LETHAL INJECTION PROTOCOL

by Ilene Millman

An easy-to-follow recipe really, the original from 1977. Just three required ingredients,

but be sure to check you have them on hand, in case

that one you thought you had is unavailable since the manufacturer

dislikes the way you're using it.

Be sure to check your equipment: two intravenous cannulas, one a backup,

plus a line leading to an adjacent room,

saline, hypodermic needles, alcohol for sterilizing just in case

someone suddenly says the word “Stay” as happened in the case

of James Autry in 1983.

You may experiment with substituting alternative

ingredients although one is banned in some states since the botched

batch in the case

of John Marion Grant, who convulsed two dozen times and puked

although he did breathe 12 more minutes. Administer in the sequence set here:

first injection to cause unconsciousness followed by the one for paralysis and the last

cardiac arrest.

Watch for these procedural problems: needle applied in the wrong direction, drugs

injected into tissue and not vein, or inability to find a vein as in the case

this week of Tony Carruthers, or the case

two years ago, of Marcellus Williams where 

evidence is strong

that he just might have been

innocent.

Ilene Millman writes about memories, mud, music, modern times, anything her abiding and determined fascination grabs onto. Her first poetry book, Adjust Speed to Weather, was published in 2018, and A Jar of Moths, in March,2024 (Ragged Sky Press). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022 and 2024. A speech/language therapist, she published two therapy games designed to help school-aged children with language development problems.

ON THE MORNING THE CITY CHANGED ITS WALK

by Khayelihle Benghu

 

 

 

 

On the morning the march moved through Johannesburg,
shop gates came down early.


Metal shutters lowered like tired eyelids


before the day had fully spoken.
Foreign-owned stores locked their doors


before noon,


keys turning twice


as if once was no longer enough


to believe in safety.
The taxi driver changed his route again,


avoiding streets where voices


had grown sharper than traffic,


where even the robots seemed unsure


who they were guiding anymore.
No one calls it fear,


but everyone adjusts their walking speed.


Everyone becomes a little more careful


with how they look at strangers.
Somewhere, a shopkeeper counts what might be lost


stock, rent, the years built behind a counter.


Somewhere else, a protester counts what has already been taken


jobs, space, the weight of being seen.
And between them,


the city keeps breathing uneven, uncertain,


but still holding everyone inside it.
A child watches from a doorway


that is neither open nor closed.


A flag lifts, then folds back into itself


as if unsure what it is becoming.
No one says the same story.


But everyone carries the same heat


under their skin.
Later, when the streets grow quiet again,


when footsteps return to ordinary distances,


there is still this question left behind:
how do we live here together


without teaching ourselves


to fear each other's names.

Khayelihle Benghu is a South African writer and an author of The Names We Carry. She explores the themes of resilience grieve, silence and love in every day setting.

LULLABY, UPDATED

by Melissa Balmain

"[An] F-250 King Ranch model [truck] will be staying at a dealership in Kansas for a couple more days after a family of robins has taken up residence atop one of the truck’s 34-inch tires. Since the birds are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the employees at Olathe Ford Lincoln and the vehicle customer must wait until the robin’s family of hatchlings grows old enough to leave the nest, and the dealership, behind." —Paul Kampe, Ford website, May 22, 2026. Photo by Olathe Ford Lincoln

 

Hush, little birdie, don’t be alarmed,

We are gonna keep all your chicks unharmed—

 

And even if they’re slow to fledge,

That is still no reason to feel on edge,

 

For though some migrants (human ones)

Have to leave their nests thanks to men with guns,

 

Robins are protected by our word.

Aren’t you glad you were born a bird?

Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her poems and/or prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, and Rattle. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

PLACING SEASHELLS ON GRAVES, BY PHOTOS

by Joan Leotta

 
 

The poet by the beach at Les Braves Monument, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer

Living far now, from where
the veterans among my
beloved dead are interred,
I will place by my
father’s photo
a seashell, one that is also
a veteran of sorts, a shell
from Omaha Beach, Normandy.
 
Walking with our guide
where our soldiers landed,
my fingers, on that cool
May morning plucked,
two slim jack-knife clam shells, 
from the wet sands before the
tide could steal them back.
 
That same guide had recounted how

scientists found that

even after seventy years
sand of this place
still carried traces
of the landing party’s blood.
 
That same day, we were given roses
to lay on graves in the American cemetery.
I also laid down one of these shells,
with a few grains of sand still
clinging to its curves like
hands clasping a lifeboat
thinking that perhaps
the grains carried
DNA from a comrade of the
unknown man I visited.
 
The other of this precious pair
found its way home with me.
I did not wash it or place it in a
generic box: “Shell, France.”
Instead, I kept it aside, wrapped.
Each Memorial Day, I carefully place
that small remaining
Omaha Beach shell
with its few grains of sand
by my father’s picture.
Although he was on
Pacific Coast sands beating
back assaults from a different
Axis Power foe, he and the
Omaha Beach men
were also comrades.
I imagine the soul or souls
on the sand in my shell
communicating with my father,
trading tales of their fight for justice.
 
On Memorial Day, especially,
I think of them and
all who sacrificed their
lives for our country as does
everyone who loves
and remembers those soldiers,
everyone who loves freedom.

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She’s been published as essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, and a two-time nominee for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her poetry and stories have appeared in Spillwords,  One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, The Lake, and many others. She performs folktale programs most often highlighting  food, family, and strong women; she performs a one-woman show, “Meet Louisa May Alcott, Nurse and a Force in Healing America post Civil War.” Contact joanleotta[at]gmail[dot]com for her Main Street Rag poetry chapbook Feathers on Stone.

A LATE NIGHT FAREWELL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

 

 

 

 

This did not have to happen.

It was not an accident, but 

a lie about costs and audience 

diminishing in the age

of the soon-to-be-built

triumphal arch, but 

then we would not

have heard McCartney

backed up by Colbert

and Costello, other 

musicians and friends 

singing Hello Goodbye,

sixty two years after 

the Beatles played 

on the same stage,

would not have felt

the audience

on stage, on television,

wherever the signal 

traveled, saying 

hello goodbye 

at the same time.

That my friends 

is the DNA

 

of experience, 

the grandeur

containing multitudes,

the contrarie states

of the human soul

and everything 

and every person

from whom I have 

learnt to get up 

despite the sadness,

to break bread 

and link arms,

despite the sadness,

to sing in the wee dark

and to disturb 

the demons and go on 

stronger together

into the new day rising.

 

 

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions. 

PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENT FOR MR. B.

by Steven Ratiner

 

“The Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet.  Let me tell you why. Because it’s a measure of its relevance.  If people won’t pay for our product, it’s not a good enough product.  It would be like poetry without rhyming, it’s too easy.” ––Jeff Bezos in an interview on CNBC reported by The New York Times, May 20, 2026

 

Too easy without rhyme?  Mr. B., I have news for you:

you’ve no understanding of the time that goes into

educating the tongue, cultivating the heart, so that words

might fly true to their destination, bearing the hard

 

truth of what’s required to be an actual human being in

our rancid/gilded age––where suffering’s a commodity

on the Stock Exchange, and all it takes is a few billion

in reserve to live gloriously without a thimbleful of pity

 

or the tonnage of regret.  News flash: your yacht’s run aground

on Circe’s island, as you quaff down cup after cup of kykeon

laced with nightshade, turning into swine along with your crew.

Ithaka can burn for all you care.  There’s no damned hope for you.

 

For what (another old poem) profit a man who gains the world but

loses his soul?  Such unspeakable waste.  What rhymes with that?

 

Steven Ratiner is the author of Grief's Apostrophe, published by Beltway Editions in 2025. He's also published three poetry chapbooks, a collection of poetry interviews, and appeared in several anthologies. His work has appeared in scores of journals in America and abroad, including Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Salamander, Vox Populi, QRLS (Singapore), and Poetry Australia––and been translated into Mandarin, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Hebrew. He's also written poetry criticism for The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, and other journals.  Giving Their Word—Conversations with Contemporary Poets was reissued in a paperback edition (University of Massachusetts Press).  He is Poet Laureate Emeritus for Arlington, Massachusetts, and was elected in 2024 as President of the New England Poetry Club, one of the oldest literary associations in America. Now, beginning its seventh year, his weekly Red Letter Poems features a diverse range of poets, from up-and-coming talents to some of the most important voices in contemporary poetry.

SHADES OF AI AND ALTRUISM

by Ashley Nicole Nootnagel

Technology Instagram

A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman. In a unanimous verdict, the jury agreed that Musk had waited too long to file his lawsuit, leaving all of his claims essentially expired. —BBC, May 19, 2026


The peerless archer stands in shaded wood
in Lincoln green beneath a feather cap.
We gather for a modern Robin Hood
who waits with patience for the gold to stack.

Full pockets split the seams of charity,
while our children’s pictures feed the machine.
Funded by his own foolishness. Pity.
Olive tights were traded for minted green.

Can three billionaires fit in one courtroom?
The ballad threads were never camouflage.
When all wear custom suits we can’t assume
which man is sheriff and which is outlaw.

Sherwood is lost in a shade of envy,
one model fits both men and company.


Ashley Nicole Nootnagel lives in Virginia and has a B.S. in Criminal Justice & Sociology from Old Dominion University. She works in human resources and is raising a daughter and two Australian Shepherds. 

AND YOU, WHAT DO YOU NEED?

by Janet Ruth

after Mary Oishi’s poem “I Need Poems”

 

These days I need the sun,
            because it gives us light,
            whether blazing, or watery,
            or obscured by clouds,
and the words to share it with you.

These days I need the moon,
            because it’s a reflection of light,
            whether new & invisible, or waxing,
            or waning, or full,
and the words to share it with you.

These days I need all the flowers,
            because they each provide food
            for some creature and our hearts,
            whether tiny prickly flowers of tumbleweed
            or galaxies of sunflowers,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the world’s creatures
            because if they disappear none of us will ever
            be the same, whether the tiger that padded past
            our jeep in India without a glance, or the black widow
            spider spinning a web by our back door,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the recipes I can collect
            because they feed us, whether my ancestors’
            pfeffernuessen and kringel, sauerkraut and pickled eggs
            or my adopted state’s tamales, posole and biscochitos,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the stories of standing up to say NO!
            because they show us the way
            and the price we must be willing to pay,
            whether Dad’s stories of being
            a conscientious objector in WWII
            or people today carrying signs that say “No Kings,”
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all of your hearts,
            whether bruised and broken,
            or fibrillating, or full of joy,
            to hold them up to the light with words,
            because they are
                        the heartBEAT            heartBEAT
                                                heartBEAT
            of the real America.

  

Janet Ruth is a NM ornithologist and poet. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, The Lyric and anthologies including The Nature of Our Times (Paloma Press, 2025). Her sonnet “A World That Shimmers” won the inaugural True Concord Poetry Contest, was set to music and performed by True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson, October 2023. Her book,Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. 

MYTHOS AT COMMENCEMENT

by David Anson Lee

Eric Schmidt stood at the stage
like someone introducing age.
He praised A.I.’s unfolding reign.
The graduates booed him just the same.

“You are the future,” Schmidt proclaimed.
The students looked professionally ashamed.
“Machines will free you for new dreams!”
A voice cried out, “They killed internships.”

The billionaires call this “transition,”
their favorite synonym for incision.
At Citadel, whole teams were gone:
outperformed between dusk and dawn.

At Stanford now the freshmen pray
their essays still sound human-made.
The honor code grows frail and thin
when every prompt begins with Begin.

The parents clap. The provost beams.
The deans keep monetizing dreams.
Meanwhile Mythos scans the wire
like scripture crossed with hellfire.

It reads the grid for sport alone,
finds ancient flaws in backbone stone;
then Anthropic, careful, grave,
explains restriction keeps us safe.

Translation: banks and states may peek
while everyone refreshes LinkedIn weekly.
The students boo because they know
the future doesn’t need payroll.

And somewhere in refrigerated light
the servers bloom all through the night,
teaching silicon to replace
the species that designed its face.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet from Texas whose work explores medicine, technology, public life, and cultural memory. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Braided Way.

DETROIT DISPATCH

by James Schwartz

Among the declassified documents dump

Via War.gov/UFO,

A curious 1955 communication 

Between the feds and 

Detroit Flying Saucer Club,

Transmitting messages 

From extraterrestrials,

Calling humanity 

"Left behind" and

"The lowest life form of

Universal existence"

Which our current 

News cycle confirms.

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections, most recently Amish Alchemy (Alien Buddha Press, 2026) and Poems (with Sourav Sarkar, 2026).

JANUARY 6 SLUSH FUND LIMERICKS

by Paul A. Freeman

 

 

Cartoon by Clay Jones

DOJ official told GOP ally that big payouts were coming for Jan. 6 defendants: Months before the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund was announced, Ed Martin predicted Capitol rioters would get millions, even if it took until 2028, two people told NBC News. May 20, 2026

 

 

They climbed up to Capitol Hill,

Mike Pence they were going to kill;

and now, for their crime,

’gainst reason or rhyme,

their pockets they’re hoping to fill.

 

The criminals of January six,

are getting a monetary fix.

Yet women abused

and sorely misused

by Epstein and friends still get nix.

 

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.

NEVER LOOK A GRIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH

by Steven Kent

Nigel Farage has provided a new explanation for why he accepted a £5m gift from a Reform UK donor in the weeks before he announced he would stand in the last general election. In an interview on Thursday, Farage said the money was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit. Previously, he had said the gift was given for security purposes, to keep him “safe and secure” for the rest of his life. —The Guardian, May 14, 2026

Concerning gifts,

The story shifts:

Security?

A Brexit fee?

Such camouflage

Befits Farage,

Who claimed, when caught,

I can't be bought.

With this much dosh,

His brag is bosh.

It's not a bribe?

Sure has that vibe!

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. 

CANVASSING

by Mark Williams

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

If a man’s home is his castle,

he reluctantly lowered his drawbridge. “Is she

a Democrat or Republican?” he asked us.

 

Manicured lawns, foot-high grass.

Porches with fishing rods, feral cats.

“She had three litters before she was fixed.”

 

A woman on oxygen. A man with a cane.

A woman using a walker

who agreed to put up a yard sign.

 

“I always vote Republican.”

“I vote straight Democrat.”

“I’m not registered.”

 

We were offered water, beer;

given thanks, directions, advice,

even hand-wipes. We learned

 

of dogs who’d been rescued, the price

of a condemned house. One woman’s grandson

is studying classic literature in Italy.

 

As for the king of his castle, he said,

nay, shouted, “Get off my land!” which,

as far as he was concerned,

 

wasn’t made for some of you and me.

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, as well as The Southern Review, ONE ART: a literary journal, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the collections, Carrying On and Life. He and his wife, DeeGee, live and canvas in Evansville, Indiana.