IN THE SAME BOAT?

by Raymond Nat Turner

BOOM goes tuna and swordfish stuffed brown burlap bags aboard

boats blown to smithereens. Presto! Fishing is now narco-trafficking.

And this violent video game replayed on high seas with impunity is

the new normal. Same boat, different decks?

Bay Of Pigs ghost ships haunt Havana. They bring boatloads of

jet black nights. Sporadic electricity. Spoiled food. Howling bellies.

Dry mouths. Dead dialysis and cancer patients with premature babies. 

Same boat, different decks?

Boatload of bodies dubbed “dignified transfer” return home boxed and

smothered in stars and stripes. While warlords of Wall Street and Washington

do undignified transfers of trillions from our treasure to float boats

on champagne and caviar. To Epstein ports of call. Same boat, different decks?

300 supersized workdays at sea. Exhausted sailors. Minutes from madness.

Several imagine Emancipation Proclamation diving overboard from the

sewage-spewing, moldy shower, soapless, food-short ship, Abraham Lincoln. 

Same boat, different decks?

Black skull and crossbones flag flaps furiously against winds of change.

Must turn SS Cruel Corrupt Titanic-class “destroyer” around—or

run aground! Can’t vote our boat ashore no more. Must convert this ghastly

gray, bloody gunboat into MLK Dr. Che-class radical Love Boat.

US as admirals. US ordering humongous waves of organizations. US ordering

militant millions into sustained strikes, boycotts, demonstrations. MUTINY AHEAD?

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

MY WIFE AND I WERE DISTURBED

by Kevin Boyce

 

while watching the nightly news 

by a noise coming from outside.

Thunk                 thunk                   thunk

 

A catbird in our rhododendrons 

had declared war on his reflection in

our basement window. Each time 

his attack was repelled by an equal 

and opposite force. 

Thunk                  thunk                   thunk

 

He could not be deterred from defending 

his homeland from this imaginary foe.

Something had to give in the battle 

between this birdbrain and glass pane.

 

I covered the window with cardboard

to curtail his instinctual onslaught 

and save him from an early demise.

My wife and I went back to the news.

 

In August of 1914, soldiers enlisted 

in the War to End All Wars, assured

that the conflict would end by Christmas. 

Four more years and 15 million souls would pass 

before the close of this grand adventure.

 

Then 2003 brought Bush on the boat with his banner

prematurely exclaiming “Mission Accomplished.”

The Iraq War lasting a mere eight more years

after victory was secured.

 

Vladimir Putin invaded an independent Ukraine confident 

of conquest within months. Here we are four years later.

 

Operation Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026

with Israel and the US attacking Iran certain that 

they could not resist. Mission accomplished.

 

Thunk                  thunk                   thunk

 

 

 

Kevin Boyce is a poet, photographer, children’s book author, and lifelong resident of New England. He volunteers in his hometown, leading a community-sponsored contest and publication for emerging authors. Kevin’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ONE ART, Nostalgia, The New Verse News, The Broken Teacup, Discretionary Love, The Poetry Lighthouse, and elsewhere.

WHEN THE NEXT DELUGE COMES

by Debra Orben

When the water comes rushing, gushing down,

Where will you be?

 

Stranded by the side of a flooded road with limited visibility

By the ocean’s edge witnessing the newest high tide

On a mountain top watching the hillside give way to landslide

In a clear-cut forest, seeing newly planted seedlings uprooted

In a homeless encampment without shelter from the pelting

In an old tired house whose roof leaks and windows creak

Standing amid ruins of your former refuge, now burned home

Or helpless as water rises higher, reaching beyond the first floor.

 

Place matters, we can all shelter from the coming storms

But not all in one place and not all places are safe

Some will survive, but left without anchoring memories

No sanctuary from the coming days of floods and fires

No arks or promising rainbows on the horizon.

 

If only we could build bridges high enough and connections

Deep enough to withstand our climate’s growing heat and fury.

If only we could make sure no one is left to drown

Before the next deluge comes trying to wash us all away.

Debra Orben is a retired elementary teacher and Quaker activist who cares deeply about the natural world and the future of all children.  She is an aspiring poet whose poems have been published in several anthologies, including ICE Out by Moonstone Press and Pennsylvania Bards, Easter PA Poetry Review 2026  published by Local Gems Press.

IN GAZA, FLYING A KITE IS AN ACT OF WAR

by Claire Zoghb

With thanks to Murad and Mustafa at Wear The Peace for the beautiful T-shirt.  

Author’s note: On Monday, August 24, 2026, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared Palestinian children’s kite-flying “an act of war.” I couldn’t help but think of “If I Must Die” by Dr. Refaat Alareer, the prominent Gazan writer, poet, activist, and professor of English literature at the Islamic University in Gaza, who was targeted and assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on December 6, 2023. His poem was widely circulated after his killing and was translated into more than 250 languages.

Available at Wear the Peace

Claire Zoghb’s collections include Small House Breathing and the chapbooks Boundaries and Dispatches from Everest. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize and appear widely in print and online journals and anthologies. When not graphic designing, Claire may be found wandering among beach roses. 

THE KIBOSH

by Steve Straight

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

Something that serves as a check
or stop; to halt, squelch, or cancel;
to bring to a sudden end.

Example: “We put the kibosh on that
to prevent another tragedy.”

Whatever its origin––
Yiddish, Irish, Arabic,
or perhaps just the streets 
of 1830s London––, though,
kibosh is still just a word.

When I put the kibosh on something,
I want it to stay kiboshed.

I would prefer a kibosh
to be a giant winged creature
with long talons and fierce eyes,
a mythical creature come to life.

I’m thinking some kind of griffin,
capable of plucking a certain human
out of his bunker
before he reanimates again
and causes another disaster,
or maybe out in the open,
on a golf course, say.

The kibosh would simply spirit this human
away, some place isolated
and barren and far from civilization.

This needs to happen soon, 
because God knows I can’t wait
much longer to taste the champagne.

Steve Straight’s books include Affirmation (Grayson Books, 2022), which won the 2023 William Meredith Award for Poetry, The Almanac (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2012), and The Water Carrier (Curbstone, 2002). He was professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College, in Connecticut.

WHAT SETTLES WHEN WE LAY OUR BODIES DOWN TO REST

by Paula J. Lambert

Source: The New York Times

Really, it’s just the claggy kind of snot struggling

to decide if it wants to stay low in your chest—

 

where your heart beats and every breath passes

through—or if, rising, clinging to the last breath,

 

it has the strength to finally release itself

to the world. We know by now what can travel 

 

on the tiny particles of our gasping exhalations: 

disease, devotion, the promise that death is no end. 

 

We might wish otherwise, drifting in and out 

of these strange dreams of drowning. We know

 

what happened in Nepal, North Carolina, Texas. 

We all might be called mystics when, prone, 

 

our bodies wrestle with desire, each wobble of faith 

in our resolve to go on a little death of its own.  

Paula J. Lambert of Columbus, Ohio, has published eleven collections of poetry including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig 2025) and Sinkhole (Bottlecap 2025). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

THE TENDER THINGS

by Janette Schafer

after “We Have Not Long to Love” by Tennessee Williams 

The tender things are those we fold away. 

The lover who didn’t stay, would not say why.

The nephew who’d be the perfect son if only

he could stop drinking. A crow who eats berries

off your front porch until he doesn’t. A mother

who remembers the girl you were at 17, 

and only talks to that child even when she’s 53.

A sister who believes every cuss word is

a demon to cast out. A husband who thinks

every bad day at work is a reason to cheat. 

You’d like the world to try a little tenderness—

except that now Dolly Parton is dead, and today

you needed any ray of sunshine—

so you reach the end of a cassette, hit rewind.

Janette Schafer is a poet, photographer, playwright, and realtor living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Chatham University. She is the author of three collections of poetry and the chief editor of two poetry anthologies. Her writing and photographs have appeared in numerous journals, newspapers, and websites, including Vox Populi, The Missouri Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and SWWIM.  She is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize. 

(CAN WE PLEASE GO BACK IN TIME &) MAKE THE GREAT LAKES GREAT AGAIN

by Ron Riekki

For the longest time, the Great Lakes have been

Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior, a bond

between US and Canada that affectionately became

abbreviated to H.O.M.E.S.  But now, to bend

that bond, eerily, the inferior (five-letter too) named

President wants to change it to Superior, Huron,

America, Michigan, Erie, which will from now on

link Trump to the new abbreviation: S.H.A.M.E.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice. 

TO FLY A KITE

by Lynn White

Cartoon by Kamal Sharaf.

The United Nations has condemned Israel’s threat to expel Palestinians from areas of the besieged Gaza Strip where kites were being flown by children... Israel warned Hamas on Sunday that it would intensify military operations if kites, drones or balloons continue, saying those responsible would be targeted... Several kites not carrying incendiary devices were reported to have drifted into southern Israeli communities over the last month... Gaza’s popular committees, coordinating with Hamas authorities, urged parents on Monday to stop children flying kites, saying they were acting “to protect their innocent lives”... “Every summer, my kid, Ahmed, and the kids in the street fly those kites to entertain themselves,” Umm Mohammed, a mother in Gaza City, told the Reuters news agency. “But [now] I will not allow him to—not any more.” —Aljazeera, August 26, 2026

The kites have fallen

down to earth

they lie on the ground

broken as a child

broken as a child in Gaza.

Go fly a kite, Israel.

Go fly a kite.

If only.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

TREMONT, MAINE REVERSES 100-YEAR-OLD BAN ON DEER HUNTING

by Marianne Gambaro

The Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Advisory Council (IFW) approved the Town of Tremont’s special deer hunt today despite one member hoping for written assurances from the Maine Attorney General’s office that the move is legal. Tremont will be the only town on Mount Desert Island where hunters can legally shoot deer. The deer hunt begins November 2026 and runs for three seasons. Any deer killed in the town will not count toward the hunter’s state bag limit. —Bar Harbor Story, August 11, 2026.

The rising sun casts a golden hue on two fawns and five does

who peacefully graze a meadow beside Blue Hill Bay unaware 

local humans deliberate their fate

with euphemisms like “balance habitat.”

 

Under July’s buck moon while male deer

grow new velvet-covered antlers

gardeners and farmers kvetch at the post office

about ornamentals leveled and crops decimated.

 

At dusk locals drive more cautiously expecting to encounter

one or more standing in the road around the next bend.

Proponents cite an increase in traffic accidents, ignoring

that it might be a function of the overall increase in traffic.

 

Seeing an upsurge at the local clinic,

the spike in Lyme disease is blamed

on the deer rather than white-footed mice,

the real culprits.

 

In August the Maine Inland Fisheries

and Wildlife Advisory Council

approved the execution order

to be carried out in November. 

Retired journalist Marianne Gambaro is a writer and cat enrichment volunteer who lives in Western Massachusetts. Her poems and essays have been published in numerous journals. She is the author of the chapbook, Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers (Finishing Line Press), and an upcoming collection, Stuffed Monkeys (Kelsay Books).

HARD CANDY CHRISTMAS

by Deborah Bacharach

I do jazzercise, and I get the joke.

We did it to ourselves, all those neon yellow

faux sexy tights under high-cut leotards.

The frayed silk flowers.

 

And even as we get older and older, corporate 

still won’t leave us be. 

We have to bring our sweet familiar

step-together-step-hop to whatever’s 

climbing the pop chart. Except for

 

Christmas when we get to move

to Hard Candy Christmas.

 

I only know Dolly as a big-busted joke, 

cringe at her platinum wigs.

But when she sings

maybe I’ll dye my hair,

maybe I’ll lose some weight

 

each word is a piece of tinsel.

I feel part of something that matters—

hearing someone in pain,

not dancing away.

Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has recently appeared in Poetry East, Last Syllable, Only Poems, and Grist among many other journals, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is a poetry reader for The American Journal of Nursing, SWWIM and Whale Road Review.