NOT TELLING IT SLANT

by Margit Berman

AI graphic by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

This poem went to the protest.

This poem went to the protest and was arrested.

It did nothing wrong.

Just stood and told the truth.

This poem has listened all day long to lies.

This poem's own mother called it evil right to its face

and it is not evil

even though sometimes it wishes it was.

This poem heard lies about zines

and the reflecting pool

and whether anyone needed a ride.

This poem is not evil

and always stands and tells the truth

and—tell the truth—that it why you hate it,

isn't it?

That is why they hanged this detained poem

without a trial

from the gallows

in the trees

until the protest signs

slipped from its hands and fell,

until the words convulsed,

ceased

in its broken neck.

Margit Berman is a writer, psychologist, artistic director of Jackson Street Arts in St. Paul, MN, and faculty at the University of Saint Thomas and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Her poetry has been published in If Poetry Magazine, The Quarry at Split This Rock, Foreign Policy in Focus, on the Mississippi Valley Poetry Walk, and in the anthology, Try to Have Your Writing Make Sense, among others. She has won poetry contests including at the Poetry Free for All, Garrison Keillor’s Green Light at the End of the Dock Poetry Festival, and from the League of Minnesota Poets.

WE WERE, WE ARE, AWAKE

by Jennifer M Phillips

The papyrus PHerc. 1018. Credit: Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III,” Napoli–Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale

We’re finally reading the secrets of Herculaneum’s lost library: A whole library’s worth of papyri owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law were turned to charcoal by the eruption of Vesuvius. Nearly 2000 years later, we can at last read these lost treasures. —New Scientist, October 14, 2025

We were here. We saw. We remember.

Some of us even write down what unfolds

and teach our children unerasable stories.

We are awake enough to discern

canes and walkers supporting grandmothers

from flagpoles used as battering rams and spears;

to tell rioters from tourists. Our hearing is keen

enough to hear death-chants, curses and threats

not mistaking them for cheers or exclamations of joy.

We know when a phony rendition

is substituted for fact and blared out to the world.

We recognized a gallows set up on the stairway,

a guard being crushed, from a simple push-and-shove.

We can tell sexual assault from a too-forward pass,

and incitement to violence from a rousing speech,

and even recorded these things on our thousand screens

and continue to share them, and store them for history.

Nothing can be covered up for ever. In an X-ray lab, 

in a particle collider, means has been found

to decipher carbonized scrolls in Herculaneum's

two-thousand-year-old library, roasted by heat

of Vesuvius's eruption, philosophy

not quite incinerated. Do not think

that you can now obliterate the past

you deem inconvenient. Great-grand-children will know

what has happened in our time and who has wrought it,

and sort true from fake and good from evil.

January 6, 2021 and what has come after—

the war on our values and democracy—

we will remember, and keep telling the story.

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). Two of Phillips' poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection is Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf & Stock).

BLACK MAN RUNNING

by L. Smith

"At the end of the day, the evidence in this case will prove that if Ahmaud Arbery had been White, he would have gone for a jog, checked out a cool house under construction, and been home in time for Sunday supper," Assistant US Attorney Barbara Bernstein told the jury [in an opening statement of the federal hate crimes trial of Arbery’s killers]. "Instead, he went out for a jog and ended up running for his life.” —CNN, February 14, 2022

“A White father and son in Mississippi were charged this week after they were accused of chasing and shooting at a Black FedEx driver in an incident that the driver’s attorney says was a “copycat crime” of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. FedEx driver D’Monterrio Gibson said he was delivering packages on his route in Brookhaven, Miss., on Jan. 24 when two White men with whom he had not interacted chased him in a pickup truck for about seven minutes and fired at least five shots at the van he was driving.” —The Washington Post, February 12, 2022

Inhale, exhale. Red blood pumping.

He was a black man running.

Running for what? For leisure?

For health? For fun? For fit? In pursuit of dreams?

He was a Black man running, running until the gun, the threat, the them,

the father and the son—they both pointed that gun and

Black man running now running from that gun

from the threat

of the ones

in pursuit

of him.

 

Black man running, for what? For leisure?

For health? For fun? For fit? In pursuit of dreams?

(Nah, they don’t do that. Not the black man, huh?)

Black man running run from himself, from his shadow,

run from his responsibilities, from his family, from his integrity,

at least that’s the lie they try and try again to tell me. Black man running from

something that he did, that he ain’t supposed to do, ain’t supposed to have done, and

Black man running with something he stole, like their wealth, like their women’s innocence,

running with something he ain’t supposed to have like self-pride and self-confidence,

that’s what they wanna feed my conscience, but nah—

Black man running running b’cause he gots to run.

He gots to run to keep from crying, from screaming, from loosing.

He gots to run to keep from coming loose.

He gots to run to keep from the noose.

He gots to run to keep the noose loose.

 

(That uppity nigga there got the audacity to run with entitlement.)

 

Hell yeah, that black man running. He running from that gun.

Black man running always been running from the gun,

from the one with the perceived power, from the wretched one with the will to

kill his potential, stifle his legacy, ruin his reputation, claim his coins and his creations.

Black man running, he run from the pain, from the fear,

from the frustration, and he can feel all those running who

ran before him, running with him now, running inside of his chest—

making his heart beat harder and his lungs fill faster and legs run rapid.

Inhale, exhale. Red blood pumping.

 

Black man running been running a long time. Black man running is

tired of running—not of feeling tired, not the bottom of his feet feeling tired, not the soles aching,

but the bottom of his soul, tired and aching, from all those souls running inside his chest keeping his

blood pumping red.

He is so tired; he is soul-tired of blacks running.

Tired of being a black man running.

Tired of them chasing him while he’s chasing his dreams.

Tied of them chasing him while he’s slowing down.

Tired of them chasing him while he’s doing no thing. At all.

Inhale exhale, inhale exhale. Red blood pumping.

 

(This nigga here got the audacity to be running and funning.)

 

But what happened to black man running?

Black man running with his red blood pumping? Well,

they forced him to stop running. Inhale, inhale.

 

But what if black man running was running toward somethin’?

Well, black man running was forced to fight those in pursuit

of his portion, in pursuit of his promise. Inhale, inhale, inhale.

 

Black man running had to stop his run, to stop his fun, his fit, his leisure,

had to quit his pursuit of his kingdom, of his dreamdom

to fight those in pursuit of his freedom,

those in lust of his life, jealous of his journey, envious of his evolution,

not that one, but of the magnanimous way he was created

by the Creator, and how their pursuit to stifle him never seems to really win,

they—them other theys—literally shackled his ankles a time or twelve million,

amputated his manhood for sport cloaked as social order, for hate hooded as justice,

and black man—well, he just keeps running, keeps evolving,

so they—these theys—saw this black man running

and decided for him that he would run no more.

 

Inhale, inhale, inhale. Red blood pumping.

 

Black man running would have run on, would have won on, had he kept on running.

He would have been winning, had he kept on running, but they—the jealous, the fearful, the hateful—

they jolted his journey.

Inhale, inhale. inhale. Red blood pumping.

 

The father and the son—they both had that gun.

The wicked and the wretched—they both wrestled his run, and when it seems like

black man running wins with his wrestle, with his hustle, with his bustle, and

when it seems like black man running is making gains with his grind and with his grit, and

just when it seems like black man running might get the glory,

what they know

is that black man running

can’t win ‘gainst no gun.

(This nigga here ain’t gone outrun this gun.)

 

Inhale, inhale, inhale. Red blood pumping.

 

The gun wants no fun, no fit for the black man running.

                No gaining, no glory for the black man running.

                No playing, no pleasure for the black man running.

                No leisure, no living for the black man running.

(Black man running, you gets this gun.)

                The kingdom not coming for the black man running.

(Black man running, this gun got your gallows.)

                No dreaming, just drumming for the black man running.

 

Exhale. Red blood spilled.

 

He was a working black man running

running at work.

He was a running black man running

who went for a run.

L. Smith, a New Orleans native, is a writer, an English teacher, and a Johns Hopkins University graduate who has freelanced for local newspapers. She has an anthology of poems and prose set to publish spring 2022 that her mother and daughter created space for her to write. She also has begun the blog Writer Teacher for writers teaching writers.

DON'T CALL IT A COUP, JUST SING TRALALA

by Siham Karami

Egypt: Rape and sexual violence perpetrated by security forces 'surges' under el-Sisi's regime in campaign to 'eliminate public protest' —The Independent (UK), May 19, 2015

Hail to the army! All hail the police!
Stay out of trouble and give us a piece!
Of what, you'll find out—meanwhile, we own the street!
Our weapons are loaded. You're lucky to eat.
To us, you are sugar, and we are the ants.
So get in the station, and pull down your pants!

We round up the students, professors, the doctors,
the girls in hijab, the sons and the daughters,
with Al-Sisi's blessing and superpower bucks,
we barrel-bomb neighborhoods, get free-for-all fucks,
make everyone watch so they'll know in advance
how bad things can get when they pull down their pants!!

No one can touch us! We do as we please!
The law says you're guilty, so crush you like fleas!
We grab you from classes, dispose you at will.
Then parents go looking—their spines feel the chill!
So scream—and we'll charge there's a bomb in your hands—
c'mon little terrorists, pull down your pants!!

We'll fuck you at your place in front of your man.
Your daddy's on death row, so get in the van!
We write up the charges, the judge slams his gavel:
Guilty as charged! Tomorrow the gallows!
The tears of the mourning will only enhance
the pleasure we get when you pull down your pants!!

We're the new god in town. How we barged through the door,
told a Brotherhood bitch to get down on the floor.
She carried her baby and dared to talk back!
So we threw the kid out of the window, like smack!
And we tore off her clothes and we told her to dance
with police stations ringing out: Pull down your pants!!


Siham Karami's recent work is or will be published in such places as The Comstock Review, The Rotary Dial, Möbius, Measure, Unsplendid, and The Raintown Review. She works in the tech industry by day, and spends nights with poetry, owls, and medicinal herbs.

CIRCLES

by Jenna Le

Image source: CP4

Once, I was so young

that, like a raw onion,

my concentric circles reluctant

to relax their grip on

one another’s whiteness,

a whiff of me could make you cry.

I had so much power,

but all I wanted

was to see people smile

when I walked into a room.

So I kept mum about

my real opinions

so that people would like me.

And it worked. I began to

feel smug about my popularity.

When I saw a rabble-rouser

hoisted on the gallows,

I sneered,

thinking he would not

be hanging there

if, like me, he knew

the secret to being liked.

When I saw a man

with six circular gunshots

in his face and chest

sprawled on crimson cement,

I did not say, “There but for the grace…”

I did not believe

in favors. I believed

I had carved my own niche

in the world using

my smarts, my likability.

I had a vivid memory

of myself with a penknife

in my hand, carving,

never thinking to ask

how that bloody knife

ended up in my hand,

or whose blood it was.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), which was a Small Press Poetry Bestseller. Her poems have appeared in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review.