APOPHENIA

by Frank Conahan

We believe in Tarot cards
Because we grew up
Being told we should credit

The expertise of
Meteorologists, their
Predictions aside.

So we did as we'd been told,
Believing them when
They'd call for clear skies (despite 

The subsequent rain).
We generalized our stance 
To fortune tellers,

Horoscopes, election polls,
And clairvoyants 
Across the board, as kids would  ...

The Jesuits bragged,
Give us a kid when he's young,
And we will own the adult. 

The pundits are sure
About Tuesday's election.
They predict clear skies. 

Dr. Frank Conahan lives in reclusive retirement outside of Baltimore, Maryland. He follows current events with trepidation and copes by writing verse. He has recently published poems with "Bards of Maryland." His collection Nothing Is Coming was published in April. 

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

by Steven Kent

The Guardian, October 7, 2026

Imagine all the crony moola

I'll acquire when I beat Lula.

Got to get the courts controlled here;

That's a bill of goods I've sold here. 

Right away I'll pardon father.

Legal channels? Yeah... why bother?

Democracy is what we're after—

Yanqui, you've no room for laughter!

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, The Asses of Parnassus, Blue Unicorn, The Dirigible Balloon, The Hypertexts, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, Well Met, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last(2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

THE UNITED STATES OF BRAZIL

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

I throw up my hands. I cannot 

understand how half the country 

votes for stepping off the cliff 

of righteousness, the rule 

of law, protection of the weak 

and the other; how so many 

can see only belly button,

door lock, money swirling

on line, quick payments 

and the roaring feijoada, 

caipirinhas flowing 

and no more focus

on that favela up the hill.

Pied Piper and the Bible,

holiness and the puritan’s

American dream, wealth 

equals God’s blessing,

but aren’t we in Brazil…

the evangelical globalized,

localized, homogenized, 

two frontier myths become one, 

the United States of Brazil,

at least half the residents

singing hymns, marching 

to the sea to build beach-

front property, marching 

to the forest to burn it down.

Indran Amirthanayagam received Sri Lanka's State Literary Award for White Space Sonnets.  He won the Paterson Poetry Prize for The Elephants of Reckoning. His Lettre aux residents du monde is forthcoming from L'Harmattan. Amirthanayagam edits Beltway Poetry <www.beltwaypoetry.com>publishes at Beltway Editions >www.beltwayeditions.com>. He writes indranmx.substack.com

THE NAME ON THE LIST

by Rajat Chandra Sarmah 

India Cut 130 Million From Voter Roll, Fueling Protests Against Modi: Public anger is growing over an exercise that critics say undermines the world’s largest democracy, particularly disenfranchising Muslims under the Hindu nationalist government. —The New York Times, October 6, 2026

Someone went looking for his name.

It had been there before—
among thousands of other names,
quietly printed,
waiting for a finger
to find it.

This time,
the finger moved down the page
and stopped.

Nothing.

He looked again,
then once more,
as if another reading
might put the name back.

Outside, something was changing
across the country.

Young people had begun
to gather in the streets.

What had been spoken quietly
inside drawing rooms
was now moving towards the road.

People who had watched in silence
were finding one another,
coming together in numbers
that could no longer be ignored.

Questions that once stayed indoors
were now being carried outside.

Who decides
whose name remains?

Who checks the list
before the list becomes
the truth?

In some places,
victory and defeat
stood closer than expected,
while the list
had grown shorter.

Numbers that once fitted
quietly into a column
now carried the weight
of people.

Petitions reached the court.
Dates were fixed,
then moved.

An election waited
for an answer
that had not yet arrived.

The anger spread.

People who had stood apart
were now filling the streets,
thousands upon thousands,
no longer willing
to remain apart.

Barricades went up.
Roads were closed.
Notices appeared.

The crowd was asked
to turn back.

But the streets kept filling.

Not everyone agreed
on what had happened.

Still, too many people
had begun to ask
whether the institutions
they had trusted
were still listening.

