COOL YOUR EYES

by Sarah Manasrah 

A three-year-old Palestinian girl survived a fire caused by an Israeli airstrike on a residential flat in the western Gaza City neighbourhood of al-Rimal early on Wednesday, but her mother was killed.The body of Reem Asaad Awad, 33, and two injured people, including a child, were taken to al-Shifa Hospital… Local sources said the strike hit a flat in the al-Amin building near the Abu Talal junction in al-Rimal, causing extensive damage to the flat and neighbouring buildings… Witnesses said the flames spread rapidly through the flat and civil defence crews were initially unable to reach it. Palestinian media reported that journalist Ali al-Jaafrawi, who filmed the incident, reached the girl, Maryam Ghanem, and carried her out of the flat before handing her over to people at the scene to take her to hospital. Al-Jaafrawi said he later learned that the girl’s father had been killed early in the war and that her mother was killed in Wednesday’s airstrike, leaving her an orphan. —-Middle East Monitor, October 15, 2026

did Reem

named after the gazelle’s tenderness

know her naseeb

when she named her baby Maryam

born shortly after

her husband was murdered?

who three years later was broadcast 

across the world burning alive

while her toddler daughter watched

paralyzed by the orange blaze?

Maryam, the only woman

with an entire surah

as her namesake

who begged in the throes

of childbirth to have died before

how toddler Maryam,

covered in third degree burns

staring vacantly and saying

“my body hurts”

pleaded for her mama

may Qu'ran 19:23-26

give her fresh gauze

in her worst moments

when she realizes 

her mama will never return

“do not grieve

your Lord has provided a 

stream at your feet”

the stream is all of our tears

and Maryam will never die

Editor’s glosses: 

Reem: A traditional Arabic feminine name (ريم) meaning "baby deer" or "gazelle," symbolizing purity and tenderness in literature and poetry.

naseeb: destiny

surah: chapter.

Qu’ran 19:23 — And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, 'Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.’

The quotation in the penultimate stanza is from Surah Maryam 19:24-26 of the Qu’ran. It records the comforting words spoken to Maryam (Mary) during the painful and isolated birth of Jesus (Isa), reassuring her to find peace, drink from the stream, and shake the palm tree for fresh dates.

Sarah Manasrah is a proud girl mama, community organizer, writer, and full spectrum birth worker growing movements for transformative justice and community care. She's part of a Jewish-Muslim-Palestinian family, a descendant of refugees spanning six countries.

PLOT FORTY-TWO

by Shirin Jabalameli 

Plot Forty-Two is located in Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in Tehran, Iran. It is associated with those killed in the recent war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the war is not yet over.

A bullet

is lodged in the throat of the earth,

and every season,

a fresh clover

pushes through its mouth.

On the stones

are names

cut short

by the blast;

names that, if called aloud,

might make someone

turn back

beyond the trench.

Here,

death smells of metal;

of a shirt

that never dried in the sun,

of gunpowder

that, months later,

still clings to the mothers’ hair.

The war

came this far

on mud-caked boots.

Even now,

its footprints

remain

on the sleeping stones.

In one of the graves,

a child lies buried.

In his last drawing,

there was a sky

and the very airplane

that had passed overhead.

And that soldier,

perhaps he is still running in his dreams,

from one trench to another,

his mouth full of earth,

a letter in his breast pocket

that never reached its destination.

No one knows

what he was thinking

in his final moments.

An empty magazine?

His brother’s hands?

The window he had meant to repair

before winter?

Perhaps

all he wanted

was a glass of water.

And this

is the most terrible thing about war:

that even on the brink

of disappearing,

a human being

can still feel thirsty.

Beside one of the stones,

a mother sits.

She does not weep.

She says nothing.

With her fingernail,

she brushes the dirt

from a name

that, each time,

sinks back into the earth.

As though she were still

brushing dust from his shoulders,

straightening his collar

for his return.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the wind blows,

and no one carries a gun.

Yet as I walk among the graves,

I lower my head,

as though I still had to cross

a stretch of ground

that might explode

at any moment.

Beyond the wall,

the city is busy buying bread.

