WHAT WILL IT TAKE

by Mary Saracino

Cartoon by Monireh Ahma

What will it take to end

this multi-millennial madness,

this lust for war and power,

this emphasis on fear,

scarcity, competition?

What will it take to wake up,

to say no to all that seeks to harm,

to say yes to all that seeks to heal, to unite

to see that we are kin to all—humans and non-humans,

to celebrate diversity and dance in the arms

of cooperation and love,

a symbiotic tango imbued with gratitude

where flourishing is mutual?

What will it take to uncloud our eyes,

unjail our hearts,

unchain our minds,

free ourselves from the edicts,

the dogmas, the ideologies that spew

hatred, cruelty, lies, and every other

evil known to humankind?

We need circles, not ladders,

communities, not hierarchies.

We are not commodities

to be bought and sold,

and neither is the Earth

with all Her bountiful gifts.

The trees are trembling,

the lands are on fire,

the winds are roaring,

the birds are begging us

to heed the cries of Mother Nature

who gifts us with abundance,

water, rain, wind, food, sunshine, shelter,

asking only for reciprocity, giving

back what we take, honoring Her

by sharing her bounty, not hording it.

We are destroying our only home.

We are polluting our souls.

We are committing ecocide,

decimating everything

that is sacred and true

and vital to our future.

What will it take for us

to reclaim our birthright,

the gifts bestowed upon us by Nature

in all Her many forms?

What will it take for us to walk,

hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm,

shoulder-to-shoulder

to change the world,

dismantle what has been so wrong

for far, far too long?

We need leaders who will lead us

to prosperity and peace,

who will proclaim our joint responsibility

to care for one another and the planet,

who know that might is not right,

that war is not the answer,

that kindness, compassion, empathy

are the seeds we need to sow

to create a better way to live,

build a symbiotic future

where we can all survive and thrive.

What will it take for us

to raise our howling voices,

in unison and proclaim:

“We’ve had enough! You do not own us, or the planet.

We must seize the reins and reinstate sharing and caring,

establish a new way, a better way, before it’s too late!”

Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her book of poetry, Motherlines, was published by Pearlsong Press (February 2026). She is the author of four novels: Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014), The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006), No Matter What (Spinsters Ink 1993), and Finding Grace (Spinsters Ink 1999), and the memoir, Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior (Spinsters Ink 2001). She co-edited (with Mary Beth Moser) She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An anthology of writings in womanist/feminist spirituality (iUniverse 2012), which earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature from Sofia University.

A ROTTEN TIME

by Marge Piercy

After violent months of war

no one can win, men with

assault rifles doing what they

were built to do, kill many,

 

world burning, people dying

of heat, hurricanes stronger

more often, tornadoes

fiercer, drought scorching

 

land to desert, Animals,

trees dying off and gone,
let’s not just hope, pray

but work to leave an earth

 

we’re not guilty of spoiling.

Despair is just laziness.

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

Marge Piercy is the author of twenty one poetry collections and seventeen novels, including Woman at the Edge of Time, and SEX WARS. A lifelong feminist, socialist, and anti-war activist, her writing has been exploring labor, environmental justice, and the struggle for a more equitable world over the last five decades.

BORDERS

by Howie Good

Nature abhors borders. A smoky haze from Canadian wildfires blots out the sun in Columbus, Ohio. An earthquake under the Sea of Japan shakes skyscrapers in LA. The Earth shares one skin. Borders are human constructs, a kind of illusion, lines that appear on maps without appearing on corresponding landscapes. Governments speak of the sanctity of borders. The smoke from far up north has turned daylight where I live a ghostly amber. There are no borders, really, only fences and patrols and checkpoints as if there were. Men have died by the millions defending what doesn’t exist.

Howie Good's latest poetry collection True Crime was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.

HERE, NOW, ON WOBBLY LEGS

by Ronald J. Pelias

AI graphic by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

When our earth stands on its wobbly legs,

its ankles broken, knee ligaments torn,

its lungs black with soot and sorrow

 

when our chemicals pollute and poison,

our air and water contaminate our bodies,

and pandemics become commonplace

 

when the heat rises each day to record levels

and oceans rise above our frightened feet

faster than any barrier can be built

 

when fires eat the landscape, tornadoes

tear through our homes, and hurricanes

can’t be measured with current categories

 

when polar bears starve as the ice melts,

whales wash on shore with bellies filled

with plastic, and bees die from insecticide

 

when steadfast scientists, overwhelmed

by the enormity of earth’s physical deterioration,

insist on triage priority for our fading planet

 

when environmentalists warn and warn

and the politicians do nothing to change course,

to save, here and now, the blue ball we call home

 

when other celestial bodies are beyond

reach, dreams of a better future fade,

and hope washes away with the latest flood

 

when words fall on the deaf ears of deniers

and our earth collapses on its wobbly legs,

it might be helpful to offer a steadying hand.

Ronald J. Pelias has spent his career working with the fusion of performance, literature, and qualitative research methods. His most recent books are The Creative Qualitative Researcher (Routledge), Lessons on Aging and Dying (Routledge) and Writing and Other Familiar Things (Routledge).

EARTHSET

by Margaret DeRitter

 

Four astronauts traveled farther from our planet

this week than any humans had gone before,

saw the Earth set over the lunar surface—

 

a colorful crescent sinking into a dusty

pockmarked gray—while down here a madman

threatened to destroy an entire civilization,

 

ninety-three million souls and thousands of years

of history, one of the oldest cultures we know,

and his cronies did nothing to stop him.

