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.

TAKING BACK MALA ROHAN

by Sarah Russell

 

The snow came silent, pure,

a quilt of feathered white

to cover wreckage of the war.

Few saw the snow’s allure—

just ordinary men who stayed to fight.

The snow came silent, pure.

This ragtag, patriot corps

were confident they’d stall Goliath’s might

despite the wreckage of this war.

Russian bodies dead, left unsecured.

Tanks smoldering, explosions in the night.

The snow came silent, pure.

Families, hid in cellars, reassured,

emerged again with trembling to the light

and saw the wreckage of the war.

Old Praskovia clutched her apron. She’d endured 

two wars, was broken by the sight.

The snow came silent, pure

to cover wreckage of the war.

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Kentucky Review, Misfit Magazine, Rusty Truck, Third Wednesday, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons.

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.

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."