SMALLEST AREA COMPATIBLE

by Pepper Trail

Valley of the Gods in Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. Dreamstime Photo by Paul Brady.

 

The President is to reserve "the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected." —The Antiquities Act of 1906

President Trump on Monday reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah by nearly 3 million acres, teeing up a legal battle over whether presidents have the power to shrink such sites in the first place. Mr. Trump signed two executive orders to sharply cut the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to less than 10 percent of their current size. Both sites are known for their sandstone canyons and vast mesas, which are rich in wildlife habitat as well as archaeological sites of importance to Native American tribes. —The New York Times, July 13, 2026

• A body, small, feverish with measles, crying into the hospital dark?
• An automobile, pinned to the curb, bullet-holed, its driver dead inside?
• The dancing-ground of desert grouse, scraped bare and sold for the oil beneath?

No, stick to this case:

A landscape unbroken but for the lines we draw

Canyons, plateaus, water and the channels it makes

Sagebrush and juniper, birds and lizards and deer

Marks etched on sandstone cliffs, testimony to other ways of being

 

A National Monument, “Bears Ears”

   named by the peoples who shared this land

Hoon’Naqvut, 

Shash Jaa’, 

Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, 

Ansh An Lashokdiwe

delineated by thousands of years of indigenous knowledge

thousands of pages of scientific analysis

thousands of voices raised for protection

 

or

 

slashed overnight by 90%

ignorance glorified

harnessed to political calculation and greed

 

The smallest area compatible with proper care and management?

• Our society, torn apart by division and violence?
• Our nation, sinking into a morass of corruption and tyranny?
• Our planet, hurtling toward unchecked climate chaos?

Decide

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

THE MOUNTAIN LION OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW

by Dick Altman

Utah’s new study aims to kill ‘as many cougars as possible’ —High Country News, March 24, 2026

Reclusive Monty,

as I like,

in kinship,

to call you,

visits in deepest night,

not to hunt,

as one might expect,

our abundant deer,

but to slack your thirst

at the water-filled grotto

lying just beyond

where I rest my head.

 

We each,

in our way,

share

the same story,

breathing life

here at seven thousand feet.

where our ridge overlooks

the Rio Grande Valley.

ancestral home to Puebloans,

who worship you

as “the beast god”,

revered beyond

any other animal,

including the bear,

for your lithe beauty

and stealth.

 

I see you

as a high desert

panther,

royalty of solitude.

Your prints

in the snow,

broad as my hand

wide,

leave me breathless,

in their suggestion

of power unbridled,

eager

to pounce.

 

Recent sightings

in the neighborhood,

remind how closely

our lives touch.

Though an Anglo

living in Indian Country,

it would crush me

to see your mythical

presence eradicated.

 

Another gift

of your species,

the smaller,

but far less shy,

Bobby the bobcat, loves

to roll around

on the welcome mat,

outside our glass-paneled

front door.

as he taunts ravens,

into a squall

of angry screams

and fly-bys.

 

I find it impossible

not to feel

an intense connection

with you creatures

of the wild,

 

Hunters,

yes,

you will

always be,

but much more,

as even Puebloans’

ageless reverence

for Bobby shows.

 

Which begs

the question:

should rampant

cravings

for hooved

trophies,

outweigh

sustenance

for one’s

innermost

bearings,

linking us

to nature?

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, and others here and abroad.  Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 300 poems, published on four continents.

SCALES OF JUSTICE IN THE COURT OF LAST RESORT

by Rick Pongratz

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

Let’s say there’s no judge,
it's just us, you and me,
and all of our peers, 
deliberating, pontificating, confabulating. 

Awaiting our verdict,
segregated in the balcony, sit
two made motherless in Minnesota 
next to two made fatherless in Utah,
and our children, with all of their peers.

Opposing solicitors dance before us, 
profiteers play up our fears, 
until we are hung—and together, 
pile more dead upon the plates,
to lie with all of our peers.

The left and right arms of our scales
tilt and totter with each fresh body,
the chains grown too taut, 
not made for the weight of revenge.

Rick Pongratz is an emerging poet. His poetry has appeared in Rattle and is forthcoming in Frogpond. Rick works as a mental health clinician and currently studies creative writing at Idaho State University.

DEAR JUDY

a duplex poem

by Trish Hopkinson

Today, a successful assassination

happened near where you last lived.

     In Utah, where I once lived with you

     a right-wing activist was shot dead.

In Evergreen, a school shooter was shot dead

on the same Wednesday in Colorado.

     It’s Wednesday in Utah and Colorado

     where I now live, 200 miles from the dead

no longer living: two men, shot dead,

two schoolchildren fatally wounded.

     This year, four kids dead, thirty-five wounded.

     They were not soldiers; they were students.

Murder on campus, witnessed by students,

no ear grazed: successful assassination.

Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines and journals; and her most recent book A Godless Ascends was published by Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.

A DRY SPELL IN UTAH

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

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

Statewide drought, evaporating lakes, whirlwinds, catastrophe; 
amidst this mess, our Governor pleads “Pray for rain.” Angels,
witches, devils descend from the sky to the chosen, but no blessed water.
 
My garden meadow browns to wasteland, crisp crackle underfoot,
hummingbird departs. Has he expended all his heartbeats in July’s
harsh heat? Warm colors of swallowtails, monarchs—gone. 
Finches, sparrows silent, beaks gape wide, throats too dry for song.
 
City residents stop sprinklers, while farmers, and our Governor
grow water-hungry alfalfa—drain rivers and aquifers. Spinning drops
irrigation-spread, artificial rainbows brighten verdant fields. Cloudbursts 
transformed to feed chug across the ocean, as our lakes recede. 

Susan J. Wurtzburg has won or placed in several poetry competitions. She is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Poets Reading the News. Her book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas was published in spring, 2025.

NIGHTMARE IN UTAH

by Dawn Corrigan

A sign at an abortion-rights rally in Miami on Thursday. (Lynne Sladky/AP via The Washington Post, May 26, 2019

A particular kind of dystopia has arrived, and we’re beginning to see its fuzzy outlines. It would involve a whisper network on social media. It would entail announcing “Off to go see Navy Pier!” and then going instead to an abortion clinic. Thousands of women would have to learn—or remember—how this all worked before 1973, when desperate women also had occasion to visit their cousins, old friends, and aunties. —Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, May 26, 2019

Last week they closed the border
and ever since we've been on the run,
wearing black clothes, travelling at night,
food and water in packs on our backs.
We've arrived at the state line and stare
longingly into Nevada. The sentries
are scattered but they have a clear shot
at us here. We're not far from the railway.
I've heard they're stopping the passenger trains
but maybe we could hide in a freighter.
Given time and a lot of luck we might wake up
somewhere new, someplace with more rights
and bodily autonomy than we're used to.

Dawn Corrigan works in the affordable housing industry in Pensacola, FL and serves as assistant editor at Otis Nebula.

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

by Devon Balwit

There are so many ghosts in our machines—their locations so hidden, their methods so ingenious, their motives so inscrutable—that not to feel haunted is not to be awake.  —Walter Kirn, The Atlantic, November 2015

                                                                                                         
We dish dirt over drinks—husbands, work,
yearnings—the room so crowded I yell

to be heard, but still wish our phones
elsewhere, mics disabled, wish everyone’s

locked away, apps always asking
for locations, each talking to the other

in a digital chorus, strands in an unseen web,
vibrating. When the photos in my feed

echo, the upflung arms of child mirrored
in an abstract painting, or when memes

ripple outwards, themes kaleidoscoped
myriad, this is no accident,

the fancy of my poetic nature. Like a
kook in a backwoods cabin, I mutter

about the eye in the sky, but know
my needle port already inserted,

perhaps now running saline, but
at any time opiates or annihilation.

Each keystroke resonates elsewhere,
saved in cold storage by the NSA

in Utah or somewhere in Russia, fodder
for the clever, data points in the on-going

experiment. We’ve been turned inside out,
pockets filched of coin. A single finger

can undo us, and, like any with a knife
pressed so intimately, we obey.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.