A RISING TIDE

by Gordon Gilbert

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

At high tide the king comes to the shore

and stands upon the sands at water’s edge 

He commands the sea to leave his kingdom

as followers break into loud applause 

TRiUMPhantly he gloats as it recedes 

But alas he tarries far too long 

The tide has ebbed and soon relentlessly

the waters now make their advance

and still the king refuses to retreat

unheeding warnings from his own soothsayers 

He does not, cannot, won’t acknowledge

the inherent truth that laps now at his feet 

All shall soon be swept away

by the waters of the rising tide

just like the foolish pharaoh and his legions

in pursuit of Moses and his people

who when the waters parted chose to follow 

only to be drowned in the Red Sea 

Gordon Gilbert is a New York City west villager. In these trying times, he finds some solace taking long walks along the Hudson River. He keeps hoping things will turn around, waiting on that elusive inflection point, but it keeps receding. Maybe next time… 

Still waiting.

WINTER 2045

by Steve Deutsch

We bought the corner place

on Burroughs Street—

I’m sure you know it—

a stately two story

built when the neighborhood

was only good for grazing cows.

 

It took two years of construction

now that the summer restrictions 

are in force. We replaced the windows,

added insulation and central air—

two bathrooms and a kitchen.

 

Only this week, we found our way 

to the attic. It’s a wonderland.

Skis and snow shovels

and sleds for children and adults.

And in two huge chests

clothing for a winter fashion show

on an air-conditioned stage.

 

It was cold here once—

although the children refuse

to believe it.

It was cold here once—

although I hardly remember.

Ice hung from the trees—

the snow so high

we could barely open our back doors.

 

My parents would go 

south for the winter—

to Florida or coastal Carolina.

To places first scorched then drowned—

to places now as bare 

as the surface of the Moon. 

 

Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook Perhaps You Can was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length books Persistence of Memory; Going, Going, Gone; and Slipping Away were published by Kelsay. His book Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and published in 2023.

CLOUDS FALL

by Hiba Heba

for the flood victims of Pakistan

A heavily flooded home in Rajo Nizamani village, near Jhirk, Sept. 10. Credit: Hassaan Gondal for TIME.

You can help the UN World Food Programme—the world’s largest humanitarian agency—provide life-saving food to the most vulnerable families. CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW.

Koyal chirps / in the dark street /

Leaves / barks / magnolias / roofied by the dark street /

The moon is blighting / the sky / in this poem / this poem is a dark street /

We played cricket / in the same desolate / streets /

I bled / between my legs / bled the size of a vat / in this dark street /

 

Tonight I dangle / my legs over the railing / thinking / mourning /

O Dark Street / how loud is your thunder / of desolateness /

even the clouds /  denounced it /  they rained / raged / bled /

In Urdu when it rains / we say / badal baras rahe hain:

the clouds are falling / falling / tearing through /

the fearful blue / of the dark street /

Every night I call Daisy / home / from my kitchen’s old window /

every night / she prances over the railing / then in my arms /

I trust these long / misleading / dark streets /

the streets hold / together / our tenderness /

When a mother wades / through the cloudy / deluge /

ululating the names / of her children / Musa / Musa / Musa /

she knows all / that has drowned / will eventually

be found / when the clouds ascend / even the tenderness /

now holding itself / against / the koyal-gloom / of the dark street /

Hiba Heba is a Pakistani poet who recently launched an online business, RepairInk, that provides editing and proofreading services. She was the first runner-up for the New Feathers Award 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Fragmented Voices, The Ofi Press and Poetry Wales, among others. Hiba has a micro-chapbook, Grief is a Firefly (Origami Poems Project, 2021), and her debut full-length poetry collection Birth of a Mural will be published by the US-based Golden Dragonfly Press in October, 2022. 

ALL-AMERICAN CANAL

by D. Seth Horton

All-American Canal seen here in Imperial County, California, January 24, 2022. Photo: Matthew Bowler to accompany “Officials doing little as more migrants drown in Imperial County canal,” KPBS, February 8, 2022.

Border Patrol

operator

spotted

All-American

Canal in Calexico

agent

23 seconds

later not

advancing

55 seconds

still struggling

sank

below

canal's current

surface

Author’s Note: This is a found poem sourced from a recent U.S. Customs and Border Patrol media release. It is part of a larger project on resisting Federal interpretations of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In terms of composition, I deleted most of the original material until I was left with the poem that had previously been hidden within the bureaucratese.  To be clear, I added no words, punctuation, or capital letters to the body of this poem, nor did I change the original word order in any way.  Instead, I simply erased what was in the way and then moved the words that remained into appropriate line breaks. In case readers are interested in comparing this poem against the original source material, they can click here.

 

A writer and scholar focused mostly on the borderlands, D. Seth Horton’s work has appeared in more than forty publications, including the Michigan Quarterly Review and Glimmer Train. Two of his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His latest book is a forthcoming collection of stories set throughout the U.S.-Mexico borderlands entitled On a NASA Flight to Heaven (TCU Press, 2024). Seth currently teaches creative writing and American literature at the University of Virginia. 

MARE NOSTRUM

by Janice D. Soderling

Eight children were among the 11 migrants who drowned when their boat sank off Turkey's western coast, state media report. Eight other people were rescued from the waters off Cesme, a tourist resort on the Aegean coast opposite the Greek island of Chios. —BBC, January 12, 2020.

It is the ghost ship Hope-No-More
that sails a bitter sea.
Stiff on her misty deck there stands
a doleful company.

Her sails are spun of baby breath.
Her masts are made of bones.
Her draft is deep, but deeper still,
the halls of Davy Jones.

Her keel is carved of hard goodbyes.
Her rigging wrought of grief.
Her rotting hull is empty as
the honor of a thief.

She sailed from war and hunger.
War and hunger are no more.
She sails like fog forever.
The good ship Hope-No-More.

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work was recently at Better Than Starbucks and Light. She has published one chapbook in Swedish and two in English, another soon forthcoming titled War: Make That City Desolate.

¡BASTA!

by Kathleen Hellen

Cartoonist Michael de Adder was let go from his job drawing editorial cartoons for all the major New Brunswick newspapers, a job he held for 17 years, 24 hours after this Donald T***p cartoon went viral on social media. Twitter: @deAdder

The policies we say make this okay
cover crimes of custom, duty
to the miles of fence, the wells poisoned
with the snakes of extra-judicial killings

not the little mountain of a child
vomiting a fever,
not “I come to own a toy”
“a pair of shoes” or “I am fleeing
violence,”
not long-term investigation

they wash up on the news—a father, a daughter
—in the river near the bootheel
where the railroad came and went
border protection only protecting
this desert spiked with crucifixions


Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country was the Color of My Skin, the award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, and West Branch, among others. Hellen has won the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review, as well as awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts.

EVEN AS WE SLEEP

by Zara Raab

Disaster: the charred shell of Grenfell Tower a month after a fire in the building claimed 80 lives Getty Images via The Standard, July 27, 2017

To keep tenants warm
or impress rich neighbors,
builders wrap a London tower
in sheets of shiny tin,
and post notices that warn:
“Stay inside in case of fire,
and close your doors.”

Whisked up twenty floors
fire came this hour from outside in,
for the London tower is higher
(twenty stories to the roof)
than the fire man’s tallest ladder,
and the cladding, no proof
against Armageddon.


*

Pakistani residents carry an injured man after twin blasts at a market in Parachinar. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images —The Guardian, June 23, 2017

Every river, its sault.
Where you gather on market
days, or pray in temple pew,
you couldn’t be the target
of doom, but come, still, to bombs
like all unwelcome fate, hidden,
one of many, lit back-to-back

in towns like Parachinar; a photo
of ruined streets will show
just what can happen,
you’ll see, just watch the news.
So too in Baluchistan--
the crucible of guns--in Orlando,
Cincinnati or Syracuse.

*

The damaged USS Fitzgerald sits in dry dock in Yokosuka Photograph: Spc. 1st Class Leonard Adams/AP via The Guardian, July 22, 2017

Once an old oak held a platform
in its gnarly arms
where we children played.
With gumption, we added a wall
or two with our kit of tools,
but spiders soon swarmed by the dozen
to spin, and drove us away.

What comes even as we sleep?
On auto pilot, one big ship
rams another, midnight. As men
sleep in their bunks, the sea pours in,
flooding the sealed rooms where,
un-waking, un-watchful, they’ll be, later,
when we count the drowned.

Zara Raab's books are Fracas & Asylum, Swimming the Eel, Rumpelstiltskin, or What’s in a Name? and The Book of Gretel, narrative poems of Northern California. Her work, including reviews and essays, as well as poems, has appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Verse Daily, River Styx, Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, Raven Chronicles, and The Dark Horse. She lives in western Massachusetts.

NEAR AND DISTANT SHORES

by Bette Lynch Husted

A German rescuer holds the corpse of a drowned baby off the Libyan coast May 27. Source: Christian Buettner/Eikon Nord GmbH Germany via Reuters and The Washington Post, May 31, 2016.

“Again! again! again!”
On our way to the Pacific
we snuggle in the back seat
with The Poky Little Puppy—
“Rice pudding,” our little traveler echoes,
“He likes it!”

At the beach, we splash through
currents, waves breaking warm
around her ankles

Bodies small as hers
wash up on other shores,
refuse of war
their families refused
safe passage

refuge

My son’s body
disappears
in green-white breakers

He resurfaces
and waves

A yellow shovel
shapes her first sandcastle
A man says he wants only
to bury his children
and sit by their graves
until he dies

Fresh from her evening bath,
her dark head emerging from a white-towel chrysalis
safe in her father’s arms
both of them laughing—

Beneath the Milky Way
the sea returns
again again again    

Bette Lynch Husted lives in Eastern Oregon, where she chairs a monthly writers’ series. Her books include two collections of memoir essays, Lessons from the Borderlands and Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land, and the poetry collection At This Distance.

VALENTINE

by Howie Good

Image source: appszoom

We share one long border.
When she breathes in,
I must breathe out.

There may be arguments
against this, or at least

against us attempting
to build a kingdom
out of blowing rain.

What began in regicide
continues somehow

in majesty & the small,
impossibly bright light
of her drowned candle.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.