AFTER THE SHOOTINGS

by Karen Marker

Hundreds of students walked off Oakland’s Skyline High School campus on Tuesday [November 18], calling for the school and district to do more to counter gun violence. They say the Oakland Unified School District needs to provide more education and better support for students who don’t feel safe on campus after shootings at two Oakland schools last week. Last Wednesday [November 12], a Skyline student was shot during the school day, and two other young people were arrested in connection with the altercation. Just a day later, Oakland’s beloved Laney College Athletic Director John Beam was shot and killed on the junior college campus. Beam, who was featured on the final season of Netflix’s docuseries Last Chance U while he was coaching the Laney Eagles, began his Oakland career at Skyline, leading the school’s football team to 15 championships over 17 years, according to OUSD Superintendent Denise Saddler. (Photo: Gustavo Hernandez/KQED) —KQED, November 18, 2025

I admit I am glad 
it’s no longer my job 
to be called out in a crisis—
part of the Response Team
at Skyline High, first to gather 
students together after 
the shooting, sit them 
in a circle so they can share 
feelings of shock 
between waves of grief 
and anger, between questions
about how much damage 
a ghost gun can do, 
how impossible 
to trace all this 
back to the beginnings
of neglected cries for help 
and so much hunger—
what was said on social media
no one warned about
those who knew the shooter
the student shot
the football coach
shot by a former student—
all those wondering 
where did we go wrong
how do we make our schools 
and city free of violence
would more mental health services 
solve the problems? For so many years 
I was out in the field offering solace, 
seeking solutions but tonight 
with no moon I’m seeing only the shooting 
of a star—the icon, hero coach 
is gone and all this
against the backdrop of news 
alerts from NextDoor 
please people be safe—
badgeless masked ICE agents, 
like ghost guns 
impossible to trace
are now active in neighborhoods 
all over the city we love
while I’m still reeling.

 

Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist and retired school psychologist who has committed to  writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response  to current events. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press and explores family mental illness, stigma and healing. 

OUR PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES

The New Verse News is proud to announce its nominees for the next series of the Pushcart Prize.

Click on a title below to read the poem..

Published January 13, 2025

TO THE ASHES IN L.A. by Alexis Krasilovsky

Published March 7, 2025

WOMEN’S HISTORY 2025: SAY HER NAME by Robin Stevens Payes

Published August 27, 2025

GREEN by John Minczeski

Published September 23, 2025

DAUGHTERS by Clare Richardson-Barlow

Published October 12, 2025

2025 by Susan Vespoli

Published November 5, 2025

BJÖRN IN VENICE by Julia Griffin

COP 30 CLOSING DAY LIMERICK

by Paul A. Freeman

With half the world living on gruel,

we’re treating the planet most cruel.

The ice sheets are thawing,

and CO₂’s soaring,

yet still we won't dump fossil fuel.

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.

SAY THEIR NAMES

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday read aloud a passage of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s memoir in which she describes shooting her pet dog, Cricket, during a committee markup on a bill related to deporting migrants who harm animals. —The Hill, November 18, 2025

She killed the dog, he said,

reading from her own words,

shot a puppy not yet grown,

its unruliness put down.

 

Fourteen months young,

he spoke the name so we could

witness her transgression,

not the puppy’s—Cricket.

 

Some snickered at the obvious,

a killer of dogs in charge,

rounding up castaways

for gravel pits unknown. 

 

It’s no joke.

 

Some countered stories

from the other side, 

of beagles left behind in labs,

abuse for an abuse.

 

What about that?

 

All agreed that dogs must

not be harmed. 

Save them all from 

cruelty’s bloody hands.

 

We vouch for Cricket’s rights

as we shout for human rights,  

to live without fear or discrimination.

We need to say all their names.

 

She killed the dog; in her own 

words, she hated the dog.

 

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing, as well as the importance of shared stories.

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.