who walked this path before.
 
This is more like it.
This is why we are here.
Pens fly jotting down details.
People smile, showing Chief Wallace
We are happy to be here.
We are not our pasts.
 
He tells us the stones’ portals, align perfectly with the rising sun
Of the spring and autumn equinox,
On those two days— only those days—
The stones ask ancestral visitors for reflection:
The ones who whisper names to the morning wind,
The ones who pause for a moment of thanks,
Palms turned to catch the emerging warmth.
The recognition of a new season unfolding.
 
His people use the stones as calendars—
Telling them when to plant the corn,
When the Bluefish are running,
When the summer Fluke and Winter Flounder
Can be found in the muddy bottoms of bays,
When the Porgy will flood the shallow estuaries every spring.
 
We smile, encouraging him.
See? We are listening.
We are ready to help.
Can you see us sitting here?
 
He looks over his audience, then he looks right at us
“But I am not going to tell you where to find them.”
 
We are outsiders.
Undeserving.
 
 “You bulldoze our prayer sites,
building six bedrooms houses with three car garages.
The kids from those six-bedroom homes
tag the stones with offensive slurs, vulgarities
use Sharpie markers to scrawl “T + M” ‘26”,
Spray paint neon- green skulls and crossbones,
 
“My grandfather’s bones
Are embedded in these rocks—
His spirit
Still alive, still breathing, still present for me.”
 
Boys bent on destruction.
Sacred spaces made unholy by ignorant hands.
Boys who would become the men
who control the land that was not theirs—
the waters, the air.
 
“These stone structures are our churches.
Imagine— just imagine—if we pulled down your altars.
Ripped the cross from the ceiling.”
 
He has lost the thread.
He is losing his audience.
He has lost so much.
 
Now we are the ones who are angry.
Uncomfortable.
Put down that mirror.
That is not my face reflecting back to me.
 
The stones are not meant for those who carry hammers,
The stones are not meant for those who carry hatred,
The stones.
His stones.
 Are sacred.
His heritage.
His.
 
It’s not the talk we anticipated.
It’s not the talk we wanted.
We sit stunned into silence.
 
What now?
How do we move forward?
Are we too late?
 
Chief Wallace stands alone
the audience puts checkbooks back into pockets,
shuffling back to their pools, tennis courts, mahjong tables,
whispering that he has closed the door—
refusing to play by our rules.
Again.
 
Because, we cannot change.
And they cannot trust.
And neither can pretend
The past never happened.
 
 
Celeste DeSario writes poetry to process life’s events, and to try to make sense of them. Sometimes that actually happens.  Celeste’s poetry appears in The New Verse News, The SportsScribe Literary Magazine, The Changing Times, The Ekphrastic Review and The Dissident Voice. Celeste does not own any cashmere sweaters.

GRINDIN’ OUT A DEAL

by Rick Pongratz

After a public contract dispute that led an East Idaho hospital to become out of network with a major health insurer, the two businesses agreed to a contract. The deal brings Portneuf Medical Center in-network for Regence BlueShield of Idaho, according to a joint announcement made Saturday by the hospital and insurer. For two months, the hospital had been out of network for Regence, the insurer for state government employees and other private plans. —Idaho Capital Sun, August 18, 2026

You need to pray for the negotiators
to reach an agreement and resolve this.
Dan, my health insurance customer service rep,
tells me this over the phone.
 
I can’t see him.
I can’t see the words either,
but his voice and tone 
remind me of the youth pastors 
from when I was a kid. 
The ones that never studied 
at a seminary—but, by golly, 
they sure loved Jesus. 
 
My insurance company and my hospital refuse 
to agree on who gets most of my money. 
My doctor wants me to get x-rays 
for a bone spur under my toenail. 
It causes the nail to rise up—inflating 
is the word my insurance company uses 
for the prices of the hospital. 
And that nasty nail just won’t let go—greedy 
is the word my for-profit hospital uses 
for the insurance company 
that won’t agree to terms.
 
And this little toenail, 
it’s quite a small thing, 
but it’s holding a whole foot hostage. 
All the other toenails lie in their beds, 
just taking the space they need. 
They don’t hold out for a ransom, 
expecting a kick-back 
in exchange for not causing pain 
when I knock the soccer ball 
around with my kid.
 
But that’s toes for ya.
So this little fella needs 
to have a bit shaved 
off the top of that bone. 
But the doctor wants
to see what he’s looking at. 
And the hospital tells me my portion 
of the x-ray price is $293, up front. 
I tell the billing specialist 
that Dremels are on sale 
at Lowe’s for $39.98. 
I can buy seven Dremels to grind off 
my toenail, just like the doctor does,
and still have enough money
left over for ice cream. 
I show her the Lowe’s website on my phone. 
She says I’m wasting her time,
and it seems we are at an impasse,
so I call off negotiations. 
 
I go for the ice cream. 
I never was the best with delayed gratification. 
But it seems that sometimes miracles,
they do happen, 
and my hospital 
and my insurance company 
have agreed 
on how rich they should each get. 
 
I haven’t called to see how many 
Dremels the x-ray will cost now. 
I’ll probably just have to settle
for the words spoken
by youth pastor Dan 

and pray for the negotiators;

as I know they prey.

Rick Pongratz is a poet and mental health clinician. His writing appears in Rattle, Bellevue Literary Review, The New Verse News, Unbroken, and elsewhere. Rick specializes in ecotherapy and studies creative writing at Idaho State University. He currently resides in Idaho where he enjoys getting lost in the woods with his family and dog.

AMERICAN BEEF

by Darrell Petska

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

In the coming months, when you bite down on a government-subsidized burger made with meat of questionable origin, you’ll have Glorious Leader Donald J. Trump to thank. On Aug. 21, the president who loves to call other people communists enraged American cattle ranchers by announcing plans to “allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.” Trump posted news of the deal on social media, but of course gave no specific details about who the deal is with, where the meat is coming from or why he’s suddenly admitting that waiving tariffs will, in fact, lower prices for consumers. It’s a turducken of hypocrisy. —Rex Huppke, USA Today, August 23, 2026

I sing burgers
made of American beef,
not of “mystery meat”
imported from Botswana or Brazil,
Namibia or the moon’s dark side.

I sing American cows
raised by hard-working ranchers
living just down the road.
Their methods and products
I can see and trust—

unlike Trump’s dubious meat
bound to depress prices paid
to American cattle growers
needing incentives to rebuild
drought-ravaged herds.

A Trump burger? No way.
There aren’t enough condiments
to mask the foul taste
of midterm connivery
tucked clumsily into a bun.

Darrell Petska grew up on a cattle farm bordering the Nebraska Sandhills, where ranching is a revered but increasingly threatened way of life. Prairie winds still strum his heartstrings, though he now lives and writes poetry in Wisconsin.

ANKLE MONITORS

by Phyllis Wax

Summertime—

and we bare shoulders,

legs, ankles, feet

except

this summer

thousands of ankles

are not bare.

It doesn’t matter

if they’ve followed

the rules, filled out the forms,

gone to all the appointments. 

It doesn’t matter

if they’ve paid their taxes,

committed no crimes,

volunteered at the local school.

They can still be snatched,

handcuffed and whisked away. 

And, if they’re lucky enough to be released,

they are bare-ankled no more.

The monitors strapped to those ankles

are meant to track and stigmatize,

remove the bare joy of summer.

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee, where she observes the goings-on of the country and the world. She has read in coffee houses, bars, libraries and on the radio, and has participated in poet/fiber artist collaborations. Among the journals in which her work has appeared are Gyroscope Review, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Wordpeace, The New Verse News, Naugatuck River Review, Your Daily Poem, Feral.

AUTOMATED GRACE

by Eric Goldfarb

The Dutch Data Protection Authority has fined Uber €825 million ($966 ‌million) for deactivating driver accounts through automated systems without adequately informing them... Uber temporarily suspended accounts of some drivers who ​were suspected of fraud, including ​when its systems concluded drivers ⁠had taken unnecessary detours to inflate fares or accepted trips without intending to complete them. Uber said such suspensions were usually brief, and it did not permanently deactivate such accounts without human review. Drivers with low ​customer ratings were sometimes permanently deactivated by computer, the Dutch agency said. Uber disputed that, saying ​it had never ⁠automated permanent deactivation decisions. —Reuters, August 21, 2026

At midnight, the app unspools his name.

Not fired. Drawn out like a thread,

a street erased

from the map that once contained him.

By dawn, he presses thumb to glass,

the small biometric oath: I am here.

The screen takes the print,

considers,

stays mute.

Yesterday had numbers:

six rides,

a four point nine,

a daughter’s braces due Thursday.

Today he is a flaw in the math,

a judgment reached

where he cannot enter.

Perhaps a detour.

Perhaps a rating.

Perhaps the drunk who called him brother

until the fare clicked over.

He appeals to a shape on the display.

The shape thanks him for his patience.

This is how we vanish now.

No foreman at the factory gate.

No manager required to meet the eye.

Only the calm blue wash

of automated grace.

Your account has been deactivated.

Across the ocean, a regulator

assigns the silence a price:

eight hundred twenty five million euros,

enough zeroes to impersonate remorse.

It changes nothing on the night shift.

In a parked sedan,

another man lifts his face to the glass,

waiting for the light

to know his jaw, his eyes.

I am here, he tells the dark.

Deep in the circuit,

something without a pulse

decides whether he is telling the truth.

Eric Goldfarb’s work has appeared in Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, The New Verse News, and others. He lives with his wife in Atlanta, Georgia.

