The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Guidelines
Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest at UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
A goddess of silence carries
my severed right arm
my Zionist
arm they call
genocidal among
many other names.
Silently moving
out of sight
through camps
where the righteous
sing from tents
it waves goodbye.
I hear
the blood of words dry
feel the pain
of my phantom limb.
Catherine Gonick's alma mater is U.C. Berkeley. She has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate.
“Israel-Hamas war said to have… displaced 70% of [Gaza’s] population in a month.” —CBS News, November 7, 2023
The DPs fleeing Gaza remind me of those I saw in the hall of a Swiss railroad station after the end of World War Two—Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, slave laborers from German war industries, resistance fighters from occupied countries… all had been waiting in DP camps in Germany, rounded up for "their own good," still not free men and women, still "inmates," still not possessing any rights, legal or human until the Red Cross and other aid organizations could open doors for "repatriation" to their old homelands or transportation to their new ones—their bodies pressed against each other, the faces of the men pale and gaunt, their eyes staring into a middle distance, the women clutching babies, their hair flapping around their heads, the hall reeking of hunger, sickness and yearning. When their eyes met they shuddered, stood there, unable to embrace each other. It is more than bodies that are displaced.
George Salamon did not know he was a refugee or "displaced person" when he, three years old, and his parents escaped one night in the fall of 1938 from Austria to Switzerland. He now lives in St.Louis, MO.
When all roads lead to monsters, where do you turn?
Plucked like a stinkweed from his family farm, a young
Ukrainian is trucked like freight to Nazi camps, where he
labors for the next 12 years in four concentration camps.
Like all captives, he will be stripped of warm clothes in
frigid weather. He will be fed a half-slice of bread and
watered-down soup before laboring in dark and dank
tunnels and mines with only stone cots on which to rest.
In quarries, he will hoist heavy boulders up hundreds of
steps and carry down corpses of those murdered by
Nazis for their frailities. And if he falters, he dies, too.
He survives. Sick, emaciated, bearing scars of abuse
and pain, but alive.
II
He returns to Ukraine to rebuild his life. An apartment that is
safe and warm. Clothes, food, medical care. A wife, children
and grandchildren. Most of all, he has a voice. He travels to
speak for those who have been silenced. Conferences, events,
memorials, and schools. People must remember. This must
never happen again. But his travels have now led to a wartorn
road with a dead end. Seventy-seven years after his nightmare
at the hands of Nazis has ended, Russian troops bomb his
apartment, killing him.
III
He now lies in a roadside cemetery. A few family members clustered
around his coffin at his funeral. A stiff, cold wind snuffed out their
lit candles quickly. A young Orthodox priest, bundled in a parka,
led a hasty service as bombs blasted in the distance. “He was patient
and kind,” he lamented as the coffin was lowered into the damp ground.
If only the world would be the same.
Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, where she and her husband have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a foster dog. Their sons, Richard and Joshua, now live in New York and Texas (respectively). Following careers in journalism, public relations, and copy editing, Shelly now spends time writing poetry, scrapbooking and making cards. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, Praxis Magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Muddy River Review, among other publications. A couple of years ago, Richard and Joshua surprised Shelly by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.
Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.
there are no shards
no shattering glass this time
only the shattered lives
the small voices begging
"donde está mi mama?"
breaking windows would be
clichéd, a dull repetition,
a cheap imitation of an old trick
but this, this breaking of families
the splintering that leaves
sharp, heartless, cutting edges
shredding those tiny hearts
"we take them to the showers"
the lies roll easily off tongues
devoid of human conscience
devoid of basic decency
why not just tell the truth
"vamos a matarlos"
boxcars are replaced with
abandoned big box stores
warehouses converted to hold
not goods, but alleged "evils"
as if a year old toddler
could be evil before he can speak
evil before he can walk
this is the path we condemned
this is the hate we fought against
the tyranny our fathers bled to halt
the destruction that we so arrogantly
swore would never come again
and here it is
in the land of the free
the night air thickened
by children's cries of terror
as AMERICA THE GREAT
pulls a blanket of darkness
over this unholy night
this carefully calculated
cruel and cowardly
kindernacht
j.lewis is a father, a grandfather, a healthcare provider who is sickened by the treatment of immigrants at our southern border, especially the children, and who sees too many parallels not to be frightened for what may yet come. His first collection, a clear day in october, pairs his poetry with his own photography.
‘Donald Trump may have signed an executive order to end the separation of families at the southern border, but his administration is not making any special efforts to immediately reunite the 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under his “zero tolerance” policy.’ —The Guardian, June 21, 2018. Photo: A tent encampment in Tornillo, Texas, to house immigrant children. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images via The Guardian.
The ghost of Goebbels creeps
through the edges of our current
landscape as he whispers lies
again and again until the innocent
believers think they know it is
the truth and although the ghost
swallowed the cyanide with his
wife after murdering his children
with poison in the temporary
defeat of his deceptions and lies
which seemed to have a life of
their own because it is too easy
to believe what the weak want to
believe to give them faked strength
as the powerful gain even more
power and cash as they delude
the defenseless and have no empathy
for the fragile and vulnerable
since winning the unequal struggle
is all that matters to the bigoted
no matter the wounded and their pain
"We can't continue to play the ostrich game anymore, especially
for those of us who still insist on being called POETS..."
— Chiedu Ezeanah
Who will pay me for a poem, read
one and be moved to action? Who
will open their ears and remove
the deafening silence? Who will
pay a coin of attention, enough
for a pack of combs, a book of
poems, and add to a small stipend
for a volunteer to go and read
to orphans while they learn to
pick and braid each other's hair?
Do you not remember when you
yourself were small, the feel
of your mother's hands upon
your head? Do you not recall
your impatience on occasions
when you were eager to be on
your way, finished with this
process? But when you left,
did you not carry the sense
of her affection with you,
the confidence that she would
not have loosed you until
you were your most presentable?
Who will pay me for a poem,
send a coin or a comb? And
who will take time to visit
orphaned children, offer them
the reassurance of adult
affection, let them know they
are not forgotten, that an
entire nation is present
to serve as surrogates for
parents they have lost? But
there is so much silence.
Are we afraid to face their
destitution and their grief?
Do we believe there are too
many for us to make a real
difference, and afraid of
failure, fail to even try?
Is there no path from silence
into action? What use is a poet
who will not be a beacon? If
there is no path, then let
the poets set the course
with words and wear it with
their feet, don't let the words
be empty. Let the poets lead.
Laura M Kaminski grew up in northern Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. She is an Associate Editor at Right Hand Pointing, and the author of several poetry chapbooks and collections, most recently Dance Here (Origami Books, an imprint of Parrésia Publishers Ltd, Lagos, Nigeria).
