WE GET TO CHOOSE

by Cecil Morris

Art by Luis Ricardo

Many people, of course, feel America is broken. You can hear about the country’s many troubles—its ideological divides, its anger, its lack of civility—from conservatives and liberals, from socialist firebrands and evangelical preachers, from Democrats and Republicans. It is, perhaps, one of the few beliefs that unites Americans right now. So many seem to genuinely want those divides to be mended, for the country to be knitted back together. But the question of why America is broken, and who is to blame, and how to repair it? That’s where things get complicated. —Tim Sullivan, AP, September 13, 2025

In the choose-your-own-adventure America, 
you get to choose which expert to believe, 
which news source delivers the truth to eyes and ears, 
which problem needs solution and which solution 
you like best and think will work and ought, therefore, 
be funded beyond your wildest ability 
to count the cents one by one in your little life. 
So close your eyes and jump to page 47, 
the just say no, the walls and cages, the answer 
that puts ever more troops and officers and masks 
on your streets, the security of surveillance, 
of armed patrols—here, there, and everywhere. Or jump 
to page 76 and guns for everyone 
and self-defense in every hand and every home. 
Or turn to page 2021: the moment 
we decide which police we must obey 
and which we must overrun to guarantee our rights. 
Or, maybe, see what happens when we choose that page 
where we realize that schools and social services 
are less expensive than prisons or where we build 
villages of tiny homes for our veterans 
unhoused and struggling instead of casting them, 
so much chaff, to streets and parks, to make-shift tents, 
where they like dandelions can sprout in the cracks. 
Which America will we choose for our families?

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) came out in 2025.  He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

PLEASE CHOOSE

by Donald Sellitti

Nina Chanel Abney, “Hobson’s Choice” (2017), acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 84 1/4 x 120 3/16 x 1 15/16 inches (image via Hyperallergic)

Please choose which dead to mourn. Now,
with your sorrow and your anger still as
raw as the shoveled earth above them. Please choose.

The children in their shorts and Messi jerseys
dead beneath the mothers clothed head to toe
in garments turned to shrouds, or

the children lying bloody in their soccer shirts
shot point blank with mothers forced to watch.
Mourn either one, not both. Please choose.

Scream loudly in my ear until I hear
you. It will never make me feel your pain, but
I might finally come to understand. 

I will not judge you for the choice you make, 
but you have no other choice but choosing.
Please choose which dead you will avenge.
Please choose.

Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.

TO A CHORUS OF TEARS

by tom bauer

It seems inevitable his eyes would look like that
singing that song, effulgent with yearning
for things lost, as the river weaves towards
the past. Reminds me of cartoon eyebrows,
pointed in an inverted ‘V’, like a tent,
anguished peaks over wounded disks, singing
what might be the saddest song ever made.

An invisible step leads to this next question,
on foot, an actual physical object
moving in space, in the moment of space,
not merely that moment witnessed onscreen,
a moment now in the past, outside this one,
this moment here with the keyboard, the echo,
the cat on the radiator nesting his head.

Are we free? As time waves out, are we free?
Free of the pain, the breath, the trees and light?
For it seems we are not free on earth, to choose
to run or fight, to give or take, we are
in moments welded to our choices,
fixed outside freedom, choosing what we must.

So are we free, then, when we die? Is that it?

tom bauer lives in montreal with his sons and plays boardgames.

WOMAN, WAKING

by Sara Sarna

But Alito’s Italian stand-up routine came at the expense of millions of people’s lived realities in this country right now—many of whom will die because of his unpopular opinion. I personally don’t find it funny at all. —Laura Bassett, Jezebel, July 28, 2022

It was never a matter of balance. 

It was a poorly weighted pendulum  

that sent us scurrying 

between who we needed to be  

and who others needed. 

Sometimes we forgot 

how to choose ourselves, 

put off becoming, 

fell asleep to our value. 

Now you beat your drum 

in celebration of what you claim 

as victory, and it wakes us 

to your arrogance. 

This is one battle. 

We do not fear the war. 

Sara Sarna is a poet, actor and hiker in southeastern Wisconsin. Her work has been published in print and online, and been heard on stage and on the radio. Her chapbook Whispers from a Bench was published in 2019.

RULING CLASS

by George Held

Left: Cameron Kasky, Photograph by Rhona Wise / AFP / Getty via The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 2018.
Right: Bethany Garrison, Photograph by Sharif Hamza, The New Yorker, Mar, 26, 2018.

The Parkland Kids have made
the cover of TIME: new
icons of a teen-mad age,
out to change the world,
or at least U.S. gun laws.

There’s barefoot Jaclyn,
buzzcut Emma, and the boys:
Alex Wind, Cameron Kasky,
and David Hogg, chairs of the board
of The Stoneman Douglas Survivors

and so far Kevlar impervious
to competitive envy,
so far without endorsements
(will they appear in ads
as a group or individuals?).

Even their motto, “Never
Again,” has brought no protest
from those who use it to resist
the Shoah: Whose slogan is it?
Which will happen again first?

But the Survivors’ suburban faces
ricochet off the teens with guns
in the pages of The New Yorker:
rural, poised, resolute, responsible
owners of shotguns, handguns, AR 16’s,

practicing where “shooting
felt as common as skateboarding.”
Whichever side you choose,
Americans, how will you accommodate
both law-abiding groups?


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

PROMETHEUS' OFFERING

by Anne Graue

A woman found an unusual reptile near her home in Hudson, Maine this week - a two-headed baby snapping turtle. Kathleen Talbot said she went to watch turtle hatchlings cross the road to make sure they each arrived at the other side safely. She noticed one of the turtles had been left behind. "I thought he had two feet in the front. I thought he was deformed. I didn't realize it was two heads until I got him home and washed him. Then he came to life-- and was just starving," she said. She has named the turtle Frank and Stein. Talbot said she doesn't plan to have the dynamic duo as a pet, but does want to make sure Frank and Stein survives. --Kacie Yearout, WLBZ September 25, 2014 Image source: NEWS CENTER

Born as if he knew
there would be difficulty
in deciding the path to take
and needed help
in choosing the way to go
and thus was created

a new perspective a new
argument, modern,
attached to one turtle body
inside a shell protecting

all but his two brains working
against and adjacent
to the matter of his choice.

Or perhaps he didn't know
and this fluke of snapping
turtle DNA would haunt him
throughout his days

of living in a push
and pull world weaker
from having to decide

on the simplest things
which leaf is tastier
which path is greener
which road is safer

which mind to sacrifice.


Anne Graue lives, writes, and teaches writing in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Ginosko Literary Journal, The New Verse News, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly.