AS THE WORLD BURNS

by Moudi Sbeity

the child who is not embraced by 

the village will burn it down to feel 

its warmth —African proverb

Who didn't love you 

the way you needed to be loved

is what I would ask the men 

in their custom suits, pampered 

and coddled, as they are,

by their kindling of dollars.

Moudi Sbeity is a Lebanese-American author, poet, and transpersonal psychotherapist. Born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, he moved to the United States at the age of eighteen as an evacuee following the 2006 July war. In Utah, Moudi founded and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by the New York Times as “the future of queer dining.” Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, Moudi is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression. Their first poetry collection, Alhamdulillah Anyway, and their memoir, Habibi Means Beloved, are set to be published in 2026.

HATE IS LEARNED, THEY SAY

by D. R. Goodman

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

Hate is learned, they say. I say it’s born
and hunting for a target from within,
coiled like a cat and patient, weapons worn
 
in secret, sheathed and still. As claw, or thorn,
it catches what comes close and pulls it in.
Hate is learned, they say. I say it’s born:
 
a hollow place the world must fill with sworn
invented enemies. Beneath the skin,
coiled like a cat, impatient, weapons worn
 
in fancied self-defense, it levies scorn
against whatever hapless prey strays in.
They say that hate is learned. I say it’s born,
 
innate and natural. We cannot warn
away what lives inside us, burrowed in
and cat-like, coiled and patient, weapons worn
 
then sharpened once again—keen claw, spike-thorn.
Our work is to expose love’s mirror-twin.
They say that hate is learned. I say it’s born.
It coils like a cat within us, weapon-worn.
 

D. R. Goodman is the author of Greed: A Confession from Able Muse Press, a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and twice winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, as well as in many other journals and anthologies. She is founder and chief instructor at a martial arts school.

DAYS AFTER

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Bombed, shot, knifed 

into silence, no more. 

I will walk to the store. 

I will walk to the post 

office. I will send a letter. 

I won’t go postal. I will 

not melt down inside

or out. I will love you, brother. 

I will hug you, sister.

I will get up, turn up,

count, be counted. 

I will not let the darkness 

triumph. I will not allow 

the dark night permanence.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. 

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO LOVE THE WORLD

by Donna Hilbert

Sometimes it’s hard to love the world 

but not the earth

not hard to love the earth

suffering through no fault

of its own

 

Sometimes it’s hard to love the world 

of humans 

who wrack the earth

as if it were their own

 

It’s not hard to love the children

of the world, but it’s hard to save them

who suffer from the failures

whose making’s not their own

 

It’s hard to love the world that doesn’t love 

its children enough to save them 

even when their heads are bowed and praying 

in their church, their school, their home.

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella from Moon Tide Press, following Threnody, Moon Tide, 2022. A second edition of Gravity: New & Selected Poems is available from Moon Tide. Work has appeared in numerous journals and broadcasts including Cultural Daily, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, Lyric Life, and anthologies including The Poetry of Presence volumes I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing. She writes and leads workshops in Long Beach, California.

THE GIRL; A DIAMOND

by Jennifer Schneider

in honor of the Women’s Professional Baseball League Draft—gems, in a league of their own.

For the first time in history, women’s professional baseball players heard their names called in a Draft. The inaugural WPBL Draft on November 2025 was more than just a list of picks; it was be the moment when the league’s four founding teams took shape. The newly assembled teams will then begin preparing for the inaugural season. For the athletes, it will mean competing alongside—and against—the best players in the world. For fans, it’s the start of a new tradition: professional women’s baseball at a level never seen before. —WPBL

The girl spends her days dreaming of diamonds. 
The girl spends her nights playing the field.
The girl fields heavy hitters. The girl
catches sluggers. Of dingers and stingers
and grand-slam aces, the girl swings.
The girl hits as hard as she pitches.
She doesn’t care for cracker jacks.
She doesn’t bluff the crowd’s backs.
She doesn’t whistle at strikes.
She doesn’t negotiate the crows’ caw.
She doesn’t wait for a league to call.
She plays in a league of her own.
She plays the game she loves.
She loves her life.
She relishes full counts.
She balances balls like Jello.
She calculates the distance
from home at awkward angles.
She drives hard. She runs harder.
She’s strong. She’s tough. Tougher
than the Earth’s hardest, natural
mineral. She’s a natural gem.
A woman. A pioneer. A revolution
in motion. Fingers wrapped
around wood. She’s at home on the turf.
She’s got good eyes and a love of leather.
She prefers supple gloves, white pants,
and form-fitting helmets. She doesn’t need
a diamond on her finger. She hits her own home runs.
Of blisters, bloopers, and bleeders, she cleans–
she cleans the bases. Of manicured fields
and destination bleachers, the girl is a pro. The girl
is home, home at last–at the plate where the diamond
begins and where the diamond ends.

