A NEW BEGINNING

by Ron Shapiro

Step back from lies, greed

and corruption if only for

an afternoon in Chicago

for the opening of Obama’s

center on the south side.

Feast your eyes 

on an alternate

amerikan reality

where character,

kindness, community,

and truth matter. 

 

Listen to diverse voices

speak of the amerikan promise:

life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

 

Hear words and songs

that elevate our country.

 

No need for a violent spectacle

on the lawn of the people’s

house. No need to reshape

and destroy this nation’s

original sins of slavery

and indigenous genocide.

No need to hide your gender,

skin color or faith. 

 

You are welcome in this place.

 

Come bring your children to

learn of the struggles for

equality, justice, and freedom.

 

Join hands with a stranger,

dance in the moonlight,

sing of hope and change,

believe in this country again. 

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and two chapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.  

CULTURE (AND OTHER) WARS

by Adele Evershed

"God is nonbinary": GOP activates over Talarico’s past comments characterizing him as too radical for Texas —Texas Tribune, March 12, 2026

 

A fresh-faced politician insisted—

God is non-binary
like a snail, like a worm
maybe a gynandromorph—
half-female, half-sod,
like a Hebrew Character moth,
a real name that asks you to suspend disbelief
in other words—have faith

 

I imagine God—
the clownfish of the skies,
slipping behind enemy lines
a double agent
in the gender wars—
it almost makes me smile

 

But I can’t be bothered with any of this—
if God exists at all
their gender is the least of it

The real question,
as men, women, and children
are obliterated, is simple—

Are you even there?

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the Valleys for the American East Coast. A Pushcart-nominated poet, her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Comstock Review, Literary Mama and Modern Haiku, amongst others. Her poetry includes the collection, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and a forthcoming collection, In the Belly of the Wail (Querencia Press). Her flash fiction includes the three novellas-in-flash Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press) and A History of Hand Thrown Walls (Unsolicited Press).

FAIR IS FAIR

by Nan Meneely

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to restrict U.S. passports based on gender identity, a setback for non-binary and transgender people seeking the document. The court order requires the gender designation on the passport to reflect the biological sex of the person applying for it. Transgender and non-binary Americans have called the effort unconstitutional.

If a passport is required to declare
the “truth” of genetic charts,
then surely it should note the fact
that some people are born without hearts.

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

Nan Meneely is the lucky member of several sterling writing groups. Her Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book, Simple Absence (Antrim House), was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been both published and turned down by The New Verse News.

DAUGHTERS

by Clare Richardson-Barlow

Judith Butler

Amid all the other breaking news consuming the United States this month, the University of California, Berkeley, arguably the nation’s most elite public university, gave the Trump administration a list of 160 names of faculty, staff and students, as part of an investigation into “alleged antisemitic incidents”. While all the names on this list are significant, one name in particular that UC Berkeley handed over to the Trump administration stands out: Judith Butler, the eminent queer theorist, literary theorist and philosopher, and one of the most famous public intellectuals in the United States today. In addition to Butler’s name representing one of the most high-profile academic scalps demanded by the Trump administration in its campaign against higher education so far, Butler’s name is also notable for another reason: Butler is proudly and publicly Jewish, and has written extendively about their Jewish identity and how it informs their politics. In the name of “fighting antisemitism”, the Trump administration is publicly making an example out of arguably the most famous Jewish public intellectual in the country today. —The Guardian, September 22, 2025

They pass the names along,
as though paper could hold a body.
Butler’s among them—
the one who told us
gender is a stage,
a script rehearsed until it feels like bone.

Now the government calls their name,
writes it as accusation,
as though thought itself
were treason.

I think of the mothers in Palestine,
their daughters’ names whispered
to checkpoints and borders,
written into files,
circulated in offices
where no one sees their faces.
A name becomes a burden to carry,
a permission denied.

Butler compared it to Kafka—
to McCarthy, to lists, to silence—
and I believe them.
A list is never just a list.
It is the beginning of forgetting
and the rehearsal of fear.

And still,
I return to the crib
where my baby curls her hand around mine,
her pudgy fist the size of a plum.
She cannot ask yet what it means to be a girl,
but already the world
is writing her story,
already she is among the daughters
who must learn to abide.

Butler’s voice is not just theirs.
It is the echo of every woman
who has been told to hush,
every mother
who has watched her child’s name
crossed out by a hand of power.

What is silenced will not stay silent.
What is written down
will be read again.
Even in exile,
even in mourning,
Her many voices endure—
not performance,
but song.

Clare Richardson-Barlow is a writer, political economist, and lecturer at the University of Leeds. Her work spans academic, policy, and creative forms, with a focus on climate, energy, and justice. Before academia, she worked in Washington, D.C. think tanks on international policy. Her poetry and essays often explore womanhood, memory, and myth, especially how women’s voices are silenced and reimagined as strength. Originally from Oregon, she now lives in Yorkshire.

ELEVEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN INAUGURATION

by Roberto Christiano

"I am out with lanters (sic) looking for myself."    

—Emily Dickinson

 

I am awake. I am a foreigner. Illegal. I am my 
parents. I know that I am not illegal. I feel that I 
am. I am scared.

My father was illegal. If you were stuck in 
poverty with Hitler’s trains running through you 
and countries crumbling before you, you’d be 
illegal too.

Musk gives the Hitler salute. Or is it the Roman 
salute? You know, the one you do to Mussolini.

My mother’s row house in the Italian section of 
D.C. was searched by the FBI for possible 
connections to Mussolini. Every Italian house 
was.

Male and female. Since when was that an easy 
divide?

Melania hides her face under a boater hat just as 
America hides her soul under a bushel.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

It snowed here. I can’t shovel. Uncontrolled high 
blood pressure. A man and his brother shoveled 
for me. Carlos and Zé. They won’t be here 
tomorrow.

I worked at the Library of Congress for twenty 
years. Our guards are the same as the Capitol 

guards. On January 6^th our guard was killed.
There are no degrees of separation. Separation is 
an illusion.

I am scared. I feel that I am. I know that I am not 
illegal. I am my parents. Illegal. I am a foreigner. 

I am awake.

Author’s note: Father married Mother and became a U.S. citizen. Mother was already a citizen.

Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from Northern Virginia Review. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poem, Why I Sang at Dinner, in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in The Gávea–Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (Brown University). His full legnth collection, Port of Leaving, is published by Finishing Line Press. Other poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, The Washington Post, Writer.org, and The Sow's Ear.

DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

by Cindy Ellen Hill

an extraction poem from...

Text

Purpose.  

deny the biological reality of sex purpose

access intimate sex

spaces for women, from women, to women  

eradicate the biological reality of sex

attack women

depriving them of their dignity

The erasure of sex in truth is critical

immutable biological reality of sex

biological facts. 

the true and biological category of “woman”

transforms laws and policies

defend women’s rights

protect freedom of conscience

recognize two sexes, male and female.  

These sexes are

grounded in fundamental

incontrovertible reality.  

promote this reality “Sex”

immutable biological classification “Sex”

not a synonym

there is a vast spectrum of genders

disconnected from one’s sex. 

from biological reality and sex

existing on an infinite continuum,

as a replacement for sex.

the term “sex”

Federal employees’ sex,

single-sex rape

shelters the freedom to express

the nature of sex

Cindy Ellen Hill has authored three chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021), Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022), and Mosaic (Wild Dog Press 2024). Her full-length collection Love in a Time of Climate Change is forthcoming in 2025 from Finishing Line Press. Her essays on poetry have appeared in American Poetry Review and Unlikely Stories. She twice won the Vermont Writer’s Prize.

INSOMNIA CHRONICLES XXVII

by Erin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. I had to go to the laundromat last week because my washing machine was broken. Just a sock stuck in the drum, an easy fix. The repair guy said Whatever you do, don’t get rid of this beast—they don’t make ’em like this anymore. It’s 43 years old, came with the house. Now that I said this, it will surely die for good tomorrow. I met one of my best friends in a laundromat. Hadley, Massachusetts, summer before grad school. We got to chatting, and I said, Hey, I found a secret swimming hole. Wanna go? So we rode bikes through a farm field to a patch of sand on the Connecticut River. Back then laundromats were my only option. A pricier place in Mount Holyoke was also a bar. It had a clever name, like Suds & Duds or Wash & Slosh. Another in Amherst had a game room, so you could shoot pool or play pinball. I prefer a no-frills retro laundromat where strangers sit on plastic bucket chairs and watch the random choreography of shirts and pants. The suspended time when magic happens. Or did before cell phones. The repair guy says the key to my washer’s longevity is the center agitator. The new ones have electronic sensors that trigger error codes. Agitator. We need all the agitators we can get right now. But maybe when there’s too much to protest, we end up protesting nothing at all. Like that study that found people prefer a handful of ice cream flavors instead of dozens. Choices can be paralyzing. On inauguration day, he canceled lower prescription drug prices and birthright citizenship, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and declared there are only two genders. And that was just the warmup. Backpfeifengesicht is German for a face that needs to be punched. I just learned eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher: an egg shell cracker. It literally means an egg shell pre-determined breaking point causer. Germans do love the compound words. The compoundest—compoundiest!—of words. What’s the word for Please let us resist fascism while maintaining our sanity for the next four years? Please hold on, dear old washer. Please hold on, fellow agitators. We can’t let the one with the face that needs to be punched be the breaking point causer.

Editor's Note: This poem is a companion poem to “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” published Sunday in Rattle. Erin explains, "These ‘Insomnia Chronicles’ are part of a series of poems dramatizing the associative connections sparked by sleeplessness. I imagine there will be plenty of insomnia for the next four years."

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

GIRLY BOY

by Jean Voneman Mikhail 

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

My little boy blue, 

as a child you wore 

girl-pink, not the browns 

of circus bears and puppies. 

Not the beiges of office walls. 

Who cares about colors now?

Wear what you like. 

As a girl child, my boy snakes hung 

down in braids past my fingertips.

They had a sweaty life all their own. 

They flicked ribbon tongues at me,

struck me on the back when I ran 

away, so I cut them off one day.

I stored them in a box of magic tricks,

decorated the lid with sequins, 

like moon disks sparkling in the light.

Who would see them in a dark closet? 

I eventually got my girl groove back. 

I liked the boys, their hawk heads, 

hooded. They blinked in astonishment

that I had actually caught up to them.

Eventually, I grew my braids back,

gave up the girl I used to love. 

I opened my legs to the bedposts. 

I had you on my favorite night of all.

You were born blue and little. 

I think of you now as a girly boy. 

A ghost of a boy-girl in a mirror.

Don’t rub off your eyeshadows

with the back of your hand,  

with your desert skin, so dry and soft. 

Your eyes are the valleys you’ve left 

behind in the rearview mirror, 

where the hills float away. 

The morning moves you, 

slides a mountain aside, as you 

drive through, around the twists 

and turns of your desires. 

The mountains widen, deepen 

their despair then disappear, 

the further into this self-love thing you go. 

Jean Voneman Mikhail has published in One Art: a Journal of Poetry, Sheila Na Gig Online, The New Verse News, The Northern Appalachian Review, and other journals and anthologies. She was recently nominated for “best of the net” by Eucalyptus Lit. 

WHEN I SAW TRUMP'S ANTI-TRANS CAMPAIGN ADS

by Janice Lloyd

I

I remembered the 1960s

when I would count the seconds

walking home from elementary school

until mom handed me my blue overnight bag

with my favorite flannel pjs and drove me

on Fridays to my girlfriend’s house.

How their home was like ones mom fantasized

about in Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

Upstairs had three bedrooms with full baths for kids,

and downstairs, off a marble foyer with a chandelier,

was a living room half the size of our house. 

How ladies in cocktail dresses and high heels

would sit straight-backed on the edge

of puffy sofas and chairs with their ankles crossed. 

Husbands in suits & ties would bring them drinks.

How we tiptoed by to gaze at elegance, respectability.

Her mom ushered us to my friend’s bedroom 

to play Candy Land or with Barbies.

II

Her younger brother John, alone in his room,

started screaming: No, Dad, please no. 

How my friend kept on playing with Barbie,

said, John wants to wear dresses, be called Suzy, 

and visit with the party guests. Dad gives him a shot,

lets him sleep it off so no one knows about him. How I lay awake 

in her poster bed that night wondering about John, 

went home the next morning, told mom.

She struck a match, lit a Tareyton cigarette,

said nothing. She started driving me 

to the skating rink to meet new friends. 

A few years later, she showed me John’s obit. 

No cause listed. We thought—suicide?

III

How I wish my friend and I could have played

dress up with Suzy the night of  her parents’ party.

Helped her put bright red lipstick on her lips.

Wear mascara.

Her favorite dress.

The Advocate, November 7, 2024

Janice Lloyd is a former journalist who spent her career at USA TODAY, is a married lesbian and writes poetry she workshops with other poets.