SEA OF DESPOND

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Israel clears final hurdle to start settlement construction that would cut the West Bank in two. —PBS, January 6, 2026. In the video above from four months ago, Israeli minister Smotrich explains the plan.

From the river to the sea,

Palestine won't come to be.

Bibi's stance is very clear:

Arabs aren't welcome here.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has around 360 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, Light Poetry Magazine, and Lighten Up Online.. She has also had fourteen previous poems in The New Verse News.

ENERGY CRISIS

by Robert McParland 

hurry down this poem
this poem is running out of gas
this poem just pulled in and
this poem is low on fuel—it’s fuming
line by line this poem is standing
in a line—this poem is limping
toward the pump this poem is running
out of gas this poem is facing
high inflation reading this poem
wasting your energy this poem
is trembling toward the pump
coughing “Help us, Henry Ford”
damning Detroit and the Arabs
standing on the brake this poem is
braking as it stands this poem has moved
four inches aching toward five-dollars a gallon
this poem is running out of
gas and
this poem is running
out of… this poem
is running out of gas… pph…
gas…pph… this poem is
running out.


Robert McParland is the author of Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Other Writers of the 1920s Shaped America and From Native Son to King's Men: The Literary Landscape of 1940s America. He is a teacher of English, History, and Humanities. 

BIRDS OF WINTER 2018

by Mary K O'Melveny

"US withdrawal from Syria will endanger Kurds, Arabs, Christians," —by Amy Austin Holmes, The Hill, December 27, 2018. Photo: Kurdish demonstrators gather to protest near the border wall separating Turkey from Syria in the western Syrian countryside of Ras al-Ain. (AFP Photo/Delil souleiman via Yahoo, December 20, 2018)

This year there is only
rain. Birds, bedraggled by
blowing wind and soggy
air, take no solace in
pumpkin seeds or suet.
Even squirrels have turned
away from our handouts,
as if they know better

than to accept comfort
from temporary stores
of millet and cracked corn,
knowing that our tenure
here is short, that we will
leave these feeders empty
soon enough. Nuthatches,
Jays, Sparrows, Woodpeckers

used to be reliable
friends. Their antics pleased us
as we dispatched more treats,
watched them from our windows
in warmth and safety. Though
we feigned otherwise, we
owned both feast and famine.
How we must have amused

those who watched us place each
scrap and kernel into
wooden boxes and tin
containers, dangle them
from porches and branches,
so sure of flocks to come.
We were eager for praise,
shocked when no one believed.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

JE SUIS REFUGEE

by George Salamon

David Cameron has rejected an attempt by the House of Lords to force the UK to take in child refugees from Europe, arguing that they are in safe countries and not comparable to those fleeing Nazi Germany. The prime minister defended his position amid a standoff between the Commons and Lords about the plight of child refugees who have already travelled to Europe from Syria and other war-torn countries. Peers first voted to amend the immigration bill to get the UK to take in 3,000 child refugees from Europe, but this was rejected by MPs earlier this week. The Lords then voted on Tuesday to ask the government to take in an unspecified number of refugees in consultation with local councils, which will be debated again by MPs next week. Alf Dubs, a Labour peer who came to Britain on the Kindertransport for Jewish children in the late 1930s, has said the government would have “probably said no” to to those fleeing the Nazis. (Photo: A family of refugees gather outside their tents at a makeshift camp in the northern border point of Idomeni, Greece. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP) —The Guardian, April 27, 2016

I was three when my parents and I scurried
Through forests of the night from Austria into Switzerland,
Where cantonal police chief Paul Grueninger
Defied federal orders and allowed 3,000 Viennese Jews
Into his Alpine paradise in 1938.
Since then, Je Suis Refugee.

The children from Syria may not be granted
My lucky toss of the dice in
Inhumanity's cruel game with humanity and
Endure  as flotsam and jetsam that has reached
Its highest total since World War Two now
That 'violence has forced 60 million from their homes.'

The refugee enjoys no amor fati, discovers no love for his destiny,
Musters no shout of "Invictus' as he struggles ashore in Greece or
Stumbles across borderland swamps in the Balkans.
The Swiss wanted Rothschildian Jews for Davos's apres-ski,
The Brits want oil-rich Arabs for Mayfair's condos.
Bleeding hearts get little respect in the
Jungle of the global economy.

To the refugee home is not where the heart is, 'though
Another's heart can become his home,
While geography offers only fragments of city
Blocks filled with borrowed lives

America showed me its good side, way back when
We wore the white hat in the West.
But refugees learn not to trust, and look for
The wormhole, secure  routes of flight and escape.
There no longer are numbers burnt on their forearms,
But the Je Suis Refugee song stuck in their throats.

George Salamon taught German language and literature at several East Coast colleges, served as business reporter and editor on a military magazine. For the past five years he has written for the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.

ONE MORE

by Ann Malaspina

Graphic by Imad Abu Shtayyah.

Off the island of Kos
you crawl through the sea
coughing salt
flailing arms—
while all around,
fishermen scoop babies,
haul grown men,
rescue women
from sunken boats
and slippery rocks
all day and night
for weeks
and months
until there is no
room on the beach
for even one more.

Still you splash to shore,
eyes stinging, skin raw
from terror nights and hunger days,
from lost husband,
lost roof,
lost country.
You swallow sea.
You fight the wind.
It is no use.
It is all there is.
It is.

When suddenly a wave
lifts you high and clean--
the same wave
that drove Odysseus
so far away
and home again.
Frothy warm and curled
like your mother's arms,
the wave lifts you,
carries you,
tumbles you
onto earthly sand
of despair and hope,
breathless,
breathing,
alive,
and the people make room.


A poet and a children's author living in New Jersey, Ann Malaspina has published two poems at TheNewVerse.News.