PERSEAE AMERICANAE

by Frank Conahan

All avocado trees  are cosexual, Or hermaphrodites.
They each contain two sexes 

In every plant. 
"A-trees" start each day with their Flowers as female

(They're receptive to pollen.)
They become male
(Producing pollen) in the

Afternoon of the next day.
"B-trees" follow a
Different schedule. They're male

In the morning and 
Female in the afternoon. 
This behavior has

Been noticed in the past but
Was not confronted 
By the woke Biden regime. 

It seems unlikely 
It will be permitted to
Flagrantly persist

In this harmful gender-based
Ideology 
And anti-Christian practice.

Specific guidance 
From the president is now
Anxiously awaited. 

US policy 
Stipulates one permanent 
Sex per each body. 

Dr. Frank Conahan lives in reclusive retirement outside of Baltimore, Maryland. He follows current events with trepidation and copes by writing verse. He has recently published poems with "Bards of Maryland." His collection Nothing Is Coming was published in April. 

LOWNDES COUNTY

by Mariana McDonald

Source: Balls and Strikes, April 21, 2025. Pictured: Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who said, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.”

       for Catherine Flowers

A low wind shifts and yet the smell

persists, erasing whiffs of sweetbrush,  

freesia, lilac. Even the gardenia,  

drowned out by the blaring stench  

of waste, raw and moving, straight-  

piped, pumped into the yards of poor   

folks in Lowndes county, Alabama,  

where Jim Crow and ramshackle join   

to spread a putrid presence onto lawns   

where children play, E. coli and danger   

in the dirt. No rains can clean it,  

clear it, make the grass a sea of   

fresh green bending in the wind,  

seed of childhood memories, scent of  

freshly-cut & gathered blades of summer.  

A memory Lowndes County children may not have.  

One brave fighter worked for years to change it,  

got a president to sign his name to fairness,  

agree to let the lilies and magnolias  

one day reign there, redolent of justice,  

until one stinking voice called it illegal, 

overturned it,  cancelling the clean-up,  

leaving stench  

to flourish

Author’s note: 

“Lowndes County” is about the poor and 72% Black county in Alabama where lack of public sewage treatment facilities forces residents to “straight-pipe” sewage into their lawns, creating a putrid public health and environmental disaster. After years of residents battling the state to have the problem addressed, and inspired by the leadership of Lowndes County native Catherine Flowers, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation which resulted in the 2023 landmark environmental justice agreement. The agreement calls for wide-ranging public health remediation and sanitation improvements. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice deemed the agreement “DEI” and therefore illegal, and overturned the agreement this month.

Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, writer, scientist, and activist. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She became a Hambidge Arts Center Fellow in 2012, and was appointed Black Earth Institute Scholar/Fellow in 2022. She lives in Atlanta. 

LAND MINES

by Tricia Knoll

The Biden administration has approved supplying Ukraine with American anti-personnel mines to bolster defenses against Russian attacks as Ukrainian front lines in the country’s east have buckled, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday. —The New York Times, November 20, 2024

I hear those words and think of Diana

in head gear walking in Angola,

 

facing pitfalls and explosives

as she walked for peace. 

 

I hear those words and remember that rat

Magawa who won a gold medal for sniffing,

 

alerting and the giant Gambian pouch rats

that followed, searching for buried armaments, 

 

whom handlers named Harry Potter and Godiva. Rats

that live nine years, a good training investment. 

 

Battlefields laced with mines to remove legs and end lives,

in places distant from me – Iran, Iraq, Sudan,

 

Syria, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, and more

My country never a signatory to the treaty

 

to prohibit them. The cost to make a mine

one hundredth of the cost to remove. 

 

I thought of land mines and never thought

my people would plant them 

 

in fields sowed for sunflowers.  

Tricia Knoll has no great love for rats, having lived with a few, but respects the capabilities of  pouched rats. Her work appears widely in journals and nine publications, either full-length books or chapbooks. She is a Contributing Editor to the online poetry journal Verse Virtual. She is grateful to The New Verse News for allowing her to write feelings that the news of today sparks.

COOKIE BLAZE'S QUESTION

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Cookie Blaze is a persona created by the poet, but 89-year-old Penny Starr (above) stripped on America's Got Talent two years ago.

I’m 81, and I want to ask you

if that’s too old for me to return

to the excellent career I’ve had,

the career that made me happiest.

See, I was a stripper. I stripped

in Lou’s bar there in upstate New York,

and sometimes I sang, and sometimes

I stripped and sang all at the same time.

When you’re 81, you need affirmation—you know,

an assurance that you didn’t live in vain,

that you still have the moves, Cookie,

that your crowds still love you

and want to see your new acts,

that they deny anything’s happened

to your skin and your voice.

Oh, maybe I’m a little off-key at times,

and forget a word here and there.

If the crowds were to notice

these trivial changes, they wouldn’t care.

Tell me, is 81 too old for me

to get back up on the stage at Lou’s?

I feel good when you watch me.

Yeah, watch me.

I’m fine for just a few more years,

maybe four. What do you say?

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of an 8th book of poetry Gender: Two Novellas in Verse and of a 5th chapbook The Spare Parts Saga which looks at the USPS from the perspective of her trying to mail her 2008 book Spare Parts to a friend in Ireland.

JULY OF ELECTION YEAR 2024

by Tarn Wilson

This year, if I keep my pace, 

I’ll read over 100 books.

I don’t know if this is a victory 

or a sad state of affairs.

I don’t know if I am in love 

with the world or addicted 

to distraction. Preachers and 

politicians used to call novels 

filthy and frivolous, wanted

us to read only stripped facts 

and sermons on virtue. Now, 

we’re pleased if children read

at all. Everywhere you look

screens hold miniature stories, 

trapdoors and tunnels toward 

truth and illusion. Last week, 

I asked a 24-year-old which 

candidate will win the youth 

vote for president. Biden is 

ridiculous, she explains: all

those gaffes-turned-memes.

Trump, she decides. He’s funnier.

 Funny? I ask. He has wittier 

insults. He says what we all wish 

we could say. Democrats are 

schoolmarms, then? I ask. 

Mothers who make you feel 

ashamed? What about the danger 

to our democracy? Low wages /

high rents. It’s all the same to us. 

We need more facts and tracts 

on virtues. We need novels, too,

about civil wars and WWII, 

about loss and love and grief 

and trees, anything to help us 

feel, in our bones, what it is 

we have to lose. Actually, she says, 

face lighting, RFK is trending 

on TikTok. His policies are crazy,

I say. He’s doing pull ups, she says. 

He looks strong. People like that.

Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and the craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write. Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet, and The Sun. 

DEBATE PANTOUM

by Dion O’Reilly

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

Nothing's quite right—
ziggurats are toppling, the president’s stuttering, 
the courts are rigged, and it's too damn hot.
Buckle up baby... this shit's happening

—ziggurats, toppling. The president stuttering, 
millennials hating him ‘cause he won't stop a war.
Buckle up baby...this shit's happening. 
—a war that’s been raging for a million years.

Millennials hate him ‘cause he won't stop the war,
they can't buy a house, and they're paying back loans,
—this war’s been raging for a million years,
but now it’s thumb-tapped on our own little phones.

We can't buy a house, we’re paying back loans.
The problem’s too big to even begin,
thank god we can thumb-tap our own little phones.
There are just two choices, and they both look grim,

like problems too big to even begin—
The courts are rigged, and it's too damn hot.
There are just two choices and they both look grim.
Whom to vote for? Nothing feels right. 

Dion O'Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator, a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs, winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, The Independent Press Award for Poetry, and honorable mention for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award; and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Reader. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

THE ONCE AND PRESENT KING

by Ralph La Rosa

Source: Laughter

Viva Joe Biden
Whose power is thriven
A SCOTUS thing
May make him king!

Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. He Loves The New Verse News!

THE FORTRESS, MY UNCLE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

President Biden announced an executive order on Tuesday to essentially block asylum at the southern border, a major shift in how the United States has historically handled claims for protection. The move, a suspension of longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek a safe haven, is intended to deter illegal border crossings, an issue that has weighed on Mr. Biden’s political fortunes as he heads into the November presidential election… Immigration advocates have said the changes, taken together, amount to a virtual suspension of the asylum system for people crossing the border. The Biden administration “is eliminating key protections to prevent refugees from being returned to harm through imposition of this ‘shout test,’” said Robyn Barnard, a lawyer at Human Rights First. “It will be a recipe for disaster and certainly result in refugees being sent to danger or worse death.” —The New York Times, June 4, 2024

The fortress, the wall, thou shalt

not enter these rolling hills and 

grasslands where bison and 

Natives once roamed. You will 

not drink at the rancher’s 

trough or sleep in the sanctuary 

city’s single residency hotel. You 

will not get bussed to the liberal

East where a temporary home

waits until shelter services stop 

at sixty days and you find

yourself on the proverbial street

unless you have relatives willing 

to keep you off the public books. 

This is no grand illusion, no 

welcome, but you have left 

your local gangs to find 

a safer and more fitting union, 

turned into a red and blue 

wall. Incredible failure 

of the big heart to open, 

to say we will find a way 

to allow the Dream free again 

as in the old poems and movies 

that led our fathers and mothers 

to make the trek west and east, 

north and south. Goodbye 

to all that jazz America. Goodbye.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

BURNING CAR

by Kip Knott

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we 
silence people or squash dissent. But…”
          —President Biden addressing protests
              over the war in Gaza

Whether it rises 
from melting tires 
or devotional candles
or one child’s body 
or a million children’s bodies, 

smoke burns 
everyone’s eyes to tears
before it gathers 
as the clouds 
one faction uses

to construct 
their idea of Heaven
and another faction uses
to construct 
their idea of Hell.

Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Ohio. His most recent book of poetry, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press.

METAMORPHOSIS

by Imogen Arate

The White House is campaigning to spin Biden’s support for Israel’s war while actively facilitating the slaughter. —The Intercept, January 17, 2024

Bid farewell in the rearview
the world you invented

A paper house unfurls
oil-slicked plumes 
as flags of surrender 

The chartreuse shutters
you proudly claimed
the victory of your refinement
curl to the lap of an inferno
nursed on sated falsehoods

And the Astroturf spits
its faux blades onto
the white pickets still
defending your illusions 

What aftertaste regurgitates now 
of the celebratory bubblies imbibed 
What terroir offers the graves 
of those you condemned

Limp now into a future that 
your past has trampled 

Let your nostrils collect the iron 
of dried blood drained to solidify 
the quicksand swallowing your flailing 
proclamations of pristine intentions

Imogen Arate is an Asian-American poet in search of hope: that humanity will overcome our self-destructive tendencies to work together against the onslaught of the climate crisis. She's also the Executive Director of Poets and Muses, an award-winning multimedia platform that has featured diverse contemporary poetic voices from around the globe. She believes that we will only be able to value lives equally when we lend our ears and hearts to the life stories of those we don't readily recognize as our kin.