ABOUT LOVE

by Ryan Caidic

 

 

Nearly 200,000 people in 124 villages in the northeastern Philippines were affected and over 5,400 fled massive plumes of ash that billowed from Mayon volcano over the weekend due to the collapse of lava deposits from its slopes, officials said Monday. —AP, May 4, 2026

Mayon is the most active volcano in the Philippines, erupting over 52 times in the past 500 years... Its most destructive recorded eruption occurred on February 1, 1814. The volcano belched dark ash and eventually bombarded the town of Cagsawa [where] about 1,200 locals perished in what is considered to be the most lethal eruption in Mayon's history. —Wikipedia

 

 

We live in the time of ash and awe,

where the bell tower of a ruined

cathedral frames the perfect dome

 

its crater glow combusting in pallid

pyroclastic smoke, thousands have fled

its strombolian show

 

of affection, amid the terrible beauty

engulfing kilometers of sky and city

under siege of nature’s desire

 

to shape itself, they say that Mayon

was the womb that rose from the burial

tomb of lovers Magayon and Panganoron

 

passion in the form of fire turned crust

then magma, then igneous stone

then lava, then a quiet, then rage,

 

then warmth, then grief, then ash again—

layers that unravel histories, unpredictable

yet predictable all the same.

 

Those who were burned have forgotten

relocating closer to the pulse

where the fire of Ibalon resides.

 

That’s the theology of love.

To be close enough to feel the rumble

of a molten heart, to be in the shadow

 

of its ending, and to exist,

every time a little more consumed

by its divine ravishing of flame.  

 

 

Ryan Caidic is a Filipino poet and advertising creative living in Denmark. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, The Missouri Review, Southeast Review, Apricity, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere, and has been highly commended by the Bridport Prize and Munster Literature Center.  

THE STRANDED CITY

by Iman Oshani

 

 

Tehran skyline at sunset, with the city's iconic Milad Tower rising in the distance, January 2026 —Iran International

 

The smell of gunpowder

lingers for a lifetime.

And in this land,

the snow migrated last year.

Car washes are shut down,

and cars won't move under the weight of ash.

Houses are drained of commotion.

The bedroom.

A large bed.

Sheets neatly made, but gathering dust.

The desk clock faces the wall.

And on the floor,

lies the only corpse: a fly.

The phone will not ring.

The TV is locked on the news.

And behind the window, there is no view...

except

a dog walking by,

sniffing the holes in the buildings.

Iman Oshani is an Iranian writer and poet based in Tehran. His work explores the surreal intersections of memory, objects, and the geography of crisis.

ICE

a Golden Shovel

after Adrienne Rich's  “What Kind of Times Are These”

by Nancy Sobanik

"We support our neighbors and we will stand with our neighbors," Leslie Carlson, a protester, said.

We are born suffused with stardust, not this
armload of crumbling charcoal. Hate isn’t
underground, it feeds on oxygen. A
tinderbox of words erupts like Russian
folk dancers. How quickly a poem
turns to men in black balaclavas. This
is our warning. Fire needs no wind, it is
fed by the pause. The wisp and spark not
stamped, and mouths bare their teeth. Somewhere
another will smother the burning, why else
would we let fire taste our own door?
But—
think of ash, think of diamonds. Grow them here.

A poet and Registered Nurse living in Maine, Nancy Sobanik (her/she) has recent work curated or forthcoming by The Orchards Poetry Journal, Mobius, Chiron Review, Jackdaw Review, Hole in The Head Review and others. A Best of The Net and Pushcart nominee, she is a three-time finalist awarded second and third place in the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest.  A manuscript screener for Alice James Books, her debut chapbook “The Unfolding”will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2026. Bluesky: nancysobanik.bsky.social

EMPTY SPACES

by Adam Bagdasarian

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

There is no pill or drink for this

No pill for the rubble of home

for the dust of flesh

the ash of bone

No drink for the season-less years—

for the trees, for the water

the sunlight one cannot feel

or the empty plate of the evening meal

Each new day comes D.O.A.

rewound, somehow and replayed

rewound and played

rewound, replayed

Adam Bagdasarian’s Forgotten Fire was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. In 2002,  First French Kiss and Other Traumas was a finalist for the ALA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults.

HEALTH ALERT BULLETIN CONCERNING CAPITOL CLIMATE CHANGE

by Lynne Barnes

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

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

Be advised:

 

Now is a time of high stress.

It’s in the air like smoke and ash.

You must mask while you’re out

and get inside as soon as you can.

 

Get inside circles of humans who see, know

who you are, circles of people who allow you

to share your emotions and thoughts.

 

Sharing inside circles of trust

can boost your immune system,

help neutralize the pollution

of this air we are breathing now,

 

air hazy with particulate matter of fear

that has come upon us suddenly

in this last half of

the month of January, 2025.

 

Take care.

Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

RED FLAG

by Pepper Trail

This is the way now, the night helicopters orange-bellied from the flames, swallowing mouthfuls of ocean, dropping salt on the mansions, bungalows, trailers, the streets running wild with molten metal, airburst of exploding eucalyptus, every TV speaking wisely, hysterically of ember fall, windspeed, perimeters, acres, percents, containment, containment, containment, canyons, freeways, the survivors somehow calm, brave beside the ruins, char and ash, the scorched tricycle on its side, the bewildered chimneys of the cul-de-sacs, hell on earth you could say and not be wrong, the City of Angels twisting in the grasp of Santa Ana, beneath the red flags and this is the way now though maybe in your town it will be hurricane or tornado or flood or drought or heat unto death or maybe in some blessed places of sanctuary maybe only a tsunami of the desperate and displaced  but this is the everywhere now and we have made it so.

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 UNNAMED FIRE

by Alejandro Escudé

Dozens of beachfront homes in Malibu were destroyed overnight in the Palisades Fire on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

The hills were there, lichen green, and I felt the small 

ferocious animals scurrying inside of it. The coyote ever-present, 

ready to pounce on the owners’ three Shih Tzu. Sometimes, we’d 

housesit, and I’d lounge on the front yard overlooking the Pacific Ocean. 

It was as if I could dip a toe in the sea from that cliff, the ruffled white curve

as it wound north toward Malibu, an emerald land too close to call distant.

Now that street has turned ash gray, only the outlines of the lots remain,

that same coast like the edge of a puddle of spilled black ink. I recognize

the people who were caught in their cars, cars that were later plowed

to make way for fire engines and ambulances. The wind spoke in vowels

the night before last across my humble balcony that faces those smoky hills.

The sudden clanks. Buffering curtains. The canyons siphoning destruction.

One could imagine the homes as graves. Ash-people holding on to one another.

In ancient times no machine could whisk them away to safety. A volcano

of wind, torrent of melted metal. What powers do the digital towers have?

What future awaits those of us who traverse this playground of film and filth

and indifference, negotiating the enchanted brutality of this hardened city? 

One can read the scroll of the flames; they speak a crackling language,

letters made of embers. It rages on, the unnamed fire, it wraps itself 

in the gales. A migration begins along an avenue of burning palm fronds.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

ONCE AGAIN, SMOKE

by JL Huffman

Once again, smoke from Canadian wildfires envelops many American cities —Medical Xpress, July 3, 2023

JL Huffman is a retired Trauma Surgeon/ICU doctor who has published three poetry books: Almanac: The Four Seasons (2020), Family Treasons (2021), and Voyage: Vista and Verse (2022). Her individual poems have appeared in The Pharos, The Asahi Haikuist Network, Haiku Dialogue, Poetry Pea, Cold Moon Journal, The Pan Haiku Review, Haiku in Action, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and others. Twitter: @JoanHuffmanMD

KINTSUGI

by Chris Reed

Kintsugi is the Japanese art or repairing broken pottery

with epoxy mixed with gold dust.

Cracks and repairs are not hidden but highlighted,

imperfections, part of an object’s life.

Sickly yellow lights the landscape,

like a room lit by an aging lampshade.

Great smoke plumes from Canadian forests,

blanket eastern farms, cities and shores,

swallow a line of green glittering trees

and a neighbor’s brown house

as if the fires are a mile,

and not a country away.

I taste ash on my tongue,

absorb smoke through sinuses,

and wonder about the birds, recently migrated

north across Lake Erie to nest,

On the deck, potted salmon-edged geraniums,

smaller blooms of pink and white,

and spikes of lavender, sit abjectly

in the aberrant light.

Rosemary and thyme rub against

each other in a blue pot with a gold seam.

My sister, the potter who shaped the planter,

repaired it in seven days,

mixing epoxy and resins with gold dust,

painting seams, fitting pieces together,

then aging the repaired pot in a large dark box. 

The trick, she said, is to know

that it is even more beautiful repaired.

Burnt ash in the air evokes memories

of not so distant atrocities and tragedies,

yet, seems a hairline fracture

in the ongoing dropping of our world.

Pillaging of nature, wars of aggression,

greed-driven power plays,

hate crimes and death-dealing viruses,

crack the thin ceramic of creation.

Lumpy veins of gold witness

our attempted repairs.

Is there room on this spiderweb

for another seam of gold. And how to start?

Epoxies of novenas and pilgrimages

don’t work anymore.

That god has picked up his play things. 

And even if we find the gold dust,

do we have a shoebox large enough?

And will we remember the trick?

Like others who live near or in the New York City area, Chris Reed was not only concerned about the extreme air quality conditions, but eerily reminded of the empty streets during the first year of Covid, and the indelible images of the air over New York after 9/11. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, US1 Worksheets, and The New Verse News.

A YEAR AFTER THE CARPENTER AND AN NPR JOURNALIST HUDDLE BESIDE A WOOD-BURNING FIRE IN LVIV

by Ellen Sazzman

Bohdan Kulik served in the Soviet military in the early 1980s in Moscow. He's done a bunch of odd jobs over the years since, he says, but in essence, he's a carpenter. He loves to make staircases. Photo by Ryan Kellman. —NPR, March 17, 2022

1

“My true love is building staircases,” the carpenter explains.  

“You must understand the difficulties of crafting a staircase.   

First the wood must be stained. Next...” The journalist 

interrupts, asks if the carpenter is worried about the war.    

 

The carpenter mans a checkpoint. Without a gun but with a crate 

of Molotov cocktails. His job: to stop cars, look for saboteurs.  

He pulls out his phone and shows videos of Russian destruction 

farther east in Kharkiv and Mariupol.  

 

The journalist asks again if the carpenter is worried.  

The carpenter chops kindling, feeds the stove, puts a kettle on.  

He offers coffee, says he’s 62, a pensioner. The carpenter repeats 

the importance of what goes into making a staircase:  

 

collecting accurate measurements, calculating the slope, installing 

risers, treads, handrails. The carpenter pulls out his phone once more, 

shares photos of staircases he has built. The journalist compliments

the staircases:  “They’re beautiful, but about the war?”    

                                                                                                        

2

After one year, a long nightmare, try to 

imagine the beauty of staircases, 

the smell of coffee, the warmth of a stove.  

Not the blood of suffering. Not the bombing.  

Not the decision to stay put  

despite what staircases are made for—  

scaling, leaving, fleeing 

through fumes and smoke, through 

a fine ash that still invades Lviv from the East 

and shrouds all things with the salt 

of a terrible weeping before a mute god.  

Pray there is dust enough

to re-make wild birds and beasts, 

to re-form woman and man, to re-plant.

Ellen Sazzman is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has been recently published in Peregrine, Delmarva Review, Another Chicago Magazine, PANK, Connecticut River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Moment, Common Ground, and CALYX, among others. Her collection The Shomer was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the 2020 Elixir Antivenom Award and the 2019 Codhill Press Poetry Award.

FIRE SEASON

by Laton Carter

Smoke turns the morning light orange on Saturday in this photo taken near the Huckleberry Lookout, provided by the Cedar Creek Fire Incident Command. Credit: Cedar Creek Fire Incident Command via InciWeb and OPB, September 12, 2022

It is not that fire is snow. It is not even

that falling ash is snow. The sky

 

is stunned, swallowed

by a yellow glove whose palm

 

opens to haze and drifting filament. Burned

bodies, trees that pursed their mouths, that

 

refused to gasp or cry, handrails that melted, that

obeyed the persistence of time, they are

 

floating. (Floating only appears directionless.)

Summer is winter. Hold up your hand. In winter

 

no one answers. It is not that snow

is winter. Breathe in. Your lips, your throat,

 

your lungs. Prepare yourself.

Floating is not a weightless task.

 

Crucible,

blind pilot, un-

yielding conflagration.

Laton Carter's Leaving (University of Chicago Press) received the Oregon Book Award. His writing also appears in Indiana Review, Narrative, and Split Lip Magazine.

DROUGHT SONG OF THE ELEPHANTS

by Orel Protopopescu

 

We lumber along and sway  

closer to death, stirring dust

like the skirts of the women

eternally searching for water, 

jugs on their heads, 

their children like bundles

of sticks on their backs.

 

We are searching for water,

but keep finding death

in the soot of the grasses 

that once waved to us.

Who took the rain clouds, 

the green from the trees? 

We walk a parched path

where leaves crack and fall

 like birds from the sky.  

            

We remember the pools,

the pools where we played

before days dried in blood

left a burnt orange haze

of dust in our eyes. 

What drives us, who hunts us, 

what beast made of heat?

 

With the children like sticks

we keep drinking the dust.

We drink and they drink

until tongues turn to ash

and milky eyes close.

 

And now we’re forgetting

the clouds and the grasses,

the haze of the heat

with no name and no face.

We’re forgetting the children

who fell on this path 

where our tongues turn to ash

and our clouded eyes close.

Orel Protopopescu has written prize-winning works for children and adults. She won the Oberon poetry prize in 2010 and 2020. Her first biography Dancing Past the Light: The Life of Tanaquil Le Clercq (University Press of Florida, 2021) received a starred review in Library Journal. 

THE WEST IS BURNING

by Steve Deutsch

On the rise above 

Route 80, by a trickle

that was once 

a river

 

I watch a line

of traffic

a thousand miles long 

going nowhere.

 

The road has 

buckled and a semi

sits on its side

steam still boiling.

 

One by one

the cars and trucks

run out of gas—

dream irony

 

I suppose,

and people stand

beside their behemoths—

afraid at last.

 

The pine

and hemlock forest 

that lined the road

has turned

 

a sickly brown

and trees light up

like candlesticks

one by one.

 

Children fight

the fire

with blankets

and spit.

 

And the dust

and smoke 

and ash

make breathing

 

an occupation.

The west is burning

and few if any

will make it out.

 

I wake with a gasp—

heart escaping.

Smoke colors the moon

the west is burning.

Steve Deutsch has been widely published both on line and in print. Steve is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is poetry editor for Centered Magazine. His poetry books: Perhaps You Can (2019), Persistence of Memory (2020),  and Going, Going, Gone (2021) were all published by Kelsay Press.