THE WIND RIPS

by Daniel Lance Patrick

Protesters confront a row of police officers outside the White House in Washington, DC, on early May 30. Photographer: Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images at Bloomberg.

it rattles my windows as it picks up speed
gusting between apartments
as a wind tunnel

if I was the praying type I’d pray for the death
of the damaged leader
for what he has done and hasn’t
I wish it like a gale force

throwing what isn’t tied down

it’s not how Mama taught me—
but if there was a god it might agree

as the wind rips through the courtyard
I can hear the powerline banging against a pipe

and in all the debris that settles
I just might
find forgiveness

Daniel Lance Patrick is a poet, songwriter and musician. His poems have appeared in The Sandy River Review, The Northern New England Review, NPR, The Buffalo News, among others. He won an Emmy for his work during the London Olympics.

PANDEMIC GOOD FRIDAY IN AMERICA

by Michael L. Ruffin

“I’m a Doctor at the ‘Epicenter of the Epicenter.’ Let’s not forget the social failures that allowed Covid-19 to overwhelm neighborhoods like Elmhurst in Queens.” —Ben McVane, The New York Times, April 5, 2020. Dr. McVane (pictured above) specializes in emergency medicine.

When this
is all over,
and we have
crucified
so many of
our doctors,
nurses, and
other medical
professionals,
will they say,
“Forgive them,
for they didn’t
know what they
were doing?”

Should they?

Didn’t we?


Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and  of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at TheNewVerse.News and is forthcoming in 3 Moon Magazine and Rat's Ass Review.

NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS

by David Southward





It took nothing—
a smoker’s match, a welder’s spark—
to start the blaze
in my ribs.

You will search
the smoldering grandeur
for some dire cause.
That is your rhythm.

But remember:
the one you blame
is small and frightened, like you.
Like you, my child.

Forgive him.


David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His chapbook Apocrypha was published by Wipf & Stock in 2018; a full collection, Bachelor’s Buttons, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (April 2020).

THE SENTENCING OF DR. LARRY NASSAR

by Alan Walowitz

Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina addresses Larry Nassar, (R) a former team USA Gymnastics doctor, who pleaded guilty in November 2017 to sexual assault charges, during his sentencing hearing. (Reuters via Yahoo! Sports)

Me, I’m just one of the run-of-the-mill, everyday sinners of this world,
but how could I not shake, with some small tremor of recognition,
leavened with that familiar there-but-for-fortune feeling,
as Judge Rosemarie Aquilina dragged Larry Nassar
over the white-hot coals of his own making?
At the same time, the thrill of punishment deserved
tingled down my spine,
and I could just hear my mother saying,
I hope he’s not Jewish.
No, Mom, I'd surely reply. Nassar—gotta be Egyptian with a name like that.
True or not, she’d be quite relieved,
at the same time a hundred different kinds of moms
Italian, and Irish, and even those who've snuck in from Guadalajara
maybe with calves the size of cantaloupes
are saying and thinking exactly the same.
Meanwhile, the Rev. Franklin Graham,
Billy's son—by some accounts a good man—
has forgiven our president all his trespasses
with busty Stormy Daniels,
who's probably a very nice woman,
though my mother would hope, also, she isn’t one of us.
The younger Rev. Graham offers with great compassion,
Who am I to pass judgment on the Pres?
I've got sins of my own. 
I only wish Judge Rosemarie Aquilina would get a hold of
the good Rev. Graham and shake him for an hour or two—
and while she’s at it, anyone he’s peddled such cheap forgiveness to.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. He teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in Queens. Alan’s poetry chapbook Exactly Like Love is in its second printing available from Osedax Press.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE MOSQUE

by Devon Balwit

Kristin Collins with the letter her son Abraham Davis sent to the Masjid Al Salam Mosque (Fort Smith, Arkansas) in apology for his actions. Davis had driven his friend to the mosque on which the friend drew swastikas and curses while Davis stood watch in the driveway.—The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2017

“I wake up and look in the mirror and I just think, ‘Who are you?’”
 —Abraham Davis quoted in "The Two Americans,” 
The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2017

I don’t know why I did it, why I did most things.
I wanted to be bigger, harder to squash. I didn’t even

do the drawing, just drove my friends to where they
scrawled the broken-winged Swastikas. When the police

came, later, no one was surprised. In fact, we all exhaled,
the cell a hole my life had been funneled towards. When

I wrote the mosque to forgive me, I startled myself. I never
expected they would, instead, just wanted to answer

the ghosts crowding my nights. I wanted to show
who I wasn’t. They forgave me. Now comes learning

how to forgive myself. Every day, I look in the mirror,
and I think: Who are you? I look myself in the eyes.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.

GOD WINS

by Frank De Canio

with the Godwin family whose father was murdered

God wins, indeed, with devotees like these
who show the hard way to a nobler realm
of love. No bending, supplicating knees
petitioning the world to overwhelm
the murderer of their beloved Dad.
Benevolence reigns godlike in their hearts
to help them walk beneath the cross they’ve had
to bear. No smug indulgence that imparts
a measured justice for their neighbor’s loss,
while their own griefs are fueled with kindling rage.
Instead, they selflessly pursue a course
that imitates the God-anointed sage
who, forced to drink death’s vinegary gall,
could still afford forgiveness for us all.


Born & bred in New Jersey, Frank De Canio works in New York. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.

JUST SAY A PRAYER

by Sarah E. Colona

NY Daily News, Dec. 3, 2015

just say a prayer
   would halt that hand
      which holds a gun
            its bullets itch
               to unwrite life

      just say a prayer
         would shield one child
            teflon coated
                  kevlar mittened
                     future made flesh

         just say a prayer
            would lop off rot
               hard sear all grief
                     stitch forgiveness
                        forceful and swift

            just say a prayer
                our dead won’t hear
                  fresh ghosts are proof
                       each Second takes
                            more than it gives


Sarah E. Colona lives and teaches in her home state of New Jersey. She is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister, which will be published by dgp in 2016.

THE TYGER AND THE LAMB . . . AGAIN

by Earl J Wilcox

She said: we forgive you.
He was mute.

She said: hate will not win.
He looked straight ahead.

She said: repent and find your savior.
He said” Yes, sir, to the judge.

They said: Every fiber of our being hurts.
He turned and walked out.

Today there is no balm in Gilead.


Earl J Wilcox lives in South Carolina, cooks, writes, watches baseball, contributes regularly to The New Verse News.

ON THE EDGE

by Laura Rodley

Abenaki Indian Pictures. Abenaki Children. Image source: Indians Pictures.

In the back edge of the forest

are stones piled up one on top the other

in a horseshoe shape facing

the quartz vein outcropping

perhaps built by Abenaki Indians

before colonial men sent their servants

to take stones from Indian burial mounds

to build their stone fences,

unknowingly disturbing the peace,

and here my husband and another

man named Jim lift beds of moss

off the stone structure, reveal it

to be as tall as a horse, facing the sky,

the midnight sky when the Big Dipper

hangs low and this is what my eyes

feasted on before the election,

how it is time for the Indian spirits

to walk our land, to look

to the Big Dipper and the old spirits

caught in her cup

for our answers, for forgiveness.

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.