PINS ON THE MAP

by J. Alan Nelson

 

After spending some of his prime years aiding German concentration camp survivors and guarding Nazi leaders tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg, a US second world war veteran is now believed to have become his country’s oldest known organ donor. The story of 100-year-old Dale Steele (above), who died in February after a head injury led to his being placed on life support, demonstrates how donors’ health is a more important consideration than how old they are, according to Live On Nebraska, an organ-procurement organization in his home state. “Mr Steele … is a powerful reminder that generosity has no age limit,” Live On Nebraska’s president and CEO, Kyle Herber, said in a statement. —The Guardian, March 13, 2026

Whenever I swear I don’t care anymore,
I open the phone, that glowing atlas,
and touch the red pins I dropped like blood drops
across the skin of the world.

One for the women I fucked in borrowed rooms,
their breath hot against my neck, thighs parting
like pages in a book I never finished reading.
One where Father left the dog behind,
old mutt howling at the empty driveway,
a childhood door slammed shut forever.

One where I straddled a pine like Frost’s secret rider,
sap sticky on my palms, wind laughing through needles.
One where I held the knife above an evil man’s throat,
his wife asleep beside him, innocent as milk,
and mercy rose up, sour and sudden,
and I walked away empty-handed.

One for the half-mile district win,
lungs burning, crowd a blur of small-town faces.
One for the bear in the Rockies,
black eyes meeting mine, both of us startled
into stillness, two animals deciding not to fight.

One where I sank into Icelandic snowdrift,
white world swallowing me whole,
cold like a lover who won’t let go.
One for the switchblade in Mexico,
cold steel kissing my throat,
I tasted metal and my own pulse.

One where I crashed Clinton’s party,
slipped past Secret Service like a dream,
shook the president’s hand, felt history
warm and ordinary in my grip.

I pin these moments still,
geography of scars and small triumphs.

Late nights when the step counter mocks me,
a few thousand short of ten,
I walk the empty streets at ten p.m.,
beer can sweating in my fist,
streetlights buzzing like tired blues.

On my pointer fingers, tattoos: RS and LP,
right starboard, left port,
so even drunk I know which way the ship turns.

And somewhere in Nebraska,
a hundred-year-old veteran, Dale Steele,
WWII quiet in his bones,
gives his liver after death,
organ young as three, they say,
regenerating cells like a river keeps running,
old body gifting what still lives.

I think of him when I pin another dot:
a man who outlasted war, depression, time,
then handed over the soft machine inside him
so someone else could keep breathing.

The map glows.
I zoom in, zoom out.
Infinity folds in on itself,
tessellations, impossible stairs,
hyperbolic curves bending away forever.

Yet here I am,
walking home under stars,
beer almost gone,
still pinning,
still caring,
one small step at a time.

J. Alan Nelson, a poet, actor, lawyer and journalist, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of Net and Best Microfiction. He played the lead in the viral video Does This Cake Make Me Look Gay, the verbose “Silent Al” in HBO’s Emmy-winning SXSWestworld, and narrated New York Times videos on AIDS programs in Africa.  

ALOPECIA

by Annie Cowell

My friend’s hair fell out.

Head, brows, lashes, body; every single hair.

One day she was lustrous, the next day naked. 

No explanation and no cure. Of course 

she will not die; there are 

far worse things to endure.

But for a while she could not face her world.

The daily chores, so simple and routine

became an endless round of hows and whys,

of sympathetic nods or stifled smiles.

And she felt lost, stripped bare;

her confidence destroyed.

And so she had her brows tattooed,

glued on false eyelashes,

bought wigs in different styles.

Found ways she could disguise the 

bald and brutal fact that

she would never feel, or look the same again.

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON

by Gail White

Explosions in Kyiv heard live on air https://t.co/JGLvh4k8tX

— HectorM (@JaguarVer) February 24, 2022

All times are times of impending doom,

If one knows how to read the signs.

But old gods walk through the living room

And lay down nets and fishing lines.

Clutching the mesh, I begin to seek

Wonders and signs I’ve let slip by:

The fish impaled on the heron’s beak

Miraculous as the butterfly.

Between war and depression the end will come.

With plague and famine we take our chance.

But the cat moves her kittens one last time,

And the sandhill crane does a mating dance.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

CRACKING THE CODE

by Dick Westheimer

This annotated image was taken by a parachute-up-look camera aboard the protective back shell of NASA's Perseverance rover during its descent toward Mars' Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. Using binary code, two messages have been encoded in the neutral white and international-orange parachute gores (the sections that make up the canopy's hemispherical shape). The inner portion spells out "DARE MIGHTY THINGS," with each word located on its own ring of gores. The outer band of the canopy provides GPS coordinates for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the rover was built and the project is managed. —NASA, February 25, 2021


Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. —Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life," April 10, 1899

The drogue deployed in a blue black sky
pulled nine Gs as it slowed the rover’s descent 
a rosette of white and red, it opened wide—
revealed to an observant few, a code

that drove the NASA team, words that T.R. wrote
of a strenuous life, of toil and hardship
of failure and strife: these are not a footnote
but the stuff of creation, of life’s drift

from the gray twilight to glorious triumphs.
There is no “easy peace,” just all the mighty things
from day to day, from here to enough
of how we end and how we begin, like

dying well
washing the dead
tending the sick
writing the one poem
writing the other
giving birth
being born
sitting silently, leaned against a tree
sitting silently 
listening
hearing
passing by a panhandler
sitting by a panhandler
depressed, getting up in the morning 
sleep deprived, suckling a baby
wiping shit from the butt of an aged parent
knowing from the taste of soil if it’s sweet
forgiving a friend
learning birdsongs.


Dick Westheimer writes poetry to makes sense of the world—which is made easier by the company of his wife of 40 years, and the plot of land they’ve worked together for all of those years. His poems have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, For a Better World, and Riparian.

"PERHAPS YOU SHOULD ADOPT A MORE CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ORIENTATION"

by Katherine West

In Memoriam for victims of the Rochester, New York shooting.

My doctor suggests after a complete physical 

He has failed to discover 

The source of my trouble 

Though I feel as if I will never recover 

He finds nothing in the blue pools of my eyes 

What could cause this endless weeping?

Blood pressure numbers don't lie

I will have a long time yet to live 

No medication for what ails me 

I am simply living inside-out 

He seems to imply, wearing my heart on my sleeve 

Where it has no business being, it has no clout 

In the streets, in the slums 

At the parties that are not fun 

Where students lie in pools of blood 

Too much love, he claims, not enough guns

Too much love, he claims, not enough guns 

Where students lie in pools of blood 

At the parties that are not fun 

In the streets, in the slums 

Where it has no business being, it has no clout 

He seems to imply, wearing my heart on my sleeve

I am simply living inside-out 

No medication for what ails me 

I will have a long time yet to live 

Blood pressure numbers don't lie 

What could cause this endless weeping?

He finds nothing in the blue pools of my eyes 

Though I feel as if I will never recover 

The source of my trouble 

He has failed to discover 

My doctor suggests after a complete physical 

"Perhaps you should adopt a more 

conservative political orientation."

Katherine West is the author of three collections of poetry and one novel: Scimitar Dreams, The Bone Train, Riddle, and Lion Tamer, respectively.  She has had poetry published in Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, Tanka Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and TheNewVerse.News who nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  She lives in the mountains outside of Silver City, New Mexico where she translates Mexican revolutionary poetry and creates custom, hand-made poetry chapbooks.

UNTITLED FOURTH OF JULY POEM

by Roberta Santlofer

Full "Buck" Moon and penumbral eclipse July 4-5, 2020.

It is after midnight
But I wouldn’t know it here
For staying stuck in my apartment
In bed with depression

Bus went –––––
I was just glancing out
My half-open bathroom window
After a warm July day

I often glance out at night
See into the towers along my street
See the low room stuck in
Behind my neighbor’s fallen tree
The branches dividing the light

Yet the brightness
Even more important
& personal
Being low

A lantern
Put up in
The air party
Maybe the moon
Did come down
Stayed in
Helped branches
Avoid the night’s blasting
Bright skies
Lit with Fourth of July fireworks

The moon feeling a little
Tame / timid / small
Among the blasting spectrum
Of color

But the true story of light—
The moon has discreetly mastered it

Roberta “Bobby” Santlofer (1943-2020) was a mother of sons, an avid reader, and a poet. A posthumous collection of her poetry is forthcoming.

IF

by Jasmine Kitses

Photo by RYAN REMIORZ/THE CANADIAN PRESS via The Globe and Mail (Canada)

If taking a nap means
                                    weeping
if the whole sky
            lets go of its corners
if you feel empty
        for no reason
full
                                for no reason—


if we could
let ourselves
be riveted
to this          
very moment


Jasmine Kitses is a poet from San Francisco.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 90 DAYS

by David Feela

Launch of the Montgolfier hot air balloon, Versailles, September 19,  1783

By the time the postponed IRS deadline arrives
the coronavirus may have circled the globe
a few more times. Still, at least a year
before you declare that smaller income,
due to a lay off, or a business closing down
when the traditional cash flow failed to levitate
like little green carpets on a magic profit ride.

Who would have predicted it requires a lifetime
to recover from the death of a loved one
so suddenly seized by the thumbs, no time to pack,
as if lifted by a balloon—a Montgolfier feat—
beyond belief, these abiding incalculable losses.


David Feela writes columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres.

CORONA

by Dale Wisely

Daffodil corona by Nick Harris

                           1

Crown of stars

Corona

The rarefied gaseous envelope
          of stars, our sun

Unfathomable halo,
           obscured by the relentless
           blaze of plasma, hydrogen, and helium

Only a perfect eclipse—
          miracle of astronomic alignment—
          permits us a glimpse
          of the pearly glow
          flaring out from the black disk
          of the superimposed moon

                          2

Crown of thorns

We take care not to confuse
          illness with death,
          or melancholy with mourning

Now our sickness and our death
          seem inseparable and
          we are blind to the distinction

And in these days
          depression and grief
          run along parallel lines
          and converge on the horizon

          under a crown of flames
          under a crown of glory


                   3

Crown of flowers

Corona

Shaped like a cup or a trumpet,
     the flared center of the common daffodil

amaryllis     paperwhite    triandrus      narcissus  

a perennial: it flowers, dies—

but the gardener does not say it dies,
          she says it “dies back”

It is time to sort our sickness from our death

Die back and grow again another year

Author’s Note: Some of the language in part 1 is from the Google dictionary entry for “corona.” Howie Good contributed the “crown of …” phrases.

Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound which publishes four journals: Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unbroken, and Unlost.  His chapbook Seven Stars is out in April 2020.

'TIS THE SEASON?

by George Salamon

Richard Johnson received a cup of hot gumbo from a Free Hot Soup volunteer in Prospect Plaza Park in Kansas City, Mo., on Nov. 18. City officials say the group’s efforts do not comply with food safety ordinances.Credit: Chase Castor for The New York Times

'Twas the season to open hearts and wallets,
The season to shelter the homeless,,
The season to feed the hungry
'Twas a spell of Sunday spirit in a Monday world.
Those were the days, but they did end,
Authorities now warn us that by
Doing good, we're doing wrong.

You must remember this:
In the hard times of the Great Depression
Those not ravaged by its deprivations
Felt the despair of two million
Surviving in tent cities across the land.
But now, after the Great Recession, after
Wall Street's Ponzi-schemed pillage,
The hearts of the wealthy and the well-off
Are stone cold.

They do not care to understand
Those drowning in hopelessness,
Choking on their own rage and
Left behind by our master The Market.
Pitiless they peer at the plight
Of half a million, sleeping nightly
On cities streets, too close to
Their homes and their offices.

Once our leaders and those who
Whispered in their ears were shamed
Into helping the victims of their follies,
Compelled by morality based on empathy..
Now their hearts and minds remain
Chained to the vantage point of the self, from which
They sneer and snicker at common humanity
As foolish fantasy or fear and fight it as looming nightmare.

But who dares to predict if a society,
Seeking to regain past affluence and power,
Will someday fashion for itself a larger identity,
And one more humane, from the slumbering
Largesse in the hearts of its members?

George Salamon arrived in the United States in 1948 and was struck by the largesse he came across among Americans from different backgrounds and classes. He sees it in action today, but rarely among the rich and powerful or the "best and brightest." He lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

THUMPED

by Peter Krass

Caricature by DonkeyHotey

We get up from bed, but can’t be awake.
This must be a bad dream, a nightmare,
though sunlight burns behind the window shade,
a car’s engine growls back at a dog
taking its first morning dump
and the overhead neighbors clomp across the ceiling.
If only our thoughts could rise to that elevation.
Instead, they lie on the floor, then sink lower,
unable to stand, let alone walk.
Even pajamas no longer see the point.
Why bother getting dressed? they ask.
Coffee reminds us of other nightmares,
ones from which we could shake ourselves awake.
Also that dream of a gushing waterfall,
beautifully treacherous, alluringly violent,
and when we awoke, the bedsheet cold and wet
with embarrassing urine, leading us to wonder
if that were the beginning
of our own ignoble, feeble decline.
That must be what’s happening now,
the end of a dream, the start
of an ending, a crisis in formation,
this time involving everyone and something
even worse, more disgusting, terrible.

Peter Krass is a freelance writer and editor living in Brooklyn, N.Y. He teaches creative writing at The Writers Studio in New York, and he recently served as poetry co-editor for a forthcoming issue of Epiphany that will celebrate The Writers Studio's 30th anniversary.

X GAMES

by Mark Danowsky

The BMX icon Dave Mirra took his own life last week, shocking those who knew him and those who simply admired him through his sport. The question immediately arose as to whether CTE – a degenerative brain disease that arises from concussions and is associated with impaired judgment and depression – contributed to his death. —The Guardian, Feb. 10, 2016

Death finds us
alone, guard down

                                    a step away

This is your purpose
they said, fly

                                 good trick

And then descent
pressure, lost

                                 time

A pass on
your future, gift

                                 in memoriam

Caution ourselves
fragile, fierce

                                 we step mindful


Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba, Burningword, Cordite, Grey Sparrow, The Lake, Mobius, Right Hand Pointing, Red River Review, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and elsewhere. Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

NEW DEAL

by George Held

Image source: DonkeyHotey

The Thirties, the Honest Decade,
When the Depression made the US nation
Face its ragged heart and wretched soul.

The Obama Era, the rotten eight years
When the US nation let racism,
The feral cat, out of the bag again

And refused to face its ragged heart
And wretched soul, and let them fester
Like a million dreams deferred so long

They colored the land with blood
Spurting from myriad wounds inflicted
By AK-47 or Glock 9,

And now it’s time to choose whose
Name will label the next four or eight
Years, which flawed candidate

Is toxic enough to scare the US
Nation into facing its wounded fate,
Its ragged heart, its wretched soul.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

PUTIN'S STRIDE

by Bill Petz

George W. Bush infamously claimed to have looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes and gotten a “sense of his soul,” but perhaps he would have learned more by watching him walk. A recent paper in the British Medical Journal takes up the unexpected question of why Putin, as well as several of his subordinates, walk with an unusual gait, swinging the left arm normally but keeping the right arm close to the hip. Bastiaan R. Bloem, a neurologist at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands, says he was first tipped off to the strange gait by one of his former instructors, who noticed it in a video of the Russian president. For Bloem and his co-authors (all “movement disorder enthusiasts,” as he puts it), the video, and others in which Putin walks the same way, set off alarm bells since “unilaterally reduced arm swing” can be a sign of several neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. . . . Videos of other senior Russian officials show the same unusual gait, including Prime Minister (and former president) Dmitry Medvedev, former defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and current chief of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov. “The first thing that came to mind is, ‘What the heck? Is there a Parkinson’s epidemic in the Kremlin?’ ” says Bloem. Another possible explanation surfaced when one of Bloem’s colleagues found a KGB training manual, which instructs operatives that “[w]hen moving, it is absolutely necessary to keep your weapon against the chest or in the right hand. Moving forward should be done with one side, usually the left, turned somewhat in the direction of movement.” The authors have called the ex-KBG agent’s John Wayne–esque walk a “gunslinger’s gait.” This doesn’t mean, literally, that the president is packing. Putin probably never did much gunslinging in the KGB, where his job was to recruit potential operatives in East Germany, but the walk may be a tough-guy affectation akin to his often-coarse choice of language. “Putin is a macho leader who kept his gait to show that he is a KGB veteran,” Bloem says. --Slate, Dec. 15, 2015

Look at Putin's walk.
Right arm doesn't swing,
left does the usual thing.
Seems kinda awkward.

Dutch neurologists took a look.
Nothing new they say,
just a gunslinger's way.
It's in the KGB training book.

Faster to go for their guns.
It might just be,
but let's wait and see
if it's not Parkinson’s.

A loss of control,
dementia and depression
explain his aggression,
lack of soul.


Diagnosed with Parkinson's 10 years ago, Bill Petz' right arm doesn't swing without meds. He lives and writes in the mountains of western North Carolina. His work has been published in Status Hat, The Ashevillle Citizen-Times, The Chronicles of Higher Education, Artists & Writers Quarterly and TheNewVerse.News.

POSTPARTUM, NOVEMBER 22, 1963

by Penelope Scambly Schott

                                                                                                               
Do I need to say I was twenty-one, my boy just four months,
my breasts still tight with milk,

my bare feet unwrinkled, and even the part in my hair
was sad?

The apartment got smaller, the kitchen table uglier,
the window gray with fog,

and all I could breathe was diaper pail deodorant
and my husband’s indifferent tobacco.

My one comfort was the warm gust from the floor vent
ballooning my white flannel nightgown.

I had thought carefully about this whole situation
and because I did want to be a good mother,

I had decided I couldn’t proceed to poison myself
without suffocating my baby first.

Then the phone rang and somebody I barely knew
said, The President has been shot.

My tiny kitchen filled up with ambulances, black limos,
the book depository, the grassy knoll,

until the moment when Kennedy was pronounced dead,
and I stood there shocked and frozen,

and then, suddenly, it came to me that maybe,
just maybe, I didn’t need to kill us,

and as I stood there holding my jolly baby,
I breathed out from healthy young lungs

the waxy gardenias of the dead.


Penelope Scambly Schott’s newest books are Lovesong for Dufur and Lillie Was a Goddess, Lillie Was a Whore.   She lives in Portland and Dufur, Oregon.