PETE HEGSETH IS TRIED FOR MURDER

by Christine Sikorski

Cartoon by Gary A Huck

for all victims of recent U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific

 
The ghosts of the fishermen and their living wives file in, filling every seat.
The judge, old uncle of a murdered man, enters, pulling on a red jacket. 
The prosecutor, a murdered man’s wife, calls the roll of the 234, the order
in which they will testify, the order in which they died. 
 
The ghosts tell what fell from the skies, each blood-thirsty, exploding surprise, 
tell, too, of their cries for help, answered by more fire. Evidence is presented: 
bomb fragments, charred boards, limbs skimmed from the sea. Hours pass. 
Lunch is served in the corridors. Night comes. Blankets are spread on the floor. 
 
One afternoon, two weeks in, the children enter, hand in hand, take turns 
stepping into the witness box to describe crying mothers, cramping stomachs, 
empty places their fathers used to be. No one sits beside the defendant and, 
because this is a nightmare, no one permits him to speak. 
 
On the last day, a jury of grandmothers finds him guilty. The judge sentences him 
to a solitary life at sea, fishing, his catch to be surrendered daily. The ghosts 
are permitted to toss bombs at him periodically and may almost let him drown. 
But they must haul him up again, place the net back in his hands, this killer 
 
who is so confused about what it means to be a man. 

Christine Sikorski’s work has appeared in The New Verse News, coastlines review, Waterstone, Little Patuxent Review, Quartet, One Art, This Was 2020: Minnesotans Write About Pandemics and Social Justice in a Historic Year, and elsewhere. Her honors include a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant and Academy of American Poets Prizes. She has taught at two universities, the Loft Literary Center, a homeless shelter, a community center, and other venues. She lives with her family in Minneapolis.

STOP THE KILLERS!

by Raymond Nat Turner

The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September —PBS, January 4, 2026

Burlap bags stuffed with tuna and blue marlin.

Catch of a lifetime! Juan’s already counting the

cash in his head. Visualizing pawn shop guitar

for Gabriel, his 10-year-old son, graduating to guitar

from ukulele. Gabriel’s greeted morning rooster-

like—since age 3—with “Let’s practice, Papa!”

Before pushing off to sea Juan bought the computer 

Rosario wished for from a journalism student he met

at the fish market training fishmongers to compute. He

also bought the bicycle Maria longed for and stashed it

at a neighbor’s house. Juan was out to make his young

family’s Christmas the best ever.

BOOM!

Bloody mess below his waist. Juan’s a strong swimmer. But

he can’t feel his legs. He quickly grabs on to fiery flotsam.

Is that Javier hanging on for dear life across from him?

He hears his children’s joyful shrieks. Sees them jumping

Up and down with joy. He kisses Lourdes long and tenderly…

BOOM!

A pomade man has amplified orders of

his demented Don into “Kill them all!”

Laughing, they dub it  a “double-tap 

strike—”

like some cool dance step

signaling mad moves to come… 

Author’s notes:

This poem is a puzzle I put together based on backwards, savage, lethal headlines and loving holiday memories I hold. The puzzle pieces are as follows:

1. The two men who were infamously ordered summarily executed by a pomade man sucking up to his Don.

2. When I was around 10 my dad took me deep sea fishing in Ensenada. And, as beginner’s luck would have it, I caught both a 21lb Yellowtail and a 21lb Bonita.

3. When I was eighteen or nineteen, my dad who'd played trombone in high school, purchased a pawn shop trombone for me.

4. Our JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge! purchased a $300 kids' drumkit for a bandmate’s 3-year-old. And from then on the child woke up every morning saying, "Papa, let's practice!" His dad obliged him. Now that 3-year-old is the 23-year-old drummer for John Coltrane's son, Ravi!

5. One Christmas Eve my Mom and Dad hid a brand new bicycle from me at the next door neighbor's house.

6. Lourdes was a beautiful curly-haired Mexican Jack In The Box worker I had a huge crush on.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

LETHALITY

by Nan Meneely

His father taught him how to enclose a spider
so gently in tissues he can carry it live from his room
to a better place outdoors.
 
