BOULDER

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Sunrise over the Flatiron Range near Boulder, Colorado.

A man has been charged with a federal hate crime and multiple other felonies after he allegedly used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to attack a crowd of people who were raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring 12 victims. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, is alleged to have shouted “Free Palestine” as he attacked the crowd on Sunday. The FBI said Soliman told police he planned the attack for a year and had specifically targeted what he described as the “Zionist group”, the Associated Press reported. —The Guardian, June 3, 2025

The Boulder mountains began as fire

perhaps that’s why they are known

as the Flatiron Range

 

If you look into their hearts you will find

fossils from the sea. Simple single cellular

creatures. Who by fire and Who by water.

 

In America, many folks like to say our story

will end in flame. I’ve seen John 3:16 signs

at Coors Field and when Mel Gibson made 

his film about Jesus, some pastor hung 

a billboard above I-25 saying the Jews 

Killed Christ. Jews kill Jews. Who gets to 

say.

 

A man throwing Molotov cocktails 

at people who want Israeli hostages freed, 

is he the authority on Jews Israel’s 

ambassador and foreign minister believe 

him to be.

 

The pressure which births mountains is 

hard to imagine. What it takes to sustain 

foundational myths across time, rebuild

temples, dream of olive trees is a pressure 

of perhaps equal force in human terms 

and very hard to fathom.

As I write this, someone would have 

you believe Jews possess a divine power 

to solve or cause all the worst excesses 

in the world. They might also think all

Palestinians want an eye for an eye. 

What is a Mashiac. Who are the prophets. 

Should we ask the mountains over Boulder.

 

The work of the Flatirons is not malevolent.

Moses didn’t receive tablets from Sinai 

but on it. Universes come and go with each 

blink of the high peaks.

Brahma sits on his lotus. 

Generals confer in bunkers.

The Earth’s crust floats on lava. 

Hashem has many names that depict 

His moods.

Not everyone says He is merely a He.

Christians speak of trinities.

 

Today, free speech invites a fire fight. 

We assemble in our mortar formations. 

I pumped gas this morning 

and it’s all I can taste.

Jeremy Nathan Marks is a former Colorado resident who lives and writes in Canada.

SILENCE, A CROW

by Francis Opila

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

Listen
to silence at dawn
the night still holds

you by candlelight
one poem wakes you
compels you to unravel

thread by thread
in breath, out breath
harmony in this moment

your 9 AM appointment
laundry, your next hike
bombs in the Middle East

until from a nearby maple
a crow cackles
arrested for free speech

yet he calls over & over
howls of a distant train
now a dozen crows

in breath, out breath
tapping of gentle rain

Francis Opila is a rain-struck, sun-loving poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest.  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Wayfinding, Windfall, and other journals. His poetry collection Conference of the Crows was published in 2023. He enjoys performing poetry, combining recitation and playing North American wooden flutes.

SUBJUNCTIVE

by Adrienne Pilon

Source: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at Instagram

If I write we are going to the sea if I write
shall be free if I write Palestine if I write 
protest or encampment or salaam
my brother if I write Allah if I write 
genocide if I write bombing or Gaza  
or Hamas if I write Zionist if I write
apartheid or war crimes if I write 
nearly 50,000 dead or children are dying
or ceasefire now these words may 
rise up from the text, flagged and marked 
by a force that gives no quarter 
to what it does not care to understand.
The ink of my pen draws a target 
on my back on the back of my mother 
my father my wife my husband 
my daughter my son my sister 
my brother salaam my brother 
salaam salaam salaam salaam

Adrienne Pilon is a writer, educator, and activist. Recent and forthcoming work appears in The Tiger Moth Review; Room; Tendon Magazine and elsewhere.

SPEAKING, UNSPEAKING

by Lavinia Kumar

A “McCarthyite Backlash” Against Pro-Palestine Speech: From university disciplinary hearings to death threats, supporters of Palestinian rights are facing a wave of reprisals. —Jewish Currents, October 20, 2023. Rick Friedman / Alamy Stock Photo: Students rally for Palestine at Harvard University on October 14th, 2023.

First, Fourteenth, speech freedom laws—a speaker’s 

Right to let words fly like leaves from trees, and now new

Edited 19^th century pro- anti- Protestant, Catholic is back

Excoriating religions, their people, morphed to

 

Swarms of crowds, anti- pro- Palestine, Israel, a revived 

Partisan diatribe, a pugnacious polemic

Energized by freedom of speech, guns, flags, politicians

Elected to lance wise trees, plant dissent, grow weeds of disquiet,  

Champion division and decomposition—while vultures

Hover over words, freedoms, human rights, and

 

Instantly Wall Street funders plunge down to scarf

Numerous dollars, from universities, they gave, yes,

 

Donated, but today want to scavenge back, yes

Adamantly against “free” speech they don’t approve…

Names spattered, posted, across media, a strings-attached

Generosity, employment conditional on proscribed screed 

Engineered, implanted, into young minds, those abundant in

Rallies on world streets, for freedom. For truly free speech. 

Lavinia Kumar’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Poets Choice, Kelsey Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Jersey Journal of Poetry, Tiny Seed.

FREE RANGE BIRD

by Indran Amirthanayagam

               for J

Stumbling is generalized from

the top down the line, the pass

to the prince but not his acolytes,

and I in turn taking my name off

the poem that calls for accounting,

consistency, respect for all

the people all the time. Living

in fear of bureaucratic sanction is

the natural state of the apparatchik,

hiding behind internal assessments,

frank reviews protected from

the public eye. But the poet

feigns innocence and writes

as if free speech were the only

principle, not playing scales

the conductor directs. Into these

coordinates, orchestra pit

the editor arrives, notices

the bureacrat's vibrating,

even squirming violin,

the post-midnight fear

of exposure, his attempt

to hold the presses—the editor

the only hero left standing,

taking a firm stance,

dropping the poem from

tweet and website,

and moving on

to the next submission,

the next poem written

without shackles,

that challenges

the moderate, real

politik, that gets

the leader to draw

a clear line in the sand

before the desert wind

picks up and wipes it away

like the usual human construct,

built in a mess, two steps

forward, one back, chicken

clucking still in the coop

smelling free wind in the yard,

the fence beyond out of sight.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

ANYMORE

by Frederick Wilbur

We don’t tolerate ripples in window glass anymore,
the waving landscape smoothed out.
Switchbacks of moral choice are GPS’ed
as Robert Frost never conceived. Now we drive
for miles with turn signal blinking right,
then U-turn back to well-traveled interstates.

Scarecrows don’t hide in corn fields anymore,
each tassel-top chemicaled to a plastic crown—
nature is an industry, a corporation,
littered with hashtags, threat assessments,
sentimental cemeteries for passed pets.

Silence isn’t noticed much anymore,
too many ringtones, beeps, and bling,
seepage from ear buds, drones overhead—
distraction, distraction, distractions, distractions.

Wisdom isn’t countenanced anymore,
everything digitalized, Googled, auto-corrected, auto-filled.
Compassion is granted by proxy, by on-line donation.

No sincere grief anymore,
as opinions bully and greed and hate rule,
even Free Speech shows up with a gun.

But if we rant out of fear, we are not free anymore.


Frederick Wilbur has authored three books on architectural and decorative woodcarving, and a poetry collection, As Pus Floats the Splinter Out. His work has appeared in many print and on-line reviews including Shenandoah, Main Street Rag, Comstock Review, The Dalhousie Review, Rise Up Review, and Mojave River Review. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Award by Midwest Quarterly (2017). He is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine.

A PROFESSOR'S DILEMMA

by Maureen Rubin

500 academics and counting have signed the JVP Academic Advisory Council letter in support of Angela Davis. Jewish Voice for Peace calls on the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to rescind their cancellation of the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award intended for Professor Angela Davis. The cancelling of this award by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is unjust, insulting and ill-conceived, especially because it is likely premised on Professor Davis' long-standing support for Palestinian human rights. The decision seems to stem from a misinformed view that to advocate for Palestinian human rights is somehow offensive to the Jewish community. —Jewish Voice for Peace

“Hell no. We won’t go!” “Hey! Hey! LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
Angry slogans soar while we march in our bell bottom jeans and tie-dyed tee shirts.

