OWNERSHIP

by W. Luther Jett

Three people were arrested by Florida Highway Patrol Sunday evening at the Pulse nightclub memorial site, after witnesses say they again attempted to chalk the nearby crosswalk in rainbow colors that were recently removed by the Florida Department of Transportation.—Central Florida Public Media, August 31, 2025. Photo by Nicole Darden Creston/Central Florida Public Media: Early Sunday afternoon, a sign reading "Defacing sidewalk prohibited" stands next to an area of sidewalk chalked with the phrase "You can't erase us." Florida Highway Patrol cars are seen in the parking lot across the street behind the building.

There was chalk

on the sidewalk and they—

the owners of the sidewalk

erased it.

                    Then it rained

while the sun shone—

We all saw the rainbow

before they put up walls

to hide it,

                    But you see

no-one really owned that sidewalk—

no more than anyone could own

the sky where the rainbow 

shimmered.

                    And if anyone

ever tells you they have touched

a rainbow—they are not

being truthful.

                    But I have held

chalk in my hand, chalk

all colors of—well, you know

how chalk dust rubs off—

how it gets

                    all over everything.

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of six poetry chapbooks. His full-length collection “Flying to America” was published by Broadstone Books in 2024, while his most recent chapbook “The Colour War” was released by Kelsay Books in 2024.

WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE?

by Bonnie Naradzay

Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move "Operation Gideon's Chariots" wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing, and permanent recolonization of Gaza, using the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction - this, even as many of the Palestinian children who've somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. Photo: Osama Al-Raqab, 6, is one of tens of thousands of Gazan children slowly starving. Screenshot from NBC. —Common Dreams, May 6, 2025

What kind of times are these,
asked Brecht, when a conversation 
about trees is almost a crime 
because it entails a silence about 
so many misdeeds!  And so
is it fitting to converse about
the ephemeral cherry blossoms
that graced the Tidal Basin trees.?
Elected felons spout obscenities. 
“Have you no sense of decency,” 
someone finally asked McCarthy.
I have grown numb to incivilities. 
The Slaughter of the Innocents
continues again without a pause,
since Israel broke the ceasefire
two months ago and halted
all food, water, and medicine.
Yet people here are arrested
and deported for decrying 
the deliberate slaughter
and starvation of the people
of Gaza, the burning of tents 
in “safe zones” where 
the displaced are sleeping.
Israel calls its war crimes
“Operation Gideon’s Chariots.”
What kind of times are these?
Yesterday, and again today,
for those still counting, 
Israel detonated drones 
and US-made bunker bombs 
in Gaza, killing over 100 
people each day; and 27 
children were said to have 
starved to death already today 
you could count all their ribs 
in these dark times
when we cannot see
the forest for the trees.

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard 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.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations. 

SILENCE, A CROW

by Francis Opila

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

Listen
to silence at dawn
the night still holds

you by candlelight
one poem wakes you
compels you to unravel

thread by thread
in breath, out breath
harmony in this moment

your 9 AM appointment
laundry, your next hike
bombs in the Middle East

until from a nearby maple
a crow cackles
arrested for free speech

yet he calls over & over
howls of a distant train
now a dozen crows

in breath, out breath
tapping of gentle rain

Francis Opila is a rain-struck, sun-loving poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest.  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Wayfinding, Windfall, and other journals. His poetry collection Conference of the Crows was published in 2023. He enjoys performing poetry, combining recitation and playing North American wooden flutes.

LETZTE GENERATION

by David Chorlton

A scream circumnavigates the world.

Is anybody listening

 

when the police arrive to sweep away

those for whom the last resort

is blocking traffic

 

to impress upon their fellow citizens

the planet is on life support

and the drivers only have a mile to go

 

before the ground opens up

and swallows them.

 

Does anybody care?

 

Call it Freedom; say Democracy

until it hurts; write to the highest authority

and the mail comes back 

as undeliverable.  

The future’s not the future

 

anymore. And yet it is still beautiful

when a day begins with a mountain

spreading its wings

 

and the sun breaking into song.

David Chorlton lives in Phoenix where he writes and occasionally paints watercolors. While his writing is usually poetry, his newest book is a true life account of a murder story from 1960s Vienna (where he lived for several years) in which one of his cousins was wrongly convicted: The Long White Glove published by New Meridian Arts.

Editor’s Note: Listen to David talk about his new book on the Word podcast (about 10 minutes in) from WJZZ.

WHOSE STORY? WHOSE CHOICE?

by Laurie Rosen

Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz/AMS via The Washington Post.

I am 35, 

I am 19, 

I am 12. 

Put a bounty on my head,

on my confidants and advisers

my doctor, too. 

Sue the office administrators,

the taxi driver that brought me.

Come for me with handcuffs.

Restrain my arms behind my back,

haul me off to jail.

Lock me up behind bars, 

Throw away the key.

Call me a murderer, baby killer. 

Selfish, hateful. 

I plead guilty. I don’t deny it. 

But, look me in the eyes 

and tell me I am not speaking 

your story or your lover’s,

your sister’s, your best friend’s,

maybe even your daughter’s. 

I am 35, mark my body   state controlled,  

I am 19, proclaim my uterus   conscripted,

I am 12, classify my heartbeat   irrelevant.

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poems have appeared in Sisyphus, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Oddball Magazine, Soul-Lit, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. 

IT IS DIFFERENT IT IS NOT DIFFERENT

by Sarah Sarai

32 mug shots of
Freedom Riders

arrested 24 May
1961 and jailed

Jackson
Mississippi.

John Lewis is
third from right

top row.
CT Vivian second

row
second from left.

In
Louisville KY

435 mug shots
of

as many protestors
jailed

saying her
name

(Breonna
Taylor)

are not yet
released.

Add 400
more

Freedom Riders.
I can’t

find them
all,

those
solid of will.

Sarah Sarai’s poems are in DMQ Review, The Southampton Review, E-Ratio, and others. Her second full-length collection is That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books). She lives in New York.

A COLLECTION OF SHORTS ON CHURROS

by Jen Schneider



Handcuffed for Selling Churros: Inside the World of Illegal Food Vendors —The New York Times, November 12, 2019


Salt and Tears

Tears of sweet
salty goodness
wrapped
in a 99 cent
pastry
served hot
on a cold
city corner

Tears of sour
salty numbness
wrapped
in a 99 dollar
fine
served hot
in a cold
city jail

Small Change

I’ll take three. Please,
keep the change.

Sweet, heavenly steam
on cheeks
as flaky pastry
with a hint
of cinnamon and sugar
melt in my mouth.

A small taste of heaven
on Earth, purchased
daily for a mere 99 cents.

Suffocating Fines

My simple
guilty pleasure,
her lifeline—dough for
milk, denim, rent—
silenced
with fines
that tally
a month’s worth
of churros and
violation of a permit
system
that permits no entry.

Seeking
a seat—if not
at the table—on the subway.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Coil, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, 42 Stories Anthology (forthcoming), Voices on the Move (forthcoming), Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

EXAM

by Mark Ward

This week Ugandan police arrested 16 LGBTQ activists on charges of gay sex—which is punishable by life imprisonment. Police arrested them at the sexual health organization where they worked and lived and cited condoms, lubricants and anti-HIV medicines found there as evidence of a crime. Police then subjected them to forced anal exams, which can amount to torture under international law, before releasing them on bail, according to a statement by activists. —The Washington Post, October 26, 2019. Photo: A Ugandan man with a sticker on his face takes part in gay pride in Entebbe, Uganda in 2014. (ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP/Getty Images via The Washington Post)

I feel his fingers pull me apart. 
I am on all fours on a steel trolley
somewhere underground in town. 
All I can see is feet passing. 
                       I clench. He smacks my arse
and for a moment, I am at home
with you—this easy intimacy 
before bed. 
                        Fingers always hurt. 
The nails. Even through gloves. 
That illusion of hygiene. 
                                               He opens me
to peer inside. 
                                He rummages, 
searching for sedition, 
or semen. Something to prove
I walk around with sinful innards.  
                I make no sound. 
                                                  And when he is done, 
despite telling me I can dress, I remain, 
                  trousers round my ankles, 
without shame, fully aware of my 
unprovable proficiencies
                                                  until he leaves in disgust.

