The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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I have crossed you, taken your job. I am
a non-divine force, succubus to wholesome
American households. Here to clean you out,
me, a spick-and-span spic. May your ears
fester with my yips and squeals after you latch
the cage. Ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay. But ah,
what an angel Earth once was to all creatures,
prey and non-prey. And your prayer is open carry
and semiautomatic. Build a wall, build a fire.
In your man cave we can safely un-selfie
one another. Mira, mister, I’m hungry,
a rude corpse. The zombie Uber you never called.
I will rise from wherever you toxic-dump me.
Darling, I’ve come to oxycontin you.
Guillermo Filice Castro is a queer immigrant from Argentina. His most recent chapbook is Mixtape for a War from Seven Kitchens Press. He lives in New Jersey.
Xavier Usanga was about 15 hours away from a new school year as a second grader at Clay Elementary when he was fatally shot Monday, August 12, 2019, while standing near an 18-year-old who was also shot but survived. The 7-year-old’s death makes him the 11th area child killed in a shooting since June. About half of them attended St. Louis Public Schools, said Kelvin Adams, superintendent of the St. Louis Public School District. In the above photo, provided by Alderman Brandon Bosley to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Xavier Usanga is pictured during a LINKS St. Louis Neighborhood event in Hyde Park in July 2019.
A child smiling,
A child so new.
He came out to play,
Not ready for death.
Not "in the confines
Of his home, or "on
A street not known
For violence." How
Is it we don't choke
Speaking these words?
How is it a part of us
No longer dies at
The death of a child?
We dare not ask.
George Salamon lives in St. Louis and has most recently published in Dissident Voice, Proletaria, The Asses of Parnassus, and TheNewVerse.News.
This time folks in a Walmart in El Paso are unlucky
I listen to the hourly recap while I wrap my ankle—seems I rolled it
in the process of loading the U-Haul
Tomorrow I’ll drive the 15’ truck 300 miles from West Virginia to almost safe
suburbs 9 miles outside Philadelphia
9 miles is the space I’ve been driving strangers all over this mad college town
more than a year now
I’ll drive strangers in the new space, too, though I hope to avoid airport staging
in spite of the possibility for decent fares
While packing, I called the $20 Walmart coffee table and the $8 Walmart shoe rack
my “staging area”
We carried that staging area to the trash earlier
Now on NPR they’re talking about a staging area outside Walmart—
families trying to find each other after the terror
forced upon them by an active shooter
I don’t know if they’re still putting children in cages at our southern border but
the images I’m conjuring are horrific enough
A man with a gun enters a public space to disrupt as many lives as he can
Another man with a gun takes a child from his father’s arms because
he says the father failed to properly change a diaper on their endless journey
Remember when we started to build that bridge to nowhere? It’s hard
to think badly of a bridge when for years now there’s been so much talk of walls
After unloading the U-Haul at the new place I’m going to get a few necessities
at the local Walmart
I’m going to go because America gets back on the horse
even if we forget what caused us to fall
I’m going to go to Walmart because it can’t be like Aurora
when the cashier at the A-Plus says I look a little like the shooter and I don’t
enter a movie theater for the next four years
I’m going to go to Walmart because sometimes
going to Walmart isn’t about class or flag-waving or quality or luxury
Sometimes Walmart means America and we just have to nod and take a knee
Mark Danowsky is a writer from Philadelphia and author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees(NightBallet Press, 2018). His poems have appeared in Eunoia Review, Gargoyle, The Healing Muse, Kestrel, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. He’s Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.
There is no man on the moon tonight.
And it is there, golden and full. I spot it above the empty golf course.
And one can watch as many footage hours of the first mission to the moon
as one desires, but they are never going to return.
Instead, they’re still debating our race. Instead, they’re still defining America.
It’s interesting to learn that Armstrong had to pilot over a cluster of boulders
to find a fitting landing spot. It’s interesting to know
that the astronaut suit-makers did not appreciate Buzz’s leaping, kicking up moon dust.
And it’s fun to think of Collins circling the pale satellite like a giant man-embryo inside a metallic uterus. But there is little room to be dumbfounded anymore.
Everyday, the internet steals the soul. They try to make us believe there’s an alternative to coal.
Last week, Manhattan went dark. Just like in 1977. They tell young students they don’t need to able to sit in a class anymore and to stay home and learn on an online school.
They sell a long gun that can take out a small, midwestern town.
Our President is a clown-salesman, a weaponized being sent into the hallowed chambers of a static, broken government. He is a human improvised explosive device with a ticking mouth.
People still die in floods in the South.
Yet, they project the Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument,
our country the equivalent of a middle aged man recalling his high school football victories with rancid nostalgia, while his children have moved clear across the country to get away from his unpredictable temper and judgement.
The Russians are still rivals.
Sputnik spins around the world yet.
Does time even really happen to us all?
Did Armstrong really come up with that poetry about one small step?
Such a quiet, distant man,
a man on the moon, three hundred thousand miles away, knowing just what to say
and how to say it—with that pause, that dead air between the word man
and the word one.
Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
The following statement by Jeremy Richman’s widow, Jennifer Hensel, was posted at the GoFundMe page created by Jennifer’s brother. It is the only authorized fundraising site for fundraising for Jennifer and her children. “Side by side since 1991, Jeremy and I walked a path of deep friendship, marriage, and parenthood. As you may know, our first born, our beautiful Avielle was murdered at Sandy Hook school in 2012. In 2013, we founded the Avielle Foundation to honor her life. Our second daughter, Imogen (4 years) and son Owen (2 years) brought a renewed sense of joy and hope to our lives. Imogen and Owen are imaginative, fun, caring, sweet, curious and RIDICULOUSLY loving. They are a true reflection of Jeremy and me. The work of the Avielle Foundation is meaningful. But my champion and the love of my life is the person who had every tool in the toolbox at his disposal. He succumbed to the grief that he could not escape. Now we also honor Jeremy through the continued work of our foundation. Our family is our true legacy. To parent our children without my champion shatters my heart and I will love my best friend forever. I am grateful for your support and donations.”
You’ve lost your daughter,
Now your husband,
To the dark reaper
Who sowed death
Among the kids and staff
At Sandy Hook,
Sure as if he’d pulled
The trigger on Jeremy.
Who knew that more years
Would pass than Avielle’s age
Before Jeremy himself
Would pass on from
The hopelessness here
To wherever—we can
Never know—but life
Without Avielle,
In an uncaring nation
Of gun Nazis
Allowing no progress
On gun laws,
Was just too hard
To bear? And we now
Pray for you, Avielle’s mom
And Jeremy’s widow,
We pray for you.
George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations and published or edited twenty-two poetry books.
A student from Gary Comer College Prep school poses for a portrait after Pastor John Hannah of New Life Covenant Church lead a march and pray for our lives against gun violence in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., May 19, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
Like what is it about
the culture inside our schools
that breeds these
hard kernels of contempt?
How is it a broken heart
inspires a lockdown shooting?
Why does bullying
lead to a beating with bullets
instead of fists?
Have we equipped our children
with a fully automatic
version of intolerance?
Have we taught them
life is so short
it starts with a bang
and ends with
an empty casing?
David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.
Presidential porn star spangled banner
apple pie, boner pills to manifest destiny
fake news erected in pleated khaki pants
fat cats and skinny puppies do the electric slide
in the land of semi-automatic gunfire and fentanyl laced dreams.
Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, husband, dad, and good mojo seeker. Google 'scott kaestner poetry' to peruse his musings and doings.
School had not started and students at Rancho Tehama Elementary were still in the playground when staffers first heard gunshots in the neighborhood Tuesday morning, said Richard Fitzpatrick, superintendent of the Corning Union Elementary School District. “The bell had not rang, roll had not been taken, when the shots were heard,” he said. Staffers immediately began to lock down the campus, rushing students into classrooms and under desks when the gunman came around the corner toward the school, Fitzpatrick said at a press conference Tuesday. The gunman crashed through the front gates of the school in a white pickup truck traveling at high speed, he said. Authorities say this was part of a larger rampage through the rural community in Northern California that left five dead and 10 wounded. The man came out of the truck with a semiautomatic rifle and ran into the center of the school’s quad and began firing at windows and walls as staffers, including the school’s custodian, rushed students into classrooms under gunfire. One student was shot in a classroom while under a desk, Fitzpatrick said. That student was said to be stable. —LA Times, November 14, 2017
The gaze from Sant’Eustachio Il Caffe
reveals a stag atop the nearby church,
a crucifix sprouting between its antlers.
Stirring my cappuccino I think of Hubertus,
as Eustace is called in Belgium,
the hunter who saw his vision of the crucifix
in the forest of the Ardennes,
and asked his would-be victim
what he might do.
The stag counseled good hunting,
trimming the ranks of the herd.
I think of the X’s spray-painted
onto the carcasses of “fallen” deer
in my neighborhood,
marked for hauling away.
Fallen perhaps over-used as a euphemism
for dead soldiers, as if they had merely
stumbled, breaking rank in procession
towards the enemy at Waterloo,
Khe Sanh, Kanduz.
In my America gun cases beckon,
designer bags hold personal revolvers,
video games tally the number killed
for the game player with his joy stick,
the one who flunked anger management
and blamed the schoolmates who mocked
and bullied him, who now focuses his aim
on the heads of children in the crosshairs.
Inside the church lie the bones of Sant’Eustachio.
Painted onto the dome above, the wings
of the Holy Spirit, flung wide.
Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, a graduate of Stanford, with an MLS from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Off the Coast, String Poet, Arroyo Literary Review, The Curator, Adanna, Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine, The Midwest Quarterly, Edison Literary Review, California Quarterly, The Sand Hill Review, and Cider Press Review. Two of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where she is a member of the U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative, and since 2015 has been part of the Cool Women Poets critique and performance group, which gives readings in venues throughout New Jersey.
Carrie Matula hugs a woman who lost her father in a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017. Matula said she saw and heard everything as it happened from the gas station where she works just a block away. (Nick Wagner / American-Statesman via AP via Yahoo!)
Some were on the sidewalk,
some were at a concert,
some were in a needless war,
some were in a laboratory cage,
some were living in a house of rage and sadism,
some were in a church,
some were in a car when the police showed up,
some spent their lives in tiny, cramped pens,
some were at school,
some were in a house with monster parents,
some were raised only to be on your plate
at the prayer breakfast, where you begged for peace.
All longed for freedom.
None wanted pain.
All wanted to live.
Diane Elayne Dees’s poems have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women’s professional tennis throughout the world.
They didn't see nothin' yet,
Those cowboys and cops
Behind the O.K. Corral in Tombstone
Back in the wild and woolly West in 1881
When the Earps and Doc Holliday
Exchanged 30 bullets in 30 seconds
With the Clantons and McLaurys
And three men lay dead in the alley
Behind the corral that defines our legends
Of guns, guts and glory.
Shucks, three dead doesn't even classify
As a mass shooting these days.
You've got to kill four for that, and that's peanuts
In the year 2017, when by June 16
We've recorded 6,592 dead and 13, 635 injured by gunshot,
With 302 children age 11 and under among them,
Some hit in the 156 mass shootings so far.
In Tombstone, back in 1881 you were supposed to
Check your gun at the sheriff's office or the Grand Hotel,
"To control the violence," True West Magazine tells me.
Now the sheriff is busy hunting the undocumented
And the Grand Hotel has moved to a suburban mall.
this week last week next week
52 weeks of stories
wherever the culture of lead will surface
out the state of rights
out of the counties called bullets
out of the senseless sensibility
where children shoot children . . .
in the home or last week in a car
it is the cult of the wild west
with its worship and fear
that any moment
these precious metals will be taken
and then the altar will be stripped bare
the senseless sensibilities will continue
the shrill voices of rights will sing on
the worship and fear will last
in 52 weeks of stories
about a disease with no cure
Sister Lou Ella Hickman was an all-level teacher and a librarian. Presently she is a freelance writer and a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been widely published in numerous magazines. One of her poems was published in the anthology After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Her first book of poetry she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released in the fall of 2015.
Our son Christopher and six others
are dead. Our family
has a message for every parent out there. You
don’t think it will happen to your child
until it does.
Chris was a really
great kid. Ask anyone
who knew him. His death has left
our family lost
and broken.
Why
did Chris die? Chris died
because of craven,
irresponsible politicians
and the NRA.
They talk about gun rights.
What about Chris’s right
to live? When
will this insanity stop? When
will enough people say,
‘Stop this madness, we don’t
have to live like this.'
Too many have died.
We should say to ourselves:
‘Not one more.'
Children killed by gun violence since the Newtown shooting. From top: Alton and Ashton Perry, Leonard J. Smith Jr., Aaron Vu; Middle: Trashawn Jaylen Macklin, Tiana Ricks, Mia Lopez; Bottom: Antonio Santiago, Jaiden Dixon, Madison Dolford. Image source: NBC News
That’s the number of once-living Innocent persons killed by gunshots In the year since Adam Lanza
Slaughtered 20 lambs and 6 shepherds At Sandy Hook School one year ago. Hard, and maybe futile, to make that
Number poetic. Say it: “11,460” And by the time anyone might read This piece, the number will be bigger.
That’s over 31 gun deaths per day, 114,600 per decade, or 10,000 More than the population of Green Bay, WI.
Adam Lanza’s name is immortal, His victims will soon be anonymous.
An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com
