AMERICAN BEEF

by Darrell Petska

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

In the coming months, when you bite down on a government-subsidized burger made with meat of questionable origin, you’ll have Glorious Leader Donald J. Trump to thank. On Aug. 21, the president who loves to call other people communists enraged American cattle ranchers by announcing plans to “allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.” Trump posted news of the deal on social media, but of course gave no specific details about who the deal is with, where the meat is coming from or why he’s suddenly admitting that waiving tariffs will, in fact, lower prices for consumers. It’s a turducken of hypocrisy. —Rex Huppke, USA Today, August 23, 2026

I sing burgers
made of American beef,
not of “mystery meat”
imported from Botswana or Brazil,
Namibia or the moon’s dark side.

I sing American cows
raised by hard-working ranchers
living just down the road.
Their methods and products
I can see and trust—

unlike Trump’s dubious meat
bound to depress prices paid
to American cattle growers
needing incentives to rebuild
drought-ravaged herds.

A Trump burger? No way.
There aren’t enough condiments
to mask the foul taste
of midterm connivery
tucked clumsily into a bun.

Darrell Petska grew up on a cattle farm bordering the Nebraska Sandhills, where ranching is a revered but increasingly threatened way of life. Prairie winds still strum his heartstrings, though he now lives and writes poetry in Wisconsin.

BURNING

by Mary Specker Stone

Whenever I make chilli, I use what I find in the refrigerator,

today, two serrano chilis, thirty or so little tomatillos 

from the garden, and some grass-fed beef that’s too tough

for any other purpose than slow-cooking in a chili. Slicing

the serranos lengthwise with my largest chef’s knife, 

I scrape out the tiny seeds and pulp with my index fingernail,

chop them small, not to a mince, but who knows where the line is?

Boiling water loosens the tomatillos’ papery wrappers to allow

me to peel them, cut them in half. My fingers, not yet burning 

as I chop an onion, press a few small garlic cloves, cut open 

the package of ground beef, add all these ingredients 

to the sauté pan. Roe v Wade has been overturned. Liberty,

as in, history of. Herstory, the proper term, the one we used at

the feminist clinic. Yes, I’m thinking about the right to abortion 

as I cook this meal, and my fingers begin to burn. More burning 

as I wash the dishes. The more water, the more burn. That’s how 

capsaicin infuses the flesh. I might have worn gloves to handle

the serranos, but I didn’t protect my fingers with latex, I wanted 

to feel the chilis’ crisp greenness, so I used my bare hands, 

and now, an hour later, I can barely grip the pen for the burning.

Mary Specker Stone’s work has been published in The Gyroscope Review, The Healing Art of Writing, vol. 1, Paradise Review, and Gila River Review. Mary lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she works as a spiritual director and facilitates a monthly poetry salon. 

AMAZON FIRE MONEY

by Kristin Yates






We’re consumed by the beef
we’re broiling
Earth’s lungs
to farm more cattle
we are burning every
minute the size of a football
field to breed, slit

over 40 million
throats

Lungs, logged

$Indigenous persons, the Mura tribe Jaguar Cashapona tree, the Barrigona tree
Pataxó tribe Giant Armadillo, the Parintintin tribe Harpy Eagle Strangler Fig tree

are the change
ranchers gain
but do not count

as if they own the forest

charred, already spent


Kristin Yates hopes more than space can see the price of our consumption. #ActForAmazonia

CASINO CAPITALISM FARM

by Mickey J. Corrigan




The fields full of grazers
heavy hooved, fat with milk
stomp through the dirt
cudding the last of the green
green grass, bovine calm.

The world barnyard shakes
with squawking, honks
cacophony,
four-footed agents of history
remnants of a civil society.

Clucky hens scatter wildly
combed heads still intact
no wiser
than small goats in pasture
black horns rubbed smooth.

The last members
of the club
of nonclubs,
survivors
in the dark heart
of a mafia state.

Beyond the waste of farmland
the future
foreshortened,
the darkness
a tunnel
that ends
suddenly
at brass-knuckled  doors
bolted

from the other side.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.