Mark Ward is the author of the chapbooks Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), and the full-length collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). His work has been widely published at home and abroad. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry. 

BIOGRAPHY/MALHEUR

by Amy Eisner

Cattle at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge wait out the fog of a cold, winter morning January 11, 2016. Image source: Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Her childhood cards said interested, alert, and eager to learn.
In her twenties she was an associative thinker and loved
to work numbers, fold them like origami in a spread
sheet. But she has no head for numbers, they slip through.
Her boyfriend said it was obnoxious to put him on a list
after laundry, and eventually he slipped through too.
In her thirties she had babies, became a thing of many:
mouths, wakings, -pieced toys. By her forties she is simply
scattered. "Get your [ship] together" reads the tote bag
in the store. (She has become a shopper, provisioning being
the only news she can solve.) This week she thinks often
of white men in the cold, in the bird refuge
they have claimed as their own. If they stay long enough
will we come look at them through binoculars, mark them
by the particular scruff on their duck canvas chests?
On so much land the fog must roll in layers: blue, sooty,
breathy, tinged with sun, filling secret baskets in secret
Paiute graves, filling the bunchgrass and the people squatting
in it--new arrivals with binoculars in their mitts watching
us watch the tribe watch the birders watch the ranchers
(oh, the ranger and the cowman should be friends)
and the vision of what you can own in a glance
multiplies to a power, like Galileo's scope, devised
to make a man on a ship fifty miles away appear five.
You can see the ship, you can see the man,
but what can you own but what you admit?


Amy Eisner teaches writing at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her poems have appeared in Confrontation, Fence, Valparaiso, and other journals.

A MIGHTY WOMAN WITH A TORCH

by Donna Barkman

MADISON, WI (WKOW August 27, 2013) -- Capitol Police have been arresting the Solidarity Singers for gathering without a permit since late July.  But for the first time on Monday, those arrests turned violent.

Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota.

They forced me to my knees—the censors
and the haters of your speech, no longer free.
The cost of congregating: a strong fence
and the punishment for protest songs, a fee
or jail time— length to be decided.
My mouth is gagged, I gasp for breath
since they wrapped me, thickly iced,
strait-jacketed, to await my death.
But my tablet bears the law of freedom—
still!—and dated Independence Day,
so legislators are forewarned we’ll come
to march and sing, and have our say.
Imprisoned lightning – my torch – will thaw
our frozen rights:  reclaim our law!

          
Author's note: Text in italics from "The New Colossus" (1883) by Emma Lazarus, engraved on The Statue of Liberty.

Donna Barkman lived in Madison in the 70s and watched Miss Liberty on ice from her office window in Helen C. White Hall.  Since then, she continued as a librarian and added the job titles of performer, writer and teacher.

SING SING SING

by Albert Vetere Lannon





They are arresting people in Wisconsin.
For singing:
           This land is your land this land is my land…
All kinds of people
Singing songs.
Not all kinds of songs.
           There once was a union maid who never was afraid…
Not justin bieber songs.
Strong songs. Songs with a message.
Songs that people sing when they are fed up:
           I ain’t a-scared of your jail ‘cause I want my freedom…
When they are angry:
           We are a gentle angry people and we are singing
           Singing for our lives…
Songs of solidarity:
           When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run
           There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun…
Grandmothersfathersmotherssistersbrotherssonsdaughters
Arrested for singing:
           Build high build wide your prison walls
           That there be room enough for all…
Songs. I think I’ll sing a song today:
           We were born to rise…
Do you think they’ll come to
Arrest me as well? And you?
           We shall overcome…
Songs that matter.
They can arrest us all they want
But they can’t jail our songs. So:
            Lift every voice and sing…
Yes, sing my brothers
sing my sisters
Sing ! Sing ! Sing !
        ‘Til the walls come tumbling down.


Albert Vetere Lannon is a retired Bay Area labor educator, former union official, and a poet and historian. He has been awarded prizes from the Society of Southwestern Authors and Arizona State Poetry Society.