ENABLERS

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

 

If you let your sons win at card games,          they will never learn strategy.

If you talk down to them using simple baby words,       they won't understand complexity.

Because you don’t want them to fail,                   you don’t make them do anything hard.

You accept every lie because it is easier   and more comfortable than checking up.

If your son is always where the trouble is,       your son is the trouble.

Your son knows you will bail him out,     make the excuse, buy him another car.

Hell, you might even buy him the gun          he uses to murder a man and then

kill himself.                     Your love knows no bounds.

Author’s note: I saw something like this play out in my own life when my stepmother did provide the gun my brother used at the end of the poem because she could not say no to him.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske teaches ekphrastic writing at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art and volunteers at an alternative high school. 

THANKSGIVING

by Morrow Dowdle

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

My four year-old comes into the bathroom where I sit. 

He turns the toilet paper roll slowly, says, It’s a nice day

for peeing. Thankful for the body and its routines. 

And so am I—thankful for emptyings and intakes,

 

the food soon to be had, then had for days after. Thankful

I will eat more than a side salad. Thankful this holiday’s lie

of peace between buckle-hatted colonists and Indigenous

victims is obsolete. Thankful we gather anyway. 

 

Thankful for what won’t be at the table—china and silver,

political scuffles, sullen drunks. The chain-smoking

grandmother’s green bean casserole. The pedophile

grandfather’s electric knife. White-knuckled silence. 

 

Thankful for the Peanuts meme my sister texts,

that after all the fallings-out, we’ve righted the rowboat

called Family of Origin. Thankful I’ve been back

on antidepressants for a week and feel like having sex again,

 

or at least a hug. That I can forgive myself for not missing

someone recently deceased, but feel the burn of grief

for those who do, light a candle at the empty plate. 

I can forgive myself for singeing the cranberry sauce

 

and buying the wrong-sized pie crust, and not extrapolate

that I’m a failure. See, I’ve been fumbling towards sainthood,

but now I’m aiming at stable and decent and good enough. 

Thankful to host rather than be hosted, to have more

 

than leftovers to offer. Thankful to prepare every room

for guests, to cross each threshold and see traces

of my persistence. Thankful my son gave me this poem

and that I could receive it, knowing there will be days ahead

 

when verse will flow like gravy, and days there will be none,

and my mind will feel stale as the cheap white bread

we use to make the stuffing. But there will be days. 

There will be days.

Morrow Dowdle (they/them) poet / arts organizer / curator "Weave & Spin" performance series and open mic (founder/curator/host) @morrowdowdle (Instagram)

REAL SUPERMAN

(and "nevah" means “not ever”)

by Regina YC Garcia

Superman would nevah….

pledge allegiance to Lex Luthor

beat down the Tamale Lady

snatch a child from a loving mother

snatch a  loving mother from the grasp of  a terrified child

cage them  strip them  from each other 

pull them from the light of hope 

Superman would nevah….

dump Mr. Terrific from his chair

keep him from accessing his reasonable accommodations

cancel his yearly checkup 

lie about his color… his culture… his merit 

leave him hungry… emaciated… prey for predators 

Superman would nevah….

set fire to non-perishable food

soak the ashes in a blood-soaked ground

willingly hand his red cloak to the enemy that they might cover the eyes of the innocents 

     and steal  their liberty

Superman would nevah….

forget the “Golden Rule”

shut down opportunities 

enlist the fools to join a league of injustice

     that they might  overtake the land

Superman would save the alligators 

from the monsters that built shoddy cages and dangled distraught meat from unclean hands 

Superman would nevah….

forget where he came from

forget who helped him and loved him

     all along the way 

forget that we all have a part to play

     a part that bends towards justice

     redefines the American way

     a way that ushers in a prosperity

     that ensures we all stay free 

     and more 

          and even more 

(unnecessary too tall buildings and death waters be damned)

Regina YC Garcia is a national award-winning poet, professor, and language artist from Greenville, NC. She is a twice-nominated Puscart nominee, and her work has been widely published in a variety of journals reviews and anthologies, as well as musical compositions and documentaries. She is the author of two collections of poetry—Whispers from the Multiverse (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, February 2025) and The Firetalker’s Daughter (Finishing Line Press, March 2023).

A VAST SHROUD

by Trina Gaynon

The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, seen here smiling during a 2021 court appearance, never lost his sense of optimism and joie de vivre behind bars, says Ilia Krasilshchik, a Russian journalist who exchanged letters with him in prison. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images via CBC).

