THE RECKONING

by Julia Griffin

But for the young, I might not care too much.

I’ll go on reading in my little hutch

And typing quirky poems, as before;

I don’t in fact expect a civil war:

This outcome leaves small danger of a putsch.

Books, dogs, Prosecco—I intend to clutch

My pleasures, drifting further out of touch.

I’d be content just to enjoy them more

But for the young.

Here’s four more years of vicious double dutch,

The crumbling earth denied a vital crutch,

More guns, bent laws, less safety for the poor,

Billionaires’ bribes—all this I might ignore;

It’s not for me my misery is such,

But for the young.

Julia Griffin lives in south-east Georgia.  She did what she could.

SH*T

by Ron Riekki

Photograph by Angela Callanan

“Chicago shootings: At least 33 shot, 5 fatally, in weekend gun violence across city, police say.” 

—ABC7 Chicago, June 10, 2024

“My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –”

—Emily Dickinson

 

“Unbending the shape of the pew

from their backs and shuffling

the pooled blood”

—Neal Bowers, “Hymns”

 

I’m writing this fresh as it happened a few minutes ago,

a high-speed chase where the front vehicle almost hit mine,

turning off quickly into the apartment parking lot where I live,

although live isn’t the right word, the car tiny, like a Mitsubishi

Mirage, the back with metal mangled like tentacles, maybe hit

by a cop car, and there are about nine police vehicles directly

behind him—I assume it’s a him, the prisons are filled with hims—

and they Doppler by, police trucks in the rear, a couple unmarked

squad cars in back, almost all with lights on, but, strangely, no

 

sirens, as if they have all forgot about the sound, too caught up

in this road with its polluted beautiful trees all in a hypnotic

perfect fake line, and I stop there, craning my neck back to

watch cop car after cop car after cop car and then the stillness,

the clouds all leaking into each other so that it feels like one large

pool of cloud that keeps spilling out and two students walk two dogs

and one nips at the other and bark-whines and the silence again

until the gunshots start popping, scattered, quick, then done, gone,

and I park, get out.  This isn’t the first shooting I’ve heard lately.

 

The last one was a murder.  A sushi restaurant across the street.

They wanted the guy’s watch.  He didn’t give it to ‘em,

so they gave it to him.  That’s what a neighbor said.  The U.S.

has four of the most dangerous cities in the world.  The entire

world.  I live in one of them.  Although live doesn’t seem to be

the right word.  I asked today, before this happened, if I could

get out of my lease, the landlord sitting behind his desk the size

of a corpse.  He talked like he hated talking.  The Lord of the Land.

He said no.  He said I could buy it out.  On Generalized Anxiety

 

Disorder tests, they ask, Do you feel trapped?  I look out the window

right now, glance, typing this.  The trees are still.  There’s no wind.

There’s an ouch to the landscape, like you can feel the earth itself,

whispering to us, What are you doing?  We don’t know.  In the last

three days, there’ve been mass shootings in Wisconsin (10 shot),

D.C. (6 shot), Alabama and Nevada and Texas and Virginia (4 shot

at each); they only count a mass shooting if it’s “4+ victims injured or

killed,” so that the other 43 shootings where 2 to 3 were shot or

killed wouldn’t have to be counted, and then the eleven pages on

 

the Gun Violence Archive online that includes the one shot or killed,

so often, when I looked through the “View Incident” option, it lists

the victims as “Teen 12-17,” “rooftop party ranging in age from 14

to 23-yrs old were shot,” “Teen 12-17,” “Park Party” attendants,

“Teen 12-17,” “House Party” teens.  Teens, teens, teens.  Tens

of teens.  Hundreds.  Thousands.  Children.  The repetition.  I keep

writing about this.  History rhymes.  I swear to God, as I’m wrapping

up this poem, more gunshots.  Were those gunshots?  I ask a neighbor.

He doesn’t know, but he heard the cop cars.  He says he doesn’t know.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).

NATIONAL PARK

by Jerome Berglund

Dogs roam the ghost town of Pripyat within the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine. Scientists have identified genetically distinct populations living in the area, including within the highly contaminated power plant. Credit: Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, March 3, 2023

The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests 

–Popular Mechanics, April 1, 2023

near fifty odd past,

generations of curs

in the fallout

plume rose up

into the air

but has it dissipated 

toys left behind

during hasty retreat 

from exclusion zone

through ruins 

of the power plant

feral strays mutating

irradiated populations

not eradicated

over the dog years

unmolested 

other kingdoms

time to flourish

the casualties

by necessity

continue evolving 

beneficial adaptations

can they be reabsorbed

into populations

tempering

for weathering 

this boiling world

roaming the wastes

admiring 

the many sunflowers 

Jerome Berglund, recently nominated for the Touchstone awards and Pushcart Prize, has many haiku, senryu, and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, including in the Asahi Shimbun, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku.  His first full-length collection of poetry Bathtub Poems was just released by Setu Press.

WHO WILL BE LEFT

by Carol Alena Aronoff

when hands steepled in prayer 

open 

bloodstained palms 

in a last gesture 

to smoke-filled sky?

When ashes 

cover newly dug graves 

unfindable 

by those who wish 

a final goodbye 

before they flee?

Who will gather 

broken dolls 

to hold a funeral 

for childhood?

Cover the ears 

of shell-shocked 

dogs 

as their owners 

carry them?

Collect tears 

from empty bullet-

scarred wells? 

Grow sunflowers 

from torn limbs

and copper jackets?

Who will be left 

to push grandmothers 

in wheelbarrows 

nowhere safe?

Who?

Carol Alena Aronoff, Ph.D. is a psychologist, teacher and poet. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and won several prizes. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Carol has published 4 chapbooks (Cornsilk, Tapestry of Secrets, Going Nowhere in the Time of Corona, A Time to Listen) and 6 full-length poetry collections: The Nature of Music, Cornsilk, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, Blessings From an Unseen World, Dreaming Earth’s Body (with artist Betsie Miller-Kusz) as well as The Gift of Not Finding: Poems for Meditation. Currently, she resides in rural Hawaii.

WINTRY MIX

by Tricia Knoll

As a forecast this seems like calling for mayhem

until the front moves in and the silence of snow

licks every branch and sticks to each twig’s gesture. 

 

The goldfinch and nuthatches retreat from the feeder

to unseen hideouts. The dogs yawn, and I succumb

to a sleepiness at odds with the morning news

 

of those who call for civil war, the skyrockets

of corona deaths, projections of costs in trust

and cash. The silence of falling snow deepens

 

inch by inch above the ice slick the rain gave 

first. Slow gather and the flurry of politicians

with papers and proof seeking. Such sad news

 

in accumulations inch by inch by inch. 

Tricia Knoll is living out the series of wintry mixes in Vermont where the forecast calls of windchills of -20 in the next few days. Her new chapbook Let's Hear It For The Horses is available February 1, and the horses outside down the road during the day  are all wearing heavy blankets now.

MAYFIELD

by Donna Katzin

In this photo taken by a drone, buildings are demolished in downtown Mayfield, Ky., on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, after a tornado traveled through the region Friday night. Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP

Where cold and warming winds collide,

twisters—minions of an angry earth—                    

lash out in pain, flatten farms, homes,

houses of work and worship in their paths.

As roofs rain bricks in darkness,                               

mothers, fathers, sons, daughters,

sisters, brothers sit in cellars,                                               

making calls never returned.

 

When the wild ones have gone, survivors pick

through mauled metal, shredded remains.       

A bus lies on its back—a turtle shell

with the body sucked out.

Splintered ghost trunks rise  

like hands to heaven.

There are no voices now.

Even wind has no words.

 

Cadaver dogs sniff through rubble.

Crews root around the clock

for what is left of men and women

who worked the late shift,

even after alarms screamed,

for twelve dollars an hour

making candles to light consumers’ holidays       

at the factory now extinguished.                   

 

On Sunday morning, faithful gather,

console and hold each other,

interrogate the Almighty,

sing hymns of hope

to staunch despair.  

A few pray for the mother

planet we torture at our own peril—

who will not be patient forever.

 

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

CATS & DOGS

by Scott C. Kaestner

My dog is a Socialist
and my cat a Capitalist.

My dog speaks of the pack 
my cat wants to be left alone.

My dog sleeps on the floor
my cat naps in a penthouse.

My dog wastes not an ounce of kibble
my cat scoffs at its gourmet food.

They are two different beings no doubt
and there is definitely conflict.

Like during the 2020 Democratic Primary 
my dog a Bernie Bro and my cat Ridin’ with Biden.

Or the time my dog’s Communist Manifesto
caught fire when my cat knocked over a candle.

Said it was an accident like when my dog
mistook the cat’s Wall Street Journal for a bone.

I have my suspicions as they both
like to poke and stoke each other’s fire.

Just when I think conflict is inevitable 
and a peaceful existence a pipe dream.

Come home and find the two of them
snuggled together on the couch.

Then I am reminded that differences 
make their union stronger.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and street taco enthusiast. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

IJS*

by Judy Juanita

Imma be ok

Even wif lightening ‘n thunder 

setting de trees on fire

& dogs howling up a storm

but if I were a spooky sort 

(which I is deep down)

I’d say we is coming into 

de apock-a-lips

* = I’m just saying

Judy Juanita’s poetry has been published widely. Her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). She appears in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Season 5, Laney College where she teaches.

COLLECTOR

by Jonel Abellanosa





I own three mountains of garbage
between pavements that have
memorized our footsteps. Five angels
follow me, sleep where I sleep,
bark, wag like the president.

People are generous, my mountains
tall whether moon or sun. My tin cup
runneth over, furbabies and I drinking
laughter. Leftovers full and fill.
Bones for them, sometimes toys.

I’m a discoverer. I know shards
of glass draw sunlight. I’m an explorer.
For each dig, I find brass or bronze.
I breathe new life to batteries.
Books remind me of Alexandria.

When it rains their yelps make me
cry, and I’m richer. They love sackcloth
for the freeze. They tell me secrets.
Debating politicians need us, so they
can speak in tongues and be bold.

A regular contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, the Philippines. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals including That Literary Review, Poetry Kanto, The Lyric, The McNeese Review and Star*Line and been nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars awards. His poetry collections include Meditations (Alien Buddha Press), Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), 50 Acrostic Poems (Cyberwit, India), and his politically-progressive collection In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art). His first speculative poetry collection Pan’s Saxophone is forthcoming from Weasel Press.

STANDING ROCK RESISTANCE

by Akua Lezli Hope





Hey-ya Hey-ya Hey Hey O O

where is it that you go
cars stopped and searched
on their way to the gathering
where others sing and pray
land protectors, land protectors
sing and pray, police, police
stop intrusive machines
that churn holy ground
that plow the sacred into memory

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey O O

gather all ye tribes to save
life water in North Dakota
Standing Rock Sioux
started in prayers in April
avert the threat to sacred earth
defend clean streams
at this end of the fossil fuel era
battle pipelines which burst
which quench an alien thirst for profit
trespass on treaty lands

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

a german shepherd pants with blood on his mouth
his nose drips with Indian blood
his handler yanks him this way and that
other dogs snap at horses’ legs which dance away
charge protectors, bite and wound
other handlers advance, spray the eyes
of protectors, mace Indian faces

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

come all defenders
stand by those whose land
has been blooded by slaughter
drowned by dams, washed away
confront the threat to who remains
from 17 banks, $3.8 billion
arrayed to transgress, to dig under rivers
dirty the clean, desecrate holy places,
intruders threading poisons
through the precious warp of earth
to steal again First People’s land

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

this is prayer ground
this is sacred water way
this is where First Peoples stand
this is where protectors stay.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, adornments, and peace whenever possible. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. A crochet designer, she has published 114 patterns.  Her manuscript Them Gone won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in fall, 2016.

BLOOD ON THE DOG'S MOUTH

by Laura Lee Washburn





After dinner we have cherry pie.
We are four people from three continents.

The pie: thick with red, butter
crusted: we are sure some old woman made it.

My friends say French and German words
with some ease.  Cherries burst under forks.

We drink tall glasses of iced tea
made with cool water from the kitchen tap.

We have come to live on the plains.
The town festival with a European name offers pie today.

George Washington, cherry pie, pure
dumb luck to be born in this country, and deliberate movements.

What must you be born to
to go out on the land against the oil machine?

You must love the water like life
to tie yourself to the digging machine that doesn’t stop

even with thin court orders.  You must
know the earth is not yours to give while others

train dogs to tear at strangers, loose dogs trained
to tear human skin.

The blood on the dogs’ mouths is human blood.

All over America while folks sit down to dinner,
the blood on the dogs’ mouths is the human blood of water protectors.

Breathe through your nose not your mouth.
[Cry liiiiiiii if you still have the bloody red heart to cry it.]
#nodapl

Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Apple Valley Review, Whale Road Review, Ninth Letter, The Sun, OccuPoetry, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

by Michael Mark

"Oh, Say, Can You See (but Not Hear) Those Fireworks?"

