THEY ARE NOT NUMBERS, THEY ARE…

by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

The Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Dr. Refaat Alareer was killed today in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. He is survived by his wife, Nusayba, and their children. Dr. Alareer was a beloved professor of literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007. Dr. Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization launched in Gaza after Israel’s 2014 attack and dedicated to creating “a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause.” —Literary Hub, December 7, 2023

Human beings, witnessing 

Gaza children in open 

 

grave sites wrapped 

in blue body bags

 

wading towards 

the afterlife, they are 

 

human beings, not 

numbers, so many 

 

murdered 

by too many

explosions, bombs, missiles 

 

aiming more than war

heads, occupied brutality 

ignores Children unarmed, head

lines bury #Gazaholocaust

 

—although you can not

see the waves of these

 

limbs wrapped in blue,

the tears from their families,

 

from neighbors, flow from 

across the globe, they are 

 

not numbers, nor war casualties, 

they are human beings 

 

wrapped in genocide 

rubble of destruction, no 

 

more detonations,

we demand 

 

—Palestine free

Too many numbers, 

 

no more human 

beings overflowing

 

death 

—from this 

grave devastation.

Editor’s note: This poem, inspired by "They are not numbers, They are human beings," a December 4 X/tweet by @malwikadevi, was submitted to us a day before the death of Refaat Alareer, a founder of We Are Not Numbers.

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press, Between the Spine from Picture Show Press, Speaking con su Sombra with Alegría Publishing, La Belle Ajar & We Are the Ones Possessed from CLASH Books and his 6th poetry collection La Lengua Inside Me with FlowerSong Press. Adrian lives with his wife in Los Angeles with their adorably spoiled cat Woody Gold.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2023

by Katherine West

Even in October 

butterflies crowd 

the butterfly bush

are lifted by the cold 

wind then released 

to drift back to their magenta 

breakfast

in a flurry of giant 

orange flakes 

of Halloween snow 

or fire 

The high rise looks like 

a grey ice cream cake 

left out in the summer 

sun so that slabs 

of cement melt and slide 

down its sides to the street where 

grey children lie 

with their eyes shut 

the party over 

time to go home 

The prairie dog sits up

on its hind legs 

still and alert 

waiting for danger—

shadows of crows 

pass over him and away 

like the low-flying planes 

in black and white newsreels 

of World War Two 

Pale blue flowers 

still cling to the tips 

of the rosemary bush 

but the lavender 

and thyme are dried out 

helpless when the wind 

drives down the mountain 

strips them bare 

In this house the cabinets 

are full of supplies—

ten of everything, power 

to run fountains 

in the desert 

thick walls to keep the heat out 

to keep the heat in--

a fat door like that 

of a castle

Vultures come in a black 

rush sometimes--

the body bags are white 

as lumps of sugar 

with the corners 

licked off

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City.  She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and  Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, Southwest Word Fiesta, and The Silver City Anthology. The New Verse News nominated her poem “And Then the Sky” for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. 

LULL

by Rick Mullin




Another month of stay-at-home-or-die.
The choice is getting tougher day by day!
A toss-up in the waning April sky
as gun enthusiasts come out to play
a game with cable news. Misspelling hate
as usual. Extolling T***p and Pence,
co-opting clumsy slogans from the left
about the right to choose. Try making sense
of their disdain for science. The bereft-
of-access taking on the Nanny State?
We’d buy it if the even-less-endowed
were not in body bags at Lost and Found.
We switch to radio. It’s not as loud
and, next up, we’ll have something from The Sound
of Music—Stick around for “Bach at 8”…


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Lullaby and Wheel.

IN THE THORN BUSHES

by Lois Rosen

One day last week, a call came in to the sheriff’s office shortly before 10 a.m. Border Patrol agents had found the body of a woman in the back corner of a ranch. Credit Brooks County Sheriff’s Office via The New York Times.

After the “Crossing the Border Newsletter” 

by Manny Fernandez and Nubia Reyna in The New York Times, April 18, 2019

Migrants have been dying in the South Texas brush.
“Many, many are dying. That was what surprised me.”
The president insists he’s shocked. But now that he
knows for sure, do you see him rushing from a private
dinner to order humanitarian convoys of water and food?
8 bodies were found this year, and it’s only mid-April.
Among the cactus, mesquite, sage, oak, thorn bushes,
the lost, frozen, dazed, sick men and women collapse
from heatstroke, hypothermia, dehydration. A sheriff
today found a female skeleton face down, in dirt,
U.S., Mexican, and Honduran cash around her, prayer
cards in the pockets of her jeans. A male body, face up,
a Honduran I.D. in his wallet, he’s discovered to be
the father of a three-year-old girl. There’s a selfie of
the two of them on his Facebook page. In Spanish, he
called her my princess. The sheriff runs out of body bags.
How does someone get used to bagging up the dead?


Lois Rosen’s poems have appeared twice before in TheNewVerse.News. She enjoys leading the Trillium Writers and the ICL Writing Group at Willamette University. Her published poetry books are Pigeons (Traprock Books, 2005) and Nice and Loud (Tebot Bach, 2015).

A HARD SHARP BLADE CUTS

by Gil Hoy

Photo by Mike Batterham, Gold Coast Bulletin

through pulsating flesh, as
the hot orange sun glistens
on freshly red-tainted steel.

No moans, no cries, no gasps,
as the core of a rational caring
man drops to the ground
with a sickening thud.

A Prime Minister recoils in
disgust at an uncivilized war
and the provocative evil
natives who dared to show

the world what a savage
brutal killing entails.
The monstrous revenge of
bombs continues to rein on

villages of the weak, who have
no say over anything, and have
been moved into the firing zone,
their killing ordered by faceless

masters they will never know,
unconcerned with the day’s
politics, just wanting another
day’s food and shelter.

A smiling child skips along
the beach in her wildly carefree
exuberance, dexterously
dodging the remaining sea tide

of welcoming puddles, not knowing
about the boys coming home in
body bags from ruinous
wars that she never would have

wanted, awed by the rhythmic
tidal sounds and smell of sea
salt, as a bagpipe player
in full regalia thinks about

the way the world still conducts
war and plays haunting songs
in the sand. A disgraced

soldier receives God’s
commendation for abandoning the
flag and disobeying a command,

while an inquisitive circling seagull flies
overhead looking for something
fresh to eat in the sea’s puddles.

Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. Since then, Gil’s poems have been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, the Clark Street Review, Eye On Life Magazine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.