RE-FRUITING

by Regina YC Garcia 

Nolan Wells' tragic death joins a long list of Black youth whose untimely demises have raised urgent questions about justice and accountability. —MadameNoire, July 10, 2026

This tree smells oddly familiar

as worms peer up

from disturbed ground

This water sighs in sadness

as sealife swims unabated

and dark-bodies sink

This land heaves up old hurts

as mouths protest 

“All is well!”

(the lies they tell)

Regina YC Garcia is an award winning poet, language artist, and professor from Greenville, NC. Her published work appears in NCLR, Fiyah Black Speculative Lit, Soflopojo, Amistad, Elevation Review, Charlotte Lit, and others. Her first chapbook The Firetalker's Daughter published by Finishing Line Press was released in March 2023, and her full-length book Whispers from the Multiverse published by Aquarius Press/ Willow Books was released in February 2025.

SWIM THROUGH THE VEIL

by H. G.

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory calls on the Israeli Government to urgently protect Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and ensure his safety, dignity, and physical integrity. The Israeli Government must immediately release Dr. Abu Safiya, or promptly charge him with a recognizable criminal offence and grant him a fair trial. In the meantime, he must be urgently transferred to a civilian hospital to ensure that he receives life-saving medical care. Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, has been held in Israeli custody since December 2024 under Israel’s Unlawful Combatant Law, without charge or trial. He was arrested at the hospital after refusing to evacuate while treating critical patients. According to his lawyers, Dr. Abu Safiya appears to be at imminent risk of death. Information available to UN Human Rights--OPT indicates he has been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement, repeated severe assaults resulting in grave injuries, and denial of medical care. —United Nations, July 9, 2026

Reoccurring
nightmares of my childhood
suddenly surprise my adult dreamscape

I'm drowning again
too deep underwater
sometimes
my ankle tied to a boat
other times
my car went over a bridge 

my chest and lungs
burn building
crescendo of terror
tension rising
behind my eyes
my head:
a pressure cooker

needing to whistle

I accept death
mouth and lungs
a vacuum 
sucking in
only to find

I can breathe underwater 

and I see
my Irish great (times two) grandparents
drowning
as the Staten Island Ferry sinks
with them on board

I feel the rage burning in her chest
the pressure of millions of colonized generations of the Irish

screaming in her head

freedom murdered
death in diaspora 

finally sucking water

into her lungs

and she swims through the veil

into my dreams

bloated

water laden corpses

newly lifeless buoys

bobbing

left behind 

and she breathes underwater with me

she whispers to me,

follow the call

follow our footsteps

to Staten Island

and Jersey City 

to our Palestinian brothers and sisters

and promise

not to leave them behind

even if we all drown

in the blue

of two colonizer flags

and so I wait

in my dreams

with my great (times two) grandmother 
and Refaat Alareer, Michael Collins, and Anne Frank

and the starved, shot, drowned, hanged, gassed, exiled, vaporized, reanimated (and reeliminated), dismembered masses

for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya

when he arrives

we swim through the veil

and try again

H.G. is an American poet based in New York. She holds an MA in history and is working on her first verse novel. Her previous poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Inflectionist Review, The Amphibian, Blue Minaret and is forthcoming in Neon & Smoke.

OLD TESTAMENT TEXAS

by Laurence Musgrove

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

And our Lord God released his anger

upon the innocent, saying, “Perhaps,

I will gain their attention on the day

they celebrate their independence

from logic with a big horrible flood,

a punishment for their blasphemies

against the creation I have gifted

them for their salvation, while they

instead, continue to burn it all down,

drowning their children in Satan’s oil.”

Laurence Musgrove teaches English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. He also edits the online poetry journal Texas Poetry Assignment. 

VOTING IS FAR MORE POWERFUL

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

with apologies to Emily Dickinson

Who is leading national polls?
Harris has been ahead of Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July, as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Kamala Harris: 49%

Donald Trump: 46% —BBC, October 9, 2024

 

Voting is far more powerful
Than Trump's attempt to rise.
So many times this sinking man
Attempts to reach the skies.
So push him down forever
To that abhorred abode,
Where hope and he part company—
His dreams morosely stowed.
The felon's sneering visage,
Most odious to see,

Let's shun without compunction
As an adversity.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 300 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), Politics/Letters, The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had nine previous poems in The New Verse News.

