TESTtosterone

by Darcy Grabenstein 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that he is rolling out a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among troops, calling it necessary to allow them to operate at their “absolute best.” ...In the video, Hegseth simply refers to troops, though it appears he is talking about only testing men in uniform for hormone irregularities. AP, July 16, 2026

Pete HEgseth is proving 

that he’s a manly man, a HE-man
for he’s questioning the virility
of our men in uniform

After all, isn’t the true test of masculinity
taking advantage of under-age girls
or throwing punches in a UFC fight
or ICE goons slaughtering citizens?

Those in the good ole boys’ club
probably think that those with ‘low T’ 
would rather have high tea, pinkies raised
than shove a gun in the enemy’s face

Test for testosterone? Preposterous!

Here’s what and who we should be testing:
the IQ of our nation’s leaders
to determine whether they’re fit for office
not whether our troops are fit to serve

Excuse me. I’m about to have a fit.

A marketing writer by profession, Darcy Grabenstein turns to poetry as a creative and cathartic outlet. The theme of social (in)justice runs through many of her poems, and she longs for the day where her page will finally be blank.

CHAPTER AND WORSE

by Steven Kent

I'll sue your sorry ass—it's libel,

Claiming I misquote the Bible.

You are not my brother, sucker;

Feel my vengeance, motherfu… .

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books. 

WHEN DO WE BEGIN, AND HOW SHALL WE END?

by Indran Amirthanayagam

 

 

 

 

The Pope will not attend the 250th birthday party. 

The gold-plated arch will tower over a dwindling 

number of illiberal potentates, driven by armored car 

from the Board of Peace. Orbán will be granted 

honorary American citizenship and sent as ambassador 

to San Salvador. Jesus will reclaim his right to authorize 

any and all uses of his image. Give me a break: Jesus 

with an American flag, warplanes, bald eagles? 

America, I can’t stand my own mind. 

But let’s get back to the future plans 

of Orbán and that miller brewing potions 

in the White House. Or Marco sporting 

platypus shoes, Hegseth strutting about on stage 

before stone-faced generals called in from 

all over the world for a pep talk paid for 

by the American taxpayer. Aah, poor taxpayer, 

your goodwill medicines undelivered 

to far away herders and victims of local wars,

money spent instead on fighter jets

and radar smoking on the ground

in Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.

And  the cross: how do we get it back 

into church and the altar at home 

and away from the necks 

of blasphemers, brutes, and butchers?

Tell me, Trump. Or are you 

disqualified from answering?

 

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

DEEPWATER PORTFOLIO

by Zumwalt

 

 

Endangered Rice's whales live their entire lives in the gulf, where they're vulnerable to vessel strikes, noise pollution, oil spills and climate change—all of which could increase with more drilling, scientists said. Other animals, including threatened manatees and endangered sea turtles, also could be put at risk, experts said. As the Iran war pushes energy prices sharply higher, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked national security in seeking an exemption from endangered species laws, which make it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list. The seldom-used Endangered Species Committee granted that request on Tuesday. Rice’s whale is the only whale species that lives year-round in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are fewer than 100—and possibly fewer than 50—left, scientists said. —PBS, March 30, 2026

The subsea map is neatly partitioned

into optimized lease zones;

seismic airguns fracture the water column 

with monetized concussions.

Audit sediment for trapped hydrocarbons;
seamlessly filter out the pathetic,
low-frequency protests of a dwindling pod:
fifty surviving Rice’s whales, biological oddities,
drowning in our modern energy paradigm.

Stupidly stubborn, incredibly spoiled,
they insist on quiet currents
and fatty silver-rag driftfish delicacies,
never exerting effort to adapt
to the tides of quarterly dividends.

Let the regulatory committees squawk about their grievances:
the diamond-tipped drill bit demands results.

Flood aquatic corridors with commercial logistics:

it's an obvious course of action.

Trade the flawed architecture of God's creations
for the unquestionable superiority of the combustion engine,
the freedom to wage war against any nation,
and the right to consume without restraint.

 

 

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt, a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, has recently been published in The Society of Classical Poets.  

STOP THE KILLERS!

by Raymond Nat Turner

The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September —PBS, January 4, 2026

Burlap bags stuffed with tuna and blue marlin.

Catch of a lifetime! Juan’s already counting the

cash in his head. Visualizing pawn shop guitar

for Gabriel, his 10-year-old son, graduating to guitar

from ukulele. Gabriel’s greeted morning rooster-

like—since age 3—with “Let’s practice, Papa!”

Before pushing off to sea Juan bought the computer 

Rosario wished for from a journalism student he met

at the fish market training fishmongers to compute. He

also bought the bicycle Maria longed for and stashed it

at a neighbor’s house. Juan was out to make his young

family’s Christmas the best ever.

BOOM!

Bloody mess below his waist. Juan’s a strong swimmer. But

he can’t feel his legs. He quickly grabs on to fiery flotsam.

Is that Javier hanging on for dear life across from him?

He hears his children’s joyful shrieks. Sees them jumping

Up and down with joy. He kisses Lourdes long and tenderly…

BOOM!

A pomade man has amplified orders of

his demented Don into “Kill them all!”

Laughing, they dub it  a “double-tap 

strike—”

like some cool dance step

signaling mad moves to come… 

Author’s notes:

This poem is a puzzle I put together based on backwards, savage, lethal headlines and loving holiday memories I hold. The puzzle pieces are as follows:

1. The two men who were infamously ordered summarily executed by a pomade man sucking up to his Don.

2. When I was around 10 my dad took me deep sea fishing in Ensenada. And, as beginner’s luck would have it, I caught both a 21lb Yellowtail and a 21lb Bonita.

3. When I was eighteen or nineteen, my dad who'd played trombone in high school, purchased a pawn shop trombone for me.

4. Our JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge! purchased a $300 kids' drumkit for a bandmate’s 3-year-old. And from then on the child woke up every morning saying, "Papa, let's practice!" His dad obliged him. Now that 3-year-old is the 23-year-old drummer for John Coltrane's son, Ravi!

5. One Christmas Eve my Mom and Dad hid a brand new bicycle from me at the next door neighbor's house.

6. Lourdes was a beautiful curly-haired Mexican Jack In The Box worker I had a huge crush on.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

LETHALITY

by Nan Meneely

His father taught him how to enclose a spider
so gently in tissues he can carry it live from his room
to a better place outdoors.
 
He grieves when a chipmunk lies mid-road, 
as exquisite as alive, forepaws stretched 
toward the brambly green safety ahead.
 
Knowing he might be too soft, he signs
with the Army to muscle up. But he didn’t bargain
for lethal, a word the recruiters never said.
 
He’s as certain of this as anything:
if he killed those named his enemies—
Venezuelans in fishing boats oceans away,
 
brown men working shop floor or field for minimum wage,
protesters armed with sandwiches shouting truth
to power, Somali immigrants fleeing hate—
 
he would kill the important part of himself,
the part he would fight for in anyone else.

Author's Note: This matter matters to me. My father, a doctor with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII, joined up enthusiastically but came home with a hatred of war and what we now know as PTSD. Eventually he killed himself. So Hegseth's lethality can be lethal in too many ways. 

Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

HEGSETH THE ADOLESCENT

by Sharon Olson

Source: Autodesk Instructables

Senator Mark Kelly: "He runs around on stage talking about 'lethality,' warrior ethos, and 'killing people'... that’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense… And instead he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army." —Yahoo!News, December 2, 2025

Before computer games, we each chose

a sheaf of white paper, scoring it with lines

going this way and that, and assigned letters

and numbers so each square would be, for 

example, B1 or D2, and then we specified 

where our boats hung out, be they cruiser, 

submarine, destroyer, carrier or battleship. 

You only called out one square at a time 

and one hit could not sink a ship. 

