ISRAEL LAUNCHES OVER 100 AIRSTRIKES ON LEBANON IN TEN MINUTES WITHOUT WARNING

by Moudi Sbeity 

as if a warning is a good excuse. 

This means over ten airstrikes per minute. 

What else could we do with a minute? 

I won't name anything lovely for you. 

I won’t save you from this terribleness, saying 

we could plant more than a hundred seeds. 

That perhaps we could feed a hundred people, 

sustain a worldwide hymn till heaven hears this 

aching chorus. Some poems need to show you 

how much it hurts. Some poems need to leave 

you wondering

just how tightly a heart must be closed in order

to champion a thirst for destruction. Just how 

desperately the soul must be choked before 

waging its inner horrors. Just how much more 

can we rip each other before remembering that 

a minute is sixty seconds, and a second is about 

one breath cycle, and one breath cycle is all you 

need to stay alive. I won't even do the math for 

you, the one that calculates all the breath cycles 

that encompass a minute across the millions of 

people now breathing in the unsanctioned dust. 

Just how much ignorance, and how heavy of a dose, 

and how often, does it take to poison one person’s 

blood before he decides to launch more than a 

hundred missiles, before his guilty fingers 

violently reach into God’s pulse. 

Moudi Sbeity is a Lebanese-American poet, author, educator, and psychotherapist. Born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, he moved to the United States at the age of eighteen as an evacuee following the 2006 July war. In Utah, Moudi founded and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by The New York Times as “the future of queer dining.” Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, he is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression.

THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT

by Constance Stadler

Tall cedars

emanate earthen aromas

with musky incense

cinnamon and mint.

A solitary oud

plucked by

ornamented fingers

sings a sad

uncertain song

to the scarlet dying sun.

The calm opacity

of old Lebanon

burns red

with fire

as dark eyes

Cry

behind silken veils

The olive tree burns black.

Constance Stadler is the author and co-author of eight compilations of poetry and has published more than 200 poems magazines and journals. She was awarded honors in the International Erbacce Prize competition for her collection Sublunary Curse. Constance dates the beginning of her relationship with poetry to early teenage years, when she was given a volume of the Collected Works of Dylan Thomas which still sits, dog-eared, on her bookshelf.

TRAVEL ADVISORY

by Shalmi Barman

"A visa is not a right. It's a privilege," [US Secretary of State Marco] Rubio said on Tuesday. Trump administration officials have said student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel's conduct in the war on Gaza, calling their actions a threat to U.S. foreign policy and accusing them of being pro-Hamas. —Reuters, May 21, 2025

The State Department has told U.S. consulates and embassies to immediately begin reviewing the social media accounts of Harvard’s student visa applicants for antisemitism in what it called a pilot program that could be rolled out for colleges nationwide. —Politico, May 30, 2025

Counselors who work with foreign students eager to attend college in the U.S. are advising them to purge their social media accounts of posts that could attract the attention of U.S. State Department officials. —CBS News, May 39, 2025

To demonstrate that I don’t pose a threat,
I strip the stickers from my laptop case,
purge the Kindle reader, ctrl-shift-del
my browsing history as if the past
two, ten, eighty years had never been.
 
We’re experts here at inoffensiveness,
smalltalk savants, the brightest and the best
arriving on these shores to earn our keep,
inflate the GDP and pay our dues—
the price of entry to the winners’ club—
in labor, taxes, learned neutrality.
 
A privilege, not a right. In Khan Younis
the going rate for a sack of gritty rice
exceeds my weekly wage. Faucets frothing
overrun my glass. A legless child
plucks maggots from his wounds. I sink a knife
deep in the turkey, utter ritual thanks
for innocence far from the blasted plains
of Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon…
 
Purpose of visit? To become just like you,
I want to tell the agent matching my name
against a neutered profile. To shop at Target
on the Fourth of July, pledging allegiance
like a marriage vow. For this I stand in line,
bereft of fluids, jacket, shoes, and shame,
not-thinking of checkpoints a world away,
asking smilingly how much? how high?


Shalmi Barman is a South Asian national, a holder of a student visa, and a newly minted PhD. She spent several years at the University of Virginia writing a dissertation on class and labor in Victorian fiction, and doing other things that would likely be deportable offenses today. Her poetry has previously appeared in The New Verse News and also recently in Boudin, Blue Unicorn, EcoTheo Review, Gyroscope Review, and elsewhere.

ANGELS OF DEATH

a previously unpublished poem written in 1982

by Mitchel Cohen

Veterans warn of echoes from 1982 Lebanon war as new conflict looms on Israel’s northern borders —The Observer, July 14, 2024

Israel, baby, you're doing it again!
How many times have I told you
You can't use me as your trench coat
Flashing your Mezuzah in the subways?!
Look, there are three things in this life
that carry us through in one piece
and one of them is Love!
This isn't love, it's murder.

Israel, sweetheart, listen to me.
Take your planes and go home.
Take your tanks and turn the guns around.
You point them at the wrong people.
Your enemies are at home.
They are in bed, living fat
Off their profits, traif pigs
in plush corporate boardrooms

Israel, the desert
is rising up around you. Refugees
are thrashing the sands with thatched straws
peeled from the rubble of huts
and phosphorous bombs. It rises up
from the desert floor of Galilee, from the West Bank,
and over Beirut, little separate clouds of sand,
Smoky clouds, bloody clouds
Of Palestine's Indians.

Israel, even in America,
in the apartments of Jews
along Ocean Parkway, in Co-op City,
In Miami, and Cleveland,
and St. Louis, a panic
jangles in the teeth, a shudder
shivers through the shawls
worn on Shabboth, an unspoken nightmare
kicks open the jaws, a tear
a scream. No, Israel, no!
We will not be your gestapo!
We cannot shield you from the genocide you commit.
  Israel, O Israel,
  Get the hell out of Lebanon now!

Mitchel Cohen was a founder of the infamous Red Balloon Poetry Conspiracy and Red Balloon Collective at SUNY Stony Brook (1969 and on). He co-founded the No Spray Coalition against pesticides, chaired the WBAI radio Local Board (2008-12), co-edited G, the newspaper of the NY State Greens/Green Party as well as the national Green Politix, and hosted a weekly internet radio show, Steal This Radio. He has published two books of poems—The Permanent Carnival and One-Eyed Cat Takes Flight—with a third in the works. He has also authored radical pamphlets and books including The Fight Against Mosanto's Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides (Skyhorse). Mitchel's currently mourning the death of Willie Mays—the greatest baseball player of all time—and his dear friend and poet Connie Norgren. Mitchel lives in “The People's Republic of Brooklyn.”

BOTH SIDES NOW, or THE THREE D’S

by Maria Lisella

Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Dec. 16, 2023. (AP via Arab News)

"The plumes of smoke from tanks, artillery and the planes of the air force will continue to cover the sky over the Gaza Strip until we will achieve our goals," Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. —NPR, January 21, 2024

Destruction, displacement, death;

the toll soars past 28,000 on one side
1,400 on the other; hostages by the
hundreds spark nonstop defiant
 
statements from the father whose
tech savvy son posts incendiary
messages from the warm rays
of the Florida sun. Like father, like son,
 
they ignite destruction, displacement, death.
Brethren in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen
rise to actions of the heart mind: force
meeting force, clamoring to save and
 
sacrifice sons, daughters. More destruction,
displacement, death. Deaf to calls for a ceasefire
postwar plans promising a two-state solution,
they focus only on Israel’s future credit rating.  
 
Standing Together, Jews and Palestinians post:
“We are aching, all of us… It seems we are
not allowed to hurt for both.”
Now is the moment, “to hurt for both.”

Maria Lisella is the sixth Queens Poet Laureate and an American Academy Fellow; her work includes Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). She is a member of the Thursday Morning Poets, Brevitas and co-curates the Italian American Writers Assoc. literary readings.

PERSPECTIVE

by Marc Swan

“This is a relatively civilized” city, he says, referring to Kyiv, after saying it’s not like Iraq or Afghanistan. https://t.co/q6UEtwvzyZ

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 26, 2022

Each morning after an espresso

from our six-cup stovetop

with granola, yogurt and blueberries

in our favorite ceramic bowls

we review the news in the online sources

disheartening is a mild term

enlightening

sometimes

watching the world dissolve before our eyes

is unnerving, overwhelming, disjointing

first European invasion since WW II

how quickly we have forgotten invasions

in Gaza, Egypt, Lebanon, the Balkans, Africa, 

and points beyond and in between

today eastern and western economies 

have our attention

fuel prices, trade options, empty store shelves

car prices, building supplies, and yes

the list has only begun

we are interlocked in this chaotic world

of language differences, money differences

but most of all ideology differences

that create distrust, uncertainty, and taint

the taste of Pavé Toulousain cheese

we used to get

from the French farm outside Toulouse

and the crisp white Txakolina 

imported from the Pyrenees—

that once seemed so important 

Marc Swan, a retired vocational rehabilitation counselor, lives in coastal Maine. Poems recently published in Gargoyle, Crannóg, Chiron Review, Queen’s Quarterly, among others. His fifth collection all it would take was published in 2020 by tall-lighthouse (UK).

TRAGEDY IN [...]

by Devon Balwit

Lebanese security forces confronted protesters during clashes in downtown Beirut on Saturday, following a demonstration against political leaders blamed for a deadly explosion in the city. Credit: Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, August 9, 2020

The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs “Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites” or “Israelis and Palestinians.” We call ours “Democrats and Republicans,” but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die. And second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics—even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic. 

—Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, August 9, 2020

How does a city fall, how does a nation?
A raft of catastrophe floats in & is lashed
to a bollard & then forgotten, pleas for attention
ignored or handed on, fears quashed

beneath derision. Those at the helm creep
away in the dark after pocketing what they can.
Those who cannot leave tremble at the seep
of decay & instability, hoping to withstand

the blast that finally comes. Many won’t.
Their names will be added to a list, misspelled,
the list lost, their ashes scattered amidst
a hundred thousand livelihoods propelled

into calamity. Then, blistering recrimination
& grim survivors doing what must be done.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

ISIL OR ISIS OR ISLAMIC STATE

by Patsy Asuncion

Image source: Aljazeera

One can be a brother only in something.

Where there is no tie that binds men,

men are not united but merely lined up.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

no matter the tag, they’re Sunnis who hate  
Shiites who dominate the Iraqi state
since Hussein departed in ‘03
"helped" by US-defined democracy.

Concerns from Mid-East neighbors,
resistance a flop since US departure –
weapons seized from fleeing soldiers,
relics smashed in the promised land
oil fields reclaimed in beat-up Iran.

ISIS eyes Syria since Assad is Alawite,
a heretic because of his ties to Shiites.
Syrian Sunnis fight to oust him
with money from Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Emirates, Egypt, even Bahrain.

Assad fights back with his mob of brothers,
Hezbollah – holy Shiite terrorists and others.
Yes, Lebanon’s faithful kill one Sunni, another.
Then Shiite Iran’s top weapons are given
for Iraq is seen as birthplace of religion.

Are you getting this straight? Do I need to conjugate?
And what’s official position of the United States?
Obama, now Trump, decries weapons of mass destruction
(seems we’ve heard this in yet another’s election).
He wants no nukes and stable oil production,

no threats to Jews or Christians with destruction
despite Republicans heating Israeli relations.
Netanyahu came to curse nuke negotiations
with Iran, much to Obama’s aggravation.
Is fight in our nation like Islamic coalitions?

Weighing terrorist bloodshed of innocents,
what can be done to prevent more incidents?
Seeing more inter-Muslim murders a day,
should we let Allah sort it out his way
as Palin retorted, and stay out of the fray?


Patsy Asuncion’s 2016 debut poetry collection Cut on the Bias depicts her world from the slant of a bi-racial child raised by an immigrant father and WWII vet. Indiana University’s Spirit this spring, The New York Times, Prevention Magazine, vox poetica, Cutthroat Journal, Snapdragon, Loyola’s The Truth About the Fact, Reckless Writing and others feature Patsy’s writings. The only local female emcee, Patsy promotes diversity through her open mic (6900+ YouTube views) and local initiatives, e.g., Women of Color, International Mother Language Day and International Women’s Day events.

SHARED GRIEVING

by F.I. Goldhaber

Haidar Mustafa, who was wounded in Thursday's twin suicide bombings, sleeps on a bed at the Rasoul Aazam Hospital in Burj al-Barajneh, southern Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Nov. 13, 2015. Haidar's parents Hussein and Leila were killed in the blast as they were parking their car when one of two suicide attackers blew himself up in a southern Beirut suburb near their vehicle. —BILAL HUSSEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS, The WorldPost, Nov. 16, 2015

Every day people of color die.
Bombs in Yemen, shootings in Lebanon
Suicide explosions in Syria.
No one shouts out on Twitter, changes their
photo on Facebook, creates a hashtag.

But when terrorists kill white people in
European countries, you rally round
their flag, change your profile picture, add
a ribbon to show how you much care. But,
only if the victims look/believe like you.


As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now, her poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies.  Her newest book of poetry Subversive Verse collects poems about corporate cruelty, gender grievances, supreme shambles, political perversion, and race relations. 

WORLD APART

by Kit Zak






Here in this world apart
from Syria’s shoeless kids freezing in Lebanon’s snow
we recheck our Santa’s list
detailed requests from our children
who track every advance in I-phones.

Here in this world apart
from tent cities not just in Bekaa Valley
but in our own hometowns
we push the thermostat up two degrees
then rush to our waiting car.

Here is this world apart
from the country and cities of Syria
where the slaughter does not cease
one hundred and ten thousand and counting
we plan our holiday entertainment.

Here in this world apart
eyes shut to our hungry and sick
and the sixty thousand vets searching shelter
we close our minds to thoughts of oligarchy
believing still in a country with justice for all.


Kit Zak lives with her husband in Lewes,  DE. She has most recently had poems published in an anthology about motherhood as well as in the following journals: Avocet: A Nature Journal, The Blue Collar  Review,  and A Time of Singing.

BOAT PEOPLE

by Martha Landman

Survivors from an asylum seeker boat that sank off Indonesia say the boat returned to land after it hit trouble in rough seas and sank only 50 metres from the shore. About 50 people are either missing or dead, 30 of them understood to be children . . . One survivor told ABC News he had lost his whole family because Australian rescuers did not come when they phoned a day before the sinking.--ABC News, September 29, 2013. Photo: A section of the boat's hull washed up on the south coast of west Java.

Crude boats navigate open waters
Their cathartic hope a controversy.
A curious myriad of destinations
crowd the dreams of young and old voyagers.
Why are we called boat people, mạ?

Wind and waves swirl higher than hopes
the angry South China Sea a perilous journey
hunger, thirst and disease unstoppable.
Stave off pirates searching for gold.
Why are we called boat people, mạ?

Children battle the wind against rusted rails
their pleasure-filled shrieks fly above the sea.
Torn sails whip at seabirds sweeping from high
not a morsel found on the sardine-packed deck.
Why are we called boat people, mạ?

No school, no chores who cares about poverty
brilliant beginnings await on foreign shores
human remnants won't refuse refuge.
Merry gale winds bluster at 47 knots to the future.
How exquisite to be boat people, mạ!

A luminous moon at the calm end of the storm
dog-tired, famished crew fall into listless sleep.
Bloodied hands and chapped lips a small price
for the merciful miracle of freedom in a new land.
For how much longer are we boat people, mạ?

A snapped mast appeases the heavens
to save the haggard wide-eyed stunted cargo
with unwashed faces and unbrushed teeth.
Cold, stiff bodies a weary tangle at disaster's edge.
We had enough of being boat people, mạ!



The rising sun confirms the arrival of land
timid excitement hovers in empty stomachs
new hope floats up from a broken hull in the
early morning breeze — to be the new kid.
Does anyone want boat people, mạ?


Martha Landman writes in Tropical North Queensland, Australia. Her work has appeared in Every Day Poets, Eunoia Review, The Blue Hour Magazine, Poetry 24 and others.

PALM SUNDAY AT RABIEH, MOUNT LEBANON

by Antony Johae

This early April the sun’s suddenly hot
good for summer suits, light dresses
and children’s spangled frocks.
Church bells jangle invitation to enter
into AC away from open heat and glare.
Candles are carried in procession
olive branches in lieu of palm.
This boy holds a sprig of rosemary, scented for Sunday.
This woman struggles with her wet baby,
she’s breaking out in tears.
Some come in out-worn dresses
pre-nuptial, before male seed misshaped them into mothers
their men baldish, bellies loose-belted.

But here’s a well-formed girl chaste as Mary, Beatrice-beautiful
coming in as the Lord’s Prayer is said:
“ . . . lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .”
This man’s tripped on the west door steps
chagrined that he’s grazed a knee.
That woman’s bra-strap is showing. Does she know it?
These girls’ skirts are short, leg muscles winter-white.
This old woman’s hair is dyed black – and that man’s moustache
camouflage for untold years.
Those dark-skinned maids are looking on as strangers,
some too young to have traveled – they don’t look troubled.

Outside, power pylons stretch up tapering like spires
and thick cables overhang a church of stone
– modern wit enough to make the Lord laugh.
Or is perhaps the joke inverse?
Human circumstance absurd.


Antony Johae lives in Lebanon and is a freelance writer. The poem is taken from a collection in progress: Lines on Lebanon. His work has appeared previously in The New Verse News.