$100 A BARREL

by Hassan Ismail Adekunle 

The market celebrates first.

Screens bloom green
while somewhere
another mother counts
the hours between explosions.

A barrel crosses
an invisible number
and suddenly
every analyst has a sentence,
every politician
a target,
every headline
a price.

No ticker records
the cost of a fisherman
who does not sail,
a child who learns
the grammar of sirens
before multiplication,
or the cashier
watching gasoline
rewrite this week’s grocery list.

They tell us
energy is security.

Yet the lamps
burn brightest
in boardrooms
far from the sea
where ships move
like nervous prayers
through narrowed water.

History has learned
to invoice grief.

It sends the bill
to those who never voted
for missiles,
never traded futures,
never owned
a single share
of tomorrow.

The market closes.

The sea
does not.

Hassan Ismail Adekunle is a Nigerian poet whose work explores contemporary life, politics, memory, and identity. His poems have appeared in Willy-Wash and other literary magazines. He lives in Nigeria.

SLIMY GREEN CESSPOOL REFLECTING CAPITALIST RULE

by Raymond Nat Turner

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

Capitalism says corporations are people… It says,

Money’s speech… Buying, bossing, sock-puppet

politicians on Capitalist Hill; White Supreme Court; and

Offal Office’s corrupt cabinet of Epstein class War House.

Capitalism pulled One Big Beautiful Bank Job, stage whispering, 

DOGE really means Department Of Grifter Enrichment! Then,

boasted about looting fruits of our labor; while its Cruel Reich Cult 

casually kills on our streets and strolls unaccountable into the sunset.

Capitalism’s painting our streets crimson, killing class bothers and sisters 

San Diego to Maine. Turning cobwebbed warehouses into torture, murder,

Mengele Medicine hells. Bombing humble boats full of fish on the high seas.

Reducing apartment buildings, hospitals, schools teeming with dreams to rubble…

Capitalism crowned a chainsaw prancing prince of apartheid

First Techno-Fascist Trillionaire. And celebrated his warped

worldview of spastic stiff salutes and spit-shined jackboots—

Mirroring the stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule.

The stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule

Mirroring testosterone-intoxicated, pomade man, obeying orders 

of Captain Morgan, Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Foolish Fox-box 

foot soldier lusting blood: Blowing up schoolchildren and teachers!

The stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule

Algae attack, metaphor for war. Peeling paint, Pentagon pimps

shredding social safety net with looped, weapons-testing, wars

Horrific, eternal, trade shows of terror… 

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL

by Anne Herrick

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

 

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information of minerals and anything profitable
I know the constitution, and I quote our rights historical
From Iran to Venezeula, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with my good navy piratical,
I understand blockades, both the simple and impractical,
About strategies I teem with ever changing views and news,
And with many cheerful facts about every missile use.

I'm very good at destruction and anything that’s tactical;
I know all leader’s names no matter they’re fantastical—
like those in space—the squirrels and hypotheticals—
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

 

In fact, I know what is meant by "bitter end" and "ravelin",
And I can tell at sight a Beretta from a javelin,
With affairs like bombings and boasting I'm very good at,
I also know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
Yes, I know what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
And I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery—
In short, I've more than a smattering of elemental strategy—
No other Major-General has ever had this capacity.

With my military knowledge, I'm plucky and adventury,
There’s no-one as good as me since beginning of all centuries
Yes it’s true—I know of minerals and anything that’s profitable
I am the greatest model of a modern Major-General.

 

 

Anne Herrick has published a few poems and prose in the US and UK.

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

by Jiang Pu

I want to bring you a heady symphony of roses, 

lavender and golden poppies as April unfolds

into giant butterfly wings in my yard, but 

I can’t sing; this morning my throat is choked 

like the Strait of Hormuz. 

I’m self-schooled in the art of drop-cover-shelter

from the bombing news, but o you wise one, 

teach me: how do I turn off this glaring pain

of my brothers and sisters constantly bombing

each other? And how do I forgive

the twin lakes of my eyes for shedding

useless tears—so useless they can’t even feed 

into desert desalination plants spared

by thirsty missiles? My tears sting more 

than the bitter horseradish a friend brings 

on a Passover. She teaches me to dip it 

into a nut paste, which is sweet, which, 

she says, tastes like 

hope. Maybe it’s time for a few Medjool Dates

grown from the cradle-land that I’ve visited

so many times in spirit but never once 

in body, so that I keep its soil and water

inside me to nourish a prayer for peace, so that

when I open my door to the unstoppable

spring outside, I can welcome Rumi’s sun

and other honored guests to visit

me today besides pain. 

 

Jiang Pu, Ph.D., is a first-generation Chinese American author and Ed leader. Her recent poems have appeared in California Quarterly, The Tiger Moth Review (Singapore), and Panorama (U.K.) among others and in several poetry anthologies.

DEATH TAX

by Mark Hendrickson

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, President Donald J. Trump’s signature will appear on future U.S. paper currency along with the Secretary of the Treasury, marking the first time in history for a sitting president. —US Treasury Dept., March 26, 2026

According to a website calculator

what I paid in taxes last year

bought the government 

350 to 500 rounds of ammo.

 

I wonder if I bought the bullets

that killed Pretti and Good

in Minneapolis

by men in masks

 

Or perhaps I helped pay

for the tomahawk missile

that killed over 100 girls

in a school in Iran.

