STARGAZING NOTES

by Dan Overgaard

Erupting star, incinerating star:

the likes of which has never been observed 

or measured in our skies—oh yes! we are 

observing now, obsessively, but maybe not 

as worshipfully as you might be wishing—

if, that is, you ever spent a wish on us.

And I’ve been searching, high and rather low, 

for some device—an image or a metaphor

sufficiently sensational for you—

but you told us you’re a star, so let’s use that.

Astronomers who stay up late observe

astonishing phenomena so they can 

measure light, and theorize. Most any night

they catch spectacular releases,

flares of blinding and exploding gas—

and you’ve got those, so we’ll be theorizing

for a long, long time about your molten core

of darkness and whatever’s broken there. 

But it’s hardly theoretical—or celestial—

for everyone who’s burned by your debris. 

In fact, you’re most unheavenly, the way

you’re not content to shine like other stars, 

or hold your corner of our constellation up

so we can navigate or wish upon you 

as our steady and illuminating guide.

Though stars, by definition, don’t have moons,

you’ve commandeered more moons than Jupiter,

and flogged them round about you til they blur

together, more like Saturn’s rings, and then

you trash them all unless they make you shine.

The stars out there do all their starry things:

forming and shining, guiding and blinking out.

It’s not fair to compare them in this way.

You claim to be our star while you are here,

but all your sucking needs may cave us in.

In time, you’ll be assessed by smarter

scientists than me, but frankly I don’t think

you’ll be the greatest in the firmament,

and I can tell you that this galaxy of ours

has never been—and won’t turn—white for you. 

And so, collapsing star, we watch you burn. 

You torch us as you smolder and pretend—

but though you smite us, we will not go blind.

Your gas is dissipating now, and soon—

before your end—you’ll be an empty dwarf.

Dan Overgaard was born and raised in Thailand. He attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and programs. He’s now retired, and probably gardening or catching up on reading. His poems have appeared in Mobius, Santa Clara Review, Across The Margin, The Galway Review, pioneertown, As It Ought To Be, The High Window, and other journals.

COLONEL AMERICA CALLING

by Lynn White

The dove sat carefully on Liberty
lining her nest with down.
She cooed sweetly
but her new chick 
said ‘coo-ark’
mimicking her,
then ‘quark,
then ’yawp’
as it grew
stronger,
she saw

her cuckooed dove
hatchling
was a mocking bird,
calling
in New-Speak
straining
to be understood,
straining 
for more space, 
more gas, 
more gold, 
more

like 
a colonising colonel
balanced precariously
puffing out his dovey chest, 
as his eagle’s eye
preys south
then north,
the Middle
East
then West.
If we don’t clip his wings
where will he go next?

 

AI-generated graphic by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

ODE TO A MAGA FUTURE

by Peter Witt

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

I don't care if 
Ukraine ends up a satellite of Russia
Israel annexes all Palestinian lands
Poland goes the way of Ukraine
NATO goes defunct

as long as egg prices go down.

I don't care if 
all judges are Trump appointees
gay marriage is outlawed
trans individuals are discriminated against
raped women must still have their babies

as long as bread prices go down

I don't care if
rich people get huge tax breaks
oil and gas wells are drilled on pristine national lands
regulations allow polluting rivers and waterways
steps to reduce climate change are abandoned

as long as the cost of a gallon of gas goes down

I don't care if
things I buy that are made in China become more expensive
illegal immigrants are rounded up and sent home
people to harvest the nation's crops become scarce
workers who build housing and infrastructure disappear

as long as Christian nationalism becomes the law of the land

Peter Witt is a Texas poet, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News and other online poetry web-based publications.

SIGNPOSTS IN DANTE’S ECOLOGICAL HELL

by Richard L. Matta

Illustration by Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

third climate opinion—

the surgeon says

why did you wait so long

winnowing wheat

a merchant trades

for a farmer’s daughter

bulldozed forest…

a herd of cars running

at the burger joint

oil and gas

a lobbyist drills 

for a politician 

water rations

a city meeting 

boils over

flame throwers—

a spirit departs 

from a scorched tree 

one more war crime

the drone creates 

a poisonous cloud

a disposal contractor

doubles his profit

leaking drums wetland

mineral reserves

one more leader leaves

a pit in Africa

Richard L. Matta grew up in New York and now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Gyroscope, and many international haiku journals.

GASSED

by Royal Rhodes

Today, U.S. officials announced that the final munition in the nation's obsolete stockpile of chemical weapons has been safely destroyed—a disarmament milestone decades in the making. 

—U.S. Department of Defense, July 7, 2023

Gassed (1919) by John Singer Sargent —Wikiart

The staggering line of gassed soldiers, each Tommy blindfolded as if in a deadly children's game, moved slowly over a ground-cover of wounded and dead, and were linked by a sagging rope of hands on shoulders. The society painter, more famous for portraits of the wealthy and renowned, a world of watered-silk frocks and highly polished silver tea sets, covered a vast canvas with these larger-than-life figures that overshadow the startled visitors gazing at the past. In the background a spirited soccer game caught their eye.

War made forests ash

and remade farmland

to fields of headstones

Royal Rhodes lives in Gambier, Ohio, and has published poems in The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review Challenge, and Snakeskin Poetry.

THE WEST IS BURNING

by Steve Deutsch

On the rise above 

Route 80, by a trickle

that was once 

a river

 

I watch a line

of traffic

a thousand miles long 

going nowhere.

 

The road has 

buckled and a semi

sits on its side

steam still boiling.

 

One by one

the cars and trucks

run out of gas—

dream irony

 

I suppose,

and people stand

beside their behemoths—

afraid at last.

 

The pine

and hemlock forest 

that lined the road

has turned

 

a sickly brown

and trees light up

like candlesticks

one by one.

 

Children fight

the fire

with blankets

and spit.

 

And the dust

and smoke 

and ash

make breathing

 

an occupation.

The west is burning

and few if any

will make it out.

 

I wake with a gasp—

heart escaping.

Smoke colors the moon

the west is burning.

Steve Deutsch has been widely published both on line and in print. Steve is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is poetry editor for Centered Magazine. His poetry books: Perhaps You Can (2019), Persistence of Memory (2020),  and Going, Going, Gone (2021) were all published by Kelsay Press.

ENERGY CRISIS

by Robert McParland 

hurry down this poem
this poem is running out of gas
this poem just pulled in and
this poem is low on fuel—it’s fuming
line by line this poem is standing
in a line—this poem is limping
toward the pump this poem is running
out of gas this poem is facing
high inflation reading this poem
wasting your energy this poem
is trembling toward the pump
coughing “Help us, Henry Ford”
damning Detroit and the Arabs
standing on the brake this poem is
braking as it stands this poem has moved
four inches aching toward five-dollars a gallon
this poem is running out of
gas and
this poem is running
out of… this poem
is running out of gas… pph…
gas…pph… this poem is
running out.


Robert McParland is the author of Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Other Writers of the 1920s Shaped America and From Native Son to King's Men: The Literary Landscape of 1940s America. He is a teacher of English, History, and Humanities. 

PIPELINE

by Scott C. Kaestner

Birds are seen as workers in protective suits clean the contaminated beach after an oil spill in Newport Beach, Calif., on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. A major oil spill off the coast of Southern California fouled popular beaches and killed wildlife while crews scrambled Sunday, to contain the crude before it spread further into protected wetlands. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu via The Columbian, October 8, 2021)

The pelican covered in oil dying on the contaminated beach

doesn’t give a shit about how much you love your new car

or how cheap the gas is at Costco 

it’s too busy taking one last breath.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and a man trying to get more fiber in his diet. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

PYROCENE THIS TIME

by Corey Weinstein

 

Nowhere winds bluster cloudless skies

blistering skins of rattle-windowed homes,

The parched air bites through wilted gardens,

Dry lightning judges the boiling world,

Heaven’s fiery tongues crackle the air

that booms the world without drenching grace,

Bestowing 8,000 square mile conflagrations,

Gaia’s retribution for dragging incendiaries

up from her breast with mine and pump,

Ripping off mountain tops, greasing her fissures,

Terra not Firma shakes our foundations.

