YESTERDAY'S WREN

by Al Ortolani

My feet are cold. My financial
value is diminishing. I am baffled
by the future, except for my
demise, which is guaranteed
by the history of birds like me.
Birds who sing as if today
is forever, as if all we need is 
enough seed, a few twigs for
a nest, and the egg we share
with its speckled shell, protected
by Social Security, by Medicare,
by whatever we gave ourselves
yesterday when we planned for 
tomorrow, which is cracking today.
I am memorizing country codes
so I can use my phone to call for help.
Hello Portugal, this is an American 
wren speaking, can I rent a birdhouse? 
I am a Boomer. I won’t sing for long.

Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review.

CLOSE TO THE ABYSS

by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

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

 

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss—

a felon in the White House—yet you, my knight,

ride in. I wouldn’t think to call it bliss

 

with tensions at a high-pitched, python hiss

in news reports: so many crimes. Indict!

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

 

and you distract me as we reminisce

about our kids, the work we love, hold tight

to us, and still, I couldn’t call it bliss

 

when daughters, sons, so young, are stuck with this:

his lies, the vitriol he spews, the spite.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss.

 

You vow we’ll move to Portugal, dismiss

the obstacles of language, passports, flight,

the cost. Is now the time to call it bliss?

 

A lunatic— his head ballooned with hubris—

rouses me to stand, to choose to fight.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

but I have you. I will. I’ll call it bliss.

 

Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the South Coast of Massachusetts and works in her hometown library as Head of the Reference department. Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Magma, Orbis, Crannóg, Eclectica Magazine and American Arts Quarterly, among others. She won the 2017 Luso-American Fellowship for the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, was a Hawthornden Fellow in Scotland, and was accepted into Marge Piercy’s Summer Poetry Intensive in Wellfleet. She is a member of the Powow River poets, and her chapbook Nothing In-Between is available from Barefoot Muse Press.

DIASPORA FOOTBALL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

It was a difficult day at the Qatar World Cup. Our American ambassadors, 

Argentina and Brazil, both with attacking teams who strike as lightning 

and sit back as well controlling the ball, dribbling it back and forth, 

 

wearing the patience down of their European opponents—had leads 

vanish with minutes to go, the European powers striking back, 

and in the case of Croatia pulling off the upset, mighty Brazil losing 

 

on penalties. But Argentina survived. Shot its penalties with clinical 

power, and their goalkeeper used his brain to anticipate the directions 

of the Dutch kicks. I am writing this to remember a Friday in December 

 

when honor lay on the field, and glory, and also bitter defeat. This is 

the field of battle, the football field, the field of dreams, the field of 

identities, how if our country loses we shift then to its natural neighbor, 

 

overcoming regional rivalries in the name of a greater continental unity. 

Imagine how Moroccans feel now as they represent their country and all 

of Africa and all migrants too, as many have grown up away from 

 

their kingdom, in exile, when they strap on their boots to play Portugal 

in the next quarterfinal? My documenting pen will dress with them. 

The diaspora team, my friend calls not only Morocco but France, 

 

England and many others. Football is the identity card, 

the passport. Borders are fluid, 2022 composed of a motley crew 

of border crossers, migrant wonders, football envoys.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

LAST PICTURE

by Anne Graue

A couple taking a photo on the edge of a cliff died when they fell hundreds of feet while their young children watched, according to news reports. The Polish couple died after falling from the rocky edge in Cabo da Roca in west Portugal. They were apparently taking a 'selfie' photo of themselves, according to NBC and others, though details of the events leading up to the fall were still hazy. A local English language news site, the Portugal Resident, said the parents had given the children the camera to take a picture. Their children, ages 5 and 6, were turned over to Polish diplomats and are undergoing psychiatric care. --USA Today, August 12, 2014. Photo: Portuguese National Tourist Office via USA Today.

Stepping back, waving
to the boys

smiling as one foot
slips on loose rock
before the other goes

they fall together
back into blue
sky, the camera

still in the hands
of the six-year-old

watching his mother
as she leans
back into the sun

his father as he
reaches for her
to catch her hand

the terror

realizing the cliff
the water below.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, VerseWrights, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com.