HOMELESS

by John Valentine

Dharmik Vibes

What is madness but nobility of soul
at odds with circumstance?
—Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” 


At home once in the universe,
the old physicist
used to weave theories of everything
in the cat’s cradle
of his mind. How orderly the atoms
danced, how fleeting the
half-life of years. Wrapped now in rags,
his words spoken
only to the wind, he signs the language
of loss, hands tangled
in mudras, like a manic Buddhist, or an
operator at the
switchboard of chaos, pulling wires,
answering calls,
frantically making connections on the
streets
of the fallen.

John Valentine is a retired philosophy teacher living in Savannah, Georgia.

PLEASE, AMERICA, DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON ME

by Cecil Morris

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

I remember breaking up with my first real girlfriend, 
the one who surprised me with earthly delights 
and let me touch the promised land, again and again, 
the one who did not push my hands away as if 
they were impertinent puppies, maybe cute 
but mostly annoying. I loved everything about her, 
her hair on my skin, her mouth, her own wild eagerness, 
her eyes turned up to me, the way we enjoyed 
the American River on sun-burnished afternoons, 
even how she dropped the great, immovable river rock 
on my naked heart and made me beg and cry 
and empty myself in stupid, sprawling letters. 
I thought she loved me and then she didn’t love me. 
 
That was almost 50 years ago—1976— 
and this is it again exactly, another love 
rejecting me, lifting her marbled foot and stepping 
on me with all the gorgeous, colonnaded tons 
of her, repulsing my advances, saying keep 
your nasty science off of me and covering 
her liberal titty. Her voice, that smile and kiss 
of democracy, has turned to bray and bawls 
and claims that I misunderstood, that she 
doesn’t even know me. And, again, I am left 
in tears to beg my heart’s case in postcards 
and signs, my own voice now raw with the ache 
of what I thought I had and now have lost. 
Please, America, please. Please come back to me.

 
Author’s note: The epigraph comes from Chris Banks, a line in his long poem “Core Samples of the Late-Capitalist Dream” in Alternator, Nightwood Editions, 2023. I borrowed the “liberal titty” and the imagery and language of the line “Her voice, that smile and kiss / of democracy” from e. e. cumming’s “Thanksgiving (1956)”

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) came out in 2025.  He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

A PUBLIC CORPSE ROTS FASTER THAN A PRIVATE ONE

(After the July 2025 Midtown Manhattan Mass Shooting)

by Michael T. Young

When you read news about
a mass shooting, when you read 

the names of the dead, you don’t expect 
to know anyone. You don't expect 

to wither into a shock of knowing,
your words to wither into the heart-shaped 

emptiness of condolences. And you are
surprised by your anger at conspiracy theories

that feast on day-old death as it were bacteria
on a corpse, brown-rot on a piece of fruit—

the coverup, the motives. And where is there
to hide if your private connection becomes

a public debate, and questions pervert your
mourning, filling it with voices and doubt, until

your loss is corrupted into another story
that conceals what no one dares speak?

Michael T. Young’s fourth collection, Mountain Climbing a River, will be published by Broadstone Media in late 2025. 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 I-70, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Rattle, and Vox Populi.

AI SHANTY

by Joel Glover

LA Wildfires and AI’s Data Center Water Drain: The explosion of data center demand for AI use is draining water resources. Even with efforts to mitigate cooling demands, municipalities and companies struggle to find a balance. —Information Week, January 17, 2025. 

[Refrain]

Oh, the sea was wide, the sun is high

The land is parched, the soil is dry

And clouds swirl over cooling stacks

And soothing rain is what we lack

[Verse 1]

There’s vapour in the atmosphere

And bubbles form, that much is clear

Pyramids and Ponzi schemes

Built on algorithmic dreams

[Refrain]

Oh, the sea was wide, the sun is high

The land is parched, the soil is dry

And clouds swirl over cooling stacks

And the cooling rain is what we lack

[Verse 2]

Profits for some, for us the loss

Ice caps melted, no more frost

Towns in rolling blackout pall

No showers, storms, or thunder squall

[Refrain]

Oh, the sea was wide, the sun is high

The land is parched, the soil is dry

And clouds swirl over cooling stacks

And the cooling rain is what we lack

Former waiter in a Love Boat themed restaurant, reformed mandarin, and extroverted accountant, Joel Glover lives in the woods of Hertfordshire with two boys, one wife, and not nearly enough coffee. His poetry has appeared in oddball magazine, Little Old Lady Comedy, Radon Journal, 5-7-5 Journal, Epistemic Literary, Pulp Lit Mag, and As It Ought To Be. He published a chapbook Untimely Poetry, taking a cockeyed view at the news of 2024.

LEGACY

by Jim Hanson

He finally was voted away
but left with the flick of a match
a wildfire burning across the land
turning once fertile fields of green
barren and black under a cloud,
as institutions smoldered from
forces of heated hate and malcontent
leaving behind for generations ahead
the remains of a republic uncertain
to rise in an unforeseeable future.

Jim Hanson is a retired university researcher and sociologist who lives in the St. Louis area. He has published three poetry collections titled Endless Journey, Ruminations of Living and Dying, and Perspectives, also some thirty single poems, and is a member of the St. Louis Poetry Center and Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter.

DEAR GAG ORDER

by Susan Vespoli

The New Verse News originally published several of the poems that appear in this collection:  "Before I Knew Adam Had Died,”  "My Ex-Husband Calls… ,"   … In Reverse,” “I Am Finally Handed… ,” “Under Investigation… ,” “Dear 2022,” “Poem for My Middle Finger.”

