INHUMANE, CRUEL, UNACCEPTABLE

State inspectors reviewed seven immigration detention facilities across California, including the recently opened California City detention facility in Kern County. Attorney General Rob Bonta said overcrowding and staffing shortages are creating dangerous conditions. “They are running these facilities with inhumane, cruel, and unacceptable conditions,” Bonta said.

The report documents allegations at several facilities, including delayed medical care, overcrowding, unsanitary living conditions, lack of clean drinking water and excessive use of force.

Investigators also reported six detainee deaths between September 2025 and March 2026, the highest number since California began conducting inspections in 2017.

At the California City facility, detainees described extremely cold conditions, leaking cells during rainstorms, and inadequate clothing. In April, Giovanni Gomez, a friend of a detainee held at the California City detention center, described what he said his friend experienced during transport to the facility. “She said that when she got captured, and they moved her from Bakersfield to the facility, they just put some chains in her feet, and then in her hands, and they put them in the cold room,” Gomez said.

State officials also said that, despite claims the crackdown targets violent criminals, many detainees reviewed during inspections had little or no criminal history.

—BakersfieldNow (KBAK), May 15, 2026

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations. Since writing her first poem at age 73, she has been published well over 100 times. Having now achieved 84 years on this planet, she appreciates leisure to delight in its gifts, as well as time to grieve its desecration. Her second chapbook, Seasonings (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her third book, Well Seasoned (The Poetry Box) has recently been published.  She lives in Raleigh, NC

Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. And he loves The New Verse News!

CHICAGO AND THE SWINE

by Ralph La Rosa

After and with Carl Sandburg

 

Trump Swine A Porky Parody Framed Print by Ingo Klotz

“Each day, it seems like the president is deciding maybe he read something in the newspaper and he’ll send troops to Portland or perhaps to New Orleans or perhaps to Chicago, so I’m always glad to know he’s not sending them to Chicago. We don’t need them. There’s not an emergency in Chicago,” [Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker said. —WGN-TV, September 11,2025

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man in the Chicago area who drove his car into ICE officers, a representative for the agency said on Friday, adding that the man had been resisting arrest during a vehicle stop. The man, who the authorities said was not legally in the country, dragged the officer as he fled in his vehicle, the agency representative said. The officer was severely injured and was in stable condition. —The New York Times, September 12, 2025

Hog butcher for the world
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
 
Euphoric, I recall Chicago and my strenuous birth in Mercy hospital eighty-seven years ago, 
as shaggy as an ape, they said, big shouldered like our city, and soon to be mentored
by its churning and creating twin energies of increasing good and encroaching evil—
but never like the present and deadly evil of the lurking and hulking Super Swine.
He intends to break your will with his weaponized and endlessly destructive lies. 
 
Carl, like you, I have seen the gunmen kill and then set free to kill 
again, when he, the Swine, forgave his armed and loyal mob
of treasonous thugs he ordered to overthrow democracy.
But I know Chicago is brutal: brutal enough to resist his folly, expose 
that he’s no better than another hog to butcher for the world.
 
As you chanted, Carl: Show me another city with lifted head singing so proud 
to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. 
It needs to be; for if the Swine slogs through our city, destroying lives and laws,
unmet by brutal resistance, he will make moves to widen his war throughout our land.
 
 
Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. And he loves The New Verse News!

A RETRO INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

by Ralph La Rosa

With a nod to Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us”

Group of Breaker boys. Location: Pittston, Pennsylvania. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, 1911 January. Source: Library of Congress

The POTUS claims a monarchy, his MAGA boon,

and gutting government, his twisted power

fires thousands, his threats make allies cower.

I don’t know, he says when plotting ruin;

don’t know that blazing August’s now in June;

don’t know about those fed by our endowers—

the sick and war-torn wilting faster than flowers.

I don’t know on trade’s a muddled tune:

He melts down, rages to even the score,

and dictates an Industrial creed outworn

that exploits children, the weak and struggling poor.

Not unionized, their workers’ rights are shorn.

Such crises and chaos democracies deplore

make the knowing world react with scorn.

Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. He Loves The New Verse News!

HE COULDN’T CARE LESS

No eggs I can afford!

     Couldn’t care less

No job with government

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t pay for room and board

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t afford a car.

    Couldn’t care less

Can’t keep health insurance

    Couldn’t care less

My children have measles

    Couldn’t care less

But cod liver oil’s sold out!

    Couldn’t care less

Campaigning again

    Dems should care more

Because He Couldn’t care less

By Joe Blow who couldn’t care more

Ralph La Rosa invented this Joe Blow.

THE WORD WAR

by Ralph La Rosa

Remembering Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

 

He wrote in verse about this word

on a blank page as pale as death.

Though silent, it is mindfully heard.

He wrote in verse a word of the absurd

sweet lie: pro patria mori earns a reward

of decorous honors for one’s last breath.

He wrote in verse about this word

on a pale page—on repetitive death.

Ralph La Rosa’s most recent book is My Miscellaneous Muse.

MYRMIDONS

by Ralph La Rosa

after and with Thoreau

"Hawk Eye" by Tom Tomorrow at The Nib

The main lesson from Afghanistan is that 

the ‘war on terror’ does not work 

—Mary Kaldor, The Guardian, August 24, 2021

Ants battled on my Walden woodpile,

Small reds against much larger blacks.

The wood was strewn with dying and dead:

Imperialist blacks and republican reds.

 

A red clamped on a black ant’s chest

Was shaken till a back leg broke.

I watched another red assault

The black ant’s back and gnaw his neck—

 

An Achilles avenging his Patroclus?

The black destroyed all the reds’ limbs,

Lopped off their heads and left with them.

Who won this internecine bellum?

 

Most warrior Myrmidons soon dead,

Ant squads claimed corpses, black and red.

 

 

Author’s Note: This poem attempts to be a microcosm of Thoreau’s discussion in Walden, Chapter 12: “Brute Neighbors.”

Like Thoreau, Ralph La Rosa finds little to commend ants inhumanity to ants.

THE GUNS THAT MADE SOME

by Ralph La Rosa

Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People. —NRA Bumper Sticker

 

To kids, the guns in TV’s shows

with cowboys killing Indians

say Play guns beat the red man’s bows.

 

First real shots from cool Red Ryders,

let children’s tiny BBs

kill small birds and sting bike riders.

 

Real guns, 12 gauge and 22,

teach white militias skills,

help killers know what they can do.

 

Guns urge cops on urban beats

to kill with high-tech specials

that threaten US states and streets.

 

Like wild-west six-guns of renown,

some guns make reasoned kills,

but impulse kills both black and brown.

Ralph La Rosa owned several of the guns mentioned until he became a teacher and writer.

A CHILDREN'S CRUSADE 2

by Ralph La Rosa

This evolution of revolution
is a student-led crusade,
its first and foremost resolution:
saving earth can’t be delayed.

Ralph La Rosa remembers the good old bad days and hopes for better. His next book in the works is My Miscellaneous Muse: Poem Pastiches & Whimsical Words.

A CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

by Ralph La Rosa

The evolution of revolution
is a student-led crusade,
its first and foremost resolution:
the NRA must be waylaid.


Ralph La Rosa’s work has been published online, including at TheNewVerse.News, and in the books Sonnet Stanzas and Ghost Trees.

AFTER EUPHORIA

by Ralph La Rosa

A post-Obama meditation

After Emily Dickinson, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” (372)

After Euphoria, formal feelings come –
Once Tuning Forks, the Nerves won’t hum
And numbed Hearts wonder, “Where is the Sage who bore
Such sane Good News – out of the White House door?”

Eyes widen, dim, dart around –
Ears ache so
From toxic Lies – all Oughts –
In offal sown,
The requiems for loss – alone –

This is the Hour of Dread
For those who were misled –
But Sickened watchers of the Trumped-up show –
Rest – Regroup – Resist – their Hearts say he must Go


Ralph La Rosa’s work has been published online, including at TheNewVerse.News, and in the books Sonnet Stanzas and Ghost Trees.

FALL LEAVES IN CHARLOTTE

by Ralph La Rosa

A memorial to Keith Scott in Sunday near where Scott was killed by police in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Emery P. Dalesio) —The Washington Post, September 26, 2016.

The brighter they are
the faster they fail.

The higher they are
the farther they fall.

The fewer they are
the faster they fall.

The darker they are
the fiercer they flame.


Ralph La Rosa's most recent book is Ghost Trees.

THE DOLTS' NEXT DEBATE

by Ralph La Rosa

Image source: DonkeyHotey

Don’t ask about earth science
Don’t ask about the poor
Don’t ask about one’s conscience
Such thinking is a chore.

Don’t ask about The Street
Don’t ask about the schools
Don’t ask about deceit
Such issues break our rules.

Do ask if we like kittens
Do ask about the wife
Do ask if we like mittens
Such questions about life.

Do ask if we hate taxes
Do ask if we pray daily
Do ask if we love crises
Such issues never foil us because we always behave like totally deranged assholes

—stupidly.

Ralph La Rosa lives in southern California where he daydreams and writes.

PIED AUTHORITY

by Ralph La Rosa





           after Hopkins

Glory be, he is by God a dappled being—
His house now couple-coloured as a brindled cow;
For faces all a-stipple standing by him;
For words he says for burnt-brown Trayvon’s dying;

Statescapes gutted,pieced—white, black, & now
A verbal fight in which Floridians mock him.
All things countered, North & South estranged;
Wars un-civil embers; inscaped Jim Crow.

With words puzzled, clear, sweet , sour, bright, dim
My president insists this will be changed:

Praise him.


Ralph La Rosa is widely published in print and online journals.