THE EXPERT SHOT

by Lynn White

Photograph: Nasser Ishtayeh/Sopa Images/Shutterstock

Dozens of Israelis from the country’s security, political and cultural elite have threatened legal action against their government over support for Jewish terrorism and an “ideology of ethnic cleansing” in the occupiedWest Bank, according to a leaked letter. —The Guardian, June 24, 2026

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a child’s head 

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a surgeon’s hand

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a young man’s balls

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a footballer’s foot

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I can do other things as well

when I’m ordered

and even

when I’m not.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes

MY AMAZING INVESTMENT

by Pat Davis

I think they are sheep at first
but they’re corpses
wrapped and tied in white shrouds.

I wish they were low clouds
laid out in a row

but they’re my purchases,
femur, tibia, wrist
tied up for delivery.

I bought the rubble,
the bulldozers, too.

Israel lets in chips 
and Coke.

Children are dying of hunger.
Children are dying of cold.

Our papers blame the wind.
Blame the rain. 
Aid is blocked, the doctors

forced out.
By the toe-end of a corpse 
as long as my forearm 

is a puddle of muddy water in which a star
was lost

Patricia Davis’ poems appear in Smartish Pace, Image, Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. Also a playwright, she earned her MFA from American University. She is translations editor for the literary journal Poet Lore and lives in the Washington, DC area, where she works in human rights advocacy.

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE CEASEFIRE

by Bonnie Naradzay

More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in   their intent, said Amnesty International today [November 27, 2025].

after Ilya Kaminsky

We were so satisfied with our stuffing recipes

and so when they bombed tent encampments

blocked entry for prosthetic limbs

for child amputees

blocked machinery for uncovering corpses

from the rubble

blocked doctors who’d earlier been given

“permission” to enter Gaza

 we (forgive us)

looked the other way again

as Israel violated the Cease Fire

over and over again with the slaughter of hundreds more,

atrocities committed with impunity

how easily we looked the other way

as Israel asked us for billions more in aid today

from our house of money

we (forgive us) lived happily during the Cease Fire.

Bonnie Naradzay has been leading weekly poetry sessions for homeless people at Street Sense and at Miriam’s Kitchen and also at a retirement community, all in Washington, DC.  While at Harvard University in the late 1960s, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize–-a month’s stay in Northern Italy–-in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. A 2017 graduate of the St John’s College (Annapolis) Graduate Institute, her book of poems Invited to the Feast was published by Slant Books in October 2025; three of the poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. 

CRUELTY

by Bonnie Naradzay

Some people say
that, having stopped 
reading the news, they 
feel better.
 
The old Chinese poets
remind me to include
today’s weather report
in each poem.
 
Dr Issam Abu Ajwa said
he was forced to sleep
on a floor covered with small, 
sharp rocks, hands and legs tied,
eyes blindfolded.
 
The weather is warm this week—
in fact, the cherry blossoms
here are projected to peak
somewhat earlier this spring.
 
Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia
was tortured for seven months 
then released without charge. 
“I was clubbed, beaten with rifle butts, 
attacked by dogs. I was beaten so badly 
I couldn’t use my legs or walk, he said.
 
Dr Ahmad Mhanna, director
of al-Awda hospital in north Gaza, 
has been in Israeli prisons 
more than a year without charge.
 
Nightfall here, and the evening
becomes a still life—
it glistens like a Chinese lantern
in a garden without strife.
 
Some people try to memorize
a meaningful poem one line
at a time as a way to neutralize 
the news.  In severe winter cold
 
seven children froze to death
in Gaza in the last 48 hours
but today’s weather elsewhere
is quite pleasant overall.

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations. 

ON THE JOB

by David Chorlton

AI-generated image by Canva for The New Verse News.

Late glow on the slopes, desert streaming
between the ridgeline
and the streets below, Friday afternoon,
T-shirts spotted with the stains
a day’s work leaves behind
                                                  and cashiers
at the supermarket scanning
what the weekend needs. Mourning doves
for restfulness, grackles for
opportunism and he who all day
wheels the carts
                               stacks another line to steer
back to the entranceway. So much
to be done: bread to bake and orders
to compile, restrooms to be cleaned
and a country to be run. A painter
splashed white is picking
up fruit,
              a man dressed in black
casually steps between coffee
and the cookie shelves with a sidearm strapped
conspicuously at his side. So much
to be done:
                    wash the floors, make
appointments, secure domestic peace
and spray the fruit to keep it fresh. Almost
Saturday, but there’s work
for the workers to do even when the sunlight
looks nervous. No rest
for the doctors, mechanics, plumbers
and all
           who believe that even
a rudderless ship reaches port in a storm.


David Chorlton lives in Phoenix close to a mountain preserve. He likes to keep track of the wildlife at the meeting of desert and the urban zone as well as the people at the nearby supermarket. His book Dreams the Stones Have was published last year by The Bitter Oleander Press.

WITH CHILD

by Jan Chronister

Arizona for Abortion Access supporters carry photographs of women who died because of abortion bans during the 35th annual All Souls Procession—a two-mile long march for community members to honor ancestors and loved ones who have died—on Nov. 3, 2024, in Tucson, Ariz. (Mario Tama / Getty Images via Ms. Magazine)

Click to see "Rest in Power: A Running List of the Preventable Deaths Caused by Abortion Ban" by Roxanne Szal,  Ms. Magazine as of November 26, 2024.

At one time

being pregnant
was a dangerous
condition to be in.
 
I would have died
in childbirth like my 
grandmother
if I’d given birth
a hundred years ago.
 
My daughter, breach,
but barely six pounds.
Small enough
for the doctor to
reach in, position her
for delivery.
How would it have ended
without his help,
called in from fishing,
smoking a pipe.
 
My son’s cord
wrapped around his neck.
Intervention again.
A healthy baby boy is born.
 
The third time
I miscarried.
Doctors took care of me,
nuns ministered
to my soul.
 
No laws prevented them
from saving me.

Editor’s Note: Women NATIONWIDE can still receive safe, effective & affordable medication abortion services via the ASafeChoice Network of physicians. 

Jan Chronister splits her year between northern Wisconsin and southern Georgia. She has authored three full-length poetry collections and ten chapbooks. Her most recent is the fifth annual chapbook recounting the year through poems. Jan poetry appears in numerous print and online journals and anthologies. She also enjoys helping fellow poets publish their work.

CASE 1

by Louisa Schnaithmann

“Donald Triplett, the 1st person diagnosed with autism, dies at 89” –NPR, 6/17/2023

I never meant to be a statistic.

I only wanted my numbers, 
to multiply them faster than
a calculator, to visit parts 
of the world people only 
dream about. I was just a man.
I’m not sure why the doctors
were so fascinated by me.
Every day, I was only myself.
What’s so special about that?
I guess they found something there.
Not sure what. My hometown
loved me. Wish I could say the
same about everyone else who
grew up like I did. Maybe it’s 
easier to not understand
than to try. Not sure.
I was always better with numbers.

Louisa Schnaithmann is a bisexual autistic woman whose poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her work can be found in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Broadkill Review, Gargoyle, and other journals. She is the consulting editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry and lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.

REQUIEM FOR PABLO NERUDA

by Donna Katzin

Fifty years on, the true cause of death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in the wake of the country’s 1973 coup d’état, has remained in doubt across the world… On the evening of Sept. 23, 1973, the [Santa Maria] clinic reported that Mr. Neruda died of heart failure. Earlier that day, he had called his wife saying he was feeling ill after receiving some form of medication. In 2011, Manuel Araya, Mr. Neruda’s driver at the time, publicly claimed that the doctors at the clinic poisoned him by injecting an unknown substance into his stomach, saying Mr. Neruda told him this before he died… On Wednesday, The New York Times reviewed the summary of findings compiled by international forensic experts who had examined Mr. Neruda’s exhumed remains and identified bacteria that can be deadly. In a one-page summary of their report, shared with The New York Times, the scientists confirmed that the bacteria was in his body when he died, but said they could not distinguish whether it was a toxic strain of the bacteria nor whether he was injected with it or instead ate contaminated food. The findings once again leave open the question of whether Mr. Neruda was murdered. —The New York Times, February 15, 2023

“Mi deber es vivir, morir, vivir.”

My duty is to live, to die, to live.

—Pablo Neruda

At your home Isla Negra,                                              

guides showed us your collections

of sea shells, butterflies and poems,

shared that when, in your hospital bed,

you heard the comrade president had died,

you closed your eyes for the last time  

as the waves wept.

 

 

Half a century later, your comrades

in the science of life and search for truth

exhumed your body from the sleeping earth,

discovered the poison injected in your stomach

by doctors of the dictators—

a burning serpent sent

to seal your lips.

