EVERY LITTLE BIT: A HAIBUN

by Miriam Weinstein

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

My assignment—oranges and limes—As much or as little as you’re able to bring—the emailed instructions specified. Food and supplies collected for people afraid to leave their homes during the ICE invasion of Minnesota. Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of uniformed, masked agents carrying weapons—now a common sight on the streets of my city. Agents of fear acting erratically. Lying in face of facts. Spreading terror and chaos across my State—land of ten thousand lakes, surging rivers, roaring waterfalls. In the church parking lot, volunteers load carts—boxes of diapers, canned goods, packaged products and produce. A middle-aged man wheels a cart to the side of my car. I pull out two large reusable bags, empty contents. Five, six pound bags of oranges, five, three pound bags of limes. Small offering considering—68, 400 people, rounded and roughed up, interrogated, arrested. In the name of searching for illegal, criminal aliens, citizens and legal residents—seized—two Americans murdered by ICE agents. Their real agenda—to breed uncertainly, fear, and chaos. Every little bit counts my friend tells me. I’m desperate today to believe in something. Has the produce I dropped off  reached its destinations? During this unfathomable crisis, is someone, somewhere being nourished?

Dusk display—turkey vulture 

soars, swoops down. Curved beak 

grasps carcass, carries rat skyward.

Miriam Weinstein completed a two year apprenticeship program at the Loft Literary Center in 2013. She has two chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press: Twenty Ways of Looking and How to Thread a Needle. Her poems are in several anthologies and journals including A 21st Century Plague, Rocked by the Waters, Poems of Hope and Reassurance, The Heart of All That Is, Survivor Lit, The New Verse News, Plum Tree Tavern, Vita Brevis Press, St. Paul Almanac, and American Jewish World. Her manuscript Here. Between. Beyond. was a finalist for the Concrete Wolf Press Louis Award. Miriam Weinstein is an avid birdwatcher and environmentalist. She lives in Minneapolis, MN.

ODE TO MY SHOPPER

by Sharon Olson

I was seventy-one and still counting
when I counted the grocery bags arriving
at my front door, each one labelled
I guess for the shopper’s convenience,
some mnemonic only he had derived,
Poems 1 of 8, Poems 2 of 8, and so forth,
and they were like poems, each item
of slightly different size and voice,
tuna can haikus next to sonnets of milk.

I chalked it up to coincidence, until
the next week new bags came, this time
marked Lyric 1 of 7, Lyric 2 of 7, so
we knew we were in some sort of
telepathic, telegrammatic finger-
tapping sync-apathy, as if he knew
I must write poems and would eat
to write them, not eating words
but snippets of lyric, edible syllables.

The market has stipulated one week
between orders, and I am as I said
earlier seventy-one and still counting.
And so I find myself wondering
what the next code will bring, what
subliminal message my messenger
will write to signal our connection.
He must be a poet, too, composing
behind the front lines and so essential.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, 71 and still counting. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019. She lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where along with everyone else she waits it out. Her grocery bags truly did arrive marked as mentioned in the poem.

DID YOU SEE GROUNDHOG DAY THE OTHER NIGHT?

by DeWitt Clinton

Too many days identical to identical days though
Identical days are far better than having no identical
Days left, as in that was the last identical day we spent
But then, you’ll be coming along soon I suspect, just
As the rest of us don’t really have a lifetime left though
Everyone is saying we’ll get over this, through this, we’ll
Make it, just take big deep breaths, eat Brussel sprouts,
Ease up on the whites and reds or for our friend up the
Road, the foreign sounding frothy drink he ends each day
With but really, it’s only not so bad if someone you know
Doesn’t call or send a text or drop in on a video check
As the bad boy virus is going to take way too many of us
Even if we keep a positive glow about all that’s happened
So far, and the reports of available masks made across
The oceans, the make-shift ventilators, the gloves that
Seem to tear even as we put them on, perhaps it’ll just
Be that unmasked ungloved shopper eager to stock up
On a basket of groceries, Charmin, Bounty, Clorox wipes,
Or just about anything that might convince us we’re clean,
We’re not sick, we don’t have a dry cough just a cough
Now and then, and our temp is about the same as it’s
Always been, and the chest occasionally feels all wound
Up but it’s probably just something we ate that gives
Us such a burn that would put any of us into a panic
Over is this it, is this what we’re trying to dodge, is this
Tasty tiny bat going to take us all out, like this, right now?
Well, yes, as the bad bug seems to constantly evolve
Into something we can’t even begin to imagine, though
Whatever it is, we’re just never going to know exactly
How to take the bugger out, just like granny did years
Ago when she twirled that chicken around and around
Then placed the goofy neck out nice and straight so
No one would have to wonder, ever again, what some
Of us, but not all of us, might be salivating again as
By sundown, the table is set, parts are frying, and
We just hope everybody we knew yesterday will
Be knocking on the door, hoping there’s still a chance
That tomorrow will be another chance for another
Identical day that will help us to get through what
Some of us actually look forward to, something identical.

DeWitt Clinton is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater, and lives in Shorewood. Recent poems of his have appeared in Lowestoft Chronicle, The New Reader Review, The Bezine, The Poet by Day, Verse-Virtual, Poetry Hall, Muddy River Poetry Review, Across the Margin, and Art + Literature Lab. He has two poetry collections from New Rivers Press, a recent collection of poems At the End of the War from Kelsay Books, and a collection of poetic adaptations of Kenneth Rexroth’s 100 Poems from the Chinese in production from Is A Rose Press.