 

Who is this people, these fire starters

that bespoil their nest and neighbor’s land?

In bands they were heroes of ice time survival

in pleasant harmony with their birthing world,

Now their fires are hidden in machines,

Personal aluminum hundred horse teams.

              Firepower unbound

                              Industrial pyro-pathologies

 Burning day and night

                      Blind to deluge and drought

                 Billions          Coal

     Tons             Gallons               Gas

           Billions     Daily     Billions!    

                Unimaginable bounty

                  Essential inferno.

 

A world melting into a grandchild’s future.

Corey Weinstein is a retired physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He is an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band.

RIOT!

by Scott C. Kaestner

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Set fire to the streets
where George Floyd
was lynched.

Blow up the notion that
being Black is punishable
by death.

Tear this motherfucker down
the blue shield enabling
these acts of terror.

Dump gas on the fire fueling
people’s fury with the futility
of having this happen again.

Another Black man slain
in the name of justice.

Another oppressor sticking his knee
into the neck of progress.

“I can’t breathe... please stop!”

Stop pretending this will get better
and won’t happen again.

“I can’t breathe... please stop!”

Stop blaming victims
and talk about systemic racism instead.

“I can’t breathe... please stop!”

Stop the insanity
and scream “no justice, no peace!”

“I can’t breathe... please stop!”

Stop playing by biased rules
fight fire with fire.

And burn
baby
burn!

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and former coworker to many. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

INFLICTION

by Jess Granger





I watch you from a noncommittal screen, you
with your arm outstretched in the gray mud, you
with your gaping maw that fumbles in the fresh

water for air, nerves searing deep beneath your
blood in convulsions of toxicity, raw rabid foam
enveloping your crooked teeth, the restless muscles

dancing like maggots devouring a fresh carcass,
the yellow vomit spilling from my lips as I watch
your children suffer in their colorful pajamas.

I hold my breath feeling the burn in my lungs as the
alveoli strain to breathe for you, eyes that try to
compensate for your fixed pupils and focus on

the heavy bodies on top of you, pressing you down
into a time where you once knew peace. I’m coming
to help you, I hear your call in the ozone that separates

us, separates you from me, the space I need to ready
my weapons, load the PBXN-109 in their casings
and post your pictures on the metal, the infliction

of my might, for I am civilized, will come in flashes
of light to exploit your torn flesh, modify it into
incendiary ash on the sand of Khan Sheikhoun.

Jess Granger is a U.S. Army veteran and an MFA student in the Creative Writing program at the University of Texas El Paso. 

SYRIA

by Antonia Clark

A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatment, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday Reuters via The Independent, April 6, 2017.

The heart overflows,
a deluge of hard
salty rain that can’t
wash away

the yellow fog that rusts
the sheet-metal sky,
fills lungs with fluid
and foam

or obscure the naked
and torn, the rows
of pale corpses
in the streets.

Sorrow’s burnt offering
of smoke and dust
scorches the throat,
sears the tongue
of the world.


Antonia Clark has taught creative writing and co-administers an online poetry forum, The Waters. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Smoke and Mirrors and the full-length collection Chameleon Moon. Her poems and stories have appeared in numerous journals, including The Cortland Review, Eclectica, The Pedestal Magazine, and Rattle.

CHEMICAL AIR

by Alan Irid Fendi

Image source: CNN

I stare at my
phone while
a clutch of
laid-to-die children
gasps for air


Alan Irid Fendi is a Syrian poet of 24 years, and a refugee of 5 years. Since 2015 he has been living in a European country where light is slight, and rain loves to be around. Alan works currently as a secondary-school teacher of the language of that country, plus all the other subjects in the curriculum. This poet prefers not to disclose the list of publications under his sleeve because he doesn't have any.

