HEADLINES JUNE 2026

by Margaret Gannon

PAY-PER-VIEW CAGE FIGHT 

ON WHITE HOUSE LAWN  

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

ICE RAIDS THREATENED 

DURING WORLD CUP FINALS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

SAN FRANCISCO D.A. DEMANDS 

15 YEARS JAIL FOR PROTESTERS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DECLARES 

MORMONS ARE NOT CHRISTIANS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

TRILLIONAIRE’S IPO TITILLATES 

RETIREMENT ACCOUNT OWNERS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

STRAIT OF HORMUZ BLOCKED; 

WORLD ECONOMY THREATENED  

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY STAGGERS 

TOWARD TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

 

Margaret Gannon is a retired attorney in San Francisco, CA.

DELANEY DEFINES “PROVOCATIVE”

by Michelle DeRose

At not-yet one, he cannot toddle

but his baby thighs can yet befuddle.

At four, all crayon plots require shredding

and no legs may be revealed by leggings.

A woman’s toes? Oh, mercy me!

Two rows of cleavage, can’t you see?

A human knee, oh hold me back—

a frontal, bulbous, sexual attack!

They get desperate when we enforce the code

that won’t let decency erode.

Professor Emerita of English, Michelle DeRose has published over a hundred poems in various journals, including multiple times in The New Verse News.

…BUT ‘TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY

by Philip Kitcher

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

"Our excursion delivered a world-changing win!"—

will it also uncover the limits of spin,

as the faithful besotted are forced to conclude

they've been conned for too long, and their emperor's nude?

Philip Kitcher has written too many books about philosophy, a subject which he taught at Columbia for many years. His new book The Rich and the Poor (Polity Press) is all about the costs of abandoning morality in politics and public life. His poems have appeared online in Light, Lighten Up Online, Politics/Letters, Snakeskin, and The Dirigible Balloon; and in print in the Hudson Review.

ODE TO JALEN BRUNSON

by Kirby Olson

Before a crowd of 10,000

we watched the fifth game at Pier 17.

 

The guy next to me was from Astoria.

He told me golf was his favorite

 

sport, because he loved the lawns.

A black kid said he wanted the upstate

 

residential college experience,

and his knees hurt from bball.

 

June 13th, we spent the day

looking for Swedish candy.

 

Everyone was wearing a Knicks jersey,

even in tiny parks such as Seward.

 

That night, Brunson took out Wemby

by using his size advantage.

 

He could get a quicker start

with Hezis; he could start and stop.

 

Wemby jerked around on baby giraffe legs.

Growing frustrated, he mushed Brunson.

 

The crowd began to hate the French giant.

FU, Wemby, was heard, as the giant got the whistle again.

 

Frustration grew, and the kid next to me said that

a Spurs teen had been put in a coma at the MSG location.

 

I tried to find that on my phone, but I couldn’t.

We hated the Goliath, but remembered he was 22,

 

So we loved the mature Brunson as he wove in and out,

and stopped the questionable flopping

 

of the previous year.

This year, he drove like a barracuda,

 

his head was sheathed like a woodpecker.

He had the strength of ten gorillas.

 

He went in like a kingfisher,

but more than all that he was human.

 

He married young and loved his child.

His wife was there for him.

 

We loved that he was an American

and had seemingly no hatred for the Spurs.

 

He said in many ways he preferred Texas

because the taxes in NY were so terrible.

 

His friendship with Kat and Anunobe,

his laughter with Bridges and Hart,

 

his wearing of the helmet to avoid

eye sting from champagne;

 

We loved it all, as orange and blue prevailed!

Kirby Olson is a poet who lives in the Catskills and who occasionally visits the city. He plays adult basketball and isn't very good. His most recent book of poetry is called Night Shift at the Utopian Turtletop Factory (Half-Inch, 2026).

AN ODE TO DAVID, GOLIATH, AND THE NEW YORK KNICKS

by H.G.

Jerry Seinfeld would call me a snob.

Me, a believer that truly brilliant writing
needs a deep understanding
of the wide spectrum of human emotions.

Him, co-creator of a show
about nothing,
yet wise enough to know:
even nothing is something.

And who dare argue
with the man who saved Snapple

and thinks he’s saving Israel
while larping
as the IDF
in 2018,
mock killing Palestinians
who are killed for real
a few miles away.

All to fly 5,677 miles
home
to his NY Knicks
and his courtside tickets.

Now,
2026: Mayor Mamdani’s NYC
the Knicks first championship win
since 1973.

Jerry,
and the whole stadium,

Mayor Mamdani,
and the whole city
at watch parties

electric
street filling joy
spreading
New York
to New Jersey:
an eruption
of celebration,

as one.

The stadium,
a stone’s throw
from Palestinian Brooklyn
intertwined
with Jewish Brooklyn
and Palestinian Patterson
adjacent 
Jewish Fair Lawn

where tensions must be buried
memories are long,
trauma, genetic

and walls
                unnecessary. 

Because
everyday
a better story
can be written
by better people
than Jerry Seinfeld
and me
as on the night of June 13, 2026
when every color and creed 
of New York and New Jersey
chanted

My mayor Muslim, 
my bagel Jewish
my Christian, Dior 
Knicks took it in five, not four*

*Italicised lines based on the viral rhyme created by MD Ahnaf Hossain prior to game 4.

H.G. is an American poet based in New York. She holds an MA in history and is working on her first verse novel. Her previous poems have appeared in The Inflectionist Review, The Amphibian, The New Verse News, Blue Minaret and is forthcoming in Neon & Smoke.

STAYIN’ ALIVE: NO KINGS

by Roderick Deacey

Cumulonimbus clouds jostle & dominate
the dark side of the sky.
             They have gathered in towering, glowering stacks,
as ominous grumbles of thunder announce
the storm is upon us.

             Of course we ignored the signs—
we have long learned to ignore warning signs
             here at the far end of democracy,
lest one of the regime’s masked rib-breaking squads
             single us out somehow,
& fling us to the ground & kick us until our ribs break.

              So, we simply accept,
that under the hard rain that’s gonna fall,
             we will, as usual, get soaking wet.

             How did we become so sad & beaten down?
Isn’t it true that, en masse, Americans are good people?

             Perhaps racist & prejudiced, but with good hearts?

             Maybe short on critical thinking, but mostly meaning well?

Whatever—this is still America—
                          supposedly no kings allowed.

            We can put on raincoats & resistance yellow hats.
            We can wear red knitted hats like WWII Norwegians.
            We can wear turquoise knitted hats, or teal—
& many of us will wear those bright rainbow hats—
            because that’s where we stand—
& some ladies among us will dig out their old pink pussy hats
            from back when
                       the country was another country.

What we seemingly can’t do
            is decide on a single unifying hat color—
                      not a good omen.


Roderick Deacey writes many poems and is rejected a lot. James is always very nice about it, though.

O BEAUTIFUL

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

 

Just before her 250th birthday

America, sweet land 

of checks and balances, 

has died in anguish.

So we must ignore

mixed martial arts fights,

the Marine Band, fireworks 

aimed at the moon.

A despot blocked the birth canal

of oil and gas.  

While conducting state business, 

he's gold-plated his family’s progeny.

Critics who think he’s broken laws,

say he should be held accountable—

he hunts down.

Since America has flatlined, honey, cancel 

the sticky lemonade, the red, white and blue 

sheet cake. 

On July 4, play taps.

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY, and Williamsburg, VA. Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Macrame Literary Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, Nixes Mate, and Streetlight Magazine. Her chapbook mansucript The Losing has been longlisted for The Headlight Review’s Annual Poetry Chapbook Contest 2026.

