WHAT WILL IT TAKE

by Mary Saracino

Cartoon by Monireh Ahma

What will it take to end

this multi-millennial madness,

this lust for war and power,

this emphasis on fear,

scarcity, competition?

What will it take to wake up,

to say no to all that seeks to harm,

to say yes to all that seeks to heal, to unite

to see that we are kin to all—humans and non-humans,

to celebrate diversity and dance in the arms

of cooperation and love,

a symbiotic tango imbued with gratitude

where flourishing is mutual?

What will it take to uncloud our eyes,

unjail our hearts,

unchain our minds,

free ourselves from the edicts,

the dogmas, the ideologies that spew

hatred, cruelty, lies, and every other

evil known to humankind?

We need circles, not ladders,

communities, not hierarchies.

We are not commodities

to be bought and sold,

and neither is the Earth

with all Her bountiful gifts.

The trees are trembling,

the lands are on fire,

the winds are roaring,

the birds are begging us

to heed the cries of Mother Nature

who gifts us with abundance,

water, rain, wind, food, sunshine, shelter,

asking only for reciprocity, giving

back what we take, honoring Her

by sharing her bounty, not hording it.

We are destroying our only home.

We are polluting our souls.

We are committing ecocide,

decimating everything

that is sacred and true

and vital to our future.

What will it take for us

to reclaim our birthright,

the gifts bestowed upon us by Nature

in all Her many forms?

What will it take for us to walk,

hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm,

shoulder-to-shoulder

to change the world,

dismantle what has been so wrong

for far, far too long?

We need leaders who will lead us

to prosperity and peace,

who will proclaim our joint responsibility

to care for one another and the planet,

who know that might is not right,

that war is not the answer,

that kindness, compassion, empathy

are the seeds we need to sow

to create a better way to live,

build a symbiotic future

where we can all survive and thrive.

What will it take for us

to raise our howling voices,

in unison and proclaim:

“We’ve had enough! You do not own us, or the planet.

We must seize the reins and reinstate sharing and caring,

establish a new way, a better way, before it’s too late!”

Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her book of poetry, Motherlines, was published by Pearlsong Press (February 2026). She is the author of four novels: Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014), The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006), No Matter What (Spinsters Ink 1993), and Finding Grace (Spinsters Ink 1999), and the memoir, Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior (Spinsters Ink 2001). She co-edited (with Mary Beth Moser) She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An anthology of writings in womanist/feminist spirituality (iUniverse 2012), which earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature from Sofia University.

TO 165 EXPENDABLES, SHAJERAH TAYYEBEH GIRLS’ ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MINAB, IRAN

by Kent Reichert

It’s a shame you had to die
but hey,
that’s war, right?
Leave it to the smoke 
in your father’s eyes to mourn your passing,
let rubble be your obituary
caught up as you were in other's dreams of power
and fear.
They say 
your death is the path to peace. They say
it is going well. They say
all according to plan. They say
their children are safer now.
When their school bells ring,
the screams at recess are joyful abandon.
But your screams rain down upon your
mother's heart
and will for the eternity she lives each
moment
without you.
At least you were not alone at your passing.
Holding your hand 
were your ideas and hopes and wishes and dreams;
your children and grandchildren;
your silly laughter;
your joy;
your love of chickpea cookies;
your bedtime stories;
your heart a flutter when that boy said he liked you
and you couldn’t run fast enough to tell your friends.
They were there, right there with you when
your world evaporated instantly.
They feared you or was it where you were born? Or they feared
your school’s location. Or they feared
who you worshipped. Or they feared 
the words your leaders spoke. Or they feared
what they might do. Or they feared…so…
“I got him before he got me.” 
Nothing personal, just collateral damage.

Those in power far away
hugged power above all else. They smiled in their safety
and their children and grand children’s safety, for…

They say it is going well. They say
all according to plan. They say
the world is safer now.
After all it was them or you, wasn’t it?
That's what they said and 
It’s a shame you had to die
But hey
that’s war, right?


Kent Reichert spends autumn beside Becky’s Creek on the Intracoastal Waterway across from North Carolina's Topsail Island. He passes the time walking his dogs, practicing digital photography and writing. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.

EMPERATORI PARS VE GHARB (THE PERSIAN EMPIRE AND THE WEST)

by J. P. Linstroth
 

To Our Armed Forces 

 

 

Combat between a Persian (left) and a Greek (right), depicted on a cup at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Credit: Wikipedia

 

I.

A vision of armies of men in thousands kicking up dust in white puffs in ordered unison files

                        Marching forward, beating rounded shields of Athenian owls and Spartan Lambda letters

            Their burnished Corinthian helmets, their fierce eyes peering through almond bronze slits

Aeneous and glinting bronze in the sun, horsehair plumes of varying colours, waving from zephyrs

                        Metallic and muscular cuirasses shining aurulent and golden in harsh sunlight

 

Emperatori Pars under Darius the Great and his son, Xerxes, the existential threat to Greek isles

Legends, the Athenian General Miltiades at Marathon, King Lionidas at Thermopylae Pass, with no betters

            In ancient times from the West, even with acrimony among Hellenes, and all their splits

Moving as one at the Battles of Marathon and Thermopylae and Salamis, against Persian aggressors

With bronze swords drawn, a chiliad of pointing dorata, gleaming helmets behind shields tensed to fight

 

            Cleverness of the Greeks tricking Persians in battle even with their formations across many miles

Outnumbering the Hellenes in the thousands and the weightiness of death in all its bellicose fetters

            If it were not for these brave men, then what of Western civilization, and all its benefits

To win the day, again and again, and many times at great loss, the sacrifice of war, and all its tethers

            For empire, for glory, for homeland, even with Pars Bozorg (Persian Empire), the Greeks never bowed to their might

 

II.

            And more than two thousand and five hundred years forward a war against old Persia continues

Having become part of Islam and Shia from the martyrdom of Husayn Ibn Ali and following the Imams

Reaching back to the death of Mohammed and at one time British and following the Shah

With all its oil riches and arcane monarchy and then the Iranian Revolution and American hostages in ’79

            And the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and advent of an oppressive Iranian theocracy

 

And so our past repeats, again and again, from ancient times til now regardless of disparate epochal venues

Every time and place, men in continual discord, even against the House of David, and revenge of Absalom

            How soon we forget after unity against Great Persia, Athenians and Spartans brawled in awe

Of brother against brother, Greek to Greek, the Peloponnesian War, how civil wars intertwine

            From Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, of voids to the destruction of Republics and Democracy

 

Can you not see we are the same brethren, those of the reds, whites, and blues

            The same from Washington, the same from Gettysburg, but now directives from Jerusalem

Across Zagros and Alborz ranges and deserts, against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and their Allah

            To contend with ourselves, and not think Poland 1939, but reverse time, and save our demokratia

 

III.

            For all our technologies and our missiles and our Artificial Intelligence and aircraft carriers

War is no less terrible and spontaneous circumstances no less unforeseen and death death death

            Young men struggle for generals’ musings far removed and clash in arms on land, sea, and air

Often far from homelands, for fellow brothers, for fellow countrymen, for the flag under God

            And Persia once more erased, once more conquered by armies as powerful as Hellenic hordes

 

 

Lest we forget ourselves in conquest and lose our values and our Republic, lest we remove such barriers

            For ours a Constitutional Republic and much celebrated, lest we drink from the waters of Lethe

Lest we forget red poppy fields of the Somme, or white crosses of Normandy, and markers en plein air

            As our Arlington and Tomb of the Unknown, so many Medals of Honour, so many left abroad

Lest we forget how the Iranians ignored our pleas to avert a day of war by dismissing all our accords

 

But remember this one and all, we are Americans, our nation is still true, our jets as raptors and harriers

Ripping azure skies, missiles through azuline heavens, across Strait of Hormuz, against Iranian shibboleth

From Mullahs and their enforcement of Islamic law, at the expense of the Iranian populace and its despair

            May ours be a road to freedom, away from Shiite clerics, a regime heavily flawed

By waging war in the name of God, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis, their demise by swords

 

IV.

