THE ART OF WHAT’S LEFT

by Matthew Murrey

 

Banksy confirmed he was responsible for the work with a post on Instagram, showing the graffiti before it was covered over. It has been interpreted by some as a comment on the arrest of hundreds of people for supporting Palestine Action by holding up placards at protests. Palestine Action was banned by the government as a terrorist group in July after activists damaged RAF planes. --BBC, September 10, 2025

What was just one raging judge 

bludgeoning one poor bloke 
lying helpless on his back 
has now been scrubbed 
into anyone, anywhere where 
faceless power hammers 
the harmless: families asleep 
in wrecked schools and sad tents, 
thousands on foot, on donkey carts, 
and in cars fleeing their flattened 
neighborhoods, starving hundreds 
shot while crowding for food, 
the badly wounded and bleeding
on their backs begging for mercy.
A gray afterimage of the mural 
remains on the courthouse wall 
like a blast shadow in Hiroshima, 
like a black-gray pall of smoke 
above human beings being burned, 
like some relentless nightmare ghost 
that ought to haunt us night and day.

Matthew Murrey is the author of Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collection, Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026). Recent poems are in Dissident Voice, Escape Into Life, Tiny Wren Lit, and elsewhere. He was a public school librarian for more than 20 years and lives in Urbana, IL with his partner. He can be found on Bluesky and Instagram under the handle @mytwords.

A RUMOR OF GHOSTS

by Howie Good

Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse on Saturday, April 18, 2020, calling for state officials to lift restrictions now, including this car with an anti-Semitic sign. (Laura Hancock / cleveland.com)

They seized you at your home
and dragged you away,
and though we searched for you in the after years,
we found no trail or trace.
It was as if you had never really existed
but were always only a false memory,
a rumored ghost.

I also am as nothing,
and whether I shamble along the street
or stumble up the staircase,
whether I pray to God for preservation
or curse him for the inventiveness of his cruelties,
the same ancestral nightmares repeat –
swastikas smeared on synagogues,
bearded Jews harried through the streets,
hearts shoveled like coal into the fire.


Editor's Note: Today, April 21, 2020 is Holocaust Remembrance Day—Yom Hashoah—in the United States. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.


Howie Good is the author of What It Is and How to Use It (2019) from Grey Book Press, among other poetry collections.

WORST CASE

by Gilbert Allen




"Corpses piled / tenderly along the curbs"
—Dorianne Laux (“Lord of the Flies,” 2020)

"I do not pity the dead, I pity the dying."
—James Wright (“At the Executed Murderer's Grave,” 1958)


Nobody dares give a damn about the dead,                                    
not now. Because if you did, you’d be
a demiurge of shadows—your own ghost,
unholy, praying for a miracle.                                                                      
A miracle to parse the mystery
of presences, of all the universe—
its molecules and light, its stars, coronas,                
infections, choices, triage, viruses.

Patient or provider, in this bed                                
you have a life to tend and medicate                      
as best you can. Till the determined day
you’ll move beyond the pity of James Wright—
above or in the ordinary earth
we creatures are condemned to walk upon.            


Gilbert Allen shelters in place in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.

RING

by Alejandro Escudé




A Motherboard report found Ring lacking basic security measures for preventing hackers from hijacking the devices. —threatpost, December 18, 2019


In the family of moments, there are unique
and strong passwords—living, bobbing like
ripe apples on the Tree of Knowledge, no snakes
coiled, ready to speak to you, to impersonate
God. The voice that comes at us from the ether
demanding we “Wake up!” like Mayakovsky’s sun.
We know better than to repeat our usernames,
passwords strung around our lives like
the rings around Saturn—a tall pot boiling,
a crackle from the device, and it is someone
talking to our daughter from the beyond.
The Ghost of Christmas Past? A horrible clown?
But why urge the child to destroy her room?
What a pinch one feels from this new reality.
Isn’t funny the things people will bring into
their house? A discarded needle, a live mine,
a tiger, a splintered chair, a vial of cyanide.
Once someone speaks to you from a device,
you cannot wash that out of your hair. It’smore
than an experience, it’s a like an experience
turned object; one you buy for the holidays
for instance, a device on which to order
a pizza or a Nintendo Switch box filled with
condoms and soda caps. All of human life
reduced to a child’s bedroom, liquified
on a small screen, the pinks pinker than pink
and the dark voice darker than darkness.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE BALLAD OF LINDSEY GRAHAM'S PICKLE

by Janice D. Soderling

Dong, dong, it pealed from each bell tower
until full twelve was said.
Cold, coverless and quivering,
Graham flopped around in bed.

He sat up, did the Senator,
and stared into the night
for at the footboard of his bed
commenced a nebulous light.

A ghastly apparation grew
and softly did it moan.
With trembling hands, it held aloft
a moss-bedecked tombstone.

"Oh, Lindsey," wheezed the ghostly guest.
Oh, Lindsey Graham, behold."
There on the mildewed stone was writ,
Orange glitter is not gold.

"And quid pro quo is not BS.
Go read the damning transcript."
A tortured moan froze Lindsay's blood,
"Far better men than you've flipped.

"Beware the traitorous pumpkin man."
The moan rose to a shout.
"I come to save you from yourself."
The frightened man cried out,

"Who art thou, apparation grim?
Who gives my blood such chill?
The Ghost of Hearings-Yet-To-Come?
Or that socialist, Joe Hill?

The glowing ghost gave mirthless laugh.
"Joe Hill has never died.
Takes more than guns to kill a man,
No matter how they tried.

"John sent me here to wake you up.
You're backing the wrong horse.
The bus is nigh. His game is rigged.
Stay off his damned golf course."

Then Lindsey woke, relieved, and said,
"Joe Hill's a loser Commie.
But that's the last time that I eat
dill pickles with pastrami."

Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work was recently at Light, Better Than Starbucks, and La Libélula Vaga.

HARNEY PEAK

by Amy Brunvand

“A federal board on Thursday renamed Harney Peak in the Black Hills to Black Elk Peak, saying the name of the state's highest peak was derogatory to Native Americans because Harney was a general whose soldiers massacred Indians. Basil Brave Heart, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, proposed the change to Black Elk Peak as a tribute to a Lakota spiritual leader who died in the mid-20th century. —Rapid City (SD) Journal, August 12, 2016. Photo: Black Elk Peak Summit Tower via summitpost.org. Insert: Nicholas Black Elk via Rapid City Journal.

“There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.” —Black Elk

A horned white ghost
Stinking of piss and musk

Drifts on muffled hooves
Through the ruined tower

Alert for fires blazing
In the hoop of the world.

Tattered scraps
Of faded red cloth

Knotted on the boughs
Of an ancient juniper

Flutter in bitter wind
Whispering prayers

For the people who came
To tie them there.


Amy Brunvand is a librarian, writer and part-time nature mystic in Salt Lake City, Utah.

BRIEFLY BOWIE

by Guillermo Filice Castro

Last
night
I was
Bowie

briefly

gliding
from
empty
office
to
empty
office

asking
each
time

where’s
the dance?

only to continue
bowie-ing
my way
through
transparent
walls

in a pearl
grey suit
that
was

more
Cohen
than
Bowie

more

femme
than
butch

never
finding
anybody

much less the dance

my eyes
under a wide-
brimmed
hat

stage-worn
& hushed

as Mars


Guillermo Filice Castro is the author of Agua, Fuego (Finishing Line Press, 2015). He’s a recipient of an Emerge-Surface-Be fellowship from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. A native of Argentina, he now resides in New York City.

BUKOWSKI'S GHOST

by Robert Halleck

November 29, 2014

California Chrome raced at Del Mar

A San Diego day

clear, 70 degrees

perfect track conditions.

By the 8th race I was

down $14 using my

winning jockey technique.

I was thinking safety first

as I walked to the window.

I saw him

leaning on a pillar

cigarette in a lowered 

right hand, racing form in his left.

Bukowski's ghost.

I went toward him.

Looking up he froze me

in my tracks.

"Chrome's a sucker bet

don't be an asshole."

At the window I bet

Sawyer's Hill to show

and lost another $2.

Leaving Del Mar I saw him again

counting his money and smiling.

Robert Halleck is a hospice volunteer and retired banker. His poems have appeared in The San Diego Poetry Annual, The Camel Saloon, The Rainbow Journal.

AMERICAN GOTHIC

by Richard O'Connell

Image source: Neatorama

It came with the house—
God in the attic
And a stream underground
That made him rheumatic.

Why shouldn't he be
Self-righteous?—the mortgage
Almost paid up & the kids gone
To war and marriage.

It's a good house
Still,  he tells himself,
And the heater may hold
Through another winter;

For the heavy ghost
Who creaks on the stairs
And stoops by the window
To peer out at stars.

Richard O'Connell lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Paris Review, Margie, Measure, Southern Humanities Reviw, Acumen, The Formalist.