PERSEAE AMERICANAE

by Frank Conahan

All avocado trees  are cosexual, Or hermaphrodites.
They each contain two sexes 

In every plant. 
"A-trees" start each day with their Flowers as female

(They're receptive to pollen.)
They become male
(Producing pollen) in the

Afternoon of the next day.
"B-trees" follow a
Different schedule. They're male

In the morning and 
Female in the afternoon. 
This behavior has

Been noticed in the past but
Was not confronted 
By the woke Biden regime. 

It seems unlikely 
It will be permitted to
Flagrantly persist

In this harmful gender-based
Ideology 
And anti-Christian practice.

Specific guidance 
From the president is now
Anxiously awaited. 

US policy 
Stipulates one permanent 
Sex per each body. 

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. 

AND YOU, WHAT DO YOU NEED?

by Janet Ruth

after Mary Oishi’s poem “I Need Poems”

 

These days I need the sun,
            because it gives us light,
            whether blazing, or watery,
            or obscured by clouds,
and the words to share it with you.

These days I need the moon,
            because it’s a reflection of light,
            whether new & invisible, or waxing,
            or waning, or full,
and the words to share it with you.

These days I need all the flowers,
            because they each provide food
            for some creature and our hearts,
            whether tiny prickly flowers of tumbleweed
            or galaxies of sunflowers,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the world’s creatures
            because if they disappear none of us will ever
            be the same, whether the tiger that padded past
            our jeep in India without a glance, or the black widow
            spider spinning a web by our back door,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the recipes I can collect
            because they feed us, whether my ancestors’
            pfeffernuessen and kringel, sauerkraut and pickled eggs
            or my adopted state’s tamales, posole and biscochitos,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the stories of standing up to say NO!
            because they show us the way
            and the price we must be willing to pay,
            whether Dad’s stories of being
            a conscientious objector in WWII
            or people today carrying signs that say “No Kings,”
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all of your hearts,
            whether bruised and broken,
            or fibrillating, or full of joy,
            to hold them up to the light with words,
            because they are
                        the heartBEAT            heartBEAT
                                                heartBEAT
            of the real America.

  

Janet Ruth is a NM ornithologist and poet. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, The Lyric and anthologies including The Nature of Our Times (Paloma Press, 2025). Her sonnet “A World That Shimmers” won the inaugural True Concord Poetry Contest, was set to music and performed by True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson, October 2023. Her book,Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. 

SCULPTURE

by Jan Chronister

In Duluth, Minnesota

a well-known snow sculptor

crafts a car on his front lawn—

Honda Pilot with smiling driver,

arm hanging out. 

He adds a sign that says,

“I’m not mad at you.”

Someone places flowers

on the white canvas.

A photo of the sculpture on Facebook

draws close to one hundred hateful comments,

some even rejoicing at her death.

It’s going to be cold in Minnesota—

wind chills as low as -60.

The snow car and driver

will be around a long time.

Perhaps long enough

for the haters to find 

their humanity.

Jan Chronister is a retired educator who splits her year between the extremes of northern Wisconsin (by Lake Superior) and southern Georgia. She has authored three full-length poetry collections and twelve chapbooks. Jan edits and publishes the work of fellow poets under the imprint of Poetry Harbor.

CONNECTING THE DISCONNECT

by Dana Yost

“A strange unrest hovers over the nation: / 

This is the last dance.” —Robert Bly, “Unrest”

I wake to the harshest

of dreams. I make a poster

one weekend—photo of a little

girl from Gaza, hungry. Afraid.

Arms reaching out, a begging,

pleading moment—so much

agony on that little face.

I write a caption:

"Please don’t kill me."

I show this to people, and they

say you can't share this: 

it's too terrible, too severe.

So it sits on my desk.

Someone wants me to write

about my earlier days,

But do they really matter?

I try, humoring them, but get

nowhere. Those days seem

puny. Even childhood, formative,

but so far away, lost to thunder

and the blasts of artillery

in another land. Someone says

there is goodness yet. They point

to flowers in a garden

down the street. They smell nice,

but, for me, it doesn't last. A man holds

a woman's hand down at the

beach, but I don’t sit with them.

In Ellay, the masks come

as the faces of hatred serving

power, power serving hatred.

The same. I come from

the same farmland as Robert

Bly, forty years later. The snow

blows across fields, the corn

groans to be born. 

But the prairie is no barrier

to speaking truth about evil,

no hindrance to fulminating

about the big wrongdoing.

I wake from a new dream

alive with anger and clarity:

these words must be said.

I want the men in masks

to lift them from their faces,

join the masses, the evil

to be buried at the point

of a pen. Then, I will sit.

