THE BRAIN RESPONDS TO THE FIREHOSE OF SH*T

by Kay White Drew

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

Pounded from all directions
by edicts of spite and hate,
words and acts of cruelty
and stupidity, the amygdala,
fear’s hangout in the brain, grovels
on the unstable ground of shifting
demands, screaming for mercy:
I’ll do whatever you want! Just
please make it stop! Meanwhile,
the cerebral cortex, where reason
and discernment reside, frowns
in puzzlement, tries to ask
the relevant question: what
course of action might be
best in these circumstances?
but cannot get a word in edgewise.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in Bay to Ocean Journal, Pen in Hand, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Gargoyle, and New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband.

LAUGH

by Ken Purscell

I heard his laugh before I heard the news,

But recognized who made that laugh and why:

He'd overcome their power to refuse

His ballot. Now his laugh could finally fly

Unhindered. Yes, there still was all the pain

Of truth to face. And reconciliation?

Never easy. Yet gentle as the rain,

He worked to foster healing to a nation.

But that one moment, joy sprang out in laughter

Because he’d laughed a thousand times before–

Despite the past behind, what might come after–

Holding tight the faith that was his core:

Christ’s mercy conquers every evil thing,

So even before the news arrives, we sing!

Ken Purscell is a retired retail cashier, adjunct professor, and preacher. He and his wife Koni live in the suburbs of Chicago. He still claims his greatest accomplishment is that he once made Victor Borge laugh.

THE DOCTOR WHO DIES OF THE CORONAVIRUS AFTER THE HOSPITAL RUNS OUT OF GLOVES

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Alameda Health System nurses, doctors, and workers protest the lack of personal protective equipment available in Oakland, California, on March 26, 2020. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via Vox

A doctor in Italy who described his concerns in a recent television interview about how the shortages of medical supplies meant he had to treat patients with coronavirus without wearing gloves, has died from the illness. Marcello Natali, 57, from Codogno, in the northern province of Lombardy, had also sounded the alarm over the number of doctors who were getting infected, during an interview with Euronews before he tested positive. He told the channel bluntly that he was not able to work with gloves because "they have run out." —Newsweek, March 19, 2020


There is no linear time in the hereafter. Angels do every-
thing at once. They see the last pair of latex gloves drop
to a hospital floor in slow motion, the look of fear on the
face of the gloveless doctor who, in the blink of a human
eye, goes on caring for patients. They can watch people
being brave (since fear is the birthplace of bravery) and
the people who are sick, some of them dying. But those
who pass away during the doctor’s glove-free hours feel
the touch of warm skin on his or her forehead when they
take their final breaths. This is the unselfish mercy that
humans are capable of, which makes the angels marvel.
Divine creatures respect mortality and all that it entails.
And from every angel’s non-linear, eternal perspective,
a doctor can do his job and at the exact same time, enter
the great mystery of his own dying. Angels may ooh and
ahh over this lone human being’s merciful acts as well as
mercy shown around the world, and still catch his soul the
instant it leaves his body. One whispers words of solace.
Yet another sings the doctor’s favorite aria, Puccini’s “O
Mio Babbino Caro,” as they carry him to the place where
there is no grief or sorrow—and no need for gloves at all.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including Becoming the Blue Heron (Press 53). Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Poet’s Market, The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

AT THE CROSSROADS

by James Cronin

The Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio

The first time I saw "The Seven Acts of Mercy" . . .  I knew I wanted to write a play about it: its generosity, its complications, its aggressive, violent compassion. —Anders Lustgarden in his introduction to the 2016 Bloomsbury Methuen edition of his play The Seven Acts of Mercy.

The artist painted a swarming crossroads where
two alleys, winged heaven and Naples did
intersect; all to show the fruits of fair
mercy, with the knife edge of its need not hid.

The city’s shame is so public, its wanton
cruelty on display. Does it want us
to keep moving, and not gaze at that fountain
replenished on its own? No, the chorus

reaching from the heavens bids us instead
to stare: as a noble hands a cloak to a nude
beggar; a weary pilgrim with a red
beard is pointed to shelter and food;

a servant moves a corpse for burial;
and a prisoner, condemned to starve in jail,
is suckled by his child, a surreal
story of old Rome. All true? Isms fail

where story succeeds. We are numbed
by numbers. Empathy demands a tale,
a face in the crowd. Compassion can’t be summed.
But now, even a clear summons can fail.

Where once only moral truth was needed,
our leader, peacock-brained, sees but his tail.
With miles of devastation unheeded,
his gloried behind dims all loss from the gale.

And those enablers of killing still stick
to their guns and sanctify murders’ ease.
No compassion! No mercy! What sick
huckster sells as freedom a deadly disease.

