DETROIT DISPATCH

by James Schwartz

Among the declassified documents dump

Via War.gov/UFO,

A curious 1955 communication 

Between the feds and 

Detroit Flying Saucer Club,

Transmitting messages 

From extraterrestrials,

Calling humanity 

"Left behind" and

"The lowest life form of

Universal existence"

Which our current 

News cycle confirms.

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections, most recently Amish Alchemy (Alien Buddha Press, 2026) and Poems (with Sourav Sarkar, 2026).

HOW DO YOU SURVIVE A WAR?

by Bruce Black

 

 

GIF by Glen Le Lievre

It’s the stories that you don’t read 

in the news that break your heart.

The old dog who can’t make it to the safe room

in the one minute you have to get downstairs.

The young children who blow out the candles on their

birthday cakes in the darkness of bomb shelters.

The couples whose weddings are held as missiles explode 

overhead, bride and groom weeping in joy and sadness.

Life, I’m told, goes on in wartime but the war

changes the way you live your life.

Love still exists but hides in the bomb shelter

with you in order to survive.

Kindness still exists but stays out of sight

while the missiles are falling.

Hope huddles under an overpass or in the shelter of underground 

stations where it can breathe and show itself again.

How do you survive a war without losing the ability to love,

to show others kindness, to safeguard and preserve one’s humanity?

Even when you live miles away from the war zone

and can’t hear the bombs exploding.

Even when you can only read about them or watch them fall

on the news or in your Facebook feed.

How do you hold onto faith 

in the goodness of people?

How do you trust in kindness and love

to prevail?

How do you hope and believe—in spite of the bleakness

of the present moment—in a better future?

In a future without war? In a future of peace?

How do you survive a war?

Bruce Black received his MFA from Vermont College. He is the author of Writing Yoga (Shambhala) and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. His poetry, personal essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The MidAtlantic Review, The Amethyst Review, Write-Haus, Bearings, Super Poetry Highway, Poetica, The Lehrhaus, Soul-Lit, and elsewhere. He lives in Highland Park, IL. 

AI

by Katy Scrogin

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

let it do our loving for us
take it finally from our hands,
this vital stock of small gestures,
all these living little impositions
and bear them in our place

anything

anything

to keep us from those efforts
that made us who we were

Katy Scrogin is a Chicago-based writer and editor who also hosts the Plain Reading podcast. A Best of the Net nominee, her most recent work is featured at Divot, Variety Pack, and The Fictional Café. She can also be found at zwieblein.bearblog.dev and katyscrogin.wordpress.com.

LEFT TO PERISH

by Tricia L. Somers

This is a screenshot from the [WARNING!] sensitive video described in the poem.

This is the beginning

of the end of humanity 

At 11:30pm I logged 

onto my Instagram feed 

First clip 

from Motaz Azaiza 

They removed 

but he replaced it

Over one million likes 

"Fully engulfed tents"

means people burn alive 

I didn't cheat this time

I turned on the audio 

Someone yelling 

A man on the ground

kept raising his hand 

into the air 

Once, twice, again

slower each time 

No one to save him 

Innocence is not enough 

Just like all the teachers

and their students in 

over 500 bombed schools 

The end of all humanity 

begins with the end 

of humanity

Trish is out of L. A. Ca. where she lives with her Significant Other and some crazy cat or two. She debates and provides some kind of opposite viewpoint, to that of the cantankerous editor's, in the semi- annual print journal The American Dissident. Online poetry can be found at Rat's Ass Review, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. For a different perspective on current topics, please visit Bitch n Complain on Substack.

BLACK AND WHITE

by Donna Katzin

for Peter Magubane

Born in Johannesburg in 1932, Peter Magubane documented the brutality of apartheid and suffered from banning orders, solitary confinement and beatings as a result. From teaching himself as a boy with a Brownie camera, he went on to work for the influential magazine Drum and became Nelson Mandela’s official photographer. He died on New Year’s Day aged 91.  Photo: The Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976, when more than 15,000 children protested against an editct making Afrikaans the medium of instruction in black schools. At first, the refused to be photographed but Magubane said a struggle without documentation was no struggle and they had to show the world what was going on in South Africa. The students agreed and this picture was taken by Peter Magubane. —The Guardian, January 12, 2024

With shadow and light

you engrave enduring images

in our collective consciousness,

lend us your eyes as microscope 

that bores deep beneath the skin,

telescope that scans beyond the stars.

 

Broken bodies scattered at your feet—

one camera concealed in a milk carton,

another in a loaf of bread or Bible—

you chronicle histories of struggle,

reveal the beast that lurks within

and humanity that is possible.

 

Confined to solitary

blocks of cold cement,

you do not let them hold

or break your indomitable will, 

bequeath your hammering heart

to our beleaguered world.

 

You squint far beyond the time

you have seeded with your vision,

reclaim the radiance of rainbows,

splendor of the setting sun,

knowing, somewhere,

it will rise again.

 

Donna Katzin has served as the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest, a 30 year old non-profit organization that facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. In that capacity, she was privileged to meet and collaborate with Peter Magubane, and honor him. She currently co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners, which helps feed impoverished children and empower their mothers in Nicaragua. She also serves on the Board of the Fund for Community Change, as well as the Tikun Olam Commission of Reconstructing Judaism—working on reparations in the U.S.  A proud wife and mother, she is a contributor to The New Verse News and author of With These Hands—poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.

COSMOPOLITAN

by Catherine Gonick

Shirt available from TEEPUBLIC

When my father used the term for what we were

I didn’t know that cosmopolitan was code for Jew,

a proud but dirty word. I thought being rootless

was a good thing, that a cosmopolitan

was the being most at home in the world,

in cities and the wild, with people of every kind.

It was great to be an American, lucky to be born 

into my nationality, but humanity—that word

was the most important one. I breathed in

this idea from my native air, the mild sun and

comforting fogs that daily swirled about

the newly established U.N. in San Francisco,

and all who lived loyally around the Bay, beings

from multiple races and nations, religions

and tongues. Even for those excluded 

from the country club, the fraternity, good

neighborhoods and jobs, forced to stay

in ghettos, migrant fields, old cars,

beaten and imprisoned for wrong speaking, 

that lovely air was equally available and free,

a promise and a sign. From Athens to Berkeley,

the flowers of democracy seem to have asked

for kind climates in order to grow strong.

Wanted: Cosmopolitan gardener able to plant

new words, root fair practices, clean air;

not afraid to get hands dirty.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and the recently published Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate. 

SWING STATE

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Missy Mandel photo on Instagram via Pinterest.

Yard signs shimmy in November’s wind.

They only have to last two more days.

Our deer huddle as snow sifts over their backs.

There is something to see here: the way

they groom each other. No one is in charge.

They browse downed yellow leaves

then chew for hours against the fence, safe

from cars, dogs, the buck that moves through

like he owns the place. Like them, we want

to live out our destinies. To kiss each other’s

velvety ears and bank our spines together

for warmth.  The signs are red, white, blue;

the deer are almost invisible against the fallen

leaves, the pine needles.  If only human congress

could learn deportment from the deer. Winds

through the branches promise nothing. 

No party affiliation. Deer days will be the same. 

Simple. Without rancor.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske spends her time looking out windows, managing two nonprofits (Poetry Society of Michigan and Friends of Poetry in Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Kamala-zoo, as some call it), and hoping to meet Olive Autumn, the newest member of her family.

BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN

by Kim M. Baker

Written on the Occasion of Pride 2018

I had hoped to compose a new melodic poetic sonata to all my sisters and brothers
Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts
theys and hes and Qs and shes
something glistening and soulful and proud

When what I really want to do is to tell the world this:
Don't tell me, world, that you understand what it must be like to be gay
if you haven't been spat on flipped off had bottles thrown at you
when all you wanted to do was go have a beer and a dance and a hullaballoo

I knew a woman once who documented the stories of Holocaust survivors
And during the training, she was told to never say I understand
Because, of course, she can’t
No matter the depth of her empathy
No matter how many survivors she knew

I want to tell the world:
please don't say you understand because you know someone gay
or watched a show or read a book or took skating lessons with a gay
I don’t need your understanding
What I need is your love

What I need you to know is that gays are spectacular and should be celebrated
not because we are different
but because we are human

We bleed we cry we eat we die of cancer of AIDS of broken hearts
of casting out from families and jobs and housing and other necessary parts of simply living

I mean what I'm trying to say is that gay is amazing and painful
gay is rainbow and see through and black and blue
gay is grace and good embrace and mixed race just like you

Andrew Garfield was correct in his Tony award acceptance:
“Let’s just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked”
Not because we are different
but because we are human

Here, let me show you how human we are:

Who here has ever gotten up in the middle of the night to tend to a crying baby?

Who here has ever lost a loved one to cancer or had cancer yourself?

Who here was the class clown in school, ever felt like a fool, ever swam in a pool?

Who here has wished to be different to be normal to be accepted to be loved?

We ARE the world
cake bakers and techno babes
tattooed beauties and bookworms
rabbis and fly girls
families and rebel artists
one-breasted word whisperers and transgender tender hearts
chefs and gardeners
sun-screen wearing beach combers and nifty nude bathers
dog owners and horse riders
fire spinners and bicycle back packers
humble poets and foster parents

Michael Jackson was right
WE. ARE. THE. WORLD.
each gorgeous tortured struggling being

And if I want to be treated more humanely
I must practice the pride of authenticity
I must gift every person I meet with this greeting:

I see you
I see you
I see you

I am you
I am you
I am you

I’ll carry your burden
I’ll speak up for you
I’ll act on your behalf

My Muslim brothers
My prostitute sisters
My immigrant children
My world family of differently abled
struggling to be stable
unfairly labeled
with N words and C words and hate

Michael Jackson was right
WE. ARE. THE. WORLD.
And I will take my place in it
All that I am
All that I am
Just as I am

Kim M. Baker’s poems have been published online and in print and essays broadcast on NPR. Under the Influence: Musings on Poems and Paintings is her first book of poetry. Kim also edits the online poetry journal Word Soup End Hunger that donates 100% of submission fees to food banks nationwide.  A retired writing professor, Kim currently works in Administration at Cotuit Center for the Arts. Kim's play Gin and Ashes will be produced at Driftwood Players in Edmonds, Washington in July 2018. 

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

by Devon Balwit

Top photo: “How New Yorkers Deal With Swastikas on the Subway” by Gregory Locke, The Forward, February 5, 2017.

Images collide in my news feed
the way strangers do on a train,
strangers on a NYC subway car,
rubbing out swastikas, the words
“Jews belong in the ovens,”
above archival Giacometti,
working papier-mâché
over the armature of a man,
a man gaunt like the Jews
after their ride in the trains,
heads shaved, teeth stripped,
children gone, names erased,
Giacometti’s man rising
like a corpse, refusing to stay dead,
race hatred rising, spectral,
bans, deportations,
Giacometti, the NYC riders,
showing what resistance looks like
when train doors open on shadows,
showing what makes a human being.


Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher from Portland, OR. She has two chapbooks forthcoming—how the blessed travel from Maverick Duck Press and Forms Most Marvelous from dancing girl press. Her recent work has found many homes, both on-line and in print.