WISHING WARS HAD SOMETHING LIKE REGULATION TIME TO DECIDE THE OUTCOME

 by Steve Rodriguez

 

 

They’re so easy to start, plenty hard to end.

That’s why we prefer baseball’s nine inning rule. 

Hate it when bad guys bleed, but refuse to bend. 

 

Football’s fixed finite four quarters also send

the age old message for any war-like fool.

They’re so easy to start, plenty hard to end. 

 

Even a marathon contest will depend

on a set distance to score a runners’ duel.   

Hate it when bad guys bleed, but refuse to bend.  

 

Like a delicious shock and awe milkshake blend,

we now crave a shot of Desert Storm old school

form. So easy to bomb, plenty hard to end.

 

Were sudden death overtime gods to descend, 

we’d rush to strike a deal, discount enriched fuel

possession. Good guys would plead… bad guys, please bend.   

 

Narrow strait’s closure reflects a nagging trend—

warrior patience is a requisite tool 

when stuck in a stalemate that just won’t end.

Such a drag when bad guys bleed, but do not bend.  

 

 

Steve Rodriguez resides in San Diego, CA. He is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and a retired high school English teacher.  

BOSTON (STILL RUNNING) STRONG

by Elaine Sorrentino

In my culinary perspective of possibilities
I could never have baked up a scenario
where a pressure cooker was for anything

other than braising chuck roast and onion,
yet here we are unable to forget 13 years later.

Runners prepare to lace up in Hopkinton
and pray—not that they are first to break the ribbon,

but rather the finish line remains a precious
symbol of transcending physical limitations,
no longer a makeshift triage center.

Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as  Minerva Rising, Poetry Porch, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Ekphrastic Review,The New Verse News, Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Sparks of Calliope, and Haikuniverse. 

THE GOLDEN MESSIAH

by Royal Rhodes

 

 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Some urge Amendment 25
that  grows more needed, day by day,.
We watch his polling take a dive.

He altered course from a backlash.
His cult found posts in horrid taste.
This grifter feared a drop in cash.

Then Trump reviled the Catholic Pope,
who asked: "Would Jesus bomb and kill?"
and begged for peace, while seeking hope.

But Trump in jest—was it a joke?—
claimed Leo never would be Pope,
'til Trump blew up some Holy Smoke.

Like Stalin (in an iffy tale)
asked if Rome had armed Divisions,
in fear morality prevail.

And Trump, the MAGA's New Messiah,
depicts himself as Jesus' twin,
and casts peace-makers as pariahs.

It's on Truth Social (what a gaffe):
Trump's divine for Right-Wing Christians,
whose beef comes from a Golden Calf.

 

 

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News. 

EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH TURNS TO RUBBLE

by Raymond Nat Turner

Tiny backpacks, bloody body parts litter pulverized apartment and charred-

car-streets. Stolen lives litter flattened hospitals and schools. Litter crimson

coffee shop floors. Litter blackened fields of vaporized crops.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Over and over Earth’s saddest symphony plays. Harrowing screams, wails, moans.

Same timbre, same tones. Same saline Palestine tears in Sudan. Same in Ukraine, 

Lebanon, Venezuela, Iran. The same 1% is at war with workers of the world—and

Everything they touch turns to rubble

They bomb, they strut. They prance and ‘dance,’ and bomb and bomb again.

They bomb abroad shouting, “stay sheltered!” Lucrative explosions silence

music of whining saw, pounding hammer raising roofs, housing the unhoused.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Hubris high off homeland invasion, hostile takeovers weeks before, they dream

of easy money. Quick work of weekend war. But weekend morphs into weeks. 

And weeks into months. And months into long and lean years.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

They send holy warriors striking Saturdays, Sundays, holidays ‘round Epstein news

cycles like pyrite wrecking balls revolving around orange planet, Pedophilia. ‘Round

its death smell. ‘Round sulphur scent and white phosphorus fragrance anointing them.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

They strike when Essential Workers catch fleeting winks on speeding trains roaring

beneath snoring cities. When countrymen and women dreaming of better worlds are

not yet woke. Over and over again Cruel Reich Cult strikes under cover of darkness and

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Cruel Reich Cult strikes when working ones are doubled over panting, catching

blitzkrieg breaths. Or, when they meditate, chant, or pray protecting souls, spirits,

minds from repeated trauma of sadistic Psy-Ops on our damn dime.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

One Big Beautiful Bank Job body count equals wreckage in the wake of DOGE:

Department Of Grifter Enrichment. And drowned, frozen, burned bodies pile up 

at feet of climate deniers battling Mengele Medicine Men for roadkill recognition.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Ugly omen, J6 white supremacists storming Capitalist Hill, ransacking offices, shitting in

halls, foreshadowed shredded social safety net. Scuttled science and education. Heralded 

War House-Offal Office golden grift; Kennedy Center shuttered; redacted Bill Of Rights.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

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.

A RECOLLECTION ON PEARL HARBOR DAY

by Katherine Leonard

It's blotchy the past

the silent man

in his uniforms

 

the child knows his withdrawn presence

but sometimes he would play

with her    for short bursts       when she was very little

 

he lived in a world of diesel and flame

oil and water mixed on the destroyer deck

bomb dropped where he stood 5 minutes before

 

gun turret melted metal and pieces of arm

face blood leg and black smoke

his men faceless except in his memory

 

daily    weekly            yearly the men lay 

submerged in his South Pacific 

they were with him through his submarine assignment

 

in the mouth of the River Kwai          bands of broken brothers

breaks the hearts of the survivors

breaking broken like metal shards 

 

until one day

that fragile plank holding those shiny dress

officer shoes broke

 

And he with that plank and metal splinters

sank too

consumed by the black rolling sea

 

of his mind now in command

of his hand

on the rope

 

Author's Note: Poem for my father, Commander Robert E. Leonard, USN Ret. who served in the South Pacific in WWII at a time when PTSD was unknown and silent men and women were numerous and all rejoiced mightily at the fall of fascism in Germany, in Japan and in Italy.

Katherine Leonard is the author of the chapbook Requiem for the Beekeeper (Bottlecap Press 2024). Her poems have been published in Sonora Review, Querencia Press Anthologies, Hole in the Head Review, Speckled Trout Review, FERAL, Allium and Stone Canoe among other journals and anthologies. She is a graduate of the Syracuse YMCA Writer's Voice (formerly Downtown Writers Center) Pro Program in poetry. She has been a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse/nurse practitioner. Her writing has been deeply influenced by time spent in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado for space and heat and Vermont and Maine for ice and clarity and by living in Washington, DC for lies and redemption. She is married to the woman with fire in her guitar.

HOW TO MAKE AN ISD*

by W. Barrett Munn

*Improvised Sandwich Device

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

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent. It was a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors who are dealing with the fallout from President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops and federal agents into Washington. —The New York Times, August 27, 2025

It's obvious I've been radicalized.
In nursing school, I was taught
critical thinking. But then, 
I attended a radical-left 
communist community college
in tiny rural Tonkawa, Oklahoma.
It hasn't helped
that I"ve had to listen to this fool spout
his nonsense day after day after day.
Like Father Karras in The Exorcist, 
I've been driven to take some kind of action 
against all these devils.
I'm at Subway. The idea pops.
I begin to make a plan. The casing
of the bomb will be critical, hard but
not too hard, and not too heavy to hold
in one hand. That means it will have to be
toasted and still have some heft.
Nothing light with a lot of holes in the crust.
Sourdough-based wheat would be perfect.
The explosive mixture must be carefully
chosen. Muscle weighs more than fat.
That eliminates a salami based explosion.
Meatballs are out automatically— 
You don't want to cause tomato sauce
collateral damage to any registered voters.
Tuna would work if it's not too wet.
This stuff is ghastly. 
I've got it: long, thin strips of lean roast beef.
I'll pay extra for a double helping, tell
the girl with the plastic covered hands
to pack it down hard.
And cheese. American is probably
best, or so my targets think, although most
have Swiss bank accounts created for them
by their oligarch handlers. 
Time to think of condiments. Screw the pickles.
Red onions and slices of jalapeno stacked
on top near the toast so they'll scatter
on impact. I'll need a fuse. Something
with a slow burn that will give me 
a head start. Dark mustard with horseradish
is perfect. After I pay, I toss the package 
up and down, feeling its heft, guessing that 
if it doesn't go off now it must be ready. 
I leave the store and see the crowd 
a block away. With renewed resolve I start 
to walk that way thinking, I really should 
have brought my toothbrush.

