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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Showing posts with label leeches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leeches. Show all posts

Thursday, July 22, 2021

NEW SHEPARD

by Monica Mills




the billionaire space race
is one without a finish line.
space tourists auction star
costs, haggle down heaven,
as latitude chokes the poor.
on supersonic joyrides white
collars pray greed into hemisphere.
on Earth oceans thrash aflame.
souls without homes look for sky.
find smog. find dollar signs
disguised as constellations.
the shepherd is a wolf. steals the herd.
no scapegoats are leashed
in fields of crumbling infrastructure.
rampant thistles, dandelions,
leeches of the grain root deep
into soil and call themselves farmers. 


Monica Mills is a Jamaican-American writer and poet. She is from Maplewood, New Jersey and has a bachelor’s degree in political science and English from Rutgers University. Monica’s work appears in journals such as The West Trade Review, The Anthologist, The Normal Review, and The Quiver Review among others. She enjoys rainy days and ginger tea. 

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

RONDEL ON ISAIAH 58:12

by Esther Greenleaf Murer


Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called repairer of broken walls, restorer of streets with dwellings. —Isaiah 58:12


The repairer of breaches,
restorer of paths
has won by a handbreadth.
Now legions of leeches
and star-belly sneetches
drag out the aftermath.
Maintain the breaches!
Block all the paths!


Enough with the screeches
of stokers of wrath
indifferent to megadeaths.
Heed him who teaches
repairing of breaches,
restoring of paths!


Esther Greenleaf Murer is a longtime contributor to The New Verse News. She lives in Philadelphia.