CHOSEN

by Linda Parsons

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

You, yes, you. On the porch glider of memory, 

thinking again of your grandmother’s grease-

stained kitchen and how she saved you. You, 

in the first snow of the year, the burdened photinia 

limbs, the night’s blue note. I mean you. You 

who’ve been griping and gnashing your teeth 

in the constant upheaval—not just our country’s 

bruised fist, but the world entire, its tectonics adrift. 

It was your idea, when the roll was called up yonder, 

to take up your pallet, to rise like Lazurus, 

his winding sheet of myrrh and aloe trailing behind. 

To say, Me, I’ll go. I’ll go to that time, that cliff 

and split sky, that rage of brother against brother 

against sister, unfriending right and left. 

Left from right. It’s my time. My time to be 

a lighthouse, to shine far and wide over veined 

stones and broken vows alike, though my heels 

bleed, my steps falter. My time to march 

on the winter streets and hold high my sign: 

God is watching you kill.

 

Remember 

your Ecclesiastes: Time and chance happen 

to us all. And what will you do with this time, 

this chance to sweep your beam along the rocky 

shoreline, to pull whoever outlasted the nor’easter 

back to breath? This is your time—to spend 

like a wastrel or shower the heavens with a gracious 

plenty. You engine of steam and plow. You 

shoulder to the squeaky wheel. You asked for it. 

You volunteered to help turn the tide 

and guide this mother home. 

 

Linda Parsons is the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, Tennessee. She is also the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and many others. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville. 

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE (TAYLOR’S VERSION)

by Diane Elayne Dees

Taylor Swift attends the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards. PHOTO: 

JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE

Publicly acknowledge your peers
and show pleasure in their creations.
Make little girls happy at every opportunity.
Everywhere you go, stock the food bank 
for a year, and send emergency money
to our states before the government 
can even fill out the forms.
Show women and girls how to take 
ownership of their own lives.
Show little girls that tears and rage
and poetry and making money
and red lipstick and ass-kicking
are all feminine pursuits.

Don’t cheat your vendors, defraud
your customers, or insult your fans.
Don’t incite violence wherever you go,
and don’t endanger the lives of others
because they are black, brown, female,
government officials, or journalists.
Don’t sexually abuse anyone,
don’t pretend you don’t know
anyone or anything connected to you,
don’t threaten people.

And do whatever it takes to guide 
us out of this Cruel Summer.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA

by William Marr

In the 1990s, the Italian authorities had to close the bell tower to the public and launched a competition for ideas to reinforce its structure and prevent it from collapsing, as the situation was critical. The first intervention, which consisted of adding lead counterweights to the structure, did not solve the problem, so it was finally decided to excavate the earth to reduce the slope of the tower and ensure its preservation. "The rescue of the bell tower allows us to celebrate the 850th anniversary and to appreciate the efforts of our ancestors in the arrangement of the monuments in the Duomo square," the president of the Opera Primaziale, the monument's managing body, Andrea Maestrelli, told the local press. —Euronews, August 8, 2023

 

descending from the tour bus

we knew right away

that the earth was gaining

in its wrestling match

with the sky

 

to help maintain the balance

we all raised our hands

in front of the lenses

strenuously trying to prop up

the tower

 

but the local guide shouted at us

our exertion threatened his Money Tree—

it must neither be allowed to fall

nor be straightened up

William Marr, a Chinese American poet, has published over 30 collections of poetry and several translations.  His recent bilingual (Chinese/English) books of poetry, A Dreamless Night and Every Day a Blue Sky, are available on Amazon. 

AN IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY

by Austin Alexis

Immigrant children at Ellis Island gather around a toy horse in 1920 (NYC Vintage Images). Source: The Atlantic

A sea

she will paddle upon

or attempt a desperate swim in

while hoping to shoo off sharks.

A mountain 

she will hike through,

braving mudslides,

slicing through brambles.

A desert

she will trek across,

stepping over rattlesnakes

as she swallows fear of starvation

and guides her children

to reach milk and honey

even if the milk is sour,

the honey bitter.

Austin Alexis is the author of the full-length collection Privacy Issues (Lotus Press/Wayne State University Press) and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, Paterson Literary Review and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Poetry Pacific (Canada) and The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly.