The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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This summer, Florida’s ocean water temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A recent scientific study revealed that rising water temperatures can cause crucial memory loss to damsel fish and other reef-dwelling species. The fish in the study who were subjected to temperatures as high as F 89.6 did not fare well, failing “to find shelter, recognize their neighbors or find food easily.” —The New York Times, August 23, 2023 Credit.Credit...Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty Images]Credit...Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty Images]The New York TimesAugust 23, 2023
As Fahrenheit rose, some damsel fish forgot where to find their food sources. With each degree, memories shifted far away. First to go: finding a meal. Next was fear. Who posed a threat. Where danger lay. Which reefs might safely hide them, what might portend trouble in sargassum seas or bubble upward in their pathways turning marbles of algae into floating spectral groupers or snappers. As memory fluttered away like flotsam, reef fish failed to thrive, survive. Each day’s heightened heat seared off some tiny thought, some echo that time had taught, some souvenir of before. Yesterday’s cache of jeweled thoughts scattered now into a vast void. Who can ever truly know what is lost as heat sears, scalds? As oceans warm, equal risk befalls both predators and prey. Who will remain alive as seas simmer and pale coral reefs blanch white as brides? Will these warmed fish discard scales of azure, sapphire, magenta, or wispy tails of sunshine yellow, peachy orange? Will they recall where eggs were laid or where sharks stayed hidden as reefs shrank? What tales will they recount as awareness shapeshifts, then fades away like images in an infinity mirror? As they spin through steamy waters, adrift in the present tense, our questions float along beside them. Will we have a future? What flashbacks will follow Fukishima?
Mary K O’Melveny, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York. Mary’s award-winning poetry has appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on national and international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s much-praised fourth book of poetry Flight Patterns was published by Kelsay Books in August 2023. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mary was a finalist in the 2023 Poetry Competition sponsored by Slippery Elm Literary Journal. She is also a co-author of two anthologies of writing by The Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group, including Rethinking The Ground Rules (Mediacs Books 2022).
Antony Blinken was greeted by China’s top diplomat on Monday, and will perhaps meet its president, on the final day of a rare visit aimed at trying to resurrect relations between Washington and Beijing from historic lows. —The Guardian, June 18, 2023
Semiconductors Formosa…Taiwan… Uigur burial practices Tesla Ships passing in the South China Sea Warships frigates destroyers Balloon looking down on the American continent SHOT Spy station on the island of Cuba Confucius Institutes everywhere in the developing world Plastics, christmas trees, clothes A massive relationship, two superpowers yet distant neighbors coming together on climate change policies but staying apart on so many hot buttons including the rights of Man and Woman Five and a half hours meeting (extended by an hour) American and Chinese teams then strolling before a working dinner for two hours Foreign Minister and Secretary of State Hard at work making peace. eating thousand-year-old eggs.
DENVER, April 17, 2023 (AP) — After Colorado’s Democratic governor signed a bill Friday banning what experts consider unproven treatments to reverse medical abortions, a federal judge temporarily halted its enforcement following a lawsuit from a religious clinic. Judge Daniel Domenico, who noted that Colorado is the only state to ban the treatment, issued the temporary restraining order over the weekend after Bella Health and Wellness argued that barring them from prescribing the so-called “abortion pill reversal” treatment violates their First Amendment right to free speech and religious exercise. The idea of reversing a medical abortion has become a flashpoint in the clash over reproductive rights nationwide after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,leaving abortion up to the states.Roughly a dozen states have passed laws in the preceding years compelling abortion providers to inform their patients about the “reversal” treatment.
Sari Grandstaff is a school librarian and poet in the Catskill Mountains/Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State. Her poems have been published in many print and online publications including The New Verse News and Chronogram. She and her husband have three adult children and a little chihuahua mix named Ruby.
Cristina M. R. Norcross lives in Wisconsin and is the editor of Blue Heron Review. Author of 9 poetry collections, a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee, her most recent collection is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021). Cristina’s work appears in: Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, Poetry Hall, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, and Pirene’s Fountain, among others. Her work also appears in numerous print anthologies. Cristina has helped organize community art/poetry projects, has led writing workshops, and has hosted many open mic readings. She is the co-founder of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day.
A protester at a rally in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in support of ethnic Uighur Muslims in China. Uighurs in China are being forced into “re-education” camps for indoctrination. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency via Shutterstock via The New York Times, January 2, 2019
Even the tiniest pebble has
Many brothers in the valleys of liberation
Despite the distance between them but,
An egg in great numbers whether far or near
is still fragile, still spineless
Still an
egg
Do not fight against the good
People
Whose patience is that of
Stone and passions are ignited
By a garish will comparable to
The sun
What is hidden today, will be
Uncovered tomorrow
and the fragile flesh of censorship
will be gashed in coming time as
the truth bleeds out
bountifully gifting death to
the brawny body of injustice
Your tanks have made you shielded
And your clubs have extended your arms,
And your weapons have armed you
but oh eggs
You will always be just that
As the virus contaminates the news
Let us look closer under the scope
As we keep our eyes on the oppressed and
Give a voice to the silent
Keep your eyes on the mighty
Rocks as they wage war against
The many villainous eggs
Aaron Hicks is a writer from Wilmington, North Carolina. He enjoys well crafted movies, creamy coffee, and standing on the side of those who are oppressed. #FreeChina
“One hundred percent girls,” whispered the biologist, crawling next to the pregnant reptile. “This nest will be 100 percent girls.” As the earth gets hotter, turtle hatchlings worldwide are expected to skew dangerously female, scientists predict, making the animals an unwitting gauge for the warming climate. —The Washington Post, October 22, 2019. Photo: A marine biologist helps a newborn sea turtle reach the sea on Cape Verde’s Boa Vista island. Credit: Danielle Paquette via The Washington Post.
