The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, and in online poetry journals including The New Verse News, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. She resides in Cherokee County, Texas.
Swastika graffiti at Naturally Good Foods in Montauk, Photo: Rabbi Josh Franklin. —Dan’s Papers, October 30, 2023
We spend the morning cleaning graffiti. An antisemitic phrase scrawled on a Holocaust survivor’s home in California. A display supporting Israeli hostages, kicked over in Minnesota. Palestinian nationalist messaging spray-painted on a non-profit’s building in Rhode Island. There is no justification for raping and murdering ordinary citizens in front of their families, mutilating babies, decapitating people, using automatic weapons and grenades to hunt down and murder young people at a music festival celebrating peace, burning families alive, kidnapping and taking hostages, parading women hostages in front of chanting crowds, and documenting it all on social media. Kristallnacht 2023.
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be,Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press),and After the Equinox.
DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — On the top floor of a modest two-story brick building near the shore of Lake Superior, the executive director of northern Minnesota’s only abortion clinic flits from room to room, checking in patients, fielding phone calls from people seeking appointments and handling billing questions from those struggling to pay. In the waiting room at WE Health Clinic in Duluth, patients from Wisconsin and Texas sit among Minnesotans — the leading edge of an expected uptick in out-of-state patients following the Supreme Court’s removal of the federal right to abortion. Photo: A clinic escort outside WE Health Clinic in Duluth, Minn., awaits the arrival of patients, Thursday, July 7, 2022. The clinic escorts protect patients from protesters as they approach and enter the clinic. (AP Photo/Derek Montgomery)
We mosh to punk in a shower of bubbles
and beer at house shows on Saturday
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
Decked out in tin foil and wearing fish heads,
we flail and wail in the annual Smelt Parade
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
Our earrings are handmade, we drink coffee
brewed downtown and our music is Homegrown
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
An underground art collective hauls a piano
onto Lake Superior for improvisation opera
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
We plow out each other’s cars in negative
thirty-degree temperature snow storms
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
Our lake is as big as the sea. She is grounding,
healing and as comforting as living
within a city where abortion is legal and safe.
Pro-choice protestors sing the child I babysit
happy birthday and feed him cupcakes
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
Indigenous land protectors chant and bring
their drums when we rally for choice
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
A surprising amount of us are queer or trans,
and my non-binary heart feels right at home
in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
I’d like to own goats on the outskirts of town,
and will only raise a family or give birth
in a city where abortion is legal and safe.
My co-workers and I work together to provide
patients with gender-affirming healthcare
in my city’s clinic where abortion is legal and safe.
Patients kiss my hand after a suction abortion,
thanking me for holding theirs during their procedure
in my city’s clinic where abortion is legal and safe.
Too many Duluthians make a poverty wage and rent
isn’t cheap in my city where abortion is legal and safe.
And each day we must keep fighting for the culture,
clinic and city where abortion is legal and safe.
Jess Morgan is a nonbinary poet in Duluth, Minnesota where they juggle many hats. Their jobs include (but are not limited to) working as a wedding DJ, sound technician, patient educator for abortion services at WE Health clinic, hobby photographer, and occasional goat-sitter. They are a fiscal year 2022 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Poems they've written have been included (or are soon to be included) in The Nemadji Review, Prøve Art Gallery's Zine titled Emerge, and the Wisconsin Review. Jess shares a Tik Tok account with their partner called @ColdLakeHotPoets to capture their poetry adventures around Duluth.
How do they know the real population of Minnesota, asked my daughter, as her older sister was within hours of an and-one moment. There are vital statistics kept, each birth and death are tracked to offset the changes. Deaths by IED, in schools, grocery stores, dance clubs, by gangster/zealot/misguides with ARs, by combat, depression, vengeance-disease or age. Thinking of my Aunt, with her new pacemaker, describing her day to her what’s-his-name son, because after dinner, the mind’s velocity wanes, as if a human comet falling back to earth. I visited my dad’s grave, saluting his WWII Airforce time, sure, but his greatest service as mentor to all. If he could see what the insurrectionists assert today in the name of patriotism, he’d re-enlist and ask for a D.C. assignment, thinking he could detox the paranormal hatred engendered against progressive democracy. If unsuccessful, he’d enter his “come on now” mode, demanding nothing less than reason, flinging treason into the infested sewer. It’s said we are coded. His sense of equanimity/persuasion/reason/forceful compassion = soother of spirits. We each inherit a collection of such souls, all of the elements swirling within, like an alphabet of inclinations. With it do we promote peace, or reflexively look for sales, fitfully running from the best within? Memorial Day is indeed solemn, honoring passed down lives that survive as we ride the bear, the bull and the barrel.
Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine and litigates. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, Blue Mountain Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Portside, The New Verse News, JMWW, Cagibi, Silver Blade, Crack the Spine, Dash, Mikrokosmos, North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Main Street Rag, and Brooklyn Review.
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Prosecutors in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery's accused murderers filed a flurry of new motions in recent days, including 15 in just the past 24 hours. Among them, the state's District Attorney's Office is asking the judge to allow a three-hour closing argument (an hour longer than allowed) and to show jurors cell phone video of Arbery's killing during opening statements. Arbery was shot to death on Feb. 23, 2020, after three men chased him through the coastal Georgia neighborhood of Satilla Shores. Travis and Greg McMichael are charged with first-degree murder along with their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, who joined the chase and recorded the incident on his cell phone. All three have pleaded not guilty. … The state has filed previous motions seeking to keep out evidence of Arbery's diagnosed mental illness or his prior run-ins with police. The judge has not yet ruled on any of the motions. The next court date is July 22 at 10 a.m. —First Coast News, July 2, 2021
1. I Sing For Ahmaud
I sing for my sanity
At night when I cannot sleep
When the darkness plays an endless loop
Of yesterday’s tragic news
And I sing for the young black men
Daily dying in our bleeding streets
And I sing and pray for the mothers
Whose tears stoke the flames of justice
Now I sing and I pray
Try to understand the fear the killers feel
Why they grasp the coward’s last line of defense
The trigger of a gun
Yes I sing and pray that they’re something more
Than the heartless, mindless head at the White House door
Greeting millions marching for justice
With tear gas and vicious dogs
I sing for my sanity
And pray for a savior like Dr. King
To heal this deeply wounded world
With wisdom, peace and love
Yes I sing for the martyrs
That their blood will finally cleanse this world
And slake the thirst of hate
For now and all-time
Now I sing and I pray
Try to understand the fear the killers feel
Why they grasp the coward’s last line of defense
The trigger of a gun
I sing and pray that there’s something more
That the mindless, heartless head at the White House door
Greeting millions marching for justice
With tear gas and vicious dogs
Yes I sing, I sing, I sing
I sing for this country’s sanity
2. Chanty For Ahmaud
The sunbeams and shadows thread through the Spanish moss
As the young men run under the live oak trees
It’s 1820 and all is well
Cause young black men know where they should be
At work for the master crushing shells from the beach
Making tabby all day, yes that’s their play
Hang your head low and shuffle your feet
Building master’s big house on Satilla’s white shore (and they sing)
“Ho, Ho. Scrape and pound.
Happy at work for the master
Ho. Ho. Yes scrape and pound
Crushing shells for tabby to build Master’s house.”
Now it’s two thousand twenty, see what we’ve lost
Young black men forgot their place in this world
They dare to run on Satilla’s white shore
Without a white man to set their course
Sorry to say it had to be done
Lesson well-taught with an old shotgun
Soon we’ll forget and go back to our ways
When young black men knew their place (and they’ll sing)
“Ho. Ho. Scrape and pound.
Happy at work for master
Ho. Ho. Yes I scrape and pound
Crushing shells for tabby to build Master’s house.”
3. Black Lives Matter
Black lives matter
Finally a cause worth dying for
Black lives matter
Finally a chance to do what Jesus would do
Do you know Jesus
He used to run every Sunday down in southeast Georgia
Then one day two white men shot Jesus dead in the street
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Do you know Jesus
After dying in Georgia, she moved up to Kentucky
Asleep in her own bed the police shot her dead
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Black lives matter
Finally a cause worth dying for
Black lives matter
Finally a chance to do what Jesus would do
Do you know Jesus
Dead in Kentucky, on up to Minnesota
Policeman put a knee on his neck, he died
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Black lives matter
Do you know Jesus
4. Little Jimmy’s Eatin’ Some Crow Now
Awake this morning before the cock crowed
I worry, worry, worry bout my battered soul
I can’t stop seeing that black child’s blood
Puddled neath his body and his toy gun
2020 air still stings my eyes
It’s summer 21, now who will die
Don’t know why some folks continue to hate
And take delight in passing it along
It’s the damnest way to live in this world
Bowtie man telling cute jokes
“Why’d the little negro bring his toy gun to town?
To give police some target practice.”
“Whooowee,” says the bowtie man, “...that little Jimmy’s eatin some crow now.”
Why? Why? Why?... Hell, I don’t know
And he laughs and laughs into the online sky
Bowtie man with the crazy eyes
Living to spread hate as far as he can
He’s the darling of every other Christian man
“When should a black man jog down the street.”
“If he’s in south Georgia... never. “
“How do you celebrate Black History month.”
“Watermelon, breakfast, supper and lunch. Whooo Weeee.”
It’s the damnest way to live in this world
Bowtie man telling cute jokes
“Why’d the little negro bring his toy gun to town?
To give police some target practice.”
“Whooowee,” says the bowtie man, “...that little Jimmy’s eatin some crow now.”
The work of Richard Lawson of Brunswick, Georgia has been published in Fine Lines.
T***p tells white audience in Minnesota they have 'good genes.'
Only the best horses the best of the best genes all American we have been told winning is ours, it's in the genes
In the genes of the whitewashed suburban picket fences clean rural outposts pristine fields, barns purebred offspring the best future of the ultimate winners of this gifted generation history outpacing, outrunning imagination so we cannot see our dwindling power dementia darkness taking root.
Taking root in the hayfields, cornfields urban tracks and highways bleachers and country clubs of the best country only the best of the best of us betting on the top horse to win at any cost.
At any cost we run the track we've run before we keep losing the best of the human race costing us everything.
Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include Project XXabout a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Lovea spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year.
They put me in these overalls
They put me in these shoes
Yeah, they put me in these overalls
They put me in these shoes
They handed me a Stanley knife
Said, ‘son it’s time to pay yer dues’
Well, the stock is rolling in
And the stock is rolling out
Yeah, the stock is rolling in
And the stock is rolling out
I’m walking like a branded slave
When all I wanna do is twist and shout
Well, mama get me outta here
This ain’t the life I choose
I said mama get me outta here
This ain’t the life I choose
I’m shackled to this factory
Lord, I got the boxcutter blues
Damian Balassone is an Australian poet whose work has appeared in over 100 publications, most notably in The New York Times. He is the author of three volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming Strange Game in a Strange Land.
Researchers believe there are far fewer snowy owls than previously thought, and they worry the birds' long-term survival could be affected by global warming. —U.S.News, December 21, 2017
They have arrived from the north
Exiting the tundra and the lemmings
To hunt along the lake shore
Overlooked by high rises where
They perch noble as statues.
Yellow eyes fasten on a bridge
Where the ghost of Clarence Darrow
Is said to return each anniversary
Of his death. A wreath is placed in the
Lagoon where the arctic birds
Survey prospects like the Vikings
In the long ships headed for the Mediterranean.
What is it about the south that lures them—
These voyagers—the hunger for expansion
Or to be lauded as myth?
Each summer a woman in a Boundary Waters cabin
Awaits the visitation of the snowy owl
She rescued as a fledgling.
He comes wingspread as a westerly wind
To the familiar perch on her veranda.
Here, the photographers, out in force,
Capture the invasion. On barn roofs,
Streetlights, electric poles, they land
With a taste for rats and gulls.
The Greek priests extracted
The entrails of owls to seize upon the future.
Now, the warming world foresees
White feathers floating past the towers
Of condominiums and offices
As the owls descend to warn us.
Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead HorsesandSelected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.
Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She was an all level teacher and a librarian. Presently she is a freelance writer and a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been widely published in numerous magazines. One of her poems was published in the anthology After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Her first book of poetry she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released in the fall.
A truck drove into a crowd at Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France, leaving many dead and sending hundreds running for safety. —The New York Times, July 14, 2016. Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters.
One daughter posts a picture of her face, sad,
reading Hannah Arendt On Violence; my husband
watches Wimbledon, says he has no perspective
on it yet. One daughter is growing a son. Her app
says he’s the size of a coconut. Another texts
from the West: I can’t sleep -- I feel traumatized.
A client calls from home to say his anxiety’s up.
People kayak on the flat lake, ignoring the thunder.
This makes me anxious. The dog sleeps beneath
the dining room table. All I want is to read 89 Ways to Love Summer! Can we afford to let sleeping dogs lie?
I take my pills, prelude to a walk, and eat strawberries,
small and sweet, on Cheerios. Wheaties are more
American but my daughters can’t tolerate wheat.
How much can we tolerate? The storm is sweeping
across the lake. I need a megaphone to shout out
my grief and anger. My fear. If you hear thunder,
the warning repeats over and over on the news, you’re close enough to be struck by lightning.
Gail Martin’s book Begin Empty-Handed won the Perugia Press Poetry prize in 2013 and was awarded the Housatonic Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her first book The Hourglass Heart (New Issues Press), was published in 2003. New work is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry and The Southern Review. Martin works as a psychotherapist in private practice in Kalamazoo, MI.
Colleagues and parents on Thursday remembered Philando Castile as an ambitious man who served as a role model for hundreds of children before he was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota. Photo: Philando Castile (L) is seen with a colleague in this undated J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School yearbook photo. —TIME, July 7, 2016
Philando Castile, cafeteria
supervisor, remembered
which students couldn’t have
milk. I imagine his kids
lined up under the fluorescent
hum, pushing plastic trays
along the chrome lunch counter.
Yes to mashed potatoes.
No to baked beans. A little
more corn, please. Last stop
the quiet act of reaching
down into the chest cooler
to select white, chocolate,
or infinitely less popular juice
for kids Phil might’ve consoled
with a smile or clap on the shoulder.
Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.
“The week started with scenes from a cellphone video of an African-American man lying on the ground being fatally shot by a Louisiana police officer, and an astonishing Facebook Live feed of a woman in Minnesota narrating after her African-American boyfriend was killed by an officer during a traffic stop. It ended with horrific live television coverage of police officers’ being gunned down by at least one sniper at what had been a peaceful march protesting the police shootings.” —The New York Times, July 8, 2016 Photo: A spray-painted mural on a building on Foster Drive in Baton Rouge, La., on Thursday, where Alton Sterling was shot to death by a police officer two days earlier. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times.
No, I do not want to be integrated
into a burning house
where the roof collapses
and firemen die in the rubble,
forced to stay silent when
the sirens fly by in the dark
and guns shoot the innocent.
I do not want to live
in a field of burning red poppies,
shocking in their color
against fallen gray homes
bombed down to bedrock.
My life means more than this.
I am not ready to walk silent
into a cemetery to lie down
with all the unnamed dead.
Carolyn Gregory has published poems and music reviews in American Poetry Review, Cutthroat, Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ygdrasil, Seattle Review. Her first and second books were published by Windmill Editions in Florida.
Diamond Reynolds (right) and her 4-year-old daughter. Both were in the car during Philando Castile's untimely death. Image source: Twitter via Ebony, July 7, 2016.
My granddaughter just turned four,
she holds as many fingers in the air and smiles,
our ancestral gap between her two front teeth,
her pearly face blushed.
She loves to sing and stands beside me
on a chair to help with food prep,
asks surprisingly complex questions
I often struggle to explain to her satisfaction.
I don’t know what to do with the headlines this morning.
I don’t want fear and hatred to win.
What words can I give you, Lavish,
that could possibly serve?
I can’t get out of my head,
your four-year-old girl comforting you,
you in handcuffs, partner dead.
Your courage, the facts, sir, the facts.
I see it. I hear it.
It's in my mouth, my lungs.
I cannot stop hearing her voice.
Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years, old.
A Pushcart nominee, Kari Gunter-Seymour holds a B.F.A. in graphic design and an M.A. in commercial photography. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in publications including Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, Main Street Rag, and The LA Times. She is the founder/curator of the “Women of Appalachia Project,” an arts organization (fine art and spoken word) she created to address discrimination directed at women living in Appalachia.