 

 

But, comrade poet, your words

carry us on wings of awe—

beyond despots, toxins,

solitude and silence—

to liberated zones of our

imagination, hope and love                                 

as tireless as an ocean of stars.

Author's note: Isla Negra, today a museum, is a seaside former home of Pablo Neruda, where for years staff had quietly shared with visitors the popular belief that the poet had died of grief when he overheard the news that General Pinochet had taken power and that his friend President Salvador Allende had died.

Donna Katzin is the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest which facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. She co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners which helps feed and empower impoverished mothers and children in Nicaragua, and she serves on the board of Community Change in the U.S.  She is also a contributor to The New Verse News and author of With These Hands, poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.

TABLE FOR ONE

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Warm some olive oil, let it spread  

slowly across the bottom of a saucepan,

sauté chopped garlic, watch bubbles form 

around the edge of each morsel,

chop red pepper, some mushrooms,

some onions, use bite sized pieces, watch 

them soften, watch the onions turn 

golden, use vegetables so fresh 

that they offer up their essence 

to the sauce, add some chopped tomatoes, 

crush basil leaves between your palms, 

add a dash of red wine, fresh ground pepper, 

meanwhile bring salted water to a rolling boil,

add vermicelli or linguini, stir as the steam

fills the air, inhale. Then one by one

subtract the smells, the extra virgin olive oil,

the garlic infusion, onion, mushrooms,

the tomatoes ripe and juicy, 

the warm semolina, shaved parmesan, 

subtract the taste too, so the pasta

tastes like paper, the sauce, some warmish swill,

the vegetables add a bland kind of texture,

something to chew on, softer than stones,

sort of, the red wine is not worth the cost,

not really worth the trouble of decanting,

swirling. Subtract the guests at the table, 

add candles where they used to sit, 

relatives, neighbors, doctors and nurses, 

songwriters, teachers, students, bartenders,

barbers, and servers, 900,000 Americans.

Feed the birds, set the table for one,

watch clouds move across the sky,

say Mass, say Kaddish, say Grace,

try to remember how it used to taste.

 

 

Bonnie Proudfoot’s fiction and poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle Poets Respond, and in many journals. Her novel Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) was selected by the WNBA for its Great Group Reads and long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway award. Her first chapbook of poems, Household Gods (Sheila-Na-Gig Press), is forthcoming in  Summer of 2022. 

SPRING AND FALL

by Fran Schumer

An empty FDR Drive in New York City was photographed on March 25, 2020. Credit: Phil Penman via The U.S. Sun

It was a beautiful fall, and we all remembered that it was because it was
such a terrible time. From the reservation near my house, you could see
where the towers stood. For days afterward, someone posted a sign:
Dear Jesus, Please bring Mr. Spinelli home.

This spring is beautiful, too; piles of pink on the streets of my deserted
suburb, the magnolia trees past their prime. I walk every day with my
husband, our new routine, and notice what I might have missed before, like
the hawks flying overhead, above the skyline where the buildings burned.

I see hyacinths and daffodils and creeping phlox, pale and soothing like the
blue the doctors wear or the coverlets on patients in the ventilators. We’ll
remember those patients, and how good it was not be one of them, to eat a
banana after weeks of canned pears, not to be the only person living in fear.

It’s not so bad when everyone is afraid of the same thing, though some
days you’re afraid of those other things too. On those days, especially,
it’s good to be distracted by the work it takes just to eat, to go out, and,
heaven forbid, risk it at the bike shop because one of your tires is flat
and you need to ride to see all this beauty, the expressway beneath you, so eerie
and empty of cars. In more normal times, the traffic could kill you.

Fran Schumer is the author of Powerplay (Simon and Schuster; NYT bestseller) and Most Likely to Succeed (Random House). Her work has appeared in various sections of The New York Times including Op Ed, Book Review and Sunday Magazine; also, Vogue, The Nation, The North American Review, and other publications. She is the winner of a Goodman Loan Grant Award for Fiction from the City University of New York. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.

POSTHUMOUS EXISTENCE

by John Hodgen

Were we not paying attention, attention-deficited even then,
even before the term was wheeled in on some gurney
with a wobbly wheel? Brooklyn Hospital, so overrun,
where Fauci was born, where Whitman volunteered,
his beard as face mask, tending Union soldiers,
bringing peaches, poems, writing letters for them,
urging them to believe that a woman back home
would still marry them when they came home,
marching Johnnies through the rye,
missing a leg or an arm or an eye?

