NEW YEAR'S EVE IN GAZA

by Donna Katzin

Part of the humanitarian zone, around Al-Aqsa University, west of Khan Yunis. February 2024, compared to December 2024. Credit: Planet Labs PBC via Haaretz, December 31, 2024

There is no shelter to keep out the cold                                     

in Deir al-Balah—no water

safe to drink or mouthfuls of food…

famine claims the children one by one,

even infants who, though barely named,

are loved.

 

Winter winds do not appear to notice,

rip through shreds of plastic

pretending to be tents,                                       

that can no longer hold together

as unspoken words and stifled prayers

stab at throats too dry to utter them.

 

Without knocking, rain pours through the openings,

soaks clothes and bedding to the skin

for days and nights that never close their eyes,

like a lethal benediction

claiming tiny souls of unblessed babies

freezing in their mothers’ arms.

 

A world away, one million revel in Times Square 

awash in bright lights and bubbly 

on the eve of the New Year.

 

 

Donna Katzin is founding and former Executive Director of Shared Interest, investing in South Africa's democratic development, and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners, working with Nicaraguan mothers to feed their children.  She is also a member of the Reconstructionist Movement's Tikkun Olam (Repair the World) Commission, and a published poet honored to have been included in The New Verse News.

THE OTHER NEW YORK

by Susana H. Case

A view shows a petrol station, which bears the name of New York in Donetsk Region, Ukraine March 3, 2021. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich. See also Wikipedia.

There is a town called New York in Ukraine.

Stalin gave it a Soviet name that didn't stick.

Many of its houses are empty,

along with the streets and parks.

Young people dream of leaving.

At the store in the town center,

they are out of bread.

In a room with balloons, a child

holds a chocolate and cherry birthday cake,

while the sound of gunfire blasts out

a few miles away. How naive we are

about power, profits—like children holding sparklers.

The few adults at the birthday party fret an errant 

artillery round might hit the chemical plant.

Even in peacetime, it spits out fumes 

from phenol production into the air. 

The streets are worn and tired.

Oh, New York: where is your Donetsk Times Square

full of excited tourists, your skyscrapers

that cause neck aches from people looking up in awe?

Where are your people—like in that other 

New York, the American one—who complain 

how much they suffer because the air is chilly,

the bus ten minutes late?

Susana H. Case has authored eight books of poetry, most recently The Damage Done (Broadstone Books, 2022). Dead Shark on the N Train (Broadstone Books, 2020) won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. She co-edited, with Margo Taft Stever, the anthology I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk and Cake Press, 2022).

BRING IT ON: A NEW YEAR'S POEM

by Aaron Poochigian

I.

For several decades I have been one cold,
one fall, one monthly bill, away from living
derelict under cardboard on the street.
Why is it, now that I am halfway old,
my mug a mug of damage and defeat,
that New Year’s has become its own Thanksgiving?
Why do I sit here typing words of praise
about the world’s largess? Why do I sing
heart-felt ballads about each silly fling
and psalms of hope about the coming days?

II.

From California I can see Times Square,
one of the chakras of America.
The ball has dropped. I’m sorry I’m not there
to add my whoop to the hysteria.

Tourists and buskers mob the streets, and you,
my friends, are wild among them. Pop the cork,
loose the confetti, sound the shrill kazoo.
I heart the mess of you, New York, New York.

Midnight has come to Minneapolis.
While, here and there, a raucous air-horn blares,
my friends from school, as wives and husbands, kiss
on couches, with their kids asleep upstairs.

Oh Uptown rife with music, theater
and Madeleine—the things I love the most.
In memory of a twenty-something blur
of poetry and wine, I raise a toast.

Cheers have gone up all over Salt Lake City.
Futurity has driven out December!
I wrote my first book there and kissed a pretty
red-haired girl (whose name I don’t remember).

I see her, hunched and fearless, on the slopes
of Alta, snowboard-footed, goggles on.
I hope that she has Rocky-Mountain hopes
for 2020 and is up till dawn.

Finally, in Pacific Standard Time,
I feel fireworks erupt at Disneyland,
and I can see my niece in Anaheim
agog in bed, stuffed elephant in hand.

Just so I journey westward, zone by zone,
while sipping whiskey at my laptop here
in Fresno, at my mother’s house, alone.
How should I resolve to spend the year?

III.

This year I will bottle
my animal candor
the way Aristotle
honed Alexander.

The redolence of
this martial spirit
will vanquish like love
all who come near it,

and a sip will lay
the taster out.
This year, I say,
will know no doubt.

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His first book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr (Able Muse Press), was published in 2012, and his second book Manhattanite, which won the Able Muse Poetry Prize, came out in 2017. His third book, American Divine, won the Richard Wilbur Award and will come out in 2020. His thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, was released by Etruscan Press in the fall of 2017. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and POETRY.

NO RESOLUTION

by j.lewis

Image from Breaking Burgh

again, the ball drops, but does not break
its descent carefully engineered to delight

again, the ball is fumbled, or intercepted
despite the carefully engineered play

again. the ball passes its mark in space
the carefully engineered orbit a quiet assurance

again, we wait, not for ball, but for hammer to drop
for the carefully engineered investigations to resolve

but the dropping ball,
wobbling pass,
eternal orbit,
special investigation
seem to have no end

again, an angry tweet that
"my button, my nuclear football
is bigger than yours"
pushes us closer to the dropping
of the other shoe
and no amount of careful engineering
will save us when it strikes the floor

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poetry and music reflect the complexity of human interactions, sometimes drawing inspiration from his experience in healthcare. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California. A Clear Day in October, j.lewis’s first collection of poetry paired with his own photography, is available directly from E&GJ Press.