INDEPENDENT EGG

by Albert Hwang

Los Angeles, May 1 (CNA) A U.S.-based coffee association that organizes the World Coffee Championships (WCC) said on Friday that its decision to change the designation of competitors from Taiwan as representing "Chinese Taipei" was in line with international conventions at sporting events. The decision has drawn criticism from Taiwan's coffee community, particularly after the WCC website recently changed references to Taiwanese competitors--including this year's World Latte Art Championship winner Lin Shao-hsing (林紹興) pictured above—as being from "Chinese Taipei" instead of "Taiwan."

We're trying to hatch this island

egg-shaped, that was born already.

Thousand-year-old, incubating

in a standoff, we were born already.

They say to be careful, step-ball-

change what you call yourself,

dance around words like

Taiwanese and Country.

Special administrative,

inner outer autonomous,

hyphenations on a name,

that was born already.

Imagine, standing

on eggshells that spell     I-N-D-E-P-E

N-D-E-N-C-E     trying to take a step.

Birth being brokered, pawned by two

protrusions, jutting into the Pacific. But

we were born     already.

Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet from Illinois. He writes about alienation, distance, and inherited grief in the Asian American experience. He is a 2004 James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Inscape Journal, Unbroken: Prose Poems, Heavy Feather Review, Eunoia Review, Unleash Lit, DIHP, Anxiety Press, Pen Pushers, Longmeadow Literary, and other publications.

FLIPPING BACK AND FORTH

Between the Artemis II Launch Live Stream and the Live Stream of the Supreme Court Hearing Arguments Regarding Birthright Citizenship

by Liz Ahl

 

Someday, humans may be born on the moon.

Whose moon may or may not be in dispute

in that future I imagine, as I flip from laptop tab

to tab on April Fool’s Day, feeling a little foolish

with the thrill-flutter summoned by the fully-fueled

rocket; feeling also a little edgy with my Gen X

rocket-gone-wrong memory. But thrill wins out

and I don’t look away as the biggest rocket

we’ve sent up since I was a toddler burns skyward,

moonward. As the nation burns deathward—

a rocket-spitting machine both fueled

and made rickety by insatiable greed, a sadistic

hybrid of automation and a deeply human cruelty.

I was born in the wing of a Naval hospital

that’s torn down now; the people who

conceived me in the moon-foolish summer

of 1969 and parented me for decades

are dead, and I’m feeling a little adrift,

a little nationless. A little unsure of my name,

my place. As if I’d been born on the moon.

Liz Ahl is the author of A Case for Solace (2022), winner of the 2023 New Hampshire Literary Award for Poetry. Her other collections include Beating the Bounds (2017) and a number of chapbooks, the most recent of which is A Stanza is a Place to Stand, published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2023. Poems have appeared recently in Rogue Agent, Cherry Tree, and River Heron Review. She lives in New Hampshire.

HATE IS LEARNED, THEY SAY

by D. R. Goodman

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

Hate is learned, they say. I say it’s born
and hunting for a target from within,
coiled like a cat and patient, weapons worn
 
in secret, sheathed and still. As claw, or thorn,
it catches what comes close and pulls it in.
Hate is learned, they say. I say it’s born:
 
a hollow place the world must fill with sworn
invented enemies. Beneath the skin,
coiled like a cat, impatient, weapons worn
 
in fancied self-defense, it levies scorn
against whatever hapless prey strays in.
They say that hate is learned. I say it’s born,
 
innate and natural. We cannot warn
away what lives inside us, burrowed in
and cat-like, coiled and patient, weapons worn
 
then sharpened once again—keen claw, spike-thorn.
Our work is to expose love’s mirror-twin.
They say that hate is learned. I say it’s born.
It coils like a cat within us, weapon-worn.
 

D. R. Goodman is the author of Greed: A Confession from Able Muse Press, a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and twice winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, as well as in many other journals and anthologies. She is founder and chief instructor at a martial arts school.

RITUAL

by Amy Shimshon-Santo

the year crawls toward an end 
sharp knife between its teeth
& bleeding tongue

a year of vowels

displaced from their consonants,
zipped together 

by a three letter word 
that is not good for children 
& other living things

I walk to the edge of language
thin stick between my hands 
holding a makeshift flag

colorless as the memory of water
scavenged from cotton 
clothing of the departed

it is time to place the year inside 
an urn, bury it in the Earth
lie down beside the unimaginable

hear the new year drumming
& dreaming itself into being, wanting
to be born

Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is a warm-blooded vertebrate with hair. She writes  poetry, essays, performs spoken word, improvisation, and choreography. Read or listen to her poetry collections: Catastrophic Molting (2020), Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (2020), and look for her forthcoming book Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (2024). Teaching and facilitating trans-local community arts projects have been central to her social practice for 30+ years. She is available as a guest artist, arts educator, coach, and editor. Dr. A has been nominated for an Emmy Award and three Pushcart Prizes in poetry and creative non-fiction. She was a finalist for the Night Boat Poetry Prize, and earned a place in the U.S. Service Learning Hall of Fame. Connect with her at @shimshona / @amyshimshon