INAUGURATION IN NEW ORLEANS

by Elizabeth Larose

They are taking our roofers

our window washers

our builders

our preschool teachers.

They are killing white women

our poets 

our mothers 

our neighbors.

In my intestines the knots

have knots.

But last night was the Inauguration

Mass for the new mayor of Nola

beautiful Latina

Helena

and the new City Council:

a white woman

a black woman and 

five black men.

In the Cathedral-Basilica of 

St. Louis, King of France,

the queen, Irma Thomas sang

How Great Thou Art—I felt it.

We still have street lights 

that don’t work, so many,

potholes the size of small lakes

and tremendous inequality

still the knots have let go a bit

and my chest feels a little bigger

to hold my heart.

I heard Kamala Harris and Steve Scalise

were at the inauguration. 

And the lion lay down with the lamb.

Peace be with us

and with our Spirit.

Inaugurate that!

Elizabeth Larose is a visual artist from New Orleans with shows worldwide, including in NYC, The San Francisco Bay Area, Istanbul and Cartagena. She has also worked in education, from teaching to administration at international schools in Columbia, India, Turkey, and the U.S. Her poetry has been published in Leas Lit, Resilience in Writing, A Poetry Anthology, and The Ekphrastic Review (as of Jan. 22)

WO IST MUTTER

by Jon Wesick

In the final days of the Third Reich, Magda Goebbels poisoned her six children. The Goebbels family in 1942: (back row) Hildegard, Harald Quandt, Helga; (front row) Helmut, Hedwig, Magda, Heidrun, Joseph and Holdine.

 —Wikipedia

 

Two girls, blonde hair, blue ribbons, bare feet caked with dirt. 

Their nightgowns smell of diesel, breath tastes of bitter almond. 

“I want momma!” Little Heide says.

“She’ll put us back in that basement.” Helga drags her sister 

past masked men deporting former allies to the Taliban.

 

“Have you seen my Helga, meine Heide?” 

Magda staples a poster to an almond tree.

FBI agents in blue jackets don’t reply. 

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

“I want cake. I want Blondi,” Heide says. “I want Hilde and Helmut 

and Holde and Hedda. I want to sing the Leader a song.”

Show trials, lawsuits, rubber stamps in judges’ robes, 

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

After an anti-anti-fascist salute at the inauguration,

billionaires bankrupt the sick, starve the poor.

Magda joins the president in the Horst Wessel song.

Ay! von mir, Wehklagende, Wehklagende

Wehkalagende, in himmelblau 

Green fruit, pink blossoms, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

Tanks in D.C., Predator drones over Portland, Gaza on Beale Street, 

iron lungs, broken test tubes, enemies within,  

“Why is your neck bruised?” Heide asks. 

Serrated leaves, green fruit, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

Partisans burn their rifles, mail excuses with requests for donations. 

“Hush, children.” Magda feeds her daughters poppies and marzipan.

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

Hundreds of Jon Wesick's poems and stories have appeared in journals such as the I-70 Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, and Unlikely Stories. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and host of the Gelato East Fiction Open Mic. His latest book, Reductio Ad Absurdum, is a collection of parodies. He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and longs for gene editing to bring giant wombats back from extinction.

REGARDING NEWS OF JANUARY 20, 2025

by Jacquelyn Shah

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

At home alone I don’t inaugurate.

As silent never-wish-to-witness, I

will read the news that’s fit-to-print, berate

the rest that shouldn’t even amplify

what’s nothing but unspeakable and grim. 

So watch––I’ll sit me down with paper, pen

and try to think of every synonym

for fiend and bully, brute and sadist... Then

inspired, I can write (restrained) a snippet

that indicates my indignation that 

my nation’s gone. Although this meager sonnet 

is nothing more than insubstantial chitchat,

I’ll revel in my puny getting-even:

shunning blather that I can’t believe in.