Buses arrive.

Traffic lights turn green.

Someone quickens their pace

to avoid being late.

And here,

beneath the earth,

a young man remains

forever the age

at which he should have begun to live.

Sometimes,

this is what war is:

not the sound of an explosion,

but a rented room,

a broken radio,

a shirt hanging behind a door,

someone

who was supposed to come home

on Friday evening.

And now,

in Plot Forty-Two,

the roots of trees

thread through bones,

unaware

which side of the front line

they belong to.

I leave the cemetery.

I slip my hand into my pocket.

The key is cold,

and the cold

climbs to my wrist.

Suddenly,

I think of home:

a door closing,

the clatter of dishes in the kitchen,

someone in the next room

calling out,

“Are you home?”

And I think of all those who are gone,

all those

who will never again

be asked

that question.

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, artist, and writer. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway(USA), where she was selected Poet of the Week. She has authored books including Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, 101 Moments, and 25 Fell from the Frame; her latest book titled Beneath the Skin of Tehran was recently published. She was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Lineage of Birds”. Her short story “The Red Thread” was selected among the Top 25 Works Worldwide for the Hannah Arendt Special Edition presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement in Manhattan, New York.

A MARRIAGE OF EAGLES

by stella graham-landau 

From Nest to Deathbed, Jackie the Eagle Entranced California and Beyond. The bald eagle and her mate gained fame during the pandemic, as a livestream tracked their nesting attempts. She died while being treated for anemia. —The New York Times, August 10, 2026

mated for years

jackie is larger than shadow 
her compadre of the skies 
both hardwired to protect 
each egg each feathered chick
perhaps they met in a playground of clouds 
an accidental encounter 
not paired by families imagining 
a coupling worthy of majesty 
they soar
own the sky 
build aeries in the tops of giant trees
relying on architectural instinct
carried in their bones
jackie 
an unpretentious name 
for a mother 
tasked to save her species
eons of ancestral instructions
to keep eagles aloft

build a nest
mate
lay eggs
hatch
fledge 

repeat

stella graham-landau is a poet in richmond va. she has been published on the new verse news and other journals, websites, and anthologies. she loves the generous community of poets she has found online and welcomes conversations with other creators.

OH BEAUTIFUL

by Chris Reed

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

For the country’s 250th birthday celebration

my sister texts a collage of photos of our mother

in her last years before dying at 100.

At first it seems a strange birthday message

for the nation, until I start looking at the photos.

In my mother’s face, her seated posture, 

often holding flowers or her cat on her lap,

I see the inevitable wear of years, time’s destruction,

a loss of elasticity and nimbleness, 

a loss of focus, purpose and endless energy,

a loss of fitting in to how things work and get done.

 

Yet in her eyes and smile in photo after photo,

I see acceptance and memories of past joys

and loves, her ocean sailings, mountain climbs, 

her shore walks, and dance among multitudes.

I see a hint of denial, pretending that her place

in the family of things is not coming to an end,

only her eyes betraying her knowledge 

that the journey has already started.

Her face tells me all this, but also tells me 

that amid her brokenness and joys and losses,

ever courageous, she is finding new love

and meaning in this, her season of endings.

 

With no flowers for you, let me still say,

Happy Birthday America.

Chris Reed cared for her mother in her last two years of life and found beauty in her mother's decline in health and purpose.  Finishing Line Press recently published a chapbook of Reed's poems about this time, Two Years and Two Months.

DOROTHY LOWAKUTUK

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

 

 

Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Northern Kenya was established to rescue and release orphaned and abandoned elephant calves. It was featured recently by the AP and on PBS.

 

 

They follow her or she follows them, the babies

of Reteti. Swinging their miniature trunks, they 

navigate the steep and dusty terrain not far from 

the elephant sanctuary—all the while listening 

for her voice and the voices of other keepers. 

These calves are like little children let loose 

in the playground, nowhere near ready to be

released in the wild. Most carry the memory 

of a mother’s disappearance, some brutally so. 

Others less dramatic. But a lost mother, how-

ever it occurs, is no small thