WE THE PEOPLE

by Mary Saracino

 

 

 

 

We the people

who believe in freedom

are rising

one heart

one voice

one vision,

warriors united for justice

standing shoulder to shoulder

arm-in-arm

women, men, children

of every age, race, creed, color,

ethnicity, economic condition.

Roaring and soaring

we seek to create

a more perfect union.

Fierce in our determination

we band together,

millions of souls,

to free our Republic from the fists

of autocrats, oligarchs, tyrants

and all who would silence us.

With our ancestors at our sides,

propelling us forward,

whispering in our ears: “Resist!”,

we will not be deterred.

We march onward

refusing to be mute about immorality,

refuting the lies, believing our eyes,

deploring the evils of

genocide, racism, misogyny,

xenophobia, homophobia,

transforming the present

into a brighter future for all.

 

Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her book of poetry Motherlines was published by Pearlsong Press (February 2026). She is the author of four novels: Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014), The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006), No Matter What (Spinsters Ink 1993), and Finding Grace (Spinsters Ink 1999), and the memoir Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior (Spinsters Ink 2001). She co-edited (with Mary Beth Moser) She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An anthology of writings in womanist/feminist spirituality (iUniverse 2012), which earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature from Sofia University. 

THE BOOK OF QUIET GIRLS WHO BURN

by Linda K. Sienkiewicz

To the pediatrician who insisted on taking a rectal temperature with me across his knees,

To the pediatrician who tweaked my nipples during a physical,

To the neighbor’s grandfather who worked his fingers into my shorts,

To the stranger in Woolworth’s who grabbed my hand to rub against his crotch and ran,

To the boy who called me into the pool for one last swim and tried to drown me,

To the mechanical drawing teacher who rubbed his elbow against my breasts while checking my work,

To the employer who told his female, high-school-aged staff that whoever got the most sales would win an overnight date with him,

To the guy who raced his car through town while I screamed for life from the passenger seat after I said I was breaking up with him,

To the recruiter who told me to wear a short skirt to the job interview,

To the hiring manager who instructed waitress applicants to go heavy on makeup,

To the neurologist who sat on the arm of my chair, pinning me there in nothing but a hospital gown, while discussing my options,

To the employer who gave me a gold necklace but told me never to wear it at work,

To the guy who date raped me in a warehouse loft,

To the guy who parked in the woods and shoved my head into his crotch,

To the guy who said he should rape me after I broke up with him,

I remember every one of you.

Quiet. Quiet piggy.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of the multi-finalist award-winning novel Love and Other Incurable Ailments, forthcoming novel In the Context of Love, five poetry chapbooks and a children’s picture book. Among her awards are a poetry chapbook and a Pushcart Prize Nomination in poetry. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and serves as Honorary Director of Detroit Working Writers.

QUIET, PIGGY

by Ron Shapiro

Words that carry me back to a deserted island

where a group of schoolboys tried to survive 

as a civilized community without adult supervision

were the words the bully in the bully pulpit used

to silence a female reporter who asked a question

about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

 

Right out of Golding’s novel, this country’s leader

is our Jack Merridew, a boy who relishes a life of

no rules, uncouth rhetoric and violence. His passion

centers on killing a pig. To accomplish this, he dons

a mask of savagery and attacking anyone who gets

in his way. Far from being a responsible leader,

 

Like our bully, Jack’s id controls his behavior. 

In seeking his prey, whether a pig or Piggy, the 

group’s intellectual, he lets the signal fire go out.

The boys’ main chance of being rescued no longer

important to Jack’s purpose of creating chaos.

 

In the novel’s climactic scene after Jack steals Piggy’s

glasses, a symbol of his ability to ‘see’ the downfall of

this civilized and democratic microcosm of society,

Piggy leads the last boys to Castle Rock, the setting

of Jack’s fort, in order to retrieve his glasses.

 

At that point, Piggy utters the book’s central questions:

“What are we civilized or savages? Which is better---

to have rules and agree or to hunt and kill?” With

the launching of a huge boulder from the mountaintop,

Piggy’s fate is doomed. All hope for democracy is lost.

 

Piggy’s question, like that of the reporter’s, followed by

the bully’s misogynistic, curt reply echoes Golding’s.

“Quiet, Piggy,” poses the same question about Amerika

as her shining light dims to a flicker. Sadly, in these times, 

a country being hi-jacked, held hostage by fear, offers silence. 

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.

THE FEARED GENERATION

by Colin Dardis

Plans to tackle misogyny in schools could take up to 20 years to have an impact on society, the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, has said as she outlined measures to protect women and girls. Phillips spoke the day after the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) estimated that 2 million women were victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency.” —The Guardian, July 25, 2024

Fear for a lost generation,

already losing itself

inside a national emergency,

the beartrap of masculinity 

lying in wait

on every fresh field.

But who needs teeth

or blade or object

when a fist is enough?

Hands closed by culture,

clenched by mistruth,

the lie of servitude.

Pray we can reform

the expectations

of millions:

divorce boy from incel,

girl from object,

violence from sex.

Colin Dardis is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently with the lakes (above/ground press, 2023) and What We Look Like in the Future (Red Wolf Editions, 2023). A neurodivergent poet, editor, and sound artist, his work has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and USA.

CIRCUS

by Imogen Arate

Met Police officer Wayne Couzens has been sentenced to a whole-life term for the murder of Sarah Everard (above), in a case that sparked national outrage and calls for more action to tackle violence against women. Couzens admitted the kidnap, rape, and murder of the 33-year-old marketing executive when he appeared in court several months ago. But it was only during his sentencing that the full details of his crimes emerged. —BBC News, October 1, 2021

Don’t ask me to write a poem about her death

because there’ll be another before I can find

the perfect synonym that excites murders to titillate

Though I think we’ll be just fine with our hot

breath fogging up whichever screen that

protects our voyeurism as a news craze

Don’t look for nuance as there won’t be

hues apart from those that sell well

Misogyny has a target market like any

I mean do we really care about the loss

of peoples whose value we’ve decided 

to debase long ago except during

their assigned celebratory terms

How else can we virtual signal without

Ah sorry #Timesup For your month

I mean Not your demise Amphitheaters

must be filled Come come we’ve broken

through the boundaries of brick-and-mortar 

decades ago but bloodlust is evergreen 

And since we’ve dispensed with shame

only thumbs ups are allowed 

though we’ll deliver all the same 😉

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses (https://poetsandmuses.com), a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published in Rigorous and The Opiate and on the Global Vaccine Poem project. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL

by Jeremy Nathan Marks 

I will not forget what happened earlier today/last night/yesterday/

last week/last month/last year/this past decade 

I will not un-hear “I can’t breathe” I will not un-see “I can’t breathe”

Now I can hardly mouth “take a knee” 

I will not overlook the seizing of children from the arms 

of their mothers and their fathers at the border

met with a jacket that said, I really don’t care do u?

I will not pretend there was no Merrick Garland 

Birtherism, “Lock Her Up,” “Commie,” “Monster” 

and “Nasty Woman” 

I won’t overlook Access Hollywood and Charlottesville 

Muslim Bans and “Stand Back/Stand By”

I do recall Russia, Ukraine, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn

William Barr, the emoluments clause, impeachment and tax returns

I won’t forget “Send Her Back” or ignore all those phoney words of outrage 

by Senators and Representatives who now walk in complete lockstep 

playing the country for fools with Judge Barrett and how “he’s learned his lesson” 

I will not un-see the Second Lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

accosted buying groceries, called the n-word because she’s of color 

I cannot reconcile how Covid became a “blessing from God” 

because the right man contracted it at a hugging party for a judicial coup d’état 

This is not normal

none of this is normal 

there is more to democracy

than just the news cycle

There is the world 

and our place in it 

there is a country, burning

This is not normal 

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. New work appears this fall in So It Goes, Boog City, Unlikely Stories, The Journal of Expressive Writing, The Last Leaves, Chiron Review, Dissident Voice, Ginosko, and Bewildering Stories. 

PARSING A BATTLE CRY

by Scot Ehrhardt

She was warned. She was given an explanation. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. —Senator Mitch McConnell

Image source: Sharrock’s Blog

Virginia Woolf may have
momentarily occupied
your mouth,
Senator McConnell:
succinct declaratives
abuting an ornate
curleque of
nevertheless
—even the word alone,
a wild breath,
a skip step in an otherwise
ordinary gait—but it was more
than a whimsical lilt,
Miss Woolf layered in you
tricolon and parataxis,
asyndeton and omission
of the auxiliary verb
on the third of the triple.
You are a cautionary tale
of the danger
in cadence,
and when the granular
whisper of persisted
dissipated in the
velvet and mahogany,
the women knew,
the tattoo artists and
journalists knew, and Miss Woolf
did something so extraordinarily
unlike her
that elbow-patched
professors everywhere
had to google
what she looked like
when she smiled.

Scot Ehrhardt is a teacher and writer in Baltimore, MD. He writes poetry at an alarmingly slow rate, so it rarely appears in TheNewVerse.News. His first book One of Us Is Real is available through Smashwords, Inc.

A NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING

by Mary Saracino

Poster by JessicaSabogal for We the People which will flood Washington, DC with NEW symbols of hope on January 20. You can download the set of posters for free at http://bit.ly/wtpdownloads.

I will wear black on January 20
a national day of mourning
while the collective soul of America
lets loose a dirge as an illegitimate president
takes the oath of office
his place secured in history
by fake news, voter suppression
the deception of a foreign dictator
and his own brand of white supremacy
spewed from his bully pulpit of
racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia
and every other kind of –ism the world has ever witnessed

On the next day the women of the world will don
pink pussy hats, take to the streets in cities far and wide
to march in protest, defying the fake king, the tyrant
in the Oval Office
reclaiming their vulva power,  the power to
procreate truth, to name evil, to smash
the glass ceiling of lies that tries to silence us

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet, and memoir writer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her most recent novel is Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014). Her novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Mary’s short story, "Vicky's Secret," earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.

NOSTALGIA

by Gil Hoy

Caricature of Steve Bannon for The New Statesman

Their homes, cone-shaped wooden
poles covered with buffalo hides.

Set up to break down quickly
in order to move to a safer place.

A reddish brown squaw sits inside of
one of them, adorning her dresses

her family's shirts with beads and quills.
She watches over her children, skins

cuts and cooks the buffalo meat, pounds
clothes clean with smooth wet river rocks.

But then she sees the blue cavalry
coming, she starts to run again.

Is that what made America great,
back then?

Negro families working hard on hot cotton
farms, sunrise to sunset, six days a week.

Monotony broken only by their daily beatings
by their singing of sad soulful songs.

Like factories in fields, dependent upon
the demands of cotton and cloth.

You could buy a man for a song,
back then.

Is that what made America great,
once again?

They say the full moon today is bigger
and brighter than it’s been in 69 years--

since Jackie Robinson played his first
big league baseball game.

But there are swastikas in our schools
today, gay pride flags being burned.

Whitelash. While those in government spew
anti-Muslim venom and rant of white power.

Just as the old new man at the top
gets set to solemnly swear, he'll
make America great again.

Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer currently studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program where he had received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as Brookline MA Selectman for 4 terms. Hoy's poetry appears or is upcoming in Right Hand Pointing-One Sentence Poems, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News and The Penmen Review.

IMAGINE

by Janet E. Aalfs

Throw pillow cover by society6.

She, as you.
She, as I.
Even the one

who stands behind
cheering him on.
Will not, does not, cannot.

All the leaves, every color
and shape, every size,
old ones, young ones, sun-washed,

rain-lashed, turn in the wind.
We see them.
As she as you as I

fluttering, lifting, fall.
Light hidden on the undersides
silver-soft, then gone.

Even the one
who swears he'll fight for her.
Even she.

Would not, did not, could not.
Hear them, so close.
Though the wind in every wave

remembered it, told it, wept.
Tides calm to raging
turned and turned and yet.

The one who smooths his brow
and kisses him to sleep.
Even she.

Janet E. Aalfs, poet laureate emeritus of Northampton, MA, 7th degree black belt, Jian Mei Internal Arts branch chief instructor, and founder/ director of Lotus Peace Arts at Valley Women's Martial Arts, has been teaching and performing weavings of poetry and movement arts locally, nationally, and internationally for 40 years. Her writing has been widely published, and her most recent book of poems is Bird of a Thousand Eyes, Levellers Press.