THE EMPTY CELL

by Lynn White

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

Bosnian Serb war criminal Mladić commemorated in Belgrade, but no state honours: Thousands are expected at Mladić's burial in Belgrade on Monday, which will proceed without serving officials, artillery salutes or ceremonial military presence. Brussels has said earlier any glorification would be "incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built". Mladić died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war in Bosnia. His remains were flown to Serbia from The Hague on a government plane on Thursday. —EuroNews, September 5, 2026

The Butcher is dead.

His meat decayed bones

broken

burned

buried

now waiting

for him to follow.

His cell is empty

waiting gravely

for those

whose meat 

is fresh

blood

and bones

broken

burned

buried

sometimes in rubble

always in the rubble of words.

So we wait

wanting

them

to be unearthed

the earth

made empty

as the cell

waiting 

for the ones

who are chosen.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

REQUIEM FOR VESNA VULOVIC

by Devon Balwit

A Serbian woman who survived what was said to be a 10,000-metre (33,000ft) fall after a plane exploded in mid-air in 1972 has died aged 66. Vesna Vulović  (above in 1972 AP photo) was found dead by her friends in her apartment in Belgrade, Serbian state television reported. The cause of death was not immediately known. In January 1972 she was working as a flight attendant a Yugoslav Airlines DC-9 plane when it blew up over the snowy mountain ranges of what was then Czechoslovakia. All of the other 27 passengers and crew on board died.Initially paralysed from the waist down, Vulović eventually made almost a full recovery and even returned to work for the airline in a desk job. She never regained memory of the accident or her rescue. She said in 2008 that she could only recall greeting passengers before takeoff from the airport in Denmark, and then waking up in hospital with her mother at her side. She went on to put her celebrity at the service of political causes, protesting against Slobodan Milošević’s rule in the 1990s and later campaigning for liberal forces in elections. —The Guardian, December 24, 2016

The nervous begged to sit beside her on planes,
figuring anyone who had plummeted 33,000 feet
and lived had lucky coiled into her DNA.  Her fall
made her a mosaic reassembled by doctors and
by will.  Changed by gravity, she spoke out,
unafraid to call a butcher’s hands blood-dipped,
even if it cost her job.  The tiniest stone can clog
an engine, resisting from where it’s hurled.

Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon. She has a chapbook Forms Most Marvelous forthcoming from dancing girl press (summer 2017). Her recent poems can be found in: Oyez, The Cincinnati Review, Red Paint Hill, The Ekphrastic Review, TheNewVerse.News, Noble Gas Quarterly, Timberline Review, Trailhead Magazine, Vector, and Permafrost.