AN UNDESIRABLE SILENCE

by Katy Z. Allen

I first noticed it early in the morning, isolated orange rays of light passing between the trees, the unusual color catching my eye, and so I went looking for the Sun, hidden from sight, and stopped abruptly when I saw it, not far above the horizon, a deep orange disc in the foggy, hazy, cloudy sky. Later, stepping outside for a second time, the light was so strange and eerie it gave me the shivers. I thought a storm was coming, maybe even a tornado, for the feel of the air was foreboding, so I checked all three weather apps on my phone, but none said anything about rain. The unease remained with me as I journeyed from errand to errand, wondering why I had heard nothing, although to be honest I hadn’t gone searching beyond my weather apps, but each time I stepped out of the car I felt that unease and when at last I arrived home and checked my email I saw a subject line, “The sky looks ominous and the air quality is bad. When will it end?” and that was when I learned—perhaps having had my head in the sand for longer than I should have—about the latest wildfires across Canada and Minnesota and the smoke from those fires arriving on our doorstep, so to speak, here in New England, and at last I understood, but all day I’d been feeling the silence of an explanation and only when it was so bad that everyone would notice did some brief and insufficient explanation arrive. I don’t have my head so far into the sand to be fully unaware that as long as we’re not seeing it, we’re not hearing it, we’re not experiencing it, the fact that the world is on fire is greeted with silence, even though it is a deep, dark  heaviness that breaks our hearts and weighs us down, no matter what the color of the Sun as it rises above the horizon in the morning.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, poet, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, former healthcare chaplain, and co-founder of a Jewish climate organization. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in print and online in such places as The New Verse News, Amethyst Review, The Bluebird Word, Cosmic Daffodil, The Soliloquist Journal and Art on the Trails: Number 9. She was awarded Honorable Mention in The Prose Poem’s 2025 Prose Poetry Competition, and her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing. 

IS TODAY ENGLAND AND CONGO OR JORDAN AND FRANCE?

by Jennifer M Phillips

The heat-dome trundles in like a tumbril

lugging 98 degrees. Men are laying asphalt

in the courthouse parking lot, smell

my drug of choice in childhood, tincture

of summer, intoxicating toxin of tar.

I want to summon the ice cream truck for them

with its salutary jingle and chill. Is it still

rumbling round on Willow Lane

in after-school hours? Or divert a mountain rill

to ripple between the marble columns

down the marble steps to cool their feet.

We share a co-misery of heat this July

that tamps our civic feuds and ardors. 

In the deep south, men in kilts stride the lobby

of the Grand Bohemian Hotel—of course they do.

This makes us unreasonably happy.

Boston is learning La Marseillaise,

dining on Fufu and practicing The Wave.

The possibility of joy backspins between us.

Even sad souls without Spanish

now know the meaning of pausa de hydratacion.

Hometowns are parade-ready,

balconies skirted in red, white, and blue.

The French assume it is for them, and why not?

World Cup is a feast for all fools and fans.

We all have sibling-skin in this game.

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). Two of Phillips' poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection is Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf & Stock).

HERE, NOW, ON WOBBLY LEGS

by Ronald J. Pelias

AI graphic by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

When our earth stands on its wobbly legs,

its ankles broken, knee ligaments torn,

its lungs black with soot and sorrow

 

when our chemicals pollute and poison,

our air and water contaminate our bodies,

and pandemics become commonplace

 

when the heat rises each day to record levels

and oceans rise above our frightened feet

faster than any barrier can be built

 

when fires eat the landscape, tornadoes

tear through our homes, and hurricanes

can’t be measured with current categories

 

when polar bears starve as the ice melts,

whales wash on shore with bellies filled

with plastic, and bees die from insecticide

 

when steadfast scientists, overwhelmed

by the enormity of earth’s physical deterioration,

insist on triage priority for our fading planet

 

when environmentalists warn and warn

and the politicians do nothing to change course,

to save, here and now, the blue ball we call home

 

when other celestial bodies are beyond

reach, dreams of a better future fade,

and hope washes away with the latest flood

 

when words fall on the deaf ears of deniers

and our earth collapses on its wobbly legs,

it might be helpful to offer a steadying hand.

Ronald J. Pelias has spent his career working with the fusion of performance, literature, and qualitative research methods. His most recent books are The Creative Qualitative Researcher (Routledge), Lessons on Aging and Dying (Routledge) and Writing and Other Familiar Things (Routledge).

MAJOR OAK

by Matthew Murrey

‘Most famous tree in the world’: Sherwood Forest’s 1,000-year-old Major oak dies —The Guardian, June 18, 2026. Photo by Mark Chelu via Shutterstock.

I hold a thousand years of rings—

laws turned crimes, outlaws

heroes: Robin Hood to Mangione.

I have remained here

as posts were sunk, fences strung,

and commons turned to cost.

I have known the sadness of air

heavy with smoke and all the burnings:

coal, humans, forests, oil and gas.

I know there are limits,

only so much time,

and all of us must perish.

I am stark. You can see

every gnarl, burr, split, and break

in the bark, scar in the wood.

