NOTHING

by Lynn White

ABC (Australia), August 27, 2024

In those streets

of men and boys,

in that country 

for men and boys,

she feels like a person with no face,

her face space covered,

her identity occupied

by a swirling mist of confusion

like nothingness being born.

Sometimes 

she wishes for a blank space

that she could fill herself

with a Magritte apple

or even a woman

even herself

un-blanked

and visible.

Now, in those streets

of men and boys,

in that country 

for men and boys,

she feels like a person with no voice,

Magritte’s apple is choking her,

muting her

so even in her home she whispers

her songs and curses.

Only in her head does she shout

that something will come of nothing,

that something must come of nothing.

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.

GHAZAL FOR THE WOMEN OF AFGHANISTAN

by Jackie Fox

The bearded old men stop at nothing to stifle the women.

Keeping them hidden will solve the temptation of women.

Oh, they talked through their turbans like nothing would change

for lives that had blossomed like lilies—the women. 

The women knew better. The cascade of workplace and school

slammed tight against the menace of girls and danger of women.

Vanished from work, school and public movement without a male—

this would seem sufficient erasure of women.

But nothing is ever enough for the old zealots, who want only

to keep their coarse sandals planted on the necks of women.

So now—of course and at last—the beauty salons, 

last refuge for most and livelihood for some of the women.

Not enough to endure the hijab or burka and forego makeup in public.

Even the most private pleasures must be denied to women.

And to those of us in the West with our patented knee-jerk shock—

We tried to warn you, whisper the women.

Jackie Fox lives and writes in Nebraska. Her work has appeared in Rattle, The Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets, and numerous other journals and anthologies

DOOMER MADNESS

by Steven Croft

Why climate ‘doomers’ are replacing climate ‘deniers’: How U.N. reports and confusing headlines created a generation of people who believe climate change can’t be stopped. —The Washington Post, March 24, 2023

"If I am mad, it is mercy!" —H.P. Lovecraft, The Temple

Boundary between our world and the speculatively doomed

one finally dissolved, we all just sing with AC/DC now

as the world burns, as we inherit the hurricane winds

A man in Kentucky carries a mattress on his head, wades

from his flooded house to dry ground, collapses on it

in despair, lights a cigarette and laughs at all his/our ruin

A few years ago, just the faraway Seychelles were disappearing

Now, shunning sedate natural laws, future ghosts enter our minds—

"Oh, our prophetic souls!"—telling us all is irreversibly rotten

It's not like we were never warned—but, now, the world

of Soylent Green—2022—a year ago, if all that's left is to fail,

we've got catchin' up to do!

Now, loud muffler-rumble pride of our gloriously gas-powered,

world-castrating civilization as it races us all to the fiery oblivion

of Satan's eternally beckoning ancient mouth—sons of perdition!

Now, Paris Accords ripped into victory lap confetti for those

who can make it first to this perverse ever after—What of

those who still cling to hope in the sweat-throes of our mania:

Soon, as Seychelles-erasure goes nuclear, our heads spinning

faster than the earth some already orbit—the lucky few—even

the hopeful will cling to their rockets like Afghans fleeing Taliban

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, Soul-Lit, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

UNIVERSITY WOMAN

by Tamam Kahn 

Female students are stopped by Taliban security at a university in Kabul, on 21 December 2022 (AFP via Middle East Eye)

We the Taliban 

will make you 
go quiet. 
We want 
an empty blackboard.
We the Taliban
are erasing the rights 
of each one 
with breasts 
and a vagina 
and a clitoris.
 
Each girl-student and
female professor 
splashes silenced outrage 
into a ruptured world,
zig-zags suspense 
back and forth 
across her mind,
hides a spaded heart 
raw with hiccups.
Each one cracks open
a brain-leak 
of stories and poems,
stashed backpacks 
of notebooks filled with 
foundational work,
knowledge, science—
 
all soon to be 
academic ditch-litter.

Tamam Kahn is the author two books on women of early Islam. Untold, A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, (Monkfish Books, 2010), and Fatima’s Touch, (Ruhaniat Press, 2016). Both won International Book Awards. Tamam believes that sharing the lives of women, famous or in difficulty, helps bring awareness and change into today’s difficult times. She lives near San Francisco, California.

READING ANNE FRANK’S DIARY IN FARSI

by Elane Gutterman

About a dozen teen girls in a secret book club in Afghanistan are reading—and finding comfort in—Anne Frank's diary. Arzou, one of participants, said it was the first time they had read the firsthand account of a teenage girl living through extreme hardship. "I think Anne Frank is like, as a friend for me," she said. Photo: Diaa Hadid. —NPR, September 11, 2022.

I don’t want to live in vain like most people
 

In a basement at the edge of Kabul, at a secret

      book club,

a dozen teenage girls defy the Taliban,

feed their curiosity, exercise their minds,

connect to a Jewish girl from a distant time and

      place.

 
I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people
 

In translated books, the girls find themes to tunnel

      through darkness. 

Volunteer leaders steer the conversations, probe

      with questions. 

Girls like Arzou discover a kinship with Kitty—

      Anne’s diary, relate 

to bickering with mom, crush on Peter, resolve not

      to lose hope.

 
Even those I’ve never met
 

What brave teens, they’ve survived suicide

      bombings, 

losses, terrors, hardships of their Hazara minority.

In the past year, they’ve cried and tried to 

      circumvent 

the Taliban’s intent to cover, confine, undermine

      women.

 
I want to go on living even after my death
 

Masouma finds comfort in Anne’s diary, despite

      her grasp

of Anne’s horrific end. These teenage girls of

      Afghanistan 

now all dream of writing a book. Zahra says,

      “Nobody 

knows how long I will live, or when I will die.” 

Editor's Note: The italicized lines are quotations from Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.

Elane Gutterman is a trustee and the literary chair at the West Windsor Arts Center. Her poems invoking social justice have appeared in prior issues of The New Verse News. Her first book of poetry, Tides of Expectation (Kelsay Books), was published earlier this year. She dedicates this poem to the brave girls in the secret book club in Kabul and to one remarkable Afghani girl who arrived in Santa Fe, NM this week to begin tenth grade studies there.

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE YOU

by Umang Dhingra

do not be too loud on the streets; do not play music; 

this is how you hide if there is a bombing, this is how you hide if there is noise, this is how you hide if there is a knock on the door, this is how you hide if the shadows outside your room change shape; 

this is how you cover yourself up 

but i thought we did not have to do that anymore– 

this is how you cover yourself up; 

this is how you read books you stole from school, this is how you read books from your father’s shelves, this is how you read books when you are not supposed to; 

this is how you cry for help; 

do not wear bright colours; 

do not look anyone in the eyes; 

do not go outside until I tell you to; 

this is how you beg for asylum you thought was guaranteed; 

this is how you live with no electricity; this is how you live with no food; 

this is how you live with no dignity; 

this is how you live with constant fear 24/7 on 365;

this is how you pray and beg and hope that someone is coming to save you,

knowing

no one is coming to save you.

Umang Dhingra is a 17-year old writer from India. Her work can be found in numerous publications, scraps of paper around the house, and her family's WhatsApp group. She usually writes about being a brown girl from India, about her family, and what her mother calls, 'little explosions of sadness.’

WOMEN OF GHŌR

by Steven Croft

In twilight we stare into our deaths

like we are the coming darkness

Our harrowed babies cry

but we dare not sing to them

The flour is gone in days

even tea is scarce

Our colorful dresses long hidden

or already burned for warmth

A bird calls a melody from a snowy tree

like joy trapped by the coming darkness

Warlords with stern faces walk the streets

with whips, rifles,

Whip-march a head-bent man with hands

bound behind by thick layers of rope

They tell us we have now what the hands

of the people have earned

And there is nowhere else to go, just

a cold valley, hill passes snowed for winter

If allowed to sing, we would moan a dirge

now even the night-bird is quiet

Nowhere is even a seed of relief

markets, kiosks, shops, silent and empty

They say our sins haunt us now—

girls wanting work and education

In the cold schools boys recite the Quran

Ameen

But how many times, O Knower of the Unseen,

until all our sins are erased

In our dreams of spring we see green trees

goat's milk and markets full of vegetables

In our dreams of spring we dance and sing

in our colorful dresses

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, Soul-Lit, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

INITIAL PROMISES

by Stephen House

there were initial promises

from the Taliban

to form an inclusive government

 

there will be no women

in government

 

women playing sport

is not appropriate

 

women will be killed

if they commit adultery

 

LGBTQ people’s mere existence

means an automatic death sentence

 

LGBTQ Afghans are on the run

fearing they will be stoned to death

under Taliban law

 

Ahmadullah says

the Taliban beheaded his boyfriend

on the day they entered Kabul

Ahmadullah is in hiding

 

UN and US warn the Taliban

we are watching you

 

what will watching do?