“Do not speak of the loss or the case,” 

my lawyer’s email upon learning I sent copies

of One of Them Was Mine to President Biden,

Governor Hobbs, Senator Mark Kelly, 

Terry Gross, and a local NPR podcast host.

Dear tight strand of puka shells,

tiny beads and a flat silver OM sign,

my neck skin cinched.

Dear SHUT UP. Zipped lips.

Stage fright.    My mom’s, 

“Only say nice things.” 

Dear voice, found in my mid-forties

after a bout of cancer, the therapist

telling me later when I answered

FINE to every question, she knew

I had a lot of work to do. Dear Speak

the truth. Dear I can’t figure it out 

if I don’t write about it. Dear canceled 

poetry readings at Peregrine Bookstore

in Prescott and Changing Hands in Tempe.

Dear emotional eating, peanut M&Ms, kettle corn, 

asiago bagel, Voodoo Ranger IPA in an orange can. 

Dear “Do not speak of the loss or the case.”

Dear silenced.     Dear Adam, I am here 

to follow the thread to give you a voice. 

Susan Vespoli continues to write poems about the loss and the case, even though she wasn’t able to publicly share them for many months. She was finally able to read her book One of Them Was Mine about her son Adam's murder by a Phoenix police officer at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on January 5, 2024, because the book's poems (and the ones from Blame It on the Serpent) were already in the hands of the cop’s lawyers who were using her poetry books as evidence against her son's value as a human being.

CASSANDRA SPEAKING AFTER OCTOBER 7, 2023

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

I huddle in a thicket  I have been through this for centuries 

Seeing   not stopping it  hearing screams  pleas  screeches  shots 

 

I still want to whisper to yell to stave off disasters 

but my words are ghost breath traveling down centuries 

 

I know about the arched spine in pain 

the bones whittled down thinned by loss 

 

I know the closed eyes that can’t stop seeing 

blue eyes brown eyes hazel ones drained of hope 

 

I know there are no sentences for horror for killing 

Just broken words like ankle bone breast bone thigh bone 

 

No dreaming flesh   no dreaming bodies 

No dreaming breath   always prophecies that come to pass 

 

No one listens to my warnings   just darkened earth  

withered grasses   stones of remembrance  

 

And the  blue thread of an empty story 

in an endless labyrinth of grief 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz where she taught creative writing, memoir, creative nonfiction courses as well as American Literature, Women’s Literature, the Literature of Witnessing, and Holocaust Literature. Her poetry has been published in over one hundred journals including The Cream City Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review,  Phoebe, The Chiron Review, Memoir(and), The Westchester Review, Wind, and The Vassar Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize Series. She had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000). Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time,  by Word Temple Press. Her volume of poetry Foraging for Light was published by Finishing Line Press.  And her chapbook about Bess Houdini, the wife of Harry Houdini, entitled Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini, recently was published by Palooka Press.   

WHAT THEY TRIED IN MY SMALL TOWN

by Chad Parenteau

Glenn set a car on fire.
Surprisingly stuck around 
until the police arrived. 
 
Jesse got his girl pregnant.
Denied it. His family told hers
never contact him again. 
 
Tim’s Dad shot my aunt’s cat
from his window, kept guns
Tim grabbed from drawers.
 
Brian and James tried college.
Drank their first night. Thought 
licorice would conceal breath.
 
Some trolled on Facebook when 
Trump lost, angry that our world 
was bigger than where they lived.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

A PALER BIRD

In Memory of Sinéad O’Connor

by Diane Elayne Dees

She searched for God,

she searched for self,

she searched for a safe place

to build a nest and nurture

the fragments of her soul. 

The Magdalene Laundries

tried to wash her clean;

she suffered alone,

slept with the dying,

and—though forced into silence—

her voice escaped the prison.

Her voice—the voice that sang 

like an angel, the voice that told 

the truth that no one wanted to hear—

could not be silenced.

Her nerves on fire, her joints

inflamed, her past injecting pain

into her flesh and bone every moment— 

she shaved her head, cast off husbands,

cast off criticism, searched harder for God,

lost her child, lost her hope.

She was the pain felt by thousands,

the truth ignored by millions,

the voice of the screaming unheard,

the voice that will never be silenced.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

ONE BIG GULP

by Barbara Simmons

Watching it disappear, 
this planet gobbled up
by something so much smaller,
the very star it circled swallowed it,
reminds me of that ancient feeling, 
vanishing into another,
brought into being by my insecurity,
my inability to feel complete unless
submerged, immersed, subsumed
into another’s orbit.
 
Those days are gone, my learning
not to be absorbed so fully that
I’d lose myself in someone else’s space.
It’s taken time, not fifteen thousand years
astronomers are saying it took 
the star to nibble up its planet, though
decades in my earthly life I often 
count as infinite.
 
What I have learned the planets must:
circle stars more safely, 
spend time while wheeling 
looking back and in,
insuring you understand
both apogee and perigee, 
assuring you’ll be fine
both with, without, and by yourself.
 
Nothing’s as dark as orbiting gone awry,
nothing as lonely as losing who and where you are.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, resides in California—both coasts inform her poetry. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins, and an MA in Education and Counseling from Santa Clara University. A retired educator, she continues to savor life and language, exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, and try to understand. Publications have included Boston Accent, The NewVerse News, Topical Poetry, DoubleSpeak, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Capsule Stories – Summer Edition, Swimming, Journal of  Expressive Writing,  and her recently published book Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums from Friesen Press.