TRUMP DREAMS

by Paul Freeman

Poor Donald’s at home, feeling slighted;

to China he wasn’t invited.

Yet still there’s a boon,

his UK trip’s soon,

and there, in his dreams, he gets knighted.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of numerous published short stories, poems and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

AMERICA’S PRECIPICE

by Laura Boatner

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

It starts with one stone
      a chipping away, chiseling of sorts
      digging to China as my mother always         
      said                                        

In China it was pounded into sand
       and their people have known it
       for seven decades or so

Here, babbling brooks, once slick as silk
        have rough edges now etched
        into fifty pieces, maybe fifty-one

A carnival barker yelling;
        flushed face, eyebrows furrowed
        the color of honeydew, or more
        fluorescent than that
     
Stones and bricks in a road leading to Oz
        because this doesn’t feel quite real
        and the curtains are pulled back

Judges, legislators, 
           one at a time acquiescing 
           out of fear, reprisal
           is this really happening?
               to us of all people?
               right now?
               like we’re scarecrows or something?

In one-hundred days
               the rocks have become boulders
               on shoulders of complacency
 
David threw a rock at Goliath 
              hitting the target
              unlike we do at the strongman 

A mountain of stone
              penetrated upon and fissured
              and it’s on this precipice that 
              we now stand

Laura Boatner is a registered nurse by day and an aspiring writer by night.  She has been published in scholarly nursing journals, but finds it much more fun to write fiction.  She has been accepted into the MAPW program at Kennesaw State University in Fall 2025.  She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and her two rescue pups, Birdie and Pepper.

GENESIS 2025

by Michael Dorian

Source: Seattle Times

In the beginning

He pardoned all the seditionists.

Now the nation was barren and shapeless,

darkness was upon the land

and He said, “Let there be lies,”

and there were lies.

He saw the lies were good

and He separated the lies from the truth.

He called the lies “truth”

and He called the truth “lies.”

And there was evening 

and there was morning—

the first day

And He said, "Let me stop the wildfires

scorching the pretty landscaping

and those expensive houses. 

I know some people in L.A., some 

very wealthy, well-connected people."

And He released with almighty force

from his gullet a torrent of water pressure

the likes of which no man had beheld.

And the fires stopped burning.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the second day

And He said, "Let the illegal immigrants

in the land be returned whence they came."

So with a gust of His great breath

He swept them all up in a glorious gale

and blew back to homelands the vermin, 

scattered like so much feed.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the third day.

And He said, "Let me build a big beautiful wall

And He saw it was a good wall,

a great wall, better than China’s,

The Greatest Wall Of All Time

that anyone has ever seen anywhere

on Earth or any planet in our 

Solar System or even in all of Space,"

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fourth day.

And He said, "Let me stop the war in Ukraine."

And a great swathe of his carefully—

coiffed hair sent all the soldiers

toppling like toys back into their

respective sovereign countries

(with Russia gaining great areas

of formerly Ukrainian land)

and the bloodshed ceased 

like the last lilting notes 

of cherubs’ trumpeted fanfare.

And He saw this was good

(for Putin and Himself, anyway)

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fifth day.

And He said, "Let me drill, baby, drill!"

So with tremendous huffing and puffing

He had an angel, a female one, fluff

His manhood until it stood,

a tower of steel shining in the sun,

and He poked it in and pulled it out

with enduring virility

until he had poked 

many a holy hole 

deep into the Earth’s womb

and into 625 million acres

of preserved coastal seawaters

and the nation became richer with crude.

And the land and great numbers

of its people were crude.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the sixth day.

And on the 7th day

He played golf and he cheated.

Once upon a time, Michael Dorian had a collection of poems and a play in one act published by Silk City Press entitled "The Nektonic Facteur.”  He likes to think that when the going gets tough, the tough write poems. 

CANDLE GLOW IN UKRAINE AND HONG KONG

by C. J. Anderson-Wu

We read books by candlelight whenever
power is out after air raids

We hold candles in the prohibited vigil 

for those nameless students killed

more than three decades ago

 

In the underground shelter we take turns
to recite stories for one another

At the park we mourn anonymously

in order to protect one another

 

We are in a war for
our dignified identity

We are in a war against

the deprivation of memories 

 

By candlelight we relay ancestors' stories
in our language

By candlelight we pass on the history

the regime is forcibly erasing

 

We are in a war 
for hard-earned sovereignty 

We are in a war 

against thought control

 

After the air raid alarm we briefly go home
and our stories are to be continued

As police approach we disperse into the night

and our struggles drag on

 

Reading, mourning, hiding and remembering
with different forms of resistance
we are in a war

Author’s Notes: 
     The publishing industry in Ukraine experienced significant growth after the outbreak of the war, as reading became one of the few activities people could engage in during power outages caused by bombardments. Additionally, the invasion led the Ukrainian public to value their own culture, history, and language more deeply.
     On June 4th each year, people in Hong Kong used to hold a candle vigil at Victoria Park for those who died during the Tiananmen Square Crackdown in 1989. However, since the implementation of the National Security Law by China in 2020, any event commemorating the slaughter of June 4th has become illegal. Several pro-democracy activists who persisted in continuing the vigil have been arrested and imprisoned without due process of law. 


C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020). Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards including the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

BLINKEN IN BEIJING: DATA CALL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Antony Blinken was greeted by China’s top diplomat on Monday, and will perhaps meet its president, on the final day of a rare visit aimed at trying to resurrect relations between Washington and Beijing from historic lows. —The Guardian, June 18, 2023

Semiconductors
Formosa…Taiwan…
Uigur burial practices
Tesla
Ships passing in the South China Sea
Warships frigates destroyers
Balloon looking down on the American continent
SHOT
Spy station on the island of Cuba
Confucius Institutes everywhere
in the developing world
Plastics, christmas trees, clothes
A massive relationship, two 
superpowers yet distant neighbors  
coming together on climate 
change policies but staying apart 
on so many hot buttons 
including the rights of Man and Woman
Five and a half hours meeting
(extended by an hour)
American and Chinese teams
then strolling
before a working dinner for two hours
Foreign Minister and Secretary of State
Hard at work making   peace.
eating thousand-year-old eggs.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own 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 won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

AMERICAN DAIRY COWS UNDER ATTACK?

by Cecil Morris

Chinese scientists have successfully cloned three “super cows” that can produce an unusually high amount of milk, state media reported, hailing it as a breakthrough for China’s dairy industry to reduce its dependence on imported breeds… They were cloned from highly productive cows from the Holstein Friesian breed, which originated in the Netherlands. The chosen animals are capable of producing 18 tons of milk per year, or 100 tons of milk in their lifetimes. That is nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk an average cow in the United States produced in 2021, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Photo: Workers feed cows at a dairy farm in Handan, Hebei province, China, on November 15, 2021.[Hao Qunying/Costfoto/Future Publishing/Getty Images] —CNN, February 1, 2023

The headline makes me think of Superman,

the Man of Steel, and cows in capes and tights

and an enduring fight for truth, justice,

and the American way (or better

tomorrow). Then, after reading the news

of exceptional Holstein Friesian cows cloned,

I think of Frankenstein and his monster

because, to a suburban boy, Holstein Friesian

already sounds like science run amuck.

I imagine herds of Chinese cow clones

descending like knock-off handbags or phones

on American dairies, udders bulging

with tons of milk, another disruption,

another Chinese plot (just like Tik Tok)

to corrupt our country and weaken us

and, maybe, the high-flying spy balloon

was scoping out farms and dairies and not

our strategic fields of nuclear missiles

and when I read that our own FDA

approves of meat and milk from cloned cows

my mind leaps to deep-state conspiracies

and wholesomeness and the American

way weaponized against our best interests.

What if they clone Tom Brady or Peyton

Manning next? Will tons of passes saturate

our football landscape and forever change

the game we love as much as we love guns?

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, divides his time between Oregon and California. He has poems in or forthcoming from 3Elements, Cimarron Review, Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hiram Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Scapegoat, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

CAROLINA CALLING

by Earl J Wilcox

Around noon

A balloon

Not from a party

Not from a parade

In full sunlight, it made

Our Carolina palmetto

Shade its eyes,

Smile in surprise:

Chinese February

Fireworks.

 

Earl Wilcox lives in upstate South Carolina where the Chinese balloon was visible from his balcony on February 4.

WHITE PAPER

by Alexis Krasilovsky

Photocollage by the poet.

Blank sheets of white paper were a symbol of defiance over the weekend as Chinese protesters braved likely prosecution to openly oppose the government's policy of zero tolerance for COVID and public dissent. —Newsweek, November 28, 2022.  China has rolled back its most severe Covid policies—including forcing people into quarantine camps—just a week after landmark protests against the strict controls. —BBC, December 7, 2022

the white hibiscus

moves in solidarity

with the protesters

who hoist white posters

of invisible slogans

perfumed with freedom.

Alexis Krasilovsky was born in Alaska, survived sexual assault at gunpoint, knows what it’s like to be completely deaf, and has traveled to over twenty countries. Educated at Yale and CalArts (MFA Film/Video), Krasilovsky is the author of “Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems” (Cyberwit – finalist, 2022 International Book Awards) and other books. Her award-winning poetry film, "The Parking Lot of Dreams" (2021) has screened in over a dozen festivals worldwide.

CHIPPED JESUS

by Chris Reed

Yesterday a Ukrainian woman

and her two children, lay in the rubble,

three esses, as booted rescuers

tried to save the father, still alive.

This morning a post bombardment

photo. In a sea of debris

a lone building stands without

exterior wall, rooms open

to the world like a dollhouse

with furniture intact, a china cabinet

unbroken, a pillow still on the sofa.

From a last cardboard box,

my mother’s bequest, I unfold old

newspaper to reveal a shepherd,

familiar figure of a once loved 

childhood creche, his staff broken.

I unwrap a king, crown intact,

and a Jesus, chipped, cradles

in my open palm, white plaster edge

of his missing side, ragged against

his painted flesh

In past winters he lay in a crib 

of cotton balls we took from 

the bandage drawer in the bathroom.

Returning the figures and crumpled paper

to the box, I wonder if it’s a sin

to throw it away on my way to ShopRite.

He won’t like being in that trash bin,

but then, no one does.

Chris Reed finds the reading and writing of poetry to be a moving medium for letting the absurdities, sorrows, anger and joys of life speak to each other. Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Little Heron Review, and US1 Worksheets.

YEAR IN REVIEW

by Barbara Simmons

“In the weightlessness of space.” Oil on canvas painting by Anastasia Balabina (Ukraine).

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. —Joan Didion

 

What were the stories that seemed mental U-turns,

that needed returning to, never ending?  At year’s

end, 2021’s review heralded tales most told,

the big look back compactly written,

the headlines sculpting what had happened

into what we should remember.

I’ve skimmed the stories alphabetically, but find the letter C

for COVID is my alpha, tireless virus with infinite variations. I 

flip quickly to the Fed, to China, climate, revivals

on Broadway, deaths we expected someday, but maybe

not this year, like Didion’s, Sondheim’s, Tutu’s.

The story I return to most takes me on SpaceX travels,

finding weightlessness a way to reconstruct my sight,

no longer lineated up and down,

but now a new fluidity, a chance to stream myself beyond

the time and space of just one journey,

just one life, to understand how we are multitudes,

how we are singular, how we are both chorus, soloist, conductor

in a musical rendition of this year reviewed

and what we need most is to listen to stories we’ve composed,

and play

and play

and play

until we fully hear.

 

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, graduated from Wellesley, and now lives in San Jose. As a secondary school English teacher, she loved her students who inspired her to think about the many ways we communicate. Retired, she savors exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, always trying to understand human-ity. Publications have included Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Writing it Real, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition, and OASIS. Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums will be published in Spring 2022.

