WARNING SHOT

by Catherine Gonick

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

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight doctors and researchers, including four who have spoken out against vaccination in some way, to replace roughly half the members he fired from an expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. —The New York Times, June 11, 2025

I go to CVS to get a Covid booster.

A pharmacy staffer prepares the injection.

Do you think we'll be able to get

these much longer? I ask.

Is this a political question? 

she shoots back.

We are strangers. I realize 

she might be asking 

if I'm MAGA. Maybe she

is. But if either of us were,

would we be here,

giving and receiving

life-saving help? Is this political?

I repeat inanely. Battle-lines wait

to be drawn, and I'm lost

in a small fog of war,

until she asks, Have you heard

what's happened to the CDC

and vaccines? Now I know

we're on the same side

and it's safe to answer, Yes, 

we're in a horror movie. She jabs

my arm and I flinch. You need

to stay still, she warns,

plunging deeper. When I leave

and thank her, she smiles.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, and Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her first full-length collection, Split Daughter of Eve, is forthcoming in June from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works in a company that slows  the rate of global warming.

GREEN TEA AND A CANDY BAR

by David Chorlton

On a desert cool December evening
outside the CVS branch
a dark shape in the parking lot
asks for green tea and a candy bar.
He doesn’t say Please, doesn’t

want to chat, doesn’t introduce
himself, doesn’t offer a story
to explain why he’s here
with a rolled up blanket and
bad teeth; he just stirs like a conscience

with Christmas on the way
and knows what he wants
even if he’ll settle for less.
It’s difficult to concentrate
on peace and goodwill when

there are hostages in the news,
as well as police and yellow tape
around the house where a man
died of self-inflicted wounds
after killing his ex-wife and whomever

else was within range, while
the breaking story farther away
is more brutal than a video game.
A truce would be nice, or an outbreak
of compassion. Maybe a little snow

to fall on Phoenix to convince us
of the season. We select an energy bar
to go with the tea, not exactly
what he asked for, but he takes it
as he turns to leave without offering

a Thank You, just heaves
his bundle onto his back as if
to load a world of worry he can’t change
and tell us what he really wants
is a cup of hot coffee.

David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.