SOME TIME NO FISH

by Mickey J. Corrigan

The mysterious deaths of Jeffrey Epstein’s friends —The Independent (UK), July 26, 2026

So many dead
in suspicious manners
like the "modeling scout" 
under investigation
for human trafficking
funny how they pass
so fast just before 
they can confess
to their crimes
and put names
to the powerful. 

Some time I cache quick
he told Epstein 
traveling the globe
looking for girls
to bring to Paris
to Jeffrey's crime pad 
sometimes no fish
he said too before
the gig ended
his voice silenced
permanently.

Sleeping with the fishes
as they say in the mob
the French "model manager"
also under investigation
for sex trafficking etcetera
and Epstein's last cellmate
dead on release
and Epstein himself
strangled or hung 
his Florida butler 
selling the "little black book"
he kept for protection
from what he knew
the Palm Beach detective 
afraid for his family
under surveillance
under threat
suddenly dead 
the Deutsche banker
the Hollywood producer
the fellow Ponzi schemer 
the former governor
of New Mexico,
and Virginia, 
don't forget Virginia 
her voice
will not be silenced.

Mickey J. Corrigan writes pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Poems have appeared in literary journals and chapbooks. Her most recent novel is Lazy Palms, a controversial look at life inside a euthanasia trailer park. 

RE-FRUITING

by Regina YC Garcia 

Nolan Wells' tragic death joins a long list of Black youth whose untimely demises have raised urgent questions about justice and accountability. —MadameNoire, July 10, 2026

This tree smells oddly familiar

as worms peer up

from disturbed ground

This water sighs in sadness

as sealife swims unabated

and dark-bodies sink

This land heaves up old hurts

as mouths protest 

“All is well!”

(the lies they tell)

Regina YC Garcia is an award winning poet, language artist, and professor from Greenville, NC. Her published work appears in NCLR, Fiyah Black Speculative Lit, Soflopojo, Amistad, Elevation Review, Charlotte Lit, and others. Her first chapbook The Firetalker's Daughter published by Finishing Line Press was released in March 2023, and her full-length book Whispers from the Multiverse published by Aquarius Press/ Willow Books was released in February 2025.

INHUMANE, CRUEL, UNACCEPTABLE

State inspectors reviewed seven immigration detention facilities across California, including the recently opened California City detention facility in Kern County. Attorney General Rob Bonta said overcrowding and staffing shortages are creating dangerous conditions. “They are running these facilities with inhumane, cruel, and unacceptable conditions,” Bonta said.

The report documents allegations at several facilities, including delayed medical care, overcrowding, unsanitary living conditions, lack of clean drinking water and excessive use of force.

Investigators also reported six detainee deaths between September 2025 and March 2026, the highest number since California began conducting inspections in 2017.

At the California City facility, detainees described extremely cold conditions, leaking cells during rainstorms, and inadequate clothing. In April, Giovanni Gomez, a friend of a detainee held at the California City detention center, described what he said his friend experienced during transport to the facility. “She said that when she got captured, and they moved her from Bakersfield to the facility, they just put some chains in her feet, and then in her hands, and they put them in the cold room,” Gomez said.

State officials also said that, despite claims the crackdown targets violent criminals, many detainees reviewed during inspections had little or no criminal history.

—BakersfieldNow (KBAK), May 15, 2026

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations. Since writing her first poem at age 73, she has been published well over 100 times. Having now achieved 84 years on this planet, she appreciates leisure to delight in its gifts, as well as time to grieve its desecration. Her second chapbook, Seasonings (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her third book, Well Seasoned (The Poetry Box) has recently been published.  She lives in Raleigh, NC

Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. And he loves The New Verse News!

COCOONED

by Marjan Sabouri 

Underground shelters

with the smell of sweat and fear
in musty air—

These are my first feelings of war,
as I was a little child.
A dark cocoon

that surrounded my childhood.

Now, in my forties,
I experienced the second touch of war.
Israel attacked Iran,
while I was far from my homeland.
 

Darkness ravished me again.

Not as musty shelters,
but of total net blackout.
For days,
I had no news
from my loved ones.
 
All those fears and scents
came down on me.
 
The silkworm

that was ready to emerge

got cocooned again,
in the dark. 

Not long after,
a massacre of many Iranians

who fought for basic rights
occurred in only two days.
Unbelievably heartbreaking.

 
Memories run through my head,
a track of caterpillars;
 

The faces of those youths
beautiful and filled with hope

covered in body bags.
 
The voice of “Sepehr e baba, kojaei?” 

—the desperate father that called for his dead son among many dead bodies.

 
The ecstatic voice of the little child
when she saw her father’s face in TV

and screamed out of joy: “Babaei! Babaei!”—it’s dad—
without knowing
it was a list of the deceased.

