ENDANGERED

by Penelope Moffet

AI-generated image by NightCafé for The New Verse News

A large orange butterfly

flits through a break in traffic

from one side of the street

to the median, one line of

sign-holding people chanting

"No monarchs! No kings!"

to another. No, goddammit, no.

Don't be such a fucking poet.

Don't focus on the butterfly.

The handmade poster the poet will be carrying at today's march.

Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). Her poems appear in Eclectica, ONE ART, Calyx and other literary journals. A full-length collection of her poetry will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives in Southern California.

LOWNDES COUNTY

by Mariana McDonald

Source: Balls and Strikes, April 21, 2025. Pictured: Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who said, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.”

       for Catherine Flowers

A low wind shifts and yet the smell

persists, erasing whiffs of sweetbrush,  

freesia, lilac. Even the gardenia,  

drowned out by the blaring stench  

of waste, raw and moving, straight-  

piped, pumped into the yards of poor   

folks in Lowndes county, Alabama,  

where Jim Crow and ramshackle join   

to spread a putrid presence onto lawns   

where children play, E. coli and danger   

in the dirt. No rains can clean it,  

clear it, make the grass a sea of   

fresh green bending in the wind,  

seed of childhood memories, scent of  

freshly-cut & gathered blades of summer.  

A memory Lowndes County children may not have.  

One brave fighter worked for years to change it,  

got a president to sign his name to fairness,  

agree to let the lilies and magnolias  

one day reign there, redolent of justice,  

until one stinking voice called it illegal, 

overturned it,  cancelling the clean-up,  

leaving stench  

to flourish

Author’s note: 

“Lowndes County” is about the poor and 72% Black county in Alabama where lack of public sewage treatment facilities forces residents to “straight-pipe” sewage into their lawns, creating a putrid public health and environmental disaster. After years of residents battling the state to have the problem addressed, and inspired by the leadership of Lowndes County native Catherine Flowers, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation which resulted in the 2023 landmark environmental justice agreement. The agreement calls for wide-ranging public health remediation and sanitation improvements. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice deemed the agreement “DEI” and therefore illegal, and overturned the agreement this month.

Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, writer, scientist, and activist. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She became a Hambidge Arts Center Fellow in 2012, and was appointed Black Earth Institute Scholar/Fellow in 2022. She lives in Atlanta. 

AN IMAGINARY PAGE FROM VIRGINIA GIUFFRE’S DIARY

by Lisa Seidenberg

The photo of [Virginia Giuffre who committed suicide last week] and Prince Andrew, taken in London in 2001, became emblematic of the royal's entanglement with [Jeffrey] Epstein… who was said to have taken the photo—died in jail facing sex trafficking charges. Ghislaine Maxwell—who helped him abuse young girls and is pictured to the right of Prince Andrew and Ms Giuffre—is in prison in the US. Prince Andrew has stepped down from all public duties. And Virginia Giuffre, a smiling teenager in the photo, is now dead. —BBC, April 28, 2025

“Giuffre alleged that after taking the role (as massage therapist to Jeffrey Epstein) she was trafficked to the financier’s friends and clients and ‘passed around like a platter of fruit.’ Among them, she claimed, was Prince Andrew.” —The Guardian, April 26, 2025

Today I am a mango
arrayed on a plate 
ripe for the choosing 
in a billionaire’s lair

Yesterday I was a peach
with downy skin, freckled 
like a fawn’s back
In hunting season

Tomorrow I will be
a delicate treat—
a plum or a strawberry
finger food for preying hands

They will take me to shop 
for a proper dress 
offered up like a fruit tart
for the entitled eyes of a prince

Someday I will be a pomegranate
my seeds of bitter truth 
left like Persephone 
on a path away from the dark


Lisa Seidenberg is a 2025 Pushcart nominee. She is a writer and filmmaker residing in coastal Connecticut and a poetry reviewer for Whale Road Review. Her writing has been published in Atticus Review, Asymptote Journal, Gyroscope Review, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, The New Verse News, and others. Her photo book Dark Pools is available from PrintedMatter.com. Her documentaries and poetry films screened at Sundance, London, Athens and Berlin International Film Festivals. She is currently at work on her first chapbook.

THEN AND NOW

by Jerome Betts

Near the Sherman DD tank memorial, Torcross, Devon, an interpretation panel names all the 739 US sailors and soldiers who were lost at sea during the D-day training exercise "Operation Tiger" on the 28th of April 1944. Photo source: American War Memorials Overseas.

 

Start Bay, Slapton Sands, by the tide’s ebb and flow,

    Old and young on their holidays glance

Through the list of Americans killed long ago

    Rehearsing for Utah beach, France.

 

But Time bears down hard on all here below

   Combined with the freaks of mischance;

The past eighty one years have brought changes, and so . . .

   Today we have Trump, Musk and Vance. 

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online.

A FEW THOUGHTS AFTER THE PASSING OF POPE FRANCIS

by Terri Kirby Erickson

My maternal grandmother, widowed for years, 
was a small, quiet woman who drank a cup 
of Sanka in the late afternoons and took naps. 
I cannot picture her feeling comfortable in her
parents’ primitive Baptist church what with all 
the shouting and dire warnings of damnation.
She rebelled against it at some point, became
a Presbyterian whose members know how to sit
silently in their pews and listen to the preacher 
talk about estate planning and heavenly rewards. 
My mother, also a Presbyterian, and my father, 
a Lutheran, settled on a Methodist compromise. 
But after my brother died, Mom said her prayers 
to Mother Mary more than God, often holding 
one of the many rosaries Catholic charities sent 
her in return for contributions. Not a Catholic, 
she didn’t know what to do with them, but liked 
the feel of the beads in her hands, the weight 
of the cross. I have my mother’s rosaries now 
and some of my own, one of which was blessed 
by the pope. His image is everywhere since his 
death, front and center on the news. But the clip 
that moved me was of Pope Francis and a boy 
who wanted to ask him a question yet was too
afraid to speak. Then the pope said whisper it 
into my ear, his expression so tender, so full of 
goodness and mercy, it unclenched a fist in my 
chest that I did not know was there. This must 
be how my grandmother felt when hell was no 
longer mentioned, and why my mother prayed 
to Mary, who knew the pain of losing a son.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

RETURNING TO VIETNAM IN PEACETIME

by Karol Nielsen

New York Times, April 22, 2025

My father served in Vietnam War with the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. He figured out that it was not a winnable war soon after he arrived in country. He felt his mission was to keep his men alive. Once, he found a dead North Vietnamese soldier with a photo of his family in his pocket. My father had a family, too. He thought that under different circumstances he and this soldier could have been friends. Forty years later, my father, mother, and I traveled to Vietnam. We traveled to all the places he had been—along the central coast and up in the central highlands. Our guide told us his father had been sent to a reeducation camp. In Kontum in the central highlands, we teamed up with a local guide. He took us to fox holes where Vietnamese took cover from bombings and then to his friend’s cafe. It was in a tropical garden with art about the war. The cafe owner and our local guide had studied art in Hanoi. Later, our main guide told us they were Viet Cong. But in that lush cafe, we all talked like friends. My father thought Vietnam was a beautiful country and he always wanted to return in peacetime. Now our government has told diplomats not to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

Karol Nielsen is the author of Walking A&P: A Vietnam War Memoir and other books. Her Gulf War memoir Black Elephants was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poem “This New Manhattan” was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in Epiphany, Guernica, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

SURVIVOR’S GUILT

by Julie Weiss

“4-year-old migrant girl, other kids go to court in NYC with no lawyer: 'The cruelty is apparent.’” —Gothamist, April 22, 2025

We order mile-high hamburgers,

chicken fingers for the kids,

clink glasses as if the world

isn´t spiraling toward some terrible

demise. There aren´t enough colors

in the complimentary crayon box

to draw the dread prowling

my body, or the howls

of all the people being erased

so I praise my children´s

artwork as if their puppies

and bunnies could charm

the shit off the lips of fascists.

They drag fries through ketchup.

Every analogy on our plates

is a choking hazard. Somewhere

in a country that´s being stripped,

shaved, and tortured, a child

who once celebrated a birthday,

a victory, a graduation, an award

at a restaurant like this one

is being dragged into an unmarked

van. My daughter´s medal glistens

my grief back to me. I blame

the onions, a speck of dust,

yesterday´s pollen. I don´t say

your surnames could get you

arrested, if you lived in the US.

We laugh at the latest memes

as if the faces weren´t fireballs

waiting for the right moment

to mushroom. As if the biggest  

aggravation today is the rain.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection Rooming with Elephants was published in February, 2025 by Kelsay Books. "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for "Cumbre Vieja" and was a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in Variant Lit, The Westchester Review, Up The Staircase Quarterly, and others. Originally from California, she lives with her wife and children in Spain. 

FRANCIS’S PARTY

by Jo Ann S. Hoffman

God slept in the day after Francis arrived

matter of fact I couldn’t reach a soul up there

 

finally managed to snag Mary about noon

(she always has her cell)

sorry it’s so late, she says

but we partied hard last night

sang and danced 

ate and drank till all hours

everyone is dragging today

 

she adds 

the Trifecta was pleased with Francis

good man   strong voice      soft touch

I hear the smile in her words

anything on your mind dear?

