OH BEAUTIFUL

by Chris Reed

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

For the country’s 250th birthday celebration

my sister texts a collage of photos of our mother

in her last years before dying at 100.

At first it seems a strange birthday message

for the nation, until I start looking at the photos.

In my mother’s face, her seated posture, 

often holding flowers or her cat on her lap,

I see the inevitable wear of years, time’s destruction,

a loss of elasticity and nimbleness, 

a loss of focus, purpose and endless energy,

a loss of fitting in to how things work and get done.

 

Yet in her eyes and smile in photo after photo,

I see acceptance and memories of past joys

and loves, her ocean sailings, mountain climbs, 

her shore walks, and dance among multitudes.

I see a hint of denial, pretending that her place

in the family of things is not coming to an end,

only her eyes betraying her knowledge 

that the journey has already started.

Her face tells me all this, but also tells me 

that amid her brokenness and joys and losses,

ever courageous, she is finding new love

and meaning in this, her season of endings.

 

With no flowers for you, let me still say,

Happy Birthday America.

Chris Reed cared for her mother in her last two years of life and found beauty in her mother's decline in health and purpose.  Finishing Line Press recently published a chapbook of Reed's poems about this time, Two Years and Two Months.

WARM AND CUDDLY BELONGING FOR ALL

by Lynne Barnes

 

 

A hospital patient who managed to talk a man out of detonating a bomb in a maternity wing said the would-be attacker “asked for a cuddle” before standing down. Nathan Newby, who stopped an atrocity through an act of kindness, spoke publicly for the first time about his encounter with Mohammad Farooq before receiving the George Medal [from King Charles, above] for bravery. Farooq, a clinical support worker who took a viable pressure cooker bomb into St James’s hospital in Leeds intending to “kill as many nurses as possible” was jailed for at least 37 years last year. After asking for a cuddle, Farooq told Newby to “phone the police before I change my mind.’ —The Guardian, March 24, 2026

 

 

Oh, the layers of life right now—
sweet family visit with my
thirty-something god-nephew
and our goddess-niece, his wife.
Calming, evocation of
belonging, togetherness, as we
commune deeply with them.
They are artists, teachers, such
loving creatures, here with their
stray-rescued-as-a-puppy-ten-years-ago,
Navajo, to spend the night with us.
 
Bearing down on that layer is
a dangerous one above it,
malignant, narcissistic,
Machiavellian, sadistic,
hanging by a thread—
a heavy concrete cloud,
just above our heads,
visible, threatening,
seeded with stress and dread.
I fly above into
the stratosphere of compassion,
look down through the conflicting,
complex layers of our
human race in this era.
 
Kindness, not war and hate, 
rescues minds from harmful ideas.
Will we learn to weave empathic ropes
to throw, not just to those we love,
but to those who other us as well?
 
Can humanity, we, reel away from our
constant collapse into competing cultiness,
a tendency in all of us?
 
Broader belonging, expansive,
Transcendent Human Tribe is now
our mental moon shot challenge.
 
How will it come? I wonder as I land
back on earth from my imaginary
skyward travel. Perhaps
 
Eroding Othering
should be a sibling category
to the Nobel Prize for Peace.
 
All this I think as anxious rescue Navajo
finally stops pacing, settles out of her
traumatic memories of her early life
on the reservation, on the streets—
packless, othered, bitten, diseased.
 
At last, she welcomes our acceptance,
lets us pet her, relaxes on her
fluffy, gray, perfect circle of bed.

Lynne Barnes' poetry memoir Falling into Flowers won the 2017 Goodreads Rainbow Award for Best Gay and Lesbian Poetry, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and received Honorable Mention in both the Gay and Poetry categories for the 2018 San Francisco Book Festival Awards. 

ROTATED

by Richard Garcia

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

You will be rotated. You will be rotated in ways you did not foresee. You will be walking casually away in one direction and then find yourself walking casually away in the opposite direction. Do not be alarmed this will only be a test. If this were the real rotation you would not be able to read this because your eyes would be rotated. Do not attempt to curry favor by accepting your rotation—your acceptance will be rotated. You will find yourself in a line of concentric circles that spiral along the border. You will be rotated toward checkpoints where tall, broad-shouldered men wearing military caps and mirrored aviator sunglasses, with belts cinched below their bellies and pistols strapped to their hips are waiting to inspect your papers. You will be rotated into newly constructed barriers where bullhorns will declare, Y'all git along now, you folks gonna be rotated and all your people gonna be rotated, your children gonna be rotated and that's how it's gonna be now and forever. 

Richard Garcia's poetry books include The Other Odyssey (Dream Horse Press, 2014), The Chair (BOA 2015), and Porridge (Press 53, 2016). He has received a Pushcart Prize and been in Best American Poetry.

THE OSCAR

by Margaret D. Stetz

…for the “Best Adapted
Life”
goes to the women of
my generation
we make up most
of the Academy
and won
though no one else would
vote for us
but learned at last
to write our own names
on the ballot
then turn up with a speech
for the acceptance
that we’ve never felt
of course the host
has withering jokes 
at our expense
but we don’t
slap him
we’ve always swallowed more
at work at home in bed
than pride
when all our names 
are called
we will not miss 
this moment
although our bladders fill like
Thanksgiving Day Parade
balloons
the trailing hems of gowns
catch heels and trip us
on the way to reach
the stage
where music has already 
played us off before
we even speak
the microphones the cameras
shutting down
we shout our thanks
for one another’s 
help and strength
into the emptying auditorium.
Our afterparty invitations
are for a future day
we don’t know when
but meanwhile
stand 
just stand
and keep our grip on something
golden.

Margaret D. Stetz, a lifelong feminist and a poet, is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware.

IF YOU SHOULD STUMBLE ACROSS ME IN THE BARREN WOODS

by Amna Alamir

“Barren Wood” by Mindy Newman

Hooded and lonesome, untie 

the shrouds and the clouds that 

walk among you and I will 

gently open inviting you in.

Reach out with tender curiosity 

your fingertips, feign a lasso out 

of heartstrings and I will share 

the taste of the ocean, the many 

travels I have bottled up and 

tossed at perturbed sailors.

Where they turned their backs on me: 

this is night country 

this isn’t right country 

in the blackness I am suffocating 

this isn’t my country. 

My body is changing 

has taken on your culture 

and become momentarily ill. 

There are parts of me 

I had to give up, I lost 

gave to you in exchange 

for your acceptance. 

I covered myself in barberries 

ginger root, cardamom. 

I am a rare sighting, now

beyond the star-shaped stars 

that float like lucid ribbons 

when it is time to die 

the earth shivers. 

 

Amna Alamir is a Kuwaiti writer who currently studies and resides in the UK. She is finishing up her MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is pursuing further research on silence, the female voice, and somatic practices. 

AFFIRMATIVE

by The Bangkok Bards

Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

Say yes to natural existence
Observing how plants animals grow
Learning to live dying gracefully
Acceptance simply being truly yourself

Life’s rhythms coexisting in harmony
Unfinished symphony awaiting upbeat coda
Spiritual serenity vision quest guide
Wholehearted cooperation with inevitable Fate

Accepting things we cannot change
Focusing on making positive adjustments
Governing ourselves without being overruled
By external circumstances beyond control

Seedling sprouting from infertile soil
Revitalized cool breezes soothing angst
Overburdened restless spirit regaining strength
Restorative nature uplifting serene oneness

If only I could grow
Stronger firmer quieter perceptively wiser
Learning what sedentary rocks know
Perpetual stillness simply being content

Life adapts to irresistible spontaneous
Change letting things flow calmly
Nurturing nature’s strange creatures world
Freely running own predestined course

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

TOLERANCE PERCHANCE

by The Bangkok Bards
Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

    ACCEPTANCE
Buddhists Christians Hindus Jews Muslims
Believe in compassionate multiversity values
Humility kindness dignity mutual respect
Civilized compromises agreeing to disagree

BALANCE
Same-same yet somehow different
Seen through refocused laser gaze
Cherish our commonalities honor discrepancies
Superiority complexes falling through cracks

ENDURANCE
Religions teach empathy not enmity
Universal red blood donor brotherhood
Imperfect beings inhabiting peaceful planet
Sacred principles uncovered deep within

FORBEARANCE
Education learning life-altering lessons
One’s enemy the best teacher
Common sense accepting forgiveness as
Rare as quality of mercy

SUFFERANCE
True lie lovers worshiping freedoms
Telescopic visionaries modifying radical approaches
Irrespective of perverse background perspectives
Matter-of-fact conscience conviction not convenience

REASSURANCE
Acknowledging disowned zero level tolerance
Bent on hateful fear violence
Distorted mirror image shattered stereotypes
Up-tight bigoted assholes prejudicing mindsets

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .