WHAT WORDS MEAN

by Michael T. Young

Cartoon By Nick Anderson

          For Alex Pretti, Nurse Executed by ICE Agents

 

They say “domestic terrorist.” 

We say “citizen.” 

They say “violent radical.” 

We say “peaceful protestor.” 

They say “he brandished a gun.” 

We say “he had a phone.” 

They say “absolute immunity.” 

We say “first amendment.” 

 

At the end of each sentence a life is at stake. It’s how 

words form in the mouth. Some unfold like a flower 

 

scenting the air with an aroma 

reminding you of a summer day 

when you knew your mother and father 

loved you and time seemed 

endless, full of light and warmth. 

 

But other words form like an ache 

where the bullet entered 

and a pain where it blew out 

the other side, red 

not just with the usual blood, 

but with speech and every other right.

Michael T. Young's fourth collection, Mountain Climbing a River, was just published by Broadstone Books. His third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including Chiron Review, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Mid-Atlantic Review, and Vox Populi.

CUAUHTÉMOC

by Jennifer Hernandez

For the crew members who lost their lives in the tragic crash of the Mexican tall ship into the Brooklyn Bridge. The ship, Cuauhtémoc, was named after the last Aztec emperor.

 
Sometimes the power goes out. 
Sometimes, it’s smallpox. 
 
The most inconsequential events 
can change the course of a river, 
the course of a life. 
 
We never know 
where the journey will end. 
Nor when. 
 
The leader this morning 
might be gone by nightfall. 
 
Through it all, the currents 
keep pushing us forward. 
 
Each moment we are closer 
to the finale. So we must 
choose to resist 
with all our might. 
 
Like Cuauhtémoc—
to never give up, 
never give in, 
never compromise 
who we are and 
what we believe 
to be true. 
 
We must don the fairy lights, 
wave the big, beautiful flag. 
 
We must stand on the bow, 
watch as the sunset plays 
between clouds at dusk, 
glimmers on the water’s surface.
 
Life is fragile. 
Life is glorious. 
 
La vida siempre 
vale la pena vivirla.

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she teaches immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Once again, her recent writing has been colored by her distress at the dangerous nonsense that appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Pushcart-nominated, her work appears in such publications as Sleet Magazine, Heron Tree, Northern Eclecta, and Silver Birch Press. She is working on a chapbook of hybrid writing about teaching as a political act.

THE DEAD WAKE

by W. Luther Jett

The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country. —The Guardian, April 11, 2025

The dead brush their teeth,
drink coffee, stare
at the morning news screen.
The dead are the lead feature.
The dead take the crosstown 
bus to the factory, the fast
food place, the office. 
They send their children to school.
Are their children also dead?
No-one is certain. The dead
Call up their doctors, their
lawyers, their graduate advisors.
All the lines are dead.
The dead go back to work.
The dead receive paper cuts
and bleed. Their blood is red.
The dead walk among us.
The dead sit beside us
in the restaurant, on the 
underground, in the park.
You would not know,
to look at them, that they are dead.
The dead go home for supper.
The dead shower and go to bed.
There is a ship in the harbor, waiting
to sail away in the morning.
The dead will not be on it.


W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of six poetry chapbooks. His full-length collection, “Flying to America” was published by Broadstone Books in 2024, while his most recent chapbook, “The Colour War”, has just been released by Kelsay Books. 

MORAL CLARITY

by Julie Steiner

Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters via The Guardian

    Asked by CBS News [on Friday] what he would advise a Catholic voter forced to choose between a candidate who backs abortion rights and one who has said he would have 11 million migrants deported, the pope said: “They are both against life—the one who throws away migrants and the one who kills children.” 

     ...Asked whether there were any circumstances under which it would be morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who does support abortion rights, Francis said when considering political morality, “one must vote.”

    "One must choose the lesser of two evils," he said. "Who is the lesser of two evils, that lady or that gentleman, I do not know." 

 

One has to vote,
declared Pope Francis with a sigh.
One has to vote.
Dilemma’s horns are at one’s throat.
Abstention’s not an option. Try.
Although both options cast a “Die,”
one has two. Vote.

Choose the lesser
evil. (Both are bad, in short.)
Choose the lesser,
quoth the pontiff at his presser:
Pick either A (Deport! Deport!)
or B (Let those who could abort
choose.) “The lesser

of two evils”
assumes they’re not equatable.
Of two evils,
which brings fewer lives upheavals?
Choose the not-as-hateable —
“And which is that?” “Debatable.” —
of two evils.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared in the past year include Literary Matters, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

CARCASS

by Melanie DuBose

World’s Rarest Whale Washes Up on New Zealand Beach, Scientists Say: Only six specimens of the spade-toothed whale have ever been identified. This carcass could be the first that scientists are able to dissect. —The New York Times, July 17, 2024

swimming by
he notices 
on the ocean floor 
something long  sleek  dead

they hang the body by its tail on the beach
some things never change

very small fins long beak
an endless loop on repeat in my brain

my brain with its depths I can not reach
but perhaps could synthesize and become a pop star
if I knew how to make thoughts into sound
outside the window the hills are outlined  in red
along the horizon

am I ashamed to be human?
the whale comes from mountains higher than any on earth
I get vertigo floating  

Ex means out  my brain circles the parking lot
Extinction Existence Depth
very small fins long beak 

proof of life in death hanging by its tail on the beach
another dead whale out of water hoisted not quite extinct 
it seems though rare

another summer of fires
I swim in the deepest water and wish for something
sleek and alive

Melanie DuBose lives in Los Angeles. Recent poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Press, Kelp, Gyroscope, and Drunk Monkeys among others. Her favorite award is from the National Weather Association for helping six-year-olds write about the value of wetland preservation. 

OLD MAN IN WINTER

by George Salamon

CBS News Sacramento

You live long enough

you're no longer afraid

of death, but of what

life can still do to you.

George Salamon lives in St. Louis, MO, and had his 88th birthday in October.  

SOME MEMORIES OF THE QATAR GAMES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

A woman holds up sign reading Woman Life Freedom, prior to the World Cup group B soccer match between England and Iran at the Khalifa International Stadium in in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

armbands 
hands covering mouths 
wales a flag 
a falling star 
silent voices for a national song 
(did you know the team and their families were threatened) 
silence for a dead lady 
signs for “Women, Life, Freedom”  
“no politics in sports” the cry
yet politiká in greece where sports also ruled 
a word for a network and affairs of the cities 
a small world if you will 
our world now 
in a game 
where the boundaries of freedom’s speech 
end and begin 
now  
who will speak for those who died building 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

ELECTION NIGHT 2022

by David Radavich

“Waiting for a Pear to Fall” by Jonas Daniliauskas

The sky is clear
and not a word
floats in the heavens
or on the earth.

 

It is the time of waiting.

 

What must be said
has already been said

 

and we 

like perfect fruit,

 

waiting to be peeled
and consumed.

 

What remains
in the eating

 

at the hands
of others?

 

A last hope
that our insides
will be tasty,

 

that our sacrifice
will bring life
and health

 

to a broken state.

David Radavich's poetry collections include two epics, America Bound and America Abroad, as well as Middle-East Mezze and The Countries We Live In. His latest book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German and English Poems (2022).  

LIMITS OF LANGUAGE

by Amy Small-McKinney

The shootings never stopped during the coronavirus pandemic, they just became less public, researchers say. —The New York Times, December 1, 2021

           

Let’s say you are struggling to speak.

A six-year-old has been ensnared by a shooter

in the sights of his makeshift automatic.

Let’s say you don’t understand his language of righteousness.

You look for oxygen.

For the locust that grows nearly twenty-feet tall.

 

Let’s say his mind empties body disconnects

returns astonished by his own rage.

Let’s say you want to walk a path

through the black locusts that survive drought lousy soil

pollution sea spray light and shade its clusters of white or pink

fragrant as your own body once was.

 

Let’s say the shooter turns his back, decides not to kill.

Notice how the locust’s treetop becomes a bear holding its cub.

Now, a bird. How the Arctic tern lives longest

and travels in its lifetime

almost three times around the moon.

 

Let’s say you loved this path, following your beloved

onto another trail that looped past a waterfall then a stream

where human figures loomed above in the distance

and you could only guess if they held

guns or each other.

