THE CIRCUS: A MUSING

by Howard Richard Debs

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

            —common quotation widely attributed to Abraham Lincoln

 

In Florida of all places there is a circus museum, I’ve been there, many times. I don’t know why, I’ve always thought the famous “fooling some” quote was from “P. T.” Barnum, that is, Phineas Taylor “P. T.” Barnum aka “the Greatest Showman”—I’ve seen the movie by the way and highly recommend it, well worth the time, I didn’t know Barnum was a newspaper man, a publisher in fact, a politician too, who knew?! Anyway, I digress. What’s so attractive about the circus, and I don’t mean Cirque du Soleil? I know it came to be a spectacle of distain, it was dispatched became a relic of the past, a society bent on being better voted “no” but for generations “The Big Top” had appeal. Why “the big top?” I looked it up: it occurred to circus promoters they could take their show anywhere, an open field would do, and pitch a tent, and do the show and move on and be gone and as a boy I marveled as I raptly watched as workers like bees changed a barren plot into a field of dreams. Because that’s what it’s all about.

 

Author note: My 83rd “voyage” around the sun was November 1. I have witnessed a lot. I am a news junkie, my inbox is constantly overflowing with headlines like Trump Cancels Weekend Rallies, Plans to Phone in to Other Midterm Campaign Events I studied philosophy back in the day and have puzzled ever since about the good and the bad, the juxtaposition and connection of things, most often the answer depends on the question raised.

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally; his art and photography will be found in select publications, including Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words is a 2017 Best Book Awards and 2018 Book Excellence Awards recipient. His chapbook Political is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, a winner of the 2023 International Book Awards. He is listed in Poets & Writers Directory.

THE BOG

by Karen Marker

responding to The New Verse News poem “Daily” by Sarah Dickenson Snyder who was responding to the podcast When AI Comes for Your Purpose in Life 

also responding to what’s been happening all around the SF Bay Area:

The Guardian, October 27, 2036

It’s not really a bog but it’s spongy and weirdly 

acidic—this soil lacking oxygen, gasping  

waterlogged, quaking with layers of torn down 

trees, redone flipped houses, luxury high rise 

senior living. A whole storm’s come through 

and left my neighborhood full of debris without  

the air it needs to decay. A slew of AI billionaires 

spend their wealth jacking up real estate prices

while the unhoused veterans camp out next door 

in collapsing cars, collecting wood to cook, 

old folks sleep in ruined tents. Even the rock 

of the moon’s become something else now we know 

it’s got the gold of frozen water for data centers. 

Tonight I can’t find a ladder to climb my way out

or a solid plank under my feet to stop me 

from sinking.    I keep thinking about my father.

His whirling brain never stopped solving problems 

with numbers—the most vital part of his life—

 

but he’s been gone ten years already and I have 

no valid way to measure what’s been lost 

when the whole history of human knowledge,

including every math problem, has been eaten up 

by AI, and answers get spouted out in a second. 

On a The Daily podcast a math professor cries 

confessing his love of numbers and teaching, 

telling of a crazy old genius mathematician

and a child math prodigy come together to work

at what they do best.  Now all that’s left, Ecclesiastes.  

Even if you’re an atheist and don’t believe in

anything but the eloquence of solving problems

there’s still this turning we do in time to die—

this moment when it all clicks in place. 

 

The hole of the loss, the sorrow, my father’s death.

The Dreams.  Questions coming again 

that can’t be stolen. So much inside me 

I still haven’t uncovered—air, and somewhere 

a plank laid out like my father so I can stop, 

 and step out over the rubble.

Karen Marker writes protest poetry and prose  from Oakland,  California where she finds inspiration by  reading the news as seen through the eyes of the wonderful poets that NVN features. She is honored that her work has been included here as well as in a number of other places like The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, WordPeace, Calul, and the  Kent State University May 4 Special Collections and Archives. Her book of flash memoir and poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella is available through Finishing Line Press and explores resilience in face of family trauma.  

PLOT FORTY-TWO

by Shirin Jabalameli 

Plot Forty-Two is located in Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in Tehran, Iran. It is associated with those killed in the recent war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the war is not yet over.

