MIDWESTERN AMERICAN DREAM

by Svetlana Litvinchuk

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News

My American husband wants a quiet life. He’s ready for it 
to be predictable again, as it unfolds across the flat, 
easy soil in the American Heartland. He says he knows 
what to expect from people there.
 
He’s nostalgic for the kindness of strangers
holding doors open for one another and for all 
the seasons to parade in and out in an orderly fashion. 
He wants rectangular plots of easy to tame lawn 
and fresh cut barbecue Sundays where the wildest 
thing is grass prairie housing clean water in gleaming
towers.
 
He wants starchy cuisine swimming in dairy, lactose 
intolerance be damned. He craves a place so bland 
that they ship newscasters there for vocal training 
to drop any accents that might offend. 
 
We’ve entered the low-drama era of our lives.
The low-stakes, low-excitement Zen that urbanites 
don’t know they’re missing.
 
He wants toothless fish that surrender to the hook 
from stocked lakes in subdivisions so that he can 
appear capable of anything, heroic in the eyes
of our daughter.
 
Soon she’ll take her first steps. So, it is time to decide
on our preschool of choice, their waiting list coveting 
our checking account. We’ll roll around the cul-de-sacs 
in the comfort of our Sienna minivan, a synecdoche 
of a humble family life.
 
We’ll choose our couple-friends, who will also be 
parents and he’ll swig beer with someone named Chris 
by the grill while I’ll have low-voiced table chats 
with someone named Emily as we keep watch out 
the sliding glass door as our children play in the yard 
and there will be 
 
no war planes flying overhead and we will be 
so safe that we’ll have the luxury of taking for granted 
just how safe we are.

Photo from US European Command video of Russian warplane over the Black Sea

Svetlana Litvinchuk is a poet and permaculture farmer who holds degrees from University of New Mexico. She is the author of a debut poetry chapbook Only a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, Sky Island Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, ONE ART, Apocalypse Confidential, Union Spring Review, Longhouse Press, and elsewhere. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she now lives with her husband and daughter on their organic farm in the Arkansas Ozarks where she derives satisfaction from watching cucumber plants climb their trellises skyward. She is a reviews editor with ONLY POEMS.

THE DAY BOMBING OF UKRAINE BEGAN, 2/24/22

by Julie Bolt

The old Kiev Restaurant on 7th Street in Greenwich Village; Allen Ginsberg and Quentin Crisp dining there.

It was always a point of debate:

Veselka, Kiev, or Ukrainian National Home

Veselka was busy and bright, 

Kiev was for neighborhood regulars early or late at night, 

UNH was to time travel into a Ukrainian  private club from another age

I loved them all, but especially Kiev 

For the best comfort food in Greenwich Village

And largest portions and lowest prices

And latest hours, the most tolerant waiters

However it was hard to decide whether to order a combo blintz and pierogi platter 

or assorted pierogi platter 

or potato pancakes

Real first world dilemma 

Ideally friends would share what they had

And then there was the challah of clouds with butter

And oh how the boys had crushes on the Ukrainian waitresses

And the head waiter flirted with my mom, cheeks flushed like borsht

And I went so often they sometimes gave me a free cherry blintz!

I knew through my Bulgarian pen pal how oppressive the Soviet Union was

I don’t remember if I thought much about whether the Kiev staff escaped oppression

But I remember that December 26, 1991 was a great day

I had just moved to Philadelphia then

So I could not celebrate at Kiev

I probably just ate a vegetable hoagie

Gorbachev had the map of peace on his head unlike Putin’s face of war

After Philly, I moved to New Mexico, Arizona and California

In 2005, I returned to NYC, ready to feast on Kiev’s sauerkraut pierogis slathered in apple sauce and fried onions

New ownership resulted in Ukrainian-Asian fusion, and small portions, 

aspiring to expensive tastes 

Sadly, Veselka acquired long NYU lines, 

So I decamped to The Ukrainian National Home

It wasn’t long before Kiev shut its doors forever

I will always mourn the closing of Kiev

I hope the owners did not miss the entire bright window of Ukraine’s democracy 

Where are they now?

What are they thinking today

as people flee Kyiv 

as Ukraine is bombed 

as Putin says the dissolution of the Soviet Union that we all lived through is a myth 

Our friends are dying in the crossfires of lies

The blue sky grows dark 

The yellow flowers burn

Julie Bolt is an associate professor of literature and writing at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Recently, she was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Transformative Learning in the Humanities. Her poems have appeared in Thieves Jargon, Slow Trains, The Red River Review, Poetic Diversity, Syntax, Shot Glass Journal and Home Planet News, amongst others. Her book is Border Pedagogy for Democratic Practice.

SO SUE US

by Judith Terzi

People protest outside a speech by U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions on Wednesday in Sacramento, where he admonished state politicians for not cooperating with federal authorities on immigration enforcement issues. (Noah Berger / AFP/Getty Images via the Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2018)


Oddly, we (sort of) welcome the Trump administration's legal challenge in hopes that it will clarify not just for state officials, but for the federal government where the lines of responsibility and culpability might lie. We suspect the courts will side with California on most if not all of the legal issues Session's lawsuit raises, and in the process could underscore the reality that California's menu of state and local laws limiting involvement with federal immigration enforcement do not offer anyone anything remotely like sanctuary. —Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2018




Enjoy your Tuesday dinner at $35,000+
a head in Beverly Hills. If you have time,

Mr. Pres., explore SoCal culinarily. There's
an Indian place up the street from your shindig

called the Spice Affair. But beware. You don't
need more tsuris. Their chicken tikka masala

is excellent. Or try their saag aloo, potatoes
simmering in a spinach curry. Instead of

checking out prototypes of prejudice, try some
pork or beef enchiladas at El Portal. You can

have two, plus rice and beans for under $15.
Let's see, would you order black beans or frijoles?

That might be a tough choice. Or try camarones 
a la diabla. That's shrimp in a spicy red sauce.

Very close to the Mexican place is a Salvadorian
hole-in-the-wall delight. Do you know what

a pupusa is? It's not what you're thinking. If
you've got more time, stop by Saladang. It's close

to Beverly Hills. Have you ever tasted pad thai
or ginger chicken? And what about fried calamari?

That's our fave. BTW, you can have two scoops
of ice cream there. Yes, vanilla, if you don't like

ginger or mint tea. But if you want chocolate sauce,
you'll have to cross the street to Kabuki, where

all the sushi chefs are either Korean or Mexican.
So sue us!

Judith Terzi is the author of Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Caesura, Columbia Journal, Good Works Review, Main Street Rag, Raintown Review, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and Net. Museum of Rearranged Objects will be published by Kelsay Books later this year. 

FOODIES ABROAD AND DOWN THE STREET

by Lee Ann Pingel

Image source: China Highlights

            On Calvin Trillin’s “Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?”
            Published in The New Yorker, April 4, 2016


Maybe “province bagging” is a thing, foodies
like tourists collecting cathedrals.
No wonder the ancient countries
and their children
take offense at our forgetting
these places are sacred,
these dishes are mothers.
May we all—all, no matter
our birth, our skin, our standing—
remember to open our souls,
let them expand with each site or bite.
Let us be pilgrims,
let us repent of devouring,
learn to savor.

Lee Ann Pingel has lived in Athens, Georgia, since 1994 and works as a freelance editor and writer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from UC San Diego and holds graduate degrees in political science and religion from the University of Georgia. Her work has been published in the anthologies Motif 2: Come What May from Motes Books and Crossing Lines from Main Street Rag, as well as in The Fib Review, Plainsongs, TheNewVerse.News, Contemporary Haibun Online, and other journals.