TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, I’M NOT SO SURE ABOUT THE VENT

by Eric Oak

A government handout photograph showed weapon remnants displayed on a table near the ruins of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, where a precision strike reportedly killed 175 people, mostly children, on Feb. 28. The remnants have been identified by The Times as components of a modern, U.S.-made Tomahawk missile. Credit...IRIB, via Telegram

It was not the Israelis, after all,

who triple tapped the school in Minab.

It was US, according to the Times—

our bombs 

that blasted babies into doll parts, 

scattered them among the concrete-

silica dust of their classrooms.

But it was always our bombs, really–

Arab Salim and Jabalia, Biden’s

red line to Rafah. Bombs with

our names on them. Cruz and 

Haley chickenhawked in Sharpie, 

mine and yours scratched san-serif 

onto the shells in bolder relief with 

each paycheck deposited.

I read the article about Minab 

during my planning period, and

it lingers with me now around

this crater-quiet classroom.

The kids are taking a test, but I 

don’t care whether they pass it. 

I just want to talk to them.

I just want to believe that it's 

not too late to talk, that it’s 

not too late to believe.

Something about the way the 

big vent grumbles when 

the air kicks on reminds me:

the surprise lockdown drill

has to be this week or next. 

They’re quiet, like now,

the drills at least. 

The kids are used to them.

Winder and Uvalde, Gaza and Minab.

Maybe bullets stop when bombs do.

I remember now why that vent rattles—  

I took out most the screws that hold

it to the wall, and a few more outside. 

The maintenance guy showed me how

to kick and climb our way out there

in case we ever need to flee, to run

outside, unafraid as we are of a 

brush smoke sky.

Eric Oak is the pseudonym of a teacher of social studies at a middle school near Chattanooga, TN. He sometimes asks people to read the things he writes so that they may exist.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION AND HOPE

by Cathy Lee

Today, in a quiet English classroom

In Southeast Ohio,

An English teacher 

And special needs teacher 

Discussed how to incorporate 

The work of students in the special needs classroom

In this year’s school-wide literary anthology

Of poems, stories, and art.

This year’s theme 

is hope. 

Some of these high school students will 

Be able to circle images of pictures

That give them hope.

Some of these students 

Have the ability to write a few sentences

And draw a picture about

what gives them hope.

Most of these students 

Rarely get included 

in school-wide projects,

Often remain hidden

And anonymous

Like Boo Radley.

But we 

are working 

To change that. 

While pompous politicians 

Flaunt their abilities to dismantle 

Programs for DEI, 

We move forward,

Inviting the voices

Of our fellow humans  

Who can name hope

By circling an image of a bird,

Or drawing their dog,

Or writing about a yummy piece of apple pie. 

Mmm, mmm. So good.

Cathy Lee is a wife, mother of almost adulting daughters, one in college and one in high school, and a high school English teacher in Southeast Ohio. She enjoys running, baking, and reading. 

THE COST OF MAGIC

by Brian O'Sullivan

Union leaders say the traditionally high status of teachers in Ireland is under threat due to a combination of issues such as pay, workload, limited promotional posts and the growing complexity of the job. So, is teaching still an attractive profession? We asked delegates at teachers’ unions annual gatherings. —“Is Teaching Still an Attractive Profession?” The Irish Times, April 11, 2023

Orla Ryng told The Irish Times that “that magic

of being in the classroom is still there.” That magic

turns a student’s face from the cell phone’s dim light

to the brightness of a peer and an idea. That magic

turns some paper mache into a volcano,  and it

turns jumbled numbers into that kind of magic

spell mathematicians call a formula, and it even turns

the mangled words of social media into that magic

that I—and you, I bet?—value just about the most:

Words that leap and love and shout that magic,

which is to say poetry, will never die. And it’s with words

and letters that teachers are rewarded—like that magic

“N.T.” that got dangled off the ends of National Teachers’ names

in Ireland. My dad, being Irish, seemed to believe in that magic;

he asked, as I trudged through grad school, when I’d

be getting “the letters after [my] name,” that magic

“Ph.D.,” and I thought he was just teasing me, but later

I knew that even he, a practical guy, valued that magic

of letters. But letters don’t pay rent, and so Sean

Maher lives with his parents, still valuing that magic

That devalues him. Economists may

say that if you get good money and you also get that magic,

then you’ve been paid twice. ‘No one goes into teaching

expecting huge wages,” says Eoin Fenton; that magic

serves in place of huge wages, and asking for both money and magic

might be hubris. But would it, in the end, be all that tragic?

Brian O'Sullivan teaches literature and rhetoric in southern Maryland. He has had creative writing published in ONE ART, The Galway Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Virtual, and Every Day Fiction.

PERFECT PORTRAIT

by David Radavich

Sometimes metaphors are

too perfect for words:

 

Police in riot gear

standing in a school hallway

in Uvalde, Texas

                

doing nothing

 

for 77 minutes,

strolling, phoning,

reaching for hand sanitizer

 

while inside the classroom

the crazed gunman

mows down

 

one child after another

two teachers

 

air burning

with smoke and blood

 

and screams

only ending

 

when death explodes

or oozes out.

 

This is America in 2022:

Immobilized.  Imprisoned

in a trap of power.

Lost in the hallways

of moral evasion.

 

We can’t address

racial justice

or climate change,

enforced poverty

or violent inhumanity.

 

We are the cops

standing around

checking our phones

 

doing nothing

 

to save our children

to guarantee our future.

 

Look in this frame

and see 

 

what we’ve become.

Among David Radavich's poetry collections are two epics, America Bound and America Abroad, as well as Middle-East Mezze and The Countries We Live In.  His latest book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German and English Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

TOO GRAPHIC

a poem found

by James Penha

in “Why the Austin American-Statesman chose to publish video from inside Robb Elementary,” July 12, 2022.

Above: screenshot of the video.

We have also removed

the sound of children

screaming

as the gunman entered

the classroom.

James Penha edits The New Verse News.

THE ALPHABET IS NOT ENOUGH

by Miceala Morano

From an experimental alphabet by Max Morin combining real paintings with digital manipulation. In collaboration with Jim Lepage.

We learn, but we never do. 

A as in apple, B as in ball, C as in cat,

D as in the desks we shield soft bodies with. 

Rewind, repeat. A as in active shooter situations.

B as in blood, scarlet staining the halls. 

Rewind, repeat. A as in America, is this 

what you meant by red, white and-

B as in blue lips, C as in CPR. 

I am shielding their bodies in the grocery store, 

in the classroom, in my nightmares each night. 

It is still not enough to protect them. 

C as in clear backpacks. D as in 

don’t make a sound. E as in ending, 

as in breath interrupted. Rewind, repeat

repeat, repeat. A as in active shooter,

F as in freedom, delegated to weapons 

and never to women. We throw our alphabet

at the bullets, B for books, C for chairs, D for desks, 

the classroom deconstructed into a war zone, 

our breaths deconstructed into silence. 

A as in America, never learning. B as in bullets, 

falling like rain.

Miceala Morano is a writer from the Ozarks whose work is published or forthcoming in Berkeley Fiction Review, Eunoia Review, Kissing Dynamite, The Shore, Gone Lawn, and more. Find her on Twitter @micealamorano .

TAMIR

by Diane Vogel Ferri

Every time an unarmed black man
falls to our videoed fears and white failures

I see Tamir’s face, so many times, too many times,
the face that I saw in my classroom one year.

Yes he was tall, yes he liked attention,
neither are reasons to be given two seconds

to respond to an adult, neither are reasons
to be on a list of martyrs to America’s shame,

neither are reasons for his twelve year-old
face to be frozen in time on tv, the news,

on the never-ending list of lost black men,
not a reason to be famous or dead.


Author’s Note: Tamir Rice was my student in 2012.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Cleveland Christmas Memories, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications include Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). A former special education teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland.

DISTANCE LEARNING

by Scot Ehrhardt

To my seniors in Literature and Composition class, Spring 2020

You aren’t alone in missing milestones.
I had a kickass poetry unit planned for April
that might have changed the way you existed
in the world--at least, the world before.

I’m not sure what you did learn. Maybe
that rites-of-passage bend and blear,
walking an evening labyrinth in
a poorly-made gown. Maybe
that Patience is too timid a virtue,
that you should have held prom early—
on the driveway of your first love,
something acoustic on Bluetooth—
and danced in the bursting light of forsythia.
You could have touched someone longer,
when people touched.

Bluetooth is the opposite of poetry.
You would have learned that in April.

I’m afraid to open the door again,
to a preserved mid-March classroom—
what papers I left, the withered
potted plants, the perfunctory chalk
message that was supposed to be read
by you, who have long since moved on
and maybe understood something new
this April, though it won’t be poetry,
not like it would have been from me.

Scot Ehrhardt writes and teaches in Baltimore, MD. His first collection of poetry One of Us Is Real was published in 2016. He has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Tidal Basin Review, Switchgrass Review, and Lines + Stars. He supervises two journals for young writers: The Mill and Lexophilia.