He grieves when a chipmunk lies mid-road, 
as exquisite as alive, forepaws stretched 
toward the brambly green safety ahead.
 
Knowing he might be too soft, he signs
with the Army to muscle up. But he didn’t bargain
for lethal, a word the recruiters never said.
 
He’s as certain of this as anything:
if he killed those named his enemies—
Venezuelans in fishing boats oceans away,
 
brown men working shop floor or field for minimum wage,
protesters armed with sandwiches shouting truth
to power, Somali immigrants fleeing hate—
 
he would kill the important part of himself,
the part he would fight for in anyone else.

Author's Note: This matter matters to me. My father, a doctor with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII, joined up enthusiastically but came home with a hatred of war and what we now know as PTSD. Eventually he killed himself. So Hegseth's lethality can be lethal in too many ways. 

Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

HEGSETH THE ADOLESCENT

by Sharon Olson

Source: Autodesk Instructables

Senator Mark Kelly: "He runs around on stage talking about 'lethality,' warrior ethos, and 'killing people'... that’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense… And instead he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army." —Yahoo!News, December 2, 2025

Before computer games, we each chose

a sheaf of white paper, scoring it with lines

going this way and that, and assigned letters

and numbers so each square would be, for 

example, B1 or D2, and then we specified 

where our boats hung out, be they cruiser, 

submarine, destroyer, carrier or battleship. 

You only called out one square at a time 

and one hit could not sink a ship. 

There were no sailors on these ships, 

the losses not serious, the arsenal only 

pen marks on a grid. But armed with a 

computer now the tempo rises, especially

when it's the War Department striking

in the Caribbean, no marimba music or 

swaying palms, a techno-hit in a made-up 

war can end the game, but if survivors cling 

to the side, no need to ask mother's permission, 

we double-tap and send them on their way.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian and native Californian who now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

INTO THE DARKNESS

by Karen Marker

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

If this isn’t the end, I don’t know what is.

I didn’t always wake up feeling this weary, 

feeling the pain of the wound in my chest

like I held a dead child. Like someone 

had stolen my sword and the light

of the grail was gone. I used to sleep 

through the night, trusted the widening gyre 

was leading me out of the dark.

 

If this isn’t the end, I don’t know what is 

after he flat out said he’s sending the military 

into our cities because he’s sick of the mentally ill, 

addicted, disabled, veterans, the hungry, unhoused, 

that he’s sick of those who come in needing shelter, 

jobs, a better life, that he’s sick of protestors.

 

I didn’t always wake up this worried

that if the Department of War blows up ships 

in the Caribbean they say are carrying drugs,  

ignoring all laws, it won’t be long before 

they’re waging war on us to make the world safer 

for the billionaires, sending off the unwanted

to concentration camps in the desert.

 

If this isn’t the end, I don’t know what is 

after the government shut down goes on and on

while the thugs on the streets get paid

to carry out “the Lords’ work.”

 

If this isn’t the end, I don’t know what is

except a comet coming straight at the Earth 

and all of it exploding.

Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist who has committed to  writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response  to current events. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press and explores family mental illness, stigma and healing. 

SONG FOR A SOUCOUYANT

by Geoffrey Philp

Hurricane Beryl has ripped across the Caribbean with winds of 150mph tearing roofs from buildings, uprooting trees and devastating the islands in its path. —BBC, July 4, 2024. Souvouyant graphic via The Compendium of Arcane Beasts and Critters.

It was only a glancing blow, they said, when Beryl wrapped her arms around the island's spine, pinning us inside our home, avocadoes pelting our roof whose nails barely held against the howls that tore blossoms off the naseberries nestled in the dried gully, which became a river before she overturned fishing boats and ripped houseboats from their moorings. And all the while, she wailed like a Soucouyant, drowning our prayers, leaving us knee-deep in the storm surge, the floods, as boulders tumbled down the mountains into islands of leafless mangroves, the briny odor clinging to my hair. 

coiled at the center 

of the hurricane's fury:

 screams of Africans 

Geoffrey Philp, a Silver Musgrave Medal recipient, is the author of Archipelagos, a book of poems about climate change which was long-listed for the Laurel Prize. Philp’s Twelve Poems and a Story for Christmas retells the nativity story, transporting readers back to that holy night in a fresh yet traditional way. His poem “A Prayer for My Children” is featured on The Poetry Rail—an homage to 12 writers who shaped Miami's culture. He is working on a children’s book, Marsha: The Mangrove Guardian, and is anticipating the release of his graphic novel My Name is Marcus on September 15, 2024.

