DELUSION

by Jocelyn Ajami

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

In the libraries of distortion

eyes blur mites with dust

they scan empty racks 

like x-rays of aging spines

the shelves bend and tilt 

from the heft of books

once held with reverence

tossed out like easy trash 

In the libraries of distortion

mirrors line the walls 

from ceiling to floor, multiplying

a gleaming buzz

that binges on translucence—

Narcissus on steroids— 

In the libraries of distortion

there are no chairs, tables

or stools, only beds

that glitter, bearing pallid 

corpses, ensured 

a good read on life

Jocelyn Ajami is a painter, filmmaker and poet. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness. She has been published in various anthologies of prize winning poems and has been nominated for Pushcart and Touchstone awards.

MOTIVES

by Abby Caplin

My neighbor has nodded to The Goon, some policies 
he approved of—arresting students in despair  
over genocide, mass firings, unmarked vans 
pulling people off our streets here, in America, 
and sending them to concentration camps. 
The Goon breathes on his mirrors and people 
quickly evaporate. But what really motivates 
my neighbor is his bank account, his investments 
dying like those rockets exploding over the gulf 
of American debris, so now 
he’s finally speaking up. It’s kind of fun, 
my amusement for the day, seeing him 
chided on social media by the Faithful, 
who say pipe down, in six months you will see 
how wonderful your life will be.

Abby Caplin’s poems have appeared in AGNI, The MacGuffin, The New Verse News, Pennsylvania English, Salt Hill, Stirring, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2024 and a nominee for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Abby is a physician and the author of A Doctor Only Pretends: Poems about illness, death, and in-between.

A BONFIRE OF MYTHS

by Michael T. Young

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for TheNewVerse.News 

I want to say what my country is like, 

to speak the wonder of its cities, 

the roads along its farm fields,

 

even while the gears grind

of so many people trying to agree

that the sun still rises in the east, 

 

and not in the west or elsewhere.

So, if I say there are blind eagles 

decorating the porches, 

 

we sigh because the words

stink of symbolism and ash,

of mythic fires choking us.

 

The smoke obscures our mirrors 

so they no longer reflect 

what we need to know 

 

about ourselves, or who we call 

to the front: that the dictator 

of a day, outlaws every tomorrow. 

Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Mid-Atlantic Review, Talking River Review, and Vox Populi.

MARCH OF THE POSTER BOYS

by Scott LaMascus

for Robin Davis

He Took His 68-Year-Old Secret to Court and Finally Confronted His Ghost: Robin Davis (above) spent a long career in finance and philanthropy haunted by what had happened to him as a boy. Could an unusual trial on Long Island help him find peace? —Michael Wilson, The New York Times, August 5, 2024

The poster boys for this malady 
each stare into their mirrors hoping to see the ghost
they would be able to fight now
their feet are no longer frozen to the spots

of their only crimes — the car ride with a coach, 
an after-school job, a church’s back room. 
They gather now in a spectral locker room of boys
chosen by chance and dark intention, charged 

and armor-plated by twenty, thirty, sixty years
of silent shame driving them to something else.
However much success they find, the juries snicker
and some doze, nodding away at lack of blood

and gore, for they cannot see the fright of spirits
gathered on each side of the glass, a throng of 
poster boys facing ghosts who picked them out 
of the schoolyards of time. No justice can redress 

the fraids on either side of the mirror, peering 
in with one hand on gavel and one on a scale, 
sometimes seeing the wispy victims, sometimes not,
I suspect. All velocity has settled now into sleep.

The pardon Robin seeks is in that mirror, too,
as he speaks before the harsher judge and jury all in one,
a lone poster boy standing again before his ghost
testifying now into the wisp of time he cannot unimagine.

Author’s Note:  This poem puts Davis (and me) into the company of a myriad of ghostly perpetrators and ghostly victims. A “fraid” is the technical name for a gathering of spirits, in this poem’s vision a two-sided confrontation of ghosts of perpetrators and of survivors. The poem also turns on found language from the Michael Wilson article including the three F’s (fight or flight or freeze) quoted by Wilson from the courtroom testimony of the psychologist, Valentina Stoycheva.

Scott LaMascus is a writer and public-humanities advocate living in Oklahoma City. His recent work may be found in World Literature Today, The Writer’s Chronicle, Bracken, Red Door, and Epiphany.

MASS PSYCHOSIS

by Katherine West

“Big Lie” by Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune via USA Today, May 15, 2021.

This is the disease 

That does not send us 

To the hospital 

To die alone 

On the other side 

of quarantine 

Masks

Are ineffective 

Vaccines 

Nonexistent 

No lab can create 

Or uncreate it 

Herd immunity 

unattainable 

Contagion 

Inevitable 

This is a disease 

With a seed 

Planted in the desert sand 

Of which mirrors are made 

Fun House 

Distortions 

Germinating 

In the mind 

Desperate to love 

Itself 

It leaps 

From loathing 

The thing 

In the mirror 

To adoring 

The king 

And all the false 

Jewels in his crown 

To destroying 

Any shadow 

That falls 

Across his perfect 

Face

Since perfection 

Is contagious 

Is the only cure (we believe)

For distortion 

For drought 

For the desiccated 

Heart 

For thirst 

A thirst 

That can't be quenched (we believe)

Where rose and mind bloom 

Where pools reflect 

The real

Where songbirds 

Mate 

For life 

Returning 

To the same 

Garden 

Year 

After year

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel, When Night Comes, A Christmas Carol Revisited has just been released, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in March of 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing. She is presently at work on the sequel to When Night Comes. It is called Slave, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist.

5.59 MILLION CASES

Sarah E. Colona is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016). Recent poems appear in TheNewVerse.News.

REFLECTING THE WORLD

by Richard Schnap

When he learned that
To lose was to
Be spit upon
He wore a Superman outfit

And when he discovered that
Hate was becoming
More fashionable than love
He wore a swastika armband

And when he found that
The future was looking
More like the past
He wore a watch that ran backwards

And when he saw that
To be different was
The worst of all
He wore a mask made of mirrors

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter, and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.