IMAGINE

by Steven Croft

AI-generated graphic for The New Verse News by Shutterstock

If instead of munitions, we could send Ukraine a spring

without war,

see Russian soldiers march off singing, "There is No Rank

Higher Than a Soldier's Mother," as mothers

who love them call them back home,

As the Dnieper thaws, let Ukraine beat its swords

into ploughshares for its golden fields of wheat, the farmers

no longer molested by fighter jets,

Let its cities be beautiful European cities again, free of

shelled and crumbling buildings, with

vibrant commerce and carefree nightlife, let people

sit idly in cafes, reaching calmly for coffee cup, newspaper,

its list of dead gone – for now,

Unwind stacked car graveyards of burnt-out husks,

bomb-twisted chassis, put them new again on roads

unpocked by explosion,

Let the countryside host tortoiseshell butterflies and roe deer,

the sound of bees visiting flowers, instead of armies

of tanks,

Let unstartled horses and cattle whip their tails idly in pastures

behind mended fences,

Let Ukraine part the dark curtain of daily anticipatory death,

box up the war strategy, the screams of wounded and dying, grief

of the living, tape them shut—for now,

Send home its stretched-thin, worn-out army of war,

Let its President wear a suit again, let his face cast off its war

fatigue, his body the green battle fatigues,

All over Ukraine let bells of peace and respite ring from the shingled

belltowers of wooden churches, let them dance the hopak

with fevered joy.

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, December 2023). His work has appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, So It Goes, Anti-Heroin Chic, The New Verse News, and other places, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

NAVALNY: IS FREEDOM DEAD IN THE SIBERIAN GULAG?

by Mostofa Sarwar

You grew up watching: 
Birds open “The Sky Gate”

over the river Protva
 
You, awakened by the dreams of
chirping fieldfare and rock pigeon,
seagull’s greetings from the Caspian Sea
Dimensions, unbounded
 
Bathing in photons and sucking light’s nectar,
the birds whispered to you:
Infinite freedom, unshackled
 
Who knows? Those birds, perhaps,
decoded the stars’ cryptic notes
and then swam in the love wave of freedom
 
Near the bank of the Dnieper by the reed forest,
perhaps, you played with the sands
perhaps, those tiny particles,
the river carried as loads,
ended up, with your touch,
in the carnival of endless water
 
This gloomy morning, I read,
you are dead
in the “Polar Wolf,” a Siberian Gulag
An absurd tyrant pierced your body
with poisoned knives
It could be a rumor
Could it be?
 
Are you dead?
I saw you by the lake next to my home
You lead a demonstration
of seagulls, grasshoppers, doves, and egrets
I heard the slogan
Freedom and freedom and freedom
Nothing but the freedom
 
It echoed through the universe

Dr. Mostofa Sarwar is professor emeritus and former associate provost at the University of New Orleans, dean and ex-vice-chancellor and provost of Delgado Community College. His opinion essays were published in The Daily Star and Bdnews24.com of Bangladesh, The Strait Times of Singapore, The Statesman of India, Phuket News of Thailand, The Times Picayune of New Orleans, The Advocate of Baton Rouge, The Acadiana Advocate of Lafayette, The Daily Advent and The Opera News of New York. Recently, his English poetry has appeared in Sangam literary magazine, The Seattle Star magazine, New Verse Newsonline literary journal, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart. Sarwar published three books of Bengali poems. He frequently participates in Bengali talk shows at cable TV channels (broadcast out of New York, Washington, DC, and Dhaka).