SYSTEM SNOW

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Elizabeth Kerlikowske pays attention, though she doesn't want to.

SURVIVOR’S GUILT II

by Julie Weiss

Photo by Seema Miah at Unsplash

It snowed last night, an unusual

enough flurry in our part of Spain

to make the news. Downstairs,

my children pelt each other

with snowballs, their voices

all sparkle and windchime.

The sky, though gray, has no

reason to grieve. I stack dishes

in the sink, sweep up crumbs,

grumble, because who doesn´t

grumble about housework?

If a bang knocks a flock of birds

off course, I assume it´s a car

backfiring, no need to scramble

outside in pajamas, search

the snow for blood. It´s easy

to chide your children for tracking

mud inside when a government

thug isn´t kicking down your door.

Easy to indulge in a cup of hot cocoa,

extra marshmallows please, when

your neck isn´t crushed under

a state-sponsored knee. Tomorrow,

they´ll shove another child into

an unmarked van. Another child´s

mother will vanish, or die. Here,

far from my homeland, the sidewalks

will have frozen over. We´ll glide

to school, graceful as skaters,

hoping not to break any bones

on the hard, hard ice.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, was published in February, 2025. "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was a finalist for Best of the Net, she won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for "Cumbre Vieja," and she was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in ONE ART, Stone Circle Review, Gyroscope Review, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review and MER. She lives with her wife and children in Spain.

THE STINGLESS BEE, RECOGNIZED

by Martin Elster

Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere. —The Guardian, December 29, 2025

We’ve been here since Cretaceous times,

predating all your categories.

Now, as in some horror stories,

killer bees have come with crimes.

 

The forest shrinking, climate drift,

chemicals—how can we cope?

But now your courts declare there’s hope.

We’re “recognized.” A gift—a shift

 

in ethics? We have gained the right

to live. We have our age-old laws,

and we enforce them without flaws.

Will you now do the same to fight

 

and show up for what you regard

as vital, enforce the words you’ve penned

to make sure this is not the end?

Guarding us from yourselves is hard!

The winner of the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, Martin Elster comes from Hartford, CT, where he studied percussion and composition at the Hartt School of Music and performed with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Martin, whose poetry has been strongly influenced by his musical sensibilities, has written two books, the latest of which is From Pawprints to Flight Paths: Animal Lives in Verse (Kelsay Books)..

A FINGER FOR THE WORKERS

by Donna Katzin

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

In his big-boss suit, the President 

tours the Ford factory, as if he owns the place,

until a heckler calls him a predator

without even slowing down the line

that devours his labor until the bell rings

to keep the country’s machinery running.

 

The boss’s fingers have never known a callous,       

labored long hours to meet production quotas

until they ached and his back complained.

They flick disdain and disrespect to workers 

like cigarette butts or young women used up

until the men on top tire of them,

spit them out, like last night’s nicotine—traumas and all.

 

But the gesture masquerading as power

sends a message to the shop floor crew—

the truth-teller has gotten under 

boss-man’s sagging skin,

and this group knows how to organize… 

They can do it again.

 
A former union organizer, Donna Katzin has worked for more than four decades with South Africa in its struggle to defeat apartheid and advance the new nation's  democratic development.  She also continues  through Tipitapa Partners to work with vulnerable Nicaraguan communities struggling to feed their children.  She is the author of With These Hands, a book of poetry and photos of South Africans struggling to give birth to a new nation, and a published poet honored to have been included in The New Verse News.

THE KILLERS

by Howie Good

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

You can hear the slow tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine. It’s the end of the so-called “American Century.” Conscienceless killers disguised as police prowl factories and airports and schools for new victims, and all with the sanction of a government of liars and thieves. The lamp beside the golden door has been shot out. My grandparents were poor Jews from the shtetl – in current parlance, “garbage people” from “shithole countries.” And look at me. My face, with its hollows and shadows, its worry lines and age wrinkles, is like a map, sort of, a map of a country I no longer know.

Howie Good is a widely published but little-known author.

ME AND MR. MONROE

by Lynn White

Cartoon by Christo Komarnitski

You wonder where next.

Gaza, or Greenland,

just follow the gas,

so some say.

But Monroe and me say Mexico.

Don-roe and they say Mexico.

Gaza and Greenland

are just chips in the deal.

You can bet your bottom dollar,

it’s Mexico, say Monroe and me.

And then it’s the time of Don-roe and they

All doors open, north and south.

Canada, Colombia, Cuba,

Greenland… and then

we can only wait

and see.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

EPSTEIN WAR

by KP Liles 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

It was always about the crude.

Extracting the dark

archives out 

from under us.

A few wealthy men 

plotting to own

everything, down

to the last

liquified remains 

they groom 

to burn. Virgin 

trillions naked

for the taking.

O Power! the Power!

Unrivaled deployment—

Military, ICE, beyond oversight…

Taste Venezuela: 

lest we forget

it’s a jungle out there. 

War

drugs, law, lust

regime change

Mexico, Cuba

Minneapolis

Iran

Portland, Greenland

Behold! A politics of scandal 

heaped on scandal heaped

on scandal heaped on

morals. On truth.

Still, the trafficked girls

will not be

silenced. Drill! 

If you have the stomach for it.

It was always 

about the crude.

KP Liles desires a better, safer world for his daughter. For his son, his family, his students, his community, his fellow decent human beings. So, while he would have preferred to have spent time indulging in his newfound enthusiasm for birding, he felt obligated to put on the poet uniform for this piece.

GRĒNLAND UNFÆST (GREENLAND OFF-BALANCE)

by Zumwalt

Cartoon by Anne Derenne

President Trump announced in a social media post on Saturday morning his latest strategy to get control of Greenland: He is slapping new tariffs on a bloc of European nations until they come to the negotiating table to sell Greenland. —The New York Times, January 17, 2026

“Greedy for Greenland,” the great leader uttered,

Musing on military modes of grabbing.

“Shale and shield,” he shouted out loud,

White House words woke up the world!

Old World earls offered their swords,

Rallying round the Realm of the Danes.

Pushing back promptly against pressure and might,

Frederiksen fierce, flashed her reply:

“If force is flaunted on frozen shores,

Strikes from the States shatter our league;

Broken the bridges of brotherhood built,

NATO is nuked—if neighbors clash!”

Damning the Danes in deep standoff,

“Lay down the law!” the leader swore.

Taxing with tariffs those tribes that balk:

"Gobble up Greenland, get all we can;

If that game goes bad, go grab Iceland!"

Zumwalt's poetry explores themes of alienation, shifting reality, and personal adaptation. Recent work has appeared at Ink Sweat and Tears.

O GREENLAND! MY GREENLAND!

by Anne Gruner

Global AI race makes Greenland's critical minerals a tempting target —NBC News, January 17, 2026

Frozen for millennia,

your ice melts faster and faster,

the shiny shield that protects you

from the sun, reflecting its rays,

like armor deflecting spears, arrows,

and swords but not outrageous fortune.

 

Invulnerable for ages, your permafrost

softens, disgorging its methane and carbon

to fuel the global bonfire of the vanities.

Ancient microbes, freed from glacial captivity

create black holes of “giant” viruses,

standing ready for missions of good or evil.

Fresh and cold, your newly born meltwater

floods the warm salty ocean,

and like a hormonal imbalance,

it slows the sea's circulation,

a fateful harbinger.

 

As your ice bids its long farewell,

you say hello to a new peril,

one from humanity, which may transmogrify

your beauty into toxic mountains of sludge, acid,

dust, and runoff from crushing, grinding,

and chemical bleaching for coveted minerals

and a cesspool of data centers, accelerating

your blackening, melting, warming,

and death. 

 

For the first time in human memory

you have shed tears on your highest peak,

weeping for the Earth.

Anne Gruner is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Honeyguide Literary Magazine, The New Verse News, Humans of the World, Spillwords, and Written Tales. Her fiction and non-fiction can be found in Dogwood, Rhapsody of the Spheres, Persimmon Tree, Constellations, Hippocampus, and others. A former CIA analyst, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

VENEZUELAN PEACE PRIZE GIVEAWAY LIMERICK

by Paul A. Freeman

The not-so-Nobel Peace prize. Cartoon by Marian Kamensky. Cartoon Movement at Instagram.

A second-hand peace prize! My word!

In hopes that St. Donald is spurred

to help out Machado,

yet ’neath her bravado

she’s trying to polish a turd.

Paul A. Freeman teaches English. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!)commercially published, Paul Freeman is the author of numerous published short stories, poems, plays and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

HOW CAN I WRITE A LOVE POEM?

by Rose Mary Boehm

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

Do I write about poets with red holes

in their forehead? Students whose eyes

have been shot out, the mother of four

small children is rotting in a cell full of other people,

excrement, wails, the sounds of metal and wood

on flesh and bone.

 

How can I write a love poem when 

all I know is that planets no longer align,

that war has been declared on peace,

that all the crystals disintegrate into millions

of nano shards, shaken by the vibrations of hate.

 

How can I write a love poem when

I am no longer allowed to trust my eyes,

when blue is red, up is down, no means yes,

when, while I am hollow and starving

a blonde demon laughs and tells me I have riches

to look forward to. Perhaps even in this life.

All I have to do is believe.

 

And haven’t we all been taught to believe?

To believe that there is a big old man on a cloud

somewhere, an old man with a long, white beard

who has a big book and writes all your 

little misdeeds in big letters,

and who they say is love and who asks you to love

‘the other’ as you love yourself.

 

So, for many it’s easy to believe that in his name,

in the name of love, you are being hung

upside-down by your feet until you

confess how much delicious hate you feel,

and that you never had it so good.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026.

MIRRORING OUR TIMES

by Lylanne Musselman

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist. Her poetry has appeared in Pank, The Indianapolis Review, The New Verse News, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among many other literary journals and anthologies. A seven-time Pushcart nominee, she is the author of eight poetry collections and is currently working on another.

SPINNING HALF-TRUTH STRAW INTO BIG-LIE GOLD

by Raymond Nat Turner

Phil Maddox, a Minneapolis-area resident, told The Intercept he recorded the video [above] on Sunday morning during a quick drive around his neighborhood to keep tabs on federal agents in the area. 

POP-POP-POP … One, two, three kill shots disturbing

ICE-cold Minnesota morning. Morning frozen in the past.

Bloodstained airbag. Driver-side door ajar. A

Third Reich-ish morning ambush on crooked legs of big lies …

Expletives dripping from masked lips—shooter man struts

away after blasting 3 holes into the bullseye. No pulse to check.

No blood to scrub. No tears to fight. He prances away as if it was

routine rifle range target practice. Or, the video game of—Gaza.

Made his bones. No one to answer to but remote-controlled, traitorous,

CRC: Cruel Reich Cult. They got his back. The violence-worshipping

vampiric cult celebrates bloodshed. And for its Fox-box foot soldiers

heirs of Goebbels quickly begin to spin half-truth straw into big lie gold …

No semiautomatic “thoughts and prayers.” No “Political violence is 

unacceptable.” “Indefensible.” or, “has no place in our democracy.”

No “good guy with gun is the only thing that could’ve stopped bad guy

with gun.” Mother-poet-guitarist-legal observer’s character must die too.

Career criminal 34-count felon floods the zone riddling her body with dreck-

dipped bullets. Buckeye big lie “Haitians are eating the dogs” architect empties

his clip center mass. Puppy-killing princess of darkness, fires “domestic terrorist”

shots. “Weaponized vehicle” shots. Blonde Lil Eva Braun blasts “lunatic” rounds …

School Shooting Du Jour; War Of The Week; Nonstop Genocide—

Holy trinity, sacred triad of violence worshipped daily by Warfare State.

And besides, didn’t its high priest—pomade man—prance and pontificate to a roomful of medals “ Maximum lethality—not tepid legality.” “Violent effect—not politically correct?”

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.

DISRESPECTED

by Alan Catlin

For Renee Nicole Good

We came with whistles
and they came with guns.
If you see something,
say something,
blow your whistles
take pictures of malefactors.

Men with masks and guns
used to be called outlaws,
the bad guys.
Apparently, they still are.

“You should see the people
they are hiring now.
Background checks are
a thing of the past.”

We don’t need to see
the new hires, we’ve seen
what they old ones will do.

“I’m not mad at you, dude.”
are famous last words now.

The president says it’s her
own fault she was killed,
“She disrespected a federal
officer.”

Seriously.

There will be no investigation.

Alan Catlin is the poetry and reviews editor of Misfitmagazine.net. His next full-length book of poetry is Still Life with Apocalypse from Shelia Na Gig Editions.