ABOUT LOVE

by Ryan Caidic

 

 

Nearly 200,000 people in 124 villages in the northeastern Philippines were affected and over 5,400 fled massive plumes of ash that billowed from Mayon volcano over the weekend due to the collapse of lava deposits from its slopes, officials said Monday. —AP, May 4, 2026

Mayon is the most active volcano in the Philippines, erupting over 52 times in the past 500 years... Its most destructive recorded eruption occurred on February 1, 1814. The volcano belched dark ash and eventually bombarded the town of Cagsawa [where] about 1,200 locals perished in what is considered to be the most lethal eruption in Mayon's history. —Wikipedia

 

 

We live in the time of ash and awe,

where the bell tower of a ruined

cathedral frames the perfect dome

 

its crater glow combusting in pallid

pyroclastic smoke, thousands have fled

its strombolian show

 

of affection, amid the terrible beauty

engulfing kilometers of sky and city

under siege of nature’s desire

 

to shape itself, they say that Mayon

was the womb that rose from the burial

tomb of lovers Magayon and Panganoron

 

passion in the form of fire turned crust

then magma, then igneous stone

then lava, then a quiet, then rage,

 

then warmth, then grief, then ash again—

layers that unravel histories, unpredictable

yet predictable all the same.

 

Those who were burned have forgotten

relocating closer to the pulse

where the fire of Ibalon resides.

 

That’s the theology of love.

To be close enough to feel the rumble

of a molten heart, to be in the shadow

 

of its ending, and to exist,

every time a little more consumed

by its divine ravishing of flame.  

 

 

Ryan Caidic is a Filipino poet and advertising creative living in Denmark. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, The Missouri Review, Southeast Review, Apricity, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere, and has been highly commended by the Bridport Prize and Munster Literature Center.  

AMERICAN FLAG BLUE

by Bonnie Proudfoot

In the twilight of my life, I came 

to the history of indigo: color 

and currency, “a length of cloth 

in exchange for one human body.” 

The secrets to its cultivation known 

by Africans. “In the 1700’s profits 

outpaced those of sugar and cotton.” 

The first American flag stitched with 

indigo-dyed cloth. Wave a flag sewn 

by shackled fingers while the blue 

bruise thickens, seeps its way into today, 

stain of the past slumps in the corner 

of every classroom, pain threaded into 

every pledge, each anthem we sing. 

Now, 250 more years around the sun,

we’re waiting for the arc of the moral

universe to catch the freedom train,

but the station is empty, streetlights

have begun to fail, first one, then another, 

shadows lengthening while our ears

press the rails, listening for the thrum.

My country tis of thee, sweet land—

it’s twilight here in the heartland.

the indigo light dims and lingers.

 

 

Author’s note: Source of the poem’s quotations: Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World by Catherine McKinley.

Bonnie Proudfoot's fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Sheila-Na-Gig, SWWIM, Gyroscope Review, Rattle, The New Verse News, and the New Ohio Review, and have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart. Her novel Goshen Road(OU/ Swallow) received the WCONA Book of the Year and was long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway. Poetry books include Household Gods, a chapbook, on Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, and Incomer, released in 2026 on Shadelandhouse Modern Press.

FEBRUARY 28, 2026

by Alice Hartley

Photography & Reporting by Zohreh Saberi, Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2026

Frankenstein’s monster,

from parts lived before.

I wonder,

if we made a monster from

the little ones' parts

left unburied,

would its limbs

remember they wanted to run,

with nowhere to go?

If muscle remembers,

will our monster,

be doomed to flee,

to arms

too weak to hold?

Alice Hartley is a public health nurse in Milwaukee. She has been writing since she was five years old, starting with picture books about her friends. As an adult, she mostly writes poetry and horror stories. She has a found family that includes two cats who don't get along...but four adults that do.

WHO'S GOT THE CARDS?

by Paul A. Freeman

 

 

“My hand,” Donald boasted, “is great!

Two pairs, kings and aces. That’s fate.”

And while he did holler,

the sly Ayatollah

said, “Too bad, coz I hold a Strait.”

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Paul A. Freeman is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States of America. The book 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.

DETHRONED DEPOSTED

 by Esther Cohen

The Guardian, May 1, 2026 with a photo by Roy Gumpel, The Overlook News.

Greene County New York is one of those places
small, poor, magical, compelling.
Incomparable beauty. Worthy of love.
Forty years ago we bought a house .
Sounds odd to say but
life there is a poem. A poem
I’ve been writing for forty years,
taught hundreds of writing classes.
Many at the Cairo Public Library.
Last fall the legislature and the arts council
decided they’d have their first poet laureate.
Arts council called to say I’d been nominated.
I explained that I’m a New York City Jew
who lives upstate part time. Maybe they wouldn’t
want me. Please apply he said. I won the title
of First Greene County Poet Laureate chosen by peers
and of course I was happy. They sent a signed
contract and a thousand dollar check.
My induction was planned for April 11.
The legislature and everyone would join
me writing poems. But on March 4
when the arts council head went to the legislature
(poet laureate is a legislative appointment) legislator
Michael Lanuto said on their video: I’ve been doing a
background check on her social media. She voted for
the Communist Zohran Mamdani (true) and she promoted
violence against Donald Trump on her Facebook page (untrue).
I became Not the Greene County Poet Laureate but then
a small online paper wrote this story. The story went viral
over a thousand readers wrote in support. Democrats
and Republicans too. Then The Guardian wrote the story.
A few days ago Raina Lipsitz, The Guardian reporter, posted:
I loved writing this story for many reasons.
In some small but important way
it made me feel better about Americans,
many of whom really do love their neighbors as themselves.
And even though I’m not the poet laureate, I’m still
hopeful as always that all of us together is the poem.

Esther Cohen is not the poet laureate now. She’s on Substack@Overheard.

A TROPHYLESS FIRST

by Carol Parris Krauss

Baby’s first steps. The first words uttered.

First day of school. First day of college.

First day on the job. We rush to each

first with celebration. A race to be won,

a ribbon to break through.

 

Until the first Mother’s Day with no call

after the first Christmas without a mother.

The first time reaching for a name

no one answers anymore. No

Mother. 

 

A First without a trophy. Just 

a series of races no one wants to win.

Ms. Parris Krauss is honored to have published poetry in Louisiana Lit, ൪uartet, the Arkansas Review, Salvation South, Eclectica, One Art, Story South, The South Carolina Review, and the Mid/South Sonnet Anthology, among others. Fernwood Press published her full-length book (Mountain.Memory.Marsh.) in November of 2025. Carol was born in S.C., to mystical mountain people, raised in NC, and attended Clemson University. She currently lives in Virginia with her St. Bernard, Martha June. 

HOW TO MAKE THE RICH EVEN RICHER

an American Senryu

by William Aarnes

The companies making billions from the Iran war. —BBC, May 8, 2026

Declare war (well, don’t).  

Declare doubtful cease-fire deals.  

Declare losses wins.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

MIGRACIONES

by David Chorlton

on World Migratory Bird Day

Music in flight from the border tonight

and it’s pulling miles

of starlight behind it. Darkness

tuned to grosbeaks, orioles, homesick songs

and the Black-necked stilts

who come down at the golf course pond.

There’s an echo

to the ads between corridos

and the high romance that ends

in a flourish no matter

who stays and who leaves. The trogons

cross to occupy a canyon lined

with pine-oak where sycamores sing

to the daylight. Gray hawks

in the cottonwoods, tanagers where

the edge of woodland

overlooks a wide

and open valley dark priests occupied before

they named the land for

saints, and Black hawks looking down on it

from an indifferent sky.

Doves take back their city

for the summer in tune

with the natural order

of hunger and survival. 103.5, La Tricolor,

playing until morning and then

in the yard, russet crest and

greyly greened, the unmistakable

Trepador cola verde.

David Chorlton lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He writes, paints, and keeps track of which birds show up locally. Originally from Europe, he has learned that not all truth and beauty is to be found in museums and cathedrals (much as he enjoyed seeing them) but in wildlife.

MINORITY RETORT

by Steven Kent

“six in 10 Americans say president is doing a bad job” —The Guardian, May 3, 2026

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

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books. 

INTERVAL

by Rajat Chandra Sarmah 

They said

this is your moment.

So we sat—

a few rows in—

watching

democracy

adjust its lights.

Promises entered first.

Well-dressed.

Fluent.

They spoke

in our language—

better than we do, sometimes.

Jobs arrived next—

counted aloud,

like blessings

no one stopped to check.

Cash followed quietly.

No speeches.

Just something understood

without being said.

We clapped.

Not loudly—

just enough.

Somewhere between

need

and negotiation,

we stopped thinking too much

about what was ours

and what was being offered.

The button—

small,

decisive,

mercifully simple.

Press.

Nothing to show later.

Interval.

Lights dim.

Noise settles

somewhere behind us.

When the curtain lifts again,

the stage is lighter.

Fewer promises.

Some things

just not there this time.

What was announced

comes back

“under process.”

What was certain

slows down—

then disappears.

We do not protest.

We adjust.

Survival stretches itself

over the years.

Dignity—

it comes and goes.

Outside,

the posters fade first.

Inside,

something follows.

Next election,

they will return—

with improved scripts,

cleaner numbers,

and our own words

borrowed again.

And we—

seasoned audience,

repeat believers—

will take our seats

before the lights come on.

No one will ask

what the first show changed.

No one will ask

why we stayed.

The applause will begin

on time.

And we will give it—

not because we believe,

not because we forgot,

but because

we have learned.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah is a poet and writer based in India. After a 36-year career in India’s power sector, he now focuses on literary writing. His work explores public memory, environmental crisis, social change, and everyday human endurance. His poetry has previously appeared in The New Verse News and other international journals.