UNDER

by Jenna Le

Political Art is a painting by Gull G

Under the politician's monument,
there was a grub twisting in the topsoil,
and a topsail from an ancient ship
folded nine times,
and a mole with pale human-like fingers
prodding a tree root,
and under this,
a chest seething with stolen coins,
and an aquifer dank with depleted water,
and a cave system beading on for miles
and miles, and a vein of gold ore,
and a cache of diamonds, and a hoard
of sapphires, and under this,
a corpse moaning the name of its child.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011),  A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. 

JURASSIC PARK, FINAL EPISODE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The age of dinosaurs is over—ferocious ones who ate

meat, tearing off opponents' skulls, stomping on them

for breakfast, predecessors of Atilla the Hun, Bokassa

who ate human blood, and the island potentate who

negotiated surrender of the remaining Tiger leaders to shoot

them down while they held white flags. No. Not on our watch.

The new dinosaur, killing by thousands in the neighbor's house

of Ukraine, will be stopped in one way or via the highway,

that glorious road leading not to exile or a humanitarian

pause, but as with dictators of childhood nightmares—Hitler,

Stalin, Tonton Macoute, wherever we draw our fears—into

the light we shine on his crimes as we put him on the dock

in absentia, not by 'Frisco Bay but in the Hague, while some

of our family members stagger out of the cave, blinking, still alive.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

IN THE DENISOVA CAVE

by T R Poulson

Once upon a time, two early humans of different ancestry met at a cave in Russia. Some 50,000 years later, scientists have confirmed that they had a daughter together. DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The discovery, reported in Nature, gives a rare insight into the lives of our closest ancient human relatives.Neanderthals and Denisovans were humans like us, but belonged to different species. —BBC, August 22, 2018

This at last is bone of my bones

—Genesis 2:23

The wind blows, brittle as a bird bone needle
in this cave where skeletons dance in layers,
time folds in eons, and we seek the seed, dull
as the Beginning, a stone bracelet our prayer
to grandfathers unknown. It must have begun
with fire, the flames that made flesh tender,
laid bare the bones of beasts, broken, undone,
crying. The flames that twisted up like slender
ribbons, teasing, heating. Here, a strange man
enters, here a woman’s bones turn away a suitor
like her, here bone meets bone. Here, the clan—

Genes spiral, twist, through bones, as computers
tell of fire, of seed. We see an orphan long bone
splinter. We see ourselves, unmixed, alone.

T R Poulson, a University of Nevada, Reno alum, lives in San Carlos, California. Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, The Meadow, Trajectory, J Journal, and others.

RESCUE EFFORT

by Catherine D’Andrea 

“Rescue Effort Still Underway to Save Boys Trapped in America” by Pia Guerra TheNib, July 9, 2018

A cave in the earth holds
rushes of water
foreign hearts
trapped in a hidden chamber.

Rushes of
familiar blood
move
with atrial
ventricular
compulsion.

The dark
pump and pound
whooshes
inside and around us.
We dive
into waiting
the drain
the exchange
knowing each other’s need
to breathe.



Catherine D’Andrea lives in Connecticut with a fat, orange tabby, a crazy calico, and a funny husband. She is a mother, teacher, and student, who believes life is a mystery, not to solve, but to explore. Poetry helps her do that.

BUFFING UP MY RESISTANCE RING

by Tricia Knoll


The young boy on the deck
of a cave fingers his ring.
Seeking to join the flock

that scoots through space,
the resistance that old women
like me have known as marches,

petitions, sit-ins, showings up,
letter writing, paying forward,
and which he may learn as war

to tilt love forward, to feed
the hungry, house them,
welcome them from the far

corners of the universe.
This forever war, I want to say
to him standing in hope,

the forever work of keeping
shine in our hands. Guard
the glow for work.


Tricia Knoll’s collection Broadfork Farm, now available from The Poetry Box, contains poetry about pigs, dogs, starry nights, predators and farmers on this small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington. Knoll is a regular farmsitter on the property.

OPTIONS TO CONSIDER AFTER A TRUMP VICTORY

by David James

CREDIT: MATT / THE TELEGRAPH 

You can stumble
into your cave of despair and blame

half the electorate for their blind
ignorance; you can stick your head
in the sand and try to hide the shame

you feel for your country; you can live behind
four walls of silence and let the world implode

on itself.  Or you can gather your belongings
and move to Croatia or Singapore.
But it won’t change a thing. On the long road

to heaven, you’ll find lepers and hypocrites, almost anything
floating between paradise and hell.

The fact is, no election could ever save us.
No truth can be hidden for long.
No amount of rain can fill the old well

if the well’s dry as a bone. To live with disgust
is to admit defeat. To admit defeat is to lose

all hope. And to lose all hope it to give in
to darkness. Sorry, I can’t let that happen. I’ll stand here
in the light, work hard, and wait for the good news.

David James' third book My Torn Dance Card was a finalist in the 2016 Next Generation Indie book award. More than thirty of his one-act plays have been produced. He teaches at Oakland Community College.

COULD BE MORE TRAMPLED BY THE FEET

by Jim Gustafson

Schools and subways remain closed in Belgium today, with the nation’s threat level at the highest possible. —NY Times, Nov. 23, 2015; Reuters photo via BBC.

Could more be trampled by the feet
of beasts who walk the garden?
Could there be other nights that mourn
the passing of the graves?
It is not new dusk that wraps the world
It is the same rolled paper of the past,
pulled and torn and rolled tight again.
The pendulum digs a rut in time,
from open hand to fist. Duck the swing,
wait for knuckles to grow tired of bruises,
then you may grip, shake, and exchange
names. Until that time, let the unknown
push you deep within the cave
where only shadows of yourself dance.


Jim Gustafson teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida Southwestern State College. His first book of poems Driving Home was published by Aldrich Press in 2013. He live in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes and pulls weeds.

WHITHER WEATHER #1: CA RAIN PRAYER

by Frances P. Davis

Lake Cachuma photo by Paul Wellman, Santa Barbara Independent, January 23, 2014

We listen with such longing
its little liquid voice
metallic tap on heater vent
click against cement, hiss on leaves

Our thirsty memories stretching
far back to parched times in caves
sand and dry wadis, long treks
to miracle holes gushing springs

Enough of this listlessness
dehydration’s wilting lassitude
withering fruit and vines
the farmer’s boot on powdered ground

May the sky anoint the land with rain again
let’s hear it pounding shingles
gutter runnels gushing
the splash and gurgle of surfeit

Dance or pray or seed the clouds
catch cumulous in a net and twist, bring
back birds in puddles, boats on brimming lakes
canals bearing gifts to penstocks south

Let’s smell the earth drinking
the air electric with recharged ions
let’s catch rainwater in a goblet, lift it
like the finest wine and swallow


Frances P. Davis lives in Summerland, California, a button of a village stitched to hills overlooking the Santa Barbara Channel. The village looks at water all day long, but its reservoir is dry, its lawns browning, its vineyards, raisins on the vine.  A Pushcart Prize nominee, Frances writes a column about the town for the local newspaper and publishes poems in print and online journals.