TRITINA FOR SYRIA'S CHILDREN

by Jo-Ella Sarich

A man carries the body of a child, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Photograph: Ammar Abdullah/Reuters via The Guardian, April 5, 2017

My daughters’ faces, quivering beneath Heavy
Water, their lips pucker and slide breath
from the inception of the word to the final release of the air.

And I all at once catch a flicker of them in the air,
their lungs grown bone-heavy.
I seize breath, before my own breath

is pressed, mouth-to-mouth to force breath
to form the word in them, air
becomes mercury in the glass and the heavy

air between us too much like one breath or word-clouds across our heavy sky.


Jo-Ella Sarich has practised as a lawyer for a number of years, recently returning to poetry after a long hiatus. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quarterday Review, Cleaver Magazine, Blackmail Press, Barzakh Magazine, Poets Reading the News, The Galway Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, takahē magazine and the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017. @jsarich_writer

HELIUM LEAKAGE

by Kristina England

Image source: Chasing Davies

I take my nephew to Sesame Street Live.
Sick, I would rather inchworm under
a comforter, so I buy him a juice box,
let him sit an aisle away, the show far
from sold out, convince myself it will
give him some freedom and space.

At intermission, there are Elmo balloons.
JoJo begs for Cookie Monster blue.  I tell
him they're double-sided, the back is fire
red, because everything has two faces.
He clenches his hands, won’t give up,

keeps stammering, I want it. I want it.
I say there's a difference between want
and need, reject his appeals. He contorts
his three-year-old face into a tantrum
that's acceptable at his age, later uses
his empty fist to rub away tears as
we head for the car, hand in hand.

Three days pass. Brussels is bombed.
Terrorists say the worst is yet to come.
And, sure enough, the comb-over man
climbs on dead bodies to point at polls,
tantrums his way into too many minds,
terror his decor for the Presidential bed.

I can hear Mick Jagger singing what
I've already seen back at the theater
when a girl lost her newly purchased
balloon. My nephew and me, necks
craned, watched a bag full of gas
float to the arched, heaving ceiling.

I wonder if the balloon stayed there
long after we left, long after the girl
cried out all her snot.  I want to go
back, not to retrieve a present for
my nephew, but rather to see if that
tinfoil face has popped or if it is still
clinging to an ounce of substance.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her writing has been published in several magazines, including Gargoyle, Silver Birch Press, and Story Shack Magazine.

SORRY

by Janice D. Soderling

On Aug. 26 in Idomeni, Greece, a cousin of Ahmad's, Nisrine Majid, looked out of the train that would carry the refugees through Macedonia, to its border with Serbia. SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

When war comes to your country,
it will not just come to other towns than your town.
It will not just come to people you don't like anyway.
Sorry.

When war comes to your country,
the milk you buy at your corner grocery store
will not be there for the buying.
It will never be on your breakfast table again.
Sorry. No breakfast table.

When war comes to your country,
your children will be crying on live television.
Sorry. Life isn't always fair.

When war comes to your country,
it will bring you new knowledge.
Words which you never fully understood
will gain a deeper significance. Chlorine gas.
Barbed wire. Tear gas. Batons. Bread.
Sorry.

When war comes to your country,
when you flee with your family,
what should you take, what leave behind?
Family photos? Your new espresso machine?
No, be smart. Take bottled water,
a pan to cook in, soap, a towel,
band-aids for minor cuts and scratches.

When war comes to your country,
take sturdy walking shoes, woolen blankets.
Be prepared for a long wait. The borders are defended.

Sorry about any inconvenience.



Janice D. Soderling has previously contributed to TheNewVerse.News. She is featured poet at the October Quill and Parchment  and has forthcoming fiction at Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and Wasafiri.

WARRIOR WORRIERS

by The Bangkok Bards 

Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

If the horrendous losses sustained
During World Wars are not enough
What must be the price
Of arousing our ultimate awakening

Ten million killed twenty million
Wounded emotionally maimed for life
Poisonous gas epidemic creating bacteria
Uncivil secret courts unmanned drones

Pre-war normality means post-war depression
In wholesale murder bullyrag gamesmanship
What if huge wasted expenditures
Aimed for productivity not destruction

Crooked gerrymandering pandering partisan advantage
Scoring F in zigzagging Freakonomics
Disarmament on humane grounds focuses
Attention on rebuked No Nukes

Saving hungry noble caring gesture
Viewed economically it’s first-aid nursing
If enabled destitute produce wealth
There’s no reason for starvation

Changing smug attitudes requires re-envisioning
Relentlessly battling elements through science
Lightning wind air wave energy
While the Sun still shines

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

A CHANGE IN AIR

by James Cronin

A change in air soon defines a lonely beach
after Labor Day, as if a calmed breeze,
dark clouds and serene gunmetal seas
could lineate my life’s declining reach.

A world away, the gassed move, but not much,
the juvenile debate of where to draw,
or not, a line in sand. Its final flaw
—the dead don’t count—waits for sand’s tacit touch.

Displayed, as in an Irish wake gone mad,
the bodies, lacking souls that once they had,
their lungs gargled with blood, the air as gun,

it’s murder, and it cries out, but for what?
Revenge?  Justice? The law is pled for naught.
What sire lets sand entomb the rising sun?


After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin has returned to his first loves, literary studies and writing.

GASSED

by Tricia Knoll





I can’t imagine how I will die,
what day, what hour, who will be there

but breathing gas? The people I knew
with numbers on their arms
march toward me from a mist. Anything
is possible in the world
of horror. My parents tried
to explain those numbers.

I swallowed tear gas
when it misted over yellow street lights
across the New Haven green
one May Day during the trial
of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins.

It followed me like a bold ghost,
slipped between my sheets, dented
my pillow and nauseous dreams
of blood and riot gear
smogged.

Syrian gas falls
beyond tears, laying out youth,
bodies, brutal line ups for speedy burials
in pits, dead hands
cannot point fingers.

I cannot imagine.
My throat rides
high in my mouth’s
last gasp
most deadly.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. She lived in New Haven, Connecticut throughout the Black Panther trials of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins.

GREETINGS FROM FORT McCLELLAN, 1944-1995

by Laura Shovan

Image source: Transition Force, US Army Garrison, Fort McClellan, Alabama

This is a really beautiful camp.
I found George in excellent health.

Love,_____

                                    Please help.

I was stationed at Fort McClellan.

I have developed a symptom of passing out.

Doctors called it "Syncope".

None of them could figure out

what caused it. 

Hi my name is: _____

I went through Basic training

in Echo 1 company. We had to go through

that building they called the Gas Chamber.

Does anybody know what type of gas

or chemical was in there?

I want to hear from you.

We were exposed to toxic substances,

big time. The McClellan Cocktail:

depleted Uranium, Sarin gas, mustard gas,

and let's not forget that old standby,

Agent Orange.

                                    I drove track vehicles

through dust and mud, unknowing the danger.

I taught troops to make the smoke

that covered the base, was told Fog Oil SGF2

was harmless. We breathed it in for hours.

I went thru the live nerve agent chamber.

They drew blood to check us but never

told us why.

                                    I was face down

in toxic-smelling stuff on the firing range.

They sprayed stuff to keep the bugs away.

They sprayed us in the "gas chamber,"

said I had "sensitive skin" when I broke out

in weeping blisters and dizzy spells.

We were "just women." It's a damn shame

they couldn't tell us what we were

crawling around in.

                                    Tell you more

when I get home.

Author’s note: This is a found poem. The italics in this poem are taken from a used postcard, cancelled in 1944. All of the stanzas not italicized are taken directly from blogs and internet postings by veterans who trained at Fort McClellan. I deleted a word here and there, but have not changed the vets’ language.

Editor of Little Patuxent Review, Laura Shovan was a finalist for the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the Harriss Poetry Prize. She edited Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems and co-edited Voices Fly: An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program, for which she teaches. In January and February, 2013, Laura is blogging 44 poems inspired by antique postcards at www.authoramok.com..