EVERY LITTLE BIT: A HAIBUN

by Miriam Weinstein

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

My assignment—oranges and limes—As much or as little as you’re able to bring—the emailed instructions specified. Food and supplies collected for people afraid to leave their homes during the ICE invasion of Minnesota. Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of uniformed, masked agents carrying weapons—now a common sight on the streets of my city. Agents of fear acting erratically. Lying in face of facts. Spreading terror and chaos across my State—land of ten thousand lakes, surging rivers, roaring waterfalls. In the church parking lot, volunteers load carts—boxes of diapers, canned goods, packaged products and produce. A middle-aged man wheels a cart to the side of my car. I pull out two large reusable bags, empty contents. Five, six pound bags of oranges, five, three pound bags of limes. Small offering considering—68, 400 people, rounded and roughed up, interrogated, arrested. In the name of searching for illegal, criminal aliens, citizens and legal residents—seized—two Americans murdered by ICE agents. Their real agenda—to breed uncertainly, fear, and chaos. Every little bit counts my friend tells me. I’m desperate today to believe in something. Has the produce I dropped off  reached its destinations? During this unfathomable crisis, is someone, somewhere being nourished?

Dusk display—turkey vulture 

soars, swoops down. Curved beak 

grasps carcass, carries rat skyward.

Miriam Weinstein completed a two year apprenticeship program at the Loft Literary Center in 2013. She has two chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press: Twenty Ways of Looking and How to Thread a Needle. Her poems are in several anthologies and journals including A 21st Century Plague, Rocked by the Waters, Poems of Hope and Reassurance, The Heart of All That Is, Survivor Lit, The New Verse News, Plum Tree Tavern, Vita Brevis Press, St. Paul Almanac, and American Jewish World. Her manuscript Here. Between. Beyond. was a finalist for the Concrete Wolf Press Louis Award. Miriam Weinstein is an avid birdwatcher and environmentalist. She lives in Minneapolis, MN.

THE FIRST 100 DAYS

by Akua Lezli Hope

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

I rebuke calm voices sitting around tables 
decatastrophizing recontextualizing, 
explaining this inexplicable harm
incalculably mounting, betraying trusts, alarming allies
banishing wards, destroying safeties, conscripting civilities
this insanity this madness, this indifference that grabs
that disrupts, that destructs as if our prior state flawed
as it was somehow merited this manic monstrous mayhem
that peace we knew 100 days ago,
somehow called to be smashed and spat upon
as if any of what was wrong then,
called for the dismantling of all our frameworks
leaving us frail exposed unprotected unprotected,
this dire daily detonation of assistance, food banks,
literacies, the hows of how we made do, made it through,
assured ourselves our air would be clean and the hungry
could be fed and access gained and opinions expressed
and why are the town criers, these well-fed talking heads
not running screaming through the streets
with hair on fire and why are these transgressions
relayed piecemeal in calm tones
bit by disassociated incoherent bit
without anyone saying it’s all torn up
it’s all torn down, you may not see the whole
but it’s falling down yes yes the sky is falling
by eccentric emergency, executive fiat
by a rapacious, murdering, lying, orange clown
and now rush out dearies to hold the exploded
earth, the shattered reality, floating away in this
inverted gravity, hurry citizens to grapple with these
fragments and hold them, before all is lost, hold them
hold them down.
 

Akua Lezli Hope is a paraplegic wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, adornments, and peace whenever possible.

THREE HAIKU FOR A WEEKEND RALLY

by Renée M. Schell

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Cherry blossoms sing
Potholes, sticks, and stoplights chant
Make Lying Wrong Again

I wear a sandwich
Front and back bloom violet
Not My DicKtator

Pussy willows whip
Forget-me-nots spread like words
Hands Off Our Bodies

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection, Overtones, was published in 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, and many other journals. She was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. A Best of the Net nominee, she holds a Ph.D. in German Studies and also taught at a Title I school in San José.

THE PLEASURE I’D TAKE IN THE ANY-AGE DEATH OF ONE WHO REMAINS UNNAMED

a truncated trenta-sei

by Jacquelyn Shah

Spoofing that poetic form of John Ciardi 

used for his “A Trenta-Sei of the Pleasure We Take in 

the Early Death of Keats”

“Still Life With Skull, Leeks, and Pitcher, March 14, 1945” by Pablo Picasso

I will not pretend to be sad
thinking about his death. A treat
it would be—(the species-truth? We are glad
to have a death to munch on.)
to wake some morning soon to a Tweet
reporting his demise. Why, oh why
am I so moved to pray he will die?

Thinking about his death is a treat

I allow myself. To be spared the bother of hearing,

day after day, his merely bitter, never sweet,

falsehoods, fabrications; watch his sneering

and his huff and puff, huff and puff

would constitute, for me, a quite-enough.

Re: Ciardi’s “species-truth”—yes, we are glad

to have a death to munch on. But truth to tell,

I’d forgo the munching; is snarfing up too-too very bad?

When it comes to lying, this unnamed guy does it well,

and his performances, so brash, his smear and jeer

deserve no curtain calls, despite the fools who stand and cheer.

