A DRY SPELL IN UTAH

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

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

Statewide drought, evaporating lakes, whirlwinds, catastrophe; 
amidst this mess, our Governor pleads “Pray for rain.” Angels,
witches, devils descend from the sky to the chosen, but no blessed water.
 
My garden meadow browns to wasteland, crisp crackle underfoot,
hummingbird departs. Has he expended all his heartbeats in July’s
harsh heat? Warm colors of swallowtails, monarchs—gone. 
Finches, sparrows silent, beaks gape wide, throats too dry for song.
 
City residents stop sprinklers, while farmers, and our Governor
grow water-hungry alfalfa—drain rivers and aquifers. Spinning drops
irrigation-spread, artificial rainbows brighten verdant fields. Cloudbursts 
transformed to feed chug across the ocean, as our lakes recede. 

Susan J. Wurtzburg has won or placed in several poetry competitions. She is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Poets Reading the News. Her book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas was published in spring, 2025.

CAMP MYSTIC

by Karen Marker

Art by Nick Anderson

With no advance warning 

the San Antonio National Weather Service

had already been reduced to rubble

missing meteorologist, hydrologist, 

staff forecaster.

 

Frantic parents pray for their children 

caught off guard by the flooding

Guadalupe. No more have been found alive

clinging to trees.  

 

The governor signs a declaration. 

The search and rescue in Central Texas

will continue looking.

 

In this state while water spills over 

the banks of rivers in another 

water’s gone missing. The Great 

Salt Lake is starved to death. 

 

Protestors speak like sybils, prophets, seers.

And still the senators, the governor claim 

climate change a hoax.They can’t see 

through their frozen hearts the melting ice,

can’t smell the noxious gases, admit what 

this means for our survival.

 

It costs them nothing to offer their prayers

 

We all feel haunted like Hamlet did 

in Elsinore.  Perfumes can’t cover over 

the smell of what’s rotten—a shriveled lake

with its dead fish, a bloated river where children 

float downstream like Ophelia.

 

 

Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist who has committed to writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response  to current events. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press and explores family mental illness, stigma and healing.