            And while the thousands marched and thousands more gunned down for their freedom

Lest we forget ours in these uncertain times and living with mendacity and profiteering

            At the expense of our dignity of our community of our brotherhood of our common sense

Lest we forget our Independence from tyranny, lest we forget our lacking representation

            And we remember Locke and Montesquieu and Rousseau and our Enlightenment

 

Now some two-hundred and fifty years, from independence to civil war, now extremam corruptiem

            Of our leaders to whom we entrust with our lives, but who seem immune from sneering

And directing us toward wars and away from personal investigations and forgetting our tariffed expense

May we uphold the pillars of our democratic oaths by not scapegoating the newest from migration

While understanding hyper-capitalism undermining our social welfare from Neo-Gilded Age Entitlement

 

To our brave soldiers, brave men and women, who fight for our Republic, not as vassals for a fiefdom

Lest forgetting Spartan might won over Athenian intellect, and protect ourselves with judicial hearings

            If necessary and to use our laws and our cameras and checking imbalances in our defence

So, to the breach against armies and foes, now the Iranians, we ask to pray for victims in supplication

            Likewise remembering who we are and our history, and not the spoiled life of a political miscreant

 

To America, to America, forever the brave and the bold

            Across the seas from now and remembering times of old

                        May we remember our fallen heroes always, their fearlessness not to be cajoled

 

To America, to America, the beautiful and the bold

            May we always protect our sea shining shores, may your glories always be extolled

 

                        To America, to America

                                    Now and forever as many have before foretold

                                                About the land of our brave and our bold

 

 

J. P. Linstroth has a PhD (D.Phil.) in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, UK with several awards for his research concentrating on the Spanish-Basques, Brazilian urban Amerindians, and Cuban, Haitian, and Guatemalan-Mayan immigrants in South Florida. He is an Adjunct Professor at Palm Beach State College (PBSC) and the author of several books: Marching Against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland (2015, Bloomsbury Books); The Forgotten Shore (Poetic Matrix Press, 2017); Epochal Reckonings (Proverse Publishers HK, 2020, Winner of Proverse Prize 2019); Politics and Racism Beyond Nations: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Crises (2022, Palgrave Macmillan); and Swimming in Blue Shadows: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems (2022, Proverse Publishing, Proverse Supplemental Prize). He was awarded a J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholar Grant (2008-2009) to study urban Amerindians in Manaus, Brazil and he received a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for his accomplishments toward peace, conflict resolution, and social justice. 

I LIVE IN A COUNTRY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

"Oil and Distraction" by Ann Telnaes

I live in a country
Proud to invade
Proud to destroy
Proud to kidnap and murder
The leaders of other sovereign nations
 
I live in a country
Too brutal
Too lacking in a sense 
Of our shared life on the planet
Too impatient and inarticulate 
To negotiate its aims
So it vociferates instead
Using bunker-busting bombs.
 
I live in a country 
With an embedded elite
That controls massive amounts of wealth
And leaves millions
Lacking in the wherewithall 
Necessary for a decent 
Productive and creative existence.
 
I live in a country without leaders
Only capos
Without a vision of a better world
Only hackneyed slogans
And faded old Batman comics
Without the music of hope
Only the cracked ballads of despair
Played on one-string shoebox guitars.
 
I live in a country
That fervently worships
Only itself
Mad with the fear
That it is rapidly losing its place
As the hegemon
A country that is 
Flailing away hysterically
Demanding that the rest of the world
Keep paying tribute and obeisance
And endlessly fawning
Like a Hollywood lacky
Assuring the fading star
“You are still beautiful.”
 
I live in a country whose mountains
And prairies and woodlands
Rivers and lakes and streams
Are beautiful
Whose ordinary citizens
Are still mostly good and kind
But whose leaders
Are a pack of craven 
Crooks and scammers and parasites
Who use their positions and powers
To bully the populace
And upholster their own pockets.
 
I live in a country whose leaders
Make it a very difficult land
To love
But let us all keep standing 
With our neighbors against
The cruelty and criminality
The self-absorption and toxic greed
That prevails in high places
And raise another banner on the flagpole
The banner of universal humanity.
 

 Buff Whitman-Bradley podcasts his poetry at thirdactpoems.podbean.com

WHAT DOESN’T VANISH IF DENIED

by Devon Balwit

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

Department of Commerce announces the end of $4 million in funding of climate risk projects at Princeton. —Daily Princetonian, April 9, 2025

The prevailing wisdom used to be to hide 

the ailment from the ailing and, in so euphemizing,

ease their dying, like a fringe of trees beside

the road used to mask clear-cutting.

