A HOUSE IN GAZA

by Christopher Woods

Shutterstock file photo

In her mind is the locket

She thinks about so much.

Inside it, wrapped in blue ribbon,

A single strand of black hair.

Her firstborn.

She can’t stop thinking about it,

That hair, how it would be

To see it again, how she might hold it,

Go back to the house

That disappeared

When the bombing began.

If she could know this hair again

Her memory might rest.

 

But she won’t open the locket.

She can’t.

Maybe it’s been too long,

The hair might dissolve in the air.

Maybe birds would carry it away.

 

No matter how much she wants to

She will not open the locket.

She keeps it hidden,

Safe in a drawer, in a room,

Inside a house on a small road,

In a dusty village that no longer exists.

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show Twelve from Texas was performed in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. His monologues have also been performed at The Invisible Theatre in Tucson and the Pro English Theatre in Kiev, Ukraine. He has received residencies from The Edward Albee Foundation and The Ucross Foundation.

HURRAY FOR HAIRY SNAIL HUNTERS

by Jerome Betts

Search is on for the German hairy snail in London:

Conchologists and citizen scientists team up to seek

out endangered mollusc species along River Thames.

—The Guardian,November 24, 2025

  

Hush, hush, chortle who dares,

At people out looking for shells growing hairs!

They’re along by the Thames under pieces of  wood,

Only fingernail-sized, though they may have withstood

A break from old Europe worse than Boris’s Brexit

As Doggerland sank and sea rose to annex it.

So here’s to conchologists, clean-shaven or hirsute,

As they seek tiny molluscs encased in a fur suit!

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online.

PRESIDENTIAL, THE SCOWL SAYS IT ALL

by Peter A. Witt

The White House released a new version of President Trump's official portrait on June 2, 2025. 

Ah yes, the look of a leader—
if your idea of leadership
comes from reality TV reruns
and late-night Twitter storms.

Behold, the squint of gravitas,
or maybe just squinting
because truth is blinding.

The hair—a masterpiece of engineering,
suspended like disbelief,
defying physics and sincerity alike.

That suit? Tailored to say “power,”
but mostly says,
“Does this blue make me look important?”

The flag pin, a delicate touch—
as if it might distract from the fact
that this is more wax museum
than White House.

He stares, not with wisdom,
but with the intensity of someone
trying to remember
where he left his talking points.

Yes, this is a portrait of a man
who believes looking serious
is the same as being serious.

Presidential?
Sure, in the same way
wearing a goofy hat 
makes you royalty.

Peter A. Witt lives in Texas. His work has appeared in The New Verse News, other online publications, and several print volumes.

THE EMPEROR’S NEW SKIN

by Dana Wall

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

At night, the spray tan must fade
like sunset on sandstone, revealing
the soft animal beneath the mask—
a man who fears his own reflection,
who builds towers to touch the sky
but cannot reach his own heart.

I imagine him alone in gilt rooms,
counting retweets like rosary beads,
his hands small as a child's reaching
for validation through blue light.
The weight of inheritance heavy
as his father's disappointed ghost.

The paper-thin skin of his ego
requires constant tending, like
an endangered orchid that feeds
on camera flashes, on the roar
of crowds that fill the hollow
where love should have grown.

Even his hair tells a story—
how it coils around absence,
a golden nautilus shell hiding
the spiral of ancient fears.
Each morning, he reassembles
himself from fragments of pride.

I wonder about the boy who became
this avalanche of need, this hunger
shaped like a man. How many mirrors
cracked before he learned to replace
reflection with gold leaf, to mistake
attention for the warmth of touch?

Watch how he circles his wounds
like a leopard guarding territory,
how he marks everything mine, mine
as if ownership could fill the space
where meadowlarks should sing,
where truth should root and bloom.

Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood's agents and lawyers in perfect order. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College's MFA program. Her work in Bending Genres Journal, Mixed Tape Review, Witcraft, 34 Orchard, Eunoia Review, and Sykroniciti confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance. 

THE ASTRONAUTS SEEK TO REASSURE ME OF THEIR SAFETY

by Kathleen McIntosh

In a news conference from aboard the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said they had confidence in the troubled spacecraft to get them home. (NY Times, July 10, 2024)

 

 

I know in their place I would worry, seeing earth whole

––oceans, continents, poles––

and they themselves . . .

 

No, says NASA, the astronauts are not in danger, not stuck in space; they’re just doing some additional testing of the thrusters. But the questions continue, variations on a theme:  How confident are you that the Starliner will get you home safely? Butch and Suni are patient, though they have taken time out of their work for this. A reporter persists: Can you give us examples...  about the status of Starliner as far as being able to bring you back to earth safely?  Suni smiles, bats away his concern:  It’s great to be up here.  Her casual manner seems grounded in certainty; her wavy hair flies out from her head in all directions, wiry, Medusa-like––will we be turned to stone for questioning the logic of this optimism? 

 

I know about the vanishing rain forest,

melting ice sheets, spreading desert and yet,

how thrilling it would be to see it all as they do:

our one and only         so fragile         suspended out there... 

Horn of Africa,

Malay Archipelago,

Isthmus of Panama––delicate waist of America,

the poet called it. Hell on earth

say those crossing the Darien Gap     

from Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Ethiopia, India, China,

Democratic Republic of the Congo––

no, from up there I wouldn’t see the ant-like procession,

ragged, polyglot,

on any given day a planet worth’s sampling, citizens

of nowhere-on-earth-that-is-safe––

 

Yes, the astronauts confirm, they were able to watch the hurricane that became Beryl. The question gets more personal: What have you heard from your family? Was there any damage to your house?  Still smiling, they pass a mike back and forth between them or allow it to float free for a few seconds. Well, says Butch, we’ve got some downed trees like most people...  but thankfully we’ve got good church folks and good neighbors that are coming by... 

The news conference is coming to an end.  In Texas, concludes Suni, everybody pulls together. She launches herself into a weightless backward flip.

 

Author’s note:  NASA is now considering bringing the astronauts home on a Dragon SpaceX capsule, an option which would mean that Wilmore and Williams would need to remain on the space station for six more months. A decision about this will be needed, says NASA, by the end of August.

 

 

Kathleen McIntosh moved to New England following a peripatetic childhood.  She remained there, teaching language and literature for many years. Now retired, she lives in Connecticut where she writes poetry and serves on the Board of the Connecticut Poetry Society.

WE DIG TRENCHES

by Dmitriy Shandra

Translation by Denis Pinchuk and Bohdan Bondarchuk

 Servicemen of Separate 14th Regiment of Armed Forces of Ukraine dig a trench on the frontline in the Zaporizhzhia region. —The Guardian, November 7, 2023

We dig trenches

too tight to stand and walk in

we dig them nights and we dig them mornings

and evenings we dig them

we are swarm

 

There is death

we will tear out its eyes

cut out its heart

and strangle it with beautiful hair

 

Of

The girl from Mariupol

The girl from Irpin

The girl from Bucha

The girl from Gostomel

 

I promise

Dmitriy Shandra is a poet from Ukraine, Kyiv. He is a paramedic of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

BATHING BEAUTIES

by Karen Olshansky

I’ve always despised Martha Stewart,

her smug, “I can cook anything from scratch, 

decorate a table with weeds from my

yard,”and, her hints:

add a Lazy Susan to your fridge,

label everything,

make a triple fudge multilayered cake

while dictating an article on preventing mildew,

create a blender smoothie from 

home grown vegetables,

and, most importantly,

how to be the perfect prison inmate by teaching yoga.

My first swimsuit was a

two piece blue stripped beauty

with a skirt bottom.

