THE GREAT LOUVRE CAPER

by James Schwartz

I map the security cameras 

Locked windows 

& locations 

Tap

Tap 

Tap 

I disable a camera 

My Amish father 

Is behind me

In hot pursuit 

Tap

Tap

I snare 

The painting

Cubist.

Tap

Tap

Tap

My Amish father

Rolls the dice

Still behind me.

Tap

Tap

The window is locked.

Tap

Tap

Tap

On a winter afternoon

We enjoy the board game 

Clue: The Great Museum Caper.

Tap

Tap

Tap

A teenage memory 

Forgotten until headlines 

Of the Great Louvre Caper.

Tap

Tap

I make my escape.

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (2011) and most recently Big Island Beatnik: Poetry & Photography from the Lower East Rift Zone (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). queeraspoetry.bsky.social 

CHANTING OVER GRAVES

by Jocelyn Ajami

AI-generated gif by NightCafé for The New Verse News

     “Our Golden Age has just begun.” —Donald Trump

Gold is great

From the rubble they erect gaudy 

temples, trimmed with gold and lust 

Wine cellars lick the soil, imbued 

with the fetid scent of slaughter 

Gold is great

From children’s eyes they steal  

rainbows to light arches and roulettes

from their marrow, mortar to seal the               

sandstone fronts

Their hair thread arabesques 

into the dice that roll and roll

Gold is great 

The root of sorrow, buried beneath 

the shimmering spectacle, seethes…

slowly migrating, breaching sea

and stone

until no false suns remain 

to scorch the truth 

Jocelyn Ajami is a painter, filmmaker and poet. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness. She has been published in various anthologies of prize winning poems and has been nominated for Pushcart and Touchstone awards.

FIRST ROUND, BRAZIL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, speaking after election results were announced on Sunday. Mr. da Silva and President Jair Bolsonaro will face each other in a runoff later this month. Photo Credit: Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

It's a long night with strong emotion,
the whole world is listening to the results,
and after seventy percent counted
Lula finally has a slight advantage.
I am tranquil now, the world quiet. 
It's like the dice game between 
the Pandavas and the Kauravas, 
or between Putin and the allies,
 
or it's just an election. We must 
not let our fears get out. We 
will see tomorrow. Let's go 
to work for the Amazon 
 
rainforest, for humble workers 
who appreciate the labor of 
one of their own. Lula, my 
brother, even though I live 
 
far from Brazil, today and 
always, I join the community 
of the left, of human and animal 
rights, of plant, forest and land 
 
rights. of rights that are going
with you to the Alvorada Palace.

***

É uma longa noite com uma emoção forte,

todo o mundo está escutando os resultados
e depois de setenta por cento contado
Lula tem finalmente uma leve vantagem.
 
Estou tranquilo agora. O mundo 
é tranquilo. É como o jogo de dados 
entre os Pandavas e os Kauravas, 
o entre Putin e os aliados,
 
o é uma simples eleição. Não 
devemos deixar que os medos saiam. 
Veremos amanhã. Vamos 
a trabalhar para a Mata Amazonas, 
 
para os trabalhadores humildes 
que apreciam o labor dum deles, 
Lula, meu irmão. Ainda 
que moro longe da Brasil
 
hoje e sempre me uno 
a comunidade da esquerda, 
dos direitos humanos e animais, 
de direitos de plantas e de floresta, 
 
de direitos da terra, de direitos 
que vão com você ao Palácio da Alvorada.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

TOSSING DICE IN FLORIDA

by Mickey J. Corrigan

"Florida Hurdles" — Claytoonz by Clay Jones

You flip a seven and—

the day hatches bright, shiny

new penny in the white sand

bronze bodies washing off 

emptiness at the azure shore.

Morning brings no escape

from one's and two's

wild gaze, rocky wonders

a better hand today

to grasp straws with claws.

The afternoon overheats

hard scowls over face cards

erasing your winnings

double-crossing the house.

Happy hour obliterates 

all of tomorrow's concerns:

another wave of cool luck

or a fast ride under glass

flashing lights ablaze.

Night sounds simmer down

squelched by humid air 

the eerie cries of coyotes

nosing barrels of scraps

soaked in fresh blood.

The unknown lingers:

that you awaken again

to another day of play

fate on your side… 

or you're forced to fold

beating, beating

like bones on a drum—

taps, not reveille.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes tropical noir with a dark humor. Her poetry has been widely published in literary journals and chapbooks. In 2020, Grandma Moses Press released Florida Man. Her novel The Physics of Grief puts the fun back in funerals while taking a serious look at the process of mourning (QuoScript, UK, 2021). 

GIANT DIE WASHES ASHORE ON LAKE COEUR D'ALENE

by Martin Ott

Coeur d'Alene resident Mark Sales told KBOI 2News that he and his father spotted the floating object on Saturday near the boardwalk. (Photo courtesy Mark Sales) —KOMONEWS (Seattle), March 22, 2017

Perhaps Paul Bunyan was rolling bones to stake Babe
against enough food to last the winter, the errant throw

skidding over the Rockies and into the soup. Theories
on how lake monsters could transform into any object

hung on rearview mirrors don’t account for this die
castaway forever tumbling toward its opposite or twin.

Alien vessels were round until the Borg sucked us in,
this camouflage of games and chance rolling in waves,

an invasion of our psyche, lust for numbers, and desire
to be on the last square. Dice, after all, are about turns

and seizing the next piece of land, inexorable steps
in an American game where there is just one winner.

Sometimes the die would disappear in evening mist,
the makeshift worlds we build ephemeral and slick,

until that last passage onto shore, final roll stuck,
the deity of odds nowhere to be seen in the picture.


A previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Martin Ott’s most recent book is Spectrum, C&R Press, 2016. He is the author of seven books and won the De Novo and Sandeen prizes for his first two poetry collections. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and a dozen anthologies. He tweets and blogs.

DUNGEONS FROM DRAGONS

by Dennis Etzel Jr.

Asmund wakes me up for another game
as the sun tries rising in another December
morning I try to rise he says he likes to wake up
in a little dark time not too early
looks out the window over our back
yard over our Kansas our country
waking up I’ve never woken up in such a dark time
these gradual small wake-ups to dungeon builders

as our resistance is set to dismantle walls Asmund asks
if this little dark time is okay for me to wake up in
I say yes let’s go downstairs with your brothers to sit
navigate the dungeon together keeping the dragons
from getting further ahead as we search for a secret door
for freedom I show my sons how to throw the dice

Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has an MFA from The University of Kansas, and an MA and Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Kansas State University. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. He is a TALK Scholar for the Kansas Humanities Council and leads poetry workshops in various Kansas spaces.