 

But the patient, intimate with tumors and waning powers, 

knew, and felt the greater pain for all 

the smiling, for all the cheery cards and flowers,

and wondered at the falsehood, and was appalled.

 

And we, too, as we hear our current leaders

asking scholars to deny how far gone

we are so we mightn’t worry—as if our rivers

weren’t in flood or our homes burned to the lawns.

 

As if insisting there’s no such thing as gravity,

makes the times we’re living in less heavy.

Devon Balwit edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.

LETTERS TO LUIGI

by Andrew Romanelli

Luigi Mangione, suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, departs after a hearing at Blair County Courthouse on December 19 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Mangione has received dozens of letters and emails as well as monetary support while in prison, a report by the New York Post has revealed. Photo: Gene J. Puskar-Pool/Getty Images via Newsweek, December 21,2024

are about what you’d expect Jesus to receive

if he had mail privileges 

at Mount Zion, near Holy Sepulcher or Calvary.

 

I work for a company that prints letters, 

photos, and books for inmates that people 

upload and purchase for us to send.

I fold the letters, put the photos in envelopes,

noticing the names of inmates, the patterns

of image, of word, what gets sent and said.

 

Every letter to Luigi begins with an endorsement of full support.

Some just want to connect, say where they’re from

what they do for a living. They include a phone number,

a few photos of them hiking, walking a dog at sunrise,

a post gym ab showoff shirt lift, a night out on the town.

 

Most letters contain stories about illness.

How they lost their child, father, brother, mother,

wife, sister, best friend, high school crush, how

they have lost themselves to denials

of treatment plans, medication, surgeries.

There are pictures and pictures of X-rays,

pedicle screws for spine fusion and support,

scars on backs, calves, bellies, breasts, pictures

of phantom limbs gone to the time waiting for an approval.

 

The letters often close with:

“For the first moment since my diagnosis I feel

like you understand what I’m going through.”

Or “I’d do anything to be healthy again, 

thank you for giving me hope that things will be different.”

 

These are people who:

Have stopped writing and calling their leaders.

Understand that statistics have no effect in making a point.

That murder is wrong but wonder what do you call

the death of millions in the name of profit?

 

Last week I was processing mail for Puff Daddy.

 

Now its Luigi, a man-made avatar,

expressing the ignored collective suffering of the people.

 

Jesus was a guy in jail on charges of terrorism.

 

These are days in which we are able

to reach more people than any other time before.

 

Yet look what we are doing:

To be seen.

To be heard.

To be validated.

 

We have been taught the alternatives.

Yet our fracture, 

bound by violence,

gets the attention.

 

Can you begrudge the people for cheering? 

 

 

Andrew Romanelli was born and raised in Las Vegas. His first poetry book Rotgut was published by Zeitgeist Press. You can find him @downcharleston and at andrewromanelli.com .

OVERTLY POLITICAL

by David Dumouriez

in response to the announcement of the UK general election.

Link here to Xwitter.

Election sickness
is on us once more,
with a worse set of symptoms
than ever before.

There’s the hoard of campaigners
who will burst through the gate
intending to give us
the bullshit we hate;

there are more of them still
who will tramp till they bleed
to deliver those leaflets
we don’t want to read.

There’s our constituency member
whose job-losing fears
make him visit these parts
for the first time in years.

There are those who oppose him,
who want what he’s had;
they claim to be better

but they’ll be just as bad.

There are three party leaders
who each boast they’ll win
(though two of them know

that they’ll never get in).

There’s the phony sincerity,
the well-rehearsed lies;
there’s the promise of everything

under the skies.

There’s debating and speeches,
many words are received;
but it’s air and not action,

so there’s nothing achieved.

There are infantile adverts
meant to mask what’s unsound
about the party elites

and the guff they propound.

There’s the media coverage
where, with serious breath,
overpaid people
try to talk us to death.

There’s the collection of ‘experts’
from colleges wide,
who make duff predictions
then run off and hide.

There’s the feeling in voters,
drawn from years in the past,
that the parties betray them
when the votes have been cast.

So discuss all the options—
that won’t tax your jaws—
half think about stirring,
and then stay indoors.

David Dumouriez wouldn't be tempted to blow his own trumpet even if a) he had a trumpet or b) he knew how to play one.