A ROTTEN TIME

by Marge Piercy

After violent months of war

no one can win, men with

assault rifles doing what they

were built to do, kill many,

 

world burning, people dying

of heat, hurricanes stronger

more often, tornadoes

fiercer, drought scorching

 

land to desert, Animals,

trees dying off and gone,
let’s not just hope, pray

but work to leave an earth

 

we’re not guilty of spoiling.

Despair is just laziness.

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

Marge Piercy is the author of twenty one poetry collections and seventeen novels, including Woman at the Edge of Time, and SEX WARS. A lifelong feminist, socialist, and anti-war activist, her writing has been exploring labor, environmental justice, and the struggle for a more equitable world over the last five decades.

MY CANNOTS

by Kim Malinowski

I cannot say ban guns 

 

I cannot say ban assault rifles 

when the Uzi I fired at eight still thrums 

its song through my veins, the recoil still smacking muscle 

rifle stabled on rusty hood 

merging in fierce moment with those before me 

deep in warrior chant. 

 

I cannot cannot say ban assault rifles 

the morgue has seen enough mangled 

enough loved ones pointing at shirts that should be muddy 

not tie-dyed with blood. 

 

I cannot cannot cannot watch faces line up  

as if on the milk carton shelf 

rows of parents, rows of children, wives, lovers, husbands, police 

panic the pledge of allegiance 

 

I cannot cannot cannot 

 

cannot see plague 

 

when I prime flintlock, inherit ancestors’  

gunpowder  

  savor gritty aftertaste  

Kim Malinowski is a lover of words. Her collection Home was published by Kelsay Books and her chapbook Death: A Love Story was published by Flutter Press. She has three forthcoming verse novels. Her work has appeared in War, Literature, and the Arts, BOMBFIRE, S/tick, Mookychick, and others. Her work dictated that she become a political science defined rebel, advocating for listening and understanding of our individual and collective history and bringing it to the page. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable. 

EGG RACE

by Devon Balwit

Image by Melodi2 via Answer Angels.

I write hate crime, mass shooting, extremist,
target, victim, second amendment, make
my students copy and pronounce, make
them lift their heads from their phones
and listen, all of us awkward, the ones
fasting for Ramadan, the ones who may
be gay, the ones who, secretly, do not care,
Orlando a place they’ve never heard of
in a country they barely know; they want
my language, not my history, and this lesson,
they can do without, my fumbling to do
justice to horror, while balancing the fragile
egg of blame in my tiny spoon, trying to dash
to the finish without letting it fall, homophobia,
intolerance, assault rifles, class ends and
I’ve taught something; none of us sure what.

Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher living in the Pacific Northwest.  Her work has appeared in TheNewVerse.News twice before. Her recent work has appeared or will soon in The Fog Machine, The Cape Rock, The Fem, Of(f) Course, drylandlit_press, and The Prick of the Spindle.

THE GREAT GOD

by Howard Winn

Image source: The Holy Prepuce

The Great God
gun speaks in its own language
and that is considered scripture
by the lovers of shotguns and pistols
even assault rifles which also
talk in the tongues of the
holy disciples congregated
in the church of the Association
that puts the fear of that god
into the souls of anxious politicians
who care more for re-election
than for economic justice or
saving the life of church goers
or innocent school children
as they continually bow their
heads in meek obeisance
to the power of that great
God gun the all powerful
ultimate Deity and icon of
their single minded faith


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.