Amy Small-McKinney’s chapbook One Day I Am A Field written during Covid after her husband’s death, is forthcoming with Glass Lyre Press. For the 2020 virtual AWP, she co-moderated an interactive discussion, Writing Through Grief & Loss: The Intersection of Social and Personal Grief During Covid.  Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Towards Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2017. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, for example, American Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, Connotation Press, and SWWIM. She was the 2011 Montgomery County Poet Laureate, judged by poet Chris Bursk. Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian.  Her book reviews have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner and Matter. Small-McKinney resides in Philadelphia.

WAITING ROOM

by Laura Rodley

Graphic from The Atlantic.

Don’t let anyone tell you different,

it takes guts to sit in the chair

after your vaccine waiting

for possible anaphylactic shock,

it takes guts to hold up the mirror of fear

and see it showing your face masked,

it takes guts to weight the pros and cons,

death and life, the accordion wings

of your two lungs expanding, their

three lobes lifting up like the mouths

of goldfish inside a koi pond, it takes

guts to fill your tank with gas

holding the nozzle that some stranger

held, hand sanitizer wiping away

germs, wiping away fear, it takes

guts to drive yourself to your appointment,

the second time, all because you don’t

want to lose your place in line of this

carousel called life, all for real, and

the whole time, your lungs, their pink

tenderness expands and contracts,

without you asking, even when you sleep.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

THE REFUGEE

by Karen Mandell

 

Seedlings are something else entirely.

I’ve tried them year after year, the excitement

of new growth lulling me into forgetfulness:

Most fail miserably. Then I go to the nursery

and buy their baby plants instead, planted in plastic

Cages but at least they’re sturdy, survivable.

Most have small, hopeful flowers already laughing

and practicing their dance moves in the light wind.

Bearing flowers, doesn’t that mean they’ve come of age?

I’m told to pick off the early blooms to make the plant stronger.

I can be tough but I can’t manage that.

This year is different.

Out of two packs of seeds, a dozen nasturtium and cosmos

have come up. A dozen all together. A small victory. 

I’ll wait out the nursery and nurse these seedlings

with their too thin stems, frail, spindly,

roots thin as cobweb strands unable to soak up

the water I’ve poured with too generous a hand.

This morning when I roll up the shades to let in the sun,

a mushroom stands upright it the pot, 

its thin stem strong enough to hold its gill upright.

Gray, with a perfect helmet head, erect posture, a soldier

Standing his ground. I can’t allow it. It speaks of decay,

ruin, dank. The seedlings are impervious and lean into the sun.

I should be like them, happy with their square inch,

no begrudging or fear of encroachment. Instead,

I look for a plastic spoon to dig out, to disembody.

But I don’t go through with it. It’s not me to determine

Who will live and who will die. 

Karen Mandell’s short story “Goddess of Mercy” is forthcoming from Notre Dame Review. She has written Clicking, interconnected short stories, and Rose Has a New Walker, a book of poetry. She has taught writing at the high school and college levels and literature at community senior centers.

DARNELLA'S DUTY

by Laurie Kuntz

Darnella Frazier is the brave young woman who filmed the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The artwork is from the official Peace and Healing for Darnella Fund at gofundme.

How does it feel to be 17,
and just want to hold your life in your
glistening palm, go to the corner
and buy a sparkling water to quench
a parched mouth that longs to sing?

How does it feel to witness
a purpose too cruel
for all your 17 rotations
around a sun you only want to bask in?

How does it feel to beg a name,
witness a life breaking,
while your opened ebony eyes,
see loss and corruption corralled
to the borderless sky?

And, how does the humid wind feel
as you watch it carry one man's life
to a crevice where only the wind can go?

Laurie Kuntz is an award-winning poet and film producer. She taught creative writing and poetry in Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. Many of her poetic themes are a result of her working with Southeast Asian refugees for over a decade after the Vietnam War years. She has published one poetry collection (Somewhere in the Telling, Mellen Press) and two chapbooks (Simple Gestures, Texas Review Press and Women at the Onsen, Blue Light Press), as well as an ESL reader (The New Arrival, Books 1 & 2, Prentice Hall Publishers). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her chapbook Simple Gestures won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook  Contest. She was editor in chief of Blue Muse Magazine and a guest editor of Hunger Mountain Magazine.  She has produced documentaries on the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Law and currently is producing a documentary on the peace process and reintegration of guerrilla soldiers in Colombia. She is the executive  producer of an Emmy-winning short narrative film Posthumous. Recently retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.

