BIRDS OF DARKNESS

by Dick Altman

The Perseid meteor shower at Eleven Mile State Park in Colo. in 2024. Eleven Mile is among several state parks in Colorado working on becoming certified with DarkSky International. (Eric Schuette | Colorado Parks and Wildlife via Colorado Public Radio, September 1, 2025

Carefully crafted and robust public policy is crucial to fulfilling DarkSky’s mission to restore the nightime environment and protect communities from the harmful effects of light pollution. We are involved in various efforts to influence the decisions of various lawmaking and oversight bodies worldwide to  formulate, adopt, implement, evaluate, or change public policies on outdoor lighting. We partner with various government entities to support policy priorities that reduce light pollution and promote quality outdoor lighting. —DarkSky

Northern New Mexico

My first night

living in Indian Country,

on the seemingly

boundless

high desert plains,

begins as I step

from my pickup,

to peer

into the blackest sky

of my life,

and not a light

anywhere near,

when out

of the far eastern

horizon,

you,

a shooting star,

burst,

to journey

one-hundred-

eighty degrees,

traversing

the entire

visible heavens,

to what,

to my eyes,

appears to be

the other side

of the universe.

I’m too spellbound,

to count how long

you take to make

this unimpeded,

rarest

of nocturnal

crossings.

 

Did Indigenous

spirits want

somehow

to further

approach me,

when at twilight,

a few nights later,

I walk up

a hilly road,

alone,

I thought,

as a Great

Horned Owl,

wings open,

glides

from the top

of a juniper,

straight for me?

I know your call,

and just as you’re

about to pass

overhead,

Hoo! Hoo! Hooo!

I chorus.

As if you abruptly

hit the brakes

in mid flight,

you circle twice,

above me,

no more than

two arms’ lengths

away,

before

your feathered bulk,

dissolves

into the fading light.

 

Instead of treating me

as an

outlier,

you spirits,

so it feels,

continue

to reach out to me.

I walk up

the owl hill,

only this time

a streak

of astral flame

races across

my view

at eye level,

just before dark.

I can’t tell

the distance

between us,

but I swear

I hear

an orchestra

of super-heated

gases billowing,

fluttering

like gale-driven

sails,

soaring

across night.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 250 poems, published on four continents.

SHE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A U-TURN

by Beth Fox

Photo by Kevin Bermingham at Dreamstime.

She’s black, she’s white—
she’s a white-throated swift
moving so quickly I barely see
the male on her back as 
she barrels toward earth
in a courtship spin—
swerving at the point 
of impact, then 
hurtling upward 
again to become 
a speck in the sky.
(Black and white,
           dark and light—)
The nest—
a cup of moss and twigs
glued to the side of a sheer cliff
with saliva.
 
(I was once convinced
    that dark news 
          was really light—)
Fifty trips a day to care for chicks, 
feeding them balls of insects… instincts
as true as their flight.
 
Before dark times, I could tell
black from white… I will again, when
I can see through these reddened eyes…
    Will I/will we turn back in time   
          to see
     the brilliant blue sky?


A lover of the outdoors, Beth Fox was a finalist in four New England poetry contests and is widely published in New England. She helped seniors publish their work in an anthology, Other Voices, Other Lives. Her chapbook Reaching for the Nightingale is available at Finishing Line Press. Beth lives in Wolfeboro, NH.

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

by Jim Burns

with echoes of Buffalo Springfield

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

it can’t happen here 

they say

and go on 

with their day, 

but are they sure,

do they remember a time 

way back in their prime 

when they raised voices and sang

that something’s happening here,

it’s not exactly clear,

but we’d better beware

and look what’s goin’ down

what’s that sound, 

it ain’t exactly clear, 

but something for sure 

is happening here, 

the Constitution, institutions, 

are biting the dust, 

like used up metal 

they’ll dissolve into rust 

while we whistle 

in the dark, 

take a walk 

in the park, 

say it’ll be alright

and forget 

that what follows

the dark 

is the night

Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana, received degrees from Indiana State University and Indiana University, and spent most of his working life as a librarian. After retirement he turned to an earlier love of writing and has been fortunate to have seen over 20 of his poems and prose published either online or in print. He lives with his wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.

TRUMP INAUGURAL

by Paul Hostovsky

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

The day Trump takes office

I’m quitting sugar

to protest the irreplaceable

place of sweetness in the dark

world. I mean look

around. The ice is melting into everything and the levels

of pain are rising worldwide with alarming

silence seeping into everything 

and there’s nothing

I can do about it. I need

to do something about it. I’m quitting

sugar as an act of solidarity, 

a way to keep the sweetness 

holy. Kind of like the sabbath, only

secular. Kind of like a hunger strike, only

healthier. Of course the symbolism

will be lost on Trump, whose own

blood sugar levels are a state 

secret—if it weren’t

lost on Trump he probably wouldn't

have won. Hell, he wouldn’t have 

run in the first place if he understood 

the irreplaceable, unimpeachable,

inexpressible place of sweetness 

in the dark world, which is growing 

darker and more bitter apace, 

and is just as irreplaceable as it ever was.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best of the Net. He has been published in Poetry, Passages North, Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, The Sun, and many other journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart Prize, the Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Award, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, Split Oak Press, and Sport Literate. Paul has thirteen full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being Pitching for the Apostates (2023). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. He lives with his wife Marlene in Medfield, Massachusetts.

A TEAR FALLS FROM THE MOON

by Richard L. Matta

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

Hideous weeds hide

in high grasses. Experts examine

lawns with satellites, surveil 

with drones, send in spies.

Intelligent eyes can’t locate 

the wild pests so tap-tap-tap 

go the buttons and neighborhoods 

are bombed and burned and stripped 

bare and young lingering eyes of flowers 

are cut off at the head.

I could ask a question of the wise 

pale moon in the thick evening heat 

but it’s dusted with debris. 

A speaker echoes…

         indiscriminately

                   inhumanity.

And I ask myself is this not a swarm

of bees in the making, generations 

of hate stewing, a turn of minority 

to majority, a dark legacy.

Richard L. Matta grew up in New York and now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Slipstream, and many international haiku journals. 

BROKEN WORLD

by Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of The Dark, a poetry collection forthcoming from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

IN THE DAYS BEFORE I DIE, I RECALL THE LAST TIME I WAS HERE

by Dick Westheimer

                   for Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova

A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor died while sheltering from Russian strikes during the siege of Mariupol, her daughter has said. Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova died on 4 April while taking cover in a freezing basement without water, in a grim echo of how she had hidden in a basement from the Nazis when she was 10 years old, her daughter Larissa told Chabad.org. Obiedkova, the second Holocaust survivor known to have died during Russia’s war in Ukraine, “didn’t deserve such a death”, said Larissa, who was with her mother at the time. Larissa described the conditions in Mariupol as “living like animals”. Photograph: c/o Rabbi Mendel Cohen —The Guardian, April 19, 2022

"I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness;

I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.”

—Anne Frank

The tongue of huddling in cellars is a forgotten one, a language 

only a few of us remember from the before times. But here I am, 

again, buried in this frigid basement beneath these same shamed streets. 

I should be home, folding laundry, making khrustykys for the little ones, 

maybe napping. Instead, I shiver away the last of what was me

covered only by my daughter’s thin coat.

I recall my father, gone to dust in the gulag days, his sure hand

firm over my small mouth, held my crying inside as Nazis hunted

for my kind in the homes above our blacked-out hiding place.

I beg for water but it’s really the dark that defeats me, steals these 

last shallow breaths of mine. I dream back to that time when 

10 year old me first learned the lightless dialect of cellar life, 

was forever drained of light. Since then, it has been the daily 

illuminated hours that have saved me—that made the thin link 

from one frightful night to the next—and without that dim lit bridge

I am already dead.

Dick Westheimer has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have recently appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Chautauqua Review, RiseUp Review, Ekphrastic Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat.

BURROWING

by Farah Art Griffin

“Into the Void” by DINA D’ARGO, 56, SPRINGFIELD, TENN. Acrylic on canvas via The Washington Post. “‘Into the Void’ symbolizes stepping into the unknown — the idea of life ‘after the pandemic’ and the insecurity of not knowing what lies ahead.” 

still burrowing —

drowning in yesterday's time

past grips us in its palm

wounds

            still wet

            still dripping

memories

            still clear

            still swimming

cave of unforgotten sorrow —

echoes in the dark

Farah Art Griffin is a literary and visual artist. She holds an EdM in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her work is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry.

WHEN IT IS OVER

by Katherine Tian

A weekend afternoon, the park near my room,

the stone table where my friends and I used to sit is covered with a thick layer of dust.

Untrodden weeds cross the dirt path.

When it is over,

we will come together like a wind gust.

Our friendship will only bloom.

 

After a long day at work, a nurse mother goes home with a sigh of bliss.

She can only embrace her toddling daughter with her gaze and tears,

close at hand, but on opposite sides of the canyon.

When it is over,

my little dear,

Mom will hug you in her arms with a long kiss.

 

During a festival, I walk on the empty square,

music and fragrance that once wafted through the restaurant disappear like a cloud.

Now only cold wind blows through.

When it is over,

the long-lost crowd

will gather again to breathe the free, healthy air.

 

Golden wedding grandparents pass away in isolation, looking at each other like new lovers.

The memory and close goodbye can only dwell

in the relatives’ sorrow hearts.

When it is over,

the belated remembrances and farewells

will turn into rainy tears and falling flowers.

 

I miss the sound of my teacher's marker scratching on the white board,

the crowd in the hallway,

the morning flock of school buses.

When it is over,

to my dear teachers, I will say,

in the back of the classroom, I will never fall asleep or get bored.

 

The early spring flowers are about to sprout.

The birds in the trees are singing happily as they cheer.

At this darkest moment of the pandemic,

my dear friends,

can you hear

the footsteps of the warm sunshine behind the heavy cloud?

Katherine Tian is a senior at Ward Melville High School on Long Island, New York. She is a long-time dancer and a long-term volunteer at a local elder-care center.

