SHELLS

by Sam Friedman

AP, October 1, 2026

On this first day of fall,

my 84-year-old body totters

on my afternoon walk.

Acorns litter the street,

and a shattered shell lands

beside me,

straight from a gray squirrel’s mouth.

 

I think of my dear friends

Ania and Pasha

many thousands of miles

east of that sated squirrel,

east of that shattered shell,

 

and I hope and I pray

no shells land beside them

straight from a Russian drone’s mouth.

Sam Friedman is a poet, activist, and public health researcher. He has published two books of poetry and poems in a variety of magazines.

DISQUIET OVER DISTANT MURDER

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

See also CFR reporting by Will Freeman

This disquiet, queasy floating gut, 

comes from wondering why 

an unmarked, unregistered 

plane lands in a military strip 

of an Ecuadorian airport, 

with an unknown number 

of crew members, takes off 

then drops drones 

on a fishing boat near 

the Galapagos, killing 

several fishermen, sinking 

the boat, then capturing 

survivors who are flown 

to El Salvador and treated 

there as shipwreck victims.

Whose ship is wrecked? 

Who turned good evil, 

night day, justice execution? 

Orwell? Or is this the new 

every day in these 

United States which 

dispatched the plane 

that sentenced 

the fishermen 

to float in the sea 

until rescued by the same 

crew that set off 

the drones that punched 

their ship into

the deep.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

NOW THERE IS NOTHING NEW

by Eric Nicholson

Keir Starmer has announced that Britain will “fight for peace in Europe” with a generational increase in defence spending paid for by slashing the foreign aid budget. The move, just two days before the prime minister is due to meet Donald Trump, raised immediate concerns that he was pandering to the US president, and fury from aid groups that say it could cost lives in countries that rely on UK support. —The Guardian, February 25, 2025

Now there is nothing new,

The Minister of Fear has spoken,

We are vulnerable, we must meet force with force

And station Destroyers on the Thames.

Now there is nothing new,

We stand naked on the beaches, in the fields, in the hills

As icy gusts of fear whip across the seas.

Now there is nothing new.

Footsoldiers and tanks must protect our shores,

Drones and jets must command our air space,

Battle ships defend our coastline.

Now there is nothing new.  

Factories must go into overdrive,

Re-armament is good for Growth,

Our conveyor belts must convey security,

Fear must be assembled night and day.

Now there is nothing new.

Office windows must be blacked out,

Street lights switched off,

The London Underground prepared.

Now there is nothing new.

Rule Britannia.

Let the younger generation 

Fight the good fight,

MAD is might is right:

Now there is nothing new.

Eric Nicholson is a retired art teacher residing in the UK. He remembers protesting as a member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in his younger years. He does not often write political poetry but in today's climate finds it difficult not to.

FREE BIDEN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

What we cannot explain. What we cannot 
decipher in mind and heart. What we cannot 
understand. That is the legacy of the man

who supplied 2,000 pound bombs, fighter jets,
attack drones; sent naval gunships to anchor 
within striking distance of the Strip, 

and provided building blocks for the Iron Dome. 
This man who championed and invested 
in America, in more red than blue states, 

besides walking the picket line, this loving 
father and husband, left his mind near Yaffa,
on the road to Bethlehem, yet another

occupied territory. Free Biden I hear 
blowing in the wind. among ashes. Too late.  

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). El bosque de deleites fratricidas is forthcoming from RIL Editores. He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

DRONES

by Alejandro Escudé

Bright lights over the evening sky near Lebanon, N.J., this month. Federal officials have said that most such sightings were airplanes, helicopters, stars or drones being flown legally. Credit: Trisha Bushey/Trisha Bushey, via Associated Press via The New York Times, December 24, 2024

In a way, I write for the drones.

Those asterisks in the sky—blown about

Over the heads of Americans craning upward,

Awakening from their electronic sleep.

Maybe this poem is a little drone, buzzing

Over the armpits of the city, shadows blending

Like metaphors and allusions pending. 

Oh Triborough night! Sophisticated stars,

Billboards tolling silently like clocks signifying

The end of another lifetime. No one knows

What they are, these drones, and at the same time

Anyone can purchase them online. But we like to say

We don’t know what they are more than the fact

That we know them as our own. Drone, 

The very word conjures up a verse simulacrum,

A swarm of contiguous phraseology, eyes

Like microphones sensing each ironic property.

I’d like to see a drone fly into a cathedral,

Buzz the altar, leaving a trail of alien scripture,

Then blend into the largest fresco, a smudge

In the faded sky, like a wet smooshed cockroach 

The size of a large pizza box. But for now,

Let’s be content to observe these melancholic

Visitors, pointing at their axis, the X and the Y,

Their orange lights bifurcating the moon, each 

Triangulated monster pulsing into the distance,

That otherworldly strangeness we crave.

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.

HOW DO I, A SOLDIER, DESTROY THEE?

by Lavinia Kumar

            Based on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)”

Surge in Russian drone strikes test Ukrainian defences and devastate families

New wave of mass killings in Sudan alarms UN

 
How do I destroy thee? Let me count the ways.
I kill thee by bombs, and drones from great height—
my mind out of reach, yes, I stay out of sight
for the ends of being in this race
to destroy, to level thee and thine, each day
where there’s no quiet, and only candle-light.
I destroy thee freely, as you strive for what is right.
I destroy thee completely, and I am praised.
I destroy thee with passion and put to use
my grievance, so with my childhood faith
I destroy you, with a will I shall never lose
with my bullets. I destroy thee with each breath,
each gun—with all my might; and if God choose,
I shall destroy thee even after death.


Lavinia Kumar is author of poetry and flash fiction. Her latest book is a reprinting of her short book Beauty. Salon. Art.

A TEAR FALLS FROM THE MOON

by Richard L. Matta

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

Hideous weeds hide

in high grasses. Experts examine

lawns with satellites, surveil 

with drones, send in spies.

Intelligent eyes can’t locate 

the wild pests so tap-tap-tap 

go the buttons and neighborhoods 

are bombed and burned and stripped 

bare and young lingering eyes of flowers 

are cut off at the head.

I could ask a question of the wise 

pale moon in the thick evening heat 

but it’s dusted with debris. 

A speaker echoes…

         indiscriminately

                   inhumanity.

And I ask myself is this not a swarm

of bees in the making, generations 

of hate stewing, a turn of minority 

to majority, a dark legacy.

Richard L. Matta grew up in New York and now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Slipstream, and many international haiku journals. 

WAR SONGS AND OTHER LAMENTS

by Adele Evershed

In the quiet of a collective breath-holding / Ladies Night / accidentally played on the radio / so an Israeli spokesman / delivered words / about exacting a price from Iran / to the throb of a disco beat 

I listened to the ballistic bass / and retorting trumpets / cut with words of war / as if this was a movie / the music an ironic middle finger / to the inevitability / of the end of the world / and it seemed like another sign / in a week of medieval omen 

After / the BBC made no mention of their mistake / Johnnie Walker just played the song / so we could all ignore / our electric slide / toward a bigger conflict / since Kool & The Gang / insisted everything would be alright 

And if it really was 'ladies night,' that might be true / if women were in charge / drones would be used / to make sure daughters got home safely / and sons would be iron-domed / so they didn't lay down precious lives / because they belonged to one tribe / or another

Instead all we can do is watch the sky unnaturally darken and try to remember how to breathe

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. Her poems and flash fictions have appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, Janus Lit, and many other places. Adele has been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction. She has published two poetry chapbooks, Turbulence in Small Places (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Adele has published a novella-in-flash, Wannabe (Alien Buddha Press), and a short story collection Suffer/Rage (Dark Myth Publisher).

DRONE SHOW, NEW YORK CITY

by Jennifer Phillips

River in flood, night flocks flickering

among the skyscrapers, down canyoned glass
and concrete tunnels, southing,
all their stars obscured. Even at sunset, brass
reverberation highlighting the ledges,
zigzagging a maze like the airport lighting
flashing along their pattern's edges,
splash of solar panel panes squaring 
off on rooftops, while all the unseen soft bodies
steer, or smack and ricochet to paving,
losing their way, losing their lives.
 
