POEM TO RUMI

for my granddaughter

by Tina Williams

AI-generated graphic by NightCafe for The New Verse News.

“Ken Paxton sues New York doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to Texas woman: This case sets up a legal battle between Texas’ near-total abortion ban and New York’s shield law that protects doctors from out-of-state prosecution.” —The Texas Tribune, December 13, 2024

A week before the election,

my neighbor next door overnight

posted a Women for Trump

sign and I was too incensed

the next day to wave to her

as she stood on her porch

with a smile as big as Texas

which is where we live

and where my 17-year-old

granddaughter could be raped

tomorrow and made to bear

the damage done

no questions asked.

 

Meanwhile Rumi 

calls from a wall

in my office

that out beyond 

the ideas 

of wrongdoing 

and rightdoing

there is a field

and that we should 

meet each other there

but, Rumi, my dear 

dead Sufi poet,

you never met

my neighbor's 

grab ’em 

by the pussy hero.

 

You never saw

freckles dance

on my 

granddaughter’s

cheeks.

 

In some poems 

there is a field 

too far.

Tina Williams’s poems have appeared in the San Pedro River Review, Quartet Journal, Amethyst Review, The New Verse News, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Stone Poetry Journal, and Green Ink Poetry.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CYNICISM

by Michael Mark

The doctor looks at the x-ray 

of my little toe and notices

a dip in his 

Money Market fund. 

 

He recommends surgery.

 

The authorization request 

is forwarded to the insurance 

company examiner who'd

been warned by management 

about being too liberal with 

approvals.

 

She reviews the doctor’s 

diagnosis, carefully 

considering her job security.

 

After reading the denial

my wife

asks why we pay so much

for insurance if we can’t

use it.

 

And why doctors go

to medical school to get 

all the knowledge 

when the insurance 

companies

have all the power.

 

And why do I 

go around without shoes 

all the time

because that’s what caused

the bump on my toe?

 

I go for a ride to blow off

steam and my car breaks down.

 

Bending over the engine, 

the mechanic 

glances at my expensive shoes

and I say,

Yeah, I know, this is going to be a big job.

Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, awarded the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Prize. Poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, The Sun, The Best New Poets 2024.

NEWS OF THE WORLD THROUGH ECLIPSE GLASSES

by Bonnie Naradzay

A man detained by the Israeli military in northern Gaza shows injuries on his wrists at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on 24 December 2023 (AFP/Said Khatib)

Israeli doctor says detained Palestinians are undergoing ‘routine’ amputations for handcuff injuries. —CNN, April 6, 2024

On my listserve, someone posts her fears 

that the pairs of eclipse glasses she ordered 

will not arrive in time. A neighbor shares a link

from NASA on how to make a pinhole camera.

In the news, I read about Palestinians detained 

outside an Israeli military base. They were given

numbers and lost their names. A doctor said

the men are chained day and night, blindfolded

at all times, hands bound behind their backs,

fed through straws. Forced to wear diapers,

dehumanized. Bound to a fence for prolonged 

times, consecutive days. Because of the injuries

caused by the shackles, the doctor performs 

“routine amputations” of their legs. At church 

this morning, after our group’s discussion 

of the Sunday readings, a woman talks about 

how good God is to her family and he knows 

what’s best for us. How can she say this,

I think, remembering Ivan Karamazov, 

“The Grand Inquisitor.” Why would God 

permit such suffering in the world?   

The Israeli Defense Force official replied

that every procedure is within the framework

of the Law and is done with “extreme care

for the human dignity of the detainees.”

All day, the wind’s unrest builds and disperses 

clouds as I try to make sense of such cruelty.

Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published by Slant Books this year.  She leads weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC.  Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Split This Rock, Dappled Things, and other sites. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems.

ATTACHED

by Esther Cohen

Tractional Retinal Detachment is a painting by Feyene Art which was uploaded to Fine Art America on February 3rd, 2019.

My cousin Stanley
has been living on kibbutz
forever detached retina
a few days ago 
went to an eye hospital
an hour away
surgeon a skilled
Palestinian doctor did 
a beautiful job 
and although he still
has the usual eye problems
sight will take a while
Stanley was grateful in the middle of all this
to have such a good doctor
fix his eye.

Esther Cohen’s new book All of Us will be published Nov 6 by Saddle Road Press.

FRONT LINES

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

The governor of Alabama on Friday signed into law two controversial bills: one that criminalizes healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth and another that requires students to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she “believed very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl”. The anti-gender-affirming care bill, described as the first legislation of its kind in the US, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to provide medical care including hormone treatment and puberty blockers to minors. It also includes bans on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, which are extremely rare, and compels school personnel to disclose to a parent or guardian that a “minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex”. —The Guardian, April 8, 2022

We will fight them on the

beaches    we will fight them in

 

the sandbox    these tiny

terrorists, the little boys

 

with nail polish, a spangly pony

and a special Barbie.

 

We have God on our side

He who surely must have sanctified

 

the hand of the doctor filling out

the birth certificate.  We have

 

George Orwell on our side to

inspire our marketing team.

 

We’ll call it de-nazification, no,

we’ll call it parental support, no,

 

wait, we’ll call it The Vulnerable Child

Compassion and Protection Act.

 

No more shelter in the demilitarized

school nurse’s office.  We’ll make It a crime

 

to slow the inexorable hands of time

bringing forth an unwanted body.

 

In this holy war

No prisoners are too small.

 

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a psychotherapist and a poet.  Her chapbook Out of Order was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.  Her poems have been published in District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Lighten Up, The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Calyx, and Voices:  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and an ever-shifting blend of rage and wonder.

WHEN GOVERNOR ABBOTT DECRIES GENDER-TRANSITIONING AS CHILD ABUSE

by Remi Recchia

 

I call my doctor and tell him, I don’t want to be a man 

today. Detransitioning? No. I mean I don’t want to be alive 

 

in a place that thinks my heart strings are puppeteered, that I am  

a marionette genetically modified for road rage, sex drive, alcoholic 

 

tendencies. That I don’t want the pharmacy tech to stare extra 

hard at my driver license on a routine prescription pickup. 

 

That I don’t want to blush when drunk friends ask: 

tampon or jockstrap? Because they’re not asking, are they? 

 

The dive-bar dust on their credit cards will remind them later 

that yes, it was rude, but they were drunk, and they have a right 

 

to know who their friends are, their dates are, what I 

will expect them to suck or fuck. 

 

Greg Abbott isn’t asking why the children want to change, 

he’s asking why they’d want to look like that. 

 

Like a man in a dress or a woman who’s been mutilated 

from the inside out, breasts carved off by a butcher’s 

 

knife or by a tree when she lurched in the wrong direction 

at the shout of “timber,” wearing, presumably, a flannel  

 

button-up under a leather jacket. Like a turtle without its shell 

or a ring-tailed lemur without its jewels. But if Greg Abbott 

 

asked me, I’d tell him, what kind of parents agree to HRT 

in the first place? What kind of parents say, yes, I trust you 

 

to grow a beard you won’t regret? Maybe our mothers  

are lovely and our fathers are brave, but I have always been alone 

 

and I have always made my own choices. I’d tell Greg Abbott 

that sometimes a law is just a word and abuse is a red 

 

herring for an onslaught of transphobic legislature, an actual 

school of fish with teeth and fish with fins, and who, now, 

 

can win against the slaughter.     

Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and Reviews Editor for Gasher Journal. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); his forthcoming chapbook Sober will be published with Red Bird Chapbooks in 2022. 

PARROT THERAPY

by Ellen Aronofsky Cole

Credit: Josh Seong / Verywell

The room is fat with jungle sounds.

Haiku runs three-dimensional laps

around her cage, across the floor,

 

up the bars to her food dish, across

two perches, whistles, rings her bell,

repeats. 

 

Okay, I may be turning into Haiku.

 

My manic pacing, the way I roll

and twitch in bed, unceasing motion.

Pamala, the parrot behavior specialist,

 

tells me Haiku’s a fearful bird.

All parrots are, she says. After all,  

they’re prey. So that explains it,

 

my sleepless nights, how I can’t

concentrate, can’t settle.  The congregation

of monsters salivating outside the door,

 

one named COVID, the one we call

World on Fire, the mendacious Cheeto-hued

one bellowing his own name. 

 

My new doctor says we’ll all sleep better

after November third.  Perhaps, but

fear’s a cold bone that runs deep in me,

 

and sleep’s the promised land. This evening

Haiku grinds her beak, a happiness

behavior that precedes sleep. 