 

What did those warmongers say to their children?

Did they ever teach them the lessons of space,

the singular beauty of our one blue home?

 

Perhaps they should take their own long journey.

Perhaps they should never return.

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

Margaret DeRitter is the author of Singing Back to the Sirens (Unsolicited Press, 2020) which Pulitzer-winning poet Diane Seuss has described as a collection of "achingly beautiful and gutsy poems." DeRitter also wrote Fly Me to Heaven by Way of New Jersey, co-winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest. Her poems also have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies. DeRitter lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she worked as a full-time journalist and taught journalism at the college level. She is currently the copy editor and poetry editor of Encore, a regional magazine for Southwest Michigan.

OVER THE MOON: A GOLDEN SHOVEL

by Liam Boyle

Now’s a time to celebrate, drink

a toast with best French wine,

gather friends to break bread and 

sing patriotic anthems. Look

into the eyes of your guests, smile at

the thought of what’s been done, the 

great news, a return to the Moon.

 

Before radio silence, and

across 250,000 miles, the astronauts think 

of love—of our love for them, of

their love for us—“we love you” and all

that love is on the dark side of the 

moon, while back on Earth civilisations

 

are dying, rockets carry destruction; the 

truth is, we can no longer see the moon

as benign. This coincidence of time has 

undone all lyric, all hope. We have seen

the darkness passing

overhead. It will not go by.

Liam Boyle lives in Galway, Ireland. His work has been published in various journals in Ireland and internationally. He was a featured reader in the New Writing Showcase at Galway's Cúirt International Festival of Literature 2025.  

TAXES, SEEN FROM THE MOON

by Indran Amirthanayagam
NASA photo

I walked in the woods 

today, a spring in my step,

the Great Leader had

stepped back from 

his threats 

to the sovereign 

Republic of X,

and my tax deadline 

loomed even clearer; 

no more time 

to distract with poems, 

even this one a lazy 

fingering,  extracting juice 

from the rind of past fears, 

raising arms to God 

to say thank you

for your intervention.

But what’s ten minutes 

to a poet avoiding reckoning 

with the IRS?  Only ten 

minutes to say thanks, 

 to say I love you  and keep 

in touch always. Ten minutes 

to say tomorrow will come—

it already has—

 

despite the terrible words

and bombs exploded

until now in the latest 

killing fields 

of our one Earth

lit by the rising Sun seen 

now for the first time 

by the Artemis crew,

from the dark side 

of the Moon. 

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.

THE MOMENT OF CLOSEST APPROACH

by Theta Pavis

Using an inflatable Moon globe, [the Artemis II crew] practiced seeing how the angle of the sun changed the colors and textures of the lunar surface, honing their observation and note-taking skills for the big moment. —France 24, April 4, 2026. Above: An inflatable moon ball for sale at ebay.

Before the Artemis II Crew blasted off,
they had to practice looking at the moon.
Back on Earth, researchers would want to know
what each astronaut saw out there, in-between
the greys and dusty browns. What craters and colors,
what rocks and rockets. To prepare the voyagers,
the Science Flight Operations Lead hung a giant
inflatable moon globe from a crane and packed
the four fragile humans into a mock capsule.
She told them all to rehearse looking at the moon.
Funny no one thought to hire a poet to help with this part.

 

Theta Pavis is poet and editor. A former reporter, she spent years teaching journalism to first-generation college students. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Lilith magazine, The Red Wheelbarrow, Mom Egg Review and others. She’s received residencies from Bethany Arts Center and Arts By the People. Her chapbook The Red Strobe was published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

LOOK UP AND LOOK OUT!

by Ron Shapiro

NASA estimates there are more than 100 million pieces of space junk larger than 1 millimeter in diameter in LEO. Approximately 500,000 of those objects are between 1 and 10 centimeters, and more than 25,000 of them are greater than 10 centimeters wide. —Freethink, November 29, 2025

 

On the darkest night of the year

when stars glow like brilliant diamonds

reminding us that we are indeed star dust

that has taken human form on this planet,

we should be grateful for the moonlight

under which tides flow, nocturnal animals

emerge from safe shelters and lovers kiss.

 

Look up once more then slowly realize that

what you thought were stars are actually 

more than 100 million pieces of rockets

and satellites, tools discarded on spacewalks,

junk floating in space. 

 

Here, on this planet, huge landfills stacked high

like mountains with 

    computers, 

    electronics,

    batteries, 

    styrofoam, 

    ink cartridges, 

    glass bottles,

    diapers,

    enough paper to fill several decimated forests

    and, of course, the toxic poisons released

    from human garbage.

 

The Earth is not large enough to handle this waste. 

 

In a world that can seem like a warehouse of commodities,

where capitalism begs for your dollars, once again 

human exceptionalism does not seem to care. 

 

Trash the planet or trash space, 

it’s all the same to those in power. 

 

And once all that space junk begins to collide,

sending more satellites into orbit will become

too risky. Without such devices to enhance 

communication, predict weather patterns,

bring about scientific breakthroughs.

 

Even the possibility of intergalactic travel,

the dreams of science fiction writers and

futurists, writers and artists, will fall into

darkness while humans, who once looked

up to the stars for hope and creative

inspiration, protect themselves from

any space junk falling from the sky.

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.