HANDLER'S HANDS

by Michelle DeRose

First skin shrivels

without touch. Parent's

palm to baby's back

an initial prayer

for safe-keeping, offered

in heart's rhythm.

 

How maimed the hand 

that releases the leash

on a dog trained to maul.

Strokes fur to praise puncture,

urges sic, not stay.

Fingers turned incisors

on blue fields of fifty

rip red strips

on a father's back,

pierce our beating core.

A member of a foster family for newborn wards of the state of Illinois as she grew up, Michelle DeRose witnessed first-hand how simple touches soothed some of the many infants her mother nurtured. A life-long dog-lover and -rescuer, she still wonders if she and her husband rescue dogs or they rescue them. The perversion of this most basic of communication--love and calm conveyed when one living being gently touches another--blatantly revealed in ICE's actions in Washington state against Wilmer Toledo-Martinez should repulse us all.

SPECIAL SECRET

by g emil reutter

Posted by Mark Hamill at Bluesky

Whack-a-Mole

Jeff is still there

Throw everything against the wall

It doesn’t stick

Jeff is still there

Hammer and miss

Hammer and miss

Jeff is still there

Make crap up

Attack attack attack

Whack whack whack

Jeff is still there

What lurks in shadows

Of special secrets

Reality is creeping up

As these two creeped

Young girls.

The last one standing

Shall fall hard

And no matter how

He may try heaven is

Not calling

Virgil awaiting his arrival

g emil reutter is a writer of stories and poems. His latest release is Distance to Infinity, an anti-authoritarian poetry chapbook.

LOVE OF THE COMMON MAN (HONEST!)

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Netanyahu and Trump, the peacemakers of our time... Cartoon by Tjeerd Royaards

All we have done

Is take off our fedoras

And baseball caps,

But under our space-age flight helmets.

We’re the same good-hearted

Ordinary Joes

We’ve always been.

 

We were remarkably restrained,

Weren’t we?

We said we’d wait and see

And we did,

For hours and hours.

We gave them the opportunity

To cease and desist

Their opposition

To the war being waged against them

By our little brother

(With, admittedly, a little big-brother supporrt).

They did not stop.

 

We know they have nuclear weapons

With which to destroy us. 

Even though “experts” in the CIA

And other suspect organizations

Tell us this enemy

Has no nuclear WMDs.

We know the “experts”

Are wrong. 

We know 

They are going to use those bombs

Against us.

Honest.

If we do not attack them 

They will attack us.

Honest.

So we have taken

A pre-emptive step.

(Pre-emptive is such 

A multifaceted and useful adjective.)

 

We are sorry most people

And most nations

Misunderstand us,

Accuse us of over-weaning ambiton,

Of wanting to rule the entire planet.

We are merely seeking

To take our rightful place

In the hierarchy 

Atop the world order

Where we will reign with

Wisdom and generrosity

And love of the common man

As long as the common man

Doesn’t get too big for his britches

And think he can fight back.

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is A Friendly Little Tavern Somewhere Near the Pleiades. He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

DEMAGOGUERY FOR DUMMIES: LYING WITH IMPUNITY

by Paul Burgess

President Trump’s shifting positions and outright lies have presented the American public with dueling narratives at every turn. —The New York Times, March 8, 2025

When caught in bold, apparent lies,
Just look accusers in the eyes
And flash a grave, offended frown
While digging in to double down. 
 
When people say they've gotten proof,
Declare their sources stand aloof 
From all that's decent, true, or fair 
And freeze them with an icy stare.
 
Then take their claims and throw them back
And wear them out with your attack.
Their armor takes no time to rend.
They came to charge and not defend.
 
Insist they envy all your fame
And labor hard to smear your name.
To get the mob to take your side,
Appeal to people's sense of pride.
 
Convince them that their brains are wired
To see the way your foes conspired
And other folks are not as smart
Or simply play the villain's part.
 
What's true will shortly be defined 
In only ways you have in mind.
Their truth's not worth a bag of beans
Because you'll change what “honest” means.

Paul Burgess lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the sole proprietor of a business that offers ESL, translation, and interpretation services. He speaks several languages fluently and enjoys engaging with the cultures and intellectual histories of many nations. His poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Orchards, Parody, Lighten Up Online, and other poetry publications.

DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

by Cindy Ellen Hill

an extraction poem from...

Text

Purpose.  

deny the biological reality of sex purpose

access intimate sex

spaces for women, from women, to women  

eradicate the biological reality of sex

attack women

depriving them of their dignity

The erasure of sex in truth is critical

immutable biological reality of sex

biological facts. 

the true and biological category of “woman”

transforms laws and policies

defend women’s rights

protect freedom of conscience

recognize two sexes, male and female.  

