INCINERATE

by Robin Wright

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Shutterstock

Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. —Hana Kiros, The Atlantic, July 14, 2025

Children are left to live
with hunger pangs
clawing their stomachs
like a tiger
while enough food
to feed millions
of them for a week
will be tossed in a fire
that roars with orange flames
& adds a new circle
of hell to Dante’s list.
The orange glow
reflecting perfectly
on the man in charge.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, One Art, As it Ought to Be, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Loch Raven Review, Panoply, Rat’s Ass Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.

AMONG THE DEAD SEQUOIAS

by Pepper Trail

In this April 22, 2021 photo provided by Sequoia & Kings National Parks is a stand of burned sequoias in Sequoia National Park, CA following the 2020 Castle Fire. At least a tenth of the world’s mature giant sequoias were destroyed by a single California wildfire that tore through the southern Sierra nevada last year, according to a draft report by scientists with the National Park Service. Photo credit: Tony Caprio/Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks via AP and KTLA.

When the immortals die

The thousand-year trees

When they burn

 

It is time for the climate scientists

All the deepest thinkers

To gather, to bring their life's-work

Their most elaborate models

Their most detailed simulations

To meet in the grove of fire-blacked giants

Clasp each other's shoulders, bow their heads

Scatter their predictions among the ashes

And return the way they came, empty-handed

 

Now at last we know: we know nothing

We have killed the world of our understanding

And our future, a lifelong lesson in grief

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

OLD MCDONALD

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Art by Zelley

destroys his own farm

blind eye on the golden hay

clumsily embarking on a sweep

of dirt under fields and rugs 

fistfuls hidden, tossed away

the swamp calm beneath blue skies

and the swell of a flood tide

bearing an economy of crime

bears down, drowns the land.

And there he stands, proud 

pitchfork in one pale hand

flash suit over excessive flesh

his minions and puppets

whiplashed and soft-focused

in the brilliance of a gilt sheen

he has shed the dark cloak

and revealed a plastic heart

that does not beat in tandem,

a harvest plan that starves,

feeding neither bodies nor souls

but the infantile emotional self-

interest of the greedy animal

chowing down fantasy food

and golden age TV dreams 

of power and wealth only

silly fictions bring to life.

From the top of the silo

fake this, false that

the poor garden at his feet

the sick and dying, lost

trampled down, laid out

in a stink pile of manure

his arrogant gaze pitiless

as the Florida sun

burning to a crusty char

all of it,

all that so many

worked so long, so hard 

to plant, tend, grow.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

COALS

by Elizabeth Johnston

Image source: DonkeyHotey

“[He] is being raked over the coals in the press right now. People are trying to destroy him”

—Glen Beck in “Witch Hunt: Bill O’Reilly Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt” 

“We will not be staked this time.” 

–Cari-Lee Miller, “Granddaughters”

Myth smokes with the corpses we’ve inherited,
simpering seventy-times-seven girls:
Gretel, escaping the oven to wrap arms around her dead-beat Dad.
Persephone in a singed bikini boarding the bus for Spring Break.
Corn-woman begging for the stake so bellies might be fed.

We are the granddaughters of the witches you burned
and our tongues won’t, anymore,
wrap around the lie:
            Once, Long Ago, Far Away

Like fugitives of Pompeii
we’ve borne the blistering surge,
been arrested mid-joy, fixed
to the earth for centuries, lain airless,
buried under soot, cocooned
our voices like fingers
cast in their clawing.

But go ahead, storytellers.  Rewrite.

Return to the scene shouldering your excuses like shovels,
dismissive as a pickaxe.
Fill the void with your plaster white,
your sight-seer-safe.
Stake your claim. Charge your fees.

There’s profit in bigotry, big money in violence.

Stand over the volcano’s mouth piece,
sermonize, ejaculate,
make your pithy sacrifice.

Never mind the ghosts
who sneak up from behind,
palms facing forward.


Elizabeth Johnston teaches writing, literature, and gender studies in Rochester, NY. A past contributor at TheNewVerse.News, her most recent work appears in The Atlantic, Feminist Formations, and The Boiler.