In the dark sea, a greater darkness
An absence of starlight, moving
Then on the wet sand, a stone
Stone into turtle, with gathering of breath
And the climb begins, pull and drag
Against all the weight of earth
Far up the beach, with pause for gasp
The turtle curves wings
Into mittened hands, and digs
For this warmth of nest, the ocean shed
This gush of eggs into the place prepared
Hidden among the grains of sand
Then the lurch, the thrash
The torn-up ground, last concealment
Before the run toward home
At the first break of wave
She lifts head, trailing earthly tears
Rests, breathes full, and flies free
So it has been, the mothers forever
Returning to their mothers’ beach
The fathers waiting in the fathers’ surf
But now, the warmth too warm
The nests send only girls into the sea
Until fathers can be found no more
For long barren years, turtles will swim
Far from the beckoning useless land
Bearing eggs for no generation, the last
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.
the slimy egg, salted and peppered,
slurs sideways on the plate as if to plead
hold on to sanity. Then I see the sign, whoever killed my hen may you rot in hell,
which is on everyone’s mind these days,
hell
that is, and I had met Shakespeare before
all ruffled red and cock-sure, watched him
prance and dance around the yard, circle
the girls, cluck how he loves them like they love
him,
just like the Donald proclaims insidious love
for his chattel, then adds oh-by-the-way they must be punished
should their eggs get sucked into some
venomous void, and I watched him mount
the stage with bullets in his skull where eyes
should be, where the soul of Putin, we’re told,
resides, and I sip from my coffee cup the rancid
taste of deceit, I drive by rough-hewn boards
splintered around the yard make-shift
marking the territory where the wall wasn’t built
to keep the hen in whose tiny brain
and chicken feet walked right on down
to Mexico into the hot oil, stewed
into oblivion, a delicacy of chicken
bones just a few miles up the road
from hell.
Marsha Owens lives and writes in Richmond, VA, celebrates her roots in the Chesapeake Bay area, and looks forward to tomorrow.
Soon, monarch butterflies that sipped nectar in your backyard will heed an ancient call. These tiny, black and orange insects will rise high in the air, hitch a ride on the thermal updrafts and fly until they reach their winter home in a Mexican forest, 2,000 miles away. Climate change has also taken a toll, Sarikonda said. Drought kills milkweed and other pollinator plants; cold snaps keep caterpillars in that stage longer, leaving them more vulnerable to predators, she said. Steps toward helping the monarchs are showing progress. Many parks and nature centers hold programs in the fall asking volunteers to help catch and tag monarchs so that scientists can gather data about their migration habits. —Julie Washington, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 9, 2015. Photo credit: Katharine Auld Breece.
The Monarchs have returned.
It’s taken them four generations,
but they made it;
a few of them anyway,
fewer by a quarter, by a half.
Their overwintering forests
have been logged and burned.
The climate is too hot,
drying out the eggs, cooking the larvae.
Milkweed, the larvae’s only food, has been decimated by herbicides.
This time they’ve come prepared.
They picked up what they could along the way,
balancing it on fragile bodies
suspended beneath spectacular wings:
helmets, blast-proof armor, grenades, light arms.
They’re not going quietly this time.
After a few weeks,
once they’ve copulated, laid their eggs,
and before they die,
they plan to take a few of us with them.
Roger Stoll is a retired music teacher living in San Rafael, California.
“Everything is beautiful in my room, but only in my room, not in Gaza.” --Nidaa Badwan quoted by Jodi Rudoren in The New York Times February 28, 2015
Call me radical, you who uphold
hegemony of the hothead; call me
artist when I find beauty on the
inside, where it’s supposed to
have been stamped out; call
me traditionalist, locked away in
my own self-inflicted zenana.
Here, no one will beat me or throw
stones after me. Here, I can forget about
which missile coming from which side
may explode my face. Here, I have
rediscovered what safety feels like.
Look carefully: let me remind you, too.
This is the only way I know to honor
perfection of nests and eggs and those
fledglings straining at the windows who
will have to learn to fly inside their heads
like I have, like we all have, in this ageless
conga line of barefoot women on hot sands.
Here, when I am punched in the gut, it’s by sunlight
or soul; colors or ideas. Freedom, I call this freedom.
No need to send for a doctor. This is how I heal.
Some day I would like to fit the whole world into this room.
Catherine Wald'sbooks include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of ClassicalPoets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.