We can barely breathe. We cover our innocent collegiate mouths with wet washcloths to ward off the tear gas.  But washcloths couldn’t stop the bullets at Kent State.

College students are marching again. Dressed in yoga pants and ripped jeans they now yell “Fight the power. Turn the tide.  End Israeli apartheid” Same anger. New slogans.

They are BDS.  They demand Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions for Israel. They are Palestinians. They hate all things Israel.

They use tough tactics. They ban Israeli speakers from their campuses. They seek to forbid college funds from supporting the Jewish state. They pass resolutions.

They win at Barnard. George Washington.  University of Minnesota. Pitzger College. And now the US House of Representatives.  A new freshman Member of Congress admitted she backs BDS.

They demand freedom, justice and equality, just as we did.  But is it the same?

But my job is to teach aspiring journalists to cherish the First Amendment. “Democracy demands free speech,” I say. I quote Tallentyre. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

As I hammer the necessity of free speech into my student’s sponge-like brains, I always think of my causes.  The good ones.  The right ones. Viet Nam.  ERA.  #MeToo.

Free speech lives on college campuses.  They are safest of all places. Safe to debate. To argue.  To protest. To march.  To learn.

David Duke came to my campus.  I told my students to go see him. I quoted Justice Brandeis. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”  Let them spew their hate on my campus.  Openness exposes idiocy.

But now, there is a cause that is not mine. There is a cause that makes me sick. I am a Jew and I do not want angry Palestinians working for their change in my backyard.

But don’t these protesters have the same rights as we did?  How can I teach my students to cherish the First Amendment rights of hateful BDS?

I can’t.  I am a hypocrite.

Maureen Rubin is an Emeritus Professor of Journalism at California State University, Northridge. In her 30 years on campus, she served in a variety of administrative positions, published widely and received numerous teaching and public service awards.  Prior to joining the university, she was Director of Public Information for President Carter’s Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs in the White House, and held similar positions for a U.S. Congresswoman and several non-profits. She has a JD from Catholic University School of Law In Washington, D.C., an MA in Public Relations from University of Southern California and a BS in Journalism from Boston University.  

IMPERATIVE ON FACEBOOK FROM NEIGHBOR WHOM I THOUGHT ONLY DISCUSSED THE WEATHER

Found Poem by Donna Hilbert

Really, Donna
Stick to art and poetry
Enough politics!
He’s the President
Get used to it!


Donna Hilbert is observing the collapse of free speech from Long Beach California.

POEM FOR THE POETS OF MYANMAR

by Jo-Ella Sarich

Myo Yan Naung Thein "spent six months in prison last year after posting a satirical poem to Facebook deemed insulting to the then president Thein Sein. Two of the lines read: 'I have a tattoo of the president’s face on my penis / My wife is disgusted.'" —“Free speech curtailed in Aung San Suu Ky’s Myanmar as prosecutions soar,” The Guardian, January 8, 2017

That time you
lay, wine-numbed, upon the bench
cling-wrapped like luncheon meat, and branded
yourself ‘Slut’ in another language
(accidentally, you didn’t discover until that
night out in Roppongi)

When you ran outside and cried
into the sun. And
That friend had
her twin’s names tattooed
on her wrist, and tattooed
Angel wings around
the name of the one
who first learned to Fly.

When That razor
was like a river in your hand
when you dug deep so they would see,
that being is just a hair’s breadth. When you carve
Freedom, and it’s just a word written in another language, just
thousands of tiny pin pricks that span the world. Like
light seen from space, if you see his back it’s
golden with his scars. I want to

Run

my fingers along them with the lightest touch,
connect them like humanitarian corridors. Because you can’t
lose those scars. But That leopard
could change its spots just by dreaming it can Fly, so

turn the page quietly, and I’ll write you a poem
in a place where no-one will ever read it.

Jo-Ella Sarich lives in Petone, New Zealand beside the beautiful Wellington harbour. She has worked as a lawyer for a number of years, and has a husband and two small girls. She has recently started writing again in her spare time. Her poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine and The Galway Review, and will be appearing in the upcoming Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017.