SARGASSUM

by Mark McKain

“Yellowtails and Turtles in Sargassum” by Michelle Nicole Lowe

This morning folds of orange light, the garden under construction. 
A heat wave threatens. The Gulf Stream slowing.
 
Dislocated matts float into the Caribbean. Home to fish, turtles, 
childhood memories. Sexual identity, nutrient availability,
 
dust from Africa. Wanted: herbivories to graze algae from the reef 
able to scrape the toughest deposits. It won’t recover
 
without your teeth. Seaweed swirls, coquina clams burrow. Shush 
of white noise only birds can penetrate. Water sings to the child,
 
running to the shelter of mother’s knee, a soft tree. Wake up worrying 
I will have to flee—censorship-antisemitism-misogyny-racism
 
feet high washing ashore. A teacher works overtime to erase “take a knee.” 
Her job eliminated if she didn’t ban empathy.
 
Rows of brown-green rafts on the shore, covering turtle nests, 
choking air passages with sulfur fumes—how I often feel,
 
out of place, like Braithwaite in New York, yearning for the “blue mist 
from the ocean” the cotton tree in the school yard,

the crack of sugarcane. The houses flood the trees aflame the bed shaking 
like a theme-park ride throws me into the street.
 
On the curb with cracked cup. And you, sea, gulping water and sky.
The house groans, swims.  

Mark McKain’s work has appeared in Agni, The New Republic, The Journal, Subtropics, Cimarron Review, Superstition Review, ISLE, and elsewhere. He has published two chapbooks: Blue Sun by Aldrich Press and Ranging the Moon by Pudding House Publications. He writes, teaches, and experiences global warming in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

DEAR WILLIAM

by Geoffrey Philp

"Relationships evolve. Friendship endures."

—Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

I hope I'm not breaking any royal protocols, 

which in my father's time would've gotten us killed, 

strung up on the gallows like Daddy Sharpe, Paul Bogle, 

George William Gordon—heroes who were martyred 

at the king's pleasure for demanding the right to rule

ourselves, a stake in the wealth your empire robbed

and vowed never to return a farthing to unwashed rebels.

And now, you've come into my yard, claiming to be a friend? 

Tell me, William, what kind of friend enslaves another friend, 

pillages and loots family heirlooms of his friend's ancestors, 

brainwashing generations of descendants with a one-sided story 

without claiming responsibility for the plight of the survivor's

welfare, and after four hundred years still can't say he's sorry

with reparations? No, William. This relationship must end.

Author’s Note: My “Dear William” letter to the Duke of Cambridge. There goes my knighthood and invitation to Buckingham Palace.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children's books, and two novels. His next collection of  poems, Archipelagos (Peepal Tree Press), uses Sylvia Wynter’s readings of Cesaire and Foucault along with Amitav Ghosh's paradigm to explore the connection between colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity in the Plantationocene. Twitter: @GeoffreyPhilp Instagram: @geoffreyphilp

A HEARTBEAT DISCOVERED

by David Chorlton

Hyalinobatrachium dianae

         

A frog nobody knew existed
appeared among the raindrops
in the foothills sloping down
toward the Caribbean.
It had been there all along,
as the Golden toad was dying,
as the Harlequin toad was losing
its forest, and while ultraviolet light
washed into the brightly
colored skins of tree frogs
and dart frogs, any one of which
would barely register
on the scale that weighs losses
until it becomes the last
and its call no longer
brings the nights to life.
The glassfrog is an inch of green
when it wraps its toes around
a narrow stem, and seen
from underneath, its heart
is visible through the transparent
skin, transmitting a signal back
up to the stars.


David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. In September, 2015, he will participate as a poet in the Fires of Change exhibition at the Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff (Sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, the Landscape Conservation Initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.)