MARKING TERRITORY

by Nan Meneely

No offense to the lions and tigers, I swear,

Who mark what is theirs with a wee.

Our cretin, his g(u)ilt and his name everywhere

(No mammal more worthy than he),

Tags his kingdom with arches and, hubris untamed, 

Prints his features on banners unfurled,

But his big baby claim to his rivals' domains

Has him peeing all over the world.

Nan Meneely retired to the relative peace and beauty of Connecticut after 20 electric years with FEMA. Her first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. Her work has been both accepted and rejected by The New Verse News.

UPON LEARNING THAT THE UNITED STATES VOTED AGAINST

the United Nations resolution designating the trafficking
of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity.”

 

by Cecil Morris

 

 

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) March 25, 2026 — The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans "the gravest crime against humanity" and calling for reparations as "a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs." The resolution also urges "the prompt and unhindered restitution" of cultural items—including artworks, monuments, museum pieces, documents and national archives—to their countries of origin without charge. The vote in the 193-member world body was 123-3, with 52 abstentions. Argentina, Israel and the United States were the three members voting against the resolution. The United Kingdom and all 27 members of the European Union were among those that abstained.

 

 

I think of Macbeth fresh from murdering his king,
his hands still badged with royal blood
and Macbeth asking why he could not say Amen,
could not call God’s blessing to himself.
Of course, even my least interested student knew
that answer: guilt. Guilt for what he’d done.
I think of my teenage daughter denying evidence
of some minor transgression, thinking, I guess,
that if she herself did not say it then it could not
be true. I think of her at 2 when we played peek-a-boo
or at 3 when we played hide-and-seek
and she thought she became invisible behind
a curtain even though it didn’t cover her shoes.
Even now, a 160 years after the 13th,
are we still Macbeth, tongue-tied by an inherited,
collective guilt? Or are we the teen who thinks
well, we didn’t know, it wasn’t even illegal then,
and what about the Holocaust or the genocide
in Armenia or litany of other horrific things?
Why can’t we just say Amen, just say yes
it was a grave crime? Oh, there’s the statement
about reparations, how they’d be right,
a remedy, if you will, for historic wrongs.
There’s the rub. Who’d volunteer to pay a fine
for great-great-great-great-grand-country’s mistake?
Wipe the evidence from your face and books,
and never admit what can be denied.

 

 

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) came out in 2025. He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California. 

A BLOT UPON THEE

by Zumwalt

 

 

 

 

"One prominent House Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said Monday afternoon that he had reviewed the unredacted documents [of the Epstein files] and saw  'tons of completely unnecessary redactions... I saw the names of lots of people who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons,' Raskin said." —CNN, February 10, 2026

 

 

What Blindness now doth mark this stream of text,
Where Blame falls dark, and we are left perplexed.
The blurred distinction between right and wrong—
The weak are blistered by the brazen strong.
The blundered records, bleached of wealthy name
Won't bear the Guilt, now blotted free from shame,
While those who bled a trail of broken trust
Are bluntly bared, the others cloaked with dust.
What blatant gall to hide the rich man's Sin,
To shield in blacked-out lines the wolves within,
Now battered, those who bear no Stain at all—
What Blight is bred in this corrupted hall?
There is no Justice, just the shattered teen,
Her blank Betrayal b-l-i-n-k-i-n-g on our screen. 

 

 

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, and was recently nominated for Ink Sweat & Tears "Pick of the Month." 

LETTER TO CRAZY HORSE

by Roxanne Doty

Left: A 1934 sketch of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) made by a Mormon missionary after interviewing Crazy Horse's sister, who claimed the depiction was accurate. —Wikipedia. Right: The Native American activist Leonard Peltier—convicted in 1975 for the killings of two FBI agents—was released from federal prison on Tuesday after Joe Biden commuted his sentence at the end of his presidency in January. In a statement, Peltier said that he was “finally free!” —The Guardian, February 18, 2025

Innocence is the weakest defense
Leonard Peltier says, it has a single voice,
can only deny, while Guilt has a thousand voices
all of them lies. They said
you were resisting imprisonment
when George Crook’s military guard killed
you with his bayonet. Some call this murder
but language and land prevail.
 
The old medicine man says,
You could make a lovely mountain
into a great paperweight.
Can you make the monument to you
in the Black Hills into a wild, natural mountain again?
 
Today, I see people still longing
for justice and facing defeat,
the lust for stolen lands
still raging, white settlers still rampant.
I hear the thousand voices of guilt.
 
We all need your spirit now, Crazy Horse,
you, the last great figure of resistance
who inflicted defeat on the powerful.
And we need the patience and wisdom
of Leonard Peltier, finally free.

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by William Stafford’s “Report to Crazy Horse.” Italicized quotations by Leonard Peltier are from Prison Writings, My Life is My Sun Dance.

Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel Out Stealing Water was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30. 2022. Her first poetry collection was published by Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024. She has published stories and poems in Third Wednesday, Amethyst Review, Cloudbank, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, Cagibi, Espacio Fronterizo, Ocotillo Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, The Blue Guitar, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, The New Verse News, International Times, Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion-The Dallas Review.

COMPASSION FATIGUE

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

cartoon by David Sipress

what is not in the news

is the invisible… 

those who change the channel

when the nightly report begins

announcing again the pop pop pop pop

and showing the single file

scurry under the hovering helicopter eye

this is not unconcern

but rather

the bone weary dailyness

hearing another father’s choking voice

seeing another mother’s blank stare

more children, more bodies riddled with lead

please 

feel no guilt 

for you want to honor their story of stolen presence

when you listen and watch

yet tonight 

you just can’t

and the news won’t tell you—

be kind to yourself in your sorrow

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, US Catholic, Commonweal, The Christian Century, Presence, Prism, and several anthologies. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. “Chavah’s Daughters Speak,” five poems from her book she: robed and wordless set to music by James Lee III, has been performed in New York City and Cleveland, Ohio.

MOURNING IN AMERICA

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

I.
no vaccine for this condition

ever present     sucks out life
      soul      erases biographies

one knee
8 minutes, 46 seconds
   Momma, I love you

II.
lifeless daughters, sons of God

our grief       anger
   guilt       emptiness

ache    
to resurrect
     to re-breathe you

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations at state, diocesan and national levels. Her work has appeared in several Old Mountain Press anthologies, Poetic Portions anthology, Soul-lit Spiritual Poetry, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Panoply Literary Zine, Snapdragon Journal, Whirlwind Magazine, Kakalak, Red Clay Review and Gyroscope Review. Five poems were turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham.  Her chapbook Being Kin (CreationRising Press) was published in 2019.  She lives in Durham, NC.

LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM

by Mickey J. Corrigan

What about the women who think
they are shore birds in startled flight
over the unruffled sand, eggs nestled
in jagged rock crevices slap-fed
by the bathe and bash sea?

Don't blame the shoreline, comfortable
in the lap and suckle, the eating away
the sloping of high grass dunes
hillcrests ever flattened by time
and growth spurts of starlit cities.

What about the clotted clapboard graves
narrow streets, neighborhoods blissful
in their ignorance, their pancake morning
sameness, their white cream frosting
smothering rich cakes of desire?

Don't blame the strong men barging
onto the ark, boarding forcefully
pillage in their knife eyes, hammy fists
full of weaponry, double strapped bullets
draped across broad hairy chests.

What about the meat-and-potato talk
in the pubs and pastel living rooms
all our fears shrunk to shadows
blued under hot white moons
gibboning in a lurching black?

Don't blame the suck and slur of the tide
days trailing by, forgetting themselves
in the flutterkick to a shared illusion
spoon-fed to us in flying dreams

the windswept sky like a blue door
that will swing shut behind us.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. 

HE TOO

by James Cronin




Who could expect they’d get it right,
as if the crimes weren’t crimes before?
From couch to floor, to any site,
each claims she chose, and asked for more.

Rich men, power, office as hotel,
the scene was set so long ago.
Does beauty lust for age? In hell.
Some drugs, of course, to make it go.

Novice trust sets a satyr’s ease,
then a forceful push to get his fun.
From “seduce” to “rape,” a few degrees,
too dark to tell when all is done.

Moguls, solons and comics may
regret they let their morals skive.
Shame might not be enough today,
when indictments and the cuffs arrive.

The days of grace, of men to men,
are gone thank God and here’s the pitch:
found guilty, you’re in jail and then,
whose turn is it to play the bitch?

James Cronin facilitates a course in the art of the short story for The Second Half, a lifelong learning institute in Fall River, MA. His first book of poetry World of Shadows is scheduled to be published this summer by The Poetry Loft Press of Cranston, RI.

ME TOO WHO

by Rebecca Street

How can it be a little lass of nine

Should feel such guilt and fear the threat of hell?

Too young to name his cruelty a crime

Too damaged and coerced to ever tell.

Me too

Time’s up

So what

Shut up

Rosy cheeked girl who works to find a way

For her sweet child to have a better life

Could not afford to lose her job that day

Besides her mother’s cousin is his wife.

Me too

Time’s up

So what

Shut up

The bashful boy with pimples on his face

Could run like lightening so his coach did say

This dear one’s "yes sir" followed every race

With sleepless nights and silent tears by day.

Me too

Time’s up

So what

Shut up

Will justice for the few forever reign

While numerous nameless suffer such pain?

Rebecca Street is the author of You Can Help: A Guide for Family & Friends of Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Assault and the online program for survivors You Are Not Alone. She is also an actor and a poet. She has addressed both lay people and professionals at a wide variety of venues including the NY Office of Mental Health, the Fordham Graduate School of Social Work, and the University of CA., Santa Barbara. On April 4, she will be the keynote speaker for "Take Back The Night" at The Juilliard School.

COMPLICIT: WORD OF THE YEAR 2017

by Jacqueline Jules

“As we look at the cultural and political landscape, we ask:

‘What does it mean to be complicit in 2017?’” —Dictionary.com

A word with soft syllables,
like a snake slithering in the grass.
Silent but deadly.

Who gets bitten if I step away?
If I wait for someone else to speak?

The president’s daughter
said she didn’t know
what the word meant,
denied wrongdoing.

We can’t be guilty
if we do nothing.

Right?

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum, Stronger Than Cleopatra, and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, The Rising Phoenix Review, What Rough Beast, Public Pool, and Gargoyle.

MIERCOLES NEGRO

(Black Wednesday)

by Thor Bacon 

So is the baker guilty, too,
who baked the loaves
served at the Last Supper?

Am I also tinged
if I sell diamond earrings
to an adulterer?

And, if I stay quiet,
not sure what to say exactly —
am I party to the flames and rubble?

The election will solve nothing.
Still, we have to vote.
Still, we have to ask each other, "Why?"

And today, Wednesday the 19th, I hear
shouting and weeping down the crowded caminos
of my virgin's heart.

Thor Bacon is an American poet whose work has appeared most recently online at International Times, and in print with The Aurorean.  He resides in Michigan, working as a goldsmith.

BURN THE WITCH

by Catherine McGuire

The arena turned in a moment
to a lynch mob, frothing, hanging
on the words of a “prosecutor” who parodied
his job for a spotlight and cheers.
Guilty! raged again and again – the crowd
inflamed by sentences honed
to razors – the truth be damned! –
She’s a witch and we know it – Salem shadows
spiraled up from the floor, ashy, dark,
trying to voice their warning. But blood
boiled up, blotted out reason,
the hounds of hate set loose,
howling for a victim. On the podium,
sneering, the man disgorged his bitter fury –
passed over twice! – and clawed back
the adulation he knew was his.


Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for ecology and our planet's future. Her first full length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, will be published in October 2016 by FutureCycle Press.

NO CLOUDS LEFT TO COVER US

by Allie Long

Into orbit around Jupiter. Lockheed Martin built the Juno spacecraft for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Photo credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin via UniverseToday.

The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. —NASA explaining how the space probe Juno was named.

Jupiter covers his infidelity
with thick clouds, masquerading

behind an entire atmosphere
as something we’d want to discover.

He surely looks at Earth and laughs
at the colorless vapor that veils

the outlines of land and sea, at how
we are tilted in constant bow to the sun.

We cannot cover our sins like a god.
The façade of our planet is cracked

like the skin that surrounds a laceration,
framing a picture for the Universe

of our uniformed men sweeping our black
bodies away in a flood of blood-spatter

while we choose to read lists of their crimes
as eulogies. They must die a thousand times

on our televisions and a thousand more behind
the eyelids of loved ones. We turn blue fabric

purple, soaking it in the holes our bullets dig
into the men who resemble killers. We are unable

to grant that lungs still rise and fall below
badges, that no offense can hide a dead body

as it rots without reverence in the street,
that no cloud can clot bullet wounds.

Soon, Juno will peer through Jupiter's curtain
and crash to her death on his surface,

and we will finally be forced to recognize
that a guilty man never becomes the victim.

Allie Long is an economics and English double-major at the University of Virginia. Her poetry appears in Ground Fresh Thursday, Yellow Chair Review, and Bird's Thumb.

KALASHNIKOVS

by B.Z. Niditch

MIKHAIL Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47 rifle, told the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before his death that he felt guilty for those it killed. -- news.com.au

The arms trade
profits at the world's
children's expense,
who merely ask for love
or just a chance at living
now with no arms or legs
begging for food,
body parts now seen
on technicolor screens
with scars on skin
that cannot be erased
or some without remains
only the memory
of historical or geographical
error of being existentially
at the wrong place or time.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.