ALTERCATION IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

by Jerome Betts

The war-time dead, thanks be, sleep sound
Where laid to rest in hallowed ground
Immune to campaign cheers and boos
Or use by self-obsessed yahoos.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online.

INCIDENT ON SALISBURY PLAIN

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

 

An orange mist; the towering rocks cried, wept 
liquid marmalade down their ancient faces.
Such desecration. For more than three-and-a-half thousand years, 
the henge has stood strong, an important place 
in the past, and for many, today. 
 
Grey pitted sarsen stones, silent above 
modern protestors, who spray orange dye
across this British site. Who are you,
puny people to destroy our heritage?

 
Susan J. Wurtzburg received 1st place in the Land of Enchantment Award, 2024, the Save Our Earth Award, 2024, and the Elizabeth M. Campbell Poetry Award, 2022, and was a semi-finalist in the Crab Creek Review Poetry Competition 2022, and in the Naugatuck River Review's 14th Narrative Poetry Contest, 2022. She was a Community Poet in the Spring 2023 Poetry Workshop, Westminster College, Salt Lake City. Wurtzburg is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024. Her poetry book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas will appear in spring, 2025.

THE FLAG OUTSIDE A NEIGHBOR'S DOOR

by Jean L. Kreiling

Just down the street, outside a neighbor’s door, 
it reaches up and out, as if for hope 
or heaven, in an effort to restore 
its honor and resist the downward slope 
traversed by those who lied, who followed liars, 
who beat a man with those same stripes and stars, 
who lit and fanned and spread murderous fires 
that left some dead, the rest of us with scars. 
I see Old Glory fluttering in the breeze— 
but elsewhere, desecrated by a gang 
of thugs, it symbolized not liberties 
and laws, but rage, and justice by flash-bang. 
I miss the days when I was confident 
about what flags by neighbors’ front doors meant. 
 

Jean L. Kreiling is the author of two collections of poetry: Arts & Letters & Love (2018) and The Truth in Dissonance (2014).  Her work has been honored with the Able Muse Write Prize, the Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters Sonnet Prize, the Kelsay Books Metrical Poetry Prize, a Laureates’ Prize in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, three New England Poetry Club prizes, the Plymouth Poetry Contest prize, and the String Poet Prize. 

WILDER MANN

by Martha McCollough

zombie daddy trudges on / grudges flying / bringing you your big chance / to shit in marble hallways / what a land of opportunity / for a sweaty daddy / poor daddy / his pinhole hungry-ghost mouth / starving starving / rubbing up against the teevee / daddy eating up the low-class love / slabface swelling & yelling / nooooooo / bloody crash of murder clown car / tactical antlers tangled / kevlar hooves sliding on the pedals / daddy’s at the wheel singing / all the way to / mother of mercy / is this the end of daddy

Originally from Detroit, Martha McCollough now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. She has an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Radar, Zone 3, Tampa Review, and Salamander, among others. Her chapbook Grandmother Mountain was published by Blue Lyra Press in October 2019.  

VANDALISM AT A MILITARY CEMETERY

by Janice D. Soderling

Dozens of Commonwealth graves have been daubed with swastikas and other symbols at a cemetery dedicated to those fought in the first and second world wars. The headstones were vandalised with red spray paint overnight at the Haifa war cemetery in northern Israel, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). It comes just days after several other Commonwealth graves were knocked over at Belfast City Cemetery in Northern Ireland. —The London Economic, October 11, 2019

Indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
the dusty lads sleep on.
Allied in unilateral descent,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
and to the tiffs of kings or president.
Unmindful of thick darkness and bright dawn,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent
the dusty lads sleep on.

Janice D. Soderling, poet, writer and translator, is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work in Spanish translation was recent at La libélula vaga and her own translations from Swedish to English are forthcoming at Better than Starbucks.