JULIO

by Judy Strang

Screenshot provided by the poet’s son from the video he recorded.

My son told me 

he’d put on his vest and 

hooked the phone into the chest pocket facing out, 

pressed video, then strode across the narrow city street. 

That was his spontaneous choice, 

just home from his night shift, 

after parking his car across from his apartment,

after seeing two masked figures accost a person on the sidewalk.

 

In his paramedic suit and bullet proof vest with the phone-on-video,

he told them his name and pointed to his photo badge. 

He asked them to identify themselves,

looked at their badges—photo-less, flimsy, 

“Those could be printed on Etsy,” he said, “How do I know who you are?” 

They would not answer. But he got the name of the person they were taking, 

who gave it to him freely. 

My son yelled at the masked faces, “Take off your masks. 

Show us who you are.” 

And he yelled it again, venting his anger at their secrecy 

at their silence 

at their unjust power—

then it was over.

They had shoved the man into their unmarked car and were driving away.

 

My son told me

that’s when he let loose the language he’d wanted to spit in their faces. 

He threw it at their backs, watching the car disappear,

then stood there on the sidewalk, 

next to the door to the stairs leading to his apartment, 

and called the police. 

He waited for them to come so he could report the incident. 

A paramedic, he would speak his truth, 

“to serve human need, with respect for human dignity,”

and he would wonder what would happen 

to the man he would never see again 

whose name he would never forget

 

Judy Strang lives in the woods of Amherst County, VA, where she writes creative nonfiction, directs the Sourwood Forest artist residency program for the Pedlar River Institute, and works part time for the Harte Center for Teaching & Learning at Washington & Lee University (Lexington, VA). Her creative nonfiction, including What Holds Us Here: pieces from a place in the woods (Blackwell Press 2023), examines how humans understand (or not) their place within more-than-human nature. 

BARK, BITE, BEG, FIGHT, ROLL OVER

by Gabriella Brand

It’s a good day to be a dog

just a dog, with a dog brain

blissfully unaware of red and blue tallies,

unburdened by disappointment,

indifferent to triggers or loud words,

unless someone is reaching for a leash.

It’s a good day to be a dog,

fearless, undaunted, exuberant,

ready for any future, any at all

confident that tomorrow will be 

pretty much the same as today and

the hydrants will be in the same place

It’s a good day to be a dog

keeping dignity when the pit bull passes,

keeping calm when the cats tease,

looking neither left nor right but straight ahead,

putting one paw in front of the other,

tormented by nothing except maybe squirrels.

Gabriella Brand’s short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail,  Grand Little Things, Gyroscope Review, Red Wolf Journal, and more. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Gabriella teaches in the OLLI program at the University of Connecticut. 

AT TACO BELL

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

on Earth Day 2023

Art by Yinza

At Taco Bell

I watch a crow

Reconnoiter the parking lot

For scraps and morsels

Of sustenance.

With it’s dagger-like

Sleek black beak

It flips over

Discarded take-out cartons,

Pokes into empty soda cups,

Snaps up torn bits

Of tortillas,

All without surrendering

A shred of its natural dignity.

As it struts defiantly,

Like a corvid Napoleon,

In front of oncoming cars,

Its spine remains perfectly straight,

Its head held high,

Its bearing proud.

“Get me a burrito,”

The crow orders.

“Hot sauce?” I ask.

“Get me a root beer,”

The crow commands.

“Small, medium, or large?”

I inquire.

Here is a bird

Of natural authority,

A bird with no self-doubt,

A bird who was born 

To take charge.

You’d think with all 

These leadership qualities

Crows might have an interest

In running for public office, but

Too smart to be Republicans,

Too forthright 

To be Democrats,

Crows are dyed-in-the-quills anarchists

Who believe that no crow

Is better than any other crow,

And that no government is better

Than no government.

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have been widely published in print and online journals.  His latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives in northern California with his wife, Cynthia.

QUEEN OF CEYLON

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The Queen is dead. This afternoon

at Balmoral Castle, on the eighth

of September. We mourn her

 

throughout the Commonwealth

and much of the planet. This is

no easy passing, from the world

 

before and the world to come.

When she assumed her brief

India and Ceylon had just won

 

their latest independence. 

When she traveled to Ceylon 

in 1954 to see the fledgling 

 

new nation she charmed 

everyone she met, from mahout 

to rickshaw driver to staff 

 

at the Queen's Hotel

in Kandy. I imagine

she stayed at Galle Face too,

 

and Sir Chittampalam

Gardiner led the royal couple

to their rooms. Dignity

 

is the word. Quiet resolve.

Memory of how Britain

survived the Blitz, how

 

it let go of its imperial

arrogance to later become

part of Europe, one among

 

equals—how it lost great

comics to homogenization

of the transatlantic

championing of money

above all values. She

saw Monty Python,

 

Dave Allen, the Two 

Ronnies, Peter Sellers,

and other geniuses on stage, 

 

in music, on television,  

leave their wit in history

books of a golden age.

 

She lived through many

and leaves us now to balance 

our nostalgia against 

 

the return of a would-be 

iron lady to Downing Street.

God forbid Truss may

 

just bring out the artists

again, born in suffering,

a new Mersey sound,

 

a Notting Hill dub,

English revolution,

Commonwealth invasion.

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.

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.

THE ANTIDOTE

by Judy Kronenfeld

John R. Lewis, 1940-2020

Given poverty, he created dignity.
Given indifference, he returned passion for justice.
Given intolerance, he expanded the meaning of tolerance.
Given violence, he gave his bashed-in skull.

He made himself the instrument of that oh-so-slowly bending arc—
so slow, it is easy to lose courage, but he didn’t.
Given venomous hatred, he returned love
because hate destroys the hater, and he knew it.

Parents, sit your children on your knees,
and explain to them—not marble
nor the gilded monuments,
nor lofty towers emblazoned—
explain to them what greatness is.

Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent collections of poetry are Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Ghost Town, New Ohio Review, One (Jacar Press), Rattle, South Florida Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other journals, and in more than two dozen  anthologies. She is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing, UC Riverside, and an Associate Editor of Poemeleon.

IT SEEMS

by Kristina England

The pride flag flies at half-staff over the MB Lounge in Worcester during a vigil for the victims of the attack in Orlando Sunday. T&G Staff/Rick Cinclair. —Worcester Telegram & Gazette, June 20, 2016

there remains a bit of cockamamie in the kettle,
no matter how much we try to reshape its bitter ends.
Here, in Worcester, Mass, we lower a rainbow flag,
while, in Alabama, there is apparently a right time
and a wrong to mourn. It seems we are reading
from a very different dictionary or theirs is upside
down. Other countries look at us funny. Who could
blame them?  I drink coffee with my breakfast, enjoy
dark roast, yet I own more flavors, even a tea kettle,
to welcome visitors of any kind, because who can tell
you what beans or leaves to like?  Which one will get
you to the ultimate high?  We all have an acquired taste
and if you refuse to accept someone else's company
by way of their choice, break your kettle in angst,
perhaps I should buy two more, bright porcelain ones,
hand-made with doves, encase them in glass, dedicate
them to anyone that leaves a state that will never give
one sip of dignity a try.  Look around. See what all us
wide-eyed wakers see. There in the distance, so many
mugs that once gleamed beautifully, clinked in the early
morn, now shards of glass under a closed and brutal fist.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in several magazines, including Gargoyle, Muddy River Poetry Journal, and Pure Slush. She can be followed on Facebook.

REPUBLICANS REACH OUT TO WOMEN

by Chris O'Carroll



     “And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it, let’s take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than Democrats have made them out to be.”
     -- Mike Huckabee addressing a Republican National Committee meeting


Hey, ladies, listen up.  Mike Huckabee
Gets where you gals are at.  The GOP

Rejects those Uncle Sugar Democrats
Who want you doing it like alley cats

While taxpayers shell out for your libidos.
We live by holier free-market credos.

You do the reproductive heavy lifting,
We do your thinking for you.  We are gifting

You with a chance to raise your girlish voices
And cry, “Please, fellas, take away our choices.

Please give us more deception and distortion
Regarding contraception and abortion.

We don’t want rights.  We don’t want dignity.
Give us prescription-strength Mike Huckabee.”


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous New Verse News appearances, he has published poems in BigCityLit, the Kansas City Star, Lighten Up Online, Umbrella, and the Washington Post, among other print and online journals, and also in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.