DEBATE RESTS

by Chad Parenteau

Gang violence?

Missile drills 

by buzzwords.

 

Hard evidence.

Fingers fumble

to investigate. 

 

Cannot say

Now show me

another one.

 

Body already

set in place

as latest step 

 

next armchair

commander 

strides over. 

 

 

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Crossroads, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

DEAL

by Margaret D. Stetz

Illustration: Nicola Jennings/The Guardian

that future wealth between her legs—
how much will you
snatch?
 
the territory of her arms—
where will you
amputate?
 
those children clutching at her breast—
will you drag them
away?
 
in the history of auctions
another shameful sale
you feel you own
and now will barter
with another Master
on his terms
 
this body
this Ukraine

Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Delaware, as well as a widely published poet. She is also a Ukrainian American, proud of her heritage.

FLACCID JUSTICE FOR MONSIEUR TOUT LE MONDE

an Erasure

by Betsy Mars

Dominique Pelicot and 50 Others Guilty in Rape Trial That Shook France: A court sentenced Mr. Pelicot to 20 years after he admitted to drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, for nearly a decade, and inviting strangers to join him. The case has made her a feminist hero. —The New York Times, December 19, 2024

they appeared to represent a cross-section of men:
The court heard from their wives,
 parents, 
friends
and children, 
who mostly described them 
as kind people incapable of rape
 
after watching videos of them penetrating Ms. Pelicot 
while she lay inert, sedated and often snoring loudly 
the defendants didn’t think of those acts as rape 
 
among the terms they used were 
“involuntary rape,” 
“accidental rape” 
and disassociated rape:
“rape by body, but not mind”
every defendant fully knew

he had drugged his wife 

without her knowledge

a playful threesome

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

HELENE

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Cadaver dogs and search crews trudged through knee-deep muck and debris in the mountains of western North Carolina on Tuesday looking for more victims ofHurricane Helene days after the storm carved a deadly and destructive path through the Southeast. —AP, October 1, 2024

He found his wife’s body draped over

a limb, her skirt flapping in the wind

 

like a bedsheet pinned to a line, her

long hair hanging like Spanish moss.

 

He dropped to his knees in the mud,

moaning like a bear caught in a steel

 

trap, ready to gnaw off its leg to stop 

the pain. He didn’t care, anymore,

 

about their splintered house floating 

like matchsticks down the river, never

 

felt the dog’s rough tongue trying to 

lick the agony from his face. Still, he

 

could not make himself believe what 

he was seeing—pictured her, instead, 

 

walking down the aisle with flowers 

tumbling from her hands. He vaguely

recalled saying to her, Till death do us 

part, but it tasted like gibberish in his 

 

mouth, words with no meaning about 

a time he was sure would never come.

Author's Note: My poem, ‘Helene,’ is an imagined narrative prompted by reading and hearing about the devastating destruction and loss of life in western North Carolina (my beloved home state) that occurred as a result of Hurricane Helene. I also drew upon my own experiences with trauma, grief, and sudden loss while writing this poem.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Rattle, The SUN, and numerous other publications. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize among many others. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

MOMENT

by Jennifer M Phillips

"I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. THEY WILL FINALLY BE HEALTHY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE. THEIR LIVES WILL BE HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL, AND GREAT AGAIN!" —Trump on TruthSocial via Newsweek, September 21, 2024

You could surrender everything
hearing the mesmeric voice of the predator
saying, I will make you safe, will save you
from your body, from decisions between the imperfect,
from nebulous fear, from the unknown future, from your tired heart;
fluttering at the excitement of the sycophant carrying a big idea
of someone else's like a hydrogen balloon,
his tongue a blurted  flame, and suddenly
you long for detonations. Life's long patience
and quiet hands you shake off like your mother's
holding you back from the thrill of traffic,
the allure of the other side.

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). Two of Phillips' poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection is Wrestling With the Angel (forthcoming, Wipf & Stock)

DEER

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

These words will name the one 
dragged out of the woods by two men 

to the dirt road I walk on, how the day 
before I had startled one in our field, 

& all I saw was the white flag of its leaving, 
& today I see a long, limp tongue hanging out 

from the quiet mouth as the men lift it
into the back of a truck, the sagging 

body, four hooves held by their hands. 
Hands. Hooves. How a bullet leaves a body 

still & stained, & now every day I will look on the edge 
of the road for signs of blood & write 

this poem over & over. In every death
sloughed skin to become again. 

That settling of death right next to you,

how you move over, make room for it.


Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera(2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO.

MY STEPSON IN TEL AVIV SENDS A SHORT VIDEO

by Catherine Gonick

At night, on a street near his house

neighbors follow as soldiers carry

a spent missile as if it were a body.

The weapon that landed, killing

only itself, is about the size

of a man, maybe six feet long,

one end twisted by impact.

It takes three men to carry the gray

corpse to wherever they are going.

I don’t know how it is in Hebrew

or Arabic, but in English, when we say 

a body, we know without being told

whether the body is dead or alive.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, Blue Heron Review,and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate. 

BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS

by Ann E. Wallace

The swift punishment brought down on Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker in Montana, began over words that others in American politics have used without hesitation or consequence: saying opponents have “blood” on their hands. The governor of Texas. A GOP congressman in Florida. A city councilwoman in Denver. Just in the past few years, they are among the elected officials who have chastised colleagues in government with the same pointed rhetoric almost word for word — accusing them of bearing responsibility for deaths — over everything from immigration policy to gun laws. None faced blowback, let alone retribution. But not Zephyr, who on Thursday began legislative exile after Montana Republicans barred her from the state House floor a week after saying those who voted to support a ban on gender-affirming care would have blood on their hands. —AP, April 27, 2023

This was her warning,

the cost of the ban 

on affirming healthcare 

for trans kids.

 

They would have blood

on their hands,

she said.

 

The words, or her body, labeled 

a breach of decorum,

they removed her,

silenced her voice

with a majority, 68 to 32. 

She may watch,

voiceless, may cast

her singular vote 

out of sight and from afar.

 

Hers is a body they do not want 

to see. And they do not want 

to hear about their own hand 

in doing harm, about the toll 

of bloody-handed legislation 

on kids, or on the adults 

like her who once were kids 

in need of votes and affirmation.

 

They removed her from their sight.

They will wash their hands 

with blood.

And her voice, 

it will grow stronger.

Ann E. Wallace is the Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. Follow her on Twitter @annwlace409 or on Instagram @annwallace409.

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED TO NORMAN DUBIE

by Ralph Culver

Author’s note: Be at peace and travel well, Norman Dubie, singularly gifted American poet and teacher, who died 20 February, 2023 at 77.

Ralph Culver is a past New Verse News contributor. His most recent poetry collection is A Passable Man (MadHat Press, 2021), available in bookstores and through all the usual internet sources. He divides his time between Vermont and central Pennsylvania.

REBOUND

by Devon Balwit

A mind in a body, we want

the body not to suffer,

but bodies must learn

 

what illness is. To avoid

unpleasantness is to leave them

vulnerable to reinfection.

 

How tempting are blister-packed

nostrums when better

is to roll in our fever sweat

 

and full inflammation, each cell

a diligent student

of never again.

Devon Balwit is trying to put her final days of isolation to good use and is crossing her fingers against her own rebound.

BEING ROOMMATES WITH A STRIPPER

by Jennifer Elise Wang

The picket line on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood has been loud, energetic, flamboyant, and... costumed. The strippers from Star Gardens have organized for their protection and become a cause célèbre for other organizers and unions across the country. —People’s World, June 6, 2022

When your roommate is a stripper,

You discover who makes

The teeniest thong

You can legally get away with

And that 7-inch Pleasers

Are not too bad to walk in.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You start going to the gym more,

Not to have her body exactly

But to have the same gluteal control

In order to twerk along with her

In your at-home dance parties.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You see the stacks of 1s,

But not the 5s, 10s, or 20s

She has given to the house and staff.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You stop laughing at jokes about her job

Because her colleague was stalked

And another was threatened

While the bartender laughed

At the image of her possible demise.