For years,
trust needed no proof.

You entered a polling booth,
pressed a button,
and went home.

Now people were looking
more closely at what happened
before a vote became a number,
and who was responsible
for what came after.

Something once taken for granted
was becoming visible:

the distance between
a citizen's faith
and the institution
that asks for it.

He folded the paper.

His name was still missing.

There was no way to know
who had taken it away.

For the first time,
he understood
that finding it again
might require more
than going to the polling booth.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah is a writer from Assam, India, and the author of eight books. His poetry and prose have appeared in literary journals and publications in India and internationally. He is a previously published contributor to The New Verse News and has received several literary awards and recognitions.

AUBADE BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Cheryl Martone

One crow swoops down from his solo perch,

beholds a lifeless body of another. His sudden

voice nudges indifferent dawn, grates the air.

Sky stretches and shifts, grows rich with color,

streaked with wings. This is no Van Gogh sky,

though. No wheatfields here. And yet, a sweep

of nature’s gestures,

 

                                 menace on the horizon,

a certain madness in the air, and now—in my

own backyard—a community moved by and

within a murder of its own. Crows pace, scan,

echo each other. Somehow, they must know

how mythologies persist about them: trickster,

thief. Something to dread. But when I look

below my own window,

 

                                        I don’t see anything

worse than small creatures born with intent

to survive. Everywhere, it seems, some kind

of danger, another funeral. Old lamentations,

new ones not yet imagined. Eventually, each

bird lifts away, leaves one soul behind. They,

and I, begin this day acknowledging another

passing, another unease

 

                                beyond Equinox. Soon,

All Souls Day. And days later, the millions

of votes cast. Dies cast. But now, it’s still

October, the shorter days, human silhouettes

moving within the windows of their lives –

within a daily exorbitance of

 

                                               whatever’s next.

Is it this ticking brightness? Some take it all in.

Some resist. Others look down and away. Sky

anchors in cobalt, erases this dawn reflection

of our autumn world riddled with fire.

Cheryl Martone lives in Rhode Island, where she works as a grant writer for a food rescue and hunger relief nonprofit. Her work has been published in Still Point Arts Quarterly, River Heron Review, Gyroscope Review, Drifting Sands Haibun, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Unlost, among other publications. 

CANVASSING

by Mark Williams

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

If a man’s home is his castle,

he reluctantly lowered his drawbridge. “Is she

a Democrat or Republican?” he asked us.

 

Manicured lawns, foot-high grass.

Porches with fishing rods, feral cats.

“She had three litters before she was fixed.”

 

A woman on oxygen. A man with a cane.

A woman using a walker

who agreed to put up a yard sign.

 

“I always vote Republican.”

“I vote straight Democrat.”

“I’m not registered.”

 

We were offered water, beer;

given thanks, directions, advice,

even hand-wipes. We learned

 

of dogs who’d been rescued, the price

of a condemned house. One woman’s grandson

is studying classic literature in Italy.

 

As for the king of his castle, he said,

nay, shouted, “Get off my land!” which,

as far as he was concerned,

 

wasn’t made for some of you and me.

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, as well as The Southern Review, ONE ART: a literary journal, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the collections, Carrying On and Life. He and his wife, DeeGee, live and canvas in Evansville, Indiana. 

NEW YORK MAYORAL RACE LIMERICK

by Paul A. Freeman

Ass Kicking by Nick Anderson

The Donald was made to take note

(when Mamdani sank Cuomo’s boat)

that normal folk weather

a storm when together,

while billionaires just have one vote.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

BORN AND BREAD

by Adele Evershed

A center-left Welsh nationalist candidate defeated the governing Labour Party and Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform U.K. in a Welsh Parliament special election on Thursday that has been closely watched as a potential bellwether of major upheaval in wider elections next year. Plaid Cymru, a party that supports Welsh independence from Britain, had been vying with Reform U.K…. in Caerphilly—for decades a Labour Party stronghold—amid poor approval ratings for both Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government and its main opposition, the center-right Conservatives. —The New York Times, October 24, 2025

Welsh is lilting all over the airwaves, with no definite article and plenty of soft mutations. Plaid Cymru won in Caerphilly against the odds, beating that odious little Reform Party—fashioned in the image of MAGAdom, with red hats, pitchforks, and teal (I ask you, teal?) rosettes.

Now, in Wales, we love a bit of scarlet. Jemima Nicholas beat the French back in the day with a pitchfork and a tall black hat, so we don’t mind a prop or two. And although we wouldn’t know teal from turquoise, we’re not colour-biased.

And there you have it—the nub of the thing. I listened to a woman describe herself as born and bred in the cradle of Labour’s heartland—think Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan—but now, because of Reform’s rhetoric, she fears for her sons in the town she grew up in, because her children are biracial.

We all know Farage might talk about the cost of living—how he’ll bring down the price of eggs—but all he cares about is buttering our daily bread with fear. This time he was told to go back to where he came from (and I’m not talking Clacton), but next year he’ll slide out of his gutter again, forked tongue slick with Eton-mess promises. And I’m not sure a Welsh hat will be enough.

full English breakfast—
I ask to swap the beans
for laverbread

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the Valleys for the American East Coast. Her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Modern Haiku, Flashflood, Free Flash Fiction, Atrium and Literary Mama. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Her third collection, In the Belly of the Wail, is forthcoming with Querencia Press. She has published two novellas-in flash, Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press), and has a third called, A History of Hand Thrown Walls, (Unsolicited Press). Her short story collection, Suffer/Rage, was recently released by Dark Myth Publications.

INCENDIARY SONG

by Matthew King

Art by Clay Jones

Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire
You no longer represent me
I’m immediate desire
Our constitution is suspended
on a fence of barbed wire
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire

I’ve cancelled your election
I’ve exposed your fatal flaw
Trapped in your reflection
we argued to a draw
The people want perfection
they love to be in awe
Baby you’re the Reichstag
my will is the law

Our union needs annulment
our wedding was a sham
The preacher stole the word of God
now he’s on the lam
He said he’d bless the devil
he didn’t give a damn
Baby you’re the Reichstag
who do you think I am

Like lightning this befell me
not you but I self-crowned
No court can now compel me
my power is unbound
I dare you try to tell me
my methods are unsound
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’ll burn you to the ground

I’m rounding up your lovers
each one of them a liar
They tell me they don’t know you
say it’s me they most admire
Now I alone can save them
or throw them on the pyre
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire


Author's note: Many, not on only one side of the political divide, have been watching for a "Reichstag Fire moment." The thing about historical echoes is you're never sure what you're hearing is exactly what it sounds like, but with some things sounding like them at all is bad enough. A hat tip to Leonard Cohen, whose shade I seem to be channelling in this poem, and who would have turned 91 on Sept. 21. Leonard! thou shouldst be living at this hour; lucky for you you're not, I guess.


Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville," where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighboring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. His photos and links to his poems can be found at birdsandbeesandblooms.com.

THE ADMINISTRATION

by Susan Martell Huebner

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

At the kitchen table watching the birds,

a normal comfort, seeing them fly, flit, feed.

 

Jay lands on seed tray, all command blue,

tail feathers angled upward in smart salute.

 

Finches wearing winter beiges swerve

and weave, perch on metal crooks, chittering warnings.

 

Downy woodpecker's folded flat, composed

against the peanut tube, eyeing the suet lock.

 

I drink my coffee, extra cream, admiring

their careless freedom, unworried song

 

when Coopers Hawk threatens overhead

and each bird freezes.

 

On this side of the window, a sharp inhale.

I understand the instinct.

Susan Martell Huebner lives and writes in Mukwonago WI. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals. She writes across the genres. Find her printed work at Finishing Line Press, Kelsay Publications, and Amazon.