Dana Yost grew up in southwestern Minnesota, an hour from Robert Bly’s farm, forty years after him. But Yost shares Bly’s early interest in taking on the establishment.

ON EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

by Catherine Gonick

spirits shed like gasses 

   from the bodies 

 

of our ancestors, 

   children, and others

 

we have loved 

   like to put on costumes 

     

adorn their bones

   wear jewels

 

and red flowers

  tune up guitars

 

They rush to gather

   at the elevator

 

press the button

  for the noosphere

 

that earth-space full

  of our continuing

 

thoughts, private

    and shared

And when the door opens

and the operator calls

 

      going down

      going up

 

      getting off

      getting on

 

the spirits know

  they can go anywhere

 

that we are thinking

  today of them

 

remembering and waiting 

  for them to join us

 

for a fiesta without borders

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in a wide range of literary journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and forthcoming in The Orchards Poetry Journal, as well as in anthologies including Grabbed and Support Ukraine.  She works in a company that fights global warming.

THE IN-BETWEEN

by Kathy Conway

For a month, we’ve noticed 

tender green sprouts—

too early not to freeze or

be trampled, often poking

out of dried-brown leaves 

of last fall. Do you hear

their crinkle in

the breeze? 

On our walks, we’ve created 

a game—are they crocus, 

jonquils, tips of hosta? We’ve 

savored forsythia and lilac buds, 

the red tint of oaks, the pale 

green of maples. 

I have always loved early 

Spring’s pops of color, signs

of growth and new life to come;

births and passings of loved 

ones, of this year’s departed 

and a yet-to-be-born

grand-nephew.

This spring, we also have the brown 

water of floods and mudslides, 

the yellow and red flames of fire, 

leaving grey-black ash and debris

in war zones—Ukraine, Gaza, 

Haiti. And the orange man—I’ll 

not use his name—threatening 

a bloodbath.

Kathy Conway lives and writes in New England and is increasingly frustrated with the state of the world.

IMAGINE

by Steven Croft

AI-generated graphic for The New Verse News by Shutterstock

If instead of munitions, we could send Ukraine a spring

without war,

see Russian soldiers march off singing, "There is No Rank

Higher Than a Soldier's Mother," as mothers

who love them call them back home,

As the Dnieper thaws, let Ukraine beat its swords

into ploughshares for its golden fields of wheat, the farmers

no longer molested by fighter jets,

Let its cities be beautiful European cities again, free of

shelled and crumbling buildings, with

vibrant commerce and carefree nightlife, let people

sit idly in cafes, reaching calmly for coffee cup, newspaper,

its list of dead gone – for now,

Unwind stacked car graveyards of burnt-out husks,

bomb-twisted chassis, put them new again on roads

unpocked by explosion,

Let the countryside host tortoiseshell butterflies and roe deer,

the sound of bees visiting flowers, instead of armies

of tanks,

Let unstartled horses and cattle whip their tails idly in pastures

behind mended fences,

Let Ukraine part the dark curtain of daily anticipatory death,

box up the war strategy, the screams of wounded and dying, grief

of the living, tape them shut—for now,

Send home its stretched-thin, worn-out army of war,

Let its President wear a suit again, let his face cast off its war

fatigue, his body the green battle fatigues,

All over Ukraine let bells of peace and respite ring from the shingled

belltowers of wooden churches, let them dance the hopak

with fevered joy.

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, December 2023). His work has appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, So It Goes, Anti-Heroin Chic, The New Verse News, and other places, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2023

by Katherine West

Even in October 

butterflies crowd 

the butterfly bush

are lifted by the cold 

wind then released 

to drift back to their magenta 

breakfast

in a flurry of giant 

orange flakes 

of Halloween snow 

or fire 

The high rise looks like 

a grey ice cream cake 

left out in the summer 

sun so that slabs 

of cement melt and slide 

down its sides to the street where 

grey children lie 

with their eyes shut 

the party over 

time to go home 

The prairie dog sits up

on its hind legs 

still and alert 

waiting for danger—

shadows of crows 

pass over him and away 

like the low-flying planes 

in black and white newsreels 

of World War Two 

Pale blue flowers 

still cling to the tips 

of the rosemary bush 

but the lavender 

and thyme are dried out 

helpless when the wind 

drives down the mountain 

strips them bare 

In this house the cabinets 

are full of supplies—

ten of everything, power 

to run fountains 

in the desert 

thick walls to keep the heat out 

to keep the heat in--

a fat door like that 

of a castle

Vultures come in a black 

rush sometimes--

the body bags are white 

as lumps of sugar 

with the corners 

licked off

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City.  She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and  Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, Southwest Word Fiesta, and The Silver City Anthology. The New Verse News nominated her poem “And Then the Sky” for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico.