HOPE FOR THE NEW YEAR

by Barbara Schweitzer

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

There is no rodeo feat to lift history.

History is the slain bull bloodied for sport 

with his blood scoured into the concrete.

 

It is obscene to pick up a pen

on the day disaster flies in

but if not, the next day and the next 

days will keep us dumb to our ways.

 

We have physics and light: we know 

dark cannot exist when filled with light,

that speaking corrals our common plights

and even pigeons know how to take flight

and we are not night. We will not be night.

Barbara Schweitzer writes poems and plays and sundry fiction from upstate RI. She is the author of 33 1/3: Soap Opera Sonnets. She is the creator of Cyjoe Barker, detective extraordinaire of stage and flash fiction. Feeling Plankton, a 10-minute play can still be viewed in its entirety here.

ONE FLY TO ANOTHER

by Melissa Balmain

Caitlyn Johnstone / Chesapeake Bay Program via Flickr under CC BY-NC 2.0

Invasive lanternflies have been spreading across the United States for over a decade, leaving behind poop that bees are transforming into a less sweet, sometimes savory, honey. —Smithsonian Magazine, December 12, 2025

Humans are eating our poop—
and they’re buying the stuff with good money—
even though they admit it tastes funny
and we’re far from their favorite group.

My intel? It’s straight from a bee:
they’re the ones turning lanternfly doody
into something befitting a foodie.
Our crap’s the new triple-cream brie!

You’re acting surprised—what’s the reason?
This is hardly the first bit of buzz
that we’ve heard about people this season—

can’t you tell, from the wackos they follow,
and the bull they believe “just because,”
there isn’t a thing they won’t swallow?

Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

ANIMAL FARM 2021:1. BRAZEN BULL

by E. L. Blizzard

A young male bottle-fed, head-petted, indulged, insulated from common bovine. Aggressive disposition rewarded, elite pedigree admired, need for dominance nurtured.

 

Let loose, it mounts at will. Out for blood. Horning and pawing dirt, snorting, trying to gore everything in its way.

 

Humans walk on eggshells, circling periphery, scratching heads, wondering what went wrong. Much too late for dehorning and castration, but they gather keystone and bands, readying to interrupt its flight zone.

 

pasture grazing—

sickly bellows

scatter the herd

E. L. Blizzard has recent poems forthcoming or in The Other Bunny, Bones, Drifting Sands, Failed Haiku, Autumn Moon, Under the Bashō, Wales Haiku Journal, Femku and Poetry Pea. Over years of nonprofit work, she’s advocated on issues faced by immigrants and refugees, survivors of intimate partner violence in cis and LGBTQ+ relationships, and those experiencing homelessness.