I have not put forth one leaf

in this heat of twenty twenty-six.

You and I stand bare beneath the sky.

Matthew Murrey is the author of Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026) and Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019). He can be found on Bluesky and Instagram under the handle @mytwords.  

BOWSER THE RUNAWAY TORTOISE

by Cecil Morris

Slow and steady runaway tortoise crosses highway before Portland police rescue —Oregon Public Broadcasting. August 2, 2024

This summer’s heat beat his hard shell
like a hammer on an anvil,
and even the dandelions
were discouraged onto wilting,
so he decided he had to go
like OJ in his white Bronco,
slow-mo escape through open gate.
He thought he’d find a place both lush
and cool, the greens still succulent,
the dandelions crisp delight.
He thought Cool Hand Luke shaking it.
He hummed slow tortoise on the run,
felt the sun like cymbals on him,
heard passing cars as electric
guitars. In two days gone, he went
a mile and crossed the 205.
This was his flight, his fancy free,
‘til he was caught. Should we say found?
Now Bowser’s back in the yard,
a new tracker on his arm,
and wishing like all of us
to taste freedom one more time.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing or forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. He and his patient partner, the mother of their children, divide their year between the cool Oregon coast and California’s relatively dry Central Valley.

I WILL

by Xebat Bradost

translated from the Kurdish by Sarwa Azeez

Advocates for justice for Iraq’s Yazidi community say much more needs to be done 10 years on to address the brutal genocide it experienced at the hands of Islamic State militants on August 3, 2014, and its aftermath. On August 3, 2014, Islamic State militants invaded Iraq’s Sinjar province brutally attacking, killing, displacing, and enslaving hundreds of thousands of Yazidis in their ancient homeland in the country’s north. Ten years on, more than 6,000 women and children remain captives of the Islamic State with nearly 2,800 still missing. Many of the displaced still live in camps which Iraq says will close. —VOA, August 4, 2023. Photo: Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate, Aug. 11, 2014.

Keep walking 
towards the Zagros—
womb of the world,
find an oak tree there 
and rest my back against it.

I am weary of the desert's stuffy heat,
the weight of history's shadows—
stories of our mass killings,
our mass graves,
echoing through me.

I will rebuild the place 
where humans first met 
the peaceful face of God,
stretch my arms to the sun 
like those mountain mornings.

I will wear a white dress,
sit in front of a bonfire,
sing my holy Gathas
three times a day,
renew my vows 
to my wise Pir and my ancestors.

I will carry a sack full of plant seeds,
return to the Daitya River,
create streams from it
bury the seeds 
and rebuild my shattered life.

Xebat Bradost is a poet born and raised in Bashur, Iraqi Kurdistan. She writes in Kurdish, using both the Sorani and Kirmanji dialects. Xebat's work has been published in various local publications. She is the author of the poetry pamphlet A Hundred Coral Beads. Her poetry resonates with a deep sense of cultural identity and the pursuit of liberation.

Sarwa Azeez, a Kurdish poet, researcher, and translator, is a Fulbright alumna who earned her second master's in Creative Writing from Nebraska-Lincoln University. Her debut poetry pamphlet, "Remote," published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Sarwa's work graces numerous publications including Parentheses Journal, Writing for A Woman's Voice, The International Journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention, the other side of hope, Collateral, and more.

WARNING

by Jacob Richards

Dangerous air today
they say,
as if i could hold my breath
or turn back the industrial revolution.

Dangerous air today.
Forests burn all around us
old growth turned sunlight 
into sugars
a strange alchemy
now turning sugars into 
a carbon haze
and air quality alerts.

Dangerous air today.
An “I-told-you-so moment”
if only I could catch my breath.
Ed Abbey laughing–
he tried to warn us–
that we were falling and not flying.

Our fears lulled by PR firms 
and impossibly cheap plastic baubles.
“Please put your seat and tray into the full and upright positions.” 
Falling not flying.
Dangerous air today.
Red flag warning,
no burns,
red-eyes
impossible heat.

Dangerous air today. 
Can’t see the mountains–
might as well live in Kansas–
a long nothing.
Without mountains
how can one tell which way is north?
The cardinal directions
are all mashed potatoes–
featureless like a cartoon heaven–
a special kind of hell.

Dangerous air today.
People breath it in
and hate–
as if
that will clear the skies.

Jacob Richards is a writer, editor, activist, and wilderness guide in Western Colorado.

BENEATH THIS HEAT DOME

by W. Barrett Munn

AccuWeather, July 10, 2024

The red juiced rooster-shaped thermometer
crowed a whole octave above 100 again today.
Being forged from tin, feathers can’t be touched
unless a blister is accounted for by a salve
or some suitable soothing lotion.
In the evening beneath this heat dome,
I can see the Milky Way, and weigh in that
the temperature matches all 88 constellations,
explain how some are seen only in New Zealand

or elsewhere below the equator, forming 
constellations with names like Eridanus, Carina, 
Hydrus and Hydra, Octans and Pavo, and Sagittarius.. 
If only the smaller dipper would drip, or bigger tip 
over and spill; but the earth spins slowly, carefully, 
there's no spillage to share. In a few hours the world 
will turn, and we'll face the sun again; who knows 
how many more will die today beneath this dome, 
ferns left in the sun too long without being watered.

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature. His adult poetry has been published in Awakenings Review, San Antonio Review, The New Verse News, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Sequoia Speaks, and many others.

MY MOTHER IS SUING THE US GOVERNMENT FOR POISONING HER HUSBAND

by Bill Garvey

The government doubts his
cancer was caused by Camp Lejeune.
How do you know he was even there? they ask. 
We lived in New Bern North Carolina, 
she says, and every day Bill took the bus to Cherry Point 
or Camp Lejeune depending on his orders.
 
But even if he was at Camp Lejeune,
how do you know he drank the water?
It was hot, May to September 1952.
I'm sure he drank the water.
Were you with him at Lejeune?
Did you witness him drink the water?
 
Of course I wasn't with him. 
Of course I didn't witness... 
So for all you know he could have quenched
his thirst with an ice-cold Coca-Cola.
Or even a Ginger Ale. For all you know he was never 
exposed to the water at Camp Lejeune. 
 
I was madly in love with a Marine 
with crooked teeth and a cocky grin. 
Every day from May to September he came 
home to me seventy-two years ago,
clean and showered, so handsome 
in his crisp uniform, stepping from the bus 
 
into our tiny apartment, ready for me. 
Embracing me so close I forgot all about the heat. 
I'll always remember how good he smelled 
at the end of a long day, his hair still damp from 
your showers, not a whiff of Coca-Cola—
or even a Ginger Ale—on his lips.

Author's note: This is a true story. My mother is 93, still sharp, and she is suing the US government for my father's death from kidney and renal cancer in 1977, when the world was ignorant to Lejeune.

Bill Garvey's collection of poetry The basement on Biella was published in 2023 by DarkWinter Press. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Rattle, One Art, San Antonio Review, Connecticut River Review, Cimarron Review, The New Verse News, The New Quarterly and others.

ON THE HOWLER MONKEY DEATHS IN MEXICO

by Pepper Trail

Their howls were pure vowel, shapes
in the mouth of existence: Here, here, we are here,
bringing the forest to monkey-life,
vibrating the leaves of caoba and pochote,
the fruits of zapote, guarumo and nanche,
howls that named the family, organized the world.
 
Yes, there was always heat—but now
different, a heat that makes silence 
through the night, through the day,
loosens the baby’s grip, then the mother’s.
They fall from the trees like rotten fruit,
their open hands holding nothing but questions.

Author's note:  As a field biologist, I have shared tropical forests with these monkeys, have been awakened in the night by their prodigious howls, have marveled as they leap from tree to tree with their infants on their backs. The news that we have made the planet too hot for these fellow primates, superbly adapted to the heat and humidity of the tropics, is tragic and terrifying. How can we not understand that we are next?

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

NAPTIME ON A HOT OCTOBER AFTERNOON

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

These days we ask ourselves
If the weather we are experiencing
Is typical of the month and season
But we can no longer remember
What is normal
And what is extraordinary.

For example,
Is it usual for an afternoon
In late October
To be a cloudless 90 degrees?
Maybe not,
Yet I seem to remember 
Sweltering on after-lunch yard duty
In the days leading up to Halloween
When I was a kindergarten teacher
Back in the 1990’s.
But in “Big Time”
Thirty years is just a fraction of a nanosecond ago
So what does that prove
One way or another? 
.
Besides, we know what’s up,
We don’t need to ask.
We are cooking the biome
With carbon
And there seems to be so little will
In high places
To turn down the heat
That we could sauté the whole planet
In a couple of generations.

Plenty of people know this.
Plenty of people are banding together
To protest, to disrupt, 
To go mano a mano
With the perpetrators.
But it is a massive undertaking
And who knows if plenty will be enough?

The little dog and I are lying on the bed
Not discussing any of this
As we look out the window
Watching yellow leaves
Detach themselves from branches
And drift slowly downward
Through the honeyed autumnal light
As they always do
This time of year. 

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.

PLAY FOR THE TEAM

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

“Why Summers May Never Be the Same” The globe’s warmest months on record redefined summer for many Americans. —Julie Bosman reporting from Chicago, where it is 84 degrees in October, for The New York Times, October 5, 2023

Even though summer heat

Has stopped by to remind us

That we are living in precarious times,

Autumn is unmistakably upon us.

The light is liquid gold,

Long, lanky afternoon shadows 

Are sprawling all over 

The houses and gardens and lawns

Up and down the block,

And there is something about

The taste and smell of the air,

Something leafy and loamy 

And earthily aromatic.

Even though summer heat

Has stopped by to remind us

That we don’t have a whole lot of time left

To flip the climate narrative,

To turn the dire story on its head.

Seasons do still come and go

And will keep doing so

If we are smart enough

And brave enough

And passionate enough

And organized enough

To resist the despoilers of earth and air,

Confiscate their piggy banks,

And stick the spoiled kids back

In their play houses and their little red wagons

Until they can learn

To get with the program

And play for the team.

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.