TAR

by Jess

The world is burning, 

So I took a lighter and match, 

And set fire to my craft, 

So my nails could saw and sear my keyboard, 

So black plastic can burn and rise, 

Sting wide nostrils, smoke Spanish shaped eyes, 

With memories of my community in zip ties, 

Hoping its loud clack might drown and drown, 

The images of  that little girls tears, 

As her mom was forcefully pushed down, 

By a non-native in a black vest,

Twisting our poetry into tar, 

To gag our syllables and curls, 

As white women recorded and watched, for their performative internet fodder, 

A small brown girl escorted home, without her father. 

So I go deep in the iambics of colonizer language, 

Because they cut, lynched and burned our tongues, 

In the Rio Grande of Texas,

And from Boston, 

I can hear the screams of Chicago and Canal Street. 

They can come and hang me from the Texas Oak Trees, 

In high June, 

Before they take the words  in me,

They can tighten the rope, 

Make it a hundred degree day, 

Scorched earth and crackling grass, 

The smell of magnolias and cookouts, 

They will see the blue come over me, 

Before they take the Mexican me. 

Jess is a Mexican American / Arab Proxmate human rights activist and writer from South Texas. She has been nominated for a PEN Robert J. Dau Prize and Pushcart Prize for her story "Feathers." Her poetry and op-eds have been published by Dissident Voice, The International Human Rights Art Movement, Poets x Hunger, and Missing Perspectives. She has forthcoming work with Writers Resist and Radical Catalyst Literary Journal. She holds a masters from Brandeis in Conflict Resolution. 

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

ELECTION NIGHT’S GLIMPSE OF WHAT THE PEOPLE REALLY WANT

by Raymond Nat Turner

“Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state, but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.^” —Frederick Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Celebratory blip on history’s continuum, tracing No Kings’ DNA to

Occupy-ish campus encampments. To pink pussy hats — #Me Too.

To Peoples Climate March, Strike-tober seasons of searing street heat —

Arab Spring to George Floyd Summer …

With warehouse hands lick … the Mayor-elect hit my 

Tear note Tuesday night

Hit my tear note like sopranos at Great Hope Baptist

Church, or Lady Day’s lovely “Autumn In New York.”

Bet he hit tear notes of thousands of phone bankers/door-knockers

Teaching NYC to shout No Mo Cuomo? 

Bet he hit tear notes of those reclaiming time from Turkey Trotting, 

Crooked rabbit footnote, PapaCop?

Bet he hit Muslim tear notes Big Apple-wide? Borough by

Borough? County-wide, state-wide?

World-wide with an authentic As-salamu alaykum and

Prayer for deliverance from raggedy-ass Islamophobia?

Bet he hit Jewish tear notes with sincere Shalom aleikhem? With

Recognition of tradition troubling czars, nazis, cossacks and klan?

Recognition of tradition opposing hospital-bombing, baby-killing 

Genocidal maniacs?

Celebratory blip on history’s continuum! DNA of vigilance, steel —

Class struggle — solidarity. Tuesday night’s tiny glimpse reveals

Good things will happen when we Walk; Chew gum; Shout slogans;

Text —  And Organize; Organize; Organize —       At the same time!

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.

WE’RE RIGHT, BEHIND YOU

by Steven Kent

"Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani's supposedly radical policies as 'normal'" —The Guardian, November 6, 2025

It's Communist, beyond the pale

Of all our freedom-loving norms,

To look at European forms

So goshdarned guaranteed to fail.

Free healthcare? Transport? Daycare, too?

We ain't about to spring for those,

Since everybody 'round here knows

They can't succeed--oh wait, they do?

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.

DEAR GOVERNOR, PLEASE COMMUTE THIS SENTENCE

by Barbara H. Williams 

on behalf of Tremane Wood scheduled for execution November 13, 2025 

An Oklahoma inmate convicted of murdering a teenager who belonged to a nonviolent religious sect remains scheduled for execution, despite a parole board’s finding that he doesn't deserve to die. Tremane Wood (pictured), 46, is set to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday, Nov. 13, for the 2002 killing of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf, who was stabbed in the heart during an ambush robbery at an Oklahoma City Ramada Inn. Wood's brother Zjaiton "Jake" Wood confessed to the crime, while Tremane Wood has always maintained his innocence. —USA Today, November 11, 2025

Let him live, Governor. Please give

him the benefit of doubt

who did not purpose to murder, who

is repentant and remorseful, who was

without proper counsel or defense, perhaps 

sin in itself––cold carelessness that’s

cast a dubious light on the verdict. Please honor

the parole board’s vote for clemency. Please

first search the heart, lay down that heavy

stone. That you, and we, in conscience walk more free.­­­­­

Barbara H. Williams is based in Princeton, New Jersey, where for many years she was a professional flutist and music teacher. She began writing poetry in 2013, with poems appearing in The Raven’s Perch, US 1 Worksheets, and The Paterson Review. She is a member of the DVP/US1 Poets Collective, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first collection of poems Continuo was published in 2024 (Cool Women Press).

AFTER THE BLAST, DELHI

by Rajat Chandra Sarmah

I saw a short video on my phone.
smoke rising near Lal Qila,
people running, some shouting things I couldn’t hear.

At the tea stall, one man said, "Gas leak."
Another thought, maybe leftover crackers from Diwali.
Nobody really knew; everyone kept guessing.

The sky stayed a dull grey.
same as most winter evenings in Delhi.
The peanut seller didn’t stop;
he kept calling, louder than usual.

Down near Chandni Chowk,
rickshaws crawled through the lane,
horns clashing with the sound of sirens.

I remembered the guard at the gate—
the one who waves people in each morning.
I wondered if he was still on duty,
if he’d made it back home.

When night came,
the dust hadn’t settled.
People stood around with their phones.
faces lit by the screens,
not saying much.

A voice on the radio said the city was calm again.
No one moved;
they just looked toward the fort.
waiting, maybe, for another sound.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah is a writer and poet from India whose work has appeared in The New Verse News and other national and international journals. A Fellow of LEAD India and the Institution of Engineers (India), he writes about everyday life, memory, and the quiet shifts within public events.

POINTING FINGER

by Ellen D.B. Riggle

Pointing finger
jabbing at the air
knees pumping
agitated body 
up and down
jerking, frenzied
feet stomping
commanding
follow 
the line of the arm
a furious digit
directing
to the target.

Growling
desperate
to deflect attention
from the real locus
of terror,
anger 
rooted in fear. 

Weak eyes follow
the trajectory of missiles,
while courageous eyes 
remain fixed
on the one
intent on causing pain
and mass casualty. 

What fearless soul
will step into the path
holding a mirror
returning the pointing finger
to its rightful owner?

Ellen D.B. Riggle is an award- and prize-winning author and educator.  Their essays and poems appear in numerous publications; their essay about their gay great-grandfather was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Does it Have Pockets.  They are also author of over 100 academic articles and five non-fiction and fiction books, and executive producer of the short documentary “Becoming Myself: Positive Trans & Nonbinary Identities.”

IN THE TIME OF THE MAD KING

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

We waited. For someone to save us—
A lawyer who emerged from an onslaught
of documents to find that smoking diamond
of indisputable scandal, the hot and hard
evidence fresh from the seismic forces
that will eventually implicate everyone
and pull the red edifice permanently
beneath the surface. We waited on 
a clutch of senators as if they were
blackbirds, screaming with thirst, as
the temperature rose and the dough 
hardened around their bellies and necks, 
their vision fit to burst. Perhaps there was
a philanthropist, a banker or some titan 
of industry who had yet to offend us, who 
could provide a sweeping indictment of
the king’s fiscal wardrobe and its hidden 
curses. We waited for anyone outfitted like
the Statue of Liberty of Kafka’s imagination, 
wielding not light toward our welcoming shore 
but a scimitar pointed toward the heavens. 
We waited for literature; for comedians, 
professionals and amateurs in puffy animal
get-ups; for a plague of insects and amphibians 
to get the job done before all other species were 
sent to their doom, along with millions of humans. 
We waited for science, geometric proofs, facts 
of all genres; for sources and methods, common
sense or history to catch up with the velocity of 
the carnage. Our children injected Botox 
to preserve their tight and inchoate faces 
because we had foreclosed on their youth 
and they were keeping their options open 
for a second childhood to be carried out free 
of the king’s aegis. We waited for creams 
and lotions, hair dye and bronzers, for their 
chemical processes to reach their malignant 
apexes. We waited for the madness to lift 
as if a curtain made of the lead
we had allowed to adulterate our paint and seep 
into our rivers; for bread and angels to nourish
the poor huddled among us, until the miracle
rebirth of women whom we had previously 
torched for failing to dispense with the king
without our assistance, as if their ashes 
and embers had always contained the directions 
but we couldn’t be bothered to read the labels. 
So we waited, and kept waiting, like mourners 
afraid to share their allegiances, until we could
blame only ourselves, instead of the victims.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, five full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. Her poem "Overheard at the Sphere in Las Vegas During Dead and Co.'s Spring Run 2025" appeared in the The New Verse News on May 23, 2025.  

TO GATSBY

by Devon Balwit

USA Today Instagram graphic, November 3, 2025

A hundred years since Fitzgerald gave us The Great Gatsby,

a man we first meet reaching into the dark.

At first, he seems sad, then sinister, then sad again.

Some people have it so easy, old sport,

he marvels in his practiced accent. We know. We can see 

their ballrooms scintillating, distant and unreachable. 

We gather at their property line and try to make sense of their hilarity.

The vast eyes of advertisements—crypto, AI, online gambling—

stand in for God’s: No matter how hard we work 

the lever, the payout goes to the next guy, to someone 

someone’s only heard about. You need cash to sleep 

with another man’s wife. Spoiler: The book ends 

with a bang—a car crash, Gatsby’s murder, a suicide.

Sycophants queued up for his parties. None came to his funeral.

When not making art, Devon Balwit walks in all weather and edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.