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.

NEXT GEN JEWS

by Rob Okun

A new Jewish tradition is growing in those places where solidarity flourishes. Amid the ugliness and death, and as our institutions cleave to the mistaken idea that our safety comes from ever more brutal applications of state power, the future of our people is being written on campuses and in the streets. Thousands of Jews of all ages are creating something better than what we inherited. Our new Jewish tradition prioritizes truth-telling and justice, and in this way it is actually the old Jewish tradition, which has given us all the tools we’re using. —William Alden, The Nation, May 10, 2024. Photo: Jews calling for a cease-fire in Gaza demonstrate at Grand Central Station in New York City on October 27, 2023. (Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images)

now comes a multigenerational exodus:

next gen jews leading us out of the

desert of fear where
too many in our ancient tribe
—hearts paralyzed by trauma—still 

cannot see 
the nakba as a catastrophe for
our semitic cousins

stifling next gen voices only strengthens resolve
shutting down encampments is a 
losing proposition:
love flourishes in these life camps and
 “justice, justice, thou shalt pursue” 
remains our north star
of david

with an outstretched hand 
fingers tightly wrap around 
the braided fringes hanging at
the ends of our meditation shawls
we hear the cries of our far flung 
family in diaspora

turning inward—to the work of tikkun olam: 
there is a jewish renewal unfolding
a new jewish agenda being birthed 
at street seders and shabbats 
in the rain 

no one, not netennotajew nor any jew—no 

matter how hard they squeeze their eyes 

wide shut—
can unsee the future 
blowing in the wind on campuses 
in the streets and in the hearts of all 
those following next gen jews out of egypt

Rob Okun is editor emeritus of Voice Male, a magazine which has been chronicling the profeminist men's movement since the mid-1980s. His commentaries and op-eds are syndicated by the Portland, Oregon-based Peace Voice. 

JERUSALEM LAMENTS

by Greg Friedman

William Blake, The Emanation of The Giant Albion, Object 41 detail from “Jerusalem” 1804 to 1820

From the south I hear their cries: 

David, 

Wala’a, 

Yochered, 

Aya, 

       Oded, 

      Muhammad. 

They call from the tunnels, 

the dead unburied 

from beneath the ruined hospital 

    where mothers search  

    in the dust for the lost. 

From the north I witness the terror, 

from the south I suffer the terror, 

with my sons I bear the terror, 

with my daughters I carry the terror, 

the whistle of the anonymous messengers, 

raining their sentence of vengeance: 

alarm across the city, 

dread beyond the border, 

anger unchecked by reason, 

retribution fueling the advance, 

memories etched in blood staining 

my land gifted, 

inheritance claimed, 

my land usurped, 

inheritance ignored— 

my land where only the stones now cry 

to me its mother.  

I hear them from captivity,  

I hear them from subjugation, 

I hear them from internment, 

I hear them  

from Nasser Hospital, 

from Kibbutz Nir Oz, 

from Deir al-Balah, 

from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, 

from the shrines sacred to my children, 

from mountain, mosque, temple, basilica, 

from the holy rock, 

from Herod’s enduring walls, 

from the ancient sepulcher, 

from the sudden sepulchers of rubble, 

from the entombing walls of Gaza City. 

 

I hear them all 

from mountain, mosque, temple, basilica, 

ancient in my mourning, 

young in my anguish, 

vigilant for their outcry, 

I wait for the silence, 

I despair for the peace, 

I remember and watch and listen. 

Greg Friedman is a Franciscan Friar who travels frequently to the Middle East, leading pilgrims. He has been a magazine editor, radio host and pastor.

I IMAGINE THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING OVER MICHELANGELO'S DAVID

by Cecil Morris

A Florida charter school principal said she was forced to resign this week after some parents complained about their sixth-grade students being shown images of Michelangelo’s “David” statue in class, with one parent believing the art lesson on the Renaissance masterpiece amounted to pornographic material. —The Washington Post, March 24, 2023

A mob of sixth grade students complained

that David defied the school dress code

and came completely naked to school

where he stood, hugely white and naked,

aloof and silent and all judge-y,

with his extra-large, not-even-erect thing

and his hanging sack on display. 

The boys said: he made us feel uncomfortable

and maybe even a little guilty

because, because, and we don’t want to say this,

but we will because we have to stand up

to bullies like him. We have to speak up,

that’s what our parents and teachers tell us,

so here goes, David made us feel bad

because we are white

but not nearly as white as him

and our things are not as big.

It’s like he’s judging our heritage

and putting us down. And those sculpted abs

and pecs and biceps and muscled thighs

and his tremendous height, it's just not right.

And some girls added their complaints

about double standards and sexist favoritism.

They said: you know David was naked

and we can’t even wear spaghetti straps

or off-the-shoulder tops or crop tops

that show a strip of skin and belly buttons.

How is that right or fair?

The boys and girls together said: we want him

removed and the teacher who invited him

and the principal and maybe you, too.

State law says you can’t teach stuff

that makes us feel bad. We saw that on the news

so we want David gone, and no more Cs

or Ds or Fs cause they make us feel bad, too.

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

NO FRIENDS OF COAL

by Pauletta Hansel

LOST CREEK, KY. — Families along Upper River Caney and Lower River Caney roads recall how the floodwaters that rushed through their narrow hollow turned from a muddy brown to a charcoal gray late last month. Within minutes of the color change, the water rose so high that it picked up homes, cars, sheds, boulders, trees, staircases, swingsets and swimming pools. The debris turned into dangerous projectiles as the water rushed down through the community. Many residents fled into the mountainside and waited out the storm as the ashy water and mud cascaded down the hills that surrounded them. One person from the community is still missing, and another was killed. Officials expect Breathitt County to be without water utilities until December…. Now 59 people who live in this narrow hollow hope to hold Blackhawk Mining and its subsidiary Pine Branch Mining, which together operate a nearby coal mine, accountable…. The plaintiffs allege that the failure of the companies’ silt ponds, aggravated by the mining operation’s damage to the land, led to the widespread destruction of their community and the contamination of their drinking water. Photo: Tatyn Skidmore carries Brelyn Hays on his shoulders outside their home in the Upper River Caney community of Lost Creek, KY., on August 18. Credit: Michael Swensen). NBC News, August 23, 2022.

“What a Friend we have in Jesus, / All our sins and griefs to bear!” Traditional hymn.

 

“And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place.” Leviticus 14:45

 

 

And when the unclean place

is the silt pond

up by the strip mine and the grey

of its waters broke free

from its rickety dam

and carried away your house built

wise as you could, what else but a lawsuit 

to carry the blame

back up the shorn mountain

where it belongs?

 

“What a friend we have in…”

 

Jesus wept

and I’m willing to wager he would again

at Blackhawk Coal and their claims

of “our people” and “deeply impacted,”

their sympathies and their support.

And the mud had not dried

when they posted their notice

“Intent To Blast”

over where the door stoop had been

before the flood.

 

I know there was rain,

too much, too fast,

another one of those 1000-year floods,

but what kind of flood

carries its little ashy silt pond fishes

down from what’s left of the mountain,

not up from the creek?

 

“Within minutes of the color change, the water rose so high

that it picked up homes, cars, sheds, boulders, trees,

staircases, swing sets and swimming pools.”

 

So, yes, I’m feeling biblical,

Old and New,

calling on Jesus

to back up his people,

once clothed and fed by coal.

The ones who lost everything

there on Lost Creek, along River Caney.

The ones that are fixing to lose

every friend they thought they had.

 

“And the Philistine said to David, Come to me,

and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air,

and to the beasts of the field.” 1 Samuel 17:44

 

“No Friends of Coal”

reads the headline about the lawsuit

in the local weekly paper

underneath the photo of what used to be

that young man’s house,

now torn down to its timbers,

its moldy plaster spread out on the stony ground,

the raptors circling just beyond the frame.

 

That young man’s name is not David.

I wish he were David, delivered

“out of the paw of the lion,

and out of the paw of the bear,”

and “out of the hand of this Philistine.”

 

“What a friend we have in…”

 

Brother, I am here to tell you,

no matter the money they used to pay,

you don’t have a friend in coal.

Poet Pauletta Hansel writes: Driving back through my southeastern Kentucky hometown from doing some flood relief work I picked up the weekly paper with the headline, “No Friends of Coal: River Caney residents file lawsuit.” After letting out a cheer, I started thinking about what a headline like that meant for those 59 plaintiffs in eastern Kentucky where coal is second only to Jesus. My Sunday School lessons started coming back to me, including the hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  I drew on national news for many of the details in this poem.

THE STUMBLING BLOCK

by Tamara Kreutz

Advocates for abuse victims at a rally outside the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas in 2018. Credit: Jeffrey Mcwhorter/Associated Press via The New York Times.

For the victims of the Southern Baptist Convention’s sex abuse coverup, whose stories were hidden, twisted, and heaped with shame to protect spiritual leaders of the SBC as well as to the victim of Pastor John Lowe II, of New Life Christian Church, whose abuse was cast as adultery.

“Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was beautiful to behold.” II Samuel 11:2

Religious tradition placed Bathsheba on her roof

performing a striptease for the king—a bullseye 

view of her naked body on display: breasts dripping 

in nectar, smooth curve of her hips that glistened

like jewels, and her pubic hair—a lily between her legs.

Tradition imagines her hands sliding over her wet 

body—washing and touching and rubbing.

It says her beauty brought low God’s anointed 

one. Pastors brand her a stumbling block—

but David cast her from his bed,

his semen trickling out of her like blood.

I imagine she stood, her head bowed, her arms 

embracing her own ravaged body for comfort,

as she shuffled back home and closed her shutters

to shut out the king’s hidden gaze.

I imagine her crouched in the darkness, washing

and washing and rubbing away memory of David’s

hands on her breasts, his mouth on her belly—

memory of him between her legs—but his touch

was branded on her skin, as much a part of her future 

as the seed he planted in her womb. No one calls their child

Bathsheba, a name dripping with shame, though David’s 

namesakes number the stars. She is remembered

as temptress but he as a man after God’s own heart.

Tamara Kreutz is an English Language Arts teacher and a poet who currently resides in Illinois, though she will soon move to Antigua, Guatemala. She began writing poetry early in the pandemic, and through poetry, she found order, peace, and joy in a turbulent, uncertain time.

A ROCK IS NOT A RIFLE

by Akua Lezli Hope

A rock is not a rifle
a jackass is not a genius
hysterical raving is not fact
might is not right

a caravan is not an invasion
a child is not a commodity
a refugee is not refuse
a rock is not a rifle

resentment is not democracy
fear is not strength
denial is not affirmation
a rock is not a rifle

commitment is not a joke
accords are not accidents
science is not opinion
a rock is not a rifle

abuse is not a right
hate is not a right
murder is not a right
a rock is not a rifle

a rock is not a rifle
though you be goliath
and we are david
a rock is not a rifle

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, handmade paper and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, adornments, sculpture and peace whenever possible. She has published 125 crochet designs. Her new Word Works poetry collection Them Gone is now available.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE . . .

by George Held

by Cardow, Ottawa Citizen

Gun control support fades three months after Florida massacre 

—Reuters/Ipsos poll May 23 2018

This time it was going to be different.
This time the losers were going to win.
This time the good guys were named Emma
and Cameron and David and the survivor
parents were hip, articulate, determined.

And then they ran into the NRA,
the intransigent bought legislators,
the Second Amendment zealots and the
nation’s sense of titanic inertia in
favor of the status quo, and nothing changed.

The wise guys were right: No massacre, like
Sandy Hook or Las Vegas, will change
the deep culture’s love of guns and aggression,
winners and losers…plus c’est la même chose.

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

THE COST OF THE WHITE

by Cally Conan-Davies

“When Roman emperors, Michelangelo and Mussolini needed the finest marble they all knew where to go—Carrara in Tuscany. But some are worried about the future of the quarries that have been used for thousands of years,” writes Antonia Quirke., BBC News Magazine, July 24, 2016. Photo: Carrara marble quarry. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Turning to stone is how some old bones last,
but David's statue seems to be relaxed
as if the stone were going the other way
into a body full of the light of day.

As if it could make light work of defeat,
after all, it had survived rejections
(unstable, they called it, flawed, the risk too great).
Until one man could see through imperfections

something to put his hands on, and set free
a man from a mountain.
Now the mountain is sinking
into counter tops and bathrooms, artlessly.

There are shadows in the falling light.
And nothing—not paper or pearls or stars—is always white.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

FOR PETE

by Larry Litt






He was Planet Earth’s Minstrel Poet,
wedging his way into worried minds,
making activists out of Davids
who didn't know they could control
American Goliaths.


Larry Litt is a writer and performer who can't decide if he’s a 'dirty old man, 'smart olfart' or 'recently bathed geezer.’The NY Times has called his work "Wryly conceived, politically provocative."