If they’re told to feed you caviar tomorrow, they’ll feed you caviar. 

If they’re told to strangle you in your cell, they’ll strangle you.

                                                                                    

Aleksei A. Navalny

Excerpt from letter to Ilia Krasilshchik

 

Exile begins when the law is broken.

Don’t let them tell you your arrest

will be followed by a bail hearing.

There will only be bank accounts seized

and a shuffling between prisons,

There will only be a pen and paper,

sometimes held up to prison windows

by your attorneys, sometimes transmitted

through an outdated digital system.

Don’t let them tell you there will be

a trial, an impartial jury, an unbiased judge.

There will only be executioners slipping 

poison into your tea, shoving a knife

into vital organs as you walk the streets,

or releasing a little nerve gas in your cell.

Don’t let them tell you death will erase you,

every sacrifice in vain. Call out the lie.

 

Trina Gaynon's poems recently appeared in Poetry East, Tomahawk Creek Review, and Clepsydra. More can be found in The Power of the Feminine I, Volume 1,  Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, other anthologies, numerous journals, and a chapbook An Alphabet of Romance from Finishing Line. She received an MFA in Creative Writing at University of San Francisco. A past volunteer for literacy programs in local libraries and WriteGirl in Los Angeles, she currently leads a group of poetry readers at the Senior Studies Institute in Portland.

THE PEOPLE IN GAZA KEEP DYING

by Richard Jeffrey Newman

Crowds of displaced Palestinians at a UNRWA-affiliated school in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on December 19th, 2023. Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via AP at Jewish Currents.

“You don’t need overt bloodshed to cause significant violence that ends people’s lives. Many people will die unnecessary deaths due to deprivation.” —Yara Asi quoted by Maya Rosen in “The Epidemiological War on Gaza,” Jewish Currents, January 5, 2024

 

This morning on my daily walk

I met a long-haired shepherd

with ambiguous eyes.

I slowed my pace,

watched the dog’s walker

rein the animal’s curiosity in,

winding tightly around her hand

the tether we tell ourselves

protects people like me,

who believe all others

will of course welcome the friendship

we assume they assume we intend,

and in that moment, the rage

I thought I’d put behind me

at the words of the poet

whose book I was asked to review

sent its own tether out,

and I heard myself again

reading his lines aloud

as I sat some months ago

alone among my books,

confirming I’d not misread

his refusal of history,

the willful pleasure he took

in a hatred I disowned long ago,

no differently, I have no doubt,

than that dog, under

the right circumstances,

would disown its leash,

and perhaps its master as well.

I don’t remember much

about my own opportunity,

except that I was standing

in my sophomore dorm hallway

while a man from a country

I knew nothing about,

except that I knew nothing,

looked at me with disbelief.

“You really believe those mothers

love their sons so little

that they bring them into the world

just to make them martyrs?”

I had not said exactly that,

but it was my meaning,

as its hatred was,

in poem after poem,

the lie that poet embraced.

I started to ask if the dog was friendly,

but the woman spit out, “Come!”

and pulled him hard into the gutter.

I let my question sink back into silence,

which I thought at first

was how I should respond

to that poet’s betrayal

of this art that saved my life,

but then I wrote the review.

It’s in the world. I want to know

what difference it has made.

Richard Jeffrey Newman has published three books of his own poetry, T’shuvah (Fernwood Press 2023), Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017), and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006), as well as three books of translation from classical Persian poetry, Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan, Selections from Saadi’s Bustan (Global Scholarly Publications 2004 & 2006), and The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press 2011). He curates the First Tuesdays reading series, is the Executive Director of Newtown Literary, and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College.

THE FISH ROTS

by Bruce Bennett

“Since when do Republicans care more about criminals in jail than the cops who put them there? Since when do they coddle domestic terrorists? Since Donald T***p. A new report in The Daily Beast shows how the fish rots from the big orange head.” —Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, July 31, 2021

How many hurt? How many dead? 

How many at that rotten core? 

The fish rots from the big orange head. 

 

How many let themselves be led 

by what they rightly should abhor? 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

 

What was it that he did and said? 

What is it that they now ignore? 

The fish rots from the big orange head. 

 

Who should have been in jail instead 

of causing riots most deplore? 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

 

How long are we to suffer dread 

as he pursues his sick, sick war? 

