ASSYMETRICAL WAR

by Paul Burgess

 

Cartoon by NICK ANDERSON @andertoon.bsky.social

They’re hoping schools won’t rain as rubble showers
resulting from an errant missile strike. 
I can’t afford the drive to see the flowers 
around the gorge I’d waited months to hike. 
They fear they’ll find their children split in half 
or buried under shrapnel, dust, and rocks. 
I’m scared the jagged line upon a graph 
will show decreasing values of my stocks. 
Their sky’s become an endless sea of threats 
erupting with the sights and sounds of war,
but over here, we’re making mobile bets 
on every prop the market’s apps can score. 
There’s something vaguely troubling, sad, and dark 
about an age of gulfs so deep and stark.


Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, and several other publications. 

LETTER FROM A POET TO AI

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

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

What do you know of heartache?

How it feels to watch your father die 

gasping for air like a fish in a bucket, 

or to find your comatose mother in her 

front yard, dying alone in the dirt? 

My brother bled to death in front 

of my eyes when he was twenty. Can 

you even imagine it? Of course, you 

can’t. You have no imagination, no 

feelings, only data, data, data that you 

spit out like pits from fruit you’ve

never tasted. And what about the good 

stuff? That first kiss from a guy who 

means it? Holding your newborn baby 

in your arms, astonished by how much 

love one person can bear? Have you 

strolled down the Champs-Élysées in 

the rain? Laughed at a joke or made 

love by an open window to the sound

of Italian doves? Tasted a chocolate 

milkshake or pumpkin risotto? Have 

you thrown a softball or climbed a tree? 

Ridden a Merry-Go-Round or a bicycle, 

seen Mick Jagger strut like a rooster 

across a stage or watched the Rockettes

kick their way to Christmas? So you can

write a semblance of a poem or a story

or a novel, so what? Your creations are 

rickety scaffolding, Hollywood sets that 

will never be the Swiss Alps or even

a human home, which is better, even if it 

sucks, than anyplace you could generate 

because you are nothing but a vending 

machine, AI—stocked with empty words.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including The Light that Follows Us Home (Autumn, 2026, Press 53). Her work has been widely published and has won numerous awards, including the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

LEARNING HER ABCs

by Madlynn Haber

A tiny girl, with sweet face, gentle features,

soft voice, recites her ABCs for me.

She learned them from an older, bolder cousin. 

The speech is hard for my aged ears to decipher. 

Mingled languages, English, Spanish, baby talk, 

an imitation of the elder cousin’s careful pronunciation. 

She smiles shyly, appreciating my attentive listening 

without noticing my lack of comprehension.

Her mother was not deported today.

 

The mother showed up at the immigration center 

with the little girl in her arms. The fearful father 

stayed home. Bail money collected by well-meaning 

neighbors filled her pockets, just in case.

Sighs of relief as she returns with a four-month reprieve. 

The little one will know her letters and some numbers, 

in English, the language of the only home 

she's ever known, by the time she escorts her mother 

to the immigration office again in July.

Madlynn Haber is the author of Seasons of Sorrow and Joy (Metaphysical Fox Press, 2025). She lives in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts.Her writing has been published in many literary journals and anthologies including, Eunoia Review, Months to Years, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and The Metaworker Literary Magazine.

NO KINGS DAY

by Ron Shapiro

 

 

 

 
What if signs of discontent,
Anger, frustration and hatred
Line every nook-and-cranny
Of the amerikan landscape
On this national day of protest?

What if everyone set down
Their phones, turned off
The hypnotic hum buzzing
In their ears, feeding them
What they want to hear rather
Than what they need to hear?
This morning I wonder
What I can do today?
How can I manifest
The sadness of witnessing
Amerika’s descent into darkness?

While bombs drop on buildings
And streets in the Middle East,
Bombs of deception and corruption
Drop daily, one after another,
Boom
boom
boom
into the fragile fabric of democracy.

Collateral damage of such weapons
Invite suffering, disease and division
Mocking ideas of “liberty and justice
For all.” In these times, words empty
Themselves of meaning replaced
With ignorance and exceptionalism
Along with a foundation of fear.

On this day, which should be everyday,
People of all ages who resist the dumbing
Down of amerika, the purging of skin
Color, gender diversity, critical thinking,
And the failure of elected officials to
Follow their conscience instead of money
And power, take to the streets. Not carrying
Weapons that kill but weapons of kindness,
Compassion, love, and hope that children
And grandchildren will grow up into
A world that favors peace not destruction.

So I’ll head out to add my voice
To those who gather with intention.
We will not succumb to a government
Whose lies, carelessness and stupidity
Try to steal the breath from our lungs.
On this day we will be heard.
Our voices will not be silenced. 

 

 

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and two chapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry. 

THERE ARE LIGHTER DAYS AHEAD

by Marc Swan

Cartoon by Clay Jones

a wise philosopher said

to the man in the white coat

who nodded his head

as the wind began to howl

and small creatures skittered

into their holes 

thunder roared

rain fell

The river current

shifted its flow

from coursing into a chasm 

of uncertainty and dread 

as all of us

who care about this world

laid smooth hands

on a thoughtless bickering 

destructive old man

Marc Swan lives in coastal Maine. Poems recently published in Ropes, Chiron Review, Sandy River Review, Crannóg, among others. His fifth collection all it would take was published in 2020 by tall-lighthouse (UK).

THIS YEAR, WE MARCH ON MY BIRTHDAY

by Ann E. Wallace

I was born in a springtime blizzard. 

     I know to expect storms that run roughshod 

over delicate crocuses poking their stubby 

 

buds from the hard, freeze-weary earth. 

     I read the news each day—of men trafficking 

in children with bluster and impunity,

 

of blue butterfly girls detained in cells, 

    out of sight, where they learn to withstand 

the cold sting of humanity’s turned back 

 

and our leaders’ smug shrugged shoulders. 

    This is the way winter is, they say. 

But seasons change. And I know, 

 

in my small, weathered body, we are built 

   to stand up to gales and thunder, to the old 

guard of winter’s flailing bravado.

These storms, we will ride them out. We stretch 

   and yawn, gather force under hostile conditions. 

Today, we call forth a new season.

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and the author of Keeping Room(Nixes Mate, 2026), Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID's Long Haul (Kelsay Books, 2024) and Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag, 2019). You can follow her on Instagram @annwallace409.

SYMPHONY OF THOUSANDS

by Barbara H. Williams

 

 

         

 

   after No Kings Day 2, October 18, 2025

 

Each played a part 

and played it well

just by being there––

good-natured fellow humans 

there for all that binds us

 

who face a common threat 

and care about our neighbors––

don’t we all need safety 

shelter, air and water

peace and equal possibility

a government which functions

for the good of all?

 

And we wore yellow, primal

bright and jovial yellow

listened, clapped

and raised our voices––

at least five thousand 

stood together 

in our little town

five thousand of us

 

and it felt intimate 

and neighborly–– 

skins all shades 

a rich array of ancestries 

and mother tongues––

 

carrying the red, white and blue 

in concert, jubilant

with twenty-seven hundred 

other towns and cities, communities

in every state across the land

 

more than seven million 

citizens together––in agreement.

 

Barbara H. Williams is Managing Editor of US 1 Worksheets. Based in Princeton, New Jersey,  she was for many years a professional flutist and music teacher. She began writing poetry in 2013, with poems appearing in The Raven’s Perch, US 1 Worksheets, The Paterson Review, and The New Verse News. 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). 

VENGEANCE BELONGS TO WHOM?

by Anne Reiner

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

 

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, prayed during a religious service at the Pentagon that there be “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. —The Guardian, March 26, 2026

 

 

Unlock the doors to Church of Pete.
We baptize you in gasoline,
shove beggars out onto the street,
bless with a gesture that’s obscene.
 
We humbly pray for arrogance,
demand your silence with our shouts.
Abuse is our benevolence.
Grant certainty upon your doubts.
 
We kneel to praise him at the helm,
ignoring scripture’s holy facts.
And as he asked, we overwhelm
with violence as we give the axe.
 
 
Anne Reiner is a writer and biostatistician based in NYC. 

WARM AND CUDDLY BELONGING FOR ALL

by Lynne Barnes

 

 

A hospital patient who managed to talk a man out of detonating a bomb in a maternity wing said the would-be attacker “asked for a cuddle” before standing down. Nathan Newby, who stopped an atrocity through an act of kindness, spoke publicly for the first time about his encounter with Mohammad Farooq before receiving the George Medal [from King Charles, above] for bravery. Farooq, a clinical support worker who took a viable pressure cooker bomb into St James’s hospital in Leeds intending to “kill as many nurses as possible” was jailed for at least 37 years last year. After asking for a cuddle, Farooq told Newby to “phone the police before I change my mind.’ —The Guardian, March 24, 2026

 

 

Oh, the layers of life right now—
sweet family visit with my
thirty-something god-nephew
and our goddess-niece, his wife.
Calming, evocation of
belonging, togetherness, as we
commune deeply with them.
They are artists, teachers, such
loving creatures, here with their
stray-rescued-as-a-puppy-ten-years-ago,
Navajo, to spend the night with us.
 
Bearing down on that layer is
a dangerous one above it,
malignant, narcissistic,
Machiavellian, sadistic,
hanging by a thread—
a heavy concrete cloud,
just above our heads,
visible, threatening,
seeded with stress and dread.
I fly above into
the stratosphere of compassion,
look down through the conflicting,
complex layers of our
human race in this era.
 
Kindness, not war and hate, 
rescues minds from harmful ideas.
Will we learn to weave empathic ropes
to throw, not just to those we love,
but to those who other us as well?
 
Can humanity, we, reel away from our
constant collapse into competing cultiness,
a tendency in all of us?
 
Broader belonging, expansive,
Transcendent Human Tribe is now
our mental moon shot challenge.
 
How will it come? I wonder as I land
back on earth from my imaginary
skyward travel. Perhaps
 
Eroding Othering
should be a sibling category
to the Nobel Prize for Peace.
 
All this I think as anxious rescue Navajo
finally stops pacing, settles out of her
traumatic memories of her early life
on the reservation, on the streets—
packless, othered, bitten, diseased.
 
At last, she welcomes our acceptance,
lets us pet her, relaxes on her
fluffy, gray, perfect circle of bed.

Lynne Barnes' poetry memoir Falling into Flowers won the 2017 Goodreads Rainbow Award for Best Gay and Lesbian Poetry, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and received Honorable Mention in both the Gay and Poetry categories for the 2018 San Francisco Book Festival Awards. 

DISTRACTIONS

by Mary Saracino

 

 

They want us to look away,
forget about the pedophiles
the wars,
the ICE raids,
the killing of nonviolent protesters,
the abduction and incarceration of children,
the deportation of immigrants
who are not criminals,
the grifting and the lies,
the evil that spews forth every day,
trying to silence us,
eviscerate the truth
that we see with our eyes,
bully us into abdicating our rights,
turn us against one another
so they can continue their unholy alliances
retain unwarranted power,
feed their insatiable greed,
make money off of countless atrocities.
But we are not distracted.
We are focused, lightning bright,
brave and unstoppable.
We will not look away.
We will not pretend that
war crimes are not being committed.
We see that cruelty is the law of the land.
We believe the women and children
who have been raped, silenced, forgotten.
We stand with the men with integrity who fight for justice.
We the people march to demand an end to the horrors,
to honor truth and decry genocide,
racism, misogyny, xenophobia
and all the many uncivil actions
and policies that seek to undo us
deny us our sacred humanity.
Together we shout: “No kings. No autocrats. No Oligarchs.
Never, ever again!”

 

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.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF KOSHER

by Todd Friedman

Dirt under your fingernails, backbone straight,

you would be the New Jew.

 

Clearing the swamp, rifle ready,

no more lambs to the slaughter.

 

The world was with you, Israel,

Buchenwald’s emaciated ghosts still searing.

 

My grandmother shouted through tears for you

in a jam-packed Madison Square Garden.

 

You were our Samson fighting

the entire Philistine army.

 

When you captured Jerusalem, shofars blowing,

it was the Red Sea parting anew.

 

Who can forget that photo of your “crying paratroopers”

standing in front of the Wailing Wall?

 

But now every day your settlers descend the hills masked:

smashing cars, bashing heads, burning villages.

 

And like Joshua’s sun your army stands still—

or even aids in the slaughter.

 

This is what my grandfather fled from in Russia—

only there it was called a pogrom.

 

So here you are, the New Jew,

with ancient real estate “deed” and a different kind of kosher.

 

We now know that Samson

was blind to begin with—

 

and so were we.

 

 

 

Todd Friedman is a retired  NYC high school English teacher who now revels in having time to write.  His poems have been published in Tikkun, The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blue Collar Review, and Vox Populi.

WHEN YOUR EYES DON'T WORK ANYMORE

by Kyle Hunter

 

 

 

 

I keep adjusting my glasses.

My blurry eyes feel older than me,

like I’ve been lending them out

and they’ve come back all used up.

There’s no way of telling how many bodies

will decompose enough to float up

and how many will stay on the bottom of the sea

or be carried by currents out to the Atlantic.

I shouldn’t be surprised, the loose

and languid skin around my eyes is not taut

anymore, it slouches against my sockets

waiting to hear it’s time to go.

As the bodies fill with gases

and distend sometimes layers

of skin will detach and float away

like a second ghost leaving the body.

I have known for many months

that I should set up an appointment

and talk to an expert.

There are solutions to this.

The governments involved refuse to talk

about the more than 655 migrants that died

in two months, the deadliest start ever

to any year in the Mediterranean.

But it’s easy to get distracted,

and sometimes it’s easier

not to see.

Kyle Hunter is a poet and managing editor of the 50. His poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, DASH Literary Journal, So It Goes, Tipton Poetry Journal, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere.