OLD AND FAMILIAR

by Dick Altman

A preliminary review by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog office found that Alex Pretti was shot by two federal officers after resisting arrest, but did not indicate that he brandished a weapon during the encounter, according to an email sent to Congress and reviewed by The New York Times [January 27, 2026].

We were both

ten years old,

and best friends,

the colonel’s

daughter

across the street

and I,

when he said

I think

you’re old enough

to see these

army newsreels,

from my days 

back

in World War II.

 

Down into 

the basement

we went.

Before he turned

out the lights,

we watched

as he took out

a giant reel

of sixteen millimeter

black and white film,

he fitted

to his old army

projector.

 

The two of us

watched in terror,

as people were

dragged from shops

and apartment

buildings,

thrown

to the ground,

and beaten.

With the same

fright in our voices,

we asked

what they

did wrong.

 

The colonel

stopped the film

and turned

on the lights.

What did they

do wrong,

he repeated.

Hitler—

a name

we knew barely

at a distance—

hated Jews,

he said.

The people

pictured here

were Jews.

In that quiet

fatherly tone,

I knew so well,

he looked at me

and said,

you’re Jewish,

aren’t you.

 

The next images,

forever fixed

in my mind,

showed mounds

of dead bodies 

being bulldozed

into trenches,

at what he called

“the camps”.

A vile end,

I later thought,

for a people

doing nothing 

wrong,

but approaching

their god,

in the Fuhrer’s eyes,

from the wrong

testament.

***

I can’t pick up a paper,

or see a newscast,

that doesn’t remind me—

as ICE grabs individuals

off the street,

or wades into crowds

with smoke bombs,

to break up protests—

of those images

the colonel

shared with us,

that day long ago.

 

We were still

too young

to understand

when he told,

how Hitler came

to control the truth

proclaimed 

by print

and radio.

As truth today

seems to reincarnate

with each sunrise,

the colonel’s films

begin to feel

eerily familiar.

Have America’s

once welcome

immigrants,

incarcerated now

at every turn,

I ask myself,

become

yesterday’s

vilified Jews,

our government

more Hitlerian

by the hour?

And more

terrifying?

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, and others here and abroad.  His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 290 poems, published on four continents.

THE KILLERS

by Howie Good

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

You can hear the slow tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine. It’s the end of the so-called “American Century.” Conscienceless killers disguised as police prowl factories and airports and schools for new victims, and all with the sanction of a government of liars and thieves. The lamp beside the golden door has been shot out. My grandparents were poor Jews from the shtetl – in current parlance, “garbage people” from “shithole countries.” And look at me. My face, with its hollows and shadows, its worry lines and age wrinkles, is like a map, sort of, a map of a country I no longer know.

Howie Good is a widely published but little-known author.

TONIGHT WE’RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 1939

by Steven Kent

UPenn faculty condemn Trump administration's demand for “lists of Jews” —The Guardian, January 13, 2026

At U of Penn, who's in the Tribe?

The whole thing has a 30s vibe:

Demand a list, some names get crossed—

Say, how much does a Holocaust?

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.p

CRYPTOQUIPS

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

“Stańczyk” by Jan Matejko

My grandfather, tears in his eyes, his false teeth in a glass of water on the table beside him, pounded the arm of his easy chair and screamed, "What does a man have to do to get borscht around here?" What he meant was "Why, when I was six, did I have to hide in a pickle barrel when the Cossacks came looking for Jews to kill?"

My uncle came into my bedroom and caught me dancing like I was on Shindig to the Beatles' “Twist and Shout”. "When you fall in love for the first time, you'll stop listening to garbage like this." What he meant was "Why am I working for the State when I should be a millionaire?"

My mother slapped my face when I read to her from a TV Guide that David McCallum, who played Ilya Kuriyakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., was America's new sex symbol. What she meant was, "Why am I not married to a doctor who hates football?"

My creative writing teacher gave my poems a "D" because the assignment was to write from the heart and I write from my knees. What she meant was, "You are not a serious person, and poetry is a deadly serious business."

My girl friend touched my face, looked deeply into my eyes, and said, "When you get tired, you look like Henry Kissinger." What she meant was, "I thought maybe you might be my ticket out of here, but you're actually more fucked up than I am."

My neighbor said that "If you look at every angle of what happened in Minneapolis, you can see that the Antifa girl was trying to ram the ICE guy." What he meant was the same as what I mean: the same thing all of them have ever meant, I have ever meant to them, all our lives long.

"Okay, enough. I give up."

Steve Hellyard Swartz has contributed several poems to The New Verse News over the past many years. Twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize Poetry, he has served as Poet Laureate of Schenectady county in upstate New York, been a finalist four times in the Eugene O' Neill National Playwrights' Conference, and won a Green Eyeshades Award for Excellence in Broadcasting awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists. His movie Never Leave Nevada which he wrote and directed and in which he co-starred, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in January of 1990.

IT’S NOT (YET) TOO LATE (MAYBE)

by Katy Z. Allen

Gazans Are Dying of Starvation. —The New York Times, July 24, 2025

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

A monarch butterfly flutters among the bushes and flowers beside the pond.

Memories rise up: 

a transformational summer in Jerusalem studying Hebrew;

the power of my first experience of the Kotel;

a summer rabbinic seminar at the Shalom Hartman Institute;

visits with my future mother-in-law in Tel Aviv, and later, in Kfar Saba; 

bicycling the shaded byways of the Hula Valley and quiet desert roads of the Negev in support of “nature knows no borders.”

A pond blanketed with giant American Lotus leaves and blossoms spreads out before the eye.

Netanyahu, State of Israel,

it’s not yet too late. (Maybe.)

You still have time to change course,

to save your souls, 

and the souls of all Israelis,

and the souls all the Jews spread out 

around the planet;

you still have time to remember that G?d created every single human being on this planet

and that they are all sacred 

in the eyes of the Holy One of Blessing;

you still have time.

Tall spikes of purple and white showy tick-trefoil mingle with abundant Queen Anne’s lace.

You have the power, the knowledge, and the ability 

to send massive amounts of medical supplies and food to Gaza,

to guard them from Hamas with your troops,

and to feed and treat 

and save the lives of thousands of ordinary starving Gazans,

who are trapped by your inhumanity.

You still have time.

A great blue heron stands silently, gazing into the water, listening, waiting.

It’s not too late. Yet.

But before long it will be.

And then you will have not only 

the blood of many, many more children, women, and men on your hands and your hearts,

but you will have desecrated all that is sacred and holy of Eretz Yisrael;

you will have violated every one of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah,

if not by the letter of the law,

then most certainly by its spirit;

you will have lost and abandoned your humanity,

as individuals and as a country;

you will be deserving, 

(painful as it will be to watch), 

of every single bit of retribution that will come your way;

you will have destroyed the Jewish people and state more completely 

than Hamas could ever have dreamed of doing by itself;

you will have deserted your people,

your country,

and your G!d.

A pair of black and yellow swallowtail butterflies spiral upward in a dance of unity.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, eco-chaplain, and writer since the age of eight. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and The Jewish Poets Collective Journal. Her poetic book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.

THEN THEY WERE MINE

by Corey Weinstein

Witnesses say that the IDF is deliberately killing Palestinians at aid distribution centres in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Cartoon by Muzaffar Yulchiboev.

Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’ —The Guardian, July 7, 2025

Hear it right here. The past is now,
but wrong place, wrong people.
Last time they were mine, desperate,
last gasp assault in Spring of ’43.
 
Wrong place, the Mideast, wronged Palestinians.
Is there dignity not victory for a vanquished people?
In ’43 we yelled into the Nazi tornado,
death throes of the Warsaw Ghetto 300,000.
 
Feeble return fire from a vanquished people.
As Gaza starves, the West Bank terrorized,
famine, genocide of Gaza’s ghetto of two million.
Will the end game be the same weak thrust and slaughter?
 
Tanks fire on the hungry, settlers smash homes, olive groves.
In Warsaw they were mine, Jews to the very last bullet.
Will the world let the endgame be the same last bullet,
can our ears bear to hear the past in this terrible now?
 
As for me, I will never forget, Never Again, 
no matter who, no matter where or when.

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Haight Asbury Literary Journal, Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me. He is a retired physician and has been an advocate for prisoner rights, founded California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Workshop Circle and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.

BOULDER

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Sunrise over the Flatiron Range near Boulder, Colorado.

A man has been charged with a federal hate crime and multiple other felonies after he allegedly used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to attack a crowd of people who were raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring 12 victims. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, is alleged to have shouted “Free Palestine” as he attacked the crowd on Sunday. The FBI said Soliman told police he planned the attack for a year and had specifically targeted what he described as the “Zionist group”, the Associated Press reported. —The Guardian, June 3, 2025

The Boulder mountains began as fire

perhaps that’s why they are known

as the Flatiron Range

 

If you look into their hearts you will find

fossils from the sea. Simple single cellular

creatures. Who by fire and Who by water.

 

In America, many folks like to say our story

will end in flame. I’ve seen John 3:16 signs

at Coors Field and when Mel Gibson made 

his film about Jesus, some pastor hung 

a billboard above I-25 saying the Jews 

Killed Christ. Jews kill Jews. Who gets to 

say.

 

A man throwing Molotov cocktails 

at people who want Israeli hostages freed, 

is he the authority on Jews Israel’s 

ambassador and foreign minister believe 

him to be.

 

The pressure which births mountains is 

hard to imagine. What it takes to sustain 

foundational myths across time, rebuild

temples, dream of olive trees is a pressure 

of perhaps equal force in human terms 

and very hard to fathom.

As I write this, someone would have 

you believe Jews possess a divine power 

to solve or cause all the worst excesses 

in the world. They might also think all

Palestinians want an eye for an eye. 

What is a Mashiac. Who are the prophets. 

Should we ask the mountains over Boulder.

 

The work of the Flatirons is not malevolent.

Moses didn’t receive tablets from Sinai 

but on it. Universes come and go with each 

blink of the high peaks.

Brahma sits on his lotus. 

Generals confer in bunkers.

The Earth’s crust floats on lava. 

Hashem has many names that depict 

His moods.

Not everyone says He is merely a He.

Christians speak of trinities.

 

Today, free speech invites a fire fight. 

We assemble in our mortar formations. 

I pumped gas this morning 

and it’s all I can taste.

Jeremy Nathan Marks is a former Colorado resident who lives and writes in Canada.

ARE WE THERE YET?

Ode to Passover

by Anita S Pulier

Painting by Frans Pourpos the Elder (c. 1565–1580) depicting God showing Moses the Promised Land. Source: Wikipedia.

Celebrate forty years of wandering.
Forty years of searching.

Read Haggadah to the children,
give thanks,

sing praises
for the tribe surviving.

Focus on the ancients,
not the news.

Ignore ICE, as it issues
this warning: if officers

view you as Other,
hear a foreign accent,

take notice of tatoos,
you will be wrangled

like cattle into pens
and, paperless or not, deported.

To where? Weep, explain
you have lived here

since you were two,
this is your home.

Your wife, your children,
your aged mother

may never see you again.
Glory be to what?

Listen! Angry screams nurtured
by hatred, drown out the cries

of kids in Florida, or Texas, or next door.
How many more will be force fed this poison

in the name of a merciless God
punishing the sin of survival?

and Gaza
and Gaza

Tonight, we Jews co-opt words;
suffering, pain, freedom.

I imagine the day that
anyone’s God

will deliver enlightenment,
angels will sing,

heavenly light will shine
on the cruel irony of the self-righteous,

the day each of us will be revealed
as the supplicant,

each of us the Other.
The day our ancient journey,

our Passover celebration,
will not fall so woefully short

of the promised land.

Anita S Pulier's newest  books are Paradise Reexamined and Leaving Brooklyn  (Kelsay Books). ). Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in nine print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily.