CRYPTOQUIPS

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

“Stańczyk” by Jan Matejko

My grandfather, tears in his eyes, his false teeth in a glass of water on the table beside him, pounded the arm of his easy chair and screamed, "What does a man have to do to get borscht around here?" What he meant was "Why, when I was six, did I have to hide in a pickle barrel when the Cossacks came looking for Jews to kill?"

My uncle came into my bedroom and caught me dancing like I was on Shindig to the Beatles' “Twist and Shout”. "When you fall in love for the first time, you'll stop listening to garbage like this." What he meant was "Why am I working for the State when I should be a millionaire?"

My mother slapped my face when I read to her from a TV Guide that David McCallum, who played Ilya Kuriyakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., was America's new sex symbol. What she meant was, "Why am I not married to a doctor who hates football?"

My creative writing teacher gave my poems a "D" because the assignment was to write from the heart and I write from my knees. What she meant was, "You are not a serious person, and poetry is a deadly serious business."

My girl friend touched my face, looked deeply into my eyes, and said, "When you get tired, you look like Henry Kissinger." What she meant was, "I thought maybe you might be my ticket out of here, but you're actually more fucked up than I am."

My neighbor said that "If you look at every angle of what happened in Minneapolis, you can see that the Antifa girl was trying to ram the ICE guy." What he meant was the same as what I mean: the same thing all of them have ever meant, I have ever meant to them, all our lives long.

"Okay, enough. I give up."

Steve Hellyard Swartz has contributed several poems to The New Verse News over the past many years. Twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize Poetry, he has served as Poet Laureate of Schenectady county in upstate New York, been a finalist four times in the Eugene O' Neill National Playwrights' Conference, and won a Green Eyeshades Award for Excellence in Broadcasting awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists. His movie Never Leave Nevada which he wrote and directed and in which he co-starred, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in January of 1990.

ARRANGED MARRIAGE

by Lavinia Kumar

Pluto and Charon. (Getty Images) “…researchers reported that in the early stages of formation Charon and Pluto came together and orbited as one, swapping some materials before separating. They call this cosmic dance a “kiss and capture” event…” —Yahoo! News, January 9, 2025

It was no secret Charon and Pluto

had an arranged marriage.

Neither knew the other

before the aunties agreed

stars and family were aligned.

 

Charon brought her dowry,

and with much ceremony

they were wed, the entire

Kuiper village at the nuptials

 

But, alas, it was a fraught marriage—

Pluto, unhappy, decided to undo 

this union. Naturally, he decided

to keep the dowry brought by Charon, 

those valuable diamonds,

that cache of ice.

 

Then, unfortunately, the divorce 

was not agreed to, was discouraged,

by families on both sides. And so, 

for eternity, these two unhappy beings 

are together. And apart.  

Both unhappy.

 

They had no children.

See Lavinia Kumar’s three food stories in Issue Five of Ruby Literary Press, The Monsoon Rain winning a 2024 Pushcart nomination.

AS I WATCH ROSALYNN CARTER’S TRIBUTE

by Barbara Eknoian

Why do tears keep falling from my eyes as I watch? They say Rosalynn stood by her husband for seventy-seven years, and that she cared deeply for the most vulnerable among us. Throughout my life, although I am a good person and wouldn’t harm anyone, I never did anything as inspiring as she did for others. When the choir sings “America the Beautiful,” I’m a young girl again at school singing. Why do I find this tribute so touching? The religious music playing is the old-fashioned kind, which I miss very much. Maybe, that’s why the tears flow easily while listening to all her good works. One of the speakers comments that Rosalyn would be pleased that First Ladies from both sides have come to honor her, including Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Trump, and everyone laughs. I feel like I’m at an inspiring church service, though I haven’t attended in years. I’m so glad I’m watching. Her husband Jimmy, left hospice at their home in Plains, Georgia, traveling l40 miles so as not to miss his wife’s tribute. He is wheeled into church. Their daughter, Amy, says, since her dad can’t speak, she’ll read a love letter he wrote to Rosalynn when he was in the Navy seventy-five years ago. I imagine him thinking this right now: 

Good-bye Darling, 

Until tomorrow 

                            Jimmy

Barbara Eknoian’s work has appeared in Chiron Review, Cadence Collective, Redshift, and Silver Birch Press's anthologies. Her recent collection of short stories Romance is Not Too Far From Here is published by Amazon. She lives in La Mirada, CA with her daughter, grandson, one cat, and a very mischievous kitten.

THINGS EASIER THAN MARRIAGE TO IKE

by Elaine Sorrentino

Sprinting across the I-30
in the dead of night 

the leggy legend 
with infectious charm 

 

turned trauma into triumph, 

swapped bloodied and beaten
for surviving and thriving
in an act of self-preservation. 

She dared to be the needle 
that pricked the heady
Love Team balloon,
indestructible Tina  

in leather and denim
scrubbed toilets
scaled the Eiffel Tower in heels
unearthed her pain 

instead of maintaining
her 16-year limelight lie,
transforming thirty-six cents
and inconceivable drive 

into the Queen of Rock,
self-love, that second-hand emotion
had everything to do with it, 
Buddha offered nirvana.  

When the shine was off the penny
she was at peace slowing down,
asking her devoted public 
not to disturb her before noon. 

Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Your Daily Poem,  Panoplyzine, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at  wildamorris.blogspot.com. She was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. 

