WE CAN CHANGE THE STORY

by Elizabeth P. Glixman 

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News

First there was a war

than another war
There is always a war somewhere

even if it is in your mind
against he she they them we us

who
Once there were concentration camps
mass migration from Europe
to Europe the Middle East
Once there were bombs
and ships
once a blast Hiroshima
then there were parades and applause
then there were boomers
and Vietnam
conscientious objectors
people hanging out in the country there

was Jane Fonda
and Easy Rider 
Than there was ICE
It is like a movie where
one thing happens and another

They may all seem to be out of sequence
it is hard to keep
track of of dates and time and decades and epochs

It is hard to keep track of hate
Now there is the Donald  
the world keeps shaking 
he wants to interior decorate the world
We are in a snow globe of his making
everything moving
Obliterate demolish
like you've never seen before

The globe is shaking vigorously

Some world leaders shake the globe
every day every hour
they take a nap or golf 
or write posts
on social media
They shake shake shake the globe

shake it again
Stop shaking people plead
We need kindness and Gaza needs food
The world crumbles like a stale cupcake
and there is nothing left to shake
crumbs fleeing into space

Vote November 3rd to stop the shaking

Elizabeth P. Glixman is a poet, writer and artist who like many is hoping for peace on earth.

WORLD WITHOUT END? OMEN

by Steven Kent

The Guardian, October 22, 2026

As metaphor,

It's most emphatic:

What could be more

Emblematic?

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, The Asses of Parnassus, Blue Unicorn, The Dirigible Balloon, The Hypertexts, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, Well Met, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last(2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

DANGEROUS STORIES IN THE AMERICAN PSYCHE

by Marilyn Letts

When I was a child                 in the 1970s

            I lived in Calgary

            I heard Jesus died for me at Calvary

I spoke as a child                     “Are they the same?”

            People laughed, showed me a globe

            Israel on the other side 

I felt as a child               when in the Bible, God said

            Don’t touch my chosen people!

            He meant me and Israel

I thought as a child                 Israel

            in the book of Exodus & the Calgary Herald

            fought their enemies, yet again

When I became a woman  the texts (and the news)

            read genocide  

I put away childish things   and grieve

Note: Italicized phrases in the poem reference 1 Corinthians 13:11, 1 Chronicles 16:22.

Marilyn Letts is a poet and writer who loves to experiment. Her poetry publications include FreeFall Magazine, Feathertale Review, and Other Voices. She lives on the traditional territories of the peoples of the Treaty 7 region and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Districts 5 & 6.

WHAT WE LEARNED IN 2020

by Katherine West

The globe of Earth has shrunk, a small balloon

losing air sinking against the blue blue sky

to land exactly in my hand, all mine 

to know the pain of every land, all you 

and you and you, all me in mirrors new 

as stars on windy nights of sharpened light 

that cuts my chest that makes me bleed your time

cut short then so is mine the years so few 

now less the globe a shriveled wrinkled skin

I cup as gently as a fallen bird 

my own true love I carry home to bed 

I tuck you up, I slide beside so thin

we fit, an old and folded map, a world 

of continents that kiss, of coasts that wed.

 

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City.  She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta.  The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado.  Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel When Night Comes: A Christmas Carol Revisited has just been released, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing.  She is presently at work on the sequel to When Night Comes. It is called Slave: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist.

WE CAN STILL DREAM

by Katherine West

American Dream, mixed media in resin artwork by Raphael Mazzucco.

            "I have a dream... we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Last night I dreamed of rain

It overflowed the culverts 

It washed out the road in waves 

Like a sea in the desert 

It filled the arroyos like a lover 

Or the tide before love the opening 

Before the opening the flower 

Dreaming of the bee dreaming 

Of pollen generations of honey 

The wealth of the hive 

And the queen humming 

Her birth song of infinite flight 

Over a globe of no boundaries 

One garden all colors 

A palette of rainy territories 

Mixing new shades forgetting borders 

Katherine West is the author of three collections of poetry and one novel: Scimitar Dreams, The Bone Train, Riddle, and Lion Tamer, respectively.  She has had poetry published in Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, Tanka Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and TheNewVerse.News who nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  She lives in the mountains outside of Silver City, New Mexico where she translates Mexican revolutionary poetry and creates custom, hand-made poetry chapbooks.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 90 DAYS

by David Feela

Launch of the Montgolfier hot air balloon, Versailles, September 19,  1783

By the time the postponed IRS deadline arrives
the coronavirus may have circled the globe
a few more times. Still, at least a year
before you declare that smaller income,
due to a lay off, or a business closing down
when the traditional cash flow failed to levitate
like little green carpets on a magic profit ride.

Who would have predicted it requires a lifetime
to recover from the death of a loved one
so suddenly seized by the thumbs, no time to pack,
as if lifted by a balloon—a Montgolfier feat—
beyond belief, these abiding incalculable losses.


David Feela writes columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres.

THEY SAY AND WOMEN IN WHITE RESPOND

by Tricia Knoll

While magnetic north has always wandered, its routine plod has shifted into high gear, sending it galloping across the Northern Hemisphere—and no one can entirely explain why. —National Geographic, February 4, 2019. EARTH PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JSC

They say north shifted as if we didn’t know
something bigger than big moved sideways
while liars lied and the thieves of night
hung plastic LED stars from phone lines.

They say it is almost too late when we know
too late came and passed like the reverb
gong on the sacred brass bell in the woods
where they want to fence the Pando

as if a fence is any way to save anything
except an illusion of privacy. Some say
they will feed the hungry and a few
are fed. Some dressed in white to stand

out and up, to be counted among the mix
of red ties and blue suits and to cheer
their presence in the mix. We aren’t sure
why north shifted in a molten globe.


Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who has been writing snow poems for the past six weeks. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies. Her recent collection How I Learned To Be White received the received the Gold Prize for Motivational Poetry in the 2018 Human Relations Indie Book Prize.