 

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah has AB–Rutgers U (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa); MA–Drew U; MFA, PHD–U of Houston: English/creative writing. Poetry publications: chapbook (small fry); full-length book (What to Do with Red); poems in journals. Hybrid memoir: (Limited Engagement: A Way of Living). She was a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee. Obsessive, she has written 540 centos.

INSOMNIA CHRONICLES XXVII

by Erin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. I had to go to the laundromat last week because my washing machine was broken. Just a sock stuck in the drum, an easy fix. The repair guy said Whatever you do, don’t get rid of this beast—they don’t make ’em like this anymore. It’s 43 years old, came with the house. Now that I said this, it will surely die for good tomorrow. I met one of my best friends in a laundromat. Hadley, Massachusetts, summer before grad school. We got to chatting, and I said, Hey, I found a secret swimming hole. Wanna go? So we rode bikes through a farm field to a patch of sand on the Connecticut River. Back then laundromats were my only option. A pricier place in Mount Holyoke was also a bar. It had a clever name, like Suds & Duds or Wash & Slosh. Another in Amherst had a game room, so you could shoot pool or play pinball. I prefer a no-frills retro laundromat where strangers sit on plastic bucket chairs and watch the random choreography of shirts and pants. The suspended time when magic happens. Or did before cell phones. The repair guy says the key to my washer’s longevity is the center agitator. The new ones have electronic sensors that trigger error codes. Agitator. We need all the agitators we can get right now. But maybe when there’s too much to protest, we end up protesting nothing at all. Like that study that found people prefer a handful of ice cream flavors instead of dozens. Choices can be paralyzing. On inauguration day, he canceled lower prescription drug prices and birthright citizenship, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and declared there are only two genders. And that was just the warmup. Backpfeifengesicht is German for a face that needs to be punched. I just learned eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher: an egg shell cracker. It literally means an egg shell pre-determined breaking point causer. Germans do love the compound words. The compoundest—compoundiest!—of words. What’s the word for Please let us resist fascism while maintaining our sanity for the next four years? Please hold on, dear old washer. Please hold on, fellow agitators. We can’t let the one with the face that needs to be punched be the breaking point causer.

Editor's Note: This poem is a companion poem to “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” published Sunday in Rattle. Erin explains, "These ‘Insomnia Chronicles’ are part of a series of poems dramatizing the associative connections sparked by sleeplessness. I imagine there will be plenty of insomnia for the next four years."

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

INAUGURATION DAY

by David Rosenthal

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

It’s Monday and the cans are full,
but Friday’s garbage day.
We’ll have to be sustainable,
or else we’ll have to lay

our waste in kitchen corners, or
resort to plastic bags,
and pile them high outside the door
until the old porch sags,

or dig a pit out in the lawn
and bury it down deep,
or burn it all until it’s gone
and crawl on back to sleep.

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

David Rosenthal is a public school teacher in Berkeley, California. He has contributed to Rattle, HAD, Rust & Moth, Birmingham Poetry Review, Teachers & Writers Magazine, and others. He’s been a Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist and Pushcart Nominee. He’s the author of The Wild Geography of Misplaced Things (Kelsay Books).

CLOSE TO THE ABYSS

by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

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

 

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss—

a felon in the White House—yet you, my knight,

ride in. I wouldn’t think to call it bliss

 

with tensions at a high-pitched, python hiss

in news reports: so many crimes. Indict!

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

 

and you distract me as we reminisce

about our kids, the work we love, hold tight

to us, and still, I couldn’t call it bliss

 

when daughters, sons, so young, are stuck with this:

his lies, the vitriol he spews, the spite.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss.

 

You vow we’ll move to Portugal, dismiss

the obstacles of language, passports, flight,

the cost. Is now the time to call it bliss?

 

A lunatic— his head ballooned with hubris—

rouses me to stand, to choose to fight.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

but I have you. I will. I’ll call it bliss.