And Keats, quarantined in the harbor in Naples,
not nearly the quaranta giorni, the full forty days,
on the Maria Crowther, six weeks out from Gravesend,
typhus all around, bobbing like rhythm, like synaesthesia
in the bay. Keats, mortality weighing “heavily” on him,
“like unwilling sleep,” Keats half alive,
“half in love with easeful Death.”

Did we not see it, fully take it in,
poets and plagues interwoven, the world caving in,
the burst of tubercular blood in Keats’s handkerchief,
Whitman’s soldiers (“warriors,” T***p says) who survived,
stood, hobbled and grim, and married just as he told them
they would, writing back years later to tell Old Walt,
fierce believer in grasses, sheaves and hymns,
that they had named their children after him.

Or is it simply that we have lived too long
to have seen it again?

And who moves quickly now, masked, from bed to bed,
giving succor, solace, taking selfies with the nearly dead
to share with the families prevented from being there,
with Poe’s masquers, red death, double ventilated with dread?
What nurses, doctors, poets glide among us again,
like shepherds, pastorals, like trashbagged antibodies,
nearly invisible, shining with novel, singular grace?

John Hodgen is the Writer-in-Residence at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. Hodgen won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). His fourth book of poetry Heaven & Earth Holding Company is out from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and his first book In My Father's House has been reprinted from Lynx House/University of Washington Press. Hodgen’s fifth book The Lord of Everywhere is just out, also from Lynx House/University of Washington Press.

PANDEMIC GOOD FRIDAY IN AMERICA

by Michael L. Ruffin

“I’m a Doctor at the ‘Epicenter of the Epicenter.’ Let’s not forget the social failures that allowed Covid-19 to overwhelm neighborhoods like Elmhurst in Queens.” —Ben McVane, The New York Times, April 5, 2020. Dr. McVane (pictured above) specializes in emergency medicine.

When this
is all over,
and we have
crucified
so many of
our doctors,
nurses, and
other medical
professionals,
will they say,
“Forgive them,
for they didn’t
know what they
were doing?”

Should they?

Didn’t we?


Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and  of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at TheNewVerse.News and is forthcoming in 3 Moon Magazine and Rat's Ass Review.

PROFESSIONS DURING OUR WORLD'S CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Coalition for the Homeless

                there are thousands of gaping holes now
                and there will be too many more
                spaces once filled with art music love
                such a long list of griefs
                a census list too long
                doctors
                nurses
                parents
                friends
                priests
                                     sisters
                          as well as the other invisible
                                     hospital cleanup crews
                sanitation workers
                                     truckers
                stock boys
                cashiers of every stripe
                then there is the government’s own:
                the workers of neither rain or shine
                delivering our mail
                                     those who served
                                     the never counted away invisible
                the homeless addicts prisoners . . .
                each and every empty space
                a sterling silver invitation
                a call  a challenge
                to those who will come after
                                     to fill these gaping holes
                with the sacred earth of their lives

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. is a certified spiritual director whose poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53) was published in 2015.

WE WORKERS

by Thomas Piekarski

The south wall of Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry mural in the Detroit Institute of Arts. 

We are the workers who build the ships that police
vast oceans shared by squid, plankton and blue whales.
We’re workers autonomous in our uniforms swayed
by the motion of constellations gradual in their effect.
We’re black men without pensions to rely on gathered
in front of the convenience store with lottery tickets
tucked in our pockets. We’re scantily clad waitresses
sexy at Hooters serving deep fried appetizers for lunch.
In Chicago, Pensacola, Albuquerque and Minneapolis
we’re taxi drivers and plumbers rising and stretching
to get a jump on dawn, twisting out kinks in our backs.
We’re money-laundering Wall Street financial kingpins
whose losses that add to the national debt are reimbursed
by smug congressional scallywags. We’re the Mexicans
who labor in Salinas fields planting and picking crops
and go home to wives and kids existing mostly on beans.
We’re security personnel, and we demand you remove
your shoes, pass them through bomb detection scanners.
We change your oil down in the pits beneath engines,
and though our hands ache your car will run smoothly.
Is anything as tender as the steak cooked so invitingly
on a hot teppan grill by the immigrant Japanese chef?
Note the greeter at Walmart’s entrance slurring words
as he rolls his wheelchair back and forth, quite cheerful.
We’re doctors performing abortions, pharmacists bottling
way overpriced drugs by the millions for hypochondriacs.
We are the workers, stoic, captivated by random winds,
the workers who adore HBO, smart phones and burgers.
We’re the workers whose marrow is sucked out of bones
born from the infant canyons and ravines of our planet.
We’re dreams that left European killing fields and chose
our own nation. We’re Stephen Foster’s children, Mark
Twain’s alter ego, Lincoln’s ghost, Sitting Bull’s blood.
We live in cleverly constructed boxes near workplaces.
We dedicated workers are well trained to forget problems,
check our attitudes at the door, produce at top efficiency.
We thrive on hysterical rhetoric that stirs our nationalism.
When the day’s work’s done we retreat to our televisions.

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared widely in literary journals internationally, including Nimrod, Portland Review, Mandala Journal, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Poetry Quarterly. He has published a travel book, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.

ALEPPO DIARY: THE NEW NORMAL

by Mary Jo Balistreri

What follows is a found poem based on “Aleppo Diary: The Carnage From Syrian Barrel Bombs" by Dr. Samer Attar in The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2015

A nine-year old boy a barrel bomb obliterated hand

cylinders packed with explosives/shrapnel dropped by helicopters
Can you sew it back on

Bombs can’t be aimed hospitals pancaked blood smeared floors
slaughter of innocents 12 million in need half of them children
I couldn’t promise

Hundreds dying one weekend alone pulverized bodies crushed skulls
aid alone can’t offset systemic sustained slaughter
Stop barrel bombs the doctors say

Stop barrel bombs the doctors say
a nine-year-old asks Can you sew it back on
the U.N. asks, What more can we do

Steps you can take the doctors say
enforce no fly zones buffer zones too medical neutrality would be a help
more access to camps of refugees but mostly stop the barrel bombs

A nine-year old boy hand blown off you’ll be all right the doctor says
but deep inside the doctor knows the helicopters keep dropping
barrel bombs keep exploding

Mary Jo Balistreri has two full books of poetry, Joy in the Morning and gathering the harvest published by Bellowing Ark Press, and a chapbook, Best Brothers, published by Tiger's Eye Press. She has recent work in Parabola, The Hurricane Press, Plainsongs, The Avocet: Journal of Nature Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Quill and Parchment, Ruminate, The Homestead Review, The Heron's Nest, Acorn, and A Hundred Gourds. She has six Pushcart nominations, and two Best of the Net. She is associate editor of Tiger’s Eye Press. Mary Jo is also one of the founders of Grace River Poets, an outreach for women's shelters, churches, and schools. 

MAN EATER

by Kristina England




A highly addictive drug whose name derives from the green, scaly sores that develop on users’ rotting flesh was reported to have found a toehold in the United States this week. --LA Times, September 28, 2013


1.

A woman lies on an operating table.
Metal tools deconstruct her brain,
then reassemble it.
She wakes, relieved to see another day,
expects the healing process,
the pain of coming back to life.
Weeks later, doctors inform
her the medical equipment was tainted,
the extra life that surgery gave her
may be eaten away;
she'd go mad in the process.
But they couldn't know for sure.
They had to wait
with her and seven other patients.
So the doctors, the media,
the whole world sat down,
flipped through magazines
while she went mad anyway.

2.

A boy will inject himself in Arizona
with a drug called Krokodil.
Gasoline and oil in the blood,
his arm will bubble up,
go gangrene.

Two years to live,
he'll shoot up again,
reduce the days
with heroin.

3.

A skin rash bans my friend's mother
from hugging her before surgery.

Lauren has stage 3 breast cancer.
Her mother - MRSA.
They can't even be in the same room
or else Lauren could get sick,
contract a flesh eating disease.

They know the odds, separate themselves,
wait to feel that mother-daughter touch again,
believing they will because belief
is the only thing between us
and the facts.

4.

Flesh eating bacteria is breeding.
We find it in our conversations.

My mother and I tongueless from politics,
our conflicting thoughts on Obamacare
some tool, some needle, some rash
we refuse to deal with.

She sits on the right side of the table.
I circle my fork through spaghetti

on the left.

Soon we'll be dead to each other -
a statistic, an autopsy.

It will hurt.
It will be maddening.

And yet, we'll still inject ourselves,
unwilling to believe
we are addicted,
we are suicidal,
we are the boy in Arizona,
senseless,
always searching for that ultimate high.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her poetry and fiction is published or forthcoming in Extract(s), Gargoyle, New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other journals.