SACRED

by George Held

The governor’s statement places
the key word, “God,” in the place

of emphasis, at the end, where
it makes the most of her pious case

but most offends those who question
when a fetus has become a “life”

or even doubt there is a god,
at least one who can give sacred gifts,

and those who believe that a woman’s life
is her own to join in sex with whomever

she wants and once pregnant whether
or not to delete that tiny comma without

the intervention of the almighty state.
What sort of Handmaid’s Tale

is ‘Bama spinning here now that its Senate
and the Court are packed with Medieval

men of the Right who consign women
to the stove and the marital bed,

where all conception is authorized
by a Fundamentalist Godhead.

What country is this where theocracy
struts its stuff in public and democracy

hides under the bed to avoid
a vengeful thrashing? My count-

try, ’tis of me, I sing, sweet place
of Liberty, of thee I sing . . .


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations and published or edited twenty-two poetry books.

A MESSAGE FROM THE SECOND PLANET

by Martin Elster

A composite image of the planet Venus as seen by the Japanese probe Akatsuki. The clouds of Venus could have environmental conditions conducive to microbial life. IMAGE FROM THE AKATSUKI ORBITER, BUILT BY INSTITUTE OF SPACE AND ASTRONAUTICAL SCIENCE/JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY via University of Wisconsin-Madison News, March 30, 2018.

On Friday, astronomers announced a new paper laying out the case for the atmosphere of Venus as a possible niche for extraterrestrial microbial life.—EarthSky, March 31, 2018


We’re microbes in the clouds of Venus
of an otherworldly genus
gobbling CO2 and spitting
out sulfuric acid—fitting
for a life form that can waft
akin to an ocean-going craft
far above the rocks and soil
whose heat will make lead bullets boil.

We’re vitamin D3 gourmets,
drinking ultraviolet rays
as we have done for donkey’s years,
wild about the atmosphere’s
asphyxiating greenhouse gas,
so reflective that your glass
sees only jewel-like radiance.
You scientists are on the fence

on whether there is life on Venus,
but only cause you haven’t seen us
yet. And we don’t want you to,
for if you poke and probe, you’ll strew
our virgin world with noxious matter.
All tranquility will shatter.
Goggle at our planet. Stand
in distant awe. But please don’t land!

Martin Elster is a composer and serves as percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Chimaera, and The Road Not Taken, among others, and in anthologies such as Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 and 2015 Rhysling Anthologies, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, and Poems for a Liminal Age.

DEAR PAUL RYAN

by Jacqueline Jules

Paul Ryan caricature by DonkeyHotey

After you’ve carried out your promises
to the American people,
I hope you’ll come to the chemo clinic with me.

Wait in my seat—rigid blue plastic,
stainless steel frame, comforting
as the flicker of fluorescent tubes
from the popcorn ceiling.

Notice how the legs of your chair
wobble on uneven green tile
while you listen
on a dying cell phone
to a bean counter at Blue Cross
explain why you don’t deserve
the drug your doctor prescribed.

Feel the bones
up and down your spine
burst into flames.

Then you can come home with me.
Sip canned soup at my table,
littered with pre-existing bills
for care no longer covered.

And you can tell me again
why you are so pleased
to be the face of the political party
which proclaims all life is precious
(no matter how tiny) as long
as no taxes are raised to protect it.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum and Stronger Than Cleopatra. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Little Patuxent Review, and Gargoyle. She is also the author of 40 books for young readers.

95 YEARS

by David Feela





Shadows of the first days lengthen
like steel bars across the floor.
Parallel lines take the mind

down its railroad track,
a freight train that won’t stop
for more than 10,000 days.

It doesn’t matter
if you stand or sit.
Life.  You stop counting.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

MAGAZINES

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: 20 mm AA Guns

Magazines

once  seeing Life

now death 30 bullets at a crack

Tricia Knoll grew up in the 50s when the arrival of Life Magazine was a big deal for everyone in the family. A Portland, Oregon poet, she watches the mutations of word meanings. She maintains a daily haiku practice.