DISQUIET OVER DISTANT MURDER

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

See also CFR reporting by Will Freeman

This disquiet, queasy floating gut, 

comes from wondering why 

an unmarked, unregistered 

plane lands in a military strip 

of an Ecuadorian airport, 

with an unknown number 

of crew members, takes off 

then drops drones 

on a fishing boat near 

the Galapagos, killing 

several fishermen, sinking 

the boat, then capturing 

survivors who are flown 

to El Salvador and treated 

there as shipwreck victims.

Whose ship is wrecked? 

Who turned good evil, 

night day, justice execution? 

Orwell? Or is this the new 

every day in these 

United States which 

dispatched the plane 

that sentenced 

the fishermen 

to float in the sea 

until rescued by the same 

crew that set off 

the drones that punched 

their ship into

the deep.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

STARGAZING NOTES

by Dan Overgaard

Erupting star, incinerating star:

the likes of which has never been observed 

or measured in our skies—oh yes! we are 

observing now, obsessively, but maybe not 

as worshipfully as you might be wishing—

if, that is, you ever spent a wish on us.

And I’ve been searching, high and rather low, 

for some device—an image or a metaphor

sufficiently sensational for you—

but you told us you’re a star, so let’s use that.

Astronomers who stay up late observe

astonishing phenomena so they can 

measure light, and theorize. Most any night

they catch spectacular releases,

flares of blinding and exploding gas—

and you’ve got those, so we’ll be theorizing

for a long, long time about your molten core

of darkness and whatever’s broken there. 

But it’s hardly theoretical—or celestial—

for everyone who’s burned by your debris. 

In fact, you’re most unheavenly, the way

you’re not content to shine like other stars, 

or hold your corner of our constellation up

so we can navigate or wish upon you 

as our steady and illuminating guide.

Though stars, by definition, don’t have moons,

you’ve commandeered more moons than Jupiter,

and flogged them round about you til they blur

together, more like Saturn’s rings, and then

you trash them all unless they make you shine.

The stars out there do all their starry things:

forming and shining, guiding and blinking out.

It’s not fair to compare them in this way.

You claim to be our star while you are here,

but all your sucking needs may cave us in.

In time, you’ll be assessed by smarter

scientists than me, but frankly I don’t think

you’ll be the greatest in the firmament,

and I can tell you that this galaxy of ours

has never been—and won’t turn—white for you. 

And so, collapsing star, we watch you burn. 

You torch us as you smolder and pretend—

but though you smite us, we will not go blind.

Your gas is dissipating now, and soon—

before your end—you’ll be an empty dwarf.

Dan Overgaard was born and raised in Thailand. He attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and programs. He’s now retired, and probably gardening or catching up on reading. His poems have appeared in Mobius, Santa Clara Review, Across The Margin, The Galway Review, pioneertown, As It Ought To Be, The High Window, and other journals.

WILDFIRE SMOKE AND A WALK IN THE WOODS

by Katy Z. Allen

“What the Newest Research on Wildfire Smoke Tells Us.” —The New York Times, August 16, 2026 

people are exposed to more toxins…damaging lungs…brains…other organs

entering the woods wondering about teshuvah–return, repair, restart,

welcomed by a tufted titmouse repeating peter-peter-peter

and two great blue herons with 6-foot wing spans taking flight

 

PM2.5…measured by air quality indexes…other substances…lead, mercury, formaldehyde

walking steadily, trees newly fallen join so many already decaying

quickly replaced by new growth vying for space

away from the road, the woods quiet save for a steady hum of crickets,

the call of a nuthatch, the squeal of a catbird, the hammering of a woodpecker

sounds of machinery in the distance

in populated areas…especially toxic…fires…consume…buildings, vehicles, electronics

suddenly a patch of blackberries, but I walk on, for I didn’t come to the woods to pick,

but irrepressible desire overcomes, I turn around and pick enough for my granola,

until the loss of my lid’s container and my memory of what I did with it

pierce my delight and set me to questioning and despairing of myself

wildfire smoke and …cardiovascular hospitalizations, diabetes complications, preterm birth, cancer, impaired cognition, respiratory effects

the steady rhythm of my walking restores my wellbeing

as I think of ancient sages meditating an hour before prayer,

focusing so intently, even a snake crawling up their leg would go unnoticed,

and far that I am from that degree of connection, still I stop for prayer, 

accompanied by the chirping of a chipmunk and the chattering of distant birds

no amount of smoke exposure …isn’t harmful…using masks and air filters more frequently

rising from prayer ready to complete my walk and enter the day, 

I carry with me new understanding of the potential pitfalls 

of physical desire and action taken too soon,

as I continue to contemplate teshuvah in the face of global crisis

best way to mitigate risks…to prevent catastrophic fires…addressing the root cause:…climate change

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, poet, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, former healthcare chaplain, and co-founder of a Jewish climate organization. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in print and online in such places as The New Verse News, Amethyst Review, The Bluebird Word, Cosmic Daffodil, The Soliloquist Journal and Art on the Trails: Number 9. She was awarded Honorable Mention in The Prose Poem’s 2025 Prose Poetry Competition, and her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.