WHAT SETTLES WHEN WE LAY OUR BODIES DOWN TO REST

by Paula J. Lambert

Source: The New York Times

Really, it’s just the claggy kind of snot struggling

to decide if it wants to stay low in your chest—

 

where your heart beats and every breath passes

through—or if, rising, clinging to the last breath,

 

it has the strength to finally release itself

to the world. We know by now what can travel 

 

on the tiny particles of our gasping exhalations: 

disease, devotion, the promise that death is no end. 

 

We might wish otherwise, drifting in and out 

of these strange dreams of drowning. We know

 

what happened in Nepal, North Carolina, Texas. 

We all might be called mystics when, prone, 

 

our bodies wrestle with desire, each wobble of faith 

in our resolve to go on a little death of its own.  

Paula J. Lambert of Columbus, Ohio, has published eleven collections of poetry including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig 2025) and Sinkhole (Bottlecap 2025). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

SHORTAGE

by Tara Menon

The Boston Globe states
there’s a shortage of breast biopsy needles 
in the nation, the result of a recall.
Doctors need to conserve their supply.
Breast cancer diagnoses are delayed. 
 
We mustn’t sprout cancer cells 
at least until the end of March.
Better yet, we must remain healthy 
our entire lives while science
invents ways to cure or prevent diseases.
 
What do we do about shortages
when the Strait of Hormuz closes
or when nations hoard supplies as weapons of wars
or when global warming results in more pandemics,
overwhelming hospitals to prioritize surgeries,
or when doctors are forced to turn down patients
or when the cost of insurance swells to smother us?
What then?
 
None of those scenarios have to happen, you know.
The worst enemy is the shrug of shoulders.

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems are forthcoming or have appeared in AMPLIFY (Sheila-Na-Gig), The Sucharnochee Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Chaotic Merge Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal.

DO THEY KNOW?

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

My nature app is as baffled as I

Along the upland trail

Above Rock Creek

In the wild wooded heart of Washington, DC

 

The forest floor is mantled in unfamiliar green

Paired leaves with parallel veins

An emerald carpet, enigmatic

Until recognition dawns

Sprouts of American beech, thousands

Are gathered in ritual circles

Around the smooth gray trunks of their parent trees

Who rise from the earth like standing stones

A menace is advancing

In the wake of chestnut blight

Dutch elm disease, woolly adelgid

And emerald ash borer, marching toward the capital

Beech leaf disease, as determined as Civil War General Jubal Early,

Not quite present yet but promising a deadly campaign

Could it be the Rock Creek Park beeches got word through a signal corps

Beyond our understanding, with news traveling by root or forest atmosphere? 

If only we had known what was coming for us

And thrown down our own green gauntlet

Melanie Choukas-Bradley lives in the beautiful yet besieged capital city of Washington, DC. She is the author of  City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have appeared in The New Verse News.

NO KINGS DAY

by Ron Shapiro

 

 

 

 
What if signs of discontent,
Anger, frustration and hatred
Line every nook-and-cranny
Of the amerikan landscape
On this national day of protest?

What if everyone set down
Their phones, turned off
The hypnotic hum buzzing
In their ears, feeding them
What they want to hear rather
Than what they need to hear?
This morning I wonder
What I can do today?
How can I manifest
The sadness of witnessing
Amerika’s descent into darkness?

While bombs drop on buildings
And streets in the Middle East,
Bombs of deception and corruption
Drop daily, one after another,
Boom
boom
boom
into the fragile fabric of democracy.

Collateral damage of such weapons
Invite suffering, disease and division
Mocking ideas of “liberty and justice
For all.” In these times, words empty
Themselves of meaning replaced
With ignorance and exceptionalism
Along with a foundation of fear.

On this day, which should be everyday,
People of all ages who resist the dumbing
Down of amerika, the purging of skin
Color, gender diversity, critical thinking,
And the failure of elected officials to
Follow their conscience instead of money
And power, take to the streets. Not carrying
Weapons that kill but weapons of kindness,
Compassion, love, and hope that children
And grandchildren will grow up into
A world that favors peace not destruction.

So I’ll head out to add my voice
To those who gather with intention.
We will not succumb to a government
Whose lies, carelessness and stupidity
Try to steal the breath from our lungs.
On this day we will be heard.
Our voices will not be silenced. 

 

 

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and two chapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry. 

X-RAYS

by Matthew Murrey

 

 

Cartoon by Iman Rezaee

‘Deliberate targeting of vital body parts’: X-rays taken after Iran protests expose extent of catastrophic injuries. Expert analysis of images from one hospital suggests severe trauma to the face, chest and genitals was caused by metal birdshot and high-calibre bullets. —The Guardian, February 17, 2026 

 

reveal the structure beneath,
miracle of how strong and fragile
I am, we are. I keep one

of my right hand with its fifth bone
broken—a now-healed ridge I still feel
after half a lifetime. And these

(sent in secret from a country
whose leaders, like so many leaders,
hate the people they rule) reveal

ghosts haunting the injured
bones. Here is one with bright dots
of birdshot fired into the face,

another with pellets peppering
the chest, and one where the target was
the tenderness between the legs.

I do not understand what I see,
am not trained to diagnose what disease   
carries a shotgun into a crowd

of unarmed souls, levels it point-blank,
and pulls the trigger.  


Matthew Murrey is the author of Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026) and Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019). He has recently had poems in Flyway, En•Trance, ballast, and elsewhere. He was a public school librarian for more than 20 years and lives in Urbana, IL with his partner. He can be found on Bluesky and Instagram under the handle @mytwords.  

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Story at NPR, May 31, 2025

“For heaven’s sake…”
it’s true, we are all going to die.
But how and why, under what circumstances?
Accidental death has its own brand of horror
for those left behind in the aftermath.
Diseases can ravage, destroy in torturous chronologies
of lifetimes, or swoop in all teeth and talons at birth,
suffering without boundaries or lines of defense.

We say, For heaven’s sake, let’s help! 
Let’s not walk among the dead and say
we’ve all got it coming. Let’s renounce cruelty,
callous equations by riffraff imposters
who spew bilious indifference toward the sick,
whose stone hearts will someday be erased
on the site of an unmarked grave in the canon of history.

   
 
Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing and the importance of shared stories.

ON THIN ICE

by Anne Gruner

"[Thwaites], a massive Antarctic glacier, which could raise global sea levels by up to two feet if it melts, is far more exposed to warm ocean water than previously believed, according to a [newly published]study...." —The Washington Post, May 20, 2024.

We knew you were sickly but hoped you'd recover,
not believing you were on your deathbed.
Then we x-rayed you from space, just to be sure,
and like many x-rays they brought bad news.
 
As your shining face peers at the sun,
a deadly disease eats away your soft underbelly—
an affliction we don't fully grasp—
understanding its cause, but not its progression.
 
Warm, salty water seeps into a gaping wound
with every breath of tide you take, 
rising and falling, an eroding necrosis,
accelerating without notice until it's too late.
 
We thought you would live thousands of years,
but now fear your death in decades—
with consequences so dire
we call you "Doomsday."

 
A Pushcart-nominated writer, Anne Gruner's poetry has appeared in over a dozen print and on-line publications, including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Written Tales, and Humans of the World. Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

I DO BLAME YOU

by David Radavich

 You brought us the gift

 of potential death.

 

 Not wearing a mask,

 not distancing,

 

 not deigning

 to get a vaccine.

 

 And now the whole

 family is sick—

 generations—

 

 and the threat

 has taken up residence

 in our very house.

 

 Thank you 

 for reminding us

 

 the end is not far off—

 maybe soon—

 

 disease is

 a form of politics,

 

 and we are all one

 in our shared suffering.

 

 If we didn’t believe

 in community, we do now.

 

 Let us hope healing 

 comes fast and the goat

 scapes into the woods.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His forthcoming book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

TRYING TO SLEEP DURING THE APOCALYPSE

by Lori Desrosiers 

Asthma Society of Ireland

“People with moderate to severe asthma may be at higher risk of getting very sick from COVID-19.  COVID-19 can affect your respiratory tract (nose, throat, lungs), cause an asthma attack, and possibly lead to pneumonia and acute respiratory disease.” —CDC

In histamine driven midnight storm
awakened either by the red cat’s whiskers
or your breath I recall the moments
before my hour’s sleep stumbling upon
a live feed of the northern lights where I
could hear the polar wind its breath

rising and falling the breath of earth
and ice and flow the pulse of sun’s
electric charge. Searching for a good
blank page to place in ink the element
of shift to try to describe how arctic ice’s
flow affects plankton and sea angels and
viruses held for eons in cold embrace.

How does sleep come easy to you my love,
now you are well and this new horror threatens
from beyond our bed? Four years ago, you in
hypothermia and coma after CPR, the nurse
warned me not to hold your hand or touch
your skin so my life force dare not bring you
back just yet, a connection so strong
we could draw the other back from death.

We know little about this plague except
it takes away the very breath, pulls
at the sinews of our imagination.
Panic coursing through my body,
my hand touches your forearm and
immediately my heart rate slows.
You breathe your future, and I sleep.

Lori Desrosiers’ poetry books are The Philosopher’s Daughter (Salmon Poetry 2013), Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak (Salmon Poetry 2016), and Keeping Planes in the Air (Salmon Poetry 2020). Two chapbooks, Inner Sky and typing with e.e. cummings, are from Glass Lyre Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College and teaches in the Lesley University M.F.A. program. She edits Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry, and Wordpeace, an online journal dedicated to social justice. She lives and writes in Westfield, Massachusetts.

CONTAGION

by Mary K O’Melveny

When dispersed, dandelion seed heads, also known as “blowballs,” can travel vast distances due to a unique morphology of the pappus, a fine hair-like material which holds the spherical seed heads and enables their wind-aided dispersal.  The pappus adapts, based on wind or air moisture, closing its plume of seeds until optimal conditions for maximum dispersal and germination occur.  

the metaphor seems right

too obvious of course

as arenas fill up with 

chanting shrieking clapping

sounds of sickness  backbeats

to our long agony

everyone in MAGA

hats or face masks   Look

to your right or your left

infection will arrive

like a dandelion’s

pappus as it sails off

carried by wind to new

meadows,  gliding down like

wartime propaganda 

hoping for fallow fields

and willing minds   there is 

no ripcord    just free fall

furtive looks  yield nothing

no obvious symptoms

everyone could carry

these germs    no one will tell

truths   everyone will shift

blame   new tears will be shed 

you cannot lock us all

up   cannot invent a

failsafe test   find a cure

hiding inside some lab 

mouse   even if we steal

back money from builders

of walls a plague still looms

dress up in your white coats

smile at your neighbors who

are about to lock their 

doors so you can’t enter

wash your hands one more time

then beg them for mercy

show them how your face mask

can repel each viral 

blast better than theirs  

tell them you have never 

seen a hot zone or helped 

a victim    promise you will

never argue about

anything important

won’t blow any whistles

tell them you are grateful 

you will not doubt again


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.

HUNGRY, SCARED, AND SICK

an erasure poem by James Penha
from "Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Texas," 
The New York Times, July 6, 2019

Clint is known for holding what agents call U.A.C.’s, or unaccompanied alien children—children who cross the border alone or with relatives who are not their parents. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

the stuff of nightmares
scabies
shingles
chickenpox
stench
orders to take beds away
from children to make more space
"unaccompanied alien children"
as young as 3
as young as 5 months old
lacking diapers
toothbrushes
toothpaste
soap
children crammed into
a prison environment
My God, these are babies
They are keeping babies here


James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News.

AT THE CROSSROADS

by James Cronin

The Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio

The first time I saw "The Seven Acts of Mercy" . . .  I knew I wanted to write a play about it: its generosity, its complications, its aggressive, violent compassion. —Anders Lustgarden in his introduction to the 2016 Bloomsbury Methuen edition of his play The Seven Acts of Mercy.

The artist painted a swarming crossroads where
two alleys, winged heaven and Naples did
intersect; all to show the fruits of fair
mercy, with the knife edge of its need not hid.

The city’s shame is so public, its wanton
cruelty on display. Does it want us
to keep moving, and not gaze at that fountain
replenished on its own? No, the chorus

reaching from the heavens bids us instead
to stare: as a noble hands a cloak to a nude
beggar; a weary pilgrim with a red
beard is pointed to shelter and food;

a servant moves a corpse for burial;
and a prisoner, condemned to starve in jail,
is suckled by his child, a surreal
story of old Rome. All true? Isms fail

where story succeeds. We are numbed
by numbers. Empathy demands a tale,
a face in the crowd. Compassion can’t be summed.
But now, even a clear summons can fail.

Where once only moral truth was needed,
our leader, peacock-brained, sees but his tail.
With miles of devastation unheeded,
his gloried behind dims all loss from the gale.

And those enablers of killing still stick
to their guns and sanctify murders’ ease.
No compassion! No mercy! What sick
huckster sells as freedom a deadly disease.

After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin returned to his first love, literature. Since his judicial retirement in 2007, he has participated in three poetry groups and has served as a facilitator in numerous courses for a lifelong learning program in Fall River, MA.

NAMING OF PARTS

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: White Mountain Puzzles

After Henry Reed

Spring eased the almond blossoms open
and promises of cherries while we named parts
left over from winter. Collusion. Taking
away, reducing, throwing in the trash
legal widgets that keep the water pure,
air open to the cherry’s pollen flight.

We named parts with words round
to our tongues, like emoluments, to see
how that piece fit in the grooves
of palaces and greens like golf courses.
Lies are new lower swing swivels
alternatives, the stock aiming.
We call the liar  a number, not a name.

We watched tired armies of people
whose papers dictate that they bolt
backwards, locked. Riled bees assault
the fumbling flowers and some too
called that easing the spring.

Assembled from parts, the barrel
is loaded and pointed at every one
of us. The sick. Disabled. Those
who stumbled. Women mourning
in too many dry cities to count.
Children born to know only this.

Whatever bitter cold silence ensues,
whatever violence, these parts came
forged as cocking-pieces, and the many
words to name them buzzed over us
diseasing the spring.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who in the last week has read Henry Reed's famous 1942 poem "The Naming of Parts" about fifteen times, sharing the dismay of progressives at how rapidly important protections of people and the environment can be dismantled. Her new book, Broadfork Farm, is a series of love poems to a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington.

GUNS AND THE CULTURE OF LEAD

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

EVERYTOWN For Gun Safety

this week   last week  next week
52 weeks of stories
wherever the culture of lead will surface
out the state of rights
out of the counties called bullets
out of the senseless sensibility
where children shoot children . . .
in the home or last week in a car
it is the cult of the wild west
with its worship and fear
that any moment
these precious metals will be taken
and then the altar will be stripped bare
the senseless sensibilities will continue
the shrill voices of rights will sing on
the worship and fear will last
in 52 weeks of stories
about a disease with no cure

Sister Lou Ella Hickman was an all-level teacher and a librarian. Presently she is a freelance writer and a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been widely published in numerous magazines. One of her poems was published in the anthology After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Her first book of poetry she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released in the fall of 2015.

ACUTE

by Barbara A Taylor




acute trumpitis  
the doctors’ surgeries
are overflowing

"Each day demands that I write and that my fingers touch and feel the earth." Barbara A Taylor's free verse poems, renku, haiga, haibun, award winning haiku, tanka, and other Japanese short form poetry appear in many international journals and anthologies on line and in print. She lives in the Rainbow Region, Northern NSW, Australia. Diverse poems with audio are here and here.

A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Piles of dead bodies steam. Cremation reeks
like an all-day bar-b-que.We shift disease
from one mouth to another, one penis,
one vagina to another. We wait for plagues
to pass—Zika, insane cows, the bloody spume
of Ebola and long guns. Contagion will be
the end of us, or else we'll be ill all over
from the atmosphere, from the lead water.
Perhaps epidemics, pollution and violence
will slump, new drugs, new hope emerge.
But they seem out of reach in these first days
of the celebrity Republic when we are cajoled
to believe medicine or the administration
will lessen the lesions, the tension of being
a high risk population under the politics of dying.


Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She apologizes for her state's administration.

SOME DAYS

by David James

From Edward Norton: “I saw this story on one of my favorite sites, Humans of New York, and it moved me to tears. This man has suffered profound loss that would crush the spirit of many people and yet he still passionately wants a chance to contribute positively to the world.  If we don’t welcome people like this into our communities and empower his dream of making an impact with his life, then we’re not the country we tell ourselves we are. Let’s reject the 'anti-human’ voices that tell us to fear refugees and show this man and his family what Americans are really made of.  Let’s show that a country built by the energy and dreams of immigrants still believes in brave people who come here with hope for better life. Everything we raise here will go to help this family so that the father can get the medical treatment he needs to live and pursue his work, and his family can build a new stable life after their tragedy, and…as the Scientist beautifully expresses…to support his dream of contributing to the world. Thanks to Humans of New York for sharing these stories.  Thanks to the team at CrowdRise for putting this together and figuring out how to get even the credit card transaction fees covered so we can get the maximum to the family. Thanks to everyone who rallies together to create the power of the crowd.  If enough of us kick in the price of two frappucinos, we can probably transform the experience of this family and show them that life can deliver healing and kindness, not just heartbreak. Thanks to Benevolent, all donations are tax-deductible. We will work with Benevolent to use all donated funds to help this family and will seek to use any excess or unused funds to help the other 11 profiled in the HONY ‘Syrian American’ series."

you want to slam your car right into the punk swerving
over two expressway lanes as he sends a text on his phone;

you want to drink until everybody in the whole world
disappears; you want to look your boss in the eye,

quit, & then spit in her face; you want to come home
to find steaks on the grill, a cooler of beer & a beautiful girl

waiting for you in a bikini with open arms; you want to stand
at the top of Mt. Everest & see God’s face.

and some days, you want all the pain & sorrow, hunger & disease,
the wars & bombs to melt away so those of us left can sigh & hold hands.


David James’s third book, My Torn Dance Card, was published in 2015 by FCNI Press. His second book, She Dances Like Mussolini, won the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award.

EMERGENCY ROOM, NYC

by Terese Coe

Sitting on a cot in the walkway of the ER for hours

to get up and walk the circle of disease and decay,

he is struck by the bleeding case, the festering case,

the dying woman no one tends but her daughter.

After four hours the intimidation team of interns

marches in to insist on an overnight stay. You’ll

have a bed within two hours. Another three hours on,

no bed. He cases the joint for exits. Uniformed officers

stand at every exit except one, which is locked,

and prove their seriousness when he

approaches them. Having signed himself in, he is

no longer free to quit the place. He climbs into his

clothing again, saying he’s cold, ambles to the empty

interior hall and waits. Five minutes later a nurse

enters the hall, fails to notice him in the dead

end on the other side, swipes her card on

the pad for the unguarded door and, like a

miracle, passes through the magic portal with her tray

of meds. It remains open just long enough for him to follow

her through unseen. He finds himself in the main hall

of the hospital, suddenly unconstrained across meandering

public areas and out the front door. Intact. At home,

Arlene calls to say she went to visit him in the ER

and they were looking for him: I asked them how you

could have disappeared and a nurse said “He’s not a

psychiatric patient, so we can’t force him to stay.”

He says, “If I’d been there any longer, I would have been

a psychiatric patient.” That night the swelling subsides

when he takes a shower. No one calls from the ER

to ask questions--yet.

Terese Coe's poems and translations have appeared in Threepenny Review, Poetry, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Huffington Post, Poetry Review, TLS, Agenda, New Walk Magazine, Warwick Review, The Stinging Fly, and many other publications, including anthologies. One of her poems was chosen for the 2012 London Olympics Rain of Poems and heli-dropped across London, and her latest collection of poems will be out in February 2015.