NEWSPAPER RUBBER BANDS

by Peter Henry

I miss newspaper rubber bands
The useful stash in the kitchen drawer
I miss the thud on the driveway
Promising hours of reading—
Detailed stories, facts, interviews, and opinions
Often fertilized by Deep Throat sources
Dropping follow-the-money clues.
With no heft, no will to fight the empowered villain
Mainstream media caved in to threats and paid $15 million

I miss fact checking and shame heckling
The sting of a snapped rubber band on bare skin
I miss the retreat from deceit
When waved newspapers cleared smoke
From smoldering embers
Tended by nefarious dissemblers
I miss the pink fingers of editorial endorsements
Now dead and blue from binding bands
Stretched over them by fat wealthy hands

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

Peter Henry is a retired information technology specialist and former high school English teacher. Besides poems, he writes songs, builds musical instruments, and explores the outdoors. A father and husband, he lives in Northern California with his wife.

I AM NOT ALONE: THE DAY AFTER THE 2024 ELECTION

by Guillermo Filice Castro

José     our delivery man

drops off a package

José who of late 

has begun calling me 

by my given name

not the shortened version I usually offer 

to those who cannot roll their R’s

Oh what are you bringing me today? 

I ask José in a way befitting our 

developing chumminess 

jovial (I suppose)

workplace banter

José responds with a feisty What’s up Papi!

“I’m bringing the vote that made us win,” he adds.

Takes me a second or two to process that.

“Us?” I say as I sign for the soft pack. “Win?”

The reality I was keeping at bay 

swoops right back down

claws extended open beak 

letting out a hellish screech

the reality that filtered into my sleep

last night 

as if water through strata and monsters

as votes were being counted:

The sweaty

bald man  a cross 

between a comic book villain

and a Bond baddie

in whose servitude I seemed to be

genuflecting and smiling as I fanned

the villain’s ego with nodding approval

as he pulled me into his chest

squeezing out my breath

José     who the other day told me 

he had a daughter 

(I’m thinking of his daughter)

and once tried to serve 

in the military 

smiles and pops back 

into the freight elevator

Us? Who’s “us”? 

All I do is smile back, 

parcel in hand, 

doors closing.

Guillermo Filice Castro is the author of Mixtape for a War and Agua, Fuego. His work appears in many journals, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and featured in The Best American Poetry 2023. Born and raised in Argentina, he lives with his husband in New Jersey.

I WANT TO MEET THE OWNER OF THE FIRST BOOKSTORE BROUGHT DOWN BY AMAZON

Confession of a UPS Driver

by T. R. Poulson

Amazon opens up Prime delivery service to other retailers in its latest move to compete with FedEx and UPS. —CNBC, April 21, 2022

I want to find a bar on a dark street

with a strange name, tucked in a city

I’ve never visited. I want to meet

the bankrupt bookstore owner, and make witty 

conversation only two passionate lovers

of books would understand. I’d order wine

and tell her I’ve punched gate codes, delivered

books from Amazon to folks off Skyline

Boulevard.  I’d say I’m sorry.  We would joke

about Anne Sexton, Dr. Seuss, and obscure 

heroes, villains. We’d share more wine, poke

fun at Hamlet, digress to Joshua, to a hooker

named Rahab, who once hung a red ribbon   

to save herself when foreigners toppled 

the walls of Jericho. We’d talk about hidden

twists and plots and dialog, hobbled

horses lipping grain from hands. We’d tell

secrets about who fucks whom and for how

much money. At two AM, we’d say farewell.

I’d pay the tab. I’d mingle, flirt, allow

a sleazy drunk to take me home, pretend

that everything he did to me felt good. 

T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada alum and proud Wolf Pack fan, lives in San Mateo, California.  Her work has appeared in various journals, including Rattle, Mezzo Cammin, Booth, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, and previously in The New Verse News.  She supports her poetry habit by working as a UPS driver.

AMERICAN PLAGUE

by Jan Steckel

“Bug Bell Jar 3” Color Screen Print on 250gsm Stonehenge by Emma Wiesenekker

Ensconced in my 1926 paint-peeling
clapboard-rotting Oaktown bungalow
on the eleventh day of George Floyd
I-Can’t-Breathe marches, three months
into COVID-19 Bay Area lockdown.
Ate the last big-pharm pain pill.
Looters hit our CVS, so I’m texting
photos to GreenRush Cannabis Delivery:
driver’s license, medical marijuana card,
a postmarked envelope to me myself,
so they’ll hand-deliver me CBD balm.
Those dudes are intrepid: not rain
nor snow nor sleet nor tear gas. I could just
handshake-buy shake from the boys
hanging out unmasked in front
of the Korean liquor store all day,
but I’m trying to preserve that fragile
lung tissue, don’t want to aggravate
my alveoli, because I’m high-risk
four different ways. I no longer
venture out of my crib, just click
click click my thumbs while humming
"We Shall Overcome" to the rhythm
of flash bangs and helicopter blades.
Once I marched for Black Lives Matter.
Now I’m a bug in a bell jar launching
bucks through the ether at bail funds.
My hair grows in wavy and gray.
For exercise I prune deadfall,
clear long grass and blackberry vines
from the  backyard fence,
waiting for fire season to spark,
black smoke to roll. Oh Lord when
will we all be able to breathe?


Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who stopped practicing medicine because of chronic pain. Her latest poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, December 2018) is a finalist for poetry in the Bi Book Awards. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, TheNewVerse.News, November 3 Club, Assaracus and elsewhere.

ODE TO MY SHOPPER

by Sharon Olson

I was seventy-one and still counting
when I counted the grocery bags arriving
at my front door, each one labelled
I guess for the shopper’s convenience,
some mnemonic only he had derived,
Poems 1 of 8, Poems 2 of 8, and so forth,
and they were like poems, each item
of slightly different size and voice,
tuna can haikus next to sonnets of milk.

I chalked it up to coincidence, until
the next week new bags came, this time
marked Lyric 1 of 7, Lyric 2 of 7, so
we knew we were in some sort of
telepathic, telegrammatic finger-
tapping sync-apathy, as if he knew
I must write poems and would eat
to write them, not eating words
but snippets of lyric, edible syllables.

The market has stipulated one week
between orders, and I am as I said
earlier seventy-one and still counting.
And so I find myself wondering
what the next code will bring, what
subliminal message my messenger
will write to signal our connection.
He must be a poet, too, composing
behind the front lines and so essential.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, 71 and still counting. 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. She lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where along with everyone else she waits it out. Her grocery bags truly did arrive marked as mentioned in the poem.

TWENTY QUESTIONS: THE AMAZON DRONE

by Earl J. Wilcox

Is it bigger than a bread box?
Animal, mineral, or vegetable?
Does it leap over tall buildings?
Will rain or sleet or gloom of night stop it?
Can I get two with egg rolls?
Is there an extra shipping charge?
Does it know I live in Mom’s basement?
Can I still have my copy of Playboy delivered here?
Will it bring me ice cream in July?
Can it find me in North Dakota—or Timbuktu?
How much should I tip it?
Where will it sleep at night after a hard day?
Can it ring my door bell?
Will a flock of birds threaten it?
Will it scare my cat?
Can I kill it with my BB gun?
What will happen to my UPS guy?
Does it have gender?
Will there be a graveyard for defunct drones?
Is this the way the world ends?


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to TheNew Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.