ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE OLD WEST

by Gale Naylor

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

ice melting at the poles was our nightmare scenario—still is—but now it’s interrupted by ICE in masks, killing legal immigrants (and whoever gets in their way) like it’s eighteen-seventy-five—but here in twenty-twenty-six, it’s the lawmen who kill/terrorize/strut through the center of town—camo peacocks, daring the town folk to speak or act—but the peacocks forgot: bad guys wear masks, and that’s how you know this is more bad LSD trip than Sergio Leone or John Ford movie with a scripted ending—oh, no, we’re crowd-sourcing these final moments, and I hope in this film the town ejects the masked bandits, and the woman who runs the general store is persuaded to lead—though she only accepts if everyone pitches in—because this is when we live our Sunday best, this is when we can return to solving the bigger problems, this version is when we have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding a lasting solution to ice.

Poetry is how Gale Naylor makes sense of the world as a survivor of incest and sexual abuse; they hope their voice helps other survivors feel less alone. Gale's poems have appeared in Exposed Bone, Calliope-on-the-Web, S/He Speaks 4, Jupiter Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and the California Poet Laureate’s “Our California” website. Gale received an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2026.

THERE ARE MONSTERS UNDER MY BED

by Celeste DeSario

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

I jolt awake wondering…
Where do the monsters go at night?
Are they hiding in the shadows?
In my closet? Under my bed?
My curtains, tightly drawn—I’m safe.
But… are the monsters still out there?
Lurking? Waiting? 
Or are they only in my head?
 
Biding their time,
They will creep into the hamlets, villages, towns, cities, 
Seducing men cloaked in blue, gray, brown uniforms, wearing badges, pointing guns.
 Masked. 
 For whose protection? 
Social Media, politicians, distort the truth even as visuals show us snippets of reality,
And now, AI, distorts images using Deep Fakes, making decisions based on values not aligned with ours, well, with values we once held respected, agreed upon. 
Is AI listening to our conversations, recording our fears, sharing them…with? 
We don’t know. That’s why we should worry.
 
Those monsters creep into Judicial chambers,
Where we assign fancy Latin terms, 
Like Mala Fide—acting in bad faith,
Or Proper ex Parte Communication—Defying justice, the court’s authority and dignity.
Tearing down our laws, 
And everything that carefully glues our country together.
Makes us free.
Makes us proud.
Makes us a republic we love.
 
Scenes crafted in sick, twisted minds play out in our towns, on our screens, 
Eventually, in our backyards.
Maybe even our living rooms.
Who is roaming the hallways of our colleges?
Our libraries?
Places we once found refuge for serious thought,
Contemplating futures we understood. 
 
Okay, now you are just listing. Stop being so dramatic.
You are scaring me.
 
Look carefully. The monsters have infiltrated our schools.
They need to get those kids,
Need to inject them with bigotry and hate.
Remember the song, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
So, they teach them. 
Yanking books off the shelves that instill dangerous, harmful ideas.
Like tolerance, inclusion, acceptance,
Twisting words and history,
Until we don’t recognize who we once were.
Using Doublespeak, Political euphemisms.
“I am the greatest peacekeeper in the history of the world.”
(Yes, bomb those fishing boats and those on them,
Demonize any country that doesn’t agree with me,
Detain citizens. Call them illegal. I don’t care.
Just do it. 
I’ll keep dancing to distract them. Make them laugh. Make them love me.)
 
They know spectacle distracts us, so,
They organize marches.
Political parades.
Use pennants, colorful flags, music,
Precision marching, a lot of saluting.
Film your leaders from below so they appear all -powerful,
So, they dominate the frame,
And then dominate what lies beyond the frame.
They appear…unstoppable.
But it’s just a trick. A low camera angle. We all know how that works.
See? We can stop them anytime we choose.
 So, do we choose now?
Choose now. 
Now.
I will fill up a cart from Amazon: that will save me.
Click. Sleep mask.  Click. Noise cancelling headphones. Air purifier. Click, click, click.
 