These sexes are

grounded in fundamental

incontrovertible reality.  

promote this reality “Sex”

immutable biological classification “Sex”

not a synonym

there is a vast spectrum of genders

disconnected from one’s sex. 

from biological reality and sex

existing on an infinite continuum,

as a replacement for sex.

the term “sex”

Federal employees’ sex,

single-sex rape

shelters the freedom to express

the nature of sex

Cindy Ellen Hill has authored three chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021), Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022), and Mosaic (Wild Dog Press 2024). Her full-length collection Love in a Time of Climate Change is forthcoming in 2025 from Finishing Line Press. Her essays on poetry have appeared in American Poetry Review and Unlikely Stories. She twice won the Vermont Writer’s Prize.

CANCER JEW

by Howie Good

We’re told that life, it can be a wedding or a funeral, happy or melancholy, just depends if we act like mourners or celebrants, it’s our choice, whether we dab away tears of joy or shed ones of grief, responsibility for our happiness, we’re told in podcasts and internet articles and by subliminal suggestion, is entirely ours, regardless of the colossal forces, the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics, the self-corrections of the market, that shape and direct our lives, that hurl us through a worrying present toward a future we already regret, tumors on eyes and nose and mouth and shadows congealing into a dark mass, a Jew lying on the ground, beaten to the point of death.

 

Note: “Cancer Jew” is a Dutch anti-Semitic slur.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

FORCED REALITY

by Lylanne Musselman 

The morning Facebook went down,

is a testament to the world we live in,

your first thoughts: someone hacked me—

your account is gone, the photos you trust

will always be there forever, deleted.

A life lived on social media, Instagram and

Threads vanished. You're not allowed to log in.

Wrong password. You know it’s correct,

but conditioned you change your password.

The platforms won’t let you. You’ve been shut out.

Meta doesn’t believe it’s you. How do you prove

you’re you to software programs that don’t

recognize passwords, or codes sent

directly to your phone to verify your identity?

Finally, you hear others are having issues

logging into Facebook and all related platforms.

Your next thought—we’re under attack.

Some nefarious group or country has taken control—

then like a miracle, we’re allowed back in.

It’s as if nothing happened at all, no real harm.

Except how pathetic we are

when we collectively have a panic attack

over social media, forcing us to face reality—

we rely too much on Meta to connect.

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist. Her work has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, Poetry Breakfast, and The Ekphrastic Review, among many others, in addition to many anthologies. Her seventh chapbook Staring Dementia in the Face (Finishing Line Press) became available in 2023.

POEM FOR MY MIDDLE FINGER

by Susan Vespoli

with a nod to Catherine Pierce’s protest poems

“Fuck Authority” by Dan Colen, 2006, Oil on found painting

In protest I watch eight cops 

unload from their SUV, then strut

past me, a small granny with teal luggage 

waiting at the airport for a ride. 

In protest I say Beefcake. 

Fitted khaki pants and black polo 

shirts decaled with the word Police. 

Guns strapped to each man’s thigh 

with dark bands. In protest I say garter belts. 

In protest I say (in my head) I know 

what you did to my son. I saw the body 

cam. In protest, I glare. Puffed out chests 

and cocky swagger. In protest I say 

Mr. America patrol. I say rooster 

and remember the one that attacked 

my granddaughter at the peacock park. 

We thought it was a soft striped hen 

with a red mohawk until it high-kicked

its claws into her scalp. Blood spurted 

as she shrieked. In protest I say pull it in, 

dudes. Fold those football-player-sized egos

into cloth napkins at a memorial service. 

In protest I say humble. I say karma. I say

apologize. I want to scream, you don’t scare me, 

but remember my other kid saying, watch out, Mom. 

You’re gonna get yourself in trouble. In protest 

I say fuck Superman. I say fuck cultural authority. 

I bow down to sky, birds, dogs, poems, and peace.

Susan Vespoli lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she continues to write toward finding some sort of justice for her son, Adam Vespoli, who was shot and killed by police on March 12, 2022.

MISGUIDED: A SOUTHEASTERN OHIO TRAGEDY

by Renee Williams

 

On October 29th, while on a gravel bike ride in Vinton County, Ohio, three unleashed, uncontained pit bulls attacked Eva Simons, pinned and mauled her. Thankfully, three Good Samaritans happened to drive by and were able to save her life. Eva underwent emergency surgery and the amputation of the left leg above the knee. She has a long road ahead and will require multiple surgeries to reconstruct the remaining leg. —from the Gofundme for Eva Simons

An innocent,
walking down a rural road, alone, away from the other bicyclists, 
wanting to get back to her vehicle to fix a flat, 
when she became quarry to three unchained pit bulls, 
knowing no other way than to attack, 
their so-called area invaded, 
by an unknown person, diminutive, vulnerable.
Barking, growling, snarling, 
incisors like blades,
biting,
tearing, ripping, slicing skin,
feasting on flesh from bone, savoring the salty taste of blood,
chewing, gorging, vivisecting,
mauling, mangling,
destroying, devouring, dismembering, 
eating her alive 
like pack of lions in the veld, gnawing an impala,
for twenty minutes
in a delightful game of mere response, 
base, vile, predatory instincts kicking in, 
untrained,
reacting.
 