There were no sailors on these ships, 

the losses not serious, the arsenal only 

pen marks on a grid. But armed with a 

computer now the tempo rises, especially

when it's the War Department striking

in the Caribbean, no marimba music or 

swaying palms, a techno-hit in a made-up 

war can end the game, but if survivors cling 

to the side, no need to ask mother's permission, 

we double-tap and send them on their way.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian and native Californian who now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

THE WAR WITHIN

by Donna Katzin

                        

Art by Ann Telnaes

Standing at attention, a silent sea

of the nation’s glittering medal-chested top brass

face the self-named “Secretary of War,”

who demands they trim their waistlines and words

as their ranks are filled by monochrome commanders

and uni-gender generals

required to speak in the single voice

of their Commander in Chief.

No longer facing foreign wars,

they will now be ordered to enforce martial law

on the families that raised them,

children like their own, neighbors

who shared their burdens and blessings,

compatriots with sons and daughters,

ancestors like theirs seeking shelter

and a future in a new land.

The statue in the harbor hangs her head.

“We the People” have become

“the enemy within.”

The future trembles in our hands.

Donna Katzin has worked for more than three decades with South Africa in its struggle to defeat apartheid and advance the new nation's  democratic development.  She also continues to partner with vulnerable Nicaraguan communities and mothers struggling to feed their children.  She is the author of With These Hands, a book of poetry and photos of South Africans struggling to give birth to a new nation, and a published poet honored to have been included in New Verse News.

WOKE

by Bradley McIlwain

Burial of the dead after the massacre of Wounded Knee. U.S. soldiers putting Indians in common grave; some corpses are frozen in different positions. (Wikipedia)

Native American communities that had long wanted the removal of military honors for the soldiers involved in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre had their hopes dashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his effort to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces. “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, ‘don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings’ leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said Tuesday to hundreds of military officials at a ceremony. The defense secretary announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness and painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies. Hegseth had announced last week in a video on social media that Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor, part of a wider Trump administration move that Indigenous leaders and historians on Tuesday called part of a culture war against racial and ethnic minorities and women’s rights. —AP, October 1, 2025

Warriors whisper in the willows

Odyssey of blood and ochre 

Unheard under cannon fire:

No surrender—

Dancing ghosts raid the dawn;

Eagles still soar at Pine Ridge

Drums of the ancestors

Keep the fires of knowledge

No medals, no song, no glory;

Evergreens slope to the South—

Elders rise in the heart of the sun.

Bradley McIlwain works as a Teacher-Librarian, where he strives to provide meaningful and inclusive spaces for knowledge exchange and advocacy. He believes that poems and poets can be agents for social change. Bradley’s latest book Dear Emily was published by Roasted Poet Press last year.

ONE INTERPRETATION

by Erika Takacs

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under public fire for publicly endorsing the misogynistic views of Idaho pastor Doug Wilson (above) and his colleagues in a CNN interview… What sparked the latest round of worry is CNN’s interview in which [Wilson] says “women are the kind of people that people come out of”… Hegseth reposted the CNN interview link on X and wrote, “All of Christ for All of Life.” —Baptist News, August 10, 2025 

Oh—like the crone who strides forth 
out of my skin (wise, bossy, bolder)
whenever I see a young woman try
to tuck herself into a smaller, smaller,
smaller space. Or the diner waitress
who can’t help calling everyone Hon,
the school nurse whose eyes catch
on every helpless child, like the gawky
teen in line at the airport who needs me
to tell him when he’s allowed to board. 
There’s my grandmother, when I use salt
(never measure, more is better), 
and my dad, when I cry at commercials 
(Christmas morning, someone is home 
from college, or the army, and has brewed 
coffee). My brother when I am truly selfless; 
my mother when I’m just lucky. I’ve coaxed
wizards from this old body, vixens
and virgins and vamps. So many people
have come out of me, though not one
is my child. Or maybe all of them are—
every one a new creation, a dazzling
refraction of an infinite heart. 

Erika Takacs is an Episcopal priest, teacher, musician, and poet originally from Wilmington, Delaware. Her writing has been published in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Earth & Altar, The Christian Century, Braided Way, and Thimble Literary Journal. Outside of her work and her family, her three great loves are the music of J.S. Bach, books, and baseball. She currently resides in North Carolina, where she and her husband serve at the pleasure of their very spoiled beagle.