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The New Verse News
presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Thursday, July 07, 2022
I GREW UP IN HIGHLAND PARK
Wednesday, July 06, 2022
REWIND
Tuesday, July 05, 2022
THE WIND SPEAKS
EVIDENCE
by Bruce Bennett
Glowingly, knowingly
Cassidy Hutchinson
Answers the questions
Revealing it all:
Rudy and Proud Boys
And weapons and pardons
And dishes in pieces,
A smear on the wall.
Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty poetry chapbooks. His most recent full-length book is Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems New and Selected, 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017). From 1973 until his retirement in 2014, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at Wells College, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. He predicted what we were in for in his November 2016 YouTube video, The Donald Trump of the Republic.
Monday, July 04, 2022
THIRTEEN DAYS ON “THE NRA CIVIL RIGHTS CALENDAR”
by Gilbert Allen
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Blood On Their Hands _ Anti-NRA T-Shirt by Sarana Mehra |
January 1
If the world seems cold
to you, perhaps
you’ve already fired.
January 6
Stop
the Magnetometers!
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Guns don’t make the world
go round. Guns make
the rounds worthwhile.
Ash Wednesday
Praise the One before whom
thou needest no silencer.
April 1
We inherit our relatives, but
we can choose
our AR-15s.
Good Friday
It is more blessed to grieve
than to reprieve.
Memorial Day
Talk not of wasted
ammunition. Talk instead of those
you’ve wasted
July 4
Believe the worst
about everybody. That way
you don’t have to aim.
Labor Day
My bullets are Teflon.
My burden is light.
Halloween
Every boy
needs a blackbird
to shoot at.
Thanksgiving
Guns don’t kill turkeys.
Turkeys kill turkeys.
December 24
I am the ghost
of Kevlar passed.
New Year’s Eve
Some of us are like cannons: we don’t
like to be pushed, and we’re only happy
when loaded.
Gilbert Allen lives and writes in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. His most recent collection of poems is Believing in Two Bodies.
A PERILOUS YEAR
What fireworks are good enough on any
nation’s holiday? What illumination
is light enough? The light of sweet relief
is the light most creatures seem to love the best.
Where do we find it? Shooting in the streets
and yelling for our rights? Can we ever,
can anyone find peace in war and hate?
How can we feel our best? Ignore the worst?
Paint flowers in the mind? Sell hopes and smiles?
Bring on delightful lies and praise our kind?
It happens, and we never even knew
a flash of light could take it all away.
The long night’s fireworks scream at us all.
We cannot do this anymore. No more.
Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.
7.4.22
Terrified paradegoers fled the Highland Park, Ill., Fourth of July event after shots were fired Monday. At least six people were dead, more than 40 people were hospitalized and a gunman was at large Monday afternoon after shooting Fourth of July paradegoers from a roof in this Chicago suburb, authorities said. (Photo: Lynn Sweet/AP via The Washington Post, July 4, 2022) |
In the dark timesWill there be singing?Yes, there will be singing.About the dark times.
—Bertolt Brecht, “Motto”
FREEDOM ON FIRE
THE APPROPRIATED FLAG
JULY
Sunday, July 03, 2022
ALL-AMERICAN CANAL
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All-American Canal seen here in Imperial County, California, January 24, 2022. Photo: Matthew Bowler to accompany “Officials doing little as more migrants drown in Imperial County canal,” KPBS, February 8, 2022. |
IN DREAMS, DEATH
Saturday, July 02, 2022
WHAT TO TELL CHILDREN WHEN ALL THE NEWS IS SCARY
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“With war in Ukraine, editors help kids cope with scary news.” —News Decoder, February 25, 2022 |
Friday, July 01, 2022
FOOTBALL GODS ABOUND
The Supreme Court said Monday that a Washington state school district violated the First Amendment rights of a high school football coach when he lost his job after praying at the 50-yard line after games. "The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. |
we have the coach
and his batch of Evangelicals
kneeling at the fifty yard line.
The Wiccan folks are on one twenty
and Muslims on the other.
Down by the east goalposts
there's an Indigenous circle
seeking guidance with peyote.
Over to the west Jains
are trying to avoid the ants.
Sikhs and Jews are having a debate
about the shape of the field.
Eleven Buddhists are chanting
on the east thirty,
Hindus claim the west.
On the track three Mothers
Against Drunk Driving
have given up and are passing a bottle.
near the concession stand.
The Crips and the Bloods
are sharing a joint with Spinoza
in the bleachers.
There's a street preacher
practicing his quick draw
when the lights go out.
Gary Lark’s most recent collections are Easter Creek (Main Street Rag), Daybreak on the Water (Flowstone Press), and Ordinary Gravity (Airlie Press). His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Rattle, Sky Island, and others.