 

The sound soothes me. I marvel again

how she twists her head backwards,

buries it beneath her wings.

Ellen Aronofsky Cole has two books of poetry, Notes from the Dry Country (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her work has appeared in Fledgling Rag,  Bellevue Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Washington Post Magazine, and other journals, and in The New England Journal of Medicine. Ellen lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband Brian and her parrot Haiku.

FOR JACOB BLAKE

SHOT BY A COP, PARALYZED, AND SHACKLED TO A HOSPITAL BED


by Margaret Rozga

As Jacob Blake was freed from handcuffs in the hospital, the Kenosha police union said Friday that Blake put an officer in a headlock moments before being shot in the back. Since Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a White officer, local officials have not discussed many details citing the ongoing investigation led by state investigators.

On Friday, the Kenosha Professional Police Association took issue with the public narrative, saying that he confronted officers, put an officer in a headlock and carried a knife that he refused to drop when ordered to by police, the union said. For Blake's attorneys, the police union's narrative is merely a tactic to justify the officers' actions. "I think it's the common strategy that police departments use in these type of circumstances. It's always trying to justify murder for misdemeanors," attorney B'Ivory LaMarr told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday. —CNN, August 29, 2020

Who made the decision to shackle him?
Who shackled him?
Who is the nurse who cares for him shackled?
Who is the doctor who does the surgery? Surgeries?
Was he shackled during surgery?

They did not say shackle. They said restrained.

What words minimize, hide, disguise, mask:
who uses words like this?
What words for this?

His father said handcuffed, handcuffed to the bed.
His father’s words leave the bedside, leave
the hospital, hit the air, hit the air waves,
hit the heart, cry out for release, cry for justice,
words that restrain other words, words that free.

Still to be told:
the nurse’s story, the nurses’ stories
the doctor’s,  the doctors’.

The decider, the deciders, hold a press conference,
are pressed. Pressed, they leave. They leave questions
opening like unacknowledged wounds,
lingering like ghosts of the dead they cannot shackle.

Margaret Rozga is the current Wisconsin Poet Laureate.  She writes poems from her ongoing concern for social justice.

A DAY IN PANDEMIA

by Richard Fox

I.

Suit up like an astronaut exploring a poison planet.

Fasten a fabric mask over my mouth and nose.

Mount a helmet with face shield on my head.

Slip harness on Bailey, snap leash into clip.

Slide on latex gloves. Turn the key, open door. 

Step into the airlock disguised as porch.

Morning walk. few wear protective gear.

Neighbors stroll elbow-to-elbow, whisper in ears. 

Bailey receives greetings. For me—smiles, smirks.

My steps set a meter. Words dance into lines.

Bailey stops to sniff. I memorize a stanza.

Laughter shatters my reverie.

A teen girl yells, No way anybody’s quarantining me.

Three families surround her, lips uncovered.

Kids play tag, mark IT by rolling on the lawn.

II.

March into the hospital, obey taped lines, six feet apart.

Nurse takes my temperature. Asks screening questions.

Disinfects my hands. Double-checks my mask.

The long lobby—chairs, tables barren.

One person to an elevator.

Approaching patients hug opposite walls.

Podiatrist’s waiting room. Three out of four chairs blocked.

We may sit, satisfactorily spaced, sucking air through masks.

The coatrack, verboten. No magazines or solitary games.

Exam room surfaces shine, sealed sterile packets covered. 

Nurse removes my protective sandals, socks.

Puts a spacer next to my right big toe.

The doctor rolls near, picks at a cuticle.

Pus leaking out from under nail. Infected. Must remove. 

He disinfects, injects, waits for lidocaine to numb.

Hey doc, thanks for seeing me. This is my big day out.

He grins. You’re keeping me in business. The wards are empty.

Even the COVID-19 unit has fewer beds filled.

He begins cutting, yanking the nail. Patients refuse to come 

to the hospital for critical tests. Friend of mine, cardiologist, lost 

a patient yesterday. Guy kept postponing appointments. 

My friend begged him to come in. Safe here. It’s all statistics. 

What will kill you first. Patient died at home. Massive MI.

Podiatrist bandages my wound. 

III.

Home, my couch. Prop foot up on pillows. Read the Post: 

people—me—with malignancies  in lungs, three times 

more likely to die from Coronavirus.  Time for supper.

When not writing about rock ’n roll or youthful transgressions, Richard Fox focuses on cancer from the patient’s point of view drawing on hope, humor, and unforeseen gifts. He is the author of four poetry collections and the winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize.

THE DOCTOR WHO DIES OF THE CORONAVIRUS AFTER THE HOSPITAL RUNS OUT OF GLOVES

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Alameda Health System nurses, doctors, and workers protest the lack of personal protective equipment available in Oakland, California, on March 26, 2020. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via Vox

A doctor in Italy who described his concerns in a recent television interview about how the shortages of medical supplies meant he had to treat patients with coronavirus without wearing gloves, has died from the illness. Marcello Natali, 57, from Codogno, in the northern province of Lombardy, had also sounded the alarm over the number of doctors who were getting infected, during an interview with Euronews before he tested positive. He told the channel bluntly that he was not able to work with gloves because "they have run out." —Newsweek, March 19, 2020


There is no linear time in the hereafter. Angels do every-
thing at once. They see the last pair of latex gloves drop
to a hospital floor in slow motion, the look of fear on the
face of the gloveless doctor who, in the blink of a human
eye, goes on caring for patients. They can watch people
being brave (since fear is the birthplace of bravery) and
the people who are sick, some of them dying. But those
who pass away during the doctor’s glove-free hours feel
the touch of warm skin on his or her forehead when they
take their final breaths. This is the unselfish mercy that
humans are capable of, which makes the angels marvel.
Divine creatures respect mortality and all that it entails.
And from every angel’s non-linear, eternal perspective,
a doctor can do his job and at the exact same time, enter
the great mystery of his own dying. Angels may ooh and
ahh over this lone human being’s merciful acts as well as
mercy shown around the world, and still catch his soul the
instant it leaves his body. One whispers words of solace.
Yet another sings the doctor’s favorite aria, Puccini’s “O
Mio Babbino Caro,” as they carry him to the place where
there is no grief or sorrow—and no need for gloves at all.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including Becoming the Blue Heron (Press 53). Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Poet’s Market, The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

TARGETS

by Tricia Knoll

Weathered growth rings in a horizontal cross section cut through a tree felled around AD 1111 used for the western building complex at Aztec Ruins National Monument, San Juan County, New Mexico, USA. Source: commons.wikimedia.org . Photographer:  Michael Gäbler.

Soft or hard: like ice cream?
The you-can’t-imagine bull’s-eyes
on the chest of the emergency
room doctor, but someone did.
The deepest Mars crater yawns
wide open for a rocky landing.
Today’s news has turkeys
playing soccer, fenced orphanages
for orangutans. What if instead
of seeing targets and borders
in every mapped topography
we visualize growth rings,
slow but steady widening
of enduring trees as they bow
under winter’s weight
or resprout from the fire?
For seeds of wildflowers.
Gratitude for mandala graces.


Author's note: Written in response to Monday's shooting at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

Tricia Knoll was born in a Chicago hospital. She has a daily gratitude practice, trying to find that day's hint of beauty in the midst of news of wanton shootings, vicious pronouncements from the administration—a hint of something soothing somewhere. 

EXTRAORDINARY HEALTH

by Gil Hoy




Doctor, Doctor
Can you write me a letter?

Just say that my
health is the best

Better than all the rest

That my genes are blessed

Forget the usual tests.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program.  Hoy received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.  He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared (or will be appearing) most recently in Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, The Penmen Review, I am not a silent poet, Clark Street Review, and TheNewVerse.News.

STOPWATCH MEDICINE

by E.F. Schraeder

Image source: Kikim Media

By the time I sat down I was
exhausted from my last patient.
Fifteen people a day

deserve full attention. 
Fifteen minutes
per consult.  Period. 

Sorry I kept you waiting, I say,
but look at her: perched
on that flat table beneath

a thin paper shroud, brown eyes pleading,
really? like a trapped field mouse.
She says nothing.  Good.

Don’t accept it, the thing
this medicine machine turns us
into greedy little monsters.


E.F. Schraeder's creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Corvus Magazine, New Verse News, Five Poetry,  and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Hunger Tree, was a semifinalist in the New Women's Voices series at Finishing Line Press and is forthcoming in summer 2013.