INAUGURATION DAY

by David Rosenthal

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

It’s Monday and the cans are full,
but Friday’s garbage day.
We’ll have to be sustainable,
or else we’ll have to lay

our waste in kitchen corners, or
resort to plastic bags,
and pile them high outside the door
until the old porch sags,

or dig a pit out in the lawn
and bury it down deep,
or burn it all until it’s gone
and crawl on back to sleep.

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

David Rosenthal is a public school teacher in Berkeley, California. He has contributed to Rattle, HAD, Rust & Moth, Birmingham Poetry Review, Teachers & Writers Magazine, and others. He’s been a Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist and Pushcart Nominee. He’s the author of The Wild Geography of Misplaced Things (Kelsay Books).

BEAR BANDITS

by Claire Matturro

A 500-pound black bear named Hank was partially pardoned after DNA evidence revealed that the furry fugitive did not act alone during a seven-month crime spree in Lake Tahoe. —rdnewsNow, February 4, 2022

Maybe it started with that woman—

the one in the fake Tudor—guiding

her Escalade with Greenpeace stickers

through the drive-thru in her fit of fury

hunger on her way home from her divorce,

willing to slum but when she ripped into

the Styrofoam box, a loose fry shimmied

like some pale thin snake. Figuring that

for a cosmic sign, she tossed burger and all

on her garbage can and forgot those bear locks,

which were all too much trouble anyway.

Hank, who didn’t have a name yet,

was this black bear with a keen sense of smell

who followed that waffling whiff of charred meat

all the way to South Lake Tahoe, then

didn’t see any reason to leave, especially

when the lawyer at the turn in the road tossed out

twenty boxes of old girl scout cookies

he’d purchased so his daughter could get a prize.

Hank didn’t mind stale when he dug

through garbage and snuffled up

those cookies, gorging like a teen with

marijuana munchies. In a sugar rush, Hank

ripped through that lawyer’s patio door

to find cannoli and after practically snorting

them, rolled on the floor in bear rapture,  

slamming a whole shelf of knock-off

Lladro ballerinas into shards on the stone floor.

When that pretty couple on the far side

of the lake forgot to put their quiche

in the fridge, Hank found the four-cheese blend

exquisite and there was no going back

to rooting out grubs or scratching his tender nose

in berry brambles or standing in cold water catching

those salmon with their slimy skins. No,

now dubbed Hank the Tank, he

took up burglary to support his gourmet tastes, 

smashing his 500-pound black bear body through 

doors and windows easy as a wrecking ball to get

those oatmeal raisin cookies and steaks 

left out to thaw and pizza in greasy boxes.

He once eyed some bourbon, but

its sharp smell confused him, yet the

stash of coke in the sugar bowl

drove him mad and he crashed his big head

right through the wine cooler and

that’s how he developed a taste for merlot.

The Tahoe vigilantes plotted and pushed

the game control squads to have him shot,

though of course they called it euthanized

as if killing with a better name

would be any less dead for Hank, but

imagine their surprise when DNA showed

Hank the Tank wasn’t the only thief

but three bears bandits were roaming and raiding

like rambunctious kids on a dare

and with an eye for pizza. People whose homes

were not being trashed rose to defend Hank

and his bear buddies, who after all,

had not bitten or hurt a single person.

Meanwhile, in a cool wine bar with ferns

and folk singers, a California kind of guy

nibbles gouda with gluten-free crackers

and writes lyrics to make Hank a hero.

Claire Matturro has been a journalist, a lawyer, and a legal writing teacher at Florida State University and University of Oregon. She is the author of seven novels, including a legal thriller series published by HarperCollins, and is the co-author of a recent novel. She is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and lives in Florida.

STRIKE

by Katie Kemple

We placed the blue trash can

and the green recycling bin

filled with the detritus

leading up to Christmas

in front of our townhouse

garage, like we always do,

and our neighbors too, and

they stayed there, all the way up to

and well past Christmas,

past New Years. The brown

cardboard boxes of mail-ordered

gifts stuck their tongues out

at us, papers glued like stickers

to the pavement courtesy

of the rain, and the sanitation

drivers never came. The neighbors

built cities of empty boxes.

Shrimp skins haunted us.

We wore yesterday's diapers.

The CEO of the sanitation

company makes 154 times

the pay of his average employee:

twelve-million dollars a year. 

Crows swung down to feast

on the new year's abundance. 

