Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Showing posts with label missing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label missing. Show all posts

Sunday, October 06, 2024

DEDICATED TO THE UNKNOWN: A HURRICANE MARKER FOR LIFE OR DEATH

by Susan Terris

KBTX, September 27, 2024


Florida’s venomous snakes:

Her mother gave her a marker to put

Name & birthdate on her torso

 

She promised   swore they'd be all right

Today is not all right   She’s not okay

Her mother’s missing   ghostly   gone

 

In a glass she stares at ink-black ink

Backwards & snake-less

Remembers how stupid it seemed

 

Where is she now this day when she

Has not seen even one killer snake

Who is she now    and who can she be



Susan Terris is a freelance editor and the author of 8 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, 2 plays.  Journals include The Southern ReviewGeorgia Review,Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Blackbird, Swwim, and Ploughshares. Poems of hers have appeared in Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Spring 2024, her eighth poetry book Green Leaves, Unseeing was published by Marsh Hawk Press, May 2024. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway & an editor at Pedestal.

Friday, December 29, 2023

WHAT GROWS

by D. Dina Friedman


“Rising Cairn” by Celeste Roberge


from grief, the prickled ball in my heart

The tank imprinting the sands in Gaza.

The baby on the kibbutz, snatched from its mother’s arms.

Grief as breath and breath as grief

pictures of the dead, the missing

slapped on our bland screens. We might know

this child, his laugh. This teen. She worked for peace.

Grief for the plume of smoke outside the window

of the hospital, for the doctor, searching her pockets

as if she might have stashed a pill she’d forgotten,

that could save the life of a patient, writhing, dying. 

Grief, the crevice in the land split by the river

where you think you might walk down and disappear. 

Grief, a drained lake, a parched throat, a bombed city, 

a soldier singing O Sole Mio in the desert at night

because, sometimes, there’s nothing else to do 

but raise your head to the moon 

and sing as if your life depended on it.



D. Dina Friedman has published in over a hundred literary journals and anthologies (including Rattle, The Sun, Calyx, Lilith, Negative Capability, Chautauqua Literary JournalThe Ekphrastic Review, and Rhino) and received four Pushcart Prize nominationsShe is the author of two young adult novels: Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), a short-story collection: Immigrants(Creators Press), and two  chapbooks: Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press) and Here in Sanctuary—Whirling (Querencia Press). 

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

A TOMATO FOR JOSEPH

by Liz Rose Shulman


Haidar Eid’s book available for pre-order today; shipping tomorrow from LeftWord Books.



Note: The following poem adapts language from Haidar Eid’s Facebook page, with his permission. He is currently trapped in Gaza. Haidar Eid is an Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. As of this writing, he is alive. 
 
 
I am standing over the ruins of a house in Gaza City 
peering at the horizon
 
Please don’t let our posts go unnoticed 
This is the only alternative we have 
 
Where is Abu Muhammad
under the rubble
Where is Muhammad’s mother
under the rubble
Where is Muhammad
under the rubble
 
I’ve just received the long awaited news of my book while I am trying to stay alive
LeftWord Books is publishing my latest work 
Decolonising the Palestinian Mind
 
My former student Samah Eid has risen
“My heart is ripped out of my ribs.”
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
They need Palestinian fig leaves 
Sorry, I don’t feel like doing that 
There are others who are more equipped to deal with that.
 
I am a South African Palestinian literature professor in Gaza right now, 
with a wife 
and two small daughters
 
My kind dentist, artist Oraib Rayyes has risen
My colleague and co-founder
of the Department of English
at Al-Aqsa University, 
Abdul Rahman Elhour, has risen 
with 14 members of his family.
 
Some are still under the rubble
 
My friend, ex-student Khalil Abu Yahya, has risen
with his wife, Tasnim 
and two daughters
 
This was my home
 
Where is Salwa
under the rubble
Where is Magda
under the rubble
Where is Mahmoud
under the rubble
 
Where is the rest of the family at
 
Nine members of my family were killed today
One man 
three women 
and five children
 
Progressive activist friend, mother of Prince Samira Rafiqah, 
Our friend Em ElAmeer Samira has risen
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
On the hospital floor
wounded children sit next to their injured mother
one aids her as she receives treatment after a bombing
of a family’s home in the Gaza Strip
 
Why would any country vote,
even veto, 
against a humanitarian ceasefire
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
The home is a lover
A woman who has feelings for you 
and for whom you have feelings.
She is you and you are her. 
There are no boundaries 
No separation
When the home is demolished 
something within you dies.
The sweet story of Youssef Al-Baydani as narrated by his mother: 
“Mom, I’m hungry, I want to eat.
Don’t be afraid, my love, 
I will make you a pan of tomato
I went out to the house of Um Mahmoud, my neighbor, 
in search of a tomato 
to quench Joseph’s hunger,
hoping to find a tomato for Joseph. 
I waited at the door for Joseph to come back from school every day 
I waited for him 
in front of the door every day 
welcomed him with my arms
and a tomato grill that he loves.
How can I wait anymore when Joseph is no longer here
How can a mother protect her son in war?”
 
In this house, a woman lived with her husband 
three sons 
and three daughters. 
They had also provided refuge to relatives from northern Gaza 
who had been displaced
 
Besan was a third-year medical student 
she loved her cat 
Besan was killed with all her family and her cat
 
The young columnist of We Are Not Numbers, Yousef Dawas, has risen
along with his entire family.
He attended my lecture on Postcolonial literature last month.
A few months ago he wrote the article 
“Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”
 
“I wish my eyes were a sea
where my eyelids could dwell.”
 
In 2014, I performed “Love in the Time of Genocide” 
adapted from a poem 
by the late Egyptian poet Abdul Rahim Mansour. 
 
What we need for literature 
and literary criticism 
is a critique of institutional thought
by offering an alternative
 
A will written by a little girl from Gaza via Anat Matar:
“My name is Haya and I will write my will now.
My money: 45 for my mother, 5 for Zeina, 5 for Hashem,
5 for my grandma, 5 for Aunt Heba and five for Aunt Mariam, 5 for Uncle Abdo and Aunt Sarah
My toys and all my stuff: for my friends Deema, Menna, and Amal, and Zeina (my sister)
My clothes: to my uncle’s daughters and if there’s anything left, donate them
My shoes: donate them to the poor and vulnerable
after washing them, of course.”
 
To white, mainstream media
As per my cardiologist’s instructions, plz do not call me
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
They need Palestinian fig leaves 
Sorry, I don't feel like doing that 
There are others who are more equipped to deal with that.


Liz Rose Shulman’s work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Chicago TribuneLos Angeles Review, Mondoweiss, The Smart Set, and Tablet Magazine, among others. She teaches English at Evanston Township High School and in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago. 

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

REMEMBER THE MISSING

by Lois Marie Harrod


An installation in the form of a dinner table set for Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, stands outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art—with 203 empty chairs representing those taken hostage by Hamas in its surprise attack on Israel on October 7. Photo: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times, October 21, 2023.


203 place settings, one for each hostage
believed to be in Gaza, no end, no beginning

of the guests who have not appeared—
only a plate, a napkin and a wine glass for each, 

the photo taken as the sun sets so that the wine glasses
cast their solitary shadows on the backs of folding chairs.

Up and down what seems an endless table, wine bottles
stand uncorked, apples at each guest's place, 

bread, boats of flowers as far as the camera
can frame, empty chairs for hundreds, thousands,

all those made late for dinner by the rabid angers
of a few, and there is a woman too

caught by the photographer
walking behind the empty chairs.

She wears blue jeans and cropped top.
She has with a small tattoo on her left wrist.

She is looking at her i-Phone. 
She does not seem to see the endless table of empty seats.


Editor's Note: On October 21, it was believed that Hamas had captured 203 hostages; on Monday, October 23, according to The New York Times, Israel said that Hamas holds 222 hostages.


Lois Marie Harrod’s 18th collection Spat was published by Finishing Line Press, 2021 and her chapbook Woman by Blue Lyra, 2020. Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3.

Friday, October 08, 2021

BLACK LIVES MATTER?

by Shoshauna Shy




Another daughter gone missing
and this time the prime suspect
her fiancé.
In the 'newsroom,' Jerry brightens:
This'll loop in the masses since
the Jan 6 redux and Pfizer boosters
fizzed flat, the public worn thin
by Ivermectin, Gresham memoirs,
voting laws rewritten, so here's
a scoop to revive our
sagging revenues.

I locate her photo off Instagram,
prep to launch the story when Jerry
muscles me aside.
Think Natalee Aruba, Mormon Smart Girl,
JonBenét—and he photoshops bluer eyes,
streaks the chick's hair more blonde.
Nobody will click if she's beige
or black or brown.


Author of The Splash of Easy Laughter and four other poetry collections, two of which won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, Shoshauna Shy's poems have appeared in a variety of anthologies, journals and magazines, inspired videos and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. One of her poems was nominated for the Best of the Net 2021, and flash fiction pieces were selected for the Best Microfiction 2021 anthology, and another was among the seven finalists for the Fish Flash Fiction Prize out of County Cork, Ireland. She is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program, and the Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Awards.

Saturday, June 05, 2021

WIFE OF IDLIB

by Steven Croft




Hammers echo now from the rebuilding of houses,
pounding at my heart as I carry tea to the patio, stare
down at the tiles you laid. Tear-filled eyes raise—
who moves through the terraced almond trees on the hill,
their clouds of white flowers? Alas, it is only today's dream.
If Allah allows, may you one day walk into this daily dream
of your return. You were no terrorist, only a man
who loved the warmth of the land, wheat and barley,
the green joy of lettuce. When the planes bombed the fields
you ran to the town square to tell the protesters. Then,
the security men knocked at the door, and I kneeled before God,
but they dragged you out while my heart stopped.

Now, I wait in bed for the creak of our door, a call, again,
from the kitchen that you are leaving for the fields, anything
to bring you back into existence. My soul is a leaden weight.
Our country is a corpse. How can hammers sound? How can hope
trouble us anymore? Let our dead hearts rot. Just let our loneliness,
like the bombs' fires, burn us away.


Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

OBLIVIOUS

by Sarah Edwards



The relatives of one of the victims of the twin suicide attacks in Beirut mourned during a funeral procession in the city's Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood. Credit Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency via “Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten” by ANNE BARNARD, NY Times, Nov. 13, 2015.



oblivious

to the smoke
of a thousand towers
babel to trade

oblivious

to blood-stained
family legacies
adam to al qaeda

oblivious

to tears
mothers searching
golgotha to nicaragua

oblivious

to sacrifice
of martyrs
joan to martin

we play our games
repeat the poem
change the names

oblivion


Sarah Edwards is a retired clergyperson with poetry replacing the pulpit.  She has a newly released chapbook,  Pandora, Let's Talk, published by Finishing Line Press, and other poems have appeared in Conclave, Minerva Rising, Slim, and TheNewVerse.News.