The poems of W. Barrett Munn have appeared in print and online in Awakenings Review, The New Verse News, Sequoia Speaks, Soul Poetry, Prose, & Arts Magazine, Book of Matches, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Haikuniverse, 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, and many others.

GOODBYE, KYIV

by Donald Sellitti

Goodbye, Kyiv and thank you
for the chance to stand in solidarity
with you at safe remove to
write of you with passion and with
anger in my slanted rhymes.

I cared a lot, I really did, and bared
my heart in lines I broke in
unexpected places, taking 
risks you wouldn’t 
understand.

You’re not a poet.
I was just as brave as you.

The moving zeitgeist though
has moved and left you 
far behind as winds of war
have blown again and lauded us with
new and fresher outrage for the
dead and dying. My anger needs
new tinder, not the charcoal
of your cities, for its burning.

I’m back inside my garden now
where themes of death and
inhumanity present themselves
in quaint and small tableaux.

A newly fallen tree; a spider that
I’d stepped on carelessly
with one leg tapping. Death is 
all around me as it is with you.

I might write of you again, Kyiv,
if something fresh emerges from
the blandness of unending war, 
a bomb as blinding as the sun 
perhaps, awash in metaphor.

But for now, goodbye Kyiv. 
Best wishes for the future,
really. 


Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.

I HEARD THE NEWS, AND MEANING ERUPTED

by Mohammad Javanmard

The Bomb by M Manzano

today I woke up hearing the news 
you all know the news 
‘except the one who is still laughing’ 
I heard the news and meaning 
erupted 
on the floor 
as if a flow of a sticky, dark, smelly liquid

poetry is not for talking about politics 
we all know that 
but I’m sorry, 
I’m truly sorry
when I heard the news 
the meaning erupted 
like a bomb in Gaza 
near a basement 
where Sadiqa and her two children live(d)

poetry is not a political statement 
I apologise from all of you 
it should be about beauty and love and profound things in life
like when Mahmoud Darwish talks about: 

‘the hesitation of April 
the smell of bread at dawn 
the beginning of love, 
grass on a stone…’

but how can one explain to a terrified one-year-old 
what bombing is
and why the ground is shaking every few minutes
and the windows 
and the half empty glass on the table
and the framed picture of a man you’ve never met
on the wall
and people say that’s your dad

I remember once
my mom took me to a funeral 
and everyone was crying 
and my mom cried 
I felt the whole world started shaking 
and I cried 
and I wet my pants 
‘mama let’s go out of here’ 
pulling her head scarf 
and people thought I’m so sympathetic with the one who’d died
but my mom was crying 
and all this is pointless

the main question is 
how can one explain to a three-year-old
sitting in a bus 
heading to the south
why we should leave our house today 
in the midst of all these horrible sounds 
and the rubbles of buildings and of
humans 
and why…
(the bus erupted) 

I’m sorry I’m truly sorry 
I know we’re not supposed to use too many adjectives 
in a modern poem 
that’s just bad taste 
I know 
I know that poetry should be self-referential and create a semi-autonomous environment
that poetry is not to gain its meaning from outside
signs should interrelate and then the surplus significance emerges from within
I know we shouldn’t express our feelings so explicitly 

but forgive me 
that I couldn’t think of any ‘objective correlative’ 
for the bombardment of the children’s hospital in Gaza
for people’s thirst
for the bodies left behind

just like when Neruda couldn’t find any
 for ‘the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.’

forgive me that there is no literary equivalence for the catastrophe
there has never been.  

today 
when I was having my cereal 
sitting beside my daughter 
in a city in the middle of the UK
the meaning erupted 
and it’s unraveling my poetry
(and how cliche this trick is! Disgusting!)  

I went to the main square afterward 
to see others who’ve felt the earthquake just like me
from far away
we looked at each other’s eyes 
we said ‘oh it’s awful’
it’s horrendous 
we shared our mutual despise of the political leaders 
we talked about the horror 
about water 
electricity
bread
about last night’s meal that we’d had in the pub nearby 
‘how is Tom by the way?’
a friend asked 
tom was alright 
fortunately 
minding his own business 
and we chanted 
someone said ‘what a cute little girl’

but nobody asked that main question 
that we were all thinking of 

that how you can explain to a... 
the basement exploded. 
(another rubble among the rubbles)
no need to explain anymore. 
no need to think about it. 

Mohammad Javanmard is a poet whose work has thus far appeared in Persian. He also does research on the 21st century collective movements /collective subjectivities through world literature.

LOVE IN TIMES OF WAR

a poem for Palestine
by Maliha Iqbal

Thousands of people attended a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony for victims of the conflict in Tel Aviv on Monday night, running the gauntlet of a handful of right-wing activists who shouted hated slogans. —Haaretz, April 24, 2023. Photo by Gili Getz, The Times of Israel, April 25, 2023.

The last thing that survives
When the frightened mother
Hides her littler children behind her
In the face of the hard glint of a soldier’s gun
The last thing that survives
When the eldest child loses his childhood and innocence
Because he is the only one left
To look after his little brothers and sisters
The last thing that survives
When the soldier stares at the picture
Of his dead daughter and crouches down,
Wishing to shut himself off from the world and sob forever
The last thing that survives
When little children lying in hospital beds
With IV drips attached to their arms
Smile through the bandages at their parents
To give them something to go on
The last thing that survives
When everything is covered with thick choking smoke
Like a massive cloud has crashed on earth
And all you see around yourself
Are dead bodies floating in the cloud
You vaguely recall the boom of the bomb
And the gunfire that shattered the windows of your home
The smoke strangles you, makes you tear up
But you don’t care because 
You have just remembered the scream of your loved ones
And right now you are too busy looking for them
The last thing that survives the night of war
Is the love that waits for the break of dawn.

Maliha Iqbal is a student and writer based in Aligarh, India. Many of her short stories, write-ups, letters and poems have been published on platforms Live Wire (The Wire), Creativity Webzine, Cerebration, Histolit, Countercurrents, Times of India, The Palestine Chronicle, Freedom Review, ArmChair Journal, Counterview, Good Morning Kashmir, Writers’ Cafeteria, Café Dissensus, Borderless Journal, The Cadre Journal and Indian Periodical. She can be reached at malihaiqbal327(at)gmail.com.

THE RELICS OF MARIUPOL

by Agnieszka Tworek

A Reuters photo shows the building of a theatre destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine on April 10, 2022.

grey butterflies of ashes

rise and fall on Mariupol

after each missile or bomb

is dropped

 

bridges and roads

to safety are gone,

no way in or out

 

many can’t pass

the threshold to the other

world because even Death

is overwhelmed in Mariupol

 

ghosts help wounded

soldiers reload their guns

 

the lacerated land

bleeds into the sea

shadowed by the enemy fleet

 

sirens lull children

to sleep and wake them up

 

what is for breakfast?                         

a spoonful of air

 

what’s to drink?

a cup of rain

 

what is a house?                     

fire and smoke

 

what is a school?                    

a gaping hole

 

what are the walls?                

your mother’s arms

 

the city landmarks endure

on maps stored

in survivors’ hearts

 

grey butterflies of ashes

rise and fall on Mariupol

at dawn, noon, and dusk

 

a woman covered in dust

presses her hands on the ground,

as if trying to resuscitate

her hometown

 

wailing and blood

are spilling out

from the underground

 

does anybody know? 

everyone knows

does anybody come? 

nobody comes

except for bullets, rockets,

and bombs.

Agnieszka Tworek was born and raised in Poland. Her poems have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, Best American Poetry, The Southern Review, Rattle (Poets Respond), and in other journals.  She lives on Staten Island.