I loved it, the only problem was that after a hard afternoon

of playing in the shallow river waters, 

my top would

drift upwards to reveal tiny nipples, my mother would say,

“just take off your top” but that was bad advice for a 

self conscious little girl.

at 16 I wore a one piece tank suit with four buttons on 

the front outlining my breasts,

my mother thought I looked wow, 

I felt that my thighs were fat.

At 26, I had a grown-up two piece with a skirt bottom.

After a dip in the ocean a much older male relative said,

“You are a fine figure of a woman” which made me 

feel slightly dirty, never did wear that outfit  again.

Now when I go swimming, I hide accordion skin,

vein lined legs, and falling body parts

by wearing a long sleeve caftan

that drapes towards my ankles.

Martha Stewart, who, at 81, throws her perfectly coiffed hair

around like she is making a Clairol commercial, dons white (white!)

bathing attire that shows

the full top half her breasts. 

My grandmother and her friends would go swimming 

unashamed of the blue streaks threatening to

escape from their legs, belly fat and breasts hanging low 

as ripe peaches on a tree.

They never heard of Martha Stewart.

Karen Olshansky lives in Marin County California with her husband and a well fed Koi named Pickle Face. She writes poetry in order to maintain her sanity. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Tuck Magazine and the anthologies Lingering in the Margins, Life in Ten Minutes, Unspoken, and The James River Anthology.

APPROPRIATION

by Judy Juanita

Sources: Khloé Kardashian claps back at criticism she holds daughter True, 3, ‘too much’, Khloe Kardashian Faces Backlash for Holding Baby True Dangerously: 'You're About to Break Her Neck!', The Kardashians' Legacy of Blackfishing and Appropriation, Kardashians and Cultural Appropriation | Penn State - Presidential Leadership Academy (PLA)

a kardashian butchers her face into

a kewpie doll with our lips

another apes us with silicone butt

mocking the slavemasters who auctioned us naked

inserting the middle finger to show our fertility

one nestles a brownbaby against that recast jaw

triggering envy hate monstrous anger

the reproach: you hold our brownbaby too much

she is defiant: we good

nah

you good

we not

Judy Juanita's poetry collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her poem "Bling" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] examines race, gender, politics and spirituality, as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." Winner of the Tartt Fiction Prize at the University of West Alabama [UWA], her short story collection The High Price of Freeways will be published by Livingston Press [UWA] in July, 2022. 

ALOPECIA

by Annie Cowell

My friend’s hair fell out.

Head, brows, lashes, body; every single hair.

One day she was lustrous, the next day naked. 

No explanation and no cure. Of course 

she will not die; there are 

far worse things to endure.

But for a while she could not face her world.

The daily chores, so simple and routine

became an endless round of hows and whys,

of sympathetic nods or stifled smiles.

And she felt lost, stripped bare;

her confidence destroyed.

And so she had her brows tattooed,

glued on false eyelashes,

bought wigs in different styles.

Found ways she could disguise the 

bald and brutal fact that

she would never feel, or look the same again.

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

UNCOMBABLE

by Melissa Balmain

Locklan Samples, diagnosed with uncombable hair syndrome (UHS), a rare genetic disorder of the hair shaft.

Uncombable hair? Well, of course it’s a thing:

we’ve arrived in uncombable times

with uncombable dangers, umcombable ills,

and uncombable thought paradigms.

 

Nuts with guns are uncombable (so we’ve been told)—

we are doomed to uncombable grief.

Piles of nukes are uncombable; superbugs too,

and decay in the Barrier Reef.

 

Our hatreds? Uncombable. Ditto our loves

of red meat, SUVs, fossil fuel,

and the systems permitting too few of our kids

to be nourished and housed and in school.

 

Yes, it’s all so uncombable: that’s what we’ll hear

as we fall and the rising sea foams—

unless our uncombable powers that be

can agree on some new fucking combs.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic poetry. Her newest book of verse is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books). @MelissaBalmain

TO EAT AND LEAVE THE NIGHT AN EMPTY PLATE

by Alejandro Escudé

A Donald Trump mural painted by street artist Hanksy on Orchard St. between Canal and Division Sts. on the Lower East Side. —NY Daily News Photo by SHAWN INGLIMA

In the blonde hair-skunk, in the barbershop of the mind
where the scissors raise hairs and pat them down
to demand what one wants not needs, the patience of a lion,
ingenuity of a roach, America with a Trump at its head,
the roach motel of the world, on his knees, a nice picture…
what he said to the young woman on t.v.,
a working class woman, it’s a nice picture, you
on your knees. Walled off in the mind, the soul
a mountain range of rage and nowhere to go but
to the streets where a young man bears the likeness
of North America on his bloodied face.
Do we recall the ISIS terrorist in his jeep
happy to drag five corpses? Five corpses
hanging from the moon, five corpses loaded like bullets
into the chamber of a gun, you fire-walker, you brandist,
you woman-basher, you human torture chamber,
you radioactive toad, you lacquered manipulator,
you burnt toast anachronism, you oversexed missile,
you Roman fop, you Towers burning, one man leaps
from a window of the World Trade, martyr man,
L-man, J-woman, moon feces in the shape of Trump,
in the shape of Mar-a-Lago, in the shape of Chris Christie,
piles in the cemetery where Lorca’s body lies forever
falling, never forgetting the artists’ Golgotha
in the rainstorm of human history where Trump’s foot soldiers
come to take Federico away at dawn as the rooster crows
as the apostle drowns his only son as George Washington
steps on the muddy bank as Hamilton takes aim at Burr
as Burr is borne again as the harrowing present grows wings
as the Star-Spangled Banner itself sings as the baseball field
turns to boner flowers or red licorice for wealthy trophy wives
as the hives of the rich enlarge as the states pronounce
themselves more significant than the next. Who comes
in the name of business rats? Who’s driven in Picasso
limousines? Who comes in chariots of designer
water bottles? Who comes in light-clouds Wall Street?
Who comes wagging an Arizona finger? Who comes
riding a marble horse? To eat and leave the night
an empty plate for children to weep, for the landlord
to tie our wrists down in the apex of our city streets
where the thief is arrested, shouting in stressed vowels,
as the helicopter shakes our house out of its safe slumber
and into another broken eight years of politicos and bankers,
eight years of sourceless regrets, eight years of teachers
blamed like communists, eight years of flogging
middlemen, eight years of clown-hog campaigns,
eight years of pornographic magazine covers, eight years
of cigars and neon caviar, eight years of swimming in pools
full of sheep semen. We, it began, we, it finishes, we.


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.

CORN ROWS

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Cornrow Braiding Originates in Africa: Like many other “Africanisms” in the new world, knowledge of African hairstyles survived the Middle Passage. Heads were often shaved upon capture, ostensibly for sanitary reasons, but with the psychological impact of being stripped of one’s culture. Re-establishing traditional hair styles in the new world was thus an act of resistance; one that could be carried out covertly. Photo source: Yarbrough, Camille. Cornrows. (with illustrations by Carol Byard). Coward, McCann & Geoghegan 1979 via Cornrow Curves.

“Those rows in the backfield, they need more water,”
Mom whispered.
“More cow dung,” Dad claimed.
I guess he meant more carefully manicured manure.

It’s not as if I am new to this old field.
It’s not as if I am a hired hand or something.

I have planted these rows before, seen rain
change to sunshine, change to rain.
I have seen floods like tears run through
old furrows between rows, between hard dust.
I have carefully tended these corn rows before.
I have even pictured them growing firm roots.


Lind Grant-Oyeye was born in Nigeria. She has work published in several literary magazines world wide and recently won the UHRSN human rights poetry award.

TO BE CONT'D

by Howie Good

Image source: X-laser

And despite
having hair
like a fantastic tree

and difficulty
getting on
and off
escalators,

New Year
arrives
the same way
light does,

remarkable
and beautiful
hymns
to the sun

simultaneously
burning
and bathing
everything.


Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press) and Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

HAIR AND THE HEALTH OF THE WORLD

by Kit Zak

the doctor clips
a few strands of my hair—
the adrenal fatigue test

I think about all that stresses
my gray head
            (not so many now that my children are fledged)
it’s their turn. Still

thoughts of hair seize my brain
            (not just the mineral deficiencies the test might show)
but candidate Trump’s coif
floating over his head
like a gold hairball
            (WHO has hair like that?)
Or like his devil-

interlocutor, Megan,
her honey tresses and
the talented stylists who make hair
their calling (card) and fortune.

Oh style
and the making of a President
while really
it’s Boeing and Lockheed Martin
dictating our future

such a  three-ringer
(circus): the Hawks’ war path
and the Republican guardians for coal plants

I stress
over the rising tides in coastal cities and
the killer storms (my kids in Norfolk and Miami)

American politics: it’s just entertainment and imagine
what the Europeans must think of our clowns

I await test results
and wonder about the cure


Kit Zak lives in Lewes, DE. She’s an activist who has published in various journals and anthologies.

FASHION

by Victor D. Infante

                                          For Geraldo Rivera

When I was 17
I bought a leather jacket
at a thrift store, affixed
a pair of handcuffs
to the shoulder,
and adorned the lapel
with pins from punk bands:
The Specials, The Clash,
Stiff Little Fingers.

I bought a tattered black trenchcoat
for $5 on a school trip to New York,
got home and paid a Russian woman
15 bucks to repair the tears. Didn’t mind
when the seams unraveled. Wore jeans
which were more hole than fabric.
Scribbled them with anarchy symbols,
clipped bits with safety pins.

My hair was neglect –
neither short nor long,
sometimes spiked,
briefly blue, except
that its natural darkness
resisted tinting. The dye
faded quickly. My hair
remained midnight.

When I was 17,
I couldn’t surf
but loved the ocean.
My skin was golden brown.

Strangers assumed
I was Mexican. Once
a cop half-jokingly
asked me for an ID
when I sold him Doritos
at the 7-11 where I worked.
I had a driver’s license, although
I didn’t drive. I had a history
of walking because I didn’t
own a car. I had a history
of violence, although I’m sure
the cop couldn’t tell that from
my identification, just shrugged
and returned it, and I never
spoke of it again, until now.

When I was 17, I had a problem
with authority. Had a mouth on me
but I wasn’t stupid.
Didn’t bait cops. In fact,
had sworn off fighting entirely.
Each punch seemed to wear
the seams of whatever it was
that held me together.
I was fraying like worn jeans
and a cheap trenchcoat.
I held myself  together
with pins.

When I bumped the crazy boy
while running to class, I took
his hits and kicks, until a teacher
pulled him off me; She had seen
the attack, and saw I didn’t fight,
so I didn’t get in trouble. The lesson:
Don’t fight. Don’t run.

When a jock took some childhood trauma
out on me by the lockers, I ate each fist until,
bored, he wandered away.
The urge to reply pulsed in my fists.
My legs ached with the urge to run.
I counted the cost
of what I was trying to prove.

I’m a long way from 17, now.
Haven’t faced a fight in years. Don’t
know what I’d do if I did. I’m paunchy,
my skin has paled from indoor living. Still
wear leather and trenchoats, wear
my hair long, but cops don’t look at me
funny anymore. Too old, too white.

I read the news about the boy in Florida
with pockets full of Skittles and iced tea;
who wore a hoodie walking home in the rain;
how the TV bobble-head says the hoodie
is as responsible as the gun,
as if damaged children never jump
those they perceive as weaker.

I wonder what, at 17, I would have done
if I’d faced what that boy did,
what words would have burbled
from that teenage cauldron
of combustion and leather.

I’m afraid I know the answer.
I would not fight. I would not run.

“Go ahead, coward — shoot me.
What the fuck are you afraid of?”


Victor D. Infante is the editor in chief of Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge , and the author of City of Insomnia, from Write Bloody Publishing.