JUST A COOKOUT WITHOUT HISTORY

a glosa with a nod to Jemar Tisby 

by Rachel Landrum Crumble

AI graphic created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.   
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.   
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.   
—Czeslaw Milosz from "Dedication"

If I could write history with sparklers
in the newly dark air, light cherry bombs of truth, send bottle rockets
of lament to arc the unbelieving sky,

the sky that says: "Not this again!

​​Can't we just have a nice family meal without politics?"​
​​​I wonder, "Whose politics?" For the sake of 'peace', I cave.

​"The hotdogs are ready. Who wants a hamburger?

​Let's give thanks for the Founding Fathers' faith."
​​​If God is holy, why did they enslave?
​​You whom I could not save.

​​​I'm still the youngest, so experience doesn't count

​​​though I've been married to a Black man for forty-five years.
​​What about 300 years of slavery?
​​Then decades of terror and Jim Crow?
​​Where does all that sorrow and anger go?

​​​It bleeds into the bank accounts of Industry.

​​​Broken Black and brown bodies pave the way.
"Now that's all behind us. Our future is bright."​
​​​"Yeah, for the land of the rich where some arefree."

​​Listen to me.

​​Silenced by inattention, 

​​I am again the youngest at the family table.

"Did anyone bring that peach cobbler I crave?"​

​​Why blame the victims with a little wave   
​​so the flies of understanding never find landing?

A voice canonizes the Founding Fathers--it's my brother.
​​​Most were slave holders, 

​​​who wrote that "all men were created equal."
​My siblings channel the politics of my blue-blood mother,
​Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.

​By now, I'd settle for cap-gun sparks of recognition. 
​My husband, veteran of fireworks, stayed home from this failed mission. 
​He is a tired conscientious objector in this war.
​Weary of the White noise of indifference, my grown children won't engage.
​​I write with sparklers, but I need a torch.
"Fireworks are beautiful, but they kill birds."

Land of the free. ​But how free, and who are 'we'?"
Heads together, they discuss the State of Things.

​​I love them, but this feels absurd. 

​I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words. 

Rachel Landrum Crumble 

is a life-long poet and a retired teacher. She has published in The Porter House Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Common Ground Review, among others. Sister Sorrow (2022 Finishing Line Press) is her first book of poetry. Her second is In Praise of Detours (2025 Main Street Rag). She is working on a novel. She lives with her husband of 45 years, a jazz drummer. Find her on http://substack.com/rachellandrumcrumble or at poetteachermom.com.

AFRICAN, AGAIN

by Jim Kelly

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

President Donald Trump is easing his administration's cap on the number of refugees who can enter the United States, according to a forthcoming White House memo.  Set to be published officially on Wednesday, the directive says the additional 10,000 slots—raising the annual limit from 7,500 to 17,500—are reserved for white South Africans. —PBS, May 26, 2026

Once,
America looked to Africa
and carried away Black bodies
in chains.
Now,
America looks to Africa again—
not with shackles,
but with selective invitations
for White Afrikaners.
History doesn't repeat itself,
yet sometimes
it rhymes
in uncomfortable ways.

Jim Kelly is a Los Angeles-based poet originally from Beaufort, South Carolina. His work explores race, memory, democracy, and the lived experience of ordinary people navigating extraordinary times. Drawing on a lifetime of observation, his poems examine the intersection of history, identity, and public life.

INDIVISIBLE, WE STAND

by Darrell Petska

Have you noticed how crowded
America’s thin air has become?

Now it’s homeless humans
joining immigrant humans,
LGBTQIA humans,
Black humans—assorted humans
of every persuasion, more
and more each day, into thin air.

Or so would hearts shriveled by hate
and power lusts have us believe:
think Hitler and Pol Pot, Pinochet
in Chile, Netanyahu in Gaza, and
America’s Trump disappearing souls
who don’t fit white, regressive ideals.

But the disappeared, the disparaged,
do not go away, whether the living
to whom we owe their dignity as they
pursue universally human needs
and aspirations, or the dead
to whom we owe life’s memory.

To our own selves, as well, we owe
the essential humaneness we ask
of all other humans. There can be
no invisibility, only indivisibility.
We are one body. That which divides
we must call out: inhuman!

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin with his wife of more than 50 years.

REPARATIONS APPROVED: YESSSSSSSS

by Judy Juanita

California is moving forward with its effort to compensate and apologize to Black residents for harm caused by discriminatory policies over generations after the state’s reparations task force voted to approve recommendations Saturday. —USA Today, May 10, 2023

“I can tell you from a psychological perspective that if you take $350,000 or $840,000, and you write a check to any group of people, Black, white, poor, homeless, whatever, you give any group of people that much money and say,” There you go, best of luck,’ you come back in six months, they’re going to be broke,” he said. “Whatever reparations are done, that would be an absolute disaster, as opposed to guidance and help in creating generational wealth, as opposed to income.”

—Dr. Phil

Screw Dr. Phil. I will blow mine wisely
(because the cancer of oppression goes deep)
And furthermore, f**k Dr. Phil
who pimped out Oprah
made $20 mill off her 
and off pimping out people's raw emotional trauma
and has the nerve to say Blacks would go crazy
if we got reparations
NEWSFLASH: We already crazy
The idea of getting our just due 
for the ancestors  
is mind-boggling 
for us and everyone else 
(because the cancer of oppression goes so deep)
And further, further, furthermore, 
if we spend every single penny of it
let's say 400 billion (1619-2019=400 years)
on Land Rovers, Lamborghinis, Louboutin
diamonds and pearls, lavish weddings
gambling in Vegas, Macau, Monte Carlo
yachts, gold-carriage funerals, mansions
lavish baby showers, the luxury life
Gucci, Rolex, trips around the world
why should any single nonblack be upset?
It would snake its way back to their pockets. 
(because the cancer of oppression goes that deep) 

Judy Juanita's latest book of poetry Gawdzilla looks at racism and capitalism side-by-side with the beauty and freedom of California. Her poetry collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland  won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] examines race, gender, politics and spirituality, as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." Winner of the Tartt Fiction Prize at the University of West Alabama [UWA], her short story collection The High Price of Freeways was published by Livingston Press in 2022. [UWA] in July, 2022.

THRENODY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Detail of the Cover of I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Taibbi.

In America now
We can watch real murders
On TV
Then wait for officials to decide
Whether officers
Were justified
In killing the black man
As he lay handcuffed and helpless
Face down on the pavement.
In America now
We can listen to news reports
About whether there might be evidence
That the unarmed black jogger
Behaved in a way
That was threatening in some fashion
To the heavily armed
Father and son
Who jumped out of their pickup truck
And gunned him down.

In America now
We can watch videos
In which white people call the cops
On black children mowing lawns
In the wrong neighborhoods,
On black professionals
Who “seem suspicious”
Entering the lobbies
Of the condominiums where they live,
On black walkers who remind them
To leash their dogs.

In COVID America now
Black people are dying of the virus
At three times the rate
Of whites,
Black people are incarcerated
At six times the rate of whites
Black people are unemployed
At twice the rate of whites.

“I can’t breathe!” cried Eric Garner
For four hundred years.
“I can’t breathe!” cried George Floyd
For four hundred years.
“I can’t breathe!” cry black children
From broken and polluted neighborhoods,
From decaying and crumbling schools.
“I can’t breathe!” cry black parents
From hospital emergency rooms
Holding sons and daughters
In their laps
Who are dangerously ill
Because mom and dad could not afford
Early and dequate health care.
“I can’t breathe!” cry young black couples
Unable to rent or buy homes
And begin family life
In neighborhoods
Where the unspoken understanding
Is “whites only.”

“I can’t breathe!”

“I can’t breathe!”

“I can’t breathe . . .”

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California. He podcasts at: thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

NEVER CRITICIZE A NAZI

by George Held

unless you have spoken out
in church or synagogue
or demonstrated in the streets
against your own fascist regime
as it squelches one civil right
after another

I know, as long as the sheriffs
concentrate on the Muslims
and the blacks and the Latinx
we can calmly complain among ourselves
about the increasing nastiness
and aggression

as the Other is whisked off
to prison and to the camps
now being built in the pine barrens
beyond the view of the casual
observer of all the nastiness
and aggression

and besides, it’ll be more peaceful
for a while, as long as we keep
resistance to ourselves and act
the part of loyal citizens—we know
the primacy of loyalty today—in
ignoring nastiness

have you calculated like an actuary
how long it will be before they
invade your house at 2 AM
and drag you before your cousin
the magistrate for arraignment
as a traitor

anyhow, it won’t be too long
unless you keep your mouth shut
and switch from Rachel to Hannity
at 9 PM and wear a handsome
red ball cap that says Keep America
Great

Oh, yes, and never criticize a Nazi.
Achtung!


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

I COULD HAVE BEEN IN NEW ENGLAND

by Linda Lerner

“The picturesque old town of Dachau invites one to linger and enjoy its many places of interest.” —Dachau.de

my father’s voice that I hadn’t heard
since he died interrupts a news report
about anti-Semitic crimes increasing
here, didn’t I warn you, he says
the smoke from 70-year-old explosions in Russia
rises up from bomb threats at Jewish centers now
and I’m fighting with him again to
stop living in the past, that’s over with,
I say, but as the newscaster
continues citing threats across
the country I begin marching
back to my college years protesting
discrimination against blacks
signing petitions against segregation
do it from the safety of my birthright;
there’s nothing to worry about, I tell him
it’s not us, it’s Muslims who have to worry
who need my help today…

outside the sun is shining; in the warm
winter light everything looks as it always has;
a friend is telling me about her trip to Germany
to where the death camps are now tourist sites;
as she walked around the city, went into shops
visited a park, watched children playing,
their parents looking on, relaxed,
said, I could have been in New England

Linda Lerner has new work in Onthebus, Chiron Review, Gargoyle, and SoFloPoJo. In spring 2015, she read six poems on WBAI for Arts Express. Her recent collections include Yes, the Ducks Were Real and Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (NYQ Books) and a chapbook of poems inspired by nursery rhymes Ding Dong the Bell Pussy in the Well.

THE BRIDGE CLUB DISCUSSES THE ELECTION

by Susan McLean

Image source: Yahoo News Photo Illustration; Photo: AP/Getty)

“If he groped her, she’s a liar."
            "If he didn’t, she’s a frump.”
“If she blabs, he’ll call his lawyer.”
            “What a bozo!  One no trump.”

“Thinks he’s smart to pay no taxes:
            ‘If you pay them, you’re a chump.’”
“He’ll give safety nets the ax.” “As
            well as poor folks!”  “Three no trump.”

“He’ll wall off the southern border.”
            “And haul Muslims to the dump!”
“He’ll show blacks what law and order
            really stands for.”  “Four no trump.”

“He’ll throw Clinton in the slammer.”
            “Then he’ll lift us from our slump,
helped by Putin’s blade and hammer!”
            “What’s your bid now?”  “Six no trump.”

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University. Her books of poetry are The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife. She has also translated over 500 satirical poems of the Latin poet Martial, published as Selected Epigrams by the University of Wisconsin Press. Her light verse has often appeared in Light and Lighten Up Online.

HIGHER EDUCATION HELD HOSTAGE

by Emily Jo Scalzo

Chicago State University students and supporters demonstrated in the Loop in early February. Photo source: RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES via Chicago Reader, March 3, 2016. “Chicago State had said it would run out of money by the end of March as Illinois' public colleges and universities wait for state funding held up by the budget standoff. Chicago State has negotiated with the vendors it owes so that it can make payroll through the end of April. To stretch its finances, the predominantly black Chicago State has already issued notices of potential layoffs to its 900 employees and shortened the spring semester.”  —AP via Peoria Public Radio, March 3, 2016

The parking lot at Chicago State University
overflowed the night before the announcement
of nine hundred staff layoffs, a death knell—
the result of the budget impasse in Springfield.

Bernie Sanders chose this venue to hold a rally,
a state university now decimated by political gridlock,
its demographic comprised largely of minorities—
the latest victim in our sad culture war.

After eight months without state funding,
Spring Break was axed to finish the semester early,
to allow seniors to complete degrees, graduate—
all other students in limbo, the river run dry.

At twelve I haunted the halls of Chicago State University,
playing hooky from my small-town middle school,
attending my first poetry reading outside the president’s office—
surrounded by Ebonics and Spanish, African and Latin art.

There I was embraced in culture and pride in diversity,
political protests, creative endeavors, intellectual encouragement;
this environment, a refuge, determined my future—
soon those halls will be walked only by ghosts.


Emily Jo Scalzo holds an MFA in fiction from California State University-Fresno and is currently an assistant professor teaching research and creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Her work has appeared in various magazines including Midwestern Gothic, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Blue Collar Review, Ms. Fit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Melancholy Hyperbole, and Leaves of Ink.

LITTLE OLD WHITE LADY

by F.I. Goldhaber

I saw you limp into the cellphone store and
beg for help with a phone disconnected by
a rival's service.

Behind the counter teenagers rattled off
terms you obviously didn't understand.
I called you over.

I explained in words of simpler times -- before
the clerks were born. But, despite a balance, your
phone had been turned off.

T-Mobile demanded more money, which you
did not have, to turn it back on and wouldn't
refund your credit.

When you complained, they called the mall cops to throw
you out. Your story angered me, so I marched
down the street with you.

On the way to another T-Mobile store,
I learned you were a disabled Navy vet.
You told me stories.

When we arrived, I informed the clerk, "This man
needs his phone turned back on and I am here to
make sure you do that."

He looked in his computer. You showed him your
receipt. You stepped out to use my husband's phone
to ask for a ride.

He made a phone call and negotiated
with the person on line. You came back in to
hear your phone ringing.

I thanked the young man for his efforts. Thrilled, you
asked how I'd accomplished this miracle. I
whispered in your ear.

"Little old white lady," I said, much to your
amusement. For I can pass for white and took
advantage of that.

The clerks didn't see a man disabled in
service to the country they take for granted,
only dark brown skin.

As I left, I heard you gleefully shouting,
"Little old white lady." I'm glad I could help.
But, I'm not amused.


As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now, her poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies.

MY WHITE FRAGILITY

by James Brock

The New Yorker Daily Cartoon, Feb. 23, 2016

                     

“I have a great relationship with the blacks.”—Donald J. Trump

Rather, I will reboot this poem about the blacks
with a quote from Virginia Woolf:
For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks,
between her parents who stood by the lake,
holding her life in her arms which, as she neared
them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until
it became a whole life, a complete life,
which she put down by them and said, "This
is what I have made of it! This!"
And what had she made of it? What, indeed?

And thinking of the blacks, their mattering
lives, I look at my whole white life, my bookshelf.
See?  There’s Audre Lorde and Harriett Jacobs
and Kevin Young and Yusef Komunyakaa and Richard
Wright and Ralph Ellison, all their February words!
And I look at my white, complete life, and say,
“I have done nothing wrong.”

In Florida, the best hanging tree is the live oak,
with its big low-limbed girth.  At the Lee County
Courthouse a live oak has been made into a chainsaw
sculpture of an American bald eagle in flight.  On my commute
to school, with my black president and my black
boss man, I go along Michigan Avenue,
right through the black heart of Dunbar.  My neighbor
is anxious.  Someone has given the Asian food
delivery guy the building’s passcode.  He’s
probably on probation.  Our Sheriff shaves
his head, wears his green uniform, says how
we are not willing to face our problems.
He says I should have a registered gun in my glove
compartment.  I should keep a gun in my desk
drawer, packing heat in my classroom.  The evangelist
at my university shouts through his bullhorn
how my students are going to hell, all of them
texting their next booty call.  I think how language
is dripping in the blackness.  It’s like that tar baby.
Elvis’s hips, Beyoncè’s X, are they not black, too?

When I think black I think cinder black.  Or my
one black kiss—Jesus, she was a cheerleader at Idaho
State, straight out of Pocatello—which was for me
for being sweet. I am a nice guy. I like
Kendrick Lamar.  I like his pyrotechnics. When I think black
I think the earth cindered, all that burning,
my life cindered, desiccated, to the whitest, white ash.


James Brock has published four books of poetry, and he is currently writing plays for Ghostbird Theatre Company in Fort Myers, Florida.  He also teaches writing and literature at Florida Gulf Coast University.

REPARATIONS

by Matty Layne

"There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less -- a slower-track school where they do well.” —Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

An audible gasp filled the court-
room—the last breath of the now
dead slave, & he’d been holding his
breath for centuries, before Jim

Crow & bus boycotts & affirmative
action in ’61, before Scalia said we
need to slow it down for him—more
white justice that knows what’s best

for a black man. This gasp will never
end. No breath could ever fill the void
in the dead slave’s lungs, no admission
can affirm the carnage when we lock a

race in leg irons for centuries & think
taking off the shackles can cover the
weight he’s bore on his ankles, on his
skin. The weight, heavy like the words

that cause the gasp, links in the chain
still holding him back from the chance.


Matty Layne is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University. His poems and prose on social justice have appeared in This Week in Poetry & The Harbrace Guide to Writing. 

SEEING THE LIGHT

by Kristina England

On March 7, 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff's posse.

When Martin Luther King marched,
he had equality in mind.
No line drawn down the middle
on who could cross;
just people walking together
for freedom, for rights.

Women took the same stride
with voting, abortion,
the ability to work
alongside a suited man.

The government, now in foot
with same-sex marriage,
plans to offer survivor benefits
should a partner pass away.

As an assistant professor,
I met a young man who lost
one mother to cancer,
then watched his second mom
lose her bank account in court,
her love deemed illegal, non-existent.

So many people have given their lives
for the truth of their skin
whether color, religion, persuasion.
And, though, a child will apologize
for the silliest of things,
we'll skirt around the word sorry
with laws, holidays, and parades

while the ghosts of our past linger,
waiting to play judge
to the child, woman, man
marching down the street,
exposed, vulnerable,
ready to fall victim
time and time again
to our heavy, unwarranted hands.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Gargoyle, New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other magazines. Her first collection of short stories will be published in the 2014 Poet's Haven Author Series.

RACE

by Howard Winn

Micah Kogo of Kenya captures first place in the Beach to Beacon 10K road race in Cape Elizabeth Saturday. Kogo won his second Beach to Beacon race in three years with a time of 28 minutes, 3.2 seconds. --Ernie Clark, Bangor Daily News, Aug. 03, 2013. Image source: http://www.beach2beacon.org/

There are no black faces in my town
in the suburbs of Portland, Maine,
except when they run the marathon
from Crescent Beach to the Portland Head
lighthouse where usually vacationers leave
the tour buses to admire the wild waves
whitening  the Atlantic water
against the splintering rocks of our
craggy Casco Bay.
On our street of young couples
with the requisite two small children,
the portable basketball hoops and backboards,
scooters and skateboards,
it is tricky to tell them apart
which is what is overheard when
they speak of the black faces
that appear once a year.
The hard young men who bicycle
in spandex and stream-lined helmets
after work and on week-ends,
leave for labor in similar SUVs
at about the same time each work day.
Young toned wives with careful hair
watch the exuberant toddlers
and run together in packs
on Shore Road during their nap time
or when the Granny is in charge.
But never that one time of year
when the Africans from Kenya,
Ethiopia, Ghana, Congo or South Africa,
male and female, race the road
from Beach to Beacon and
win for the money to send home
to hungry villagers who export
their beloved sons and daughters
world-wide to run the marathons
for white Western money.
Afterwards what is left
is the newspaper reports,
in paper and on the Internet,
the signs along the roads announcing
the mileage covered and to come,
the washable paint on the highways
that make beginning and end
of our world famous race
until it is rained away,
the bleachers in the park
and the portable potties for
observer and participant.
The signs, white and red,
announcing the event
and warning of street closings
will come down eventually, detached
and stored by the Town of Cape Elizabeth
for the competition next year
when black faces will appear
to run and win that race again.


Most recently Howard Winn had poems and fiction published in The Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Cactus Heart, Main Street Rag, Caduceus, Burning Word,  Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Southern Humanities Review, Cutting Edgz and Borderlands. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His graduate degree is from the Writing Program at Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at New York University. He is a State University of New York faculty member.

THE ELECT

by Sondra Zeidenstein

Image source: Wicked Mike

I woke from a dream
in which I had curly hair,
a bushel of it, unkempt,
uncombable, beyond
messing with
and I was smiling,
I who have always had
scanty hair, flat
to my narrow Rumanian
Jewish skull. I didn’t care
that it wasn’t beautiful,
just that there was
so much of it.

So I’m slow this morning
letting myself down
into reality, the disrepair
our ship of state displays
two days after we won
by one percent, the victory,
a gift from Blacks and Hispanics,
our traditional country
gone, said a pundit.

But my traditional country
has always been
diverse and I remember
how proud I was to be
standing in line in the gym
at school next to the one
black girl in my grade
and when we were told
to hold hands to our left
and our right, my brain
hesitated a second, imagining
the other to whom I’d never
spoken and then
without looking at her,
since we faced forward
so stiffly, I reached sideways
took her hand, and she
took mine. She was thin, my height,
I can’t recall her name,

but that her hand was
slighter than I expected,
her fingers without grasp
to reach for what she knew
by now at twelve
did not belong to her,
her palm flat and dry,

and I felt secretly proud
that I was called on
to extend my privilege
and well being, to someone
less sure of what if anything
belonged to her and I lived
for a moment joined, saying
to my proud, ignorant self,
what I have she must have too.
Here. Take it.

So Obama won again.
He walked on stage at two
in the morning when I could
barely stay awake and his women
wore taffeta, the girls’ legs
exposed above the knees,
their hair flattened and shining
under the lights, their parents
never leaving them for an instant
under the roars of thousands
joined as I had been
seventy years ago
at Morningside School.
This family had it all
for a moment in our country,
something I always believed in.
I was part of it or
I was nothing.


Sondra Zeidenstein is a poet and publisher of Chicory Blue Press. She has published three books of poems, including A Detail in that Story and Contraries and edited several anthologies, including A Wider Giving: Women Writing after a Long Silence.