The owners,
at a bustling urban hospital, so far from the country lane, 
a newborn child, sick.
Did the dogs offer protection in the depths of the forest, 
or the illusion of power, toughness, 
as we human animals fall prey
to the intoxicating allure 
of controlling what shouldn’t be controlled
like domesticating a lion or tiger, leading it, guiding it, exerting dominance?
Or, perhaps the first dog was taken in, alone, afraid, desperate for care,
mirroring the pitied human discards of Appalachia,
victims of a poor economy, limited employment options, and no place to call home.
It’s said that bad choices make great stories.
But why do you need three pit bulls?
Unwanted dogs multiply like rabbits,
and who has the time to tend to a dog that wasn’t wanted in the first place,
that was dumped in front of the house, 
and the kids wouldn’t stop crying until it was taken in, 
but it has killer instincts, jaws that could snap a bone in a heartbeat,
and work is calling because someone is sick with this damned Covid,
the kids have that new math homework to be done,
and the refrigerator just went on the fritz
for the second time this month?
 
Pit bulls, bred for fighting, vicious, beastly
can be caring, loving pets.
Yet the stereotype is perpetuated,
again, and again…
 
Just another country road,
in another county township,
sycamore leaves falling,
sunlight waning,
gunshots from the sheriff’s pistol. 

Renee Williams is a retired English professor, who has written for Guitar Digest, Alien Buddha Press, and Fevers of the Mind.

THE NEW NOVEMBER

by Jan Steckel

for Garrett Murphy

 

Late October is the New November,

the nova ember, when all slates

are made new. Ladybug, ladybug,

fly away home, your statehouse is on fire.

If you can’t vote the bastards out, 

drag along your electoral hammers,

spousal skull-crushers. Surveil those 

ballot boxes through the sights 

of your AR13s, only wear masks 

when you’re Ku Klux Klanning.

Proud Boys will be bashers.

It’s the ballot-harvesting festival,

so let’s go smashing pumpkins.

MAGA MAGA make it rain, it’s

lefty-hunting season again.

Kristallnacht’s in fashie-fashion.

Jack-o-Lannister, slide down

the Capitol bannister.

Olly olly oxen free!

Open season/no more reason:

civil discourse is passé,

democracy’s so yesterday.

Grab your billyclubs, shillaleghs, 

flagpoles, sheriff’s star,

little red baseball cap.

It’s mass grave o’clock, wake up, 

smell the decomposing bodies.

Get up off your brass knuckles—

Let the midterms begin!

Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California. 

SALMAN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

NADEZHDA OF KRAMATORSK

by Moira Magneson

The Kramatorsk railway station was hit by Russian missiles at about 10:30 local time (07:30 GMT) on Friday, April 8. Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, has said the death toll has risen to 50. That number includes five children… The mayor of Kramatorsk said there were 4,000 people, most of them elderly, women and children, at the station at the time of the attack. —The Guardian, April 9, 2022

Only yesterday Nadezhda had gone with her mom to pick up the red

eyeglasses. Once they'd been fitted, looped around her ears, snugged

to the bridge of her nose, she stepped into the street and the sudden

 

fanfare of the world rose to meet her—linden trees lining the sidewalks,

their green clear song—the sharp corners of buildings, the pebbled earth, the perfect

yellow rings of the blackbird's eyes.

 

Why had no one told her life could look like this?

 

At five a.m. today, glasses on, she was strangely happy packing up her belongings

alongside her mom and sister—a duffel, two suitcases, her sister's stuffed pink

hippo, a carrier for her cat.

 

Their neighbor dropped them off at the train station, promising to see them soon—

 

When the war is over.

 

Hundreds queued on the platform, bundled in down, watchcaps, scarves, and coats, some wearing surgical masks, westward bound to Lviv and safety.

 

Jostling shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, one long winding caterpillared creature, one breath steaming in the morning air.

 

Nadezhda reveled in the dazzle, color, and length of it, heartswelling, newfound sight

taking in each detail, scrap, and shape, vowed to love everyone, even

the lead-grey pigeons hobbling in the dust.

 

It was half past ten when she heard the cat's mewl and twisting cry.

 

It was half past ten when she saw the birds wheel up into the cobalt sky.

 

Half past ten when she felt the wave of wind shove through her skin.

 

She turned to her sister to say—

 

How do the birds know to rise as one?  

 

The words stilled forever on her tongue.

 

Red eyeglasses spilled on the red stained brick.

Author's note: When I read about the Kramatorsk train station bombing on my phone's news feed, the videos and photographs of people's personal belongings—children's stuffed animals, juice boxes, eyeglasses strewn pell-mell across the blood-stained brick—filled me with horror, driving home all over again the cruelty and pointlessness of war. I wondered what it must be like to be a child living and traveling in wartime. How might a child see the war? How could she possibly make sense of it? This poem—with its imagining of a child I call Nadezhda—emerged from these questions.

Moira Magneson's work has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Plainsongs, Canary, The Rumpus, The Tule Review, California Fire and Water—a Climate Crisis Anthology, and Halfway to Halfway and Back. Her chapbook He Drank Because was published by Rattlesnake Press.

BABYN YAR 2.0

by Howard Richard Debs

A Russian missile attack has

struck the TV tower in Kyiv.

All the TV channels are

off the air. Where?

Just outside the center

of the city. There is a park there.

 

            You let the earth turn upside down.

 

A small park with some monuments

commemorating events from the past.

 

            The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications. His photography is featured in select publications, including in Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing) is the recipient of a 2017 Best Book Award and 2018 Book Excellence Award. His latest work Political (Cyberwit Press) is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust forthcoming from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of Anne Frank's diary. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory. Debs' maternal grandmother immigrated to the U.S. from Pryluky, Ukraine.

INTIMIDATION AND BLACKMAIL FOR THE PURPOSE OF TAKING OVER THE WORLD

by Terese Coe

Watch for the multiple rows of replacement teeth,

the not-unfair comparison to sharks,

the antipathies that betray the territorial,

the sonar for the nascent dictatorial.

 

Terese Coe’s poems, prose, and translations appear in The New Verse News, Agenda, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, The Classical Outlook, Cyphers, Hopkins Review, Metamorphoses, The Moth, New American Writing, New Scotland Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Stone Canoe, Threepenny Review, the TLS, and many other international publications. Her book Shot Silk was short-listed for the 2017 Poets Prize, and her poem “More” was heli-dropped across London in the 2012 Olympics Rain of Poems. Giorno Poetry Systems, West Chester Poetry Conference, Barnstone Translation Award, and others have awarded her prizes or honors and scholarships.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER WOMAN

by Hafsa Mumtaz

Police in Pakistan have opened cases against hundreds of unidentified men after a young woman was sexually assaulted and groped by a crowd of more than 400 men in a park in Lahore as she made a TikTok video. The shocking assault was captured on several videos, which went viral and showed a mob descend on the woman as she was in Lahore’s Greater Iqbal park making a TikTok video with friends. In broad daylight, the men picked up the young woman and tossed her between them, tearing her clothes and assaulting and groping her. The woman registered a case against 300 to 400 unidentified persons with Lahore police, according to the case report seen by the Guardian. “The crowd pulled me from all sides to such an extent that my clothes were torn. I was hurled in the air. They assaulted me brutally,” the woman said in a statement to the police. She said the crowd also stole her money, earrings and a phone. —The Guardian, August 19, 2021

Another day, another woman.   

But the headlines remain the same –

But this time, it wasn’t just a man, just a gang,

But a mob of 400 men...

But this time, it wasn’t just private milieu,

But in the open outside Minar-e-Pakistan...

But this time, it wasn’t just a secret hour,

But the time of Azaan (the prayer call) ...

Another day, another woman,

Just like many previous targets,  

She was dressed decently – so stop this ‘the victim was a victim because

they were wearing such clothes’ nonsense right here.

But why would the maulvis say anything?

For all they need is a woman to blame for her brazenness

For all they need is to hold the axe of ‘Deen’ (religion) and behead the victims

For all they need is a woman to criticise and condemn

For all they need is Islam to exploit.

Another day, another woman. 

Oh, what a free land! 400 predators, 1victim, and no one to bat an eyelid!

Oh, what an Independence Day for the predators whose minds are still enslaved by their lust!

Oh, so this is the country founded in the name of Islam...

I read a random WhatsApp status, saying,

We merely celebrate the Islam (alluding to Ashura),

We don’t adopt Islam.

Similarly, we merely celebrate Independence Day

We still haven’t absorbed the essence of it.

Hafsa Mumtaz is a 22-year-old Pakistan-based emerging poet, a recent graduate of English Language and Literature, and a Muslim. Her poetry was first published in Visual Verse Anthology, and then in Rising Phoenix Review. 

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

by Peggy Landsman

 

To be a Jew

has little to do

with you,

who you are,

what you believe in.

 

To be a Jew

has everything to do

with the world…

 

Is it big enough

for us

to live in?

 

Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press), Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (C&R Press), Nasty Women Poets (Lost Horse Press), Mezzo Cammin, The Ekphrastic Review, and a previous issue of The New Verse News. She lives in South Florida where she swims in the warm Atlantic Ocean every chance she gets.