LETTER FROM A POET TO AI

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

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

What do you know of heartache?

How it feels to watch your father die 

gasping for air like a fish in a bucket, 

or to find your comatose mother in her 

front yard, dying alone in the dirt? 

My brother bled to death in front 

of my eyes when he was twenty. Can 

you even imagine it? Of course, you 

can’t. You have no imagination, no 

feelings, only data, data, data that you 

spit out like pits from fruit you’ve

never tasted. And what about the good 

stuff? That first kiss from a guy who 

means it? Holding your newborn baby 

in your arms, astonished by how much 

love one person can bear? Have you 

strolled down the Champs-Élysées in 

the rain? Laughed at a joke or made 

love by an open window to the sound

of Italian doves? Tasted a chocolate 

milkshake or pumpkin risotto? Have 

you thrown a softball or climbed a tree? 

Ridden a Merry-Go-Round or a bicycle, 

seen Mick Jagger strut like a rooster 

across a stage or watched the Rockettes

kick their way to Christmas? So you can

write a semblance of a poem or a story

or a novel, so what? Your creations are 

rickety scaffolding, Hollywood sets that 

will never be the Swiss Alps or even

a human home, which is better, even if it 

sucks, than anyplace you could generate 

because you are nothing but a vending 

machine, AI—stocked with empty words.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including The Light that Follows Us Home (Autumn, 2026, Press 53). Her work has been widely published and has won numerous awards, including the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

ONE INTERPRETATION

by Erika Takacs

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under public fire for publicly endorsing the misogynistic views of Idaho pastor Doug Wilson (above) and his colleagues in a CNN interview… What sparked the latest round of worry is CNN’s interview in which [Wilson] says “women are the kind of people that people come out of”… Hegseth reposted the CNN interview link on X and wrote, “All of Christ for All of Life.” —Baptist News, August 10, 2025 

Oh—like the crone who strides forth 
out of my skin (wise, bossy, bolder)
whenever I see a young woman try
to tuck herself into a smaller, smaller,
smaller space. Or the diner waitress
who can’t help calling everyone Hon,
the school nurse whose eyes catch
on every helpless child, like the gawky
teen in line at the airport who needs me
to tell him when he’s allowed to board. 
There’s my grandmother, when I use salt
(never measure, more is better), 
and my dad, when I cry at commercials 
(Christmas morning, someone is home 
from college, or the army, and has brewed 
coffee). My brother when I am truly selfless; 
my mother when I’m just lucky. I’ve coaxed
wizards from this old body, vixens
and virgins and vamps. So many people
have come out of me, though not one
is my child. Or maybe all of them are—
every one a new creation, a dazzling
refraction of an infinite heart. 

Erika Takacs is an Episcopal priest, teacher, musician, and poet originally from Wilmington, Delaware. Her writing has been published in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Earth & Altar, The Christian Century, Braided Way, and Thimble Literary Journal. Outside of her work and her family, her three great loves are the music of J.S. Bach, books, and baseball. She currently resides in North Carolina, where she and her husband serve at the pleasure of their very spoiled beagle. 

SIMCHAT TORAH WAR

by Elya Braden

“Bereshit” print from Nireh Or

The beginning is the promise of the end.

—Henry Ward Beecher

 

Every Fall we rock the house,

dance & sing & lift the scroll.

Roll back to B’reishit. In the beginning—

chaos cleaved into light & dark

a man a woman a garden a fall.

 

Roll back l’dor v’dor—generation

to generation. 

Roll back Deuteronomy’s gifts—

Ten Commandments, Moses peering

into the Promised Land.

Roll back Numbers’ sufferings—

rod, stone, bland manna,

a wilderness of complaint. 

Roll back Leviticus’ hundreds of tiny edicts

the cost of forgiveness—

denial & purification.

Roll back Exodus’ hungry waters,

locusts, frogs, endless night,

          lambs’ blood to guardian our sons.

Roll back to Genesis—father/mother/handmaid,

multiply two sons & divide 

by one patch of desert.

 

So, who’s to blame for blood feud? 

Isaac & Ishmael? Or their mothers—

Sarah & Hagar? Sarah’s laughter 

withering on her lips as her handmaid 

suckles Abraham’s eldest— 

a legacy of lack & opportunity.

Or blame God—God’s two-faced 

promise: I will make of your son 

a great nation. 

 

Well, one thing we know about land 

is God ain’t making any more.

Yet we multiply like frogs, spill

from lakes & puddles & faucets & mouths, 

our hunger rises like the papery wings 

of a thousand moths splitting their cocoons, 

stripping the trees of green.

 

So why not drone a war on this day 

we dance & sing, raise Torah scrolls 

above our heads to celebrate return? 

B’reishit bara Elohim,

“In the beginning, God created…”

 

Air raid sirens the only psalms now sung 

in this land of too many Gods.

Editor’s Note: Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday that celebrates and marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, began for Hebrew Year 5784 on Saturday, 7 October 2023 and ended on Sunday, 8 October 2023.

Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Ventura County, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks, Open The Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing (2023). Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Prometheus Dreaming, Rattle Poets Respond, Sequestrum, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets.

MEDUSA

by Akua Lezli Hope

AI-assisted images by the poet.

First lady Michelle Obama considered wearing her hair in braids while living in the White House. But then she thought of the American people. —The Washington Post, November 17, 2022

U.K. Tells Schools They Can’t Ban Afro Hairstyles. School rules about what styles are allowed that mostly affect Black and mixed-race children are likely to be illegal, a government rights commission said. —The New York Times, October 27, 2022

Almost half of Black and mixed-race women have experienced race-based hair discrimination at school, according to a new study. Of these, more than half (57 per cent) say they continue to deal with hair-related trauma today. —Independent (UK), October 7, 2022

Medusa was the serpent-goddess of the Libyan Amazons, representing "female wisdom". (Sanskrit medhas, Greek metis, Egyptian met or Maat ).  She was the Destroyer aspect of the Triple Goddess. Called Neith in Egypt, Ath-enna or Athene in North Africa.  Her inscription at Sais called her "mother of all the gods, whom she bore before childbirth existed." —Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

You think god cursed me, 
that this morphing nimbus petrifies beholders
when it is only your eyes seeing snakes 
and being struck by a beauty you cannot decipher 
 
These S&Z curved electric antennae 
are defense against the gray arts, 
channeling, channeling ancestral energies 
an armor of creation’s forcefield and being 
 
Remove your transgressive hands 
or feel the casual, stinging shrapnel
from misbelief shattering against truth

 
Author's Note: I ache for the children who have been abused for their hair styles. I had a corporate career and wore my hair in what is now called protective natural styles, along with my suit, pumps and—a tie from 1979, until I retired in the 21st century. Here it is another century and the same old stupidity.
 

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, & Best of the Net, Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations. 

SYCAMORE, SYCAMORE

by Sally Zakariya

“Today we published the results of this quantum supremacy experiment in the Nature article, ‘Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor.’ We developed a new 54-qubit processor, named ‘Sycamore,’ that is comprised of fast, high-fidelity quantum logic gates, in order to perform the benchmark testing. Our machine performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output.” —Posted on October 23, 2019 to the Google AI Blog by John Martinis, Chief Scientist Quantum Hardware and Sergio Boixo, Chief Scientist Quantum Computing Theory, Google AI Quantum. Photograph of the Sycamore processor by Erik Lucero, Research Scientist and Lead Production Quantum Hardware.

Hello world, things are changing.
What I knew only as a shag-bark tree—
Sycamore—now names computing
power beyond imagining, now quantum,
supreme, superlative, incomparable.

A dance of particles, tangling, entangled.
To Einstein, “spooky action at a distance.”
To me, complex mystery of mysteries,
wonder of intelligent wonders.

How can I comprehend such power
and speed, such limitless possibilities?
Like us prone to error, but unlike us
capable of brilliance beyond measure.

A human attempt to emulate creation?
Perhaps. Or is it proof how far our
mortal minds can reach?


Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is Muslim Wife (Blue Lyra Press, 2019). She is also the author of The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table.

THE BEGINNING (WITH NO END)

by David Feela

Image Source: Freeology

In the beginning some man said
“Let there be rape”
and he saw that if it wasn’t divinely intended
it might not be legitimate,
so he made certain enough men
held positions of power
to keep an eye on the women
who claimed it had happened to them.
And there was whimpering
on the 1st day in November.

Then another man said,
“Let there be pregnancy”
and the men charged with
upholding God’s mind
knew it wouldn’t happen to them,
so there was much relief
on the 2nd of November.

And the Constitution said,
“Let there be elections”
so the men who had wives
pushed them in front of the cameras
to claim no matter what their husbands said
they were good men.
Infants were cuddled and kissed
all during the 3rd and 4th days.

Then the doctors said,
“Let there be amniocentesis”
and a window into life opened,
(though many pulled their shades)
which accounts on the 5th of November 
for the heat in Roe v. Wade.

By November’s election day a woman said,
“Let me make up my own mind”
but so many things had been said
the chance to lay the issue to rest
on the 7th day was pretty much dead.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.