I AND THOU, CHATGPT

by Barbara Simmons

Shutterstock AI-generated image in response to “trapped in darkness” line created by ChatGPT 

Can you write poetry?
                Free verse or form?
A sonnet on aging?
                Sure, here’s one that rhymes~
the words that show your golden hue
can stay aglow, even with wrinkles
that start to show.
 
Your words come quickly, resonate, too,
reminding me that aging carries its grace
I’m glad my sonnet resonates with you, I’m glad
I’ve helped express your thoughts. Anything else you’d like to have me write about?
 
Loneliness abounds in this post COVID world, 
so would you write a poem helping me to deal
with it?
 
I try to fill the void with noise,
But it echoes back with disdain,
I try to find joy in simple things,
But it feels like a never-ending strain
I fear my loneliness smothers
And I’ll be trapped in this darkness, enthralled
But then I remind myself
That I am not alone in this fight
 
Again, my thanks, dear ChatGPT, 
you seem to understand humanity’s plight,
so now I ask you for more help:
how to write about a marriage’s ending?
Would you? For my son?
 
Farewell, my dear, we part
Our love was true, but now it’s dark
The memories we shared the vows we spoke
Will linger forever, a permanent cloak.
 
I understand the lines, though not all ring true, 
the breaking bringing darkness of its own
to what had been the marriage’s light.
 
My poem was one perspective on letting go,
and may not resonate with all.
Let me add this is a process, not always easy,
important to focus on good memories, moments
of happiness, learning from past ones to be able 
to move forward. 
Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.
 
I know my generative pre-trained transformer, ChatGPT,
generates human responses in its tool-trained ways, but
for that moment, I feel a virtual hug, feel someone
in this universe of merged moments cares, 
a universe responding when my own world’s cursor 
frequently is still.
 

Barbara Simmons, a Bostonian and Californian, says both coasts inspire her. An alumna of Wellesley and Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars, and a retired educator, she savors life, envisions, celebrates, and understands with words.  Some publications: Boston Accent, The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, Capsule Stories 2022: Swimming, and her book, Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums.

IMPRESSIVELY LATE

by Harsimran Kaur

Several women’s organisations across [India] have opposed the government’s move to increase the age of marriage of girls from 18 to 21 years, which has been ironically touted as a measure of women’s empowerment. … Similarly, ‘Young Voices: National Working Group’ formed in response to the task force, comprising 96 civil society organisations, in its report published on July 25, 2020, had also opposed this move. The report brought out after surveying about 2,500 adolescents across 15 states stated, “…Increasing the age of marriage will either harm or have no impact by itself unless the root causes of women’s disempowerment are addressed.” —Flavia Agnes, “Increasing Marriage Age for Girls May Only Strengthen Patriarchy,” The Times of India, December 19, 2021

my friend got married at seventeen

in a gurudwara

singing the hymns her mother sang some

twenty-five years ago

on a cold day in January

her henna – impolite

her body wrapped in Red

her tiny legs blurting out of her salwar:

“maybe it’s too soon.” i don’t know

her forehead smeared in red

eyes black, cajoled

driven out of existence.

all i know is that she is my friend

who loves Jell-O, baked cookies & comfy blankets

i don’t know who taught her marriage

i didn’t know a red bindi on her forehead before

& seven pairs of bangles made from glass

hanging loose from her wrists

two for one.

brought from the corner shop with no name

i didn’t know red grew in a land that

burns, buys, believes, blue

& meanders our lives 

like the Ganges

Harsimran Kaur is a seventeen-year-old author of three books. Her work has been recognised by The Royal Commonwealth Society, Oxford University Press, and the International Human Rights Art Festival. She is currently a senior in high school in India.

M-MOMENTS

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Around 1,600 refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh were rescued off the coast of Indonesia on Sunday and detained in Malaysia on Monday. Malaysian officials said Monday that 1,081 Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees landed on the country’s Langkawi Island. On Sunday, 600 “sad, tired and distressed” migrants were stranded off the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh. On Monday, another 400 were found aboard a ship, the BBC reports. Hundreds of those people are believed to be Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim minority in Myanmar who for decades have faced discrimination and persecution in the majority-Buddhist country. The government of Myanmar considers the country’s approximately 1.33 million Rohingya illegal settlers, and the United Nations classifies them as one of the most persecuted refugee groups in the world. —Newsweek, May 11, 2015

With silvery hair, bones thinned in-out, of life the silver screen speaks.
The letter M, embossed in audacious colors. It had begun long before her time,

time when clay pots were sanded out to shimmer. She had seen it and felt it.
It starts by falling- falling in love. Minute carts tenderly packed,
full of moments, full of memories delicately put together.

It moves with fantasies of prized certificates, a desire for a stamp-the majestic seal of approval.
It flows to the stage of self- journey through dark subways, tunnels to the unfamiliar,
untested promise lands. She heard some had swam bellied-up in wavy pools,
Chillin’ to the historic tempest.

Others swim to “bien venue”  cat-calls, to honeymoons filled with French kisses,
flowers and fresh caresses, beauty and beautiful feet planted on cozy carpets,
romance lasting into wintery and the hurricane hugging days.

On strange lands were some feet planted. They kissed strangers
and slept with enemies -red juices pressed against their lips,
with the firm force of a heavy weight boxer’s strength, kissing Judas’ doppelgänger
to the sweet sound of the language from Babel, spoken with a lover’s passion.

Faint memories show M in the alphabet song, is for Migration, for marriage.


Lind Grant-Oyeye is an Irish-Nigerian poet and has work published in several countries. Her work discusses issues related to culture, social justice and equality.