IF WE TALKED ABOUT MEN THE WAY WE TALK ABOUT PIT BULLS

a found poem 

by Beth Winegarner

Nearly two weeks after a brutal dog attack in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, Amber King said she is still coping with the physical and emotional trauma of the incident while beginning a long recovery process… King recalled yelling for help as a pit bull pinned her down and attacked her for 10 to 15 minutes before police arrived. —KGO, September 22, 2026

Once it tasted blood

it may have been difficult to handle.

When raised in loving and stable homes, 

they can be incredibly gentle, affectionate, 

and loyal companions. 

Being laser-focused on the target 

until it is dead or they are dead 

is literally what they were bred for.

Luckily, they are very responsive to training 

and eager to please.

Mauling is hardwired 

in their DNA.

I have one. He’s big, neutered as well. 

I didn’t train him to be vicious,

and he mostly stays at home

with my elderly mom. 

They get along well.

Grew up with “friendly” ones. 

They are absolute powder kegs.

The worst thing to do 

is run away or scream in panic.

This only triggers the prey drive.

Avoid them all the time 

is the only way you can be sure 

you're not going to get attacked. 

Sterilize all of them.

I have met so many 

friendly ones in my time.

They didn't seem aggressive 

until it was too late.

Author’s note: The poem was found from online comments regarding dogs attacking humans and in forums about pit bulls. It was written in light of the news of the "Cornell 7" and of dog attacks like that recently in San Francisco.

Beth Winegarner is an award-winning journalist, author, essayist and pop culture critic who’s contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many others. She is the author of several books, most recently San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History. She is the co-host of the Dead Reckoning podcast with Courtney Minick of Here Lies a Story, and the creator of the San Francisco Magdalen Asylum names project.

STOP THE KILLERS!

by Raymond Nat Turner

The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September —PBS, January 4, 2026

Burlap bags stuffed with tuna and blue marlin.

Catch of a lifetime! Juan’s already counting the

cash in his head. Visualizing pawn shop guitar

for Gabriel, his 10-year-old son, graduating to guitar

from ukulele. Gabriel’s greeted morning rooster-

like—since age 3—with “Let’s practice, Papa!”

Before pushing off to sea Juan bought the computer 

Rosario wished for from a journalism student he met

at the fish market training fishmongers to compute. He

also bought the bicycle Maria longed for and stashed it

at a neighbor’s house. Juan was out to make his young

family’s Christmas the best ever.

BOOM!

Bloody mess below his waist. Juan’s a strong swimmer. But

he can’t feel his legs. He quickly grabs on to fiery flotsam.

Is that Javier hanging on for dear life across from him?

He hears his children’s joyful shrieks. Sees them jumping

Up and down with joy. He kisses Lourdes long and tenderly…

BOOM!

A pomade man has amplified orders of

his demented Don into “Kill them all!”

Laughing, they dub it  a “double-tap 

strike—”

like some cool dance step

signaling mad moves to come… 

Author’s notes:

This poem is a puzzle I put together based on backwards, savage, lethal headlines and loving holiday memories I hold. The puzzle pieces are as follows:

1. The two men who were infamously ordered summarily executed by a pomade man sucking up to his Don.

2. When I was around 10 my dad took me deep sea fishing in Ensenada. And, as beginner’s luck would have it, I caught both a 21lb Yellowtail and a 21lb Bonita.

3. When I was eighteen or nineteen, my dad who'd played trombone in high school, purchased a pawn shop trombone for me.

4. Our JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge! purchased a $300 kids' drumkit for a bandmate’s 3-year-old. And from then on the child woke up every morning saying, "Papa, let's practice!" His dad obliged him. Now that 3-year-old is the 23-year-old drummer for John Coltrane's son, Ravi!

5. One Christmas Eve my Mom and Dad hid a brand new bicycle from me at the next door neighbor's house.

6. Lourdes was a beautiful curly-haired Mexican Jack In The Box worker I had a huge crush on.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

LIFE IN THE SUBURBS

by Alan Walowitz

I head off to pick up my meds,  

how I stay steady these uneasy days: 

Children going without. 

The Court implies he can shoot at will  

on the seas—and maybe where I walk?  

In time, he’ll get around to us. 

It’s warm enough these mid-Autumn days, 

but the early dark reminds the cold to come.  

 

When she sees my sunken countenance, 

the second time this week,  

the clerk says, beneath her breath, as is her way,  

A Higher Power will make it better soon. 

I suppose she means God, or the pharmacist, her boss, 

who doesn’t care or hear so much. 

Listen, she says to make herself clear,  

her forefinger waggling like a broken metronome:  

A bullet doesn’t graze someone’s ear 

not to make this world a better place.  

 

I tell her, gently, he’s still a crook, 

while she packs my pills.   

Everybody steals, she says,  

as if she gets the inside dope, 

dispensing meds to old guys like me. 

She reminds me, You live another day,  

it’s pretty much the same as stealing. 

Then, hands me my change and says, 

See you soon. Dismissal as wisdom.   

but I hope, this time, exactly what she means.  

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook  Exactly Like Love  comes from Osedax Press.   The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems  is available from Truth Serum Press.  From Arroyo Seco Press,  In the Muddle of the Night, written with poet Betsy Mars.  The chapbook The Poems of the Air is from Red Wolf Editions and is free for downloading. 

FEMA AND MY DEAD PARENTS

by William Aarnes

FEMA was authorized in 1979

 

Lately, it seems raging storms have gotten worse

and the news about people hunting FEMA agents

has me thinking of my parents, my father

dead six years before FEMA got funded,

my mother dead ten years after FEMA

began helping clean up Love Canal.

My mother voted Republican.

My father voted Democrat.

                        

When our house blew away in 1957,

FEMA didn’t exist, so my parents

                              

had no thought of receiving $750

to help them recover from our loss.

The window wells filled in a millisecond.

Lifted out of the garage, the Bel Air landed in the front yard.

Somehow the piano stood alone in the living room.

Only my bedroom retained all its walls.

                              

Neighbors we barely knew and lived

—their home untouched—a block away

offered a place to sleep (as if my parents slept).

The day after a volunteer van arrived, women

dressed as nurses offering to sell

egg-salad sandwiches. I was ten

and now don’t recall how long

it took my parents to contact

their insurance agent. The tornado

left us little. Picking through debris

my parents laughed empty laughs.

They could do nothing else but rent

an apartment while having our home rebuilt.

They could have used $750

(or whatever the equivalent

might have been back then). My mother

would have hated taking a “handout”

but would have claimed a little extra

as “rightfully” ours. My father

would have diligently filled out the forms

to apply for any additional funds

a federal agency might grant

to help cover some of any shortfall.

My mother, worried about her brothers’ farms,

continued to vote Republican. My father, in favor

of teachers’ unions, kept on voting Democrat.

If alive now, my mother wouldn’t understand

the telling and repeating of hateful lies.  

If alive, my father wouldn’t mind, too much,

being told he tends to condescend.

My mother would now vote for candidates

who support tax breaks for small businesses.

My father would vote for candidates

who support improving ventilation in every school.

They’d agree to give something to Planned Parenthood.

There’s rubble and there’s rubble; they’d agree

to contribute to the children in the Ukraine and Gaza.

They’d worry about where best to donate hurricane relief.

My parents would have welcomed FEMA’s help.

But lately, it seems, raging storms have gotten worse.

William Aarnes lived in Fargo, North Dakota in 1957. He now lives in Manhattan.

SMALL DIFFERENCES

by Moira Magneson

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

Three days

we've watched

the acorn

woodpecker

perched atop

the telephone

pole

bright red

crown

black beak

driving

into

the glass

insulator

over and over.

His fury

for the bird

who looks

just like him—

side-eye

glittering—

knows

no bounds.

He refuses

to give up

the fight

with his own

reflection.

He will win 

this war.

He will not 

surrender.

Each will hammer

the other down.

They will stop

at nothing.

Author’s Note: "Small Differences" addresses the June 12, 2024 Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel which came after Israel killed a senior Hezbollah commander in southeastern Lebanon in a June 11 airstrike.  The poem's title is based on Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept of “the narcissism of small differences" in which he proposes that people tend to amplify the minor differences between themselves, leading to feelings of hostility, estrangement, and contempt.

Moira Magneson's full-length collection of poems In the Eye of the Elephant will be published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2025. Her novella A River Called Home—a river fable illustrated by Robin Center was released by Toad Road Press in early 2024. She is currently working as the poet-in-residence for ForestSong, artist Andie Thrams' project exploring solastalgia, biophilia, and resilience in the face of wildfire devastation and the climate crisis.

STICKS AND STONES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

                                     

break my bones 

words can never hurt me 
but words are hurting 
even killing 
now  
to shut down 
to shut up 
tit for tat 
with bigger stones 
and bigger sticks 
we’ll show you who’s boss

while children die 
the hungry starve 
families live in cars 
books burn 
(this needful list is long) 
as bones break 
bodies break 
spirits die 
the world watches 
as hands take aim

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

ELEGY FOR LOST CITY

by Katie Tian

Two 13-year-old boys are under arrest for allegedly setting an 89-year-old woman on fire in Brooklyn. The victim said the pair never spoke a word to her before slapping her in the face and setting her clothes ablaze on the night of July 14 in Bensonhurst. —WABC, September 9, 2022

i. 

new york city / this city / your city / our city / home city / city of flightless ghosts & dreams turned fossil /  of dynamite rain / of mothers / who have swallowed debris / patchwork syllables / tissue-stuffed tongues / of the english language / so they may sit alone on the subway / earbuds of radio static / red-faced strangers shouting / go back to / hollowed embers of red lantern skies / where you / arms gathering fortune-cookie prayers / came from / contusions of memory like overripe plums / heard over the din of steel traintracks & shuttering constellations

ii. 

chili oil & raw scallions / one empty placemat at dinner / red-glazed pork belly / diffusing into smoke & rain-perfumed city / peanut oil fumes beaten into asphalt / beaten into muted sleep / sunday morning channel 5 / bleached blue light of the tv screen saying / 89-year-old / jade cracked like limbs on concrete / chinese woman / soot dusted off supermarket receipts / set on fire / iron melting pot america / suspects at large / teal skies of manhattan ashing themselves

iii. 

I had dreams too, when I was young. Before my grandmother cried trying to piece together a clumsy accent, before the sound of bodies hitting the pavement, before—I had dreams staring out at a sea so beautiful I could cry.

iv.

All the while, the carousel of death spins giddy like a top, our names scrubbed clean from its cratered streets. The sky scabs and bleeds over this land of the free. Take your time: peel this elegy ripe off the tarmac and cram it down your throat—

v.

elegy for lost city / gone city / city whose name we’ve unlearned / city thirsting / for love

Katie Tian is a sixteen-year-old Chinese-American writer from New York. Her work is published in Frontier Poetry, Polyphony Lit, Rising Phoenix Review, and Kissing Dynamite, among others. She has been recognized for her writing by Hollins University, Smith College, the Adelphi Quill Awards, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Apart from writing, she enjoys collecting stuffed animals and consuming obscene amounts of peanut butter straight from the jar.