DEFIANCE AS THE TREES LET GO THEIR LEAVES

by Laura Rodley

As repetitious as concentric circles

breaking one upon the other, overlapping

but never touching, the outward circles

encroach on the returning circles,

but the swimmer’s hands keep breaking

the smooth skin of the water

sending back more circles,

her breaststroke a circle;

here, at Ashfield Lake, there is no election,

no Prince of Tides, no princes,

just to swim to the brown house

a quarter mile and return

before it gets dark. 

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

HOPE: APRIL 2020

by Marjorie Maddox

Print by jolieguillebeau

A “thing,” perhaps,
and fowl,
       but bloody-
plucked,
dipped in disease
and plummeting,
the sky-high                       yours/mine
                   violently de-plumed,
bald as a vulture,
               fickle flight undone
in this freefall frenzy of fear
to doom
become dust
 become

what we don’t know
                        become
before
            and void
become dark, become
                         the dawn crack
of Eden on replay
and maybe—hope against hope—
become
the “warm breasts, bright wings”
of Spirit hovering,
                        warming,
readying its weary-
world nest
once-again
for wings.

Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry, a short story collection, an anthology (co-editor), and 4 children's books.

KARMA PLUS

by David Radavich





See what pure narcissism
brings forth: a great rot
in the communal apple.

The body politic
spoils top to bottom
and back again.

Every inequity
becomes deadly
as a snake.

We have long since
been thrown out
of the garden.

We roam streets
like zombies
in search of medicine
and care.

How can we be
one family

and not hug
our neighbors
as ourselves?

Pathogens know
our vulnerabilities
and strike
with clear knives.

In the dark night

we become
what we do
for one another.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe.

ECLIPSE

by William Marr

from The New York Times, August 14, 1932

Young at heart
the old sun
once in a while
likes to put on
his mischievous black mask
just to scare
the superstitious jittery
shadows

He doesn’t know
we now keep shadows
safely in a world of virtual reality
where we eat and drink
make love
all without benefit
of a single ray
of sunlight

William Marr has published 23 volumes of poetry (Autumn Window and Between Heaven and Earth are in English and the rest in his native Chinese language), 3 books of essays, and several books of translations.  His most recent published work Chicago Serenade is a trilingual (Chinese/English/French) anthology of poems published in Paris in 2015. 

ON THE PRACTICE OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

by David Feela

The clocks, advanced one hour, will not
save us, not from the imaginations of oblivious children
exhausted in the moist dark while waiting for school buses,
still comatose from that lost hour of sleep.

Not the shadows lengthening into evening
like tails on a tuxedo, all dressed up without
the energy to dance. Like Sisyphus’s rock,
we know pushing the sun back up the hill

won’t keep it there, and the gods won’t change
the sand in our hourglasses, and this life,
as we know it, remains fixed like a nail in the wall
where we pick up the same old hat on the way out.


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.

DUNGEONS FROM DRAGONS

by Dennis Etzel Jr.

Asmund wakes me up for another game
as the sun tries rising in another December
morning I try to rise he says he likes to wake up
in a little dark time not too early
looks out the window over our back
yard over our Kansas our country
waking up I’ve never woken up in such a dark time
these gradual small wake-ups to dungeon builders

as our resistance is set to dismantle walls Asmund asks
if this little dark time is okay for me to wake up in
I say yes let’s go downstairs with your brothers to sit
navigate the dungeon together keeping the dragons
from getting further ahead as we search for a secret door
for freedom I show my sons how to throw the dice

Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has an MFA from The University of Kansas, and an MA and Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Kansas State University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. He is a TALK Scholar for the Kansas Humanities Council and leads poetry workshops in various Kansas spaces.

KLANSMEN

by William Ruleman

The self-proclaimed largest Ku Klux Klan group in America plans to rally outside the South Carolina statehouse next month, state officials confirmed. --The Washington Post, June 30, 2015

Good Christian men in white
Ride into the night
To keep their women pure
And families secure.

Good Christian men in white
Know that they are right
But tend to wait till dark
Before they will embark

(Good Christian men in white),
For their own brand of might
Tends not to thrive by day
On what mild judges say.

Good Christian men in white
Wake to see dawn light,
Their white robes stained in mud,
Stallions’ foam, and blood.


William Ruleman’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Galway Review, The New English Review, The New Verse News, The Pennsylvania Review, The Recusant, The Road Not Taken, Rubies in the Darkness, The Sonnet Scroll, and Trinacria. His books include two collections of his own poems (A Palpable Presence and Sacred and Profane Loves, both from Feather Books), as well as translations of poems from Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (WillHall Books, 2003), of Stefan Zweig’s fiction in Vienna Spring: Early Novellas and Stories (Ariadne Press, 2010), of prose and poems by Zweig in A Girl and the Weather (Cedar Springs Books, 2014), and of poems by the German Romantics in Verse for the Journey: Poems on the Wandering Life (also from Cedar Springs Books). He is Professor of English at Tennessee Wesleyan College.