NEW YORK CITY, 7 AM, SUNDAY, 2026

by Naomi Pliskow

Fat pigeons peck hopefully

at Saturday night’s scat–

tickets, receipts, ketchup-stained napkins–

dotting grey cement as though they were 

the leaves of autumn.

 

The Saturday night squawks and judders, 

the clangs and gulps and sighs,

are replaced by an echoing quiet,

as though covered by a layer of soft cotton

intruded on only by pigeon murmurs and 

the petulant honk 

of a single metal beast on rubber legs

piloted by some human who didn’t   

make it home last night.

 

The smell of sweat and alcohol

from a hooded passerby  

interrupts the aroma   

of bread baked at four this morning

when the baker’s dark hands grasped soft white dough 

trying to hold on to these islands 

for just a little while longer

before being forced to return  

to his ravaged own,

where people peck for leavings

like hopeful morning pigeons

and bake bitterness into 

every scarce loaf.

Naomi Pliskow published her first poetry collection in a three-ring binder at age eight. She recently returned to writing poetry after a long hiatus. Her poems have been published in One Art, Adanna, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Canary, and several anthologies. Her satirical song lyrics were published in The New York Times in 2024. Her chapbook Entering the Water will be released in September of 2026. She is editor of the Philadelphia Mad Poets Society newsletter.

AFTER THE LATEST IMMIGRATION RAIDS IN LOS ANGELES

by Carrie Farrar

 

Thousands of people rallied at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on Friday [May 1] calling for legal protections and citizenship for immigrants and dignity for all workers. Janitors, stadium workers, car wash workers and educators stood shoulder-to-shoulder Friday with students, faith leaders and other community members for the annual May Day event, which is also celebrated around the world as International Workers’ Day. More than 125 pro-immigrant and social justice organizations mobilized their members under the banner “Solo el Pueblo Shuts it Down – No Work, No School, No Shopping,” according to a press release by the LA May Day Coalition. Photo by Martín Macías, Jr. —Los Angeles Public Press

They came as Michoacán, Jalisco, & Oaxaca,
feet tuned to rhythms of banda & norteño.
They came to roof houses in Inglewood & Watts,

to pick strawberries near Oxnard, to bus tables
on Figueroa, to fix rebar & copper in Compton,
to patch asphalt along Florence & Avalon.

They built drywall & scaffold
wedged into their place in South Central.
Decades of smog changed the skyline,

from oil pumps to cranes, & dream-footed
hard work rattled their bones.
They danced Zapateado. They lived

& died. Shrouded in flags, in unmarked graves,
in deportation vans idling at dawn again,
the headline already scrolling beneath the weather.

ICE owned them in neighborhoods of fear,
in alleys of Pico-Union where whispers
outlasted the sirens,

where this week’s footage loops
hands zip-tied outside a parking lot
no one will name twice.

Before developers arrived, bougainvillea
crept over chain-link & memory,
the scent of carne asada mixing
with jet fuel from LAX.

Did descendants & newcomers shoulder
the same dread, hauling drywall,
eyes darting at the low hum of drones?

Soon, footsteps of downtown’s marble lobbies
strutted overhead, back & forth
between old denials & new arrivals,

going from major to minor violence,
always on the go. The knock of boots,
the tap of a badge awaking the dead.

 

Carrie Farrar is a Los Angeles–based poet whose work explores labor, displacement, and the emotional architecture of survival. Her poems have appeared in several online literary journals.

LEARNING HER ABCs

by Madlynn Haber

A tiny girl, with sweet face, gentle features,

soft voice, recites her ABCs for me.

She learned them from an older, bolder cousin. 

The speech is hard for my aged ears to decipher. 

Mingled languages, English, Spanish, baby talk, 

an imitation of the elder cousin’s careful pronunciation. 

She smiles shyly, appreciating my attentive listening 

without noticing my lack of comprehension.

Her mother was not deported today.

 

The mother showed up at the immigration center 

with the little girl in her arms. The fearful father 

stayed home. Bail money collected by well-meaning 

neighbors filled her pockets, just in case.

Sighs of relief as she returns with a four-month reprieve. 

The little one will know her letters and some numbers, 

in English, the language of the only home 

she's ever known, by the time she escorts her mother 

to the immigration office again in July.

Madlynn Haber is the author of Seasons of Sorrow and Joy (Metaphysical Fox Press, 2025). She lives in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts.Her writing has been published in many literary journals and anthologies including, Eunoia Review, Months to Years, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and The Metaworker Literary Magazine.

SAY THEIR NAMES

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday read aloud a passage of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s memoir in which she describes shooting her pet dog, Cricket, during a committee markup on a bill related to deporting migrants who harm animals. —The Hill, November 18, 2025

She killed the dog, he said,

reading from her own words,

shot a puppy not yet grown,

its unruliness put down.

 

Fourteen months young,

he spoke the name so we could

witness her transgression,

not the puppy’s—Cricket.

 

Some snickered at the obvious,

a killer of dogs in charge,

rounding up castaways

for gravel pits unknown. 

 

It’s no joke.

 

Some countered stories

from the other side, 

of beagles left behind in labs,

abuse for an abuse.

 

What about that?

 

All agreed that dogs must

not be harmed. 

Save them all from 

cruelty’s bloody hands.

 

We vouch for Cricket’s rights

as we shout for human rights,  

to live without fear or discrimination.

We need to say all their names.

 

She killed the dog; in her own 

words, she hated the dog.

 

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing, as well as the importance of shared stories.

WE WATCHED WHITE LOTUS HAPPILY DURING THE FALL OF AMERICA

by Hilary King
 
      After Ilya Kaminsky and Mike White

And when they deported immigrants, we 

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
 
enough. I was
watching Season 3, around my couch America
 
was falling: amendment by amendment by amendment.
 
I took a spritz outside and watched the next episode.
 
In the endless month
of a monstrous reign in the house of distraction
 
in the channel of distraction in the podcast of distraction in the For You page of distraction,
our great country of distraction, we (save us)
 
needed to know who died.

Hilary King is a poet now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her book Stitched on Me was published by Riot in Your Throat Press in 2024. She loves hiking, travel, and White Lotus.

LIKE WHEN THEY TRY TO SLASH MEDICAID, ETC

by Lynne Schilling

          After Al Ortolani

Representative Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri and a member of the Freedom Caucus, said it was “inappropriate” for Republicans to say that they “aren’t going to touch” Medicaid — a phrase that Mr. Trump has used — and then “leave all that fraud in the system.” He suggested that provider taxes, which states use to offset their portion of the cost of Medicaid, were a form of “fraud” that he would want to eliminate. —The New York Times, May 29, 2025. AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Protected by the roof of the porch, a robin has tucked her
nest on top of the artificial spring wreath hung on the front 
door, with easy access to grass and flowers and oak tress—
 
showing she knows something about location, location, location
in picking real estate. But when the door swings open, she flies
flustered from the nest, fussing nearby until the door closes.
 
It’s like finding the foundation underneath the kids’ bedroom 
is cracked. Like attempting to eat cherry ice cream on a steamy 
afternoon in a cone that has a hole in the bottom, or trying 
 
to drink a cup of scalding coffee on a train when it lurches. 
It’s like believing your child is safe because she is American 
born, only to see her swept up by ICE and sent to Honduras. 
 
Mothers need to be flexible, but there are so many openings 
to peril, so many teeth in the mouth of despair. They might tie 
themselves in knots, but even the most agile can’t block it all.

Lynne Schilling has published poems in Quartet, The Alchemy Spoon, Rue Scribe, Braided Way Magazine and others. She won Honorable Mention in the 2024 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest for her poem, “Prayers I Wish I’d Uttered When Forced to Pray Aloud in Fifth Grade.”

SUBJUNCTIVE

by Adrienne Pilon

Source: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at Instagram

If I write we are going to the sea if I write
shall be free if I write Palestine if I write 
protest or encampment or salaam
my brother if I write Allah if I write 
genocide if I write bombing or Gaza  
or Hamas if I write Zionist if I write
apartheid or war crimes if I write 
nearly 50,000 dead or children are dying
or ceasefire now these words may 
rise up from the text, flagged and marked 
by a force that gives no quarter 
to what it does not care to understand.
The ink of my pen draws a target 
on my back on the back of my mother 
my father my wife my husband 
my daughter my son my sister 
my brother salaam my brother 
salaam salaam salaam salaam

Adrienne Pilon is a writer, educator, and activist. Recent and forthcoming work appears in The Tiger Moth Review; Room; Tendon Magazine and elsewhere.

A DAY IS NOT A DAY

by Erin Murphy

AI-generated image by imbox sanothai via Dreamstime

“House Republican leaders on [March 11, 2025] quietly moved to shield their members from having to vote on whether to end President Trump’s tariffs… essentially [declaring] the rest of the year one long day.” —The New York Times

A day is not a day.

A night is not a night.

A star is not a star.

Sunrise is not sunrise.

Rain is not rain.

A robin is not a robin.

A song is not a song.

Darkness is not dark.

 

Reality is not real

and neither is steam

from a whistling teakettle

or the smell of fresh basil

on your fingers

hours after you make pesto

or the calligraphy

of hoof prints in virgin snow

or the neon cotton candy

of northern lights

in Zion National Park.

 

Hunger is not hunger.

A lie is not a lie.

A gun is not a gun.

Fear is not fear.

A deported neighbor

was never here at all,

never taught your son

to dribble a fútbol

in the alley between

your homes.

 

Silence is not silence.

 

A day is not a day.

A year is not a year.

A lifetime is not a life.

 

A kiss is just a kiss,

Dooley Wilson sang

in Casablanca.

But a kiss is not a kiss.

It didn’t lead to love

or lust, not even for

your parents which means,

of course, you don’t exist.

You could tell your analyst

but your analyst is not

an analyst. And no matter

what he says, a cigar

is not a cigar.

 

A poem is not a poem.

Ce n'est pas un poème.

A rose is not a rose is not

a rose is not a rose. We are

not who we think we are.

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review.

GENESIS 2025

by Michael Dorian

Source: Seattle Times

In the beginning

He pardoned all the seditionists.

Now the nation was barren and shapeless,

darkness was upon the land

and He said, “Let there be lies,”

and there were lies.

He saw the lies were good

and He separated the lies from the truth.

He called the lies “truth”

and He called the truth “lies.”

And there was evening 

and there was morning—

the first day

And He said, "Let me stop the wildfires

scorching the pretty landscaping

and those expensive houses. 

I know some people in L.A., some 

very wealthy, well-connected people."

And He released with almighty force

from his gullet a torrent of water pressure

the likes of which no man had beheld.

And the fires stopped burning.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the second day

And He said, "Let the illegal immigrants

in the land be returned whence they came."

So with a gust of His great breath

He swept them all up in a glorious gale

and blew back to homelands the vermin, 

scattered like so much feed.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the third day.

And He said, "Let me build a big beautiful wall

And He saw it was a good wall,

a great wall, better than China’s,

The Greatest Wall Of All Time

that anyone has ever seen anywhere

on Earth or any planet in our 

Solar System or even in all of Space,"

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fourth day.

And He said, "Let me stop the war in Ukraine."

And a great swathe of his carefully—

coiffed hair sent all the soldiers

toppling like toys back into their

respective sovereign countries

(with Russia gaining great areas

of formerly Ukrainian land)

and the bloodshed ceased 

like the last lilting notes 

of cherubs’ trumpeted fanfare.

And He saw this was good

(for Putin and Himself, anyway)

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fifth day.

And He said, "Let me drill, baby, drill!"

So with tremendous huffing and puffing

He had an angel, a female one, fluff

His manhood until it stood,

a tower of steel shining in the sun,

and He poked it in and pulled it out

with enduring virility

until he had poked 

many a holy hole 

deep into the Earth’s womb

and into 625 million acres

of preserved coastal seawaters

and the nation became richer with crude.

And the land and great numbers

of its people were crude.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the sixth day.

And on the 7th day

He played golf and he cheated.

Once upon a time, Michael Dorian had a collection of poems and a play in one act published by Silk City Press entitled "The Nektonic Facteur.”  He likes to think that when the going gets tough, the tough write poems.