HE ARRIVED JUST IN THE NICOTINE

by Steven Kent

Source: Artlyst

"David Hockney's lifelong love of smoking—and the 2,000 cigarettes he kept 'for emergencies'" —The Guardian, June 13, 2026

The docs predicted early death each time they made their rounds,

But he outlived 'em one by one—the irony abounds.

How did it take so long for David Hockney to expire?

No matter: Still his spirit lives, for where there's smoke there's fire.

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. 

RAINBOW COAT

by Irene Axel

President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day of the second term, made it official policy: transgender, nonbinary, and intersex identities would no longer be recognized by the federal government. And, in turn, federal agencies started removing the questions that once measured SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] characteristics across approximately 360 data collections. —Instinct, February 19, 2026

A newbie gay sitting in my office

and the intake form said ???

next to sexually active

Girl, I see you.

And when she says I'm here for birth control

I whip out my rainbow pen to take notes and say

my usual normalizing speech

about the benefits of BC past preventing pregnancy

and we settle on a good plan to get to

NO MORE PERIODS

and when she starts to get up I say

hang on my dear what about a pap smear

you are 21 and due

and they say... but I'm well you know???

and I say—gently—aware of the white coat

covering my pride tattoo

you still need cervical cancer screening

and they shuffle their feet and bolt with a

KTHXBYE to go pick up their pills

but at least they were in my office

and now—we won't even know—

how many newbie gays

think they don't need

a gynecologist

when everyone with a cervix

needs the right

rainbow

gynecologist

Author's note: The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology cannot tell you how the rate of cervical cancer differs in the queer versus the straight population because they do not have enough data, but the ACOG does say that the risk factors for cervical cancer are more prevalent in LGBTQ patients and that ongoing research is needed. In addition, of course, LGBTQ patients may face significant obstacles in getting acreening—particularly transmen who may have a cervix and may not feel comfortable going to a gyn office to get a pelvic exam or pap smear. How are we in the field supposed to understand this underscreened population when federal policy works to obscure them?

Irene Axel is a queer OBGYN and a poet based in California. Her work has appeared in One Art: A Journal of Poetry.

TIDY UP

by Peter A. Witt

Nobody can predict how the 48 teams will do at the FIFA World Cup this summer, but if you wanted to gamble on Japan being the tidiest team, you’d surely clean up at the bookies. Thanks to a societal expectation of all Japanese people, you’d never know they were there. —CNN, June 14, 2026

The final whistle echoes across the Dallas pitch,
and the stadium slowly drains,
leaving behind the usual modern tax of celebration:
a landscape of crushed plastic, discarded cups,
and the torn remnants of a stadium afternoon.
Most of us walk away,
assuming the mess belongs to the stadium,
or the city, or anyone but ourselves.

But then, the blue jerseys of the Japanese faithful emerge,
not moving toward the exits,
but walking down the rows.
They carry large, simple trash bags,
bending to collect the garbage left by strangers.
There are no television cameras forcing their hand,
no rewards promised at the gates.

They call it tatsu tori ato wo nigosazu, 
"the bird that flies away leaves the water unstirred."

It is a quiet philosophy woven into the fabric of a childhood,
where classrooms are swept by the students who occupy them,
and responsibility is not a chore,
but a form of respect for the space we share.

It makes you stop and look at the row you just vacated.
Why must we always leave a scar on the places we visit?
Why do we treat the shared world as a landfill managed by someone else?

Imagine a culture where accountability isn't outsourced,
where we take pride not just in the win,
but in the condition of the ground beneath our feet.
To leave a place cleaner than we found it
not for the praise, but simply because we were there.

Peter A. Witt by chance lives in Texas and is a recovering university professor who lost his adjectives in the doldrums of academic writing. Poetry has helped him recover his ability to see and describe the inner and outer world he inhabits. His work has been twice nominated for the Best of the Net award and has appeared in a variety of online and print publications. He also writes family history.  His book about his aunt was published by the Texas A&M University Press (Edith's War: Writings of a Red Cross Worker and Lifelong Champion of Social Justice). He is also an avid birder and wildlife photographer.