 

there were initial promises

from the Taliban

to form an inclusive government

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright and actor. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts and an Asia-link India residency. His chapbook real and unreal was published by ICOE Press. He’s published often and performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

THAT MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH

by Ying Wu

The Taliban fired shots into the air to disperse crowds who had gathered for a rally in the capital, the latest protest since the Taliban swept to power last month. Photo: EPA via Aljazeera, September 8, 2021

Smoke burns our throats in Sacramento.

California is on fire.

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban.

I stare into the ashen sun,

and think about the ones who fled—

songs and stories ripped asunder,

flames howling at their doorsteps—

and the ones who couldn’t get out in time—

how beneath this very sun,

some tried to flee, but did not escape—

and the dreams of a generation

annihilated before our eyes—

and the dreamers in hiding,

and the women sent home.

 

I want to revel in the splendor of the Siskiyous,

but everywhere is haze, shrouding

the sugar pines and ponderosas—

Mt. Shasta erased completely—

and the sun the color of pink lemonade.

 

Near Ashland, we hike a quarter mile

across dusty, red lakebed

overgrown with cocklebur.

I want to camp beneath the shady oaks,

but the campground’s closed,

and the spigots, shut off.

I want to play guitar

in my folding paisley camp chair,

but a suicide bomb in Kabul has ripped

through the crowds at the airport gates.

I want to swim and shiver and splash

even here in this shrunken reservoir,

but the mud is too thick,

and the water, stagnant—

and the airlifts are ending,

and the bathrooms are locked,

and the treasury is bankrupt,

and the paddleboats, beached—

and thousands have fled,

but millions can’t leave.

A hot, dry wind rustles

the golden grass of August.

What awaits the women and girls

Of Afghanistan?

 

Women have their own rights,

the Andar district governor tries to reassure,

but his words burn in my ears

like the smoke in my lungs from

the massive infernos

engulfing our mountains.

It has rained at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet

for the first time in recorded history.

Wells have run dry in central Texas.

 

The UN “highlights the urgency of climate change,”

a Louisiana senator tries to reassure. 

“But we must avoid policies that rely on…increased regulation.”

How much Islam has given rights to women,

the Taliban tries to reassure,

we will give them that much.

 

That much.

They’ll give women that much.

While our leaders avoid policies

that rely on increased regulation.

They will give us that much.

While the fires are raging.

 

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art SanDiego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, and Poetry Pacific.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay.  

BACK BEHIND THE BURKA

by Virgilio Goncalves

A Taliban fighter walking past a beauty salon in Kabul on Wednesday.Credit: Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, August 19, 2021

for 20 years, hope:

a hint of freedom

a trace of peace

a slither of choice

 

finally, for women,

possibility of education

opportunity to have a voice

chance to walk streets without fear

 

within 20 days, despair:

that hint of freedom incinerated

like burning books

that trace of peace throttled

             like silent screams

that slither of choice sliced 

             like cut throats

 

amid

 

security intelligence

not worth a dime

 

and an avalanche of tears

never enough to drown foreboding

 

Virgilio Goncalves has been a journalist, teacher and tennis coach. He has a nomadic bent, having lived in various countries, including South Africa, Portugal and Australia. His poems and short stories have been published in Australian anthologies. Virgilio, as with other nomads, will forever be restless because his goal in life is to rid the world of misery.  

DEUS EX MACHINA, AFGHANISTAN

by Bonnie Naradzay

Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller speaks during an official handover ceremony in Kabul. Hours later, Miller departed in a Black Hawk helicopter. —The Washington Post, July 12, 2021. Credit: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images via The Washington Post.

The Vietnamese mechanic in the VW repair place 

fixed my car radio today and as I drove off,

I heard the BBC’s news about Afghanistan:

American bombs dropped from the air, in a war

now directed from Tampa, Florida, are killing

the doomed citizens caught in the crossfire 

between the Taliban and the Afghan troops, 

abandoned in what’s called a “civil war,” 

but it’s not. Translators are beheaded now; 

you can read about how we betrayed them. 