 

Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the South Coast of Massachusetts and works in her hometown library as Head of the Reference department. Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Magma, Orbis, Crannóg, Eclectica Magazine and American Arts Quarterly, among others. She won the 2017 Luso-American Fellowship for the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, was a Hawthornden Fellow in Scotland, and was accepted into Marge Piercy’s Summer Poetry Intensive in Wellfleet. She is a member of the Powow River poets, and her chapbook Nothing In-Between is available from Barefoot Muse Press.

TRUMPED UP

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

Robert Witmer lives in Tokyo, Japan, where he served as a Professor of English at Sophia University until his retirement in 2022. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has also published two books of poetry: Finding a Way (2016) and Serendipity (2023). Besides these original works, he served as the lead editor for a series of translations of contemporary Japanese plays, Half a Century of Japanese Theater.

ALT OR REALITY? INAUGURATION 2025

by Judy Trupin

I enter uninvited

faceless

masked or maskless unseen

I hide under a chair facing backward

a metal prong pokes my back

dagger to my heart no less

2016 flies high in the sky

banners everywhere

too late now for pussy hats

dragon suits or chimera wings

you and you and you

triumphant

trumpet 

aglow with glaze of your private galaxy

while we the countless uncounted

crouch

the nation visible

here where you do not look

or if you do 

crush under your boots 

as you rise we fall

the dawn no longer ours

not rock not river not tree

we the

hopeless, 

dreamless

 unseen.

Judy Trupin writes, thinks, and votes in Pittsburgh PA.

FAYE’S INAUGURATION

by Anayo Dioha

Just over two weeks ago, Bassirou Diomaye Faye was a little-known opposition leader languishing in jail, detained without trial on charges including inciting insurrection, who had never held elected office. One week ago, he defeated the governing party's candidate, Amadou Ba, in the country's presidential election, winning 54% in the first round. On Tuesday, the 44-year-old has been sworn in as the fifth president of Senegal, becoming Africa's youngest elected head of state. In a region where a large majority of the population are under 30, his victory offers hope to those young people frustrated by a lack of economic opportunities, with old elites seemingly clinging to power. —BBC, April 2, 2024

Rotten roots from decades past

Sinking deeper. Branches

Decaying, falling apart

Into their rancorous unrest

From this foisted tree of shrouded

Democracy.

Evergreen leaves pruned, trampled

Black, mutilated barks

Of overburdened trunk and branches

Bearing colonial scars and fresh bruises.

The rape, the loot; plagues and

Persecutions–the tale of many

Dark cities.

But look! A spark ignites in Dakar!

An ecdysis seems in progress.

This bloom just may smile

At the sky; it could be left to bask

In the sun.

But how will it fare around the pack

Of predators gathered at the lounge—

The inauguration lounge?

 

Anayo Dioha is a Nigerian and has been previously published in The New Verse News.

BERNIE’S MITTEN MEMES

by Earl J. Wilcox

cozy papa bear

snug serene independent

patriot supreme

Earl J. Wilcox somehow stays snug and serene in South Carolina.

Editor's Note: Sen. Bernie Sanders has raised $1.8 million for charity through the sale of merchandise inspired by the viral photo of him and his mittens on Inauguration Day. —CNN

INTERSECTION

by Dick Westheimer

after the reading of "The Hill We Climb” 

Your sons and daughters shall prophesy; 

Your old shall dream dreams, 

And your youth shall see visions.

Joel 3:1

The poet shown like a nova, a new star rising from the dais, 

She spoke brilliance that rivaled the light that streamed through 

the parting clouds, but like any sun, could not see the shadows 

cast by her own bright light—only the glow on the faces 

of a nation reflected back to her as she rose fierce and lyrical.

Most of the elders gathered there—like lunar satellites 

in a sky of her making—were made luminous by her, 

reflected on her words, were dazzled by what she saw. 

Others, blind to her light, heard only 

the cawing of the crows nested in their heads. 

The wise ones there knew all about the casting of shadows. 

Some had even traded in darkness—had forged troubled unions 

of dark and light. But they knew this Black star before them 

was Antares to their lurking Ares. In that moment they felt  

that this night’s moon, bathed in her corona, could make them 

brave enough to face what lurks in the penumbral places.

Dick Westheimer writes poetry to makes sense of the world—which is made easier by the company of his wife of 40 years, and the plot of land they’ve worked together for all of those years. His poems have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, For a Better World, and Riparian.

CINEMA INAUGURAL

by Alejandro Escudé

It isn’t power, but a podium levitating over a row of graves. You know you’ve heard the word, America. And you sense it, the birds circling over the dignitaries entering the Capitol, where the shadows played weeks before. Weakened, we bow before the ghosts of revolutionaries. It’s all cinema, really.

With the frigid heart of the laborer, I watch, sore yet awake, vowing to do this and that and to do it despite broken hopes. One can’t help the wicked who insist on wickedness, dopes who carry another skeleton body stuffed in their dirty Levis. I can’t help seeing the skull behind the sputtering speech,

lime-white, cracked, battle-bruised as an Apache warrior, porcelain daughters in little Puritan boots climbing steps, old senators making deathly eye contact, defiant smiles. Harrowing wind where Whitman once walked too, to aid the wounded with his round, poetic soul. I am aggrieved

by the last four years, shreds of history, the unholy present of mad insurrection. To see the Viking faces of blowhards storm mahogany chambers only to wander, stunned, hooting devilish battle cries, brandishing antebellum flags, vomiting half-baked theories, chanting croc-shit demands, whaling

creepy hide-seek queries up stairways, around sacred halls. Upward, democracy falls. We’ve been leaping sideways.

I mute the new President, turn to my laptop screen, mask laying on my teacher’s kitchen desk. My students are real; I’m not sure my country is. Even the sun needs a webpage

today and has to publicize the need for its warmth, its rising and setting. Devils wander the corridors having broken

the golden gates of heaven and beaten sword-wielding Michael with a simple, splintered stick. We step forward torn yet illumined. The exodus out of an exodus continued. 

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.

INAUGURATION DAY HAIKU

by Jimmy Pappas

a red rose 

and a white lily 

Gaga and JLo 

Jimmy Pappas can be found on YouTube interviewed by Tim Green at Rattlecast #34. Jimmy is now writing at least one haiku a day for the rest of the year. Wish him luck with that one.

POEM FOR THE INAUGURATION

by Amy Elizabeth Robinson

So much blood

on his lie-drenched tongue.

Too much

to explore

in a poem. This poem

chooses

to turn in a new direction. 

It hears 

the heavy gates

of justice 

closing 

on his reign of infancy 

and terror.

It applauds 

the sharp-shinned 

hawks 

of empathy

who guard the precarious 

scales. This poem

will not forget, yet

it turns

towards 

the dawn. 

You know this dawn, this

tender filigree of

sun-soaked web. 

The spiders have been spinning

all through the night.

Their webs of diligence,

and promise, and 

shimmer of delight. This poem 

insists on making

a plea deal

with the moment. Guilty

of exhaustion, 

it ends its 

fractured sentences

with care. 

Amy Elizabeth Robinson is a poet, writer, historian, mother, and many other things. She did live in the eastern mountains of Sonoma County, California, but her collectively-owned community recently burned in the Glass Fire. She is a community leader at Flower Mountain Zen, and her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Literary Mama, West Marin Review, West Trestle Review, Vine Leaves, Rattle’s Poets Respond program, and elsewhere. She blogs at www.turningplanet.org.

LONG AWAITED

by Imogen Arate

When the day comes

news anchors will 

imbibe on air

Doves will flock

to beat their wings

to the rhythm of bells

Clocks will spontaneously

chime to the relief

of nerves wound

too tight over fourteen-

sixty-one crawling days

caked to congeal in mud

slung by the barrel

Strangers will entangle

their gaze as momentary

lovers embrace compelled

by ecstasy that words 

from celebrated bards

will fail to capture

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of the weekly poetry podcast Poets and Muses. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her work was most recently featured in dyst, The Haifa Girls, and KJZZ's (NPR's Arizona affiliate) Word podcast.