LAST SATURDAY

by David Chorlton

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Maricopa County has the legal authority to temporarily provide water to residents in Rio Verde Foothills. The City of Scottsdale cut off Rio Verde residents from its municipal water supply last month in an effort to conserve resources. Because Rio Verde is located in an unincorporated area, Scottsdale officials have argued that the city's not responsible for providing water service. —12News, February 15, 2023. Photo: A water hauler set up hoses to fill the tank for a home that is listed for sale in Rio Verde Foothills outside of Scottsdale, Ariz. Water prices have tripled for some residents of the unincorporated neighborhood. Credit Erin Schaff, The New York Times, January 16, 2023

Broken cloud and pigeons overhead;

a hummingbird inside her nest

at the neighbor’s fence; Valentine’s Day

approaching and the wind

is circling her tongue in the mountain’s ear.

Word crackles

                          through the neighborhood

with news of police cars at Ranch Circle

and Thirty-ninth Street with tape

as yellow as front yard desert marigolds.

Maybe it was suicide

though some say dementia

but only the moon was watching

the man go into the pond.

                                                 The bookmakers

are busy preparing for tomorrow’s game

while the odds favor hotter

than usual days in Arizona come July

with a little comfort falling

as monsoon rains, even on the million dollar

homes in Rio Verde, 

                                     north of rush hour

traffic, master-planned for golf and scenery,

where life would be perfection

if only one could drink

the swimming pools and bathe

in Chardonnay. 

                            It’s late afternoon

back here on Walatowa; shadows float and soften

on the rocks; the mail van’s late;

starlings mob a suet cake and lost cars

circle the cul-de-sac in endless

search for the meaning

                                            of life with the brakes off

hurrying to find the answer

before the sky runs dry.

David Chorlton grew up in Manchester, England, in a city known for its rainy days. After some years in Vienna, Austria, he came to Phoenix and adjusted to the desert. His newest book Poetry Mountain owes much to the part of the city he lives in now, with a view of a desert mountain to soften the impact of the city.

BURROWING

by Farah Art Griffin

“Into the Void” by DINA D’ARGO, 56, SPRINGFIELD, TENN. Acrylic on canvas via The Washington Post. “‘Into the Void’ symbolizes stepping into the unknown — the idea of life ‘after the pandemic’ and the insecurity of not knowing what lies ahead.” 

still burrowing —

drowning in yesterday's time

past grips us in its palm

wounds

            still wet

            still dripping

memories

            still clear

            still swimming

cave of unforgotten sorrow —

echoes in the dark

Farah Art Griffin is a literary and visual artist. She holds an EdM in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her work is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry.

ON BUOYANCY

by Julie Steiner

Look for the helpers, Mister Rogers said.

Whenever you feel sad or scared about

the news, look for the people helping out.

Keep those within your sight. Your heart. Your head.

It’s good advice. On days when all I’ve read

puts basic human decency in doubt,

and all I’ve heard’s what hurtful people shout,

I focus on the helpful folks instead.

Or try to. Sometimes all that’s in the frame

is evidence that helpers never came.

Two long, light-gray balloons, like downturned lips,

say several states withheld their rescue ships.

No helpers in the picture. Not this time.

But you can help bear witness to this crime.

A shipwreck off the Libyan coast has reportedly claimed the lives of 130 people, despite SOS calls for help, the UN migration agency IOM said on Friday [April 23]. The tragedy was confirmed late on Thursday by the volunteer rescue vessel Ocean Viking, which found dozens of bodies floating in the water northeast of Tripoli. It had been in distress since Wednesday morning, the NGO said in a statement. IOM spokesperson, Safa Msehli, told journalists in Geneva that the victims had been on board a rubber dinghy for two days before it sank in the central Mediterranean. “For two days, the NGO alarm phone, which is responsible for sending distress calls to the relevant maritime rescue centres in the region, has been calling on States to uphold their responsibilities towards these people and send rescue vessels. Unfortunately, that has not happened.” More than 500 people have drowned on the so-called Central Mediterranean sea route this year according to IOM—almost three times as many the same period last year. —UN News, April 23, 2021

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

SHAME

by Pepper Trail

Twitter @rodriguezmonos

A deadening     a twist

            in the mouth     the heart

When personal –

            for an act     a thought

            shame is an ember

                                        a burning a thing to attend to

            extinguish or

                                     fan to flame     the better to see

           our darkness

But this—political— 

                                for my country

            for children in cages

            for father and child

      embracing in the river     dead

            for a monster whose reason not to rape is            

    “not my type”        

               for men     hands on Bibles

                                                     claiming dominion over women’s bodies

            for the highest court endorsing the lowest deceits

            for the cultivation of fear

                                                  the exaltation of hate

            for the endless

                               endless

                                endless

                                                lies    until we are bludgeoned

                                    unconscious

In this     I find no     

                           ember no gleam of light

In this darkness        

                        I howl

                                    but hear no echo

Only silence


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

THOSE IN THE LIGHT DON'T SEE THOSE IN THE DARK

by George Salamon

The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies. . . . The sinking of the vessels, which survivors say were carrying Ethiopians, is the latest tragedy to occur on the risky route used by African migrants seeking work in the Middle East. —News24, January 31, 2019. Photo: People collect bodies on Wednesday along a beach in Obock, Djibouti, after two migrant boats capsized off the coast. — AFP/VNA, January 3, 2019.

"I lost massive amounts of money doing this job. " —President T***p to The New York Times, January 31, 2019


For forty-eight hours here in
The heartland ice and snow
And arctic cold stopped
America's wheels from turning.
Nothing stopped the mouths of
America's rich and powerful,
These time-bombs to the planet's
Survival, these Attilas the Hun to
Its peoples' welfare, from the
Usual lying and whining,
While the poor, the homeless,
The nomadic dispossessed in its
Cities, on its borders, adrift at sea,
Can only live in imaginary places, or,
As migrants in rickety boats, drown
In the frozen seas of the human heart.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. He thanks Bertolt Brecht for the title.

DIASPORA

by Risa Denenberg





I see them in nightmares, or when silent in meditation.
There, they were doctors, green-grocers, artists, stone masons.
Here, they snake around barricades like a river.

I don’t see them when I’m serving dinner to the homeless
in my home town on Christmas day, because after all,
I’m Jewish and have nowhere else to go.

I see them when I meditate, or hike a mountain trail.
There, they ate breakfast, went to jobs, read the daily, made love.
Here, they lie dead on highways like roadkill.

I don’t see them when I’m working in the clinic
offering unguents and kindness to soothe wounds,
then staying late to finish chart notes, weary and irritable.

I see them when I hike, or when I pray
(which I do sporadically and) mainly when I envisage them
streaming as a long bridge across sinister waters full

of vipers, swelling the roads to a town near you.
There, they were proud of their kids’ report cards.
Here they struggle, defenseless to save children from drowning.

I pray to see them and to not see them
because it’s so much worse than I can fathom
and I can’t imagine an act that could make it right.

I see them as my family, ghettoed in their Russian shtetel,
then, crossing the ravenous Atlantic to an unknown fate.

There, they prayed and were slaughtered.
Here, we forget to pray, and prosper.

Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner. She reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing and is an editor at Headmistress Press, a small press that publishes poetry by lesbians. She has published three chapbooks and two full length books of poetry, Mean Distance from the Sun (Aldrich Press, 2013) and Whirlwind @ Lesbos (Headmistress Press, 2016).

REOCCURING STORMS

by Marjorie Maddox

Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Searchers Find Body of Killed Child in Oklahoma Tornado --AP, May 26, 2011
Woman Finds Boy After Mother Drives Van Into Hudson --The New York Times, April 13, 2011


Wind/Water, Oklahoma/New York,
the domestically symbolic bathtub/minivan,
two mothers.

And so fear gathers speed, swirls in
or out, grabbing—in its selfish velocity—each state
of who we are or were, what’s left
of our man-made lives holding tightly to the already-
born, the life still coming.

Temporarily wedged between faith and scream,
a mother sings reassurances as each
tree, board, sink, tub, life
twists and spins into the horizon
no one foresaw, grief beyond the boundaries
of such predictions, life splintered limb by limb,
like and not like (half a country away)

that other dream-turned-disaster:
depression’s dark tunnel twirling
beyond the imaginable, tires whirring
too quickly toward the Hudson,
fueling the speed of no-return,
a family’s last vision of sky flooded
with the damp wet of despair.

Except ten-year-old La'shaun,
who—between death and breath—
rolled down his window to let out fear,
then swam toward light.

And in Oklahoma, five-year-old Cathleen,
who, amidst the hurricane’s howl,
recognized hope in the heartbeat
of her unborn sibling:
that faint hum in the ear,
or that sudden surge toward possibility

into what one day even you and I—
after a particularly hard day of the ordinary—
might discuss as casually
as weather, as someone else’s life.


Marjorie Maddox is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania.