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.”

IN CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND YOUR CONTROL

by Sara Sarna

"Broken Heart — Bleeding Heart" by Michal Boubin

You feel the cracking.

Vow to be a gap-filler,

leak-plugger,

like the boy at the dike,

who knows if he walks away,

the world drowns.

It seems there is no way

to stop things coming apart,

short of legions, armies

of the like-minded,

plugging holes.

But despair is pervasive,

contagious,

the goal all along.

Hold fast,

and I will hold you

and someone else 

will hold me

and on and on

until together we are 

stitch and bandage

to bind up the hurt,

the heart,

of a nation.

Sara Sarna is a poet, actor and hiker. She is a member of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Wisconsin Writers Association, and Write On, Door County. Her work has appeared in print, online, and been heard from stage and radio. Her chapbook Whispers from a Bench was published in 2020.

WAR CHILD

by Kay White Drew

“A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through.” —The Guardian, December 11, 2024

of course I’m sure this war will

kill me   please wipe the slate clean

this lifetime was an error   a mistake   our home

our village   pounded to rubble   our next

home rubble too   father shot dead   mother

sister   brothers   all gone   don’t know

if they’re alive   or dead   just me out here

alone in the rubble   not a scratch

on me   why have I been spared

I beg Allah   if he even exists  

to take me   to Paradise

can’t I please just  

get this over with

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in Bay to Ocean Journal, Pen in Hand, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Gargoyle, and New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband.

LOOK

by Mary McCarthy

It’s no fun to go to the circus

waiting for the high wire

dancer to fall

the lion tamer

to lose his head

to a fed up angry cat

the joy is in the crazy

risk and the win

always the win

the clowns tumbling

out a pantomime

of the ridiculous

how we all want

entertainment without pain

I can’t waste time estimating

just how bad it will be

how much damage

we’ll have to witness

as all these wheels

break away from their axles

and go careening

wildly into the crowd

disaster may be the only thing

we can depend on

But remember

there is no joy in retribution

you will only bury yourself in ash

feel your heart break

as consequences spread

past anything you bargained for

Remember

even the greatest crimes

the worst offenses

even those who sowed

acres of bones

burned the libraries

broke the backs of cities

scuttled the glories

of art they had no use for

never really won

from those bare salted fields

new crops arose

shedding tears and bitterness

eager to bloom and set fruit

in a world past catastrophe

always there waiting

ready to return

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World edited by Lorette Luzajic, The Plague Papers edited by Robbi Nester, The Memory Palace, edited by Lorette Luzajic and Clare MacQueen, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, the Storyteller Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible chronicles a bipolar journey and is now available from Kelsay Books.

NEXT MORNING TEXT TO A FRIEND

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Detail from “Morning Has Broken” (Oil and Acrylic on Canvas) by Brad Gray, 2017

I was despairing at 4 am—

 

I wrote the poem and sent it off . . .

 

I didn’t choose the illustration

 

Though I knew it was fitting a bit of a shock the bird a blue bird—something

 

Lifted—

 

My father didn’t serve in WWII

For freedom from dominance and division

For me to abandon the principle

 

The impulse—

 

That he passed away 22 years ago today on a Veterans Weekend is fitting—

 

What dawned in me this morning is what someone once called something like

 

Irregular reversal subversion—

 

What a morning like this one (not unlike the lines I wrote before these lines) calls forth or for

 

As if from a haunting (fathers poets birds)—

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds is grateful to The New Verse News. This poem was written in response to her own poem published on the site on 11/9/2024. The words irregular, reversal, and subversion are taken from a letter William Carlos Williams wrote to Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry, in 1913.

THIS MAN, 2024

a cento by Jacquelyn Shah

Source: Stablecog

How will the future reckon with this man?

  ––Edwin Markham, “The Man with the Hoe”

   

There is no shape more terrible than this––

. . . dangerous man . . .

ignorant demagogue . . .    

inscrutably smiling

thick with power oozed over branches,

the capitalistic offices

   . . . makes us all turn green with fright

and through the green his crimson furrow grooves.

He must have come up from a drain.

Knowing this man . . .

(mean, underhanded, lacking all attributes . . .)   

is a man who makes avenging armies.

He makes of laws

a broken staff,

disturbs polite conversation . . .

The knotted fabric of our lives,

our words, our lives, our pains––nothing!

We talk despairingly and drink our tea,

everyone a life alone.

All day, all night, we hear, we feel,

men, women in cities, multitudes, millions.

The dead and the dead

of spirit now joined . . .     

All––only putty that tyranny rolls

between its fingers . . .     

Poor people make poor land.

Author’s Note: Cento—lines & partial lines (occasional slight alterations), in order of appearance, from: Edwin Markham; Sarah N. Cleghorn, Cleghorn; Lola Ridge; Archibald Fleming; E. B. White; William Rose Benét; Roy Campbell; Alfred Hayes; Edwin Rolfe; Selden Rodman; S. Funaroff, Funaroff; Oscar Williams; Josephine W. Johnson; Baratolomeo Vanzetti; James Palmer Wade; James Agee; William Stephens; Eunice Clark; Frederic Prokosch, Prokosch; Hugh MacDiarmid, MacDiarmid; Pare Lorentz. All poets included in A New Anthology of Modern Poetry, 1939 Ed. Selden Rodman.

Jacquelyn Shah. A.B., M.A., M.F.A. & Ph.D.––English/creative writing. Publications: poetry chapbook, small fry; full-length poetry book, What to Do with Red; poems in journals. In 2023 her memoir Limited Engagement: A Way of Living was published, and she was a Pushcart Prize nominee for Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor.

MIDDLE EAST COUPLES COUNSELING

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Graphic by Marta Monteiro

France’s top diplomat Stephane Sejourne said Saturday his government will put forward a draft resolution at the UN Security Council setting out a “political” settlement of the Gaza war. Speaking at a press conference in Cairo, he said the text will include “all the criteria for a two-state solution” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the peace blueprint long championed by the international community but opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. —The Times of Israel, March 31, 2024

Two states would be the road to peace, 
An end to the despair. 
But both sides are like little kids
Who haven’t learned to share.


Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had two previous poems in The New Verse News.

A POEM FOR UKRAINE

by David James

“Writing My Heart Out,” a painting by Gladiola Sotomayor.

I want to write a poem that will lick

 

your heart clean,

that will make you forget every nightmare,

 

every cut and scrape, every syllable of bad news you’ve ever heard,

a poem that will close your eyes and let you dream

 

of another life, perfect in its arc, where

all things, dead or alive, bow to your smile,

 

all clouds move to your breath, birds and desires and wishes

land on your forearm when you call them.

 

I want to write a poem to send all sadness into exile,

to fit all pain and despair onto one gaudy blue dish

 

that you can toss outside and ignore,

a poem so quiet you never hear it

 

come into your life, sit on your couch, sleep in your bed,

never hear its small footsteps on the floor.

This poem, which must be written under a moonlit

sky with eleven stars and one dog barking in town,

 

will end the world as we know it. No more death

or hunger or war. No more aging or sickness or weeping.

 

No more walking with your feet on the ground.

David James’ most recent book is Alive in Your Skin While You Still Own It.

IF THIS WERE A SAM ALITO POEM

by Dick Westheimer

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision.

Then burn down the house to fulfill the prediction.

—Czeslaw Milsoz

If this were a Sam Alito poem,  it would be written in tidy couplets, matched in beat and time. It would forget that words are born from grunts and battle cries, that swords decide which terms can be used and which are taboo, that the right to cleave your neighbor with a steel blade is her duty to bear Samuel’s baby, the one he so loves, the one that he is willing to render in tersets and turds, to bang and clang the lines into refrigerator magnets with the only words being “life” and “thoughts” and “and” and “prayers.”

If this were an Amy Coney Barrett poem, The First Word In Each Line Would Be  Capitalized, the lines themselves would neatly rhyme, would chime with the rhythm of the Sainted Ones, entrain with the iambs of a military parade—with goose-stepping Aunties’ heads and staffs held high, saluting to the the crowd of Commander’s wives in their hues of blue, and to the Guardians of the Right who know a thing or two about the bump and mad grind, about how we’re all inclined to naughty deeds with the lights turned off with a glory hole chemise cagoule between a woman and the beasts with their hairy parts and the beat of steeple-hatted bigots stomping time on courthouse floorboards.

If this were a Clarence Thomas poem, the meter will be trochee, a hammer hammer hammer double time.  It would be a sestina cycling lines of the before times when men were men and women were not, when guns were muskets and books were sewn with linen thread, when Coke cans shed the hair of the dog that bit us all, when what was written in the age of powdered wigs was wise and there would be a crowning of a New King who’d reign over a land where men who held hands with men were melted down into guns anointed by boys who’d hold lead to the heads of women great with child.

And if this were my poem, the verse would be blank, the words mute, the letters scattered across the page. The white space would be smudged with ash, the margins smudged with blood and pocked with powder burns. The verse would exercise its right to remain silent, cuffed to a chair, pregnant, with despair.

Dick Westheimer  has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have recently appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Chautauqua Review, RiseUp Review, Ekphrastic Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat.

90TH BIRTHDAY IN KYIV

by Corey Weinstein

In just four weeks in the summer of 1941 the German Wehrmacht wrought unprecedented destruction on four Soviet armies, conquering central Ukraine and killing or capturing three-quarters of a million men. This was the battle of Kyiv–one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were taken in the aftermath of the battle of Kiev, but very few would survive German captivity. —Arthur Grimm, “Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East,” Semantic Scholar

I live in a breadbasket,

That’s the whole problem,

Fields of wheat, of barley

for the soup the family loves,

Carrots, onions, meat scraps

or beets for borscht that stains,

Blood reluctantly on our hands.

None of them: the Whites, the Reds,

the Iron Crossed Pure Whites,

the new Green with wallets and promises,

None of them know our voices,

taste our beautiful farms,

Now still again the Reds attack,

and we are stained again

with what must be done,

I was nine standing at the pit’s edge,

Some cheered, not me, some retched,

The ground heaved and belched for a week,

Father cooked their lunches, never recovered,

A drunk in Kyiv gutter dirty to the end.

Again the shrieks of bombs and moms,

Blasts and dust and blood in the air,

These Reds of famine and orders and lies

roll over our wintered earth to plant

their seeds of our despair, now still again.

Corey Weinstein is a retired homeopathic physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, California State Poetry Society, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He was an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.  

THE CALL

by Maria Lisella

The call came

A three-story roof,

not a big building

serious enough

to break bones.

A day later,

another call comes.

A room

at Jacobi.

 

I plan.

He drives.

I’m the passenger.

She’ll be there, you know.

I know, I hear myself say,

the mother is always there.

 

I hate

the stereotype, but it fits.

The mother takes him back.

He doesn’t get better.

He never leaves except

this way.

 

The cycle—failure,

salvation, failure,

a passive remote control.

Patched up.

Lateral moves

ward to ward.

Suicide watch.

 

From the parameter,

I watch.

Stepmother

not blood

not natural.

Despair respects no borders

legal, illegal.

 

You love what you touch,

love more what touches you.

Maria Lisella is the recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the American Academy of Poets and the author of Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings and is a travel writer by trade.

BACK BEHIND THE BURKA

by Virgilio Goncalves

A Taliban fighter walking past a beauty salon in Kabul on Wednesday.Credit: Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, August 19, 2021

for 20 years, hope:

a hint of freedom

a trace of peace

a slither of choice

 

finally, for women,

possibility of education

opportunity to have a voice

chance to walk streets without fear

 

within 20 days, despair:

that hint of freedom incinerated

like burning books

that trace of peace throttled

             like silent screams

that slither of choice sliced 

             like cut throats

 

amid

 

security intelligence

not worth a dime

 

and an avalanche of tears

never enough to drown foreboding

 

Virgilio Goncalves has been a journalist, teacher and tennis coach. He has a nomadic bent, having lived in various countries, including South Africa, Portugal and Australia. His poems and short stories have been published in Australian anthologies. Virgilio, as with other nomads, will forever be restless because his goal in life is to rid the world of misery.  

RE-THINKING BASIC DANCE STEPS

by Mary K O’Melveny

Lately, I have been thinking a lot

about dancing. Not actually doing it

myself – I was never very good at it –

but how I always imagined it must feel.

Like freedom. Like a grand escape.

Gravity left behind, shaking its weary head,

as I spin, turn, shimmy, spiral away

from heavy hearts, from memory’s drumbeat.

As if one might tap tap tap far away

from troubled minds to discover a brand

new stage where a leap of faith takes flight

on one’s own command. Where the only

things waiting in the wings like wallflowers

are lengthening shadows of regret.

 

Today, I crumpled up my privileged

dance card as I stared at photographs from

Kabul’s airport. It is impossible to fathom

the despair that sends one racing on foot

down airplane runways, clinging to wings

of jumbo jets as if they were old friends.

With each trip, slip, stumble, tumble to ground,

one sees how certainty of death also

means escape, albeit with less fanfare

than was craved in yesterday’s richer light.

Even as they strained for the upward lift,

those stranded, earth-bound crowds likely

knew how fickle dance partners can be, how

we must become our own choreographers.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

SONNET FOR THE COLLAR

by Diane Elayne Dees

The collar of dissent was pale and fragile—
deceptive, with its lace and quaint design.
She wore it with both dignity and humor;
yet it doubled as a sword. She had no fear—
her armor was devised of sacred words,
her ability to reason, and to plea
for equality for women, and for all
whose voices are dismissed and ridiculed.
The collar, a dainty symbol of our rage,
is woven from the threads of our despair.
It can’t be ripped or torn, or stained by hate,
yet on its own, it has no magic power.
It’s not enough to know how much it meant—
we have to put it on, we must dissent.

Diane Elayne Dees's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, Coronary Truth, is available from Kelsay Books. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world.

EASTER DAY: 2020

by Devon Balwit

The Empty Tomb by He Qi

Here we are—days spent walled
in our tombs, straining for some sign of life,
pondering the world’s dissolution, our stalled
plans. The promises of faith we only half-
believe, yet still we send out hope like Noah’s
dove over the waters. Somewhere, the numbers
are favorable; someone descends from the peak, awe
gilding their face, glowing like the ruddy embers
of an almost-spent fire. We listen from within
our darkness for footsteps. Help was promised
us, a stone rolled away, rebirth. We begin
the same dance of every day, optimism
with despair, praying for the gasped: come and see—
the surprising confirmation the tomb is empty.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

I'M TIRED OF CONFUSING WHAT I WANT WITH WHAT I DESIRE

by Michael Brockley

Bibles with cherrypicked scriptures highlighted in red lay scattered along the culvert on my way to Casa del Sol. Border songs play on my radio. In a decade all the rock-and-rollers will turn out the lights after their final encores. No more rockin’ in the free world. No more trouble in the heartland. No more Ruthie in her Memphis honky-tonk lagoon. The waitress who serves a whiskey sour with my aroz con camarones is beautiful with her black widow tattoo inked down to her wrist and in the way she outsmiles Halle Berry. She wears a diamond stud in her pierced nose. Rides King’s Island’s Invertigo and Banshee without a safety net. When music award shows play on the television behind the bar, she roots for Drake or Cardi B. Says her mother bought records by Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. Remembers wearing out a 45 of I Heard It Through the Grapevine one summer. I listen to sharecropper songs on the drive home. To songs by a singer named for a woman who rings like a bell in the night. A woman of constant sorrow who walks the freedom highway. I toss my dashboard Jesus out the window. The white Messiah. No one sings we won’t get fooled again. No one is running on empty tonight.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Jokes Review and TheNewVerse.News.

IF MY MOTHER WERE ALIVE

by Diane Elayne Dees

If my mother were alive, what would she say?
She might just laugh and make fun of his hair,
or turn her eyes and quickly walk away.

She might recall a loud and smoky day
when she huddled underground, alone and scared.
If my mother were alive, what would she say

about the way the mobs are stirred today?
She might act as though she doesn’t really care,
yet turn her eyes and quickly walk away.

When he talks about the ones who shouldn’t stay
among us, would she find that hard to bear,
if my mother were alive? What would she say

about the vulgar signs, the cruel display
of bigotry, the children in despair?
Might she turn her eyes and quickly walk away?

His grinning minions flatter, and obey
his orders—cruel, toxic and unfair.
If my mother were alive, what would she say?
Would she turn her eyes and quickly walk away?

Diane Elayne Dees' poems have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, a semi-retired psychotherapist in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women's professional tennis throughout the world.

LYRICS FOR TREASON DAY, JULY 16, 2018

by Michael Brockley

“Send in the Clowns” trumpet solo performed by the US Air Force Brass in Blue.

What if the king wasn’t caught in a trap, and we were no longer stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues? What if we had never stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona? Or lost our driving wheel? What if we weren’t running on empty and were still too proud to beg? What if we quit holding out for a hero? What if the king couldn’t find a new place to dwell while midnight no longer fell on the oasis? What if we know who stopped the rain? What if she wasn’t a black-haired beauty, and there were no diamonds on the soles of her shoes? What if she hadn’t had Bette Davis eyes, and the king hadn’t seen her first? What if she hadn’t been Jessie’s girl? What if a peaceful man hadn’t pulled into Nazareth, and the knight hadn’t been on the run? What if there hadn’t been a wino in the road? What if we’re no longer living in a Cheerio world and God hadn’t kissed this guy? What if we miss our water? What if there isn’t a piece of our heart left to take? What if there are no more clowns to send in?

Michael Brockley is a 68-year old semi-retired school psychologist. He has been publishing poems for approximately four years now and recent poems have appeared in The Blue Nib Magazine, Zingara Poetry Picks and TheNewVerse.News.

DISASTER TENTS

by Tricia Knoll

Getty Images via Daily Kos, June 26, 2018

Beige vinyl heaves in the wind
like a lung. Crackles. I know.
The whine of the air-conditioner
insists that you cluster on low-slung cots
to speak directly into each other’s ears
or not talk at all. Intermittent cold blasts
interrupts every dream. Forget privacy.
Forget home and bedtime stories.
Store what you have under your cot.
They pitch these tents under all-bright
overhead lights. You will not sleep well
in this compound of generators, toilet
and bath modules, chain link and guards.
You will hear others' nightmares.
Your feet will scuffle on vinyl ground.
Hold your children. Let them not be stolen.
You may despair. The tent compresses you,
an I cannot breathe of internment.

Tricia Knoll lived in one of the FEMA disaster tents going up to house immigration refugees. She was a responder to Hurricane Katrina. She understands the differences between her experiencce and those of todays' traumatized families. She knew exactly when she would go to her real home, certainty. She asked to be in this tent, free choice. She was not afraid, privileged.  She cannot forget what it felt like to live inside one of these disaster tents.

LIKE A BULLET HOLE

by Alexis-Rueal

What is left to write when everything
comes out looking like a bullet hole?
When everything sounds like
a coffin door closing.
How do you make room for a pen
in your hand when you are too busy hugging
toddler nephews tight and thanking
God and fate that they’re too young for school?
This time.
How many synonyms are left for despair
and fury? Do they even mean anything, anymore?
How does the poet write
when it has all been written before?
How does the poet write when they know
they will write it again tomorrow?

Alexis-Rueal is a Columbus, Ohio poet whose work has appeared in online and print journals throughout the US and in Europe. She has appeared in festivals and venues throughout Ohio and Kentucky. Her first full-length collection I Speak Hick was published by Writing Knights Press in 2016.