TRADE-OFFS

by Imogen Arate

The bombs continue to fall. Cartoon by MATE

“Israel's New Gaza Operation Should Be Called 'Chariots of Genocide'” —Gideon Levy, Haaretz, May 14, 2025

I am the long night

that deepens into

a velvet gloom

that rambles the curls 

of your crooked fingers

as you pull irresistibly near

I am the bind

your phobias birthed

that cracks frail bones

rattling of evasion 

I am the deadly silence

strung by the eager

fingers of avoidance

A crystal each missing 

word unspoken 

A precious stone 

each unuttered phrase 

I am the irreplaceable 

treasures you've smashed 

to scatter as dust

while cradling the empty

slogans of freedom 

Imogen Arate is an Asian-American poet in search of hope: that humanity will overcome our self-destructive tendencies to work together against the onslaught of the climate crisis. She's also the Executive Director of Poets and Muses, an award-winning multimedia artist platform that has featured diverse contemporary poetic voices from around the globe. She believes that we will only be able to value lives equally when we lend our ears and hearts to the life stories of those we don't readily recognize as our kin and stop requiring the presence of certain socioeconomic trappings to recognize people’s right to a dignified existence.

PRO PATRIA REDUX

by Janice D. Soderling

You won't find the old men going.
Death and rotting bodies are too much on their minds.
You won't find their scions going either.
Too much capital invested in those victorious sperm.

You won't find the old women going.
They are too canny.
They have dealt with blood
and shit and pain and broken promises
all their lives.

A few young women will go,
The gullible ones trying to prove their equality.
The rest, the smarter ones,
are too busy with their hair and high heels.

Uncle Samuel isn't going.
Uncle Samuel would like the glory, but he hedges;
he deals in futures and private equity.
And he figures, “Why do we have all these young men
if we aren't going to use them?”

So that leaves you, m'boy,
inner city dropout, son of immigrants.
Step up and make your country proud.
Yes, you from the backwoods, the back roads,
the back of the class, the back of the line,
the backbone of Exceptionalism.
And anyway there are no jobs,
and as everybody knows,
nobody (except in action movies),
nobody dies in war.

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her fourth chapbook, forthcoming in February, is titled War: Make that City Desolate.