Jennifer Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

FIRST BOMBLESS DAY

a tanka sequence

by Chen-ou Liu

hometown

once a place of human warmth

and safety

now a pile of stones and dust

where memories crumble

family

once a source of love and help

now whispered names

on trembling lips

with a question, "still alive?"

ruins and ruins ...

under Gaza's smeared sun

childhood memories

scatter like splintered shards

that can’t be fit together

ceasefire deal

once a sunbird singing nonstop

now a mute swan

battling the chilly winds

of hunger and despair

Author’s note: The Palestine sunbird pictured above (Cinnyris osea) is a small passerine bird of the sunbird family, Nectariniidae, and in 2015, the Palestinian Authority adopted the species as a national bird. Native to Eurasia but migrating south for the winter, the mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a rare winter visitor to Palestine.

Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards.

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.

SPRING (RUDE) AWAKENING

or HANDS OFF MY SHOWERHEAD

President Trump, who has waged a long-running battle against low water pressure, signed an executive order that redefined a common bathroom fixture. —The New York Times, April 10, 2025

by Ann Weil

after Louise Glück’s “October (section I)”
 

Is it Spring again, is it green again,
aren’t we a field of four-leaf clover,
aren’t we coming up posies, 
 
weren't we promised,
aren’t we deserving,
aren’t we special, 
 
wasn’t he strong,
tougher than bullets,
 
didn’t he vow a phoenix nation,
to clean the shop
of waste and scum,
isn’t he bold, isn’t he clever, not telling
the half of his plans 
for ’25—
 
I remember our weakness, our shameful
kindness, our brotherly love, our lead-by-example,
didn’t those values drag us down,
drown us in our Gulf of America,
 
I can’t remember 
which government bloat 
I’m supposed to hate more—
park rangers or cancer researchers,
 
I no longer care
about clean air and healthcare, 
but, man, those egg prices
keep me up at night—
 
who needs allies, free-trade, or 401Ks,
who needs hurricane warnings
or Judy Blume books, 
 
down with DEI, up with ICE,
when was I young there were no illegals, 
no signs in Spanish, my grandparents spoke
only English, swept their Yiddish 
under the rug,
 
when did the taco trucks takeover
and bubble-tea shops spread like a rash,
when did a skirt 
give a guy a free pass
to the ladies room—
a scourge more worrisome 
than measly measles,
 
I blame the Fathers’ faulty foundation—
the Constitution’s lunatic creed,
 
didn’t we thrive without due process, 
without free-speech and fair elections,
 
wasn’t it great
when we were subjects
subject to
the whims of a king,
 
didn’t so-called progress
lead us to this towering cliff,
 
aren’t we jumping, won’t we bounce,
bounce back better like he said,
 
yes, we’re jumping,
isn’t it Spring?  
Yes, it’s Spring, 2025.

Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, 2024). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2024, Pedestal Magazine, RHINO, Chestnut Review, DMQ Review, Maudlin House, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. A four-time Pushcart nominee, Weil lives with her husband in Ann Arbor, MI, and Key West, FL.

HOW DO YOU READ THE LAW?

by Jeff Hardin

The Tennessee Senate on Thursday approved legislation that could subject churches and charitable organizations to lawsuits if they provide housing aid to immigrants without legal status who go on to commit a crime… Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, noted the bill makes changes to a portion of Tennessee’s “Good Samaritan” statutes, which are designed to shield individuals and organizations that provide aid from lawsuits. “What we are doing here is we are literally limiting the application of the Good Samaritan law,” Yarbro said. —Tennessee Lookout, April 3, 2025

We finally got around to laws against
loving one’s neighbor. After all, feed
someone hungry, then ever afterwards
one should be accountable for any crime
he commits. Had he died instead, he
wouldn’t have crossed that yellow line!
 
There was snow on the roads, a dark night.
In another month, buttercups in the ditch.
None of us survives experiments going on
around us—a high limb nudged by wind,
a few words spoken in haste, others unvoiced.
 
A friend describes an island—secluded
but uninhabitable. Think of standing—
wind-lashed, unsteady, uncertain—on
ground knife-edged in every direction.
 
New weights are added the longer one
hesitates deciding which step to take.

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Watermark, A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being, and No Other Kind of World. Recent and forthcoming poems appear in Image, The Laurel Review, The Inflectionist Review, and others. His eighth collection, Coming into an Inheritance, is forthcoming. He lives in Tennessee.