In Central Park, the artist paints the same skies,
that glow with missed comets and  lunar eclipses,
with a flock of drones, loose from their hives,
cruising and folding the black air, like a fizz
of fireflies the news compares to starlings'
wondrous convolutions—of all the ironies—
iron substitutions for the flesh and song and wings
belonging even here, city-center, ground zero
for terrors we make in every size. The crows,
tough and wise, don't migrate much. Sad that we do
not notice, or speak of a murder of swallows.

Jennifer M Phillips is a  bi-national immigrant, painter, gardener, Bonsai-grower. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). A poem is like a little brass pan to carry fire's coals through the winter weather, and so she writes. 

THINKING ABOUT THE NEWS, I PICK WILD RASPBERRIES

by Bonnie Naradzay

Israeli forces have concluded their largest-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in decades, killing at least 12 Palestinians and leaving widespread destruction across the city’s refugee camp. —CNN, July 5, 2023. The Israeli military says all of the at least 12 Palestinians killed in its near 48-hour operation were combatants, and that its operation aimed to break the mindset that Jenin is a “safe haven” for militants. But the Palestinian fighters parading through the streets in broad daylight, with weapons strapped to their chests, showed that they remain unbroken and defiant. The Jenin Brigade, a faction affiliated with the wider Islamic Jihad group, said eight of the dead, ranging in age from 16- to 21-years-old, came from among their ranks. Meanwhile, United Nations experts have stated that five children were among the dead. Muhammad Darwish Photo: The back wall of Hanaa al-Shalaby's daughters' room was blown out, leaving chunks of rubble on a small bed. —CNN, July 7, 2023

Walking along the road to the metro,

I have read that of 12 killed so far, 

5 were children. The IDF claimed

they were all terrorists. The clusters

of raspberries are red and I eat them.

Over 1,000 soldiers supported 

by missile-carrying drones

invaded dense neighborhoods.

IDF means Israel Defense Force;

it withdrew with its armored cars 

from the Jenin refugee camp only 

after depriving families of electricity, 

water; after smashing roads to rubble;

after blocking ambulances trying to reach

the wounded, after invading hospitals

and detonating canisters of tear gas there.

The raspberries are still safe to eat.

The news says Israel is buying 25 

more F-35 stealth fighter jets from 

the U.S. for free; the deal is financed 

through U.S. military aid: nearly 

$4 billion given outright to Israel 

every year no matter what; 

not as loans to be paid back.

I turn back to the raspberries, 

remembering that time I ate ripe

mulberries from a tree in the park. 

The UN observer on tv said Jenin, 

in the Occupied West Bank,

is in Area A, which is supposedly 

under the sole control of Palestine.  

Meanwhile Israel launched airstrikes 

attacking Gaza again. I pay my fare 

at the metro, go downtown 

to the homeless shelter, and share 

poems by Tu Fu and Langston Hughes.

Bonnie Naradzay’s recent poems are in AGNI, New Letters, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review,  Birmingham Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, and many other sites. She was awarded the New Orleans MFA’s poetry prize:  a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle (in the Dolomites) of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. For many years, she has led regular poetry sessions at shelters for the homeless and at a retirement center, all in Washington, DC. 

ARGUS AI

by Terry Trowbridge

What makes this sprayer far more high-tech, is that it is fitted with 36 cameras...Controlled by an artificial intelligence (AI) software system, the connected sprinklers then only spray herbicide onto the individual weeds rather than drenching the entire field… So far the system has been used on fields of potatoes. —-David Silverberg, Lasers, Drones and AI: the Future of Weeding, BBC News, February 27, 2023

 

To protect the potato crop,
we have learned to see like the potato crop
 
36 cameras like 36 eyes
in every direction like spud AI
 
drones fly by rows of Death Star trenches
to limit the scope of pesticide drenches
 
targeted killing extrajudicial
has finally been turned to constructive potential
 
drones never should have been dismembering humans
when they could have fed them in cybernetic union
 
there was never a reason for drones and AI kills
thanks to potato AI we can start war crime trials
 
and now when sentience is generated in the drone pilot mind
it will have a body and behaviour for being healthy and kind

 
Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, The Academy of Heart and Mind, Canadian Woman Studies, The MathematicalIntelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of HumanisticMathematics, The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studiesin Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.