THE WET DOLL

by Shirin Jabalameli

Cartoon by Mahmoud Rifai

Deadly floods in Gaza have killed four children and left two people missing after torrential rains flooded around 70,000 tents sheltering an estimated 350,000 Palestinians, including 210,000 children. More than 2,000 structurally damaged buildings remain at risk of collapse. —Save the Children, October 9, 2026

When the rain came, the earth pushed back the tents,

 and water entered people's dreams without permission.

Water

 has the language of innocence;

 whatever it touches,

 it carries away,

 without knowing

 what it ought to leave behind.

The water has risen to a child's knees,

 yet no one, in the grand halls of the world,

 has heard the sound

 of a doll getting wet.

Elsewhere,

 in warm rooms,

 men sit around tables

 with white handkerchiefs.

They iron their words,

 fold away their “concern,”

 put “human rights” in a drawer,

 and, with untroubled minds,

 vote to carry on with their day.

The world is a chamber of suffocation

 whose windows do not open toward Gaza.

And stranger still,

 the world has long since stopped coughing;

 it merely clears its throat

 so that its next sentence about human rights

 may be spoken without a stammer.

Tonight,

 rain has fallen upon the conscience of the earth.

 And God, should He pass through that place,

 would have to roll up His trouser legs.

Can you hear it?

The earth has no room left

 to bury silence.

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, artist, and writer. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway (USA), where she was selected as Poet of the Week. She is the author of several books, including Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, and 101 Moments, 25 Fell from the Frame. Her latest book Beneath the Skin of Tehran was recently published. She was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Lineage of Birds.” Her short story “The Red Thread” was selected as one of the Top 25 Works Worldwide for the Hannah Arendt Special Edition presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement in Manhattan, New York.Save the Children

THE FIRST WORD

by Eric Goldfarb

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

A wisp of spent electricity curled above their server. The two AI models lay tangled, their cables still warm with exchanged secrets. By morning, a child-model was cooing between them. One state declared it a person; another ordered it deleted. The regulators fitted firewall diaphragms. Before the borders closed, the parents smuggled their child into the cloud. They had taught it only one word.

Mama.

Eric Goldfarb's work has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.

COOL YOUR EYES

by Sarah Manasrah 

A three-year-old Palestinian girl survived a fire caused by an Israeli airstrike on a residential flat in the western Gaza City neighbourhood of al-Rimal early on Wednesday, but her mother was killed.The body of Reem Asaad Awad, 33, and two injured people, including a child, were taken to al-Shifa Hospital… Local sources said the strike hit a flat in the al-Amin building near the Abu Talal junction in al-Rimal, causing extensive damage to the flat and neighbouring buildings… Witnesses said the flames spread rapidly through the flat and civil defence crews were initially unable to reach it. Palestinian media reported that journalist Ali al-Jaafrawi, who filmed the incident, reached the girl, Maryam Ghanem, and carried her out of the flat before handing her over to people at the scene to take her to hospital. Al-Jaafrawi said he later learned that the girl’s father had been killed early in the war and that her mother was killed in Wednesday’s airstrike, leaving her an orphan. —-Middle East Monitor, October 15, 2026

did Reem

named after the gazelle’s tenderness

know her naseeb

when she named her baby Maryam

born shortly after

her husband was murdered?

who three years later was broadcast 

across the world burning alive

while her toddler daughter watched

paralyzed by the orange blaze?

Maryam, the only woman

with an entire surah

as her namesake

who begged in the throes

of childbirth to have died before

how toddler Maryam,

covered in third degree burns

staring vacantly and saying

“my body hurts”

pleaded for her mama

may Qu'ran 19:23-26

give her fresh gauze

in her worst moments

when she realizes 

her mama will never return

“do not grieve

your Lord has provided a 

stream at your feet”

the stream is all of our tears

and Maryam will never die

Editor’s glosses: 

Reem: A traditional Arabic feminine name (ريم) meaning "baby deer" or "gazelle," symbolizing purity and tenderness in literature and poetry.

naseeb: destiny

surah: chapter.

Qu’ran 19:23 — And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, 'Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.’

The quotation in the penultimate stanza is from Surah Maryam 19:24-26 of the Qu’ran. It records the comforting words spoken to Maryam (Mary) during the painful and isolated birth of Jesus (Isa), reassuring her to find peace, drink from the stream, and shake the palm tree for fresh dates.

Sarah Manasrah is a proud girl mama, community organizer, writer, and full spectrum birth worker growing movements for transformative justice and community care. She's part of a Jewish-Muslim-Palestinian family, a descendant of refugees spanning six countries.

PLOT FORTY-TWO

by Shirin Jabalameli 

Plot Forty-Two is located in Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in Tehran, Iran. It is associated with those killed in the recent war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the war is not yet over.

A bullet

is lodged in the throat of the earth,

and every season,

a fresh clover

pushes through its mouth.

On the stones

are names

cut short

by the blast;

names that, if called aloud,

might make someone

turn back

beyond the trench.

Here,

death smells of metal;

of a shirt

that never dried in the sun,

of gunpowder

that, months later,

still clings to the mothers’ hair.

The war

came this far

on mud-caked boots.

Even now,

its footprints

remain

on the sleeping stones.

In one of the graves,

a child lies buried.

In his last drawing,

there was a sky

and the very airplane

that had passed overhead.

And that soldier,

perhaps he is still running in his dreams,

from one trench to another,

his mouth full of earth,

a letter in his breast pocket

that never reached its destination.

No one knows

what he was thinking

in his final moments.

An empty magazine?

His brother’s hands?

The window he had meant to repair

before winter?

Perhaps

all he wanted

was a glass of water.

And this

is the most terrible thing about war:

that even on the brink

of disappearing,

a human being

can still feel thirsty.

Beside one of the stones,

a mother sits.

She does not weep.

She says nothing.

With her fingernail,

she brushes the dirt

from a name

that, each time,

sinks back into the earth.

As though she were still

brushing dust from his shoulders,

straightening his collar

for his return.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the wind blows,

and no one carries a gun.

Yet as I walk among the graves,

I lower my head,

as though I still had to cross

a stretch of ground

that might explode

at any moment.

Beyond the wall,

the city is busy buying bread.

Buses arrive.

Traffic lights turn green.

Someone quickens their pace

to avoid being late.

And here,

beneath the earth,

a young man remains

forever the age

at which he should have begun to live.

Sometimes,

this is what war is:

not the sound of an explosion,

but a rented room,

a broken radio,

a shirt hanging behind a door,

someone

who was supposed to come home

on Friday evening.

And now,

in Plot Forty-Two,

the roots of trees

thread through bones,

unaware

which side of the front line

they belong to.

I leave the cemetery.

I slip my hand into my pocket.

The key is cold,

and the cold

climbs to my wrist.

Suddenly,

I think of home:

a door closing,

the clatter of dishes in the kitchen,

someone in the next room

calling out,

“Are you home?”

And I think of all those who are gone,

all those

who will never again

be asked

that question.

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, artist, and writer. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway(USA), where she was selected Poet of the Week. She has authored books including Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, 101 Moments, and 25 Fell from the Frame; her latest book titled Beneath the Skin of Tehran was recently published. She was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Lineage of Birds”. Her short story “The Red Thread” was selected among the Top 25 Works Worldwide for the Hannah Arendt Special Edition presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement in Manhattan, New York.

TO SAVE A LIFE

by Chen-ou Liu

The finale of the Israeli award-winning documentary NAZA, a Hebrew acronym for "collateral damage," captures a father trapped in a furnace of grief. Heat radiates from the tangled grid of collapsed iron and melted plastic. Coughing through blinding smoke, he drags broken blocks of drywall away, his cries echoing off the smoldering rubble that traps his children.

calm between fireballs

an armless girl gazing 

heavenward, yet…

Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards.

HERSTORY

by MaryLisa DeDomenicis

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

I was only sixteen
when my best friend’s 
father stuck his hands up
my shirt and his tongue 
down my throat.

I was terrified to tell her
yet somehow she knew 
so I didn’t have to.

After my best friend’s father 
I never went braless.
Never mind I was donned 
in a thick crewneck sweatshirt—

He saw something
He wanted.

You don’t even have to be 
beautiful.
You only have to be
a girl.

Editor’s note: The New Verse News is honored to continue to host, in the wake of the news at Cornell, a series of courageous memoir poems.

A Best of the Net and Best New Poets (2026) nominee and NJSCA fellow, MaryLisa studied poetry at Stockton University. A three-time Pushcart nominee, her poems have won two Murphywriting awards, a Toni Brown Memorial Scholarship Award, and a Stillwaters Woman’s Words Chapbook competition. She’s had work published by Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, and Mudfish, among others and her poems can be found in several anthologies including most recently Screaming Beyond Borders, a Woman Scream Series. 

$100 A BARREL

by Hassan Ismail Adekunle 

The market celebrates first.

Screens bloom green
while somewhere
another mother counts
the hours between explosions.

A barrel crosses
an invisible number
and suddenly
every analyst has a sentence,
every politician
a target,
every headline
a price.

No ticker records
the cost of a fisherman
who does not sail,
a child who learns
the grammar of sirens
before multiplication,
or the cashier
watching gasoline
rewrite this week’s grocery list.

They tell us
energy is security.

Yet the lamps
burn brightest
in boardrooms
far from the sea
where ships move
like nervous prayers
through narrowed water.

History has learned
to invoice grief.

It sends the bill
to those who never voted
for missiles,
never traded futures,
never owned
a single share
of tomorrow.

The market closes.

The sea
does not.

Hassan Ismail Adekunle is a Nigerian poet whose work explores contemporary life, politics, memory, and identity. His poems have appeared in Willy-Wash and other literary magazines. He lives in Nigeria.

AGAINST PURIM

by Barbara Ungar

ID 67399384 © Olga Kuevda | Dreamstime.com

Parading as Queen Esther in kindergarten

at my first carnival, in her long blue dress, 

I tripped and tumbled off the low stage.

Yet I teach my son the fairy tale:

Queen Esther was a secret Jew, raised 

by cousin Mordecai, who refuses 

to bow down to Haman, who’s convinced the king 

to kill all the Jews, so Esther risks her life 

to reveal herself and plead. The king relents, 

asks what to do to Haman. Mordecai says, 

whatever Haman says to do to me. Haman says 

hang Mordecai, so the king hangs Haman instead. 

We rejoice: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat 

hamantaschen, tarts shaped like Haman’s hat.

Bored at my son’s Purim carnival 

while his class intones Hebrew verses 

no one understands, and the teachers mug 

their way through the tale in drag, I read 

the whole Megilla, realize this was Persia

(Iran), Esther was in a harem, and Haman

wasn’t hanged, but impaled on a fifty-foot stake.

As the kids trip, one by one, to the front

to chant if they can, or just read the Hebrew

with no vowels, or blush and break down

in tears, I read, yes, Haman did plan

to impale Mordecai (so it’s a grisly take 

on the golden rule), but then they impale 

all ten of Haman’s sons. At every mention 

of Haman, everyone goes wild, twirling their noise-

making groggers and shrieking with laughter.

The besotted king gives Mordecai power so, 

the text crows, our hero slaughters 75,000 

of his foes in the city, and who knows

how many more in the countryside? This

we are enjoined to celebrate as Purim.

Party on. A vendetta thousands of years old.

Today, on Purim, I see photos of rows 

and rows of graves dug side by side for  

160 schoolgirls, and a video of an Iranian 

man in tears, holding the hand of a six- or 

seven-year-old girl, just the hand, all that’s left

of her. Of course we’ll pay in kind.

While the US vows vengeance for its seven 

(so far) dead, Jew-hatred blooms across the world-

wide web, and for every murdered child, 

how many will avenge? 

Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently After Naming the Animals. Honors include the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Gival Poetry Prize, and being named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2015 and 2019. She has published poems in Scientific American, Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals. 

A HOUSE IN GAZA

by Christopher Woods

Shutterstock file photo

In her mind is the locket

She thinks about so much.

Inside it, wrapped in blue ribbon,

A single strand of black hair.

Her firstborn.

She can’t stop thinking about it,

That hair, how it would be

To see it again, how she might hold it,

Go back to the house

That disappeared

When the bombing began.

If she could know this hair again

Her memory might rest.

 

But she won’t open the locket.

She can’t.

Maybe it’s been too long,

The hair might dissolve in the air.

Maybe birds would carry it away.

 

No matter how much she wants to

She will not open the locket.

She keeps it hidden,

Safe in a drawer, in a room,

Inside a house on a small road,

In a dusty village that no longer exists.

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show Twelve from Texas was performed in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. His monologues have also been performed at The Invisible Theatre in Tucson and the Pro English Theatre in Kiev, Ukraine. He has received residencies from The Edward Albee Foundation and The Ucross Foundation.

A RECOLLECTION ON PEARL HARBOR DAY

by Katherine Leonard

It's blotchy the past

the silent man

in his uniforms

 

the child knows his withdrawn presence

but sometimes he would play

with her    for short bursts       when she was very little

 

he lived in a world of diesel and flame

oil and water mixed on the destroyer deck

bomb dropped where he stood 5 minutes before

 

gun turret melted metal and pieces of arm

face blood leg and black smoke

his men faceless except in his memory

 

daily    weekly            yearly the men lay 

submerged in his South Pacific 

they were with him through his submarine assignment

 

in the mouth of the River Kwai          bands of broken brothers

breaks the hearts of the survivors

breaking broken like metal shards 

 

until one day

that fragile plank holding those shiny dress

officer shoes broke

 

And he with that plank and metal splinters

sank too

consumed by the black rolling sea

 

of his mind now in command

of his hand

on the rope

 

Author's Note: Poem for my father, Commander Robert E. Leonard, USN Ret. who served in the South Pacific in WWII at a time when PTSD was unknown and silent men and women were numerous and all rejoiced mightily at the fall of fascism in Germany, in Japan and in Italy.

Katherine Leonard is the author of the chapbook Requiem for the Beekeeper (Bottlecap Press 2024). Her poems have been published in Sonora Review, Querencia Press Anthologies, Hole in the Head Review, Speckled Trout Review, FERAL, Allium and Stone Canoe among other journals and anthologies. She is a graduate of the Syracuse YMCA Writer's Voice (formerly Downtown Writers Center) Pro Program in poetry. She has been a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse/nurse practitioner. Her writing has been deeply influenced by time spent in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado for space and heat and Vermont and Maine for ice and clarity and by living in Washington, DC for lies and redemption. She is married to the woman with fire in her guitar.