 

I protest policies,

but pay my taxes

the way I was taught

good Americans should.

 

In this way I’m complicit.

Every dollar I send

will be signed by the culprit,

and signed off by me.

Mark Hendrickson (he/him) is a poet and writer in the Des Moines area navigating the Sturm und Drang of daily life through wordcraft. His words appear in The Ekphrastic Review, The New Verse News, and Modern Haiku. Follow him @MarkHPoetry, https://www.chillsubs.com/profile/mhendrickson

 or on his website: www.markhendricksonpoetry.com

ASSYMETRICAL WAR

by Paul Burgess

 

Cartoon by NICK ANDERSON @andertoon.bsky.social

They’re hoping schools won’t rain as rubble showers
resulting from an errant missile strike. 
I can’t afford the drive to see the flowers 
around the gorge I’d waited months to hike. 
They fear they’ll find their children split in half 
or buried under shrapnel, dust, and rocks. 
I’m scared the jagged line upon a graph 
will show decreasing values of my stocks. 
Their sky’s become an endless sea of threats 
erupting with the sights and sounds of war,
but over here, we’re making mobile bets 
on every prop the market’s apps can score. 
There’s something vaguely troubling, sad, and dark 
about an age of gulfs so deep and stark.


Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, and several other publications. 

HOW DO YOU SURVIVE A WAR?

by Bruce Black

 

 

GIF by Glen Le Lievre

It’s the stories that you don’t read 

in the news that break your heart.

The old dog who can’t make it to the safe room

in the one minute you have to get downstairs.

The young children who blow out the candles on their

birthday cakes in the darkness of bomb shelters.

The couples whose weddings are held as missiles explode 

overhead, bride and groom weeping in joy and sadness.

Life, I’m told, goes on in wartime but the war

changes the way you live your life.

Love still exists but hides in the bomb shelter

with you in order to survive.

Kindness still exists but stays out of sight

while the missiles are falling.

Hope huddles under an overpass or in the shelter of underground 

stations where it can breathe and show itself again.

How do you survive a war without losing the ability to love,

to show others kindness, to safeguard and preserve one’s humanity?

Even when you live miles away from the war zone

and can’t hear the bombs exploding.

Even when you can only read about them or watch them fall

on the news or in your Facebook feed.

How do you hold onto faith 

in the goodness of people?

How do you trust in kindness and love

to prevail?

How do you hope and believe—in spite of the bleakness

of the present moment—in a better future?

In a future without war? In a future of peace?

How do you survive a war?

Bruce Black received his MFA from Vermont College. He is the author of Writing Yoga (Shambhala) and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. His poetry, personal essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The MidAtlantic Review, The Amethyst Review, Write-Haus, Bearings, Super Poetry Highway, Poetica, The Lehrhaus, Soul-Lit, and elsewhere. He lives in Highland Park, IL. 

THE 7TH DAY

by Adam J. Scarborough

The day

misplaces the sun.
Somewhere
a sky still burns blue
but not here.
Here—
a black noon.

The maps keep shedding people.
Five hundred thousand
coats and shoes—missing from their hallways;
names folded into cars, trucks, 
onto motorcycles and buses,
heading north from Lebanon.
 
A child carries a key
to a pile of ash.
—
Missiles write their brief alphabets
over Abu Dhabi—
two hundred thirty-eight
steel sentences
falling through prayer. 
Most of them
erased mid-air.
Even the sky now
has editors.
—
Control of the air,
they say.
The sky is a throat
they have learned
to close.
Jets move there
like indifferent saints.
—
Smoke remembers the night.
Tehran wakes
with black in its mouth.
Balconies gather soot
like winter birds.
Cars wear the same dark coat.
The street
a long finger,
dragged through ash.
—
Oil depots
burn through the hours
when sleep should hold the city.
Ten million lungs
turn quietly
in their beds.
Above them
the sky writes in smoke—
language without vowels.
—
Morning arrives
as rain.
Not mercy.
A rain that stings the eyes,
touches the throat
with a thin metal hand.
Acid falling softly
on bread
on figs left in bowls
on the open skin
of the city.
—
The doctors speak
from distant rooms.
Particles,
they say.
Invisible dust
entering the small, naked doors of the body.
Asthma remembers.
The heart
tightens its fist.
Even the air
now carries
a slow instruction.
—
Do not open the window.
Do not turn the fan.
Cover the food.
Wait.
As if waiting
could rinse the sky.
—
A special relationship
spits across red neckties 
tied like telephone wires,
fizzing with foreign cries.
 
Night keeps arriving early.
Lebanon counts its dead
in the hundreds—
three hundred ninety-four
and still the number
breathes.  
 
Dust enters the lungs
of the city.
Beirut
a broken bell.
—
Elsewhere the world practices
this same dark grammar:
Sudan
South Sudan
Ukraine—
where the ground
remembers fire
longer than people do.
—
And somewhere a man
with a borrowed crown
waits in a golden room
for the door
to open.
 
Another country
dragged forward
by the nose of a name.
—
Still
someone lights a stove.
Someone boils water.
 
Someone somewhere
opens a window
to see
 
if the sun
has been returned.

Adam J. Scarborough is a Scottish writer and social practice artist based in Minnesota. His work has been presented across Europe and New York. His poetry has appeared in Gutter Magazine.