LIPSTICK

by Mary K O’Melveny

Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force. She is a space veteran, now making her second trip into orbit. She is set in the coming weeks to be the first Chinese woman to walk in space as China’s space station glides around Earth at 17,100 miles per hour. And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at the core of China’s ambitious space program, official and news media attention fixated as much on the comparative physiology of men and women, menstruation cycles, and the 5-year-old daughter she has left behind, as they did on her accomplishments. (No one asked about the children of her two male colleagues.) Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo capsule had supplied the orbiting space station with sanitary napkins and cosmetics. “Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup,” he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state television network. Photo: Col. Wang Yaping, center, with Col. Ye Guangfu, left, and Maj. Gen. Zhai Zhigang at a pre-launch ceremony on Oct. 15 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images —The New York Times, October 23, 2021

If one puts lipstick on an astronaut,

can she still blaze through arid

atmospheres, dangle wildly from a line 

that tethers her to the mothership 

even as she kicks up her heels 

and pirouettes out into star space?

 

It seems makeup is a juggernaut 

that enhances our reality. Some added

emphasis, a glowing image to re-define

a star-struck traveler, to make her trip

seem normal, like any mom who feels

a need to exit might arguably face.

 

There is nothing to be feared. We ought

to be glad some girl wearing a padded

suit has figured out she can still shine, 

even if she must give her family the slip.

Perhaps pancake isn’t so perfidious, but conceals

a dream or two that she might still embrace.

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. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020. Her latest poetry collection Dispatches From The Memory Care Museum has just been published by Kelsay Books.  

BIGGER THAN THE GAME

by Bonnie Naradzay

                           Galileo:  “Eppur si muove,” and yet it moves.

 

An NBA player who shall be unnamed

refuses to have the coronavirus shot

and says this is bigger than the game; 

this was after he'd said the world was flat

but some years later blithely explained

he was big into conspiracy theories then

and said we’ve all been there, right?

Meanwhile an island that's part of Taiwan,

just six miles from mainland China,

has been surrounded by Chinese boats 

fishing for squid; the boats flood the sky 

with lurid green lights to stun the squid, 

deplete all fish, send the islanders into despair.

It’s complicated, it’s covert aggression, 

nothing can be done, it will only get worse, 

like the illegal settlers (during the olive harvest 

with the few trees left) on the West Bank

who beat the limping Palestinian teen,

hung him from a tree, burned his feet,

released him to the Israeli police.

My friend says he doesn’t read the news

to protect himself from being sad

but I think why am I alive, otherwise,

if not to know what’s wrong and right, 

for I believe in Paradise, 

in the separation of church and state,

in the perfidy of pulpits and gerrymandering.

It’s bigger than the game. 

      

            

Bonnie Naradzay leads regular poetry workshops for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. 

IMPOSSIBLE

by Diana Morley

A neighborhood destroyed by fire is seen as wildfires devastate the region, Thursday Sept. 10, 2020 in Talent, Ore. (AP Photo/Paula Bronstein via The Record Searchlight)

Two long days driving
through thick smoke
behind, ahead, behind
other fleeing drivers,
all going seventy, eighty mph
to get to air.
 
Diverted from inland to coast
from coast to inland—
fire grenades exploding 
in the hills alongside,
confusing the confused

on the road through 
Sweet Home
behind family
trailer homes
horse trailers
evacuating out of town 
till I reach a motel
where I need news— 

the radio 
assures me at 5 pm—

stock market up a tad

China, a valuable resource
for released Disney film—
‘an impossible resource to ignore.’

Author’s Note: I escaped the Alameda fire in Talent last Tuesday. For two days I thought my house was gone, then learned mine and one other neighbor’s survived on the block. That’s fire for you. My return won’t be to the neighborhood; it will be to both sorrow for my neighbors and joy for all those helping and planning for the future.

Diana Morley has published two books of poetry, one in 2019, one this year, been awarded honors by the Oregon Poetry Assn.  Lived in Oregon for 20 years, in Talent for 15 years.