The fish rots from the big orange head 

 

Whose stink continues still to spread 

through regions none can now restore. 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

The fish rots from the big orange head! 

Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty poetry chapbooks. His most recent full-length book is Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems New and Selected, 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017). He was a co-founder and served as an editor of the literary journals Field and Ploughshares. From 1973 until his retirement in 2014, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at Wells College, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize.

DIME ON THE SIDEWALK

by William Aarnes

Paying with cards 

            or phones, people  

now carry fewer  

 

and fewer coins  

yet here someone’s  

dropped a dime 

 

on the sidewalk. 

FDR’s profile  

recalls the time 

 

“THE UNITED STATES 

OF AMERICA” 

had dime stores 

 

(not dollar stores),              [ 

            a time when one 

of the luckless 

 

might beg, “Buddy,      

can you spare 

                        a dime.”            

 

Though the coin 

            contains no silver, 

                        it’s shiny enough 

 

to catch the eye 

            and still worth 

“One Dime.”  

 

And it’s embossed 

with the mottos 

“LIBERTY,”  

 

“IN GOD WE TRUST,”  

“E PLURIBUS  

             

UNUM.”          

 

Your choice: 

pick the dime up 

            or just let it lie. 

William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

MASQUERADE

by Susan McLean

Muffled like bandits on a raid,

our faces wrapped from chin to eye,

we aren’t intent on ambuscade,

just hoping not to kill or die.

Yet everywhere we see displayed
the nonchalance of passersby,

signaling that they’re not afraid—

their confidence a bare-faced lie.

Susan McLean is the author of two poetry books, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of the Latin poet Martial, Selected Epigrams. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, a hotspot for COVID-19.

DARK FORESTS

by John Ziegler

The sky is an old shawl
of mumbling gray
resting on the rounded hills.

In the east, ancient trees
decompose in mist and moisture
that feeds wild mushrooms
along their rumpled trunks.

The campaign plods on.
Espousers spit turds,
sport tooth-cracking grins,
obscene innuendo,
outright lies,
in your face,
I’m talking here,
you shut up.

Out west, the fallen pines
unpack in corky chunks
on the dry forest floor.
They smell clean.

In the night forest,
a primeval rhythm
pulses with certainty.


John Ziegler is a poet and potter living in State College, PA.

THE COMEDIAN LIED

by Howard Winn

Steve Rannazzisi, during a panel for the “The League” in August, apologized on Tuesday for fabricating a story about escaping from the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.Credit NY Times, September 16, 2015

I was in the building when the first plane

crashed but escaped before the second

fireballed into offices and the hallways

down the many stairs fleeing from the

stock brokers’ cubicles as if escaping

the devils suddenly released upon

the Big Apple in a story told over and

over again even though I knew it was

all a lie of self-aggrandizement so

often I began to believe the falsehood

myself as if creating a forged memory

could make it into the truth although

now caught out in this counterfeit

story I will humbly acknowledge 

my dishonest story and beg forgiveness

so that I may continue my lucrative

career in endorsing well-paying products

and pointless services where truth

can be so inconvenient in the market place.

Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

ARIANA LEAVES A BAD TASTE IN OUR MOUTHS

by Michael Mark






That empty calorie confection
can lick my 12 hour factory job.
She can take the tip of her tongue
and taste the lonely dark of 3AM
alarms to get to the donut shop,
to mix the batter, to bake the donuts,
spread the icing that she licked and
did not buy. So another customer
tasted her spit. She can suck my middle-
class mortgage. And laugh because I’m
the sucker who has to work two jobs
to pay for it. I can’t walk away. She
can show up at a donut shop and bitch
about America’s obesity issues with all
the sincerity of imitation whipped cream.
She can eat her disgusting words on camera
in front of fat America. She can slip
her tongue in her dessert dancer of a boyfriend
then slide it over the sugary icing and leave
it tasting of arrogance, of pure meanness. That
customer who brought those donuts home
had to wonder why they stunk of revulsion. “I
asked for Boston Cream and got Rude Insolent
Post Teen.” She can flip that tongue so that simple,
happy, rainbow sprinkles smack of stupidity and
selfishness. That tongue can sell out stadiums.
And she can lie with that tongue that she really,
truly, honestly loves what the camera caught her
saying she hates. She can climb to #1 with that tongue.
And the rest of us, we can take a bite of what she leaves
us and pray for a little taste of forgiveness.


Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long distance walker. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Lost Coast Review, Rattle, Ray’s Road Review, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.