Katie Kemple (she/her) is a poet, parent, and consultant based in San Diego. Her work has appeared recently in Longleaf Review, The West Review, and The Shore Poetry. 

PRAYER FOR SYRIA'S TRASH PEOPLE

by Steven Croft

Plastic bottles, aluminium cans, clothes, sometimes spaghetti. When a tractor tows in new rubbish at a dump in northeast Syria, men, women and children rush to find the best pickings. Photo credit: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Aljazeera, January 20, 2021

In a land where dreams are invaded

by nightmare year after year,

houses broken,

families fled, 

buried, 

this is the worst shadow

of living, amidst the slough

of better lives

May you patch together a world

in these heaps and spillways,

everything you can build

from this crumbling

find some reason, like a trash bag

of moldering fruit and meat pies,

for sudden joy

as we pinch our nose

and look away

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Canary, The New Verse News, The Dead Mule, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart

Prize and Best of the Net.

COLLECTOR

by Jonel Abellanosa





I own three mountains of garbage
between pavements that have
memorized our footsteps. Five angels
follow me, sleep where I sleep,
bark, wag like the president.

People are generous, my mountains
tall whether moon or sun. My tin cup
runneth over, furbabies and I drinking
laughter. Leftovers full and fill.
Bones for them, sometimes toys.

I’m a discoverer. I know shards
of glass draw sunlight. I’m an explorer.
For each dig, I find brass or bronze.
I breathe new life to batteries.
Books remind me of Alexandria.

When it rains their yelps make me
cry, and I’m richer. They love sackcloth
for the freeze. They tell me secrets.
Debating politicians need us, so they
can speak in tongues and be bold.

A regular contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, the Philippines. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals including That Literary Review, Poetry Kanto, The Lyric, The McNeese Review and Star*Line and been nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars awards. His poetry collections include Meditations (Alien Buddha Press), Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), 50 Acrostic Poems (Cyberwit, India), and his politically-progressive collection In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art). His first speculative poetry collection Pan’s Saxophone is forthcoming from Weasel Press.

OUR FAR-FLUNG FOOTSTEPS

by Devon Balwit




I came for the beaches but stayed for the O rings,
for the liter bottles, tooth brushes, buoys and bags,
for the shush of takeout boxes at dusk.

I came for the palm fronds shivering like dancers’
fingers but stayed for the orange-pinafored crews,
rubber-booted, working against the tides.

I came for the frigate birds and brown pelicans
but stayed for the seals strangled in rope,
for the whales, gullets splitting with PCBs.

I came for the once-in-a-lifetime memories,
the honeymoon and anniversary, but stayed
for the imprint of kin, our far-flung footprint.



Devon Balwit lives scarily close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She has six chapbooks and three collections out in the world. Her individual poems can be found here or are forthcoming in journals such as The Cincinnati Review, apt, Posit, Cultural Weekly, Triggerfish, Fifth Wednesday, The Free State Review, Rattle, Poets Reading the News, etc.

A WHALE IN THE MINES

by Mary Sexson

How often do whales clean their ears? Well, never. And so, year after year, their ear wax builds up, layer upon layer. According to a study published Monday, these columns of ear wax contain a record of chemical pollution in the oceans. --NPR, Sept. 16, 2013

An exquisite thought,
the whale as the canary
in earth’s liquid mines, its
ear wax the testament to their lives,
to our foolishness.  It reads like
a book, the layered spikes
of fibrous rings pages that reveal
the oceans they traveled,
the depths they plumbed.
The mercury showed up,
and the DDT, the garbage
we dumped into their waters
as they passed beneath us,
these leviathans of the world,
silent singers, filtering
the darkness, listening
with ears we did not know they had.


Mary Sexson is the author of the book 103 in the Light, Selected Poems 1996-2000 (Restoration Press, 2004), and co-author of the recently released Company of Women:  New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press, 2013, with Jayne Marek and Lylanne Musselman).  Her work has been included in projects such as Arts Kaleidoscope and Poetry in Paint.  Her poems have appeared in various literary publications, including Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Grasslands Review.  Her newer work has been published in several anthologies, including The Globetrotter’s Companion (Lion Lounge Press, London), Trip of a Lifetime (Sleeping Cat Books), and A Few Good Words (Cincinnati Writer’s Project).  She has forthcoming work in the Reckless Writing Anthology (Chatter House Press, November 2013).