Every night, it’s a flip of the coin

As to whether she’ll be assaulted.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You learn about misogynoir,

TERFs and SWERFs,

Labor rights and union-busting tactics,

And that it’s always “sex worker”

And never “prostitute” or the other word

That sounds more apropos for fishing.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You get advice on how to set boundaries

While still smiling at the customer.

When your roommate is a stripper

And getting ready for a night of picketing

While you’ve come home after overtime

And drink a beer with some Tylenol

For your Carpal tunnel and plantar fasciitis

And blink away your dry eyes,

You realize you are selling your body too. 

Jennifer Elise Wang (she/they) is a lab tech, burlesque dancer, drag king, and poet. She won First Prize for Open Poetry in the 2018 On My Own Time Art and Literary competition and has been published in The Gunpowder Review, Jerseyworks, and R2 Rice Review. In her free time, she likes to skateboard and volunteer at the animal shelter.

WAR, ENDLESS

by Lisa Seidenberg

Tanks in fearsome formation

Slide up her southern flanks 

As troops assemble 

On her outlying appendages

While handheld missile launchers

take precisioned aim

At her twin ovaries

A soft but critical target

The containers of fragile munitions 

When was a woman’s body not a battleground?

Balancing fertility 

With freedom

Since time began

She withstands the exterior onslaught

To her interior 

Again and again

Territories taken and retaken

A war that never ends

Lisa Seidenberg is a filmmaker and writer whose documentary and experimental film work are shown in intern film festivals and arts venues.

I IMAGINE FIRST LEAVING THE HOSPITAL

by Ying Wu

A wounded 6-year-old girl arrived at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday. Her mother wept outside the ambulance. Her father was at her side, covered in blood. The family was at a supermarket on the outskirts of the southeastern port city when Russian shelling started, according to the Associated Press. Now, a medical team was racing to save the young girl's life. "Take her out! Take her out! We can make it!" a hospital worker shouted. They placed her onto a gurney and wheeled her inside, where doctors and nurses fought to revive her. But she could not be saved. A doctor who was pumping oxygen into her looked into the camera of an Associated Press videojournalist in the room. "Show this to Putin," he said. "The eyes of this child, and crying doctors." Photo credit: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP —CNN, February 28, 2022

You step on the sidewalk.

 

Life breaks into pieces.

 

There are segments and thresholds.

 

Your child collapsed

when the missile exploded.

 

Your heel strikes the pavement.

 

Her body is there at the hospital, still—

but now, you’re outside.

 

Life crosses thresholds.

 

When your child was born,

you tasted forever.

 

But the sidewalk is sectioned.

Today, all the sections seem smaller.

 

Life is unknown.

It breaks into pieces—

 

and the space between heel strikes

can swallow you whole.

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art San Diego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, Poetry Pacific, and The New Verse News.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay. 

COMES NOW

by Earl J Wilcox

Picture taken on March 23, 2018, shows a technician working on the clock of the Lukaskirche Church in Dresden, eastern Germany. (Photo by Sebastian Kahnert/DPA/AFP via Getty Images via AL.com)

That time of year

When we fall

Back

When time’s

Breath stirs

Our solitude

When nature’s

Calendar

Does not trick

Nor does our

Body fail

Though

Formidably

Confirms our time

Here changes

Course

Assuredly

As yesterday

Tomorrow

Forever remain

Unchanged.

 

Earl J. Wilcox has been writing for TheNewVerse.News through many turns of the clock.

WHOSE STORY? WHOSE CHOICE?

by Laurie Rosen

Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz/AMS via The Washington Post.

I am 35, 

I am 19, 

I am 12. 

Put a bounty on my head,

on my confidants and advisers

my doctor, too. 

Sue the office administrators,

the taxi driver that brought me.

Come for me with handcuffs.

Restrain my arms behind my back,

haul me off to jail.

Lock me up behind bars, 

Throw away the key.

Call me a murderer, baby killer. 

Selfish, hateful. 

I plead guilty. I don’t deny it. 

But, look me in the eyes 

and tell me I am not speaking 

your story or your lover’s,

your sister’s, your best friend’s,

maybe even your daughter’s. 

I am 35, mark my body   state controlled,  

I am 19, proclaim my uterus   conscripted,

I am 12, classify my heartbeat   irrelevant.

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poems have appeared in Sisyphus, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Oddball Magazine, Soul-Lit, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. 

IF YOU SHOULD STUMBLE ACROSS ME IN THE BARREN WOODS

by Amna Alamir

“Barren Wood” by Mindy Newman

Hooded and lonesome, untie 

the shrouds and the clouds that 

walk among you and I will 

gently open inviting you in.

Reach out with tender curiosity 

your fingertips, feign a lasso out 

of heartstrings and I will share 

the taste of the ocean, the many 

travels I have bottled up and 

tossed at perturbed sailors.

Where they turned their backs on me: 

this is night country 

this isn’t right country 

in the blackness I am suffocating 

this isn’t my country. 

My body is changing 

has taken on your culture 

and become momentarily ill. 

There are parts of me 

I had to give up, I lost 

gave to you in exchange 

for your acceptance. 

I covered myself in barberries 

ginger root, cardamom. 

I am a rare sighting, now

beyond the star-shaped stars 

that float like lucid ribbons 

when it is time to die 

the earth shivers. 

 

Amna Alamir is a Kuwaiti writer who currently studies and resides in the UK. She is finishing up her MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is pursuing further research on silence, the female voice, and somatic practices. 

COMPOS[T]ING MYSELF

by Barbara Simmons 

Washington state became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction in May 2019; Colorado followed suit in May 2021; and Oregon became the third state to sanction human composting in June 2021. —Treehugger, August 24, 2021. "The powerful [California] Senate Appropriations Committee has held a bill that would legalize the composting of human remains. The bill, AB 501, was authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, and had sailed through the Assembly with a unanimous vote.... Garcia said in a statement. 'This is another sad reminder that we must legalize a more environmentally friendly option like Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) as soon as possible. AB 501 will provide an additional option for California residents that is more environmentally-friendly and gives them another choice for burial.'” —Sacramernto Bee, August 30, 2021. Photo from Recompose, "a public benefit corporation powered by people who believe in changing the current death care paradigm."

I remember times when soil smelled rich,

a kind of coffee bean rich, a kind

of patchouli rich, a rich that flared my nostrils 

scenting the air with inhale more. 

The time we worked our garden soil 

composting it, the elements of peat and perlite

caking fingernails, our prepping

beds for rows and rows of plants

yearning for elements beyond clay. We dreamt

of growing foxglove, ferns and fuchsias,

entwining them with flowers mixing other letters

into soil with pansies, daffodils, impatiens.  

But it was always soil, prepared, that led to color,

soil inhabiting our very blood and bones, 

a deep affinity for dust to dust we have within,

rich dark coffee-colored soil, aromas lifting up and

taking us to early earth when scientists say the smell

was more like rotten eggs, rich with H2S. This richness lives

within me, my body’s future with the possibility of

decomposing into one cubic yard of soil,

along with wood, alfalfa, even straw, all

assisting me along the way to my new form, 

my inert self reduced to fragrant future supplements

for growing flowers after I have gone.

Something to think about, while legislators ponder laws

to handle soil that’s human-sourced. Right now, it’s not

Assembly Bill 501 I’m thinking of; I’m smelling soil, the

rich rich soil that flowers hunger for, the soil that’s fed

my soul, the gardening days when turning over dirt

was very much like leafing through a sacred text, 

when I’ve translated who I’ve been into the earth

from which I’ve come.

Barbara Simmons is a poet who celebrates the many worlds she inhabits using language to explore the ways we remember and envision. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. As a secondary school English teacher, she revisited texts with students who inspired her thinking about communication's diversity. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring the world's stories in her poetry. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, Writing it Real Anthologies, Capsule Stories Anthologies, and the Journal of Expressive Writing.  Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilbriums will appear in 2022.

MY BODY

by Claire Sapan

In bed each night I am grateful for the body that is mine: 

Skin that protects me, allows me to feel 

Tongue that gives me taste 

Heart that allows me to feel 

But somewhere along the way you decided my body

Was yours

You disassemble me 

Like a Barbie

Bending me in your direction 

At your discretion

Breaking off what you don’t like 

And today you took my choice 

You took autonomy away from me, 

From my body 

So tonight in bed I will mourn 

But tomorrow I will fight 

For at the end of the day, 

This body is mine

Claire Sapan is an avid writer and feminist, hoping and fighting for a better world. 

AT THE LECTERN

by Alan Elyshevitz

Photograph by Al Drago / NYT / Redux via The New Yorker

you need to articulate and oppose. And timing,
you need that, and enough blank space. Expel
the breath in prorated bursts like x-rays dosing
the bones. Advisers weigh in on the controversy
of whether to use the emphatic body—forearm
offensive, fingers poised in their swiveling
launcher—or hold the body still, allowing
ejections to speak for themselves. You need
not shout. The interior of any room is a multiplier—
its walls and angles—the right words both vicious
and acoustic when they undergo a truculent
bounce. The aim, of course, is not to persuade
but to level. The aim is disquiet. To impel
the president of Russia to send a lacquer box.

Alan Elyshevitz is the author of a collection of stories, The Widows and Orphans Fund (SFA Press), and three poetry chapbooks, most recently Imaginary Planet (Cervena Barva). His poems have appeared in River Styx, Nimrod International Journal, and Water~Stone Review, among many others. Winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, he is also a two-time recipient of a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

SHE BLEW IN ON LENTEN WINGS

a quarantine poem in four parts
by Jill Crainshaw

Painting M004351 from Life? or Theatre? by Charlotte Salomon at the Jewish Historical Museum.

I

she blew in on lenten winds
i think i’ll stay awhile
be your muse until this thing ends
her left eye winked a suspicious smile

you plan to stay awhile?
she tossed an ancient tweed jacket on a chair
looked at me with a smile
pushed back her fedora, twirled her hair

i eyed the tweed lounging careless on the chair
her costume convinced me—well, almost
the faded fedora, the uncontained wisps of hair
who are you? i smiled—a suspicious host

though her costume convinced me—almost
that she harbored dubious ends
who are you? i smiled—a guarded host
when strangers blow in on lenten winds

II

today i harvest the tomatoes i prayed for yesterday
she’s still here—says she’s a poet but i am unsure
no pen or paper, not much to say
she just watches me, smiles--a quaint saboteur

she’s still here--insists she’s a poet but i am unsure
what are you writing? i’d like to know
she just watches me, smiles—a quaint saboteur
who arrived uninvited, interrupting my flow

tell me again, what are you writing? i am eager to know
it’s not everyday a poet moves into my space
arrives uninvited, interrupts my flow
wearing a faded fedora and a dubious smile on her face

no, i’ve never had a poet move into my space
tell me—how can i rhyme your presence away?
because you are here uninvited, interrupting my flow
while i harvest summer tomatoes i prayed for yesterday

III

the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
she waxed eloquent when i queried her work
i don’t know what she meant—she’s a shroud of mystery
and her presence here? a self-satisfied smirk

as she waxes eloquent when i query her work
which, if you must know, lacks reason and rhyme
and undermines her presence here, her self-satisfied smirk
what? is writing poetry considered a crime?

well, no—unless it lacks reason and rhyme
okay then—look at your hands, the lines in your face
i’m writing poetry right there and that can’t be a crime
we need to mark the moment—we need to leave a trace

she’s right—i see my hands, the lines in my face
a poem is emerging in the body of me
she’s writing it down; is that such a crime
when we know that the apple falls close to the tree?

IV

she blew in on lenten winds
brought with her a threadbare refrain
i never meant for us to be forever friends
but telling her to go has been in vain

she just keeps repeating her threadbare refrain
“you are dust; to dust you shall return”
and asking her to go has been in vain
her tweed’s still in the chair—no end to her sojourn

“we are dust; to dust we shall return”
she keeps saying—her eyes full of hope
just let me stay—expand my poetic sojourn
let’s rhyme our way together out of this weary worn out trope

she says it again—her eyes bright with hope
shining from beneath her fedora—her hope never ends
let’s rhyme ourselves away from this hackneyed hopeless trope
and see where we can travel if we follow different winds


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.