THE DYING BREATH

by Rose Mary Boehm

In a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the dying breaths of the star at the heart of the famous Helix Nebula are exposed in wonder and radiance. —Good News Network. Photo: NASA, January 20, 2026

 

"As above, so below," the famous aphorism by a mythical teacher and a mythical text. 

In the Emerald Tablet the ancients already knew about the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. So, as a star dies and we see its dying breath pushing outward like a cloud of seeds to form new stars when their time has come, so the humble dandelion’s delicate umbrella-equipped seeds go with the wind to settle on another meadow and become new dandelions when their time has come, the spiders die soon after producing their egg sacs, and the spiderlings disperse into the world by ballooning: using the breeze and sometimes atmospheric electric fields to travel far, settling, mating, and laying egg sacs when their time has come.

 

"As above, so below"—instead of neurons sending electrical signals through axons, stars use magnetic field lines. Trees connect through the complex mycelia network, and we have more than 86 billion neurons in the brain, and a more or less equal number of other cells. Neurons and neurotransmitters are our mycelia. 

 

When my grandfather died, I saw a small silver cloud leaving his open mouth.

 
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026.

FOR MINNEAPOLIS

by Ruth Lehrer

They don’t tell you in the morning
you will die by noon 
driving in your car
walking on the street 
 
after you are gone
you see a picture of the gun
flesh as good as ashes
blood as good as painted pain 
 
But in that morning you just know
yesterday your neighbor was brave
so today you must be too
The boundary between trust and fear
torn open
 
We are all ash
We are all brave. 

Ruth Lehrer is a sign language interpreter and Pushcart-nominated poet living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the young adult novel Being Fishkill. 

MORAL CLARITY

by Julie Steiner

Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters via The Guardian

    Asked by CBS News [on Friday] what he would advise a Catholic voter forced to choose between a candidate who backs abortion rights and one who has said he would have 11 million migrants deported, the pope said: “They are both against life—the one who throws away migrants and the one who kills children.” 

     ...Asked whether there were any circumstances under which it would be morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who does support abortion rights, Francis said when considering political morality, “one must vote.”

    "One must choose the lesser of two evils," he said. "Who is the lesser of two evils, that lady or that gentleman, I do not know." 

 

One has to vote,
declared Pope Francis with a sigh.
One has to vote.
Dilemma’s horns are at one’s throat.
Abstention’s not an option. Try.
Although both options cast a “Die,”
one has two. Vote.

Choose the lesser
evil. (Both are bad, in short.)
Choose the lesser,
quoth the pontiff at his presser:
Pick either A (Deport! Deport!)
or B (Let those who could abort
choose.) “The lesser

of two evils”
assumes they’re not equatable.
Of two evils,
which brings fewer lives upheavals?
Choose the not-as-hateable —
“And which is that?” “Debatable.” —
of two evils.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared in the past year include Literary Matters, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

BENEATH THIS HEAT DOME

by W. Barrett Munn

AccuWeather, July 10, 2024

The red juiced rooster-shaped thermometer
crowed a whole octave above 100 again today.
Being forged from tin, feathers can’t be touched
unless a blister is accounted for by a salve
or some suitable soothing lotion.
In the evening beneath this heat dome,
I can see the Milky Way, and weigh in that
the temperature matches all 88 constellations,
explain how some are seen only in New Zealand

or elsewhere below the equator, forming 
constellations with names like Eridanus, Carina, 
Hydrus and Hydra, Octans and Pavo, and Sagittarius.. 
If only the smaller dipper would drip, or bigger tip 
over and spill; but the earth spins slowly, carefully, 
there's no spillage to share. In a few hours the world 
will turn, and we'll face the sun again; who knows 
how many more will die today beneath this dome, 
ferns left in the sun too long without being watered.

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature. His adult poetry has been published in Awakenings Review, San Antonio Review, The New Verse News, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Sequoia Speaks, and many others.

TOTALITY

by Mary Turzillo

The Sun and the Moon

did a courtship dance

did a contrary dance

nearer come nearer

far dance away

till the Sun mocked his luna love

japing “cold, changeable she” 

and “you love the earth more than me”

and it’s true: she grew fat, she grew thin,

he was hot, she was cold

Apollo, Diana:

stag and the doe

till she danced right in front of him

close to him, over him

taking delicious gold bites of him

throwing her skirts quite over him

till she blotted him out

til the night crickets sang

the the birds went to sleep

a black handkerchief over the land.

She punched a hole in the sky

where her lover had been

left a necklace of fire, a sparkle of beads

a diamond ring

for a minute or two:

the lovers' bright band

the dusk bridal veil

dark covered light, cold kissed the gold

the ring hung a promise 

a wedding of midnight and fire.

Mary Turzillo's Nebula-winner "Mars Is no Place for Children" and her Analog novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl were recommended reading on the International Space Station. She has been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars, and Rhysling ballots. Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. Her fourth collaboration with Marge Simon, Victims, also won an Elgin. Her latest two books are Cast from Darkness, also with Simon, and Cosmic Cats and Fantastic Furballs. Mary lives in Berea, Ohio, with her scientist-writer husband, Geoffrey Landis. Today’s eclipse is her third such experience.

WHERE DO YOU GO TO DIE?

by Adele Evershed

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has said that she is "deeply worried" for her extended family in Gaza. Moran's mother is Palestinian and members of her family in Gaza are sheltering in a church after an Israeli missile struck their home. Speaking to the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire, she said: "No longer are people saying, where do we go to be safe? The question they are now asking is, where do we want to be when we die?" —BBC, October 29, 2023

to the sea
already so full of salt
so you become part of the ebb and flow
governed only by the mourning moon
and any tears shed lost in the tumult of waves
or crusted in the creases of a carcass 
left to rot on a far distant shore
 
to a rowan tree
already listing from the bombardment
so you can nourish the roots
that once nourished you
and the redness of your screams
can hang like a bloody reminder
of all the things you were too young to see
 
to the mountain top
with its beguiling back story 
so your shallow breath 
can dovetail with the off white clouds
and fall as gentle soaking rain
delivering an absolution
to those who have asked for none
 
or do you simply 
pick up a stone
and say…
I will not die today

Adele Evershed is a Welsh poet living in America. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Finishing Line Press published Adele’s first poetry chapbook Turbulence in Small Places in July. Her Novella-in-Flash Wannabe was published by Alien Buddha Press in May. Her second poetry collection The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press.

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED TO NORMAN DUBIE

by Ralph Culver

Author’s note: Be at peace and travel well, Norman Dubie, singularly gifted American poet and teacher, who died 20 February, 2023 at 77.

Ralph Culver is a past New Verse News contributor. His most recent poetry collection is A Passable Man (MadHat Press, 2021), available in bookstores and through all the usual internet sources. He divides his time between Vermont and central Pennsylvania.

MASQUERADE

by Susan McLean

Muffled like bandits on a raid,

our faces wrapped from chin to eye,

we aren’t intent on ambuscade,

just hoping not to kill or die.

Yet everywhere we see displayed
the nonchalance of passersby,

signaling that they’re not afraid—

their confidence a bare-faced lie.

Susan McLean is the author of two poetry books, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of the Latin poet Martial, Selected Epigrams. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, a hotspot for COVID-19.

INFORMATION

by Bob Heman

Those who will die will die alone. Because the others do not want to die as well. The distance too far to ever be broached again. Their last words digital, fading as the signals grow weaker. Until silence is only a blank screen.

Bob Heman lives on an island that doesn’t seem like an island. His poem “Perfect” is included in A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (MadHat Press, 2019).