 

I look down at my long written list

of wishes and (mostly) complaints 

not really, I say, just checking in to say hi

 

Well, good   do that every day if you can

I’m off to take a nap

a little laugh and she was gone

Jo Ann S. Hoffman’s publications include a children’s book, short fiction and numerous poems in literary journals, including The Merton Seasonal, Flying South, Pinesong, Persimmon Tree, Red Clay Review, Broad River Review and The North Carolina Literary Review, among others. A Pushcart nominee, she has received awards from The Palm Beach Poetry Festival and several other contests.    Her non-fiction narrative, Angels Wear Black, recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley. 

ENDANGERED SPECIES / WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?

by Dick Altman

An Indonesian father of an infant with special needs, who was detained by federal agents at his hospital workplace in Minnesota after his student visa was secretly revoked, will remain in custody after an immigration judge ruled on Thursday that his case can proceed. The day before [Aditya Wahyu] Harsono’s bond hearing, DHS disclosed their evidence against him. Besides stating that his visa had been revoked for the misdemeanor graffiti conviction, for which he paid $100 in restitution, they also mentioned an arrest from 2021 during a protest over the murder of George Floyd. That charge was dismissed. Harsono is Muslim and frequently posts on social media in support of humanitarian relief for Gaza. He also runs a small non-profit, which sells art and merchandise, with proceeds going to organizations aiding Gaza. —The Guardian, April 29, 2025. Peyton Harsono (pictured above) and Madison Weidner have organized a GoFundMe to support Harsono’s family in these dark days.

I dream,

every now and then,

of an army newsreel

the colonel

across the street,

shows

two ten-year-olds,

his daughter and me.

We are old enough,

he says,

quoting Burns,

to witness “man’s

inhumanity to man,”

a phrase lost on us,

until he turns down

the basement lights,

and the 16-mm film

begins to unwind.

 

It opens

on a city street

of old buildings,

older than anything

I know of America.

The sidewalks busy

with baby carriages,

people shopping,

children skipping.

When,

out of a doorway,

two men abruptly

drag a man

into the street.

They punch him,

until he falls

to the ground,

and then begin

to kick him.

We can only stare.

The colonel,

as if reading

our minds,

says

they’re beating him

because he’s Jewish.

And the voiceover

starts to explain.

*

When I awaken,

my mind grinds

incessantly

on the words

endangered species.

Grinds on the video

of a woman in white—

a student protester

of foreign extraction,

here in America—

converged upon

by three men in black,

who arrest her.

A chilling reminder

of the colonel’s

newsreel.

Echoing

across the nation’s

landscape,

across mountain,

prairie and sea.

 

Endangered species.

My mind trembles

over the syllables,

as I imagine them

enclosing themselves

around the laws

and institutions

that nourish

and drive

our democracy.

 

Endangered species.

I strangle on the words,

here in Indian Country,

where a holocaust

nearly drove a people

into extinction.

We have a history,

I say to myself.

Can we,

as a nation,

change course?

I can almost

imagine

a raging knock

at the door,

as I write.

“You and

your words—

they’re coming

with us,”

I hear

a voice yell.

 

And I think

of the eyes

that might read

these thoughts.

And of the lines

and lives

that didn’t survive

during

and between

last century’s

Great Wars.

And I confess—

I fear those eyes.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American 

Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press,

Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 250 poems, published on four continents.

CLIMATE CHANGE

by Michael Gould

Copyright (and/or) © 2025 Earthday.org. This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In a forest, sitting on a fallen log
with my best pal, my gal, my dog
at my side, on constant alert
for any sign of harm or hurt
that might come our way
we’re having fun, so much
on this sunny day
feeling like life has just begun
the air is fresh, spring’s just sprung
and the leaves are newly green
meanwhile city life is dirty and mean.
 
Trees and streams inspire our dreams
so too the sounds of buzzing bees and birdsong
here, far from the smog, I’m breathing
in sync (!) with a dog; lost in thought
fully being who we are
not trying to be what we are not
and I say, we came for the good air
and so that you could wag your tail.
 
Oh, nature
serene and sweet
your perfect scheme has become obsolete
earth’s climate is changing, and here we sit
wondering when the shit will hit the fan.

Michael Gould is a gay Canadian New Zealand writer whose poetry has appeared in publications, academic and popular, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2021, at the age of 71, he was awarded by the New Zealand Society of Authors as an emerging poet. He is also the author of Surrealism and the Cinema: Open-eyed Screening (1976), one of the first English language books on that topic. He lives in Wellington (NZ).