CRIME SCENE

by Ilene Millman

“Taking Stock” by Keith Knight at The Nib.

If I were collecting evidence

wouldn’t I look at the tire tracks

tracing broken distances

living to dead

in stock dividends and expense accounts—

who has the motive—they who look like citizens

changing the map

leaving no forwarding address?

 

If I were collecting evidence

wouldn’t I analyze photographs,

video recordings, tweets

brittle as promises

and autopsy the bones

cracked like hope

and stacked deep

in boxes of discord?

 

If I were the one collecting evidence

shouldn’t I unpack the fingerprints

floating fibers, strands of hair

from the briefcases of influence

brushing what’s there to see

and lay them end to end

across this current carnage—

a measure of the outstretched fingers of God

or the smallest fisted hand?

 

 

In addition to writing poetry, Ilene Millman is a speech/language therapist currently working with school aged children and volunteering as tutor, tutor trainer and assessor for her county Literacy Volunteers organization. Her poems have been published in a number of print journals including The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Nelle, Connecticut Review, Paterson Review, Passager and anthologized in several volumes including the recently published Show Me Your Papers. She is an associate editor of The Sow’s Ear. Her first book of poetry Adjust Speed to Weather was published in 2018. 

AN AWKWARD THANKSGIVING

by David Feela

The cars in cue twist between orange cones

Like a snake, drivers and passengers waiting.

It’s still early morning at the testing facility 

Which has not yet opened, but the day’s task  

stretches like a painted hopscotch pattern 

on a playground before recess begins.

Everybody is so tired of paying attention.

We all want to play, to stop being told what  

should—and especially should not—be done.

The swab up the nose is our final test 

before holiday begins with a road trip or flight, 

and a gathering where families give thanks 

at the table for the bounty they share, and 

dare we say it again, each precious life. 

David Feela writes columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres.

DEMOCRATIC PROCEEDS

by Mark Williams

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Dear Joe Biden,

 

My name is Austin Baggerly. I am eleven years old.

Today my social studies teacher Ms. Kornblum

chose me to be you and Donnie Capshaw 

to be the President since his name is Donnie.

She said she would teach us about the Democratic proceeds.

First me and Donnie should give speeches to our class

which meets on Zoom cause the virus

the President said would go away did not.

So I put on my mask and sunglasses like you

and said I would beat the virus and bring our class together 

and Donnie put on orangy makeup and his grandma’s blonde wig

and said he would make our class great again.

Next Ms. Kornblum asked everyone who liked me 

to raise their hand and 15 people did 

if you count Jacob Dickinson who raised his cat’s paw

which everyone but Ms. Kornblum thought was funny.

Joe Biden, there are 25 kids in our class

which means only 10 kids raised their hands for Donnie

but Ms. Kornblum said that even though I won

we had to count hands again if we want my and Donnie’s election

to be like yours and the other Donnie’s. This time 

Emma Peterson looked around the screen

and smiled and raised her hand for Donnie Capshaw

when last time she raised her hand for me. Anyways,

that means I still won 14 to 11. Right? But Ms. Kornblum

said that even though I won fair and square 

now if we want our class election to be like your election

we have to wait and let Donnie Capshaw 

whine about our votes like an eleven-year-old

before I can be class President. She said 

this is an example of frickin democracy.

What did Ms. Kornblum mean, Joe Biden? 

Do some votes count for more than one? 

Why did Ms. Kornblum start crying

before she Zoomed away? 

 

                                           Yours truly,

                                           Austin Baggerly

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the current administration have appeared in The New Verse News, Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, and Tuck Magazine. He raised his hand for Joe Biden in Evansville, Indiana.

THIS IS YOUR WEEKEND BRIEFING

by Chris Reed

Sunday, November 15, 2020

My mother napped yesterday,

while I finished Swann’s Way.

Her water retention is down,

and we hear that someone

is unlocking the secrets of aging.

There are no words for the US 

reaching eleven million cases

of coronavirus this morning,

although the eucharistic minister 

wore a mask when she delivered

the host earlier.

The bird feeders were filled today

and promptly visited by a finch

and a red-bellied woodpecker.

Currently we are recording 

the Giants-Eagles game, in which

Daniel Jones and the Giants are

getting downfield, as constriction

threatens a transfer of power,

school reopenings and life itself.

I search for an artificial wreath. 

We have some breaking news—

a stag is walking past the window,

and we are making the call

that he is at least four years old. 

My mother sees him and reaches

for the word that means him,

although we still have no word

on reality out of the White House.

The Giants won this one.  Enjoy

what remains of your weekend.

Although relatively new to poetry writing, during the pandemic and sheltering in place with his post-stroke mother,  reading and writing poetry have become Chris Reed’s go-to survival activities.  Attending a zoom weekly poetry workshop has also been a gift and helped sustain sanity.

NOW THAT ALEX TREBEK IS DEAD

 by George Held

Yes, this might be my last autumn

And yes, I love the fall leaves

In their annual resplendent beauty

 

A deadly fall, when Coronavirus

Has surged, again bringing mobile

Morgues to house the superabundant dead

 

In El Paso, on the Rio Grande, the Chicano

City to which I drove in 1967 for my divorce

In Ciudad Juarez, where quickies were then

 

Institutionalized: you paid your

Hundred dollars and the Cesar Romero

Judge gaveled your once-great marriage over

 

In 1967, when Alex Trebek was still

Canadian, a host for CBC,

And I was in the middle, Canada north

 

And Mexico south, and now we’re all

In the middle, T***p still in the White House

And Joe Biden the President-elect

 

No one knows where it will end, the COVID,

The Transition, a life, but Alex Trebek

Is dead

George Held is a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

NEWS FROM LATE OCTOBER

by Ginny Lowe Connors

Trees still holding their leaves

look all the more brilliant

as their colors flame

against an overcast sky.

The day is nearly windless.

Still, spirals of leaves

gold, russet, scarlet

sail toward the ground all day.

Silent as snowflakes, they fall.

 

In our country, 856 people

died of the coronavirus just yesterday.

Ginny Lowe Connors is the author of several poetry collections, including Toward the Hanging Tree: Poems of Salem Village.  Her chapbook Under the Porch won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. Connors has also edited a number of poetry anthologies. She is the co-editor of Connecticut River Review. Connors runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books.

POETIC JUSTICE

by David Southward

Mother Nature has a way

of teaching all who underplay

her lethal power, not to do it.

How? She simply puts them through it.

 

Thus, when her emissaries sent us

germs to baffle an apprentice,

he who most pooh-poohed the virus

(heaping scorn on scorn to tire us)

 

soon bowed down to violent grace

and in a mirror saw the face

of vanity—its purse and pout

contorted by a creeping doubt.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), and winner of the 2019 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.

SUMMER WINDING DOWN, SALISBURY, 1666

by Sharon Olson

The king is always allowed to do as he wishes.
And so he chose our city, our neighborhood,
as a hiding place from the plague abound in London.
We who live here are weavers, our hands and feet
engage with our looms, the steady thwacking,
for shawls and lap rugs and the tightly woven arras
behind which the king is kept safe, wrapped in his silks.

The king never travels alone but brings his retinue,
his retainers, the men and ladies waiting on him,
jesters, hangers-on, crowds he thrives on
who gawk at the royal trappings, and yes,
the shiny bubble of pestilence has journeyed
here as well, so that each time we entered the church
we could hear the names being written in the parish book
of Salisbury, St. Edmunds, beginning in July:

Elizabeth Clark, of ye plague
Sarah dau of John Conduit, of ye plague
Martha Bartlett, widow, of ye plague
Elizabeth wife of John Conduit, of ye plague

until in September the buriall column in the ledger
overflowed, in Salisbury alone five hundred died.

The king has had his carnival, has come and gone.
Long live the king.


Editor's Note: “Many of the more affluent city members left London when the plague broke out, including King Charles II and his entourage who left the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Lawrence, to deal with the plague while the king and court retired to Salisbury; they possibly brought the plague with them in the process, as it broke out there after they arrived.  Once this happened, the king and court retired to Oxford to wait it all out.” —Today I Found Out


Sharon Olson is a retired librarian who lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

THE CHOKER-IN-CHIEF

by Jack Powers





The virus is just like hitting a few bad shots. It happens. You just have to keep your head down, you know, stay positive, play through it. Suddenly you'll be hittin' beautiful drives again.

People dying from the virus is like losing golf balls. You're gonna lose a few! Everybody does. Everybody. I mean, you can't waste time hunting for 'em. You gotta play on!

And these protesters! A bunch of punks leaving their divots and driving their carts on the green! Not raking the traps. No respect for property. They're ruining our beautiful course! Where are the rangers? Where are my rangers?

All these marchers chanting Equality! don't get it. You've got golfers. You've got caddies. The golfers are doing the caddies a favor, really.

The stock market is just like the scorecard. Everybody hits a couple of bad shots. You miss a putt or two. But did you make the big ones? Did you win?

All I'm asking for is a mulligan. One mulligan! What have you got to lose?


Jack Powers is the author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere.

ICE CREAM TRUCK

by Jacqueline Jules

At the park this summer
Jacob misses the big blue truck
full of treats.

I am relieved.

How could I let him
run to the window for a fudge bar?
Risk one hand touching another?

It’s enough of a gamble to ride bikes
on the circular path, reminding Jacob
every few minutes to keep his mask on,
stay away from Joseph over there
on the swings.

How will Jacob remember this summer?
The only one without the ice cream truck?
Or when he was taught to keep his distance,
to fear the air others exhale?

School on a screen begins in three days.

Will he ever learn to hold hands again?

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum, Stronger Than Cleopatra, and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, The Rising Phoenix Review, What Rough Beast, Public Pool, Rise Up Review, and Gargoyle. She lives in Arlington, Virginia.

CONTEMPLATE THIS FOR A MOMENT

by Marc Swan

Mario Guti/Getty Images via Los Angeles Magazine

Through my window I watch the older woman
across the street hold her mask
as one of the teen bathing beauties
returns from the dock. She dons her mask

and asks of the crowd—
the mid-August high tide locals
who gather each afternoon for a swim,
a paddle board or kayak ride,

a mixed bag, mostly kids,
young adults, no masks
or social distancing—
immunity of the community expected.

I try to imagine what this older woman thinks,
taking medication,
immune system compromised,
just wanting a short walk to a safe place.

I think of school reopening,
many starting in outdoor tents,
seated on folding chairs

or in some cases hay bales. Masks
for the middle and high school kids,
teachers trying to educate in person
as government leaders, some parents expect—

inspire the children, give them a social outlet,
a safe place to go
while parents toil in the work space,
play tennis at the club,
go for long walks along the shore.

If the wind picks up or rain falls
in a torrential burst     what then?

And when the virus strikes hard and deep
where will the students be?

Marc Swan’s latest collection all it would take was published in May 2020 by tall-lighthouse. Poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Stony Thursday Book, Nerve Cowboy, among others. He lives in coastal Maine with his wife Dd, an artist and yoga teacher.

COVID-19 LIPOGRAM

by Martin Elster

Kay Scanlon / Los Angeles Times; Getty Images

Masking my physiognomy
may blight my glorious bond with you.
Your shroud, part of your armory,
brings to mind this bugaboo

bugging all of us. So now
as you and I chat through our masks,
although your orbs and striking brow
may knit or grin, a ticklish task

awaits us: To concoct a way
to talk with hands, with nods, and know
that you and I can simply say,
“I want you!” though our lips won’t show.


Author's Note: This is a  poem without the letter “e."

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His career in music has influenced his fondness for writing metrical verse, which has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. A full-length collection Celestial Euphony was published by Plum White Press in 2019.

STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY DURING A PANDEMIC

by Joan Mazza

They gather unmasked in cheerful mobs

to celebrate their freedom, demonstrate

they’re unafraid of a tiny organism—

a Coronavirus that dare not swat them down

and leap from mouth to mouth. They

won’t renounce crowds, compelled to hold

signs that argue with reality, exempt from

precautions that doctors swear will reduce

their risk. Transplant specialists warn

of dangers from organs harvested

in motorcycle deaths. Look for evidence

of Toxoplasmosis! The infected rarely

know they carry parasites that make some

reckless, impervious to fear or danger.

Infected rodents seek out open spaces, 

display a fatal feline attraction.

Carefree, careless, feckless, watch us

humans do our thing. Hail liberty! We claim

to have free will. What bug drives me

to rise at three to write poetry? Like you,

my body’s filled with organisms, some not

yet identified, making neurotransmitters.

Ninety percent of me isn’t me. What

lives inside and really runs the show?

Author's note: I’m reading the book This is Your Brain on Parasites: How tiny creatures manipulate our behavior by Kathleen McAuliffe. Terrific! It makes me want to go back to school.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and has taught workshops nationally with a focus on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry appears in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner (forthcoming), The MacGuffin, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes a daily poem.

HOPE AND HISTORY RHYME

by Susannah Greenberg





Hope and history
stutter and gaffe.
Corruption and cruelty
point and laugh.

Then Joe rolls in
like Moses leaning on his staff,
sentence flows from sentence,
and then a paragraph.

He says so many dead,
and so many infected.
We deserve the truth.
We deserve to be protected.

Hope and history come together
when you need but don’t expect it.


Susannah Greenberg is an independent book publicist at Susannah Greenberg Public Relations.  

5.59 MILLION CASES

Sarah E. Colona is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016). Recent poems appear in TheNewVerse.News.

NUESTRA NUEVA CASA

by Philip C. Kolin

Corona is a cruel landlord taking over people's bodies,
cancelling their lease on life and throwing them out

of their hovels and apartments, as many as
40 million this year. How can they pay back

rent when they have no jobs. Corona profiteers
hide their eyes and close their hearts and hands

as the least of these, many Latin strangers in
a strange land, become street people overnight.

Portfolioers like death-grip Mitch advise the evicted
to declare bankruptcy, the easiest way to go.

It begins with a knock, a summons,  and ends with  a padlock.
All their belongings packed in black plastic bags

for the trip to the curb. But how can you put sheets
over the pavement or where can you hang

clothes or curtains. Will the post office deliver
to an address that has no address.

Their only furniture a donated  empty
box  used to ship a refrigerator;

passers-by glibly say these outcasts should
be grateful that America has donated the air

fouled corona air, too, they can't get with such abundance
in their own country. Some wait outside funeral parlors

for a vacancy, or sneak into a post office
to bring back some heat in a blanket

to a child or a wife too sick to walk.
The street becomes their hospital, too.

Ambulances rushing by the only medical
care they will get all night.

Other desalojos crowd into a friend's already
crowded apt. setting up households in a hallway

or sharing a bedroom with four generations,
the best housing arrangement for Corona

to spread. Shelters, too, are welcoming centers
for Corona tenants packed face to face, coughs

and sneezes in lieu of rent. Corona quips
it never evicts anyone. Everyone's lungs are welcome.


Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, African American playwrights as well as ten collections of poems. His most recent books are Reaching Forever: Poems in the Poiema Series of Cascade Books and, forthcoming from Main Street Rag, Delta Tears.

FAREWELL MS. B

by Jen Schneider

Morning greetings spill through speakers, one per room - affixed to paint chipped ceilings – Good day, All - beside a single ceiling fan - in each of our building’s fifty-three rooms. Stocked with metal chairs on rusted legs, boxes of No. 2s, and books – many Requirements, more Favorites. Ferdinand and Potter. Mice and Men and Huckleberry Finn. Rosa, Ruby Bridges, and Malala, too. Most passed down for generations of classes before. Don’t consume. Critique, Ms. B. said, as she’d stock our stacks with book swap finds. Ms. B. fought hard – her 4 feet 11 inches - alerting officials – in formations six yards wide and six feet tall - at evening school board meetings – monthly. For years. Fifteen and counting. Until the counting stopped. Teach us to fight for what’s right – through the written word, library research, and careful fact-finding. 

I want to be a Teacher. And a Writer. And a Reader, Ms. B. Uncover injustice. Just like you.

Chuckling over inside jokes of hidden closets and earlier versions of ourselves from classes prior. Missing room No. 54. Did you see…? Misplaced backpacks, clear by compliance – it’s regulation. Did you hear…? Uninhabited chairs that squeak. Each room, a relic from the 1920s. Ms. B.’s magic made each home to no less than thirty-four warm bodies of all shapes and shades. 

Principal – Ms. B. - shares updates on weather – cloudy with a chance of rain – isn’t it always the case? – and schedules – extended time for third period – stomachs flutter, mandated tests, extra review – Algebra, U.S. History – with Ms. B.’s extra readings, so that we learn the truth – cells away, pencils out - no options for pass-permitted bathroom breaks – I’d rather not say why.

Always closing with words – the reason I - We – all eighteen hundred plus of us, united by zip code and respect for Ms. B. – show each day and on time.

No matter what, Remember, you are loved. Ms. B.

Static. Click. Now done. Silence. A single chair squeaks. Rubber-soled shoes shuffle. Someone coughs. With nothing more to say, we do as Ms. B. would. With space between us, we write.

Adjust elastic around ears. Reset cloth masks. Watch silent tears drop. Pick up broken No. 2s. 

We love you, too, Ms. B.

Rip sheets of lined paper from spiral notebook. Crumple, tight. Place in right front pocket. Wash.

For fifteen years and counting, kids like me would know the voice of kindness. Syllables streamed through pie-shaped speakers – tone of warm blueberry cobbler and savory chicken soup. In servings and portions perfect for all. Never too hot. Never too cold. Always just right.

Always Ms. B. 

Until now. Last week’s Board meeting was Ms. B’s final chapter. She set down her glasses, capped her blue inked pen, and returned her key. Want only to Unlock Lives and Unleash Learning, she spoke clearly. Lose No One, she continued. No One. Through tears. Confidently. With Conviction. Just like she taught us. Want only to pile on Love. 

Cannot police young bodies. Cannot risk more lives. 

Microphone off. Static. Then Silence. 

Good night, Ms. B. Good night, all.


Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

THE AMERICAN GOSPEL (2020 EDITION)

by Avalon Felice Lee

In the beginning…

January judgment 

Red hat, white lies

"The flu is worse!" he scorns

as his gavel cudgels China, the blue-faced, the blue-lunged

The pen of law

holds the ink for healthcare blueprints. 

The dough in his fist

for swab tests; for the people. 

              

February denial

Nailed wrists, or tied hands?

Our savior, or an excuse?

Americans,

             repent!

                          Beware of

                                       fake news

                                                    sham gold

                                                                 idols— 

Nothing to worry about! Nothing at all!

Come to the altar, worship whoever’s crowned

The winged choir guard the American garden

from Wuhan fiends

And so, nib unscathed

Pockets heavy

The Gospel

Good thing he cares for his shares 

The yeast for His bread

unrisen, decayed

So, He Marches forward

And trumpets that “the numbers are good” as is

apparently

contrarily

But April showers make faith dour.

Just in case, behind Jericho bricks

He breaks bread

for swab tests; for His people

crumbs

Oh, you sinner

Cast doubt from your mind!

May you rejoice!

The Savior saves His people!

Good thing he cares for his shares.

Revelation

Though idols dine in violet silk, one day

the synthetic dye will blanch

Dress in your Sunday best, filter masks

Earth will soon steal the recipe for

manna

Sacrifice pedestrian beer

for communion wine, Purell

June bugs, heathens, see the sunup

The world ends not with a virus!

(But by the folly of man.)

Avalon Felice Lee is an Asian-American Californian. She has been writing poetry and prose since the age of eleven. Her works have been published in The Heritage Review, Kalopsia Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

THOSE WE'VE LOST

by George Salamon

Those We’ve Lost include (clockwise from top left): Terrence McNally, Hailey Herrera, Alan Finder, Dave Edwards, Lorena Borjas, Joseph Migliucci, Jenny Polanco, Dez-Ann Romain. The New York Times

The coronavirus pandemic has taken an incalculable death toll. This series is designed to put names and faces to the numbers. —"Those We've Lost," The New York Times, updated on July 29, 2020


What do we see when
We stare at the faces,
A few culled from many?
When we turn away, does
The moment linger, while
We seek light to banish
Darkness, even as the
Dying proceeds, each
Death meant to diminish
Us, to confront pain we
Deny, plunging us back
Into moral ignorance in
Which we are born?
Days later, when  we see the
Photo of a girl who survived,
Standing by her grandparents'
House amid fields of corn, do
We glance upward, above the
Girl, to the barely visible layers
Of Blue, hiding the sky, the sky
No longer giving us answers we
Don't know how to hear.


George Salamon has recently contributed to Dissident Voice, The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.

A PESSIMIST TAKES STOCK

by George Salamon

Darkness & Light Art Print by Zeke Tucker

"Pessimism is a conscious filter which disarms ideologues and frees us to act in a practical manner.” —John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion

The air all around our leader echoes with shouts,

His Tweets can not put the tiles that fell off the

Roof of his political temple back up, the storm of

Coronavirus has come and its furious waves grow

Denser, it bursts through masks and measurements

As it rages and more than 142,000 lives have gone down.

Our leader is concerned only with the quadrennial

Cockfight staged for us as Democracy while too many

Among us have lost touch with first things,as bands of

Rebels, marginalized and mocked, try to restore it,

In their own fashion, forcing us to see the state of our

Union from the short view, pitch in, waiting for the

Long view to stumble and stagger close enough to

Lead us to the light out of the darkness we chose.

George Salamon took to pessimism when he was a refugee kid in Switzerland during World War Two and the Holocaust, but he has not let it sour into cynicism. He lives and writes in St. Louis, MO, and most recently has contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems and TheNewVerse.News.