NEW CHAIRMAN OF THE KENNEDY CENTER IMPOSED

by Leslie Kenna

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

Mr. Trump posted on social media: “It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!” —The New York Times, February 12, 2025

Dismiss the bass.
Silence the wind.
Send the oboes home.
 
Fling the flutes.
Torch the triangle.
Sever strings on the harp.
 
Stop the metronome.
Punch through drums.
Shred all sheet music.
 
Fire the conductor.
Topple the chairs.
Slam the curtain down.
 

No more music!
Except for the Trumpet,
the solitary Trumpet,

metallic and flatulent

one off note repeats
incendiary words.

We are revolting.

We are so revolting.

Leslie Kenna is a writer and scientist living in Maryland. Credits include New York Times Tiny Love, NPR-affiliate station KUNC, TedEd, @NYPL, and Bacopa Literary Review.

KILLING IS IN THE AIR

by David Radavich

                On the murder of Yuriy Kerpatenko

Ours is the age of barbarians.

When life is valued little

as a song.

 

A conductor refuses

to lead the music     

of his oppressors

 

and is shot dead

without his baton.

 

Soldiers who shoot him

fear no lingering guilt, 

no final judgment, 

no cosmic shame.

 

The man who dies

is an ant to be squished,

a former echo only.

 

Let us hope the silence

will accuse forever,

 

that angels will sing

the conductor

to his final place

enhemmed in flowers.

David Radavich's poetry collections include 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 (2022).  

MOZART REQUIEM STREAMED IN A TIME OF COVID-19

by Anne Harding Woodworth

NOTE: This concert [of the Mozart Requiem] will be closed to the public; please do not attempt to visit the concert hall.
—Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, March 7, 2020


On this night of wrath and lacrymosa
the hall is hollow except for soloists,
chorus, orchestra and conductor, who,
at his back, feels eyes that aren’t there.

And at the end, when he turns to take a bow
before the crowd that has stayed away,
it’s as if he’s infected with the emptiness he sees.

The phantom audience, in its contagious silence,
offers no sound of shout or cough or applause,
no standing ovation for those who have just sung out
through an ether of airwaves to the undead.

Confutatis is understatement.

Against all advice, the conductor shakes hands
with the first violinist, who stands ready to leave
with her instrument that played flawlessly, while
the chorus begged eternal rest for whoever was not there.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of a six books of poetry, with a seventh appearing late this year.  Of her four chapbooks, The Last Gun won the 2016 COG Poetry Award, and an excerpt from it was subsequently animated at www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, and of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst MA.