QUIET, PIGGY

by Ron Shapiro

Words that carry me back to a deserted island

where a group of schoolboys tried to survive 

as a civilized community without adult supervision

were the words the bully in the bully pulpit used

to silence a female reporter who asked a question

about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

 

Right out of Golding’s novel, this country’s leader

is our Jack Merridew, a boy who relishes a life of

no rules, uncouth rhetoric and violence. His passion

centers on killing a pig. To accomplish this, he dons

a mask of savagery and attacking anyone who gets

in his way. Far from being a responsible leader,

 

Like our bully, Jack’s id controls his behavior. 

In seeking his prey, whether a pig or Piggy, the 

group’s intellectual, he lets the signal fire go out.

The boys’ main chance of being rescued no longer

important to Jack’s purpose of creating chaos.

 

In the novel’s climactic scene after Jack steals Piggy’s

glasses, a symbol of his ability to ‘see’ the downfall of

this civilized and democratic microcosm of society,

Piggy leads the last boys to Castle Rock, the setting

of Jack’s fort, in order to retrieve his glasses.

 

At that point, Piggy utters the book’s central questions:

“What are we civilized or savages? Which is better---

to have rules and agree or to hunt and kill?” With

the launching of a huge boulder from the mountaintop,

Piggy’s fate is doomed. All hope for democracy is lost.

 

Piggy’s question, like that of the reporter’s, followed by

the bully’s misogynistic, curt reply echoes Golding’s.

“Quiet, Piggy,” poses the same question about Amerika

as her shining light dims to a flicker. Sadly, in these times, 

a country being hi-jacked, held hostage by fear, offers silence. 

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 twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.

NO ONE SEES THE SUNRISE

by Sharon Neubauer

AI-generated image by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

One of the oddest UN resolutions in history seeks to solidify shaky Gaza ceasefire into an enduring peace: The hazy UN resolution dictates that Trump’s ‘board of peace’ will supervise an International Stabilisation Force, whose membership is as yet undetermined. —The Guardian, November 18, 2025

I

I do not want to live

in a kill or be killed world.

It is not refreshing

 

that for once

my people are killers

and not just killed

 

and if they stop killing

they will once again

be killed, and if 

 

they keep killing

they may kill the current killers

only to create new killers.

 

II

 

I want to live

in a love and be loved world

in a forgive and move on world

 

that makes space 

for my people

and in which my people 

 

make space for all.

There is no pathway 

to this world

 

that I can see

and many who have tried

to pave that path have been killed.

 

III

 

The sun comes up through the smog.

The killers and the killed

don’t stop to say good morning

 

Sunlight tries to enter

their eyes, ears and hearts

through closed portals

 

and trauma blocks the path

over and over, as it has

always.

 

IV

 

The grieving mothers remember 

God is the power 

to see, hear, and listen 

 

with all our might, soul and being.

But as the sun rises 

both sides toil at their killing

 

and the babies starve 

and the girls are raped

and the world picks sides 

 

and accusations abound

and no one sees the sun rise

shining its sweet rays through the smoke,

and no one lets in the light 

that burns off hatred and sorrow

and tries every day to clean the world.

Sharon Neubauer is a poet, singer, Yoga teacher, and skier. Her poetry chapbook A Work of Body: A Body of Work was published in 2023 by Finishing Line Press.

CHAMPURRADO: A REMEDY FOR MISUNDERSTANDING

by Griffin Taylor

In Abuelita’s chipped chocolatera:
Add water to masa harina.
Whisk until it feels like home…
From before.

Melt chocolate,
Strong like your Aztec ancestors.
Just enough piloncillo—
Never appear too sweet.

Steep canela, 
To infuse your flame.
Froth with a molinillo 
Between immigrant palms.

Serve immediately 
To classmates and neighbors.

Griffin Taylor writes poetry, micro-fiction, and children’s books when he isn’t making ice cream or pizza. Sometimes he even likes to write about pizza and/or ice cream. 

ELEGY FOR A CLOSE ATTACHMENT

by Zumwalt

OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT can now follow user instructions to avoid using em-dashes. However, some users reported that the issue persisted by showing their chats with the AI chatbot. —Mint, November 14, 2025

I once loved this world—my world—which 

danced with em dashes—

the best kind—
at end of lines—
seemed so clean—
went directly to the heart
—or at start of lines
or—in-between.

Now, it is the mark of the beast,
and I accept Sam’s notice to
cease and desist:
doing my best to implement on request
the effective incorporation of proper punctuation.

Zumwalt's poetry explores themes of alienation, shifting reality, and personal adaptation.

WORTHLESS

by B. Fulton Jennes

ID 10587676 © trekandshoot | Dreamstime.com

 

November 12, 2025 – U.S. Mint strikes final circulating one-cent coins.

 

At 10, I culled pennies from my plastic purse, 

dropped them into the bathroom’s metal trash can,

savored each clang. Their removal made room

for worthier coins—those with a silver sheen. 

 

Did my mother scold or slap at the discovery? 

I don’t recall. But her lesson stung and stuck: 

No small thing is worthless. A penny was more 

than a piece of comic-wrapped bubble gum,

more than a fiery cinnamon ball or palmful 

of chiclets spit from a vending machine.

It was copper—the metal that cloaked 

the Statue of Liberty. It bore Lincoln’s profile. 

It had history. It had value. It should be saved. 

 

Years later, still penny-obsessed, I scanned 

city sidewalks for coppery discs, bowed before

a speeding cab on 14th Street to pry one

from hot tar, banged heads with a woman who, 

likewise possessed, bent to snatch one from

the marble floor of Grand Central at rush hour, 

beat me to the grab, glared. I chided a teen who 

dumped a handful at a Madison Avenue bus stop,

gathered their discards from the pavement, 

added them to a five-gallon water jug at home.

 

Once I called in sick, boarded Amtrak south 

to the Philadelphia mint, watched behemoth

machines blank, anneal, strike pennies by the ton, 

a shimmering sea of copper, conveyed by forklifts, 

guided by back-braced men—such an earth-shaking, 

deafening to-do for something so small, so—what?—

 

worthless?

 

Today a two-century cascade of coins grows still.

Dignitaries make speeches, promise to auction the last

pennies struck on Earth. How foolish to spend 

2.7 cents to make something worth only a third as much. 

Even my mother would agree with those economies. 

Even my mother would hold her penurious hand, 

her sharp tongue, and see the wisdom of throwing 

such spendthrift things away.

The award-winning poems of B. Fulton Jennes are widely published. Her chapbook Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award; another chapbook FLOWN was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook Dirty Bird & Myrt will be published by Dancing Girl Press in the spring of 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer.

TRUMP V BBC

by Paul A. Freeman

A rambling Donald incites

his fans to treacherous fights.

So, shame if he sues,

the BBC news

for daring to air the highlights.

The BBC’s out on a limb,

for splicing a story. How dim!

With folk loudly booing,

and Trump maybe suing,

the BBC’s outlook is grim.

The Beeb is known sometimes to boast,

“We’re global, not just coast-to-coast.”

But due to spliced news,

if Donald Trump sues,

the BBC might just end up toast.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It 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 is the author of numerous published short stories, poems and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

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.