—The New York Times, June 30, 2016

We are jamming ourselves under the couch,
far as we can. Until another blast and Jessie
crawls even deeper; her massive paws scar
the wood floor. I don’t care. Jessie’s square
head is twice as big as mine; she’s a hundred
and forty pound Newfoundland. And because
she hates fireworks I hate them more. I’d ban
the Roman candles’ machine gun bursts, wipe
out the whistle and bang of bottle rockets, defuse
all firecrackers: they celebrate war, children blow
fingers off, their stringy guts leave a mess over
our trees and lawns. Truthfully, I could live with
all of these if their noise didn’t upset Jess. I’m
with the dogs in every corner of our country tonight,
beneath dining room tables, behind winter coats
in closets, tails between our legs in hot toxic
garages. Even a juicy burger couldn’t bribe us out.
Jess hears the onslaught before me – her dozen
extra doggy ear bones picking up the frequency
of the matchsticks’ phosphorus red heads scraping
three blocks down, the flares’ whooshes, flames
climbing filaments to the climatic celebration
that makes the rest of my family, her family, ooh
and ahh and my BFF whine, burrow towards dust
bunnies, my daughter’s missing sock, MIA potato
chips. I lean into her furry heaviness, kiss her silky
ear, apologize, It’s a human thing. Her giant breed’s
heart is near bursting now—M80s shaking windows—
our quiet cul-de-sac life is under attack by enemy
artillery but I do nothing to stop it. Don’t even hush
my own kids’ screaming racket. Won’t take on the
neighborhood dads in about-faced ball caps, flag t-shirts—
grab their bics, rip their match books. I’m not as brave
as any dog, that includes yappy lap puppets—nowhere
near courageous as Jess. She’d tear into anyone who
bared their teeth at me, take apart a pack of circling
coyotes, and if a Ford F-150 was turning the corner
faster than the15mph speed limit, radio pounding kick-
ass hillbilly, she’d hurl herself between me and that All
American made in Mexico truck, leave it a smoking heap,
sidle up beside my leg and waddle me back home. No big
bad bragging bark. Just a fluffy tail in the air, like a flag, kinda.

Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Cutthroat Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Rattle, Spillway, Sugar House Review and TheNewVerse.News. His poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. 

LOBSTERS

by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

Three people have died in a series of shootings at three sites near Hesston, Kansas, including a lawn care products factory, authorities said Thursday night. Photo: Fernando Salazar, AP via USA Today, Feb. 25, 2016

When the dogs attack
your dog,

in the new park, you spend the whole time

wondering
if you are wrong, if somehow you

misunderstood.
The light is beautiful
that night:

a hollowed shell.
No one thinks of how the thing

that lives inside
gets boiled alive.

Buried.
Frozen. There
are manuals, online.

You start
shaking

when you see how the dogs’ mouths
are full of blood, you

started screaming
at some point, oh,
no, my god, although you don’t
believe in gods.

Thursday night, another man
shot everyone

like it was in
another language where this thing
just sometimes happens.

People tried
to explain:

the soft
warm evening, what he ate, the curling

screams
like lobsters boiling,

bumping dully
in the pot.


Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her chapbook Various Lies is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

DRESSING UP THE TRADITION

by Margaret Rozga

It’s still raw there, there at the lunch counters
of our minds, our souls. Closing Woolworth’s
could not erase it, not given its firmly-fixed seat,
nor could putting sheets back on beds,
snarling dogs back in kennels.  Patronizing
faces in high places, crosses still
burn, codes still smolder, singe
those too young to know what a noose is.
Suit and tie it, it’s still a night rider.


Margaret Rozga has published three books: Two Hundred Nights and One Day, Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad, and her latest   Justice   Freedom   Herbs.

A SHADOW IS BORN

by Alejandro Escudé


Sep 30, 2015 · by Rob Stein and Eyder Peralta

From 

Couple Spends $100,000 To Clone Deceased Dog, Gets Two Puppies 

—HuffPost Science, Dec. 28, 2015

A chance to wipe
The death-slate
Clean,

And raise a clone.
We might dictate
Morals of old
But none do hold,

The messiah
Willing to pry a life
From the mouth
Of god.

I gaze at
My bloody feet,
The dust, having wandered
The desert,

A rueful act.
One traitor equals
One billion

With minds set
To explode or be
Appeased.

Holding a shadow
Should be
A harrowing thing,

To feel the body
There, only to witness
The darkness.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.