THAT TUESDAY

That Tuesday

A U.S. strike hit a home hosting a wedding in Kuhestak, Hormozgan province, Iran on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.

The clock came down from the wall
and sat upon the rubble.

Three birds
emerged from a soldier’s pocket,
and the headless horse
spent the whole night
searching for its owner.

The bride
has not yet left,
with a hand that bears no ring
and an I do
that did not survive
the blood.

When morning came,
Tuesday was still there.

In the corner,
someone had left
a suit jacket
smelling of smoke.

No one claimed it.

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, artist, and writer. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway (USA), where she was selected Poet of the Week. She has authored books including Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, 101 Moments, and 25 Fell from the Frame; her latest book titled Beneath the Skin of Tehran was recently published. She was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Lineage of Birds”. Her short story “The Red Thread” was selected among the Top 25 Works Worldwide for the Hannah Arendt Special Edition presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement in Manhattan, New York.

CALLING MY PERSIAN SISTER-IN-LAW THE DAY THE U.S. BOMBS IRAN

by Carol Boutard

 

 

We’re not close, the thicket

between us hard to cross after years

of my snide asides about her aloof Persian polish 

and her opinions about my sloppy American life. 

We chat about the weather in Santa Barbara, 

my brother’s iffy health, her worry for the citrus trees 

she had to leave behind when they moved. 

 

I remember stories about her childhood—

the neighborhood where she lived,

its tree-lined quiet and shaded gardens

far from crowded downtown Tehran,

skyscrapers like gravestones in the smog.

Finally getting her wish to enroll at Berkeley,

alone at 17, with little English and no friends,

Stranded in the states the day of the revolution,

her father was lost without his factory. Her mother, 

who had never held a job, taking in beadwork 

to earn enough for them to live.

 

She isn’t sleeping these days.

Her older brother, still in Iran, joked to her last week 

that traffic is light in Tehran now that so many people have left.

She mentions the trees she had to abandon 

as if they aren’t the only ones 

without protection in a world turned away

from the possibility of grace.

We’re not close. For now, we wait

within our separate lives for whatever comes 

as if nothing has changed,

now that everything has changed overnight.  

                                               

For nearly 30 years, Carol Boutard farmed a small piece of the Tualatin Valley with her husband, Anthony.  A farming partnership and the animal life migrating through their land were the focus of her book, Each Leaf Singing, published by MoonPath Press in 2021. Carol and Anthony now live in Penn Yan near Upstate New York’s Keuka Lake. Tucked into hardwood forest, their land is often occupied by deer, fox, turkeys and magnificent native marmots.

JANUARY 2026

by Richard Collins

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

Crossing the Rainbow Bridge to Canada,

it’s a bumpy ride over the dry Niagara, 

only a trickle of red from the wound below,

flags flying overhead, the Maple Leaf 

at half mast on one side, twin U.S. banners

on the other: Stars and Stripes, and the McDonald’s 

Arch redacted to add the eight stolen

Venezuelan stars in cheap gold leaf

from Home Depot. 

         And the quickly setting sun:

a leering orange troll with an oily glow

screaming like nails on a virtual chalkboard,

“GREENLAND UBER ALLES!” 

Author’s Note: This poem evolved from the logic of a dream. Like others whose sleep has been disrupted by the Venezuelan violation, I found sleep subconsciously interpreting the ruptures being perpetrated against our allies. Thus the wound at the border with our northern neighbors, the flag of economic imperialism now adding the Venezuelan arch of eight stars, the threats against Greenland. The leering orange troll that keeps torching the bridges to our allies with inflammatory midnight texts will be recognized worldwide. The one hope: that that doomed sun is setting.

Richard Collins, abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple, lives in Sewanee, Tennessee. His books include In Search of the Hermaphrodite (Tough Poets Press, 2024), and Stone Nest (Shanti Arts, 2025). His forthcoming book of poetry, Cartoons for the Chaos (Shanti Arts) contains his political poem, "November 2024," which was published in Clockhouse and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE CEASEFIRE

by Bonnie Naradzay

More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in   their intent, said Amnesty International today [November 27, 2025].

after Ilya Kaminsky

We were so satisfied with our stuffing recipes

and so when they bombed tent encampments

blocked entry for prosthetic limbs

for child amputees

blocked machinery for uncovering corpses

from the rubble

blocked doctors who’d earlier been given

“permission” to enter Gaza

 we (forgive us)

looked the other way again

as Israel violated the Cease Fire

over and over again with the slaughter of hundreds more,

atrocities committed with impunity

how easily we looked the other way

as Israel asked us for billions more in aid today

from our house of money

we (forgive us) lived happily during the Cease Fire.

Bonnie Naradzay has been leading weekly poetry sessions for homeless people at Street Sense and at Miriam’s Kitchen and also at a retirement community, all in Washington, DC.  While at Harvard University in the late 1960s, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize–-a month’s stay in Northern Italy–-in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. A 2017 graduate of the St John’s College (Annapolis) Graduate Institute, her book of poems Invited to the Feast was published by Slant Books in October 2025; three of the poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. 

2025

by Susan Vespoli

It was the year the garden

wouldn’t grow. Only a few cupped 

palms of sour tomatoes, never red. 

Lettuce leaves limp and bug laden. 

It was the year my ocotillo cracked in half, 

crashed to the ground with a thud. The year 

the U.S. seemed to follow suit. The year of no 

sunflowers in the long rectangular bed stretched 

beneath my office window, (okay, one spindly 

stalk sprouted, then leaned over and croaked), 

the plot where the previous year’s crop had risen 

basketball-player high, a community of petaled 

faces so prolific, neighbors would stroll their babies

past to point and smile. It was the year I bought five

packets of vinca seeds and a big bag of rich mulch,

spread and sprinkled everything over the barren earth, 

and every couple days, through hell-hot summer temps 

and nightly nightmare news, I dragged the hose to the dry

dirt, drenched it until little green arms poked through. 

And the arms grew bodies topped with buds folded

first like origami stars, then unfurled into coral, 

purple, and fuchsia 1960’s-peacenik flower-power 

blossoms that bushed out and flourished like hope.

Flower Power by cressida_carr

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ and believes in the power of poetry to stay sane. Her poems have been published in The New Verse News, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Rattle, and other cool spots.

BLOSSOMS

by Bonnie Naradzay

In Gaza City, Riad Ishkontana mourned the death of one of his children on Sunday. Mr. Ishkontana said that when rescuers pulled him and his 7-year-old daughter from the rubble of his home after an airstrike, he awoke to a new life—one without his wife and four other children. Credit:Hosam Salem for The New York Times, May 19, 2021

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns

rubber tipped bullets and tear gas cannisters

that I pay for with my taxes, and the Boeing 

weapons sales, mainly kits transforming bombs 

into precision missiles dropped from planes 

on Gaza, as before. Armed forces wreck Minarets 

during Ramadan. The call to prayer, up in flames.

Worshippers at the mosque are felled with bullets.

Evictions are enforced by the Courts, the way 

it’s always done. Snipers target fleeing children;

they’ve done it all before.  When will we learn?

Here, orange blossoms are exploding in the sun.

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns.

 

Bonnie Naradzay’s recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and others. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC. 

THE NEW MATH

by Howie Good

If a total of eight people

are shot to death

at three massage parlors

in Atlanta, Georgia,

 

and the following week

10 people are shot

to death at a supermarket

in Boulder, Colorado,

 

how long before

the next mass shooting

in the U.S. occurs?

 

Show all work.

Howie Good's most recent poetry collection is Gunmetal Sky, available from Thirty West Publishing.

WAR

by David M. Myles

It      is        

stored in the soul
of a people
and hungers
to be relevant
to more than the
sycophants of
golden calves


there      was

a time when we
thought it good
to strike out
in anger and fear
and the hubris
of the tears
of tragic death

It       has

scarred us as
a nation and the
wound has turned
in on itself on
ourselves and we pick
at the scab of the
the children laying dead

There       will

come a reckoning
our histories scream
our mutual doom
History is not a script
it is a cautionary tale
which doesn't end well
for the protagonists


David M. Myles is a Freelance Technophile and writer currently living in the Ohio Valley. Originally from New York City, Myles has lived all over the United States and the UK gathering experiences and fixing errant computers and networks His new e-book Folly is available on Kindle or Amazon.com.

THE RED LINE

by Roger Sedarat 
 




                “We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear
                weapon.” -- Leon Panetta (former US Defense Secretary)

“Where’s all this terror they find in Iran?”
She asked, over the New York Times. “They act
Like it’s the Nazis or the Soviets.”
Long married, they’d had this same talk before.
He wanted to take notes on what they said,
Banal reporter instead of poet.
“They mean the military threat.” He poured
More coffee, pleased to stir the pot again.
“Okay,” she said, the iPad in her hand:
“A single missile on a transport truck.
I saw one of these last time in Shiraz;
They brought it out in some stupid parade
To show their military might (such men).
It’s really all they fucking had besides
Teen soldiers, bearded boys who looked hungry,
As if they missed their moms.” It was his turn
To launch a counterstrike, antagonize
The enemy like Ahmadinejad.
“How do we know what they might be hiding?”
She dropped her breakfast bar and rolled her eyes.
“Oh sure, a nuke! Just like Bush with Iraq;
I think the threat’s completely overblown,
A bluff in poker.” “But Muslims don’t bet,”
He interjected. Using his smug tone
She knew belonged in academia.
“Oh Roger! You’re just looking for a fight!”
“I know,” he said, ‘performing’ my Iran.”
“I know,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“It all comes down to art for you, who cares
About reality as long as it
Becomes a poem.” “Life is just a dream,”
He said in Persian. “Just a dream?” she asked.
“Suppose we drop real bombs and people die.”
“But you yourself keep saying it’s a game.”
He knew this last comeback had gone too far.
“You’re being difficult!” She slammed her fist.
“I know, and so are you,” he said in kind.
“It’s like we’re taking turns at acting like
The U.S. and Iran, always at war.”
She sighed, frustratingly, and he sighed back,
Aware how much she hated being mocked.
In silence they went back to the paper,
Avoiding talk of new conflicts they read.


Roger Sedarat is the author of two poetry collections: Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, which won Ohio UP's 2007 Hollis Summers' Prize, and Ghazal Games (Ohio UP, 2011). He teaches poetry and literary translation in the MFA Program at Queens College, City University of New York.