 
The ululating and grief-dancing
of bereaved mothers

at the funerals of their beloved children—

As the cocoon
was getting thicker,
I made another memory of war.
America and Israel attacked Iran.
 
Broken and helpless,
people who live in enduring emptiness

—in mind and in pockets—

pray for the foreign attackers

to save their lives.

 
Wishing for freedom in war.
Wishing for happiness in ruin.
Wishing for life in death.
 
Will there be a hope

to tear away the cocoon
under the crash

and release the butterfly?


Marjan Sabouri, a 44-year-old Iranian woman, has a Master’s Degree in Illustration. She has completed many art works in Illustration and Design and has served as a University Lecturer for almost 12 years. Mostly, she writes her poems in Farsi, her mother tongue. However, since living abroad the last two years, she has started to translate her poems (by herself) to be shared with a bigger community of people in order to spread the message of Humanity, Peace, and Love worldwide. She wishes to be a voice protesting injustice and human rights violations, especially now, in Iran and in the Middle East.

WE CAN DO VERY LITTLE, BUT I WILL DO THIS

by Annie Stenzel

 

 

 

Starting now, I propose to use GOOD, instead

of good when I talk about a Good thing,

and to say PRETTI rather than pretty, when I am struck

by how pleasing something looks to me.

 

I want this murdered woman, that executed

man, to live on in my speech with their names

alive and visible, notwithstanding their absence from

what should be a Good world, where so much is Pretti.

 

I could do nothing to save them from the horror

of their deaths. Nor can I do anything

for their loved ones, or the people whose lives they graced

every day. Grief won’t allow me to turn back

 

the hands of time, restore someone who was Good

and someone who was Pretti to this frightening world.

 

 

Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was published in 2024 by Kelsay Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., including Action, Spectacle; Gavialidae; Innisfree Poetry Journal; Pine Hills Review; Rust + Moth; Sheila-na-Gig; SoFloPoJo; SWWIM; St, Katherine’s Review; Thimble Lit Mag; and Whale Road Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.

PLANET EARTH WEATHER REPORT, JANUARY 2026

by Mary K O’Melveny

Icicles weep from each rooftop corner 

dangle from windows   cast steep shadows

Temperatures keep falling  falling 

It’s so cold we could be residents of Uranus

 

Our mailman likens this winter to Old Times

This morning a thick-coated doe licks away

heaps of rock salt from our asphalt driveway

snow and ice have buried grass for weeks

 

In Minneapolis, snow sweeps past protesters

Renee Nicole Good’s last words—That's fine, dude. 

I'm not mad at you—a study in poetic irony

Someone should re-name ICE Murder Inc

 

In 2025 thirty-two people are known to be dead

from ICE detention   At least sixteen people shot

four killed   by Trump’s [bleep]ing storm troops

carrying sleek weapons of war to US city streets   

 

Tasers  rubber bullets  white smoke  pepper balls 

swirl whirl like Saturn’s wind-blown gases 

Space station astronauts are returning to Earth

The gravity of the situation will soon be evident

 

This week there is a stargazing party in an upstate

New York park  Peeking at stars is often best 

in darkness while others sleep  There is also

stormy weather on Jupiter  Venus  Mars

 

This month’s Wolf Moon beamed   brayed

its afterglow stayed chill until  dawn

The wolves are scowling  howling  prowling

We are all in danger   We are all afraid

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird, is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.

THE FIRST DEATH

by Thomas R. Smith

So a lost brother has taken a bullet.

We grasp after a coherent motive.

Another of the terminally online?

Noticing the victim did nothing to help

protect others from this kind of death.

Said a few deaths are worth his “freedom.”

Would he have considered his own death

by the gun worth it? Are we allowed to ask

whether this is irony or karma?

The mind unmoored from spirit, scrambled

by strange signals, tears loose from the real.

Can we be honest about our part in this?

Life is change, but fear turns change to death,

fear rooted in hatred, self-hatred

of the changing different one within.

I mourn his first death, the earlier one

when he turned away from decency and kindness

to join the church of the desecrated heart.

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

SWITCH

by Arlene Weiner

Source: Wikimedia Commons

For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war. But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides. —The New York Times, February 18, 2025

The boys thought it would be fun
to throw the switch, watch trains
derail. It would be rich
to watch passengers tumble out,
scream. Maybe some would be naked.
 
There were deaths. The feral boys
didn’t care. Order and law
were boring. Boys would be boys
making noise, making money,
thinking it funny to upset sacred cows.
 
Watch it on Twitch, a sport
putting people through the woodchipper
the boys’ skipper, a double dipper, boasted,
who boosted his gaming scores.
Nobody came to stop the boys. 
 
Some men would be boys, breaking trust,
ghosting friends, tribal, looting, bribing,
gleeful masculine energy in a red hat. 

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh, where she is active in community poetry groups. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry, most recently More (2022).

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT SCHOOL

by Peter Witt

At least four people were killed and multiple people injured after a shooting Wednesday at a Barrow County high school, near Atlanta, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced, adding that a suspect was in custody. Photo: Women embrace following the shooting. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)—The Washington Post, September 4, 2024

A fourteen year old killed two innocent children Wednesday,
along with two teachers, somebody's sons or daughters,
partners or parents, people who will be saddened,
no devasted, as the police call asking
a relative to come to the morgue, the death house,
to identify the body of a child or an adult who rose this morning,
dressed, said goodbye to their loved ones, forever,
and headed out the door to school, where they waited 
for a 14 year old with access to a gun to shoot them, 
dead, dead, dead. dead.

And the best we'll be able to do is thoughts and prayers,
as the gun lobby mounts another round of efforts
to suppress any reasonable action, as talking heads
are paraded across the TV screen with the same tired
rhetoric, while anti-reform legislators collect 1000s
of dollars to stand pat, do nothing 
again, and again, and again, and again.

Soon there will be funerals, with tearful parents,
loved ones, a community of people holding candles,
perhaps a politician speaking truth about killing machines 
in the hands of children, young people hugging each other, 
while hallways and classrooms are cleaned,
students and community members are offered counseling, 
so in a short period of time school can resume,
funds can be raised for a permanent memorial,
and the issue can disappear from the news
until the next young person gains access to a gun,
access to a school and puts out the light
again and again and again and again
in another group of young people
and dedicated teachers’ eyes.

Peter Witt is a Texas poet who is repulsed by the argument that people kill people not guns...it's obviously both...he has published his poetry in a wide-variety of outlets.  When he's not writing he's out birding and reinforcing his understanding of the human connection to the natural world. He and his wife also travel extensively, having just returned from Iceland/Greenland, where the witnessed first hand the impacts of climate change.

ADRIFT

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

The Greek coastguard has caused the deaths of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean over a three-year period, witnesses say, including nine who were deliberately thrown into the water. The nine are among more than 40 people alleged to have died as a result of being forced out of Greek territorial waters, or taken back out to sea after reaching Greek islands, BBC analysis has found. The Greek coastguard told our investigation it strongly rejects all accusations of illegal activities. We showed footage of 12 people being loaded into a Greek coastguard boat, and then abandoned on a dinghy, to a former senior Greek coastguard officer. When he got up from his chair, and with his mic still on, he said it was "obviously illegal" and "an international crime.” —BBC, June 17, 2024

In myths of Greece

the ancients were supremely

cruel. Prometheus, chained

to a pillar, an eagle

will pick at  his liver forever.

 

King Acricius, on hearing

prophesy of his death,

set his own daughter

Danae and her child adrift

in the sea—the child  Perseus

survives and one day

will slay his grandfather king.

 

In modern Greek seas

ancient cruelties surge and seethe:

boats full of emigrants

from the war-torn Middle East

risk the Mediterranean

to seek refuge, a new European life.

 

From the shores, Coast Guards

have been filmed

forcing immigrant mothers

and children, and men,

onto rubber dinghies,

tugging them out to sea,

setting them adrift.

 

A new Perseus might be

from Iran or Syria, or

Afghanistan.

He might survive:

he might one day

kill the sailors who,

sent to save him,

instead set him

and his mother adrift.

Pilar Saavedra-Vela has lived in Costa Rica for 37 years. Born in Colombia, she grew up in the DC area, where she returns almost every year. A translator, editor and hotel owner, she has been writing poetry since 2006 (she composed poetry earlier, just didn't write it down). She has had poems published in The New Verse News and Passager.

BOTH SIDES NOW, or THE THREE D’S

by Maria Lisella

Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Dec. 16, 2023. (AP via Arab News)

"The plumes of smoke from tanks, artillery and the planes of the air force will continue to cover the sky over the Gaza Strip until we will achieve our goals," Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. —NPR, January 21, 2024

Destruction, displacement, death;

the toll soars past 28,000 on one side
1,400 on the other; hostages by the
hundreds spark nonstop defiant
 
statements from the father whose
tech savvy son posts incendiary
messages from the warm rays
of the Florida sun. Like father, like son,
 
they ignite destruction, displacement, death.
Brethren in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen
rise to actions of the heart mind: force
meeting force, clamoring to save and
 
sacrifice sons, daughters. More destruction,
displacement, death. Deaf to calls for a ceasefire
postwar plans promising a two-state solution,
they focus only on Israel’s future credit rating.  
 
Standing Together, Jews and Palestinians post:
“We are aching, all of us… It seems we are
not allowed to hurt for both.”
Now is the moment, “to hurt for both.”

Maria Lisella is the sixth Queens Poet Laureate and an American Academy Fellow; her work includes Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). She is a member of the Thursday Morning Poets, Brevitas and co-curates the Italian American Writers Assoc. literary readings.