BLOW WINDS BLOW

by Joy Kreves

 

New Jersey had two Jersey Shore towns report wind gusts of 60 mph on Monday night. More windy weather is expected Tuesday. Canva for NJ.com, December 30, 2025

Kick this era out into the cold

tail between its legs, thrash  

it with your breath ‘till it whimpers

 

Blow   blow    blow

clear out all the hangers-on

clinging to the corners

 

Blast like the pig-hunting wolf

but with strong enough huffs

to tumble brick walls

 

Slide your exhale across cold hearts, 

melt them like the wicked witch,

Ice down, down, drown 

 

Blow, bluster, dust off 

old peace signs, bring back butterflies

reignite a summer of love 

 

Roll sushi, tie tamales, shape samosas,

ribbon takeout containers in rainbow twine

Delight in the fruits of people’s labors

 

Then let us awaken to a calm, 

a steady sun that seeps its warmth

into our naked limbs

Sun Geode Rock, sculpture by Joy Kreves

Joy Kreves is a visual artist and poet living in New Jersey. She detests wind and lives with a big, white fluffy dog who everyone assumes loves snow, but he does not. However, he doesn't mind wind, even in large gusts. Kreves wrote this poem on the recent cold, gusty day.

SINKHOLE

by Rick Mullin

Collapsed abandoned mineshaft caused giant sinkhole shutting down part of I-80 in Morris County NJ —ABC 7 New York, December 28, 2024

Rick Mullin is a painter and poet living in northern New Jersey. His latest books are Huncke, Exot Books, and The Basilisk, Dos Madres Press.

TOWARD A GENTLER GOOD NIGHT

by Elane Gutterman

N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy signs the Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act Friday, April 12, 2019 at the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton, N.J. New Jersey joins seven other states and Washington, D.C. to enact a law permitting terminally ill patients to seek life ending medication. The law takes effect in August. (Credit: New Jersey Office of the Governor via WHYY)

The trigger for me was the research for a poem, my artful
turn on two decades of Oregon envy, wanting their Death
with Dignity to apply in New Jersey as a law abiding act.

I stumbled on the lobbying group and the way grew less abstract.
Supporters met up at the State House. Our message fine-tuned art,
we engaged lawmakers on the need for choice when near to death.

Those opposed called it suicide, minimized long-suffering death.
Finally, the bills came up for a vote, would they be enacted?
I stared at the display as votes in favor mounted like hanging art.

Work of art, my state enters the pact. Governor affirms choice in death.

In this tritina, Elane Gutterman celebrates a milestone in advocacy work with Compassion & Choices. Her poems have been published in U.S 1 Summer Fiction Issue, Kelsey Review, Patterson Literary Review, and TheNewVerse.News.

SUNSET COMMENT ON THE NEW YEAR

by George Held

29 December 2016

It’s one of those glorious sunsets,
Like an ad for New Mexico, that makes
You feel blessed to be alive even as
Authoritarianism leaks over the horizon –
Orange and gold flames with a purple core
Over New Jersey without the seasonal
Obstruction of leaves on the trees –
What might it presage, what tacit
Message doth it bring, this dynamic neon
Peach Melba of a twilit sky? Not the Orange
Man risen from New York City towers
To loom Kong-like over even the sunset,
The sky, the compliant Universe,
The galactic figure of our tabloid
Imaginations?
And now the fire in the sky
Deepens like a Roman omen, the night
Rushes in to drape dark auguries
About the perishing republic, and we brace
For the inevitable inauguration, the sunset
A mere glowing ember in the charred evening.

George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has received ten Pushcart nominations, including ones for both poetry and fiction in 2016. His new poetry chapbook is Phased II (Poets Wear Prada, 2016).

THE SECAUCUS FIRE

by Rick Mullin

April 19, 2016

It burned for hours on the Internet,
the skyline of Manhattan lost behind
a meadow ghost of plodding smoke, regret,
despair, ennui and memory combined.

I watched it at my desk. I shared the link,
anticipating mayhem on the Path
to Hoboken, a donnybrook outside
the Railhead Bar, a cavalcade of wrath
and rank confusion. Madness. Suicide.
The Erie Lackawanna on the brink

of nothing, I would learn at 5 o’clock.
An unremarkable commute. The crowd
was not in crisis mode. The normal shock
and shuffle led upstairs to where no cloud
of earthly origin drove Jerseyans to drink.


Rick Mullin's new poetry collection is Stignatz & the User of Vicenza.

CHRISTIE HIAWATHA

by Joe Pacheco




“I worked the cones, actually, unbeknownst to everybody.” 
--New Jersey Governor Christie joke at his Press Conference, January 9, 2014


By the bridge of Fort Lee city,
Guys once went to make their bones,
Unbeknownst to everybody,
Actually, I worked the cones.

Port Authority bogus study:
What if we shut down two zones?
Unbeknownst to everybody,
Actually, I worked the cones.

Timed just right for 9 September:
School begins for Buono’s clones.
Unbeknownst to everybody,
Actually, I worked the cones.

Four full days of jams and tie-ups,
Staff delights at drivers’ groans.
Unbeknownst to everybody,
Actually, I worked the cones.

Jersey Dems from their glass houses
Have no business throwing stones.
Unbeknownst to everybody,
Actually, I worked the cones.

When they vote me Chief Commander
With full power over drones,
Let it beknownst to everybody,
Actually, I worked the cones.


Joseph Pacheco is a retired New York City superintendent living on Sanibel Island.  His poetry has been featured several times on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Latino USA and WGCU. He has performed his poetry with David Amram’s jazz quartet at the Bowery Poets Café and Cornelia Street Café in New York City. He writes a poetry column for the Sanibel Islander and his poetry has appeared in English and Spanish in the News-Press. In 2008 he received the Literary Artist of the Year award from Alliance for the Arts. He has published three books of poetry, The First of the Nuyoricans/Sailing to Sanibel,  Alligator in the Sky and, most recently, Sanibel Joe’s Songbook.