PUBLIC TRUST

by Dustin Miller

this morning
a woman walked alone
through the park

early sixties maybe
black mullet
lycra shorts 
cutoff cotton shirt

the sleeves removed
close to the seam

across her chest
in white and red:

TRUST GOD 
NOT GOVERNMENT

i heard instruction
or warning

the path continued
smooth beneath her

trust GOD
not government

sprinklers turned
their measured arcs
across the grass

trust god 
NOT government

a city truck
moved slowly
along the curb

trust god 
not GOVERNMENT

trash emptied
branches cleared
a bench bolted into shade

four words
and already
i had made her unreasonable

given her
the voice
i needed
the shirt to have

i believed the park
proved me right
because i trusted
the government enough
not to see it

the path
the water
the doggy bags
the expectation
that she could walk alone
and keep walking

but the stress was mine

nothing on the shirt
said where
to place the weight

nothing told me
what had failed her
what had held
what god meant
inside her mouth

or whether the shirt meant anything
beyond the shirt

she passed beneath the trees

black cotton gathering
beneath one arm

for several steps
god disappeared

then government

then both returned
with her stride

the path held her weight

she did not thank it

Dustin Miller is a Dallas-based poet whose work appears or is forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest Press, Eunoia Review, Jackdaw Review, Audience Askew, Icebreakers Lit, and Wingless Dreamer. His poems explore embodiment, desire, language, queer identity, place, and the systems that shape intimacy.

SYMPHONY OF THOUSANDS

by Barbara H. Williams

 

 

         

 

   after No Kings Day 2, October 18, 2025

 

Each played a part 

and played it well

just by being there––

good-natured fellow humans 

there for all that binds us

 

who face a common threat 

and care about our neighbors––

don’t we all need safety 

shelter, air and water

peace and equal possibility

a government which functions

for the good of all?

 

And we wore yellow, primal

bright and jovial yellow

listened, clapped

and raised our voices––

at least five thousand 

stood together 

in our little town

five thousand of us

 

and it felt intimate 

and neighborly–– 

skins all shades 

a rich array of ancestries 

and mother tongues––

 

carrying the red, white and blue 

in concert, jubilant

with twenty-seven hundred 

other towns and cities, communities

in every state across the land

 

more than seven million 

citizens together––in agreement.

 

Barbara H. Williams is Managing Editor of US 1 Worksheets. Based in Princeton, New Jersey,  she was for many years a professional flutist and music teacher. She began writing poetry in 2013, with poems appearing in The Raven’s Perch, US 1 Worksheets, The Paterson Review, and The New Verse News. A member of the DVP/US1 Poets Collective, and a Pushcart Prize nominee, her first collection of poems, Continuo, was published in 2024 (Cool Women Press). 

CLAMPDOWN AT DILLEY DETENTION CENTER

by Ellen Romano

Children detained at the immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas, speaking with ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg over video call. Clockwise from top left: Diana Crespo, Luka Mora, Juan Nicolas Mo, Alexander Perez, Amalia Arrieta, Mayra Delgado. Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica. Click here to donate to ProPublica.

 

Imagine the children’s drawings, 

a family of three, standing in a cage, 

a family of five, standing in a cage, their faces blank,

a family of seven lying down in a cage, labelled

with the words, me quiero ir,  I want to go home. 

 

Imagine the children’s letters,

We are kidnapped, help.

There’s an agent here, he’s watching us.

I can’t see Willi, accompanied by a picture of a pet cat.

 

On the day the art supplies are confiscated,

crayons, pencils, drawing paper,

the letters and pictures are seized as well,

portraits of friends, the tracing of a child’s hand,

tears and a frowning face in the palm,

even a five year-old’s picture of a peaked roof house,

lit from one corner by an inextinguishable sun.

 

One mother saves a handful of shredded pages,

all that is left of her daughter’s drawings. In a place

that is never warm enough, another mother hides

the drawings of as many children as she can

in the sleeves of her puffy jacket, carries them

everywhere. 

 

Imagine a government that tries to steal 

a child’s ability to imagine, imagine a five-year old

wearing a detention uniform, a replacement 

for the blue, bunny-eared jacket taken from him,

the conejo that shared his name,

 

imagine a child’s voice too dangerous to be heard,

though no louder than the sound

a crayon makes on a scrap of paper.

Author’s note: All descriptions of children's letters and art work were taken from various news articles except for the description of a five-year old's picture of a house, which as an elementary school educator I feel is quite typical.

Ellen Romano, she/her, is an educator, mother, grandmother, widow, and beekeeper living with her dog, Doc, in Hayward, California. She is the winner of Third Wednesday’s 2023 Poetry Prize, and won second place in Naugatuck River Review’s 2023 Narrative Poetry Contest. Other work has appeared in Lascaux Review, The Deadlands, december magazine, and other publications. 

SURVIVOR’S GUILT II

by Julie Weiss

Photo by Seema Miah at Unsplash

It snowed last night, an unusual

enough flurry in our part of Spain

to make the news. Downstairs,

my children pelt each other

with snowballs, their voices

all sparkle and windchime.

The sky, though gray, has no

reason to grieve. I stack dishes

in the sink, sweep up crumbs,

grumble, because who doesn´t

grumble about housework?

If a bang knocks a flock of birds

off course, I assume it´s a car

backfiring, no need to scramble

outside in pajamas, search

the snow for blood. It´s easy

to chide your children for tracking

mud inside when a government

thug isn´t kicking down your door.

Easy to indulge in a cup of hot cocoa,

extra marshmallows please, when

your neck isn´t crushed under

a state-sponsored knee. Tomorrow,

they´ll shove another child into

an unmarked van. Another child´s

mother will vanish, or die. Here,

far from my homeland, the sidewalks

will have frozen over. We´ll glide

to school, graceful as skaters,

hoping not to break any bones

on the hard, hard ice.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, was published in February, 2025. "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was a finalist for Best of the Net, she won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for "Cumbre Vieja," and she was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in ONE ART, Stone Circle Review, Gyroscope Review, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review and MER. She lives with her wife and children in Spain.

UPENDED, UPDATED

by Phyllis Frakt

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

The West Wing cast 

upholds the Age of Reason

as credits start to roll

to end the third episode

of the second season.

 

Josh asks, What do you say

about a government 

that goes out of its way

to protect even citizens 

who try to destroy it?

 

Sam, C.J., Donna, Toby

solemnly intone in turn,

God Bless America,

defender of liberty,

tolerance, rule of law.

 

But now in dim twilight

we slide into an inverted age,

the age of no reasons,

only whim and might,

divine blessings upended.

 

What would the cast say

about a government 

that protects itself

while its own leaders

try to destroy it?

 

God Help Us, they’d sigh,

then invoke the words

of a slain commander:

Here on earth God’s work 

must truly be our own.

Phyllis Frakt was inspired to write poetry after hearing Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of Joe Biden. Since then, she has written nearly 250 poems, about a dozen published in The New Verse News and elsewhere. She lives in New Jersey.

IF THIS IS THE POEM YOU READ WHEN I'VE BEEN MURDERED BY ICE

by Hailey Elles

Cartoon by Dennis Goris.

This is survival. 

My friend says 

“we are at war

with our government.”

We also discuss

her new winter boots, 

which hold snugly 

as she walks her dog, 

clipping her prophecies 

and beaming them to me. 

This disjointed 

correspondence

is how she is with me 

as my studded tires grip 

these switchbacks 

like a prayer– 

I am praying 

there will be no children

waiting by the doors 

of the middle school 

I was supposed to open 

five minutes ago–oh, 

I am tired. It is not possible 

to go faster. And anyway, 

every tree is sparkling 

on this cold morning, 

almost invisible 

against the sunrise, 

as red as the drag in blood-

shot eyes. All the plowmen 

are out, salting the roads,

trying to preserve any

beautiful, useful thing.

Hailey Elles is a writer, teacher, and literacy organizer who lives in Bridgewater, Vermont. She has a masters in secondary English education and is currently pursuing a masters in English as a Breadloaf Teacher Network Fellow at Middlebury College. Her writing has appeared in various journals and publications, most recently in Half and One, the BLTN Journal, and Poet's Choice.

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

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.

ON THE EVE OF A NEW ERA

by Lis Anna-Langston

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

I am waiting for the sun to dip

low over the hilltops in an act of defiance.

I am waiting for our government
to rise up again and say,
Give me liberty or give me death.

I am waiting for the free flow moments
to carry me to the seas that bump against
the belly of Savannah

and I am waiting for the tenderness to return to the night.

I am waiting for the spies to reveal their secrets
and cast aside the masks they’ve
considered identity

waiting for the bells to toll,
announcing the coming of relevance

I am waiting for elementary particles
to create their own game show
challenging anti-matter to a bet.

I am waiting for the Aztecs to conquer the Spaniards
with wit, beguiling them with the crooked smile of Montezuma’s revenge.

I am waiting for the hot neutron glow
of the sun to illuminate our place in the Universe

and I am waiting for the Warlords
to cast off their weapons and disappear into the mist.

I am waiting for the ghost of Elvis
to return to the white house
in Tupelo, Mississippi where his Mama
is standing on the front porch calling for the shadow of him
to return
from the long lines of fans
waiting
at the gates of his grace land.

I am waiting for Thomas Jefferson to bow to the
kindred spirits in the streets of Philadelphia and
walk back to Carpenters Hall to call a meeting
regarding the state of delinquent bets with the Republic
and its people.

I am waiting for the catcher in the rye
to take the hand of John Lennon and pull him back to earth.

I am waiting for my grandmother
to return to this life
so I can tell her I miss her
and I am waiting for the mailman
to bring my new book of poetry.

I am waiting for art to express form,
not just feeling
like the gut of Picasso driven and seeming.

I am waiting for the unmarked grave
of Che Guevarra
to sprout one thousand wild flowers.

I am waiting for God to find the box of crayons
I sent him
special delivery
with the sharpener on the side.

I am waiting for Dorothy to wake up in Oz,
get out of bed
and do something about that pedaling witch
once and for all.

I am waiting for the Disciples to stop serving redemption at the last 
supper.

I am waiting for Truman Capote to stop drinking
and finish another novel
and waiting for the raven
to return weary
back to the door of Edgar’s dreary.

I am waiting for the Romans to take back the Empire
on a Sunday morning
while all the good heathens are praying.

And I am waiting as patiently as a kidnapping plot
hashed out over coffee
for the scavenger angels
to walk out of the alleyways
cloaked in darkness
dragging the age of enlightenment
with their dirty hands
to rise up and startle us
with utter abandon
again.

Hailed as “an author with a genuine flair for originality” by Midwest Book Review and “a lovable, engaging, original voice…” by Publishers Weekly, Lis Anna-Langston is the author of Skinny Dipping in a Dirty Pond, Gobbledy, Tupelo Honey, Maya Loop, Wild Asses of the Mojave Desert, and the short story collection Tolstoy & the Checkout Girl. Raised along the winding current of the Mississippi River on a steady diet of dog-eared books she attended a Creative and Performing Arts School from middle school until graduation, went on to study Literature at Webster University, Creative Writing through the Great Smokies Writing Program through the University of North Carolina at Asheville and recently graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2023. Her novels have won the NYC Big Book Award, Independent Press Awards, and dozens of other book awards. As writer and producer her films screened and won at film festivals around the world. A three-time Pushcart award nominee, her work has been published in dozens of literary journals including The Literary Review, Emerson Review, Hobart, Barely South Review, and Emrys Journal.