BAI TASHCHIT (DO NOT DESTROY)

by Lenore Weiss

Israeli settlers and soldiers killed three Palestinians in their village near Ramallah on Saturday night, the third deadly attack in a week of surging Israeli violence across the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers have shot dead five civilians during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, in the brief period since Israel and the US launched a new war on Iran at the end of February. —The Guardian, March 8, 2026. Photo: WAFA archive.

Deer bite off the heads of my coreopsis, yellow sunbursts of blossoms I was hoping to see every morning outside my window, but now only sad stumps are left leaning against the pavement. Every day, I go outside to encourage the plant, hoping it might grow back, sprout a few new leaves. The way olive trees are being cut, burned and poisoned, and the olive, which is more than a fruit, a symbol of resistance, buckets picked and pressed with a wooden beam, sometimes with a stone to produce golden flowing oil. Every tree which is not being harvested, is lost to the occupation. Deuteronomy 20:19-20 prohibits cutting down fruit-bearing trees during a war as they provide life-sustaining food. Isn’t this an ongoing war? Olive trees growing in the West Bank are the first to go, surrounded by settlements built high on ridges that strangle villages, and even when armed renegades desist, they return with more venom. Concentration camps and the multitude of prisons throughout the United States produce men and women who understand how physical space can be controlled, minds never. Villagers living in Burin say their olive oil is spicier because it is laced with tear gas.

Lenore Weiss’s novel Pulp into Paper and a poetry collection, Video Game Pointers were both published in 2024. Prior poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012), Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hakodesh Word Press, 2017). Alexandria Quarterly Press published her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook Holding on to the Fringes of Love. Lenore edited a poetry and prose anthology for Kehilla Community Synagogue entitled From the Well of Living Waters: Voices of the 21st Century. She is a member the Writers Grotto and serves as the Associate Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Editor for the Mud Season Review.

WAR SECRETARY

by Lisa Fogarty

Pete Hegseth by Ian Baker

RE: WARY WAR 

WRY WAR WAYS 

ROTE WAR STORY 

RAW SCORE 

SORROW 

WORST RAT YET

Lisa Fogarty is a journalist and creative writer from New York. She is a mother of two whose work has appeared in several magazines, newspapers, and journals. 

I WEEP FOR THE WORLD

by Mary Saracino

“Weeping World” print by Marinka Bendova at Saatchi Art

I weep for the world,

for women and girls

for boys and men,

living and dying at the mercy

of those without mercy,

the merciless misers,

the autocrats who have sold

their empathy for power,

their compassion for money,

who have sacrificed their souls

for privileges they did not earn—or deserve.

The world they manifest burns

with injustice, oppression, war.

I weep for the planet,

Her essence assaulted,

decimated by greed,

and insatiable lust

for all that is unholy.

I weep for our non-human kin,

all creatures, great and small

all vegetation, too,

that seeks to live and thrive

under the sunlit sky,

bathed in the moonlit darkness,

moving through the seasons

with grace, grit, and gratitude.

We humans have lost our way.

The path is strewn with

obstacles to peace and prosperity,

the carnage of millennia,

the debris of lost memories

of how it should be,

how it could be

if we joined forces and

reclaimed our roots,

celebrated our ancient origins,

honored our connections

to all that is, and ever will be.

Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her book of poetry, Motherlines, was published by Pearlsong Press (February 2026). She is the author of four novels: Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014), The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006), No Matter What (Spinsters Ink 1993), and Finding Grace (Spinsters Ink 1999), and the memoir, Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior (Spinsters Ink 2001). She co-edited (with Mary Beth Moser) She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An anthology of writings in womanist/feminist spirituality (iUniverse 2012), which earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature from Sofia University.

LIMERICK TO HELP FORGET THE WAR FOR A MOMENT

by Zumwalt

Cartoon by Kevin KAL Kallaugher

With a face like a serial killer,
He belongs in a cheap horror thriller;
Some call him a bum
Or the worst of the scum,
But to me he's just Stephen Miller.

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News.

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, I’M NOT SO SURE ABOUT THE VENT

by Eric Oak

A government handout photograph showed weapon remnants displayed on a table near the ruins of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, where a precision strike reportedly killed 175 people, mostly children, on Feb. 28. The remnants have been identified by The Times as components of a modern, U.S.-made Tomahawk missile. Credit...IRIB, via Telegram

It was not the Israelis, after all,

who triple tapped the school in Minab.

It was US, according to the Times—

our bombs 

that blasted babies into doll parts, 

scattered them among the concrete-

silica dust of their classrooms.

But it was always our bombs, really–

Arab Salim and Jabalia, Biden’s

red line to Rafah. Bombs with

our names on them. Cruz and 

Haley chickenhawked in Sharpie, 

mine and yours scratched san-serif 

onto the shells in bolder relief with 

each paycheck deposited.

I read the article about Minab 

during my planning period, and

it lingers with me now around

this crater-quiet classroom.

The kids are taking a test, but I 

don’t care whether they pass it. 

I just want to talk to them.

I just want to believe that it's 

not too late to talk, that it’s 

not too late to believe.

Something about the way the 

big vent grumbles when 

the air kicks on reminds me:

the surprise lockdown drill

has to be this week or next. 

They’re quiet, like now,

the drills at least. 

The kids are used to them.

Winder and Uvalde, Gaza and Minab.

Maybe bullets stop when bombs do.

I remember now why that vent rattles—  

I took out most the screws that hold

it to the wall, and a few more outside. 

The maintenance guy showed me how

to kick and climb our way out there

in case we ever need to flee, to run

outside, unafraid as we are of a 

brush smoke sky.

Eric Oak is the pseudonym of a teacher of social studies at a middle school near Chattanooga, TN. He sometimes asks people to read the things he writes so that they may exist.

TO 165 EXPENDABLES, SHAJERAH TAYYEBEH GIRLS’ ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MINAB, IRAN

by Kent Reichert

It’s a shame you had to die
but hey,
that’s war, right?
Leave it to the smoke 
in your father’s eyes to mourn your passing,
let rubble be your obituary
caught up as you were in other's dreams of power
and fear.
They say 
your death is the path to peace. They say
it is going well. They say
all according to plan. They say
their children are safer now.
When their school bells ring,
the screams at recess are joyful abandon.
But your screams rain down upon your
mother's heart
and will for the eternity she lives each
moment
without you.
At least you were not alone at your passing.
Holding your hand 
were your ideas and hopes and wishes and dreams;
your children and grandchildren;
your silly laughter;
your joy;
your love of chickpea cookies;
your bedtime stories;
your heart a flutter when that boy said he liked you
and you couldn’t run fast enough to tell your friends.
They were there, right there with you when
your world evaporated instantly.
They feared you or was it where you were born? Or they feared
your school’s location. Or they feared
who you worshipped. Or they feared 
the words your leaders spoke. Or they feared
what they might do. Or they feared…so…
“I got him before he got me.” 
Nothing personal, just collateral damage.

Those in power far away
hugged power above all else. They smiled in their safety
and their children and grand children’s safety, for…

They say it is going well. They say
all according to plan. They say
the world is safer now.
After all it was them or you, wasn’t it?
That's what they said and 
It’s a shame you had to die
But hey
that’s war, right?


Kent Reichert spends autumn beside Becky’s Creek on the Intracoastal Waterway across from North Carolina's Topsail Island. He passes the time walking his dogs, practicing digital photography and writing. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.

AGAINST PURIM

by Barbara Ungar

ID 67399384 © Olga Kuevda | Dreamstime.com

Parading as Queen Esther in kindergarten

at my first carnival, in her long blue dress, 

I tripped and tumbled off the low stage.

Yet I teach my son the fairy tale:

Queen Esther was a secret Jew, raised 

by cousin Mordecai, who refuses 

to bow down to Haman, who’s convinced the king 

to kill all the Jews, so Esther risks her life 

to reveal herself and plead. The king relents, 

asks what to do to Haman. Mordecai says, 

whatever Haman says to do to me. Haman says 

hang Mordecai, so the king hangs Haman instead. 

We rejoice: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat 

hamantaschen, tarts shaped like Haman’s hat.

Bored at my son’s Purim carnival 

while his class intones Hebrew verses 

no one understands, and the teachers mug 

their way through the tale in drag, I read 

the whole Megilla, realize this was Persia

(Iran), Esther was in a harem, and Haman

wasn’t hanged, but impaled on a fifty-foot stake.

As the kids trip, one by one, to the front

to chant if they can, or just read the Hebrew

with no vowels, or blush and break down

in tears, I read, yes, Haman did plan

to impale Mordecai (so it’s a grisly take 

on the golden rule), but then they impale 

all ten of Haman’s sons. At every mention 

of Haman, everyone goes wild, twirling their noise-

making groggers and shrieking with laughter.

The besotted king gives Mordecai power so, 

the text crows, our hero slaughters 75,000 

of his foes in the city, and who knows

how many more in the countryside? This

we are enjoined to celebrate as Purim.

Party on. A vendetta thousands of years old.

Today, on Purim, I see photos of rows 

and rows of graves dug side by side for  

160 schoolgirls, and a video of an Iranian 

man in tears, holding the hand of a six- or 

seven-year-old girl, just the hand, all that’s left

of her. Of course we’ll pay in kind.

While the US vows vengeance for its seven 

(so far) dead, Jew-hatred blooms across the world-

wide web, and for every murdered child, 

how many will avenge? 

Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently After Naming the Animals. Honors include the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Gival Poetry Prize, and being named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2015 and 2019. She has published poems in Scientific American, Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals. 

DOES THE SUN RISE (FOR ME)?

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Does the Sun rise 

for me? Or if not 

for me, does it rise

for my brother,  

for my sister?

What about

the sun rising

over Tehran

or Gaza,

London,

or Doha?.

Does the sun

rise for me?

Who is 

my brother?

Who is 

my sister,

the mother

wailing beside

the rubble

of the school,

her girls

bombed

to bits?

Does the Sun 

rise anyway

over killing fields?

Does it rise

over our bodies

thrashing 

in the dark?

Does it rise

exposing

the open 

grave?

Does it rise

helping plants 

to bloom?

Does it rise

whether

we live 

or die?

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.

THE 7TH DAY

by Adam J. Scarborough

The day

misplaces the sun.
Somewhere
a sky still burns blue
but not here.
Here—
a black noon.

The maps keep shedding people.
Five hundred thousand
coats and shoes—missing from their hallways;
names folded into cars, trucks, 
onto motorcycles and buses,
heading north from Lebanon.
 
A child carries a key
to a pile of ash.
—
Missiles write their brief alphabets
over Abu Dhabi—
two hundred thirty-eight
steel sentences
falling through prayer. 
Most of them
erased mid-air.
Even the sky now
has editors.
—
Control of the air,
they say.
The sky is a throat
they have learned
to close.
Jets move there
like indifferent saints.
—
Smoke remembers the night.
Tehran wakes
with black in its mouth.
Balconies gather soot
like winter birds.
Cars wear the same dark coat.
The street
a long finger,
dragged through ash.
—
Oil depots
burn through the hours
when sleep should hold the city.
Ten million lungs
turn quietly
in their beds.
Above them
the sky writes in smoke—
language without vowels.
—
Morning arrives
as rain.
Not mercy.
A rain that stings the eyes,
touches the throat
with a thin metal hand.
Acid falling softly
on bread
on figs left in bowls
on the open skin
of the city.
—
The doctors speak
from distant rooms.
Particles,
they say.
Invisible dust
entering the small, naked doors of the body.
Asthma remembers.
The heart
tightens its fist.
Even the air
now carries
a slow instruction.
—
Do not open the window.
Do not turn the fan.
Cover the food.
Wait.
As if waiting
could rinse the sky.
—
A special relationship
spits across red neckties 
tied like telephone wires,
fizzing with foreign cries.
 
Night keeps arriving early.
Lebanon counts its dead
in the hundreds—
three hundred ninety-four
and still the number
breathes.  
 
Dust enters the lungs
of the city.
Beirut
a broken bell.
—
Elsewhere the world practices
this same dark grammar:
Sudan
South Sudan
Ukraine—
where the ground
remembers fire
longer than people do.
—
And somewhere a man
with a borrowed crown
waits in a golden room
for the door
to open.
 
Another country
dragged forward
by the nose of a name.
—
Still
someone lights a stove.
Someone boils water.
 
Someone somewhere
opens a window
to see
 
if the sun
has been returned.

Adam J. Scarborough is a Scottish writer and social practice artist based in Minnesota. His work has been presented across Europe and New York. His poetry has appeared in Gutter Magazine.