THE BOMB FACTORY DOWN THE BLOCK

by Dick Altman

Photo by Dick Altman.

The aging Los Alamos lab at the center of America’s nuclear overhaul: Contamination incidents, work outages and declining infrastructure have plagued the site, but the lab remains the linchpin in an effort to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons. —High Country News, October 28, 2025

Northern New Mexico

When I settle here,

overlooking

Rio Grande’s

historic valley,

the Jemez 

mountains,

ranging

across

the entire

western skyline,

hold me

spellbound.

 

Daybreak 

brings them

brilliantly

alive,

to be worshipped

by Puebloans,

beyond memory.

Nightfall                         

turns them

into a stage,

where

piercingly

magenta skies,

unllike any 

I‘ve ever seen,

welcome 

high desert’s

glowing

obsidian

dark.

 

I can only

imagine

how

Puebloans

revere yet

what they

call

their sacred

peaks.

I’m tempted 

to call it

sacrilege,  

when I realize,

high on 

a promontory

looms

Los Alamos,

cradle

of the nuclear

age.

 

For me,

the site

is anything

but an artifact.

Friends

work there.

I’ve passed

through it

many times.

Hiked the hills

embracing it.

My ridge aligns

with Mount

Redondo,

a few minutes

south of the lab.

It overlooks
Valles Caldera

said to be

remants
of one

the largest
explosions
ever to rock
the planet.

I often wonder

if Oppenheimer

chose Los Alamos,

for its intimate

proximity

to the caldera.

I can almost

hear him

spurring on

his atom-splitting

cohorts: 

“We may never

match that

volcanic

cataclysm.

But I believe

we have

the minds 

to create

a weapon

of such power,

unlike any 

in human history,

to stop in its tracks,

the war.”

 

For those

like myself,

who call

this majestic

geoscape home,

his era,

to my disbelief,

is far from over.

Just weeks ago,

containers

leaking

nuclear

waste,

of the Cold War, 

were allowed 

to vent

into the air.

The winds,

I dread to say,

prevail from

the west—

towards

my ridge.

 

But what

of the Pueblos,

under which

a lethal chemical

flare in the soil,

originating

at the lab,

slowly worms

its way toward

tribal

ground water?

 

So far,

no amount

of science

or money 

can stop it.

No,

to me,

Los Alamos

lives neither

as just another

spot

on the map.

Nor anything

resembling

history’s 

tomb.

.

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 280 poems, published on four continents.

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.