SECTION 106: A PLEA FROM A POET ARCHEOLOGIST

by Kim Malinowski

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) on Friday a voted to advance a notice of proposed rulemaking that would defang Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), one of the few laws that requires the federal government to consult with Tribal Nations before approving federally funded or permitted projects. New rules proposed by the ACHP would make Tribal consultation and public participation largely optional, and would drastically limit the law’s scope to historic properties that are geographically compact, excluding rivers, mountains and other Traditional Cultural Landscapes that are core to the history and identity of many Indigenous people. The proposed changes require further review and a 30-day public comment period before becoming final. —Earthjustice, July 27, 2026

Beat the drums of war.

They stole history at sunset,

went against their rules,

against their own Federal law,

voted against protecting

cultural heritage—fancy way of saying

knowledge of our past.

 

Beat the drums of war, even those who do not understand

Section 106. Because loves, 

not many of us study this law into our marrow. 

I might be one of the last.

It didn’t stand in the way of progress. It protected it.

Sacred sites were gone around, archeology was done before 

the neighbor’s pool was dug in the historic district.

The dead were found before they were uncovered.

 

Beat the drums of war for me.

For the tribal leaders that can write a public note

but not be consulted sovereign nation to sovereign nation.

Cemeteries and homesteads,

historical buildings and archeological sites endangered,

all for “progress” that could still progress

just with careful documentation.

All those places George Washington stayed at aren’t safe.

A strip mall might be more useful than a mansion.

 

But that’s what Section 106 was for. 

It wasn't perfect, but we sought

collaboration, review,

public comments, outreach, 

that now forbidden knowledge.

 

Beat the drums of war my friends.

Not just for the archeologists and historians, 

but for your history. 

Bloody and messy truth.

I don’t want massacres paved over in books or in soil.

 

My trowel begins at sunrise. 

My pen at midnight. 

Beat the drums of war.

Today, we fight for our history.

Kim Malinowski is a lover of history and words. She is the author of six poetry collections and is currently earning her Master's Degree in Cultural Heritage Resource Management (Archeology).

POLITICAL THEATER

by Jim Kelly

Cartoon by Gary. A Huck

When death darkens
the occupied space
of the political theater,

and the curtains,
somber and heavy,
are stitched with memories
of acid speech,

the audience pauses.

Not because the performance
was noble.

Not because every act
deserves applause.

Not because every wound
has healed.

The record remains.

The speeches remain.

The injuries,
the divisions,
the grievances,
remain.

Yet death changes
the lighting.

For a moment,

The spotlight shifts
from ideology
to mortality.

From victory
to loss.

From power
to the frailty
shared by every human being.

There will be time
for historians
to sort through the record.

There will be time
for critics
to weigh the consequences.

There will be time
for citizens
to debate the legacy.

But in the first shadow
cast by death,

when kindness is impossible,

Silence may be
the most humane response.

Not surrender.

Not agreement.

Not absolution.

Only the recognition
that death
has already spoken
the final line.

Jim Kelly is a California poet whose work explores democracy, race, caregiving, and social justice. His poetry has appeared in Litro Magazine, Urban Pen Magazine, Urban Poems, and other literary publications. He is the author of the chapbooks The Quiet Witness: Civic Poems of Power, Memory, and Conscience and Caregiving Through Poetry.

JUST A COOKOUT WITHOUT HISTORY

a glosa with a nod to Jemar Tisby 

by Rachel Landrum Crumble

AI graphic created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.   
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.   
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.   
—Czeslaw Milosz from "Dedication"

If I could write history with sparklers
in the newly dark air, light cherry bombs of truth, send bottle rockets
of lament to arc the unbelieving sky,

the sky that says: "Not this again!

​​Can't we just have a nice family meal without politics?"​
​​​I wonder, "Whose politics?" For the sake of 'peace', I cave.

​"The hotdogs are ready. Who wants a hamburger?

​Let's give thanks for the Founding Fathers' faith."
​​​If God is holy, why did they enslave?
​​You whom I could not save.

​​​I'm still the youngest, so experience doesn't count

​​​though I've been married to a Black man for forty-five years.
​​What about 300 years of slavery?
​​Then decades of terror and Jim Crow?
​​Where does all that sorrow and anger go?

​​​It bleeds into the bank accounts of Industry.

​​​Broken Black and brown bodies pave the way.
"Now that's all behind us. Our future is bright."​
​​​"Yeah, for the land of the rich where some arefree."

​​Listen to me.

​​Silenced by inattention, 

​​I am again the youngest at the family table.

"Did anyone bring that peach cobbler I crave?"​

​​Why blame the victims with a little wave   
​​so the flies of understanding never find landing?

A voice canonizes the Founding Fathers--it's my brother.
​​​Most were slave holders, 

​​​who wrote that "all men were created equal."
​My siblings channel the politics of my blue-blood mother,
​Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.

​By now, I'd settle for cap-gun sparks of recognition. 
​My husband, veteran of fireworks, stayed home from this failed mission. 
​He is a tired conscientious objector in this war.
​Weary of the White noise of indifference, my grown children won't engage.
​​I write with sparklers, but I need a torch.
"Fireworks are beautiful, but they kill birds."

Land of the free. ​But how free, and who are 'we'?"
Heads together, they discuss the State of Things.

​​I love them, but this feels absurd. 

​I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words. 

Rachel Landrum Crumble 

is a life-long poet and a retired teacher. She has published in The Porter House Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Common Ground Review, among others. Sister Sorrow (2022 Finishing Line Press) is her first book of poetry. Her second is In Praise of Detours (2025 Main Street Rag). She is working on a novel. She lives with her husband of 45 years, a jazz drummer. Find her on http://substack.com/rachellandrumcrumble or at poetteachermom.com.

AFRICAN, AGAIN

by Jim Kelly

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

President Donald Trump is easing his administration's cap on the number of refugees who can enter the United States, according to a forthcoming White House memo.  Set to be published officially on Wednesday, the directive says the additional 10,000 slots—raising the annual limit from 7,500 to 17,500—are reserved for white South Africans. —PBS, May 26, 2026

Once,
America looked to Africa
and carried away Black bodies
in chains.
Now,
America looks to Africa again—
not with shackles,
but with selective invitations
for White Afrikaners.
History doesn't repeat itself,
yet sometimes
it rhymes
in uncomfortable ways.

Jim Kelly is a Los Angeles-based poet originally from Beaufort, South Carolina. His work explores race, memory, democracy, and the lived experience of ordinary people navigating extraordinary times. Drawing on a lifetime of observation, his poems examine the intersection of history, identity, and public life.

BUNKER HILL

by Betsy Johnson

 

 

 

Maybe history belongs in an aquarium,
sealed glass, nothing escapes,
tourists tapping,
their faces blurring into the water
like fish circling stones,
forgetting how a river ever tasted.

Blindfolds are now built into the monument,
no need to hand them out.
People gather,
guessing at the gaps,
swapping stories about words that used to live here.
There’s a kind of bravery in pretending
not to flinch.

Slavery, taken from the wall.
Women erased,
the ones who refused to fold themselves small.
Immigrants, scratched out.
Only the dead left,
the ones good for a headline in June.
Someone decided truth was too “woke” for the daylight.
Wouldn’t want anyone catching empathy from a plaque.
You stand in front of absence,

try to piece together stories from what’s left in the shadows.

The monument looks lighter,
but the air is heavy,
pressing on your chest,
the way silence does
when no one wants to go first.
Tourists line up for their photos,
kids run the steps.
It gets too easy,
not seeing what isn’t there.

History shrinks down,
something you can keep in your pocket,
hard questions packed away in dust,
stories left behind
because they were too honest to let us sleep.

And I wonder,
what happens to a country
that keeps pretending it’s finished telling the truth,
when everyone who knows better
is still standing here,
waiting for their name to be spoken
in the story that always belonged to them.

Betsy Johnson is a poet, storyteller, educator, and autism specialist whose work explores belonging through disability, caregiving, healthcare, social justice, and the natural world. Her writing weaves personal narrative with larger social questions, tracing how people navigate uncertainty, connection, loss, resilience, and change. Her poem "Mathematics of Mercy," on the human impact of Medicaid policy, was read on the floor of the House of Representatives.

8647

by Mark Danowsky

 

 

sorry no

martyrdom

let the devil

bury himself

stay vigilant

only real victors

write history

let him be

a footnote

fool's gold

let him burn

for sins

gone down

the worst

known loser

all will say

he lost

no mercy

capital punishment?

erasure

a name stripped

from collective memory

 

Mark Danowsky is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine, and curator of Stay Curious on Substack. His latest poetry collection is Take Care (Moon Tide Press).  

EMPERATORI PARS VE GHARB (THE PERSIAN EMPIRE AND THE WEST)

by J. P. Linstroth
 

To Our Armed Forces 

 

 

Combat between a Persian (left) and a Greek (right), depicted on a cup at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Credit: Wikipedia

 

I.

A vision of armies of men in thousands kicking up dust in white puffs in ordered unison files

                        Marching forward, beating rounded shields of Athenian owls and Spartan Lambda letters

            Their burnished Corinthian helmets, their fierce eyes peering through almond bronze slits

Aeneous and glinting bronze in the sun, horsehair plumes of varying colours, waving from zephyrs

                        Metallic and muscular cuirasses shining aurulent and golden in harsh sunlight

 

Emperatori Pars under Darius the Great and his son, Xerxes, the existential threat to Greek isles

Legends, the Athenian General Miltiades at Marathon, King Lionidas at Thermopylae Pass, with no betters

            In ancient times from the West, even with acrimony among Hellenes, and all their splits

Moving as one at the Battles of Marathon and Thermopylae and Salamis, against Persian aggressors

With bronze swords drawn, a chiliad of pointing dorata, gleaming helmets behind shields tensed to fight

 

            Cleverness of the Greeks tricking Persians in battle even with their formations across many miles

Outnumbering the Hellenes in the thousands and the weightiness of death in all its bellicose fetters

            If it were not for these brave men, then what of Western civilization, and all its benefits

To win the day, again and again, and many times at great loss, the sacrifice of war, and all its tethers

            For empire, for glory, for homeland, even with Pars Bozorg (Persian Empire), the Greeks never bowed to their might

 

II.

            And more than two thousand and five hundred years forward a war against old Persia continues

Having become part of Islam and Shia from the martyrdom of Husayn Ibn Ali and following the Imams

Reaching back to the death of Mohammed and at one time British and following the Shah

With all its oil riches and arcane monarchy and then the Iranian Revolution and American hostages in ’79

            And the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and advent of an oppressive Iranian theocracy

 

And so our past repeats, again and again, from ancient times til now regardless of disparate epochal venues

Every time and place, men in continual discord, even against the House of David, and revenge of Absalom

            How soon we forget after unity against Great Persia, Athenians and Spartans brawled in awe

Of brother against brother, Greek to Greek, the Peloponnesian War, how civil wars intertwine

            From Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, of voids to the destruction of Republics and Democracy

 

Can you not see we are the same brethren, those of the reds, whites, and blues

            The same from Washington, the same from Gettysburg, but now directives from Jerusalem

Across Zagros and Alborz ranges and deserts, against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and their Allah

            To contend with ourselves, and not think Poland 1939, but reverse time, and save our demokratia

 

III.

            For all our technologies and our missiles and our Artificial Intelligence and aircraft carriers

War is no less terrible and spontaneous circumstances no less unforeseen and death death death

            Young men struggle for generals’ musings far removed and clash in arms on land, sea, and air

Often far from homelands, for fellow brothers, for fellow countrymen, for the flag under God

            And Persia once more erased, once more conquered by armies as powerful as Hellenic hordes

 

 

Lest we forget ourselves in conquest and lose our values and our Republic, lest we remove such barriers

            For ours a Constitutional Republic and much celebrated, lest we drink from the waters of Lethe

Lest we forget red poppy fields of the Somme, or white crosses of Normandy, and markers en plein air

            As our Arlington and Tomb of the Unknown, so many Medals of Honour, so many left abroad

Lest we forget how the Iranians ignored our pleas to avert a day of war by dismissing all our accords

 

But remember this one and all, we are Americans, our nation is still true, our jets as raptors and harriers

Ripping azure skies, missiles through azuline heavens, across Strait of Hormuz, against Iranian shibboleth

From Mullahs and their enforcement of Islamic law, at the expense of the Iranian populace and its despair

            May ours be a road to freedom, away from Shiite clerics, a regime heavily flawed

By waging war in the name of God, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis, their demise by swords

 

IV.

            And while the thousands marched and thousands more gunned down for their freedom

Lest we forget ours in these uncertain times and living with mendacity and profiteering

            At the expense of our dignity of our community of our brotherhood of our common sense

Lest we forget our Independence from tyranny, lest we forget our lacking representation

            And we remember Locke and Montesquieu and Rousseau and our Enlightenment

 

Now some two-hundred and fifty years, from independence to civil war, now extremam corruptiem

            Of our leaders to whom we entrust with our lives, but who seem immune from sneering

And directing us toward wars and away from personal investigations and forgetting our tariffed expense

May we uphold the pillars of our democratic oaths by not scapegoating the newest from migration

While understanding hyper-capitalism undermining our social welfare from Neo-Gilded Age Entitlement

 

To our brave soldiers, brave men and women, who fight for our Republic, not as vassals for a fiefdom

Lest forgetting Spartan might won over Athenian intellect, and protect ourselves with judicial hearings

            If necessary and to use our laws and our cameras and checking imbalances in our defence

So, to the breach against armies and foes, now the Iranians, we ask to pray for victims in supplication

            Likewise remembering who we are and our history, and not the spoiled life of a political miscreant

 

To America, to America, forever the brave and the bold

            Across the seas from now and remembering times of old

                        May we remember our fallen heroes always, their fearlessness not to be cajoled

 

To America, to America, the beautiful and the bold

            May we always protect our sea shining shores, may your glories always be extolled

 

                        To America, to America

                                    Now and forever as many have before foretold

                                                About the land of our brave and our bold

 

 

J. P. Linstroth has a PhD (D.Phil.) in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, UK with several awards for his research concentrating on the Spanish-Basques, Brazilian urban Amerindians, and Cuban, Haitian, and Guatemalan-Mayan immigrants in South Florida. He is an Adjunct Professor at Palm Beach State College (PBSC) and the author of several books: Marching Against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland (2015, Bloomsbury Books); The Forgotten Shore (Poetic Matrix Press, 2017); Epochal Reckonings (Proverse Publishers HK, 2020, Winner of Proverse Prize 2019); Politics and Racism Beyond Nations: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Crises (2022, Palgrave Macmillan); and Swimming in Blue Shadows: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems (2022, Proverse Publishing, Proverse Supplemental Prize). He was awarded a J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholar Grant (2008-2009) to study urban Amerindians in Manaus, Brazil and he received a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for his accomplishments toward peace, conflict resolution, and social justice.