The war cost over two trillion dollars, not 

counting the dead, the maimed, ruined lives. 

(“History will not forget it,” Haji Sakhi said, 

as he fled with his daughters to save them from 

the Taliban again.) We turned off the electricity 

in Bagram and left in the dead of night. Who recalls 

the taxi driver, whom our countrymen tortured 

in Bagram, the old abandoned Soviet base, nearly 

twenty years ago? Mr. Dilawar was dead, 

they said, before they cut him down. "Our job," 

explained the last American commander there,

"is just not to forget." His Black Hawk helicopter

lifted him up in a cloud of dust: our deus ex machina.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry salons at a day shelter for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. Poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, The American Journal of Poetry, Xavier Review, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), The New Verse News, and countless others.

LEFT BEHIND IN AFGHANISTAN

by Tricia Knoll

“Taliban Try to Polish Their Image as They Push for Victory: The insurgents are trying to rebrand themselves as effective governors as they capture new territory. But there is more evidence that they are unreformed.” —The New York Times, July 6, 2021. Photo: Members of the Taliban in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan last March. Credit: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times.

American stuff. Artificial Christmas trees. Humvees. 

Boots that mark the Afghan soil with the treads

of Americans. Little shops sell discards

like aluminum mugs. No longer sell the body armor. 

They do sell Jif peanut butter, alarm clocks, 

backpacks festooned with swooshes, 

instant coffee, exercise stretch ropes, 

hand sanitizer and tea bags. 

 

Bagram first the pulverized Soviet airfield, 

turned burgeoning American stronghold

with Pizza Huts and Subways, field hospital

and a prison gifted to the Afghan defense ministry.  

 

Then the women left behind. What will they be asked

to wear, to think, to learn? What will divide urban

women from rural? Will medical care advance?

What happens to the voices of the poets, activists,

radio DJs, victims of domestic violence? What music

will they hear? What input to the terms of peace? 

Will electricity return as swiftly as sharia justice? 

When women hold up half the sky,

never leave behind the hope of soaring.

Tricia Knoll is a feminist poet who never takes for granted the freedoms she has enjoyed while advocating for the role of women in our world. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies. 

HEY TALIB

by Aryan Ashory

Hey Talib a stain of shame in our history 

You didn’t show mercy to our newborn babies

You didn’t show mercy to our students

You didn’t show mercy to our pregnant women

You didn’t show mercy to our old white-bearded fathers

You didn’t show mercy to our wise sisters and brothers

I wish for this slaughterhouse generation to be destroyed

I wish for our notebooks to be no more tainted with blood

I wish that we lose no more our kin and our beloveds

I wish for no more crying, collapsing, tears and pain

I wish that our education be no more cloaked in blood

I wish that we no more be the page of sorrow in the history of the world 

I wish that our goals no longer be cut short before their fulfillment

I wish our hills be no more filled with the corpses of students

I wish those living to be coloured no more with red

Aryan Ashory is a 16-year old poet and filmmaker from Afghanistan. She spent two years in Greece, before moving with her family to a refugee camp in Germany. Her poems are in Dari, English, Greek, and German. One of her short films, about her experience of Coronavirus and quarantine in a refugee facility, was among 15 finalists for the Girl Rising Competition and is available here. 

REALITY CHECK

by Marc Swan

for Jane Ferguson

Birds shriek, buildings fall,

body counts mount

in Beirut, Kabul, Baghdad,

parts of Africa, South Asia.

Where have all the flowers gone

I think in the quiet of my office

on a quiet road in a quiet village

along the coast of Maine. I try

to imagine reporting live 

from these hostile locales, 

most importantly staying alive. 

I think of a Special Correspondent

for PBS, an Irish-British journalist 

with long blond hair tucked 

under a head scarf, jeans 

and a military-style jacket

treading lost roads in leather boots

with another woman, camera in hand.

We never see her, but know

she’s shooting the footage

we’ll see on the nightly news.

In recent reports, the Taliban 

armed to the teeth 

seem more than willing to speak 

on camera as the journalist 

asks hard questions in Arabic, 

translated for us in the comfort 

of heated living spaces unaware 

of what is truly seen, heard, 

felt in places of unending conflict—

what does constant fear smell like?

Marc Swan’s latest collection all it would take was published in May 2020 by tall-lighthouse. Poems recently published or forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Stony Thursday Book, Queen’s Quarterly, MockingHeart Review.  He lives in coastal Maine with his wife Dd, an artist and yoga teacher.

TEXT 911 FOR RESERVATIONS

by David Feela

Summer camp, scrapped
for the Taliban at Camp David,
the outing such a secret
not even the Taliban knew

if there’d be time for swimming
before their bombs blew.
The commander and chief
counselor promised

hot dogs and marshmallows,
airplane rides, and maybe
if they were good a story
around the campfire

about thousands of ghosts
who still haunt the woods.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook Thought Experiments won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A collection of his essays How Delicate These Arches was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in April 2019.

COFFEE HOUSE

by Mary K O'Melveny

“This is the only place where I can relax and feel free, even if it’s only for a few hours,” Hadis Lessani Delijam said recently as she sat at a coffee shop, her hair uncovered, and chatted with two young men in Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times, May 25, 2019

who knew escape
could be simple
like this   my cup
steaming  hints of
cardamom spice
drops of honey
our round table
thin metal chairs
tremble as we
laugh  full throated

here in Kabul
laughter often
eludes   cloistered
behind headscarves
after all who smiles
freely when she
is camouflaged
I ask my friends
this question  as
we settle in

conversations
easier now
than in our youth
we talk of peace
how we prefer
noisy songs of
blackbirds   warblers
drongos  bluethroats
to drone whines
or sidewalk bombs

how we worry
Taliban elders
sitting at tables
in Doha with
Americans
will force us from
these safe spaces
whirling back to
patriarchy

here   coffee in
one hand    my nails
red as poppies
I look through love
notes posted on
the café wallboard
I belong to
no one   this fact
will fuel my
path to freedom

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

EASTER SUNDAY, 2016, LAHORE, PAKISTAN

by Janet Leahy

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and six-year-old Zainab Jamshed could not wait to spend the day at the park with her family. The young girl - the only one in her family - had already arrived in Lahore's Gulshan-i-Iqbal park when a massive suicide bomb went off a few metres from a children's play area, killing her and at least 69 other people. Hundreds were also wounded, and most of the victims were women and children.The attack, which was claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, was aimed at killing members of Pakistan's Christian minority gathered at the park to celebrate Easter Sunday. However, most of those killed were Muslims - like Zainab. —Aljazeera, March 28, 2016. Photo: Forensic officers look for evidence at the site of a blast that happened outside a public park on Sunday, in Lahore, Pakistan, March 28, 2016. Credit: REUTERS/MOHSIN RAZA

   

After Church on Easter Sunday
families go to the park
children play at the blue fountain,
on the hilly gilly, on the train.

Families at the park
in Lahore Pakistan, children
ride the hilly gilly
parents keep watch.

In Lahore Pakistan
Christian and Muslim children play
parents keep watch, but do not see
the young man padded with explosives.

Christian and Muslim children
wait for a train to ride
explosives detonate
the park runs with blood.

There will be no more trains to ride
the blue fountain
runs red with blood
after church on Easter Sunday.

Janet Leahy lives in New Berlin Wi, she is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her work has been published in The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendars, in journals, anthologies, at TheNewVerse.News and other poetry web sites.  She has published two collections of poetry.

ELEGY FOR WASIL AHMAD

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

An image taken from social media shows the child soldier Wasil Ahmad being declared a hero last year for leading a militia’s defense against a Taliban siege. The Taliban announced on Monday that they had killed Wasil. —NY Times, Feb. 2, 2016

 Born into war,
    delivered by history, blood spilled
        with your birth, spattered on unseen hands.

The messengers raced away,
     gunmen on motorbikes, their message delivered
         two bullets to your head, no motorbike for

you, but a gun as big as  you were,
    a uniform made for a man, a helmet on your head,
        a child soldier, a human shield.  The Afghan government

has no details.  There will be
    an investigation of a child walking to his
        fourth-grade class. What did he see on his way?

Not the mountains in the distance,
    Not the flat land beneath his feet, not the
         hands of fruitless war,  only the marketplace of his world.


Lucille Gang Shulklapper’s work appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including TheNewVerse.News, Strand magazine, and Poetic Voices Without Borders, as well as in five poetry chapbooks and a picture book, Stuck in Bed Fred. Having taught reading K-college, made recordings for the blind, and raised a family, she is  presently a volunteer with Caregiver Youth of America.