SEASON OF THE WITCH, 2025

by Laurie Rosen

Usha Vance official portrait

The straw brush of my fireplace broom broke free. I refuse 

to throw it away, someone must surely need it. I could refit it, 

attach it to a long branch. I dream of bringing it to Usha Vance, 

insisting she take the broomstick and make for a speedy escape. 

I assure her that sisters and aunties will rise to guide her and her 

children to freedom. 

I might be wrong in offering Usha more protection than I do 

Melania, who seems ruthless, caring only for herself, money 

and comfort. Who can forget: “I really don’t care, do you?”

Usha stays quiet, appears surprised by where she’s been taken 

hostage––her eyes full of terror like a deer in my meadow, 

during hunting season, who looks up from her grazing, realizes 

I’m staring at her. Nudging her fawn, they run for safety. (Though 

many men would hurt them, I never would). 

When they met, Usha was an attorney, a democrat, Vance was 

someone else too. But he’s been remaking himself from the 

beginning. He’s a master of reinvention, like Woody Allen’s Zelig 

or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, altering his name and persona 

again and again. I’m guessing he promised Usha that with him, she 

could have it all, career, kids, an opinion. Instead bit by bit, with each

change, he steals her voice then her power, leaving her unrecognizable 

even to herself.  

Usha, I say, save yourself, your children too. Take the broom, and 

fly, fly, fly away. 

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in One Art: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Oddball Magazine, The New Verse News, The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food, Zig Zag Lit Mag, Minyan Magazine, and elsewhere. Laurie was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize.

BE BEST

by Beth McKim

I am the most bullied person on all the world.

And so is my husband, your President.
We are more bullied than the gays, the trans people,
 the blacks, the rapists and murderers from Mexico, the Jews,
(like my step-daughter and her husband.)
We are even more bullied than the mentally handicapped,
than those who aren’t beautiful models like me,
 the poor without pretty clothes or houses,
and people who speak only one language, not like
me who speak five and make my husband proud.

All of you watch me, every move I make.
You don’t like what you saw
when I went to see the immigrant children
in cages at the border of Texas, I wear a coat that say,
I don’t care, do you? Or when I wear my Manolo Blahnik
stilettos to Houston to say hello to the victims of the flood .

Or my white safari suit and stylish Pith helmet
when I go to Africa to visit the  children in one of the shithole
places my husband doesn’t like. You say I look like Imperialist.
I don’t know what that is and I don’t care.
I went to do good and look good.

You see me when I slap my husband’s
hand away, when he won’t open my car door, when
he keeps his umbrella only for himself when it rains, when I
don’t ride in car with him to State of the Union address.

I don’t think it’s fair I should live like this when I never wanted
this job, just like my husband. We should not be bullied
or made fun of. And that is why I have made my only job
to Be Best, stop the hate on social media, make all bullies
stop doing it except for my husband.
He has the right to do this because he is your President.

Beth McKim watches our world with daily astonishment as to what our country has become. Unlike the lady in her poem, Beth is neither wealthy nor a beautiful model and only speaks one and a half languages. She is, however, an actress and a writer and her work appears regularly in niche publications, including on a couple of occasions, the TheNewVerse.News. She reads NVN religiously and is amazed on a daily basis by the insightful poetry that helps us all weather the storms of politics today.

QUEEN

by Scot Siegel

Image source: Pinterest

for Melania

One hundred days the Queen hibernates,
burrowed deep in a cavern of bark.

Every day, a star blinks on, or off,
birth of another scientist, or murderer,

and someone loses his or her job.
Every day is someone's first

at something, waking up married, burying
the dog, eating dinner alone as a widow.

Every spring, the earth gets back to work.
Queen searches for a dry place, a loft or shed,

a wedge of light between truss and stud,
someplace warm and undisclosed,

close to the source: Wood she'll strip from lap
or fence, chew and mix with saliva.

She works fast, connects petiole to rafter.
Spins the nest about the center stalk, weaves

combs for drones whose eggs take five to eight
days to incubate. Then they get to work.

Everything they do is for the Queen.
She never returns to the same nest.


Scot Siegel, Oregon poet and city planner, is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012), both from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. His poetry is part of the permanent art installation along the Portland, Oregon Light Rail Transit ‘Orange Line.’