THE PARK CLOSES AT DUSK

by CL Bledsoe & Michael Gushue

The problem is bears in the classroom.
The problem is bears who don't know
which utensil is for the pâté, which
is for olives.
The problem is that I'm right.
The problem is our tax dollars at work.
Ask all the questions you want. Questions are free.
Answers require donations.
The problem is bears who don't speak proper English.
The problem is bears stealing jobs.
The problem is union bears.
The problem is the lack of bear vouchers.
Bears should be left up to the states,
the largest donors.
Bears eating pâté. Bears who can spell their government
representatives' names and use a touch-tone phone.
The problem is bears who don't know how to stitch
their own wounds.
The problem is bears on death panels,
bears running internment camps.
The problem is bears as Uber drivers.
Bears want to take away our pâté knives.
The problem is bears don't eat pâté
and the ones who do don't vote.
The problem is bears taking our guns and making them into backscratchers.
Russian bears who've invaded our classrooms after the arctic ice melted.
The problem is what's going on behind the bears' backs
while we're watching their teeth.

CL Bledsoe is the assistant editor for The Dead Mule and author of fourteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love. He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Michael Gushue is co-founder with Dan Vera of Poetry Mutual and Poetry Mutual Press. He co-curates the intermittent reading series Poetry at the Watergate with Deborah Ager. His chapbooks are Gathering Down Women, Conrad, and Pachinko Mouth. He lives Washington, D.C.

BLOOD MOON OVER OREGON

Editor's Note: We are pleased to repost this poem, originally published in TheNewVerse.News on Sunday, October 4, 2015. It is one of our 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees.


BLOOD MOON OVER OREGON
by Stephen Siperstein

For Professor Lawrence Levine and the students

killed in the forty-fifth school shooting of 2015 in the U.S.

Our shadow slides across its face
like an invisible hand sealing an eye
then placing an old penny

over the blankness, copper
seeping out like an aura: since 1900
only the sixth time this has happened.

On Tuesday and Thursday
mornings, in a room that looks out
to a pastoral scene: green        

paths, geese thrumming for acorns
beneath moss-maned oaks
I, too, have taught a writing class.

Have stood up to open a door.
Have stood up to say, this is a thesis:
We are human because we hope.

And this its warrant:
If something hopes, then that
            something is human.

Have asked of students:
be vulnerable, take risks, share.
And told them: This may not

be comfortable        
            (I do not coddle them)
but together here we are safe.

Yet we know we’re not.
The unspoken assumption.
The hole in the logic, hole

             in the heart: vulnerable.

But still they stood up, they shared
their light and will again and again
when we consider together:

how could this shadow not
arrive for eighteen more years
not turn to redness such light

             that pools across our sky?


Stephen Siperstein is a poet, literary scholar, and environmental educator living in Eugene, Oregon. He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities (Routledge, 2016), and his poems have appeared most recently in ISLE, The Clearing, and Poecology. He is currently completing his PhD at the University of Oregon.

BLOOD MOON OVER OREGON

by Stephen Siperstein

For Professor Lawrence Levine and the students

killed in the forty-fifth school shooting of 2015 in the U.S.

Our shadow slides across its face
like an invisible hand sealing an eye
then placing an old penny

over the blankness, copper
seeping out like an aura: since 1900
only the sixth time this has happened.

On Tuesday and Thursday
mornings, in a room that looks out
to a pastoral scene: green        

paths, geese thrumming for acorns
beneath moss-maned oaks
I, too, have taught a writing class.

Have stood up to open a door.
Have stood up to say, this is a thesis:
We are human because we hope.

And this its warrant:
If something hopes, then that
            something is human.

Have asked of students:
be vulnerable, take risks, share.
And told them: This may not

be comfortable        
            (I do not coddle them)
but together here we are safe.

Yet we know we’re not.
The unspoken assumption.
The hole in the logic, hole

             in the heart: vulnerable.

But still they stood up, they shared
their light and will again and again
when we consider together:

how could this shadow not
arrive for eighteen more years
not turn to redness such light

             that pools across our sky?


Stephen Siperstein is a poet, literary scholar, and environmental educator living in Eugene, Oregon. He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities (Routledge, 2016), and his poems have appeared most recently in ISLE, The Clearing, and Poecology. He is currently completing his PhD at the University of Oregon.

A PEACEFUL INVITATION

by Rick Gray

Romeo and Juliet starts today.
We're going Shakespeare down here in Kabul,
and though our rowdy class isn't very spiritual (though it's full)
you're welcome to observe, dear Taliban sirs.

All I ask is you check your AKs
at the classroom door.
I can't guarantee your safety, you see.
These crazy women students might yank them away

and turn against you like an army of wild Juliets.
Sometimes I think their minds below their burqas have gone suicidally awry.
If you don't believe me, come down from the caves and see.
When they recite, watch the henna of their trigger fingers shiver with weird glee.

Or maybe that's just me. Or the poetry.


Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.