HOW WE ROLL

Prelude to prayer and action

by Darrell Petska

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

Killing. Maiming.
Forever grieving.
That’s how we’ve rolled
since descending from trees
and living in caves.
Rolled with spear, with bow,
with sword, gun, and bomb.
Killing. Maiming.
For power, gold or spite,
god or country, king or knave.
Forever grieving.
Our own graves digging
or those of our loved ones.

Is killing our imperative?
Sorrow forever to yoke our necks?
Or might we have (we must believe
we have) hidden wings
awaiting prayer and act
to relieve us of these roads we roll on,
spill blood on, die on over and over
until life is cheapened, some cruel curse?
Wings we can will to grow,
to spirit away hatred, envy, and fear.
Wings at long last on which to fly
along peaceable skyways promoting
unity, egality, and love.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin with his wife of more than 50 years.

PREAMBLE TO DEATH

by Monica Korde

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, ARE DYING.

Here with only hours to spare, air 

leaving the lungs, families rush 

from hospital to hospital 

begging for a breath, for a bed 

while opulent hotel rooms 

offer a hundred covid beds 

for members of justice.

Here votes matter, deaths don’t. 

Politicians ride chariots, strut 

through reckless rallies and 

use words liberally:

“Nothing to panic. It’s all imaginary.”

“No need for masks, why worry?”

“After all, everyone has to die eventually”.

Here the gravedigger works 24-hour shifts, 

his gloves left behind to 

avoid the spade from slipping. 

It is Ramzan but he must have water before 

he goes on- turning the earth, getting the body

removing it from the makeshift ambulance 

burying it faster than he can count. 

The priest works equally—

he prays for a hundred pyres, stokes the fires, and 

this pandemic pandit of sorts walks round-the-clock 

through this burning mess

roll calling names as the flames get warm enough. 

Here the departed lie outside 

community-built crematoriums. 

No marigold, no silk, no sandalwood 

to adorn the tired bodies. 

Carefully wrapped in outrage, in anguish

they find kinship and unity

these souls on stand-by

waiting for an undignified exit. 

 

ENDLESSLY EMERGING IN BODY BAGS ON GURNEYS—ONE, TWO, THREE DEATHS PER MINUTE, OVER FOUR THOUSAND IN 24 HOURS—ON THIS DAY OF MAY 2021, WE MOURN IN THE MAKING OF THIS REPUBLIC AND QUESTION HEREBY HOW TO ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION. 

Monica Korde, is a poet from India, currently living in Belmont, California. Along with writing poems, she reads at several virtual poetry readings hosted in the Bay area and regularly co-hosts an online poetry open mic. Her poetry has appeared online on the website of San Francisco Public Library, on YouTube published by local poetry open mics, and in anthologies. 

 

LOOKING FOR AMERICA

by George Salamon 

I looked for the American character,

and I saw the contours fading, the

words to sing of it sour or drab, I

seek refuge in old photo albums, 

capturing dignity and pride, coming

together in many kinds of work and

fulfillment, revealing what we had or

what we thought we had, now that

we're seeking the causes of our loss

as if our minds had shut down and our

hands and feet were bound, yet no

cause is so deep it cannot be found.

George Salamon live in the heartland of America, St. Louis, MO, and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, and The New Verse News.

NO TWO ALIKE

by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky

          for B.A.

 

In the night snow fell

upon the bittersweet

and lined the land from stone

to sleeping limb with hope.

 

The waking sky reveals

it’s hardly deep enough

to cover the frozen leaves

of grass, but having fallen

 

far and wide, traces

each intention—tire tracks

down a road, fox footprints

fading into the woods

 

dividing neighborhoods.

Despite these separate paths

the snowfall wakes me up

again to the bracing truth

 

that we are joined to one

another and this place,

fragile icy pieces

formed in community—

 

We robe ourselves in frost

yet thrive in unity.

Felicia Sanzari Chernesky is a longtime editor and picture book author who tracks life’s footprints with poetry as her lens. Her microfiction has been nominated for a 2021 Pushcart and Best of Microfiction. She lives with her family in Flemington, New Jersey

PASSOVER IN PLAGUE-TIME

by Betsy Mars

after Saeed Jones’s “Boy in a Whalebone Corset”  in  Prelude to Bruise

“The acre of grass is a sleeping swarm of locusts,
and in the house beside it,
tears too are mistaken” for a dark sea,
into which we dip our egg
hoping it will ignite in fertility,
that it will part, a million times—
or whatever is needed—

dividing into heart, lung, legs,
the brain and whatever refrain
we choose to utter
on this, one of the holy days,
to mark our division, and our coming together
a tribe in the end, passed over,
we find our bitter herbs
our unleavened bread

our toilet paper and paper towels shared:
the treasures of this day,
when we marked our doors,
hid inside and hoped to God
he’d pass us by.

Betsy Mars is a poet, educator, photographer, and occasional publisher. Her Kingly Street Press published its first anthology, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife, in October 2019. Her work has recently appeared in Verse-Virtual, The Blue Nib, The Ekphrastic Review, and Silver Birch Press. The daughter of a professor and a social worker, she has had a lifelong interest in issues pertaining to social justice.

VITAMIN D

by Scott C. Kaestner

A novel virus, a deadly mystery
we’re all reading together

doctors, politicians, economists
nurses, cooks, and clerks

cashiers, truckers, teachers
each and every one of us

learning on the fly, adjusting
trying to grasp our new reality

mutative existence exhausting
our ability to cope with it

the story changes, the mystery grows
amid our perpetual Groundhog Day

we see the shadow of death looming
it’s hard to see the sun in the dark

but it’s still there, rising every day
shining light into our lives

whether or not we choose to see it
let the light guide us through the shadows

illuminate darkness with love and unity
the belief that together we can

solve this mystery, together we can
mend broken hearts, together we can

heal the wounds, together we can
rebuild the world with the light

alive in all of us, together we can
know we’re all in this together

and one day this virus won’t be so novel
and one day this mystery will be solved

it will be a story of rebirth
together we will walk onward

into a future we found together
thanks to the light inside us all.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and is in need of a good moisturizer for his overwashed hands. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

THE PROMISE OF HANDIWORK

by Jen Schneider




A single tear drops and pools on uneven hardwood planks.
Startled white mice scamper. Droppings where gravel
and cement once filled buckling wood crevices cushion
wool socked soles. A burgundy chest, adorned with two
brown leather straps and a single metal lock, rests
in the far-right corner. Blanketed in warm layers of dust
and tattered cloth, the family heirloom boasts of guarded memories.

Blurred photos, sweat-stained frocks, penned letters—
Normal times and ordinary folk

To its right, a cardboard box, coated in a film of powder
and particles unknown, houses a machine long silenced
yet now pulsing with hope. Its thick black electrical cord,
wrapped in a tight coil, springs loose as lungs near
and far struggle to contract, then release.

Ready. Set. Go. Breathe.

Soon settled at the square kitchen table, pots
of needles, spools of speckled thread—shocks
of light lavender, crimson red, pistachio green -
and piles of fabric—gingham, plaid, tartan—
emerge with potential born anew.

Unordinary times. Normal folk seek purpose.

Coffee brews, then turns cold. Time presses
on as dry, chafed hands, fingers arched
from years of fieldwork, pull threads, needles,
and long discarded garments from bedroom
chests and kitchen drawers. Bodies work
with an urgency—a race against no ordinary clock—
long stifled and now eager to breathe.

Hours later, the machine continues to whirl
as needles pulse and earlier anxious feet pump
in a calming pattern—One, Two, Three, Breathe.
One, Two, Three, Breathe—generating new life
in old shifts to aid the beat of chests worn down
by a silent beast that silences the beat of a nation.

Moments of silence turn lengthy. Prayers for a world on pause.

Scattered thoughts focus on spools of twisted and spun
threads that bind with supple cloth. Patterned sketches
of protective gear for front line heroes convert
to tangible realities.

Ordinary days in extraordinary times.

In unity we find strength. And hope blooms anew.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Recent work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Bat City Review, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

IN OUR ETATS-UNIS

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

the republic is kaput.
We have turned our dhabarkoodas
to the banderas which the Tribunal Supremo
says we can burn,
hoping four anos will pass by like manana.
We live in rebellion secreta.
Our menschen eat shakshuka
and after dinner, play mahjongg.
Only four years. There will still be
algebra, kayaks, canoes, haus katzen,
carne adobada and brassieres.
We are the homogenized parfaits
of years of einwanderung.
We have found chaque autre.

A retired professor of English at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Elizabeth Kerlikowske served 25 years as president of Friends of Poetry in Kalamazoo.

A NEWEST COUNTRY'S ABUSES

by Valerie Sonnenthal

Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty . Rights investigators from the UN mission in the Republic of South Sudan (Unmiss) warned of “widespread human rights abuses”, including gang-rape and torture in a report based on 115 victims and eyewitnesses from the northern state of Unity, scene of some of the heaviest recent fighting in the 18-month-long civil war. —The Guardian, June 30, 2015

where do spirits go
when they have left
reddened earth
violated bodies
Sudanese girls
mothers
women burned alive
their tukuls leave no trace
in ashes of violence
Tabit two-day spree
every man bent
metal beaten
wood hammered
every girl fouled

Nuba Mountains reverberate
bombs obliterate
schools   mosques
health clinics   crumble
water  polluted
nothing  for no one
no one  the one
they were
yesterday

who counts atrocities
who counts
one war
one way
no where to flee
life simply
eviscerated
, but
where do the spirits go
are they free
must they bare witness
praying for the ancestors
please intervene


Valerie Sonnenthal joined the Cleaveland House Poets when she moved to Martha's Vineyard in 2006. She writes the Chilmark Town Column plus arts and lifestyle stories for the MV Times, Arts & Ideas magazine, and  publishes Errata Editions' Books on Books series.