WARNING SHOT

by Catherine Gonick

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

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight doctors and researchers, including four who have spoken out against vaccination in some way, to replace roughly half the members he fired from an expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. —The New York Times, June 11, 2025

I go to CVS to get a Covid booster.

A pharmacy staffer prepares the injection.

Do you think we'll be able to get

these much longer? I ask.

Is this a political question? 

she shoots back.

We are strangers. I realize 

she might be asking 

if I'm MAGA. Maybe she

is. But if either of us were,

would we be here,

giving and receiving

life-saving help? Is this political?

I repeat inanely. Battle-lines wait

to be drawn, and I'm lost

in a small fog of war,

until she asks, Have you heard

what's happened to the CDC

and vaccines? Now I know

we're on the same side

and it's safe to answer, Yes, 

we're in a horror movie. She jabs

my arm and I flinch. You need

to stay still, she warns,

plunging deeper. When I leave

and thank her, she smiles.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, and Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her first full-length collection, Split Daughter of Eve, is forthcoming in June from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works in a company that slows  the rate of global warming.

AUGUST

by Juditha Dowd

This evening it occurs to me I ought to call my mom and dad
because it’s been a while. And for a moment they are not
gone some fifteen and thirty-six years, but still at the house 
where I left them, the first of their children to depart.
It’s summer and steamy and all the windows are open wide.
She’s on the porch working the Sunday crossword.
He’s out back picking tomatoes or wielding some tool—
lawnmower, drill, or paint brush. For what they may lack 
in talents or skill they substitute perseverance.  
Today I took tomatoes from the garden we extended again
in this post-pandemic summer, the leaves already mottled 
with a virus that will kill the plant but doesn’t harm us. 
Here too it’s hot and humid, like that year my twin brothers 
caught polio, from swimming at a public pool some said.
The same August our younger brother almost drowned 
in the deep end and our country joined the Korean war,
though my father was too old to fight in that one. 
If only my phone could find them tonight, I’d assure them 
I’ll get another booster. Or bemoan the endless shootings,
the forest fires, the latest wars… Or instead I might say 
It’s 100° and I’m making a tomato sandwich. 
Maybe leave it at that. They’d know what I mean.
 
 
Juditha Dowd’s fifth book of poetry, Audubon’s Sparrow, is a lyric biography in the voice of Lucy Bakewell Audubon (Rose Metal Press). She was a 2022 finalist for the Adrienne Rich Award and has contributed poems to Beloit Poetry Journal, Cider Press Review, Florida Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

ANY QUESTIONS?

by Clyde Always

Beware “the Delta”—COVID’s spawn

and, coming soon : “the Epsilon”

(Cyrillic once the Grecian’s gone).

  So, be you willing-to or not,

  you’ll get your monthly booster shot.

 

But, if the needle makes you flinch,

then drop your muzzle just an inch

and brace to feel the slightest pinch…

  Bi-weekly this procedure goes:

  we jam a Q-tip up your nose.

 

If still ill-motives you presume

we’ll lock you in a padded room

where daily lectures via ZOOM

  we hope may help you yet to learn

  your health’s our only real concern.

Clyde Always is an accomplished cartoonist, poet, painter, novelist and Vaudevillian entertainer. His writings and/or illustrations have been printed in the Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Light, Slackjaw, Scarfff Comics, etc. etc. You can see his storytelling act, live and in-person, any Friday evening, at the Scott Street Labyrinth in San Francisco, CA.

POSTCARDS FROM MY PLACE IN LINE

by Sandra Fees

Tweeted by Apoorva Mandavilli <@apoorva_nyc> based on the “Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line” app at The New York Times.

Phase 1A

I’m a rationed portion of myself. Loungewear

and sweatpants, no bra. Yesterday I spent four

hours trawling the provider map to get in line

online. No appointments. Is this what a ration

line feels like? Except now we wait on laptops.

It’s not my turn. But it is my boyfriend’s and

my friend’s and my sister’s and there's no place

in line. Just today someone tried to steal a turn.

 

Phase 1B

That’s me, 1B. There isn’t a line—yet.

Clergy to queue up with first responders,

educators, and grocery store workers

who stock shelves and fill my trunk

with groceries. Today, the young man who

emptied the sleet-spritzed cart warned

drive carefully out there. I hope he gets

the vaccine soon. Isn’t it scarier in there?

 

Phase 1C

The CDC matrix is a scramble of phrases

like prevention of morbidity & mortality

and preservation of societal functioning.

They position them on the scales called

equity. Everyone wants to weigh in.

 

Phase 2

Dr. Fauci says by summer. I miss

the ocean. Last year I had to pay

a cancelation fee. Is it okay to wear

my royal blue bikini from last year?

 

Phase 3

This week Moderna launched a booster trial,

like a rocket. I hope the space program boosts

its rockets too, speeds us where we need to go.

 

Sandra Fees is the author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and served a term as Berks County, Pennsylvania, Poet Laureate (2016-2018). Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, Chiron Review, and others.