After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin returned to his first love, literature. Since his judicial retirement in 2007, he has participated in three poetry groups and has served as a facilitator in numerous courses for a lifelong learning program in Fall River, MA.

VETTING THE REFUGEES

by Amit Majmudar

Image source: CBC Radio

Under the vest, something was ticking.
It ticked, ticked, ticked. A heart?
The faces all were human faces,
Salt-stained from the trail of tears
And the sea spray of their middle passage.
Their God was not our God,
But their children were our children
Discovered face down on the strand.
Treasures, buried in the sand.
In their passports we saw the faces
We recognized, or thought we did,
From last night’s news. The same? A match?
Anger, anguish, both unshaven
And praying in the same direction
To God, their God, the same, a match.
And there were babies, yes, and widows,
And gray professors speaking English—
No tests for mercy. No, the test
Was the twenty-year-old man whose face
We recognized, or thought we did;
Whose passport might encode an omen
Like scripture, entrails, curling smoke.
And so, interrogating those
Who came to us for mercy, we
Interrogated mercy in a chair:
Can hatred hide in suffering?
Can wisdom hide in fear?—
And so the line became a lineup
Eyed through a two-way mirror.


Amit Majmudar is a widely published poet, novelist, and essayist. His next book of poetry, Dothead, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf in March 2016.

THE VIEW FROM SAMARIA

by Matt Quinn

On the top of the photo it says:
Would you help Jesus up?
and beneath the fallen Nazerene:
TYPE ‘YES’

and it looks like 107,000 people
have done just that,
and I think:
well, yes,

now that you know who he is,
but take away that cross
and the crown of thorns
and all you’ve got

is some middle-eastern looking guy
with a head wound –
except this one
looks rather like 

a white man
with a tan,
but let’s pretend.
He could very easily be

a terrorist
or a refugee,
or more likely
an economic migrant

faking it:
those wounds on his head
are only scratches after all

and probably self-inflicted.

And besides

he doesn't look at all
like a Christian.
Would you help him up?

Type 'yes'.

Matt Quinn lives in Brighton, England and hopes to one day have a sufficiently impressive list of poetry publications to justify a bio.

CHARLESTON CHURCH MASSACRE

by Roger Aplon

"We forgive you."

Swept-up
on  a blast of heated air – one flash & another

& nowhere  to run,
to hide, to breathe free  . . . & he keeps
coming on
this pilfered heart, this shameless ragging,
like a lion on fire,
provoked, pissed-off,  punishing, a collapsed invention where
fear marries power,
with guns blazing the angel of death smacks his lips
slurping up a treacheries soup . . .
Speak not of justice, sanity & bigotry in one breath. Speak not
of mercy without
passion. Do unto others as you do unto me. 
The words ring wrong.
If harmony reigns what will come to fill the vacuum?
Guilt-of-the-fathers
passed to the sons.  Inbred fear of retribution. The Other, no longer dark
but from the light
comes to resurrect that supreme fabric. Owner. Master. Overseer.
That sublime indifference
born of  guilt – suspicion – nurturing – fomenting.
Is there no one to speak
against the blind warrior?
We forgive you.
It’s said with conviction – tearful & full of grace. Who’s earned
such a holy gift?
Tattooed across his brow a crown of thorns, swastika etched
between his shoulder blades.
This is the time of mutilation, of dementia, of disgrace.
Where are the voices of revolution?
Those willing to stand & be counted, unafraid of hard choices?
The one who bears malice bears
a cataclysm too long dismissed as fated, too long
      tolerated, too long unchallenged.
“Born in blood, so blood must be spilled.”
It’s the way of the smuggler,
the rapist, the strangler of kids, the demon lover of hatred & dread.
To this we say, with all our strength – No more!


Roger Aplon has had eleven books published: Ten of poetry (most recently It’s Only TV) & one of prose: Intimacies. He’s been awarded prizes & honors including an arts fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. After eight years in Barcelona, Spain, he now lives in Beacon, New York where he publishes the poetry magazine Waymark & is working on a new collection: Poetic Improvisations after musical ‘experiments’ by composers such as John Adams, Elliot Carter, Miles Davis & John Zorn.

THE RAIN OF MERCY

by Laura Rodley

Image source: Dipity.

Now your waves drink the sky,
an everflowing cup,
that soothes your skin
constantly scorched by daily sun.
See how my raindrops
speckle you with sweet relief
so your tides can surge
upon the sand, keeping
the promise of everlasting life
a promise in danger of being broken
but here, the falling drops
wet and seal the cracks
so your waves tumble, tumble,
the ground sure beneath your reach.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.