I will upload a new photo on my Instagram page.
See? 
Everything is okay. 
There is Nala the Cat,
Wearing a Superman Cape, and a gold crown.
Doug the Pug wearing funny sunglasses and a hat and a Christmas sweater.
 
Maybe TikTok can save me?
Just upload a new video.
Zach King, we need some of your digital magic,
Your sleight-of-hand.
That’s how it starts. That is also how it ends.
 
When you ask if there are monsters under the bed,
I assure you,
They do exist.
And when they crawl out,
There is little we can do to get them back under.
Except recognize them.
And it starts with that.
It simply starts with that. 

 
Celeste DeSario is an award-winning educator and former tenured professor of Literature and Writing at Suffolk County Community College. She is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence and a National Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas. After years of teaching the greats, she has stepped out of the classroom to craft her own worlds of impossible choices.

DISRESPECTED

by Alan Catlin

For Renee Nicole Good

We came with whistles
and they came with guns.
If you see something,
say something,
blow your whistles
take pictures of malefactors.

Men with masks and guns
used to be called outlaws,
the bad guys.
Apparently, they still are.

“You should see the people
they are hiring now.
Background checks are
a thing of the past.”

We don’t need to see
the new hires, we’ve seen
what they old ones will do.

“I’m not mad at you, dude.”
are famous last words now.

The president says it’s her
own fault she was killed,
“She disrespected a federal
officer.”

Seriously.

There will be no investigation.

Alan Catlin is the poetry and reviews editor of Misfitmagazine.net. His next full-length book of poetry is Still Life with Apocalypse from Shelia Na Gig Editions.

WE GET TO CHOOSE

by Cecil Morris

Art by Luis Ricardo

Many people, of course, feel America is broken. You can hear about the country’s many troubles—its ideological divides, its anger, its lack of civility—from conservatives and liberals, from socialist firebrands and evangelical preachers, from Democrats and Republicans. It is, perhaps, one of the few beliefs that unites Americans right now. So many seem to genuinely want those divides to be mended, for the country to be knitted back together. But the question of why America is broken, and who is to blame, and how to repair it? That’s where things get complicated. —Tim Sullivan, AP, September 13, 2025

In the choose-your-own-adventure America, 
you get to choose which expert to believe, 
which news source delivers the truth to eyes and ears, 
which problem needs solution and which solution 
you like best and think will work and ought, therefore, 
be funded beyond your wildest ability 
to count the cents one by one in your little life. 
So close your eyes and jump to page 47, 
the just say no, the walls and cages, the answer 
that puts ever more troops and officers and masks 
on your streets, the security of surveillance, 
of armed patrols—here, there, and everywhere. Or jump 
to page 76 and guns for everyone 
and self-defense in every hand and every home. 
Or turn to page 2021: the moment 
we decide which police we must obey 
and which we must overrun to guarantee our rights. 
Or, maybe, see what happens when we choose that page 
where we realize that schools and social services 
are less expensive than prisons or where we build 
villages of tiny homes for our veterans 
unhoused and struggling instead of casting them, 
so much chaff, to streets and parks, to make-shift tents, 
where they like dandelions can sprout in the cracks. 
Which America will we choose for our families?

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, Hole in the Head 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.

AIR QUALITY ALERT

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

The National Weather Service has issued an air quality alert for Aug. 11-12 for multiple northern Michigan counties because of smoke drifting south from Canadian wildfires. —Lansing State Journal, August 10, 2025

We’re in charge of so little. Less than an acre; a cat. Clearing debris from the street drain. The few things we control are so inconsequential, no one cares. Not even us. Take my lungs. Please. Take Canadian wildfire smoke. Their wilderness makes civilization  hard. Even deer here in Michigan wear masks. How do they get them on?  Last week, we found out we were made of plastic. Today particulate matter is coating our lungs with Teflon. Silver Beach is like the bottom of an ashtray half full of gin. Haze, the weather man says, trying to fool the tourists. Maple/bacon smoke rolls in, a plague from the Northwest, but we are so far gone, its smell only makes us hungry.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske’s latest chapbook is Falling Women, with painter Mary Hatch.

CONNECTING THE DISCONNECT

by Dana Yost

“A strange unrest hovers over the nation: / 

This is the last dance.” —Robert Bly, “Unrest”

I wake to the harshest

of dreams. I make a poster

one weekend—photo of a little

girl from Gaza, hungry. Afraid.

Arms reaching out, a begging,

pleading moment—so much

agony on that little face.

I write a caption:

"Please don’t kill me."

I show this to people, and they

say you can't share this: 

it's too terrible, too severe.

So it sits on my desk.

Someone wants me to write

about my earlier days,

But do they really matter?

I try, humoring them, but get

nowhere. Those days seem

puny. Even childhood, formative,

but so far away, lost to thunder

and the blasts of artillery

in another land. Someone says

there is goodness yet. They point

to flowers in a garden

down the street. They smell nice,

but, for me, it doesn't last. A man holds

a woman's hand down at the

beach, but I don’t sit with them.

In Ellay, the masks come

as the faces of hatred serving

power, power serving hatred.

The same. I come from

the same farmland as Robert

Bly, forty years later. The snow

blows across fields, the corn

groans to be born. 

But the prairie is no barrier

to speaking truth about evil,

no hindrance to fulminating

about the big wrongdoing.

I wake from a new dream

alive with anger and clarity:

these words must be said.

I want the men in masks

to lift them from their faces,

join the masses, the evil

to be buried at the point

of a pen. Then, I will sit.

Dana Yost grew up in southwestern Minnesota, an hour from Robert Bly’s farm, forty years after him. But Yost shares Bly’s early interest in taking on the establishment.

INCREASING TURBULENCE

by Betsy Mars

 

 

“we live and move and have our being / here, in this curving and soaring world / that is not our own” –Julie Cadwallader Staub, "Blackbirds"

Each body with its own gravity, each a potential
projectile, catapulting beyond our limits.
We pin on wings, ignore warnings, leave
our belts uncinched, bang on overhead bins.

 
Oxygen masks dangle like buttercups, lines tangled 
rice noodles, seatbacks cracked, someone’s hair floats
feathering above. In galleys: scattered wine bottles, 
kiwi slices, coffee urns, snacks, the aftermath.
 
If we could see the air ahead would we swerve, 
fly below, rise above? How many words 
for this invisible curve are there in
blackbird tongue, imperceptible to us?
 
We weather the storm. Again, ask for 
mercy, oscillate, tally the toll. 

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

CAN WE SEE THE SUN?

by William Aarnes

Beth and I are wearing masks

and, as can happen on the subway,

 

the unmasked man across the aisle

raises his voice to everyone

 

in the car to tell us that wearing masks

and getting vaccines just shows

 

we’re brainwashed by the “slime”

of lies told by the government

 

and the media.  We’ve been tricked

into believing all kinds of fictions.

 

“Take the sun,” he says, his voice

rising.  “Yes, take the goddamned sun.

 

You’re telling me you can see something

that’s ninety-three million miles away?

 

Anyone who thinks for himself knows

his eyes can’t see that far! You’d need

 

a Hubble, though that Hubble’s

just another made-up lie. Anyone

 

who’s reasonable and thinks for himself

knows he’s not seeing the sun. Read

 

your Plato and stop looking up

at the useless sky. Don’t listen

 

to those swindlers that are telling you

any different. And stop going along

 

with the idea that something invisible

can make you sick. Or just go ahead.

 

I don’t give a damn. Why would anyone               

give a damn? You’re all just pathetic!” 

As we leave the train, we don’t dare

wish him well—what would he do?—

though we want to. Beth and I wear

our masks the two blocks home.

It’s a gloomy afternoon, light rain.

And the first thing I do in the door

is—trusting the internet—open my laptop

to look up the diameter of the sun.

Then how much light the sun gives off—

enough, I’m told, to leave you blind.

William Aarnes lives in New York.  He worries about what the conservative response to COVID has done to our thinking about public health.  And yesterday his appointment to get a COVID booster was cancelled because the pharmacy had yet to receive its supply.

SMILE

by William Marr

Smile coach Keiko Kawano teaches students at a smile training course at Sokei Art School in Tokyo, Japan, May 30, 2023. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

trapped in masks for three long years

many people

can't remember how to smile anymore

 

should eyes be opened or closed 

how about the mouth 

and should the eyebrows and mouth corners 

be lifted up

or pulled down

 

there’s really no need to spend money 

to find a smile consultant

just go outdoors

and look at the flowers

blooming with innocent smiles

from the ground that was once covered 

with heavy snow and ice

William Marr, a Chinese American scientist/poet/artist, has published over 30 collections of poetry and several translations. His poetry has been translated into more than ten languages and is included in high school and college textbooks in Taiwan, China Mainland, England, and Germany. A former president of the Illinois State Poetry Society, he now lives in Chicago.

BIRDS IN WILDFIRE SEASON

by Cecil Morris

Gary Robertson/Flickr Creative Commons

“Birds shouldn’t go outside at all when it's smoky.” 

—NPR, June 8, 2023

1

Birds themselves are particulate matter, visible smudges

clouding blue skies and dangerous if carelessly inhaled,

if respirators are not fitted right—over mouth

and nose—and well sealed against avian infection.

Birds should not be inside at all, smoky or warbling

and tuneful or decorative splashes of color for

monochrome rooms. Birds and their mites and germs and

influenzas should be kept out at all costs. Use bars

and screens and N95 masks cinched tight to guard against

feather lung with its symptoms of chirping and flightiness,

erosion of marrow—so called hollow-bone syndrome

(HBS)—and often fatal light-headedness.

Do not wait for the Surgeon General or CDC

to issue official warnings or for Congress to mandate

cautionary labels on all birds. Birds can kill.

2

Wait. Birds live outside. Birds are outside always,

those complaining jays and crows, the warbling

passerines, the finches, sparrows, the larks.

Birds are the outside—along with round trees

and arrow trees and pollen-spewing weeds.

I mean, they’re nature and nature’s outside.

Are we supposed to bring them inside now?

Can they be quarantined? Locked in their nests

until tongues of flame kiss them into smoke?

Will their tiny bird brains tell them to come

inside, to seek an air-filtered shelter,

to take wing and flee fiery holocaust?

 

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

REMNANTS

by Liz Ahl

“The U.S. national emergency to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic ended Monday as President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan congressional resolution to bring it to a close after three years — weeks before it was set to expire…” —NPR, April 11, 2023

                                                

 

Still, these tattered masking tape traces 

on the scuffed tile floors, hieroglyphs  

of our attempts to demarcate safe zones  

of coming and going through  

the narrow public vestibules. 

 

The box of “take one” surgical masks 

still perched on its pedestal at the entrance, 

offers only its lonely cardboard; empty, 

too, each strategically placed 

hand sanitizer dispenser, which exhales  

a sad, shallow breath when pressed. 

Some smudged plexiglass remains, 

having been more difficult to erect 

and therefore more bother to remove. 

 

Outside, the windswept tumbleweed 

of a facemask, its torn elastic bands 

flapping their tired fronds against 

the asphalt with the other winter trash. 

 

Refrigerator trucks rededicated 

to the chilled storage and transport  

of anything but the human deceased.  

Small town campus ice arena 

bearing the slightest scars of cot-legs 

and privacy screens, the strange dream 

of soldiers fading to fragments. 

 

A ghost of myself, figment out of phase, 

measures distances, haunts the far edges  

of what bustles and churns, a clamorous  

bullying desire for “normalcy” 

almost passing for “normalcy.” 

 

And of course, the counted dead, 

the dead uncounted. The brutal 

and insufficient arithmetic. The long  

and the short, the landmine damage 

lurking in bodies, biding time 

until the next innocent footstep. 

And of course, the virus, not cc-d  

on the report of its demotion 

from emergency to some other rank, 

still lingers on the perpetual threshold: 

overstayed guest or one just arriving? 

It’s hard to know any more, if we ever could, 

the coming from the going.  

Liz Ahl is the author of A Case for Solace (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022) and Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2017). Recent publications include a poem about Buzz Aldrin in the anthology Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and poems in recent issues of TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and Revolute. She lives in Holderness, New Hampshire.