To wake some morning soon to a Tweet 

reporting death, underscoring had he lived, my own remaining time

could be not merely dull but dreadful… how Sweet!

O beautiful, the death of one whose power-grubbing lifetime’s

gone. And gone would be, ungenerosity, extravagance, and full-

blown pretense, double-crossing, treachery, cock-and-bull!

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah, nonbinary iconoclast holds A.B. & M.A. English and M.F.A. & Ph.D. English/creative writing–poetry. Her publications: chapbook, small fry; full-length book, What to Do with Red; individual poems in various journals. Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest winner, she has now won a non-fiction book award contest and her memoir-essay collection will be published this summer. 

ARS POLITICA

by David Feela
     (with apologies to Archibald MacLeish)





A voter should be imperceptible and mute
as a foot in a boot.

Mum
as the chamber of an unholstered gun,

inaudible as a candidate caught lying
at a rally for the deaf and the dying—

A voter should be aware
Truth’s not there.

*

A voter should be firm and free
As the swell of a sea,

Pushing, as if changing a shoreline
Grain by shiny grain against time,

Pushing, as an eraser over errors,
Until the paper stands corrected or it tears—

A voter should be firm and free
As the swell of a sea.

*

A voter should be equal to the task,
Not rash.

For all the history of losing faith
An empty ballot and a polling place.

For hope
A persistent vine crawling toward the light—

A voter’s not just me
But we.


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. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A Collection of his essays, How Delicate These Arches, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press will release his new chapbook, Little Acres, in April 2019.

A LEGAL CASE AGAINST AUTUMN

by Jo Ann Steger Hoffman

Bold Autumn Colors Abstract is a photograph by Carol Groenen which was uploaded on November 2nd, 2013 at fineartamerica.

Bold autumn steals light from summer.
Even dumber
he strips trees of lavish green dress,
forces excess
of brilliance to camouflage dying.
He’s lying.
He plans to prove summer is trying
to falsely convict him of stealth,
of hiding vice beneath radiant wealth.
Even dumber, he forces excess. He’s lying.

Jo Ann Steger Hoffman is a writer, editor, and former communications director whose publications include a children’s book, short fiction and a variety of poems in literary journals.  Her 2010 non-fiction book, Angels Wear Black, recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley.  A native of Toledo, Ohio, she and her husband now live in Cary and Beaufort, North Carolina.

DREAM SONGS FOR THE GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN

by Ned Balbo

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is accusing his staffers of lying to him about lead and other contaminants in Flint’s drinking water supply. Snyder has long accused state environmental and health regulators of giving him incorrect information about the safety of the Michigan city's water after its switch to using the Flint River in April 2014 until late last year. But on Monday, he accused employees at the state agencies of lying to him. —The Hill, April 11, 2016

1.

Why is our boiled water brown?

Our bottled water’s running out. 

Will it be safe to drink again?

Why shouldn’t water touch our skin?

The water mains still underground

belong to a forgotten age—

The records we’ve retrieved so far

don’t always point to where they are,

and, yes, we have a deficit—

which means we can’t repair them yet.

But rest assured: your water’s safe.

True, there are problems with its taste,

color, and smell, but samples show

lead levels are extremely low.

We hear you. We’ve conducted tests.

The wheels of government are slow.

2.

When water from the tap won’t clear—

When families forced to cook with it

get sicker, do we share their rage?

Or do we share in their defeat

when hydrants flush the streets metallic

orange—one more tainted purge?

When residents desperate to sell

are turned away by realtors?  

Water, once thought a public good,

is now one more commodity:

expendable, like those who live

in devastated neighborhoods.

3.

Why change a city’s water source

to one inarguably worse?

You know why: it was cheaper. Summer

days, pools fill with teenage swimmers,

laughter, lead. How soon will daughters,

showering, watch hair fall out

in clumps that catch in rusted drains?

How will the elderly, the poor

assured it’s safe, protect themselves?

Stop washing when their rashes burn?

Or let caregivers sponge their flesh—

the toxic river’s toxic touch.

We know this water’s poisonous.

Who’ll stop or redirect its course?

We’re told we have to wait. How long?

Who’s listening, if anyone?

4.

Hair white, startled from sleep, a man

who should have known pads down the stairs,

thirsty. What does he see at night?

Iced-over windows, mandalas

of frost on glass. He pours and drinks—

fresh water from the faucet, cool

and clear: the least that he deserves.

What do the least of Michigan

deserve from those responsible?

If citizens are customers

and nothing more, then, yes, they’re lost.

What should they ask this Governor,

and others like him? Shouldn’t water

wash us clean and nourish life?

Who sent this poison to our homes,

as if to kill or scatter us?

Don’t turn your back in disbelief.

Ned Balbo's The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems received the Poets' Prize and the Donald Justice Prize. His previous books are Lives of the Sleepers (Ernest Sandeen Prize; ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal), and Galileo's Banquet (Towson University Prize). A new book, Upcycling Paumanok, is due out soon from Measure Press. He currently teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.