A bullet

is lodged in the throat of the earth,

and every season,

a fresh clover

pushes through its mouth.

On the stones

are names

cut short

by the blast;

names that, if called aloud,

might make someone

turn back

beyond the trench.

Here,

death smells of metal;

of a shirt

that never dried in the sun,

of gunpowder

that, months later,

still clings to the mothers’ hair.

The war

came this far

on mud-caked boots.

Even now,

its footprints

remain

on the sleeping stones.

In one of the graves,

a child lies buried.

In his last drawing,

there was a sky

and the very airplane

that had passed overhead.

And that soldier,

perhaps he is still running in his dreams,

from one trench to another,

his mouth full of earth,

a letter in his breast pocket

that never reached its destination.

No one knows

what he was thinking

in his final moments.

An empty magazine?

His brother’s hands?

The window he had meant to repair

before winter?

Perhaps

all he wanted

was a glass of water.

And this

is the most terrible thing about war:

that even on the brink

of disappearing,

a human being

can still feel thirsty.

Beside one of the stones,

a mother sits.

She does not weep.

She says nothing.

With her fingernail,

she brushes the dirt

from a name

that, each time,

sinks back into the earth.

As though she were still

brushing dust from his shoulders,

straightening his collar

for his return.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the wind blows,

and no one carries a gun.

Yet as I walk among the graves,

I lower my head,

as though I still had to cross

a stretch of ground

that might explode

at any moment.

Beyond the wall,

the city is busy buying bread.

Buses arrive.

Traffic lights turn green.

Someone quickens their pace

to avoid being late.

And here,

beneath the earth,

a young man remains

forever the age

at which he should have begun to live.

Sometimes,

this is what war is:

not the sound of an explosion,

but a rented room,

a broken radio,

a shirt hanging behind a door,

someone

who was supposed to come home

on Friday evening.

And now,

in Plot Forty-Two,

the roots of trees

thread through bones,

unaware

which side of the front line

they belong to.

I leave the cemetery.

I slip my hand into my pocket.

The key is cold,

and the cold

climbs to my wrist.

Suddenly,

I think of home:

a door closing,

the clatter of dishes in the kitchen,

someone in the next room

calling out,

“Are you home?”

And I think of all those who are gone,

all those

who will never again

be asked

that question.

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, artist, and writer. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway(USA), where she was selected Poet of the Week. She has authored books including Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, 101 Moments, and 25 Fell from the Frame; her latest book titled Beneath the Skin of Tehran was recently published. She was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Lineage of Birds”. Her short story “The Red Thread” was selected among the Top 25 Works Worldwide for the Hannah Arendt Special Edition presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement in Manhattan, New York.

WE CROSSED

by Zebo Zukhriddinova 

 

 

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

 

I want to speak loud enough for the child who 

packed a suitcase bigger than their arms,


for the teenager who learned the word visa before 

they learned how to drive,


for the mother who ironed hope into a shirt at 3 a.m. before a flight that smelled like goodbye.

I want to speak the way drums speak in a stadium,


the way a voice echoes under bright lights like it refuses to disappear,


the way someone stands at a microphone and 

says:


we are still here.

We did not leave because we hated home.


We left because we loved it too much


to watch it close its doors on our future.

We left because dreams were heavier than fear,


because opportunity whispered louder than 

comfort,


because sometimes survival is not dramatic—


it is paperwork, it is embassy lines, it is a number blinking above a counter


where someone decides if your life may continue.

We learned how to pronounce ourselves again.


We learned that “Where are you from?” can be 

curiosity


or it can be a cage.


We learned to laugh at jokes about our accents


while secretly holding our language like a fragile heirloom


we refuse to drop.

They say immigrant like it is a shadow.


Like it is something that sneaks.


Like it is something that takes.

But we are not shadows—


we are sunrise workers, late-night students,


we are the hands that build and the minds that

 innovate,


we are the children who translate bills at the 

kitchen table


while finishing homework about a history that forgot to mention us.

We crossed oceans, yes—


but mostly we crossed versions of ourselves.


We crossed from who we were told to be


into who we dared to imagine.

And if you ask what we carried,


it was not just luggage.

We carried recipes memorized by heart.


We carried songs our grandmothers hummed 

while sweeping.


We carried photographs folded at the corners


from being opened too often in dorm rooms


where homesickness sounds like silence.

We carried love.

Love stronger than border walls.


Love louder than speeches soaked in fear.


Love stubborn enough to bloom in foreign winters
and call it spring.

Because hate is loud—


it chants, it points, it builds fences out of words —


but love is louder in the long run.


Love studies for exams in a second language.


Love sends money back home.


Love stands in graduation gowns and whispers,


“We made it.”

To the ones who left young—


who traded playgrounds for airports,


who learned currency exchange before algebra,


who grew up between time zones—


this is for you.

You are not “temporary.”


You are not “other.”


You are not a debate.

You are the proof


that hope can pack a suitcase


and still make room for courage.

And one day, when they ask what immigration 

looks like,


tell them it looks like a child refusing to shrink their dream


to fit inside a border.

Tell them it looks like love


walking through customs


with nothing to declare


except a future.

Zebo Zukhriddinova  is an international student currently studying in the United Kingdom.

INTERLOCHEN

by Virginia Aronson

 

Years before they were convicted sex offenders, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell used his wealth to gain access to a prestigious boarding school for young artists in Michigan, using a rental lodge Epstein donated to the school as a base from which to recruit some of their earliest victims, according to Department of Justice records and former campus administrators. —NPR, February 19, 2026

You sit on a bench
licking your ice cream
vanilla, maybe mocha
surrounded by summer
friends 13, 14 you are
such lucky talented girls
at the famous incubator
for budding artists
young friends giggling
singing in the sunshine
when she walks by
with a small cute dog
on a leash

and the bench empties
you're all squealing
you all love Yorkies!
you all bend to pet her
your future before you
like a field of daisies
and romping puppies
your friends drift off
to play piano, dance, paint
and the woman turns
her intense gaze
on you, she wants you
to meet her friend
this man can help you
he gives scholarships
he loves young artists
he is very wealthy
fellow Interlochen grad
school and camp benefactor
and your bright eyes brighten
your dreams coming true

and this man, he pays
for your education
while he takes
everything else
your childhood
your dreams
your sweet future
as he pets you
for years
and keeps you
on his tight leash.

Virginia Aronson is the director of Food and Nutrition Resources Foundation and the author of many published books. New poetry collections include Collateral Damage (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Whiskey Island and Whiskey Straight Women (Cyberwit Press).

FROM THE FIELDS OF MINNESOTA

by Mike Bayles

 

an old watercolor believed to be of Grand Marais, Minnesota

 

 

Each winter fields rested

and in spring they found

new life. My uncle raised

cattle and crops with pride.

 

News played on television

during simpler times

while families sat together

and talked at the dinner table.

 

We had our dreams

of going to the moon

and in quiet times

we looked into clear skies.

 

Buildings in downtown

Minneapolis glistened

our pride, a mecca for most

 

while in St. Paul

cattle displayed at the State Fair

won ribbons while young boys

learned to farm.

 

My cousin and I walked

through pastures and we said

our uncles would never die.

 

We talked of wars,

as soldiers fought

on the other side of the world.

Little did we know that they

would be fought on our streets

 

Back then a man dressed in a cape

could leap over the tallest building

with a single bound. I long

to hold onto that dream.

 

The farm where my cousin once lived

was torn up for a highway

and we’ve fallen out of touch.

Our fathers have died.

 

Now I cry for them

and innocence lost

when the news says

we are killing each other

on the streets I once loved.

Mike Bayles, a lifelong Midwest resident, is the author of seven books of poetry and fiction. His most recent book is The Siouxland and Other Dreams, with poems about Northwest and surrounding areas, and mythology of the land. His writing is informed by his travels when he worked as a flagger/traffic control for construction and utility crews. He is expecting to publish his next collection of poetry this spring.