DUAL-CLASS PURGATORY

by Mostofa Sarwar

Caricature at Pinterest

SpaceX shares come in two main types: Class A and Class B (although the company has the option to issue nonvoting Class C shares in the future). The Class A shares are the ones being offered for sale to the public in the IPO, and are subject to the usual "one vote per share" rule for voting on company matters. But the Class B shares, which ordinary investors can't buy, confer 10 votes per share, and Elon Musk owns 93.6% of those Class B shares. That gives Musk 85.1% of the combined voting power of the company. Generally speaking, it's good for a CEO to be a major shareholder of their company, because it means their goals are aligned with those of other shareholders. But when a CEO controls a supermajority of the entire company's voting power, their vote is the only shareholder vote that matters. All other shareholders are basically just along for the ride. —Yahoo Finance, June 5, 2026

See also “Elon Musk, Human Ponzi Scheme” by Paul Krugman.

The Class B shares are held

by a singular phantom,

ten votes for every dead soul

                           trapped in the machinery.

 

Down in the valley,

the river still runs cold and silver,

unbothered by the governance of the super-voting elite.

We bought into the future

                           at an inflated premium,

only to find ourselves locked

              in a Class C silence,

watching the billionaire steer his iron chariot toward Mars

with the capital drained

              from our pension pots

                           and collective dreams.

 

The fireflies still blink in the hedgerows—

a fragile, democratic light

that requires no underwriters.

 

 

Dr. Mostofa Sarwar is a professor emeritus of geophysics and former associate provost at the University of New Orleans, as well as the dean and former vice chancellor and provost of Delgado Community College. His opinion essays were published in The Daily Star, New Age, Dhaka Tribune, and Bdnews24.com of Bangladesh, The Straits 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 the Sangam literary magazine, The Seattle Star, The New Verse News, Ellipsis, and other publications, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sarwar published three books of Bengali poems. His book His book Sunflower Wounds, a collection of English poems about the war in Ukraine, has been accepted for publication by the University of New Orleans Press.

SHADES OF AI AND ALTRUISM

by Ashley Nicole Nootnagel

Technology Instagram

A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman. In a unanimous verdict, the jury agreed that Musk had waited too long to file his lawsuit, leaving all of his claims essentially expired. —BBC, May 19, 2026


The peerless archer stands in shaded wood
in Lincoln green beneath a feather cap.
We gather for a modern Robin Hood
who waits with patience for the gold to stack.

Full pockets split the seams of charity,
while our children’s pictures feed the machine.
Funded by his own foolishness. Pity.
Olive tights were traded for minted green.

Can three billionaires fit in one courtroom?
The ballad threads were never camouflage.
When all wear custom suits we can’t assume
which man is sheriff and which is outlaw.

Sherwood is lost in a shade of envy,
one model fits both men and company.


Ashley Nicole Nootnagel lives in Virginia and has a B.S. in Criminal Justice & Sociology from Old Dominion University. She works in human resources and is raising a daughter and two Australian Shepherds. 

FIVE THINGS I DID LAST WEEK

by W. Luther Jett

• I wrote three poems: The first compared you to a destructive gale; the second was a lament; the third was a curse.

• I met a friend for lunch. We spoke of you. Our words were not kind.

• I watched a bluebird fall in love. His love was hopeless, still it gave me hope.

• I called a friend in recovery from surgery. This was not the same friend I met for lunch, and we did not speak of you at all.

• I led a poetry workshop and hosted an open mike. I know that poetry alone cannot defeat you, but poetry is one way to say you will not defeat us. Our poems will out live your demands. You cannot fire us. We are the fire.

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of six poetry chapbooks: “Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father”, (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and “Our Situation”, (Prolific Press, 2018), “Everyone Disappears” (Finishing Line Press, 2020), “Little Wars” (Kelsay Books, 2021), “Watchman, What of the Night?” (CW Books, 2022), and  “The Colour War”,  which has just been released by Kelsay Books. His full-length collection, “Flying to America” was published by Broadstone Press in 2024.

MAGA SAGA... OR PROJECT 2025 CONTRIVED

by Gilbert Allen

Cartoon by Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune, UT

Fear queers.

Ban trans.

Hire liars.

Bring on Elon!

Pardon felons.

ICE raids

housemaids

nurse aides.

Prez sez

"I buy

Gaza Plaza!

Bombshell hotel!

Max tax

Canuck crooks!

Vex Mex!

They pay

duty booty!

Hate great!

True Blue?
Screw you.

Gilbert Allen has tried to live True Blue in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, since 1977. For more information about him and his work, check out the interview here.

SAME WEIRD SH*T

by Cody Walker

via Rolling Stone, January 20, 2025

In 2020 we got HBO so we could watch The Plot Against America. Now it’s almost five years later, and we still have HBO (now called Max). And we still have a plot against America! Except it’s not a plot; it’s an open invitation. You can even vote for it. We did vote for it.

Cody Walker is the author of three poetry collections, all from the Waywiser Press. He lives and teaches in Ann Arbor.

BEHIND THE SCENE

by Gordon Gilbert

Acknowledging the good use of A.I. for imagery in New Verse News, 

I will not even try to submit an A.I. image, but simply describe it, 

to accompany my words, which are a parody of the motto of three 

characters in a classic novel:   

Donald Trump's image hovering above a traditional image 

of the Three Musketeers, swords pointed upwards, points touching, 

whose faces are those of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.  

The title above is "Donald Trump and the Three Musk-eteers.”

The caption underneath is two lines, the first in French, the 2nd, English: 

"Tous pour un, aucun pour tous." 

"All for one, none for all.”

Editor’s note: En garde. We tried.

Gordon Gilbert is a writer living in the west village in NYC, who finds solace in walks along the Hudson River, even while contemplating with trepidation another new year of climate change and political mayhem.  

THE JOB INTERVIEW

by William Aarnes

AI graphic by NightCafe for The New Verse News

Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test. —The New York Times, December 7, 2024

The dinner was ample, pretty good,

the service obviously obsequious.

I had the third-best seat in the room,

at his table, just to his left, Musk on his right,

Melania nowhere in sight. He kept telling me

I was ideal for the office he had in mind.

I kept saying I’d do whatever he’d want.

How often did I repeat, “Just say the word”?

I heard myself echoing, “Got to innovate... got to disrupt...

got to get the government out of everybody’s way.”

Kind of glad I told that joke about my wife.

He didn’t laugh but showed his teeth.

I was all deference, nodding my head,

mumbling, “It would be an honor,”  

as he listed the scores I’d help him settle,

all the haters I’d help him put in jail.

He was pleased with himself, telling me again

I was the top guy for getting the government  

out of everybody’s way. Before turning back to Musk,

he said he was sure that I’d enjoy dessert.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

TRASH OF THE TITANS

by Steven Kent

Elon gladly goes where he goes—

Wait until these mammoth egos

Clash, two bigmouth bros turned bitter,

Trading shots on Truth and Twitter.

Point of fact: They're both a bore, so

One we loathe, the other more so.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

EMAIL ADDRESS?

by Helen Buckingham

AI graphic from NightCafé

Helen Buckingham's work appears in journals and anthologies throughout the world, including Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton, 2013). Her most recent collection is Two Haiku Poets (Iron Press, 2023) on which she collaborated with fellow British poet Annie Bachini. It was awarded an Honorable Mention by the Haiku Society of America. 

FREE SPEECH

by Alixa Brobbey

Image Credits: Jim Watson/AFP/ (collage by TechCrunch) / Getty Images

You are free to stand on the sidewalk

with your thumbs up. You are free to like

this Tweet. You are free to boo silently.

You are free to clap loudly. You are free

to give me a dollar to vote in this poll.

You are free not to vote. You are free

to choose between silence and tinnitus.

You are free to leave. Here is the back 

door. You are free to leave without a 

goodbye. You are free to swallow

thumb tacks. You are free to live inside

this snake’s nest. You are free to

decide: hunger pains or cyanide.

You are free to give me another dollar

to vote in a new poll. You are free to know

nothing—I change this game at my whim.

You are free to play this game by my rules.

You are free to leave. You are free to

shut up and like this tweet. You are free

to comment well wishes. You are free

to correct my science—once. You are

free to be fired. You are free to leave.

Go stand outside. Sip some blue air.

Ponder the wide and winding road

that led us, somehow, here.

Alixa Brobbey spent portions of her childhood in The Netherlands and Ghana. She has a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where she won the Ethel Lowry Handley Poetry Prize in 2020. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Blue Marble Review, Segullah, Inscape, The Albion Review, The Susquehanna Review, The Palouse Review, The Exponent II, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and others. She is currently a law student at Brigham Young University.

ODE TO MY TESLA

by Timothy Hennum

Oh how shiny she sits,
a cord thick as my wrist dangles from her hip.
Oh how silent she moves,
her screen—flat as a flag—glows bright as the moon.
Perched behind her wheel, parked and alone,
I scroll through their tweets and scowl at my phone.
How easy it would be to delete my account;
to push a few buttons and finally be out.
But what about her?
Now these smooth lines, this warm screen, her sweet purrs
do not bring me joy.
And no longer can I look at her, her screen a decoy
mounted to that dark dash, that inflated hood, those obnoxious rims, 
and not think of him.

Timothy Hennum is a writer and a physical therapist living in Minneapolis with his wife and two daughters. His writing has appeared in Your Fire Magazine, Intrinsick Magazine, Gear Junkie Magazine, and the Minneapolis StarTribune. 

GREAT MEN

by Kyle Gervais

 after Robinson Jeffers

Consider greatness.
A great man must have a following, and this is true,
as death, of Trump, who pulls like a fear-blind buffalo
the pressed herd onward, downward, over the land’s edge
to an imagined security. Kanye too is great,
is he not, in his crazy rage, and a yearning
turning, centrifuge fast, to an ever darker love?
But Elon’s greatness outpaces even these, demonstrably, incontrovertibly, 
one hundred twenty million 
massed numbers following him where he flutters, of all
such vast images that are not good, but great,
today the greatest.

Kyle Gervais teaches Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, where he lives with his husband and two cats. He has poems in Arion, Canadian Literature, Classical Outlook, Eunoia Review, The New Verse News, Litbreak Magazine, PRISM international, and elsewhere.

A SATURDAY MATINEE OF SELECTED SHORT SUBJECTS

BILLIONAIRE SPACE(KU) DEUX

by Scott C. Kaestner

Cartoon by Marian Kamensky Tweeted by Advaid അദ്വൈത് @Advaidism, July 14, 2021. 

(1)

Shoot them into space

And redistribute their wealth

To heal our planet

(2)

Orbit the greedy

To build a brighter future 

For all of us here

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and forgetful mind magician who can’t find the rabbit or his hat. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

In a Nutshell

by Melissa Balmain

Detail of a cartoon tweeted by Jim Carrey @JimCarrey, November 10, 2018.

“Big Jake, the World’s Tallest Horse, Dies in Wisconsin” 

—USA Today, July 6, 2021.

“Untethered to reality, T***p lies over and over about the 2020 election at CPAC” 

—CNN, July 12, 2021.

The biggest horse is sadly dead and gone.

And yet, the biggest horse’s ass lives on.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic poetry. Her newest book of verse is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books).

Ohtani of Oz

by Earl J. Wilcox

 

No hidden  smoke screens

No sticky stuff  in his glove

He pitches. Then hits. Bam!

 

 

Earl Wilcox—amazed at Ohtani’s wizardry—lives in South Carolina.

ON MARS WE'RE BRIEFLY FLYING

by Chris Vola

 

The winds declined to rip

the helicopter to pieces,

its carbon-fiber blades

spinning furiously,

defiantly, churning

for a few seconds

in the flushed sky,

even though sooner or later,

like all expensive toys,

its sunken parts would be left

to fill with dust,

even though a storm

would eventually

take an antenna,

the circuitry would garble,

landing gear would be

plucked like scabs.

Still, NASA applauded.

Elon Musk re-tweeted.

Someone proclaimed

“a red-letter day on the Red Planet!”

From 178 million miles away,

another data burst confirmed

that the helicopter

had touched softly

back down on the rutted 

ground, where only rovers

dared to tread.

The waiting was finally over

for the engineers,

who, giddy from their screens,

began to believe the future

could be tolerable.

They immediately forgot 

the gorgeous sunlight that

filtered through the oaks

outside the command center,

or the clogged freeways 

where blood & plastic 

spilled like SpaceX

propulsion fluid across

our still-living desert.

The Earth's concerns

had become irrelevant  

to them, like a neighborhood

with unknown sirens & sickness,

or the bus-stop profile 

of a sleeping family.

The Earth itself, unmoved

by progress

on another sphere,

would only turn

& brace its stem

against its own putrid winds.

Most of us would continue

to stay in the homes

we’d been staying in 

& busy ourselves

with the swipe-&-click

routines that could never

really sustain us,

pretending not to hear

the whirring in our heads,

or see the ugly

bubble cockpit

of a much different chopper,

one fueled by muzzle-flash,

& boredom,

& lungs twisted

full of loss,

its impact heavier

than a verdict,

emptier than the spacesuits

we’d never wear 

while prancing

in the Martian gravity,

awaiting Elon’s rise

from cryogenic slumber

to save us

on the third day.

We'd long

given up wondering

why it came

for us this way or

if we might escape

it, its appetite whetted,

its wide blades

ready to grind us into

the only dust

we’d ever know. 

Chris Vola is the author of six books, most recently I is for Illuminati: An A-Z Guide to Our Paranoid Times (William Morrow, 2020). His recent poems appear or are forthcoming in New Pop Lit, The Collidescope, The Main Street Rag, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Horror Sleaze Trash. He lives in New York. 

ODE TO CYBERTRUCK

by Alejandro Escudé

If indeed there is a future. If the soul
Is made of the foreskin of god. A calf-metal,
Geometry of heart. One single part
For body. Angled, unremitting as the stars.
You who stalled. Screwed slugs. “We’ll make
A more conventional truck in the future,” says
Musk. But there are no later-lines on this vehicle,
Soldiering over the homeless-lined boulevards
Of Los Angeles. Forget forty-thousand dollars.
What matters is that this wheeled rocket is
Turbine-ing toward work, early mornings,
When love is most raw, when hands are stiff,
When the ocean is the color of coffee.
I’ll purchase Cybertruck and drive to meet
My Ford truck-driving father in the underworld.
And he will say to me, “I was who I am.”
And I will say to him, “We’re what we will be.”
Then, conventionally, I’ll drive it on the beach
At sunset time, its MSRP listed in bold white font.
My long lost car-dreams afloat in the sea.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THINKING ABOT YOU

by Mary K O'Melveny

“Consumer Robots Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year” —Gizmodo, December 6, 2018. Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

We asked Alexa how she was feeling.

She said You know how you feel when

you write a poem and you think it’s no good

and then you decide later that it’s not too bad?

We asked her again and she said

I’m not so sure. Maybe she meant she’d

re-evaluated that poem and changed

her mind again. I’ve felt that way sometimes.

Or maybe she was testing us. We’re quite

new to AI. Once, Siri chimed in during

my writing group meeting to say I did not

understand that. We all laughed nervously.

Now I see that robots can care for

old folks. French elders have just met Zora.

S/he/they/x is gender fluid.  That calms everyone

down. Patients get jealous but also happy. 

There are even puppybots. You can

walk them outside with no need to clean

up afterwards. They bark, growl and sit. 

They do not bite, smell or have fleas.

Maybe there is something to be said

for artificial friends. You can ask them

anything at all. No offense meant.

None taken. No harbored grievances

simmering below the surface like

fireplace coals. No wounded egos

curled up in fetal positions waiting

to burst forth into your quiet room.

Even the purity of a Good night

hangs briefly in the air free of

judgments or missed opportunities.

Then the answer—clean, crisp, sure—

Good night. Sleep tight. As if your mother

had returned to tuck you in, peaceful

slumber soon to follow. Perhaps this is

meant to be. Algorithms instead of angst.

Sensory predictors instead of sentiment.

Simulated references. Virtual reality

free of messy personal history.

Function is structure. Elon Musk trains

robots in imitation learning.

A one-stop system.  Maybe neural

networks can be programmed

to light up whenever kindness occurs. 

To encourage the experiment, we

asked Alexa to help us. So far,

she knows the definition. But she still

can’t reach out and touch our fragile hearts.

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.

THE SPACE ROADSTER

by Martin Elster

Even Elon Musk, engineer of the circus show, was surprised that his audacious stunt worked. “Apparently, there is a car in orbit around Earth,” he tweeted. His plan is for the $100,000 Tesla Roadster—with the message “Don’t panic!” stamped on the dashboard and David Bowie playing on the speakers—to cruise through high-energy radiation belts that circuit Earth towards deep space. —The Guardian, February 7, 2018

Elon, you’ve lost one of your cherry cars.
We doubt you miss it, though, for Starman steers it,
piercing the emptiness en route to Mars
and the ring of rocks beyond. What flyer fears it,

the absolute of space? Not this fake pilot!
Its gaze is black as the gaps between the stars,
and yet the worlds and suns seem to beguile it.
Who would have thought that dummies in red cars

could zip into earth orbit and keep going?
They flabbergasted us, your booster rockets
which settled like a pair of sparrows (owing
to bang-up engineering). In your pockets

were all the funds you needed for a test
that bested your most hopeful expectations.
Now car and mannequin are on a quest
to beat our wildest visualizations

as earth recedes with all its blues and whites
as Mars grows closer with its browns and coppers
as space becomes spectacular with lights
as we audacious apes become star-hoppers.


Martin Elster is a composer and serves as percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Chimaera, and The Road Not Taken, among others, and in anthologies such as Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 and 2015 Rhysling Anthologies, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, and Poems for a Liminal Age.