STAYIN’ ALIVE: NO KINGS

by Roderick Deacey

Cumulonimbus clouds jostle & dominate
the dark side of the sky.
             They have gathered in towering, glowering stacks,
as ominous grumbles of thunder announce
the storm is upon us.

             Of course we ignored the signs—
we have long learned to ignore warning signs
             here at the far end of democracy,
lest one of the regime’s masked rib-breaking squads
             single us out somehow,
& fling us to the ground & kick us until our ribs break.

              So, we simply accept,
that under the hard rain that’s gonna fall,
             we will, as usual, get soaking wet.

             How did we become so sad & beaten down?
Isn’t it true that, en masse, Americans are good people?

             Perhaps racist & prejudiced, but with good hearts?

             Maybe short on critical thinking, but mostly meaning well?

Whatever—this is still America—
                          supposedly no kings allowed.

            We can put on raincoats & resistance yellow hats.
            We can wear red knitted hats like WWII Norwegians.
            We can wear turquoise knitted hats, or teal—
& many of us will wear those bright rainbow hats—
            because that’s where we stand—
& some ladies among us will dig out their old pink pussy hats
            from back when
                       the country was another country.

What we seemingly can’t do
            is decide on a single unifying hat color—
                      not a good omen.


Roderick Deacey writes many poems and is rejected a lot. James is always very nice about it, though.

EXTREME WEATHER REPORTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

by Melissa Balmain

“Shouldn’t we name extreme weather events after those contributing most to them? … Last hurricane season, a regular reader… suggested that hurricanes should not be named after random humans, but corporate brand names—specifically those [polluters] that have contributed most to the intensification of extreme weather.”
—Erik Assadourian and Esther Phillips, on Medium

Hurricane Exxon—from Maine down to Mass.—
appears, as we feared, to be hitting the gas.

Macroburst Google is knocking down birches
and churches as rescues lag far behind searches.

Bomb-cyclone Bezos refuses to stop
until it has flattened each mom and each pop.

Superstorm Congress? Crews strive to repair
the damage it’s done with its surging hot air.

And everywhere, Trumpulus clouds keep on raining
fresh plagues on the heads of whoever’s remaining.

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

Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

BACKCOURT VIOLATION

by Paul Brassard

The original Unsplash photograph of the Supreme Court building by Tim Mossholder was adapted by the poet using the GIMP image manipulation software for use in this haiga.

Paul Brassard is a retired teacher of high school students with behavioral challenges. He has been writing poetry and fiction since he wrote his first short story Honolulu Calling at the age of twelve. Paul has been writing a personal haiku, senyru or haiga every day for the past several years as a method of self-reflection or in response to current events. He writes his short stories and poetry at his home in South Portland, Maine, which he shares with Patti, his wife of 50 years. "Backcourt Violation" is his first published work.

WHERE DO YOU GO TO DIE?

by Adele Evershed

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has said that she is "deeply worried" for her extended family in Gaza. Moran's mother is Palestinian and members of her family in Gaza are sheltering in a church after an Israeli missile struck their home. Speaking to the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire, she said: "No longer are people saying, where do we go to be safe? The question they are now asking is, where do we want to be when we die?" —BBC, October 29, 2023

to the sea
already so full of salt
so you become part of the ebb and flow
governed only by the mourning moon
and any tears shed lost in the tumult of waves
or crusted in the creases of a carcass 
left to rot on a far distant shore
 
to a rowan tree
already listing from the bombardment
so you can nourish the roots
that once nourished you
and the redness of your screams
can hang like a bloody reminder
of all the things you were too young to see
 
to the mountain top
with its beguiling back story 
so your shallow breath 
can dovetail with the off white clouds
and fall as gentle soaking rain
delivering an absolution
to those who have asked for none
 
or do you simply 
pick up a stone
and say…
I will not die today

Adele Evershed is a Welsh poet living in America. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Finishing Line Press published Adele’s first poetry chapbook Turbulence in Small Places in July. Her Novella-in-Flash Wannabe was published by Alien Buddha Press in May. Her second poetry collection The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press.

THE SILENCED MAJORITY

by Katherine West

Graphic by Katherine West.

The silenced majority

that some day

will decide

which small piece of the sky

belongs to them

—Rigoberta Menchú quoted in Poetry Like Bread.

70% of Americans don’t trust politicians to make abortion policy. —19thNews

                                                                        

Today it is cloudy

I can’t see the sky at all

I have to imagine it

the way it was

when I was young

when life was a blue door

opening

on an even bluer

even bigger sky

Some days

the sky was so blue

it was almost purple

and I could see

all the way

to Mexico

The birds seemed to fly higher

farther

taking me with them

to new lands

where all the women

grew wings

wrote books

started businesses

ran for office

got married, or not

bore children, or not 

became stronger as they aged 

It was a blueberry sky

with something infinite about it, 

an exuberant potential

I gobbled this up

when I was young—

it became my marrow

and a good thing too

since the clouds

seem to be here to stay

I carry infinity

inside me

a multitude of blue doors

that I open

one by one

day by day

And there are others

doing the same

all over the world

The sky is falling

and we

we are patching it

putting it back up

wiping it clean

of clouds

We are passing out binoculars

to those

with faulty vision

We are leaving

blue footprints behind

everywhere we go

We know

there are those who erase

our footprints

who tell everyone

they meet

that we were never here

But we are here

We aren’t going anywhere—

and there are a lot of us

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

CLOUDS FALL

by Hiba Heba

for the flood victims of Pakistan

A heavily flooded home in Rajo Nizamani village, near Jhirk, Sept. 10. Credit: Hassaan Gondal for TIME.

You can help the UN World Food Programme—the world’s largest humanitarian agency—provide life-saving food to the most vulnerable families. CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW.

Koyal chirps / in the dark street /

Leaves / barks / magnolias / roofied by the dark street /

The moon is blighting / the sky / in this poem / this poem is a dark street /

We played cricket / in the same desolate / streets /

I bled / between my legs / bled the size of a vat / in this dark street /

 

Tonight I dangle / my legs over the railing / thinking / mourning /

O Dark Street / how loud is your thunder / of desolateness /

even the clouds /  denounced it /  they rained / raged / bled /

In Urdu when it rains / we say / badal baras rahe hain:

the clouds are falling / falling / tearing through /

the fearful blue / of the dark street /

Every night I call Daisy / home / from my kitchen’s old window /

every night / she prances over the railing / then in my arms /

I trust these long / misleading / dark streets /

the streets hold / together / our tenderness /

When a mother wades / through the cloudy / deluge /

ululating the names / of her children / Musa / Musa / Musa /

she knows all / that has drowned / will eventually

be found / when the clouds ascend / even the tenderness /

now holding itself / against / the koyal-gloom / of the dark street /

Hiba Heba is a Pakistani poet who recently launched an online business, RepairInk, that provides editing and proofreading services. She was the first runner-up for the New Feathers Award 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Fragmented Voices, The Ofi Press and Poetry Wales, among others. Hiba has a micro-chapbook, Grief is a Firefly (Origami Poems Project, 2021), and her debut full-length poetry collection Birth of a Mural will be published by the US-based Golden Dragonfly Press in October, 2022. 

FIRE THE NEXT TIME

by George Salamon

“Severe heat and drought the hallmarks of a changing west… Unless people drastically reduce planet-warming emissions, the world faces a future of increasingly frequent and severe environmental disasters: coastal flooding, mass extinctions, deadly hurricanes, uncontrollable wildfires.” —The Washington Post, June 20, 2021. Photo: Boats sit unused in Lake Oroville, Calif., on Tuesday. A severe water level drop in the lake has forced about 130 houseboats to be removed. (Melina Mara / The Washington Post)

The worship of money

and machines made us

vile and ugly, nobility

and beauty live in

inanimate things, in

flowing waters and in

moving clouds, in

animals of the wild

green and blue depth,

we sold our souls to

delusions that kept the

people marching down

to nothing at the end of

their dream.

A poet wrote that he'd

"burn his right hand in 

a slow fire to change

the future." The future

has arrived, and we'll 

burn in its fire.

George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

NOVEMBER 3RD

by Austin Davis

America is tired. 

We’re a colony of ants

who’ve stopped in a pothole

on this long road ahead

to eat the bread crumbs off our backs.

Tonight I hope for hope.

I don’t know what the next

morning will bring

but if we wake up to a sky full of clouds,

I hope we’ll still remember

that this sun of ours isn’t going anywhere

and neither are we. 

Austin Davis is a poet and student activist currently studying creative writing at ASU and leading a homeless outreach program in Phoenix. Austin is the author of The World Isn’t the Size of Our Neighborhood Anymore (Weasel Press, 2020) and Celestial Night Light (Ghost City Press, 2020).

TOGETHER WE WILL GO

by George Salamon

Cartoon by Dave Granlund via The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis is hurting humanity, with Covid-19 a clear 'warning shot,' say experts.” —The Guardian, March 25, 2020


When the light dies,
Darkness will perish.
When the earth crumbles,
The clouds will fall.
When the oceans sink,
The wind will remain still.
When the Angel passes,
Death will follow.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

SHELTERING

by Brooke Herter James

“Parakeet” by Kees van Dongen,ca. 1910, oil on canvas, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Still life  day 28
here in Vermont
a solitary junco
half black
half white
sitting on the branch
half white
half black
against a backdrop of pond
black—rimmed with white—
thank goodness for
the small red barn
in the lower right corner
of the scene

I imagine painting
over this canvas
apple blossoms
puffy clouds   a woman
in the foreground
faded yellow robe
leaning out her second
story window
to hang blue towels
and flowered sheets
on one end of a
never-vanishing cord
that travels from this hillside
to Milan   then Barcelona
Wuhan   Jerusalem   Sydney
Seattle  New Orleans  New York

An endless clothesline
adorned  with the fabric
of the world billowing
outwards   music spilling
from all those unshuttered
windows   wafts of coffee
baked bread   squeals of children
running down hallways
pinging marbles on bare floors
dogs barking
I imagine painting
parakeets in wooden cages
singing while we wait


Brooke Herter James is a poet and children’s book author living in Vermont.

AUSTRALIA'S BURNING

by Laura Rodley

This is for the kangas,
the koala bears,
the duck billed platypus,
the lizards in the soil,
this is for the tree trunks
left standing, for the people,
for the sky full of smoke
above them, I wish you
great clouds of rain,
nimbus clouds bottom heavy
to quench your thirst,
no more fire-induced thunderheads,
to avoid more lightning strikes.
I wish you moist cooling breezes
sent from far out in the ocean,
a place to rest.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Publisher Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. She was accepted at Martha’s Vineyard’s NOEPC and has been a participant in the 30 poems in November fundraiser for the Literacy Project for Center for New Americans. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

CLOUD ELEGY

by Pepper Trail

Very high carbon dioxide could suppress cooling clouds, climate change model warns —The Washington Post, February 25, 2019

The icebergs—did you see them, before?
Great rambling beasts of the Southern Ocean
White, or the faded blue of memory
Broken but whole, inanimate and alive
Taking from us, as they approached
Our breath, our warmth, our words
Now, mere wave-broken pools of melt

Next, emptying out the world, everything
Needful of the space we have filled
Elephants, bears, wolves, whales
And also the small, requiring things
To be just so, intricacy of this bee, that flower
The curving tongue, the perfumed throat
Doomed by their entangled perfection

We came to accept all that, and yes
We struggle to remember the time before
The storms, and the skeleton reefs
Droughts, floods, crumbling shores
Spreading deserts, absent glaciers
The burning forests, the sinuous rivers
Working their way through the city streets

Yet, still somehow, we never dreamed
The clouds themselves, reliable as mountains
Could be added to the roster of extinction
That we would live beneath an empty sky
That between us and the burning sun
Would remain only a merciless nothing
An atmosphere exhaled by us alone


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

A MESSAGE FROM THE SECOND PLANET

by Martin Elster

A composite image of the planet Venus as seen by the Japanese probe Akatsuki. The clouds of Venus could have environmental conditions conducive to microbial life. IMAGE FROM THE AKATSUKI ORBITER, BUILT BY INSTITUTE OF SPACE AND ASTRONAUTICAL SCIENCE/JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY via University of Wisconsin-Madison News, March 30, 2018.

On Friday, astronomers announced a new paper laying out the case for the atmosphere of Venus as a possible niche for extraterrestrial microbial life.—EarthSky, March 31, 2018


We’re microbes in the clouds of Venus
of an otherworldly genus
gobbling CO2 and spitting
out sulfuric acid—fitting
for a life form that can waft
akin to an ocean-going craft
far above the rocks and soil
whose heat will make lead bullets boil.

We’re vitamin D3 gourmets,
drinking ultraviolet rays
as we have done for donkey’s years,
wild about the atmosphere’s
asphyxiating greenhouse gas,
so reflective that your glass
sees only jewel-like radiance.
You scientists are on the fence

on whether there is life on Venus,
but only cause you haven’t seen us
yet. And we don’t want you to,
for if you poke and probe, you’ll strew
our virgin world with noxious matter.
All tranquility will shatter.
Goggle at our planet. Stand
in distant awe. But please don’t land!

Martin Elster is a composer and serves as percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Chimaera, and The Road Not Taken, among others, and in anthologies such as Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 and 2015 Rhysling Anthologies, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, and Poems for a Liminal Age.

CLOAKED IN CLOUDS

by Meryl Baer

Washington Post, May 17, 2017

The Man seduced the people,
Spilling warped words of wisdom.
The crowd kowtowed to their savior.
They yelled, they screamed
They jumped for joy.
The Man came forth to save them
Roaring Admire me! Adore me!
Love me evermore.
Crushing competence and candor,
The Man proclaims his Word.
The people say:
The Man understands our woes.
He speaks what's really in our hearts
Of hatred, fear and foes.

Meanwhile:
Snakes slither,
Squinting in the light,
Spreading venom.
They grab they stifle
The other, the unfamiliar, the foreign,
The ones abhorring The Man.

I wait, hope, anticipate one morning when
Clouds scatter and
Seeds sprout
Strangling those gnarly, nasty rascals
Unfurling hate and fear.


Meryl Baer is a recovering financial geek now freelance writer and blogger.

GETTING READY FOR THE STORM

by Catherine Wald

Photo by Carly Simon posted on Facebook, January 28, 2015

It’s as if Christmas was coming
round all over again – roads
so busy, stores so packed, faces
so intent.  We do love our doom-
sayers; we also love preparing
for the end of the world.

Everything has a purpose.
Flashlight batteries, rock salt,
milk have been transformed
from uninteresting to
essential.

We scan the skies. We
remember what clouds look
like, how they move, how
they lord it over us.

We all believe in the same
higher power, united
in our need to defend
and shelter ourselves,
keep our bellies full.

No one disagrees, not even
about scientific fact; we
accept that every snowflake
has six points and is mostly
made of water, as are we.


Catherine Wald is a poet, journalist, translator and author whose books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press).  Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.

LUNAR IMPACT

by Martha Landman



Phil Plait writes on February 24, 2014 in Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog: “On Sept. 11, 2013, an asteroid hit the Moon. That happens all the time, but most of the cosmic debris is tiny, far too small to detect from the Earth. But this one was different. Roughly a meter across and moving at interplanetary speeds when it slammed into the lunar surface, it created the brightest explosion ever seen on the Moon! The whole thing was captured on video.”


Walking in the moonlight then,
we basked in that long afterglow,
our lips a molten mass, your face
a spectacular episode in the whiteness
of moon. At the sight of your silhouette
gliding in the water, desire dislodged
like lava, with the force of a fridge
hitting the moon; an asteroid
through a sea of clouds.

Through a sea of clouds
the moon gazed at us, her naked
eye a telescopic lens, her smile
a thermal glow. She moved at
elegant speed around the earth,
dodged and winked at every
meteor along the way.


Martha Landman writes dry poems in the wet season of tropical North Queensland, Australia.

THE STORM

by Tracey Gratch

Image source: boston.com

The sea throws its weight on an unwary shore
The sand, without wisdom, changes in form
And I, as the calm in the eye of the storm,

Have survived every wound your poor body had borne
The scars, as I read them, though faded and worn,
A subtle reminder; the center, still torn.

The sea hurls white ice at my feet as I stand
At the threshold of hope, where my life had began.
Unlikely that I would endure this dire hand

To emerge from the current as strengthened and whole,
Escaping the grasp of the strong undertow;
I pretend now to learn things, that always, I've known.

The storm will disperse and the water return
To the blue, where I live, at the edge of the earth.
Awaiting a sign, I await now a birth.

I look to the sky, the clouds taking form,
A silent forewarning; prepare for the storm.


Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four children. Her poems have been published in various and sundry on-line and print publications. She is at home, preparing for the storm.