THE COST OF CAUTION

by Peter Witt

 

Malaysia's Karex Bhd, the world's top condom producer, plans to raise prices by 20% to 30% and possibly further if supply chain disruptions drag on due to the Iran War, its chief executive said on ‌Tuesday. —Reuters, April 21, 2026 

 

 

Safe sex just got more expensive,
the price of latex climbing like a fever.
There’s an oversupply of children on the horizon,
a tidal wave of toddlers waiting to break.

It starts with the fuel, the heavy scent of diesel
rising in cost, slowing the world to a crawl.
Then the cold creeps in. In northern towns,
people turn the heat down, then cuddle 

for warmth under quilts heavy as lead,
and you know what happens next.

In the tropics, the AC hums a frantic tune,
while lovers move in the artificial chill
like dancers in a refrigerated dream.
With the cost of flight soaring high as a hawk,
the world settles for staycations, 
quiet afternoons where the bedroom door
becomes the only destination left.

Without protection, the "frolic" turns to fate.
Be prepared: nine to twelve months from now,
the world may explode with new life,
a sudden reversal of the long decline.,

And while Iran guards its humming centrifuges,
and the nuclear material sits heavy and silent,
Trump stands at the podium, grinning at the chaos,
explaining to the cameras that the crying in the cradles
was all just part of the plan.

 

 

The Trump administration, dominated by religious anti-abortion conservatives and reeling in money from a new wave of pronatalist tech reactionaries, has long been considering ways to persuade, pressure and cajole women into having more babies. —The Guardian, April 14, 2026

Peter A. Witt by chance lives in Texas and is a recovering university professor who lost his adjectives in the doldrums of academic writing. Poetry has helped him recover his ability to see and describe the inner and outer world he inhabits. His work has been twice nominated for the Best of the Net award and has appeared in a variety of online and print publications. He also writes family history.  His book about his aunt was published by the Texas A&M University Press (Edith's War: Writings of a Red Cross Worker and Lifelong Champion of Social Justice). He is also an avid birder and wildlife photographer.

THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK

by Hallie Dolin

Last Tuesday the pointer moved one second closer 

to destruction. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight.

Around the world, our weapons wait for our command:

all vigilant, sitting patiently through midnight. 

We hear reports of ever-growing plagues passed on,

although information blackout's our new midnight. 

No one draws wheat from chaff, facts from alternative,

or musters effort like we used to do. Midnight 

and its stifling, sleepless depths—no rest for us—

is a bruise seeping blood, this black and blue midnight.

We snipe over who deserves to rain their revenge 

on whom, whose forfeit lives should dim out to midnight,

but we've missed the point. Your fate is mine, my blood is

your bloodstain. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight. 

Hallie Dolin is a pathology resident in Cleveland, Ohio and has been writing for fun for nearly three decades. Her work has previously been published in The Case Reserve Review and the now-defunct Flashes in the Dark. When she isn't trying to discover novel cures for frightening microbes, she spends her time working on an actual novel. She also enjoys knitting, playing the guitar, and spending time with her cat. 

ICARUS AWAITS A NEW YEAR

by Mary K O'Melveny

We’ve long been warned:

don’t fly too close, 

that sun’s too hot,

your wings will melt.

Yet here we are.

A NASA probe,

blinking distance

from spitfire flames,

solar winds, flares,

light speed heat spots

radiating

fiery dust rings.

As a new year

dawns, the Sun will

speak its first words.

Or will it sing

a scorching torch

song that sizzles,

blisters, sears, scalds?

What did we think

when we strapped on

those beeswax wings, 

leapt out as if

we knew our fate,

the sea Petral blue,

sun gold-glazed red?

Soon enough we 

will learn how far

desire can fly

before it burns,

descending like

a blazing star.

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird, is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.

THE BLUE-STATE HERON

by Barbara Lydecker Crane

Artwork: a paper collage by the poet.

Flapping hard all day and night,
these herons grapple with their plight: 
a large right wing distorts their flight. 
 
Bi-coastal, Blue-states can be found
Virginia Beach to Provincetown,
San Diego to Puget Sound.

They have lost their rural southern range;
midwest statistics now look strange;
and poachers threaten further change.

Not yet in an endangered fate,
they step with slow and measured gait,

biding time. Blue-states wait.


Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Sonnet Crown category of the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest, Honorable Mention in the 2024 Frost Farm Poetry Contest, and was twice a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Able Muse recently published her fourth collection, ekphrastic sonnets entitled You Will Remember Me.

SWINGING ON WINGS OF FLAME

by Mary K O’Melveny

There's a house somewhere I know where the fire's burnin'

All night long… 

And even though the wind may now be howlin'

The stars are bright and they push me on and on

—“Half Moon Rising” (Yonder Mountain String Band)

  

We keep exploring outer space for answers.

Out there, we learn that black holes make sounds

of music as they swallow everything

around them. Celestial destruction

to the tune of string band melodies, as if

the Osborne Brothers or the Red Clay Ramblers

had booked a cosmic venue where eager stars

do-si-do around dark matter’s edges.

 

Sit still and you will hear creation’s story

spelled out with mandolins, fiddles, five-string

banjos. On Earth we are orchestrating our

own demise. Everything has turned extreme.

Our hottest week just past will not be last.

The burning air tastes like barbeque.

Put an ear to ground, hear it singe, smolder,

sear from simmering smog and haze.

 

Far better to harmonize and tap our feet

as Earth’s axis shifts and we wobble, weave

like drunken sparrows. Saharan sands might

land in Kansas while floodwaters choke New

Jersey highways and algal blooms poke out

from Florida’s rivers. Grab a good seat

at our cosmic amphitheater where smoke

rises from the speed of guitar picking.

 

If you listen closely, you can hear some scat,

nonce, argot. Go with the flow. Flat Foot Floogie,

Tutti Fruiti. Explosions of fervor, fury

unleashed by gas ripples in galaxy

clusters. Who can say this fate will not be

ours as well? One hopes we won’t be around

by then. For now, we can dance as glissandos

of sound drift from the heart of the Milky Way.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

FAR FROM HIM I WATCH A UKRAINIAN SURVIVOR ON THE NEWS

by Therése Halscheid

A man carries water bottles as he crosses a destroyed bridge in the frontline town of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, on Oct. 27, 2022, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. —VOA

He has stopped fearing the sirens, stopped running for shelter,

is now carrying a pail to a crater a Russian missile made.

The crater has filled with muddied water. 

You see him fetching a pail’s worth from the blown out earth.

See him lugging it along the road to Odessa, on the road to Odessa 

you see his back hunched, his legs barely hurrying. 

You do not see any other, only ruins and stacked tires

as well as anti-tank hedgehogs barricading the street.

I want to say to him: the wind knows your face.

It carries the look of others, it has knowledge, the wind does, 

and power enough to change his fate, want to share 

the wind is the bringer of things he cannot imagine 

it is the collector of thoughts and blows them

tirelessly about the world.

Want to say the air wears our collective consciousness

even if hardly anyone believes this can be. 

Whatever is given to the wind the wind willingly carries. 

I want to tell him: work with the wind. 

The softest touch is the finger of wind, feel its peace

at work, for it is our work, what we have been sending. 

Therése Halscheid's poetry and lyric essays have won awards and have been published in several magazines, among them The Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, Sou’wester, South Loop. Her poetry collection Frozen Latitudes (Press 53) received an Eric Hoffer Book Award. Other collections include Uncommon Geography, Without Home, and a Pudding House Press Greatest Hits chapbook.

LIFE EXPECTANCY

by Martha Deed

Gravestone inscription: Erected in memory of Mrs. Kezia Cutter, wife of Mr. Richard Cutter, departed this life Dec. ye 1788, in ye 63rd Year of her age. "Watch ye, that live, for ye don't know / How near you are to death. / Or what may give the fatal blow / To stop your fleeting breath."

Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. It was the first time life expectancy dropped two years in a row in 100 years. —NPR, August 30, 2022

You could die of a sudden attack in church
be run over by a buffalo in Montana
be felled by a tree if you wielded an ax unwisely
or TB, smallpox or Typhoid
in a bomber over Northern France
starve
drown at sea
die in childbirth
fall off a horse or a runaway train in the Rockies
be kicked by a Union officer’s horse between battles
be killed at Deerfield or in Narrangansett Swamp
by a rogue at a card game in Deadwood

Death was just around the corner in those olden days
Everyone knew that life was a delicate thread
stitching oblivion before birth to oblivion after death
survival provisional and linked to mere chance

The old-timers knew
You can’t turn your back on death
Death can find you any place any time

But now—now we 21^st Century descendants
in a time of shrinking life expectancy
think we control our destiny
having survived hiding under desks
to fool the atom bomb

Now we do not await the trickiness of Fate
Now we have to look for the nearest exit
the place to run, hide or fight
at the grocery store or church or school
because we have turned nasty
or have not silenced others who have turned nasty—
the nastiest among us declaring supremacy
and the right to kill at will
die quickly on the street
or slowly by telling all the scientists
to go to hell

Martha Deed's poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and most recently or forthcoming in Moss Trill, Mason Street, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, The Skinny Poetry Journal. Her poetry collections Under the Rock (2019) and Climate Change (2014) and a third collection forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. She is a retired psychologist who makes trouble with poetry inspired by crises and other mishaps around her house on the Erie Canal in Western New York.

MRI

by Robin Wright

"Breathe in breathe out" poster  by Raphaella Vaisseau

A voice summons from somewhere outside this tube.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

No way to say I’ve been doing just that

ever since Putin invaded Ukraine.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

I study gray tape on the ceiling, a few inches

from my face. It’s long and straight, a runway, but

no planes, only torn spots in the shapes of tear drops.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

I lie still. When loud thuds like gunfire overpower U2

playing "With or Without You" on my headphones,

I squeeze my eyes tight, willing the noise to stop.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

I’m safe, tucked in a tube.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

A pregnant woman, bloody, swollen

thought she’d be safe inside the maternity ward

in Mariupol, but had to stumble through glass,

rubble, and labor pains to keep her body

and unborn baby from being torn to bits by bombs.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

How many families are with or without loved ones?

How many hide in basements with no food, water, electricity?

How many buried in mass graves? How many more?

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold your breath

 

The machine done, the radiology tech

tells me I’m good at holding my breath.

 

I leave, await my fate and that of Ukrainians.

 

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Hold my breath

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in One Art, Young Ravens Literary Review, Olney Magazine, As it Ought to Be, Rat’s Ass Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Muddy River Poetry Review, Sanctuary, and others. Her first chapbook Ready or Not was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.

TOSSING DICE IN FLORIDA

by Mickey J. Corrigan

"Florida Hurdles" — Claytoonz by Clay Jones

You flip a seven and—

the day hatches bright, shiny

new penny in the white sand

bronze bodies washing off 

emptiness at the azure shore.

Morning brings no escape

from one's and two's

wild gaze, rocky wonders

a better hand today

to grasp straws with claws.

The afternoon overheats

hard scowls over face cards

erasing your winnings

double-crossing the house.

Happy hour obliterates 

all of tomorrow's concerns:

another wave of cool luck

or a fast ride under glass

flashing lights ablaze.

Night sounds simmer down

squelched by humid air 

the eerie cries of coyotes

nosing barrels of scraps

soaked in fresh blood.

The unknown lingers:

that you awaken again

to another day of play

fate on your side… 

or you're forced to fold

beating, beating

like bones on a drum—

taps, not reveille.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes tropical noir with a dark humor. Her poetry has been widely published in literary journals and chapbooks. In 2020, Grandma Moses Press released Florida Man. Her novel The Physics of Grief puts the fun back in funerals while taking a serious look at the process of mourning (QuoScript, UK, 2021). 

DEAR FLAVIA

 by Paul Smith

 

Today I saw a guy on TV

about my age

a little older, white-haired

who put his hand on a Bible

and took an oath

to uphold democracy

build national trust & unity

etc., etc.

it was a nice speech

he also said something about us

being able to take whatever fate throws at us

I liked this part

it didn’t sound like

it was written by a speechwriter

and it made me think of what

fate has thrown at us

more at you than me

so, although you are not here today

you might smile a bit

knowing

that people like you

you know

skin the color of a lunch bag

who came from far away

who became citizens of this land

supposedly made for you and me

but also a land visited by a terrible plague

that took you away from me

maybe, after smiling that sly tropical smile

you’ll worry less about us

and enjoy whatever was prepared for you

by the One you’re with

on that other faraway shore

with the One we say

sheds His grace on us

Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has traveled all over the place and met lots of people. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. His poetry and fiction have been published in Convergence, Packingtown Review, Literary Orphans, TheNewVerse.News, and other lit mags.

NO LOVE IN THIS LABOR

by A. Miller

Awards season wouldn’t be complete without the requisite number of controversies, and it got an early one last week when Universal announced it would submit the thriller “Get Out” for a Golden Globe in the comedy category. The film’s writer-director, Jordan Peele, immediately communicated his disappointment, tweeting, “‘Get Out’ is a documentary.” Although he later moderated his reaction, he maintained that to categorize his directorial debut as a comedy is to fatally misunderstand the seriousness of the movie, in which a young African American man is existentially threatened by a Stepford-like liberal white family in the suburbs. “The reason for the visceral response to this movie being called a comedy is that we are still living in a time in which African American cries for justice aren’t being taken seriously,” Peele explained in a statement. “It’s important to acknowledge that though there are funny moments, the systemic racism that the movie is about is very real. More than anything, it shows me that film can be a force for change. At the end of the day, call ‘Get Out’ horror, comedy, drama, action or documentary, I don’t care. Whatever you call it, just know it’s our truth.” —The Washington Post, November 23, 2017

You start to believe this is your fate
Harassment and abuse
Murder and beatings, lynching—we are skinned
To be worn like the fur of animals
Stripped of everything that makes us human
We reek of slave labor, blood, sweat
They kill us so they can be us
They want to absorb our resilience
They pave our roads to the grave with imprisonment
If these walls could talk
They wouldn’t because
They are traumatized by how much violence
Black bodies have seen
You start to believe this is your fate
When you are persecuted and used the day you are born
And God’s ear has gone deaf to our silent screaming


A. Miller is  studying teacher education in the Midwest. Miller's work has been featured in Aois 21 publishing, and makingqueerhistory.com.

APOCALYPTIC LULLABY

by Richard O'Connell

After the Portuguese of Domingos Carvalho Da Silva

Because the moon is bright and the night

Is simply announcing the dawn

And because the sea is hardly the sea

And the hose doesn't weep on the lawn

And because we've fouled the water and air

In this best of all possible hells

And because the light is simply a vibration

That excites our nervous cells

And because rock music hurts our ears

And the wind plays an aeolian harp

And because the earth breeds plenty of snakes

And goldfish are only carp

And because the plane is about to depart

And the raven repeats nevermore

And because we have to sit here and smile

Before the final big encore

And because yesterday does not exist

And the future will never come

And because we are doing a ballet

On the pin of the Hydrogen Bomb

Let's not rush to the wall and weep

And tear our hair and bewail our fate

We did as well as anyone could

Given our love and hate

And because we are pathetic clowns

Confronting the Apocalypse

Caught in the ruins of a collapsing world

Between earthquake and eclipse

Let's dance high on the hurricane deck

Before the ship slopes under our feet

Let's soak up the wealth of the sun

Before it loses its light and heat

Let's laugh at the whole wide universe

In our eyes reflected

When we close our lids it will be

As if it never existed

Let our laughter crackle across the cosmos

Where galaxies scatter and dim

Since win or lose we only leave

A trace of ash on the wind

Richard O’Connell lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Texas Review, Acumen, The Paris Review, Trinacria, The Formalist, Light, etc. His most recent collections are Dawn Crossing and Waiting for the Terrorists.

WIND CHILL

by Richard Schnap

Image source: The Hoopla

It was just about the time
I noticed the number of beggars
On the sidewalks of my neighborhood
Seemed to double overnight

It was just about the time
That the local cable TV station
Began to show hardcore porn films
More explicit than ever before

It was just about the time
I started to hear the rumors
Of people I once befriended
Dying from heroin overdoses

That whenever I passed a church
I thought about going inside
And sit in a back row pew
To pray for the fate of the world


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

GEOGRAPHY IS FATE

by George Held

            For Shereen Tan

There you are on Facebook,

hiking the Valois with your darling

Tootsie on her leash:

the brown grass is dry and it’s fall

and the scenic mountain

on the horizon has only a cap

of snow and it’s fall all over

the northern latitudes

while in Tacloban a vomitous

stench chokes the typhoon

survivors as they drag their starving

thirst-clenched bodies

and strangled souls past bloated

corpses toward the supply copters

landing another mile ahead, toward

the endless lines at the aeroport,

toward the makeshift morgues,

praying for relief, for escape,  

for the chance to identify

Maricel’s or Mama’s body,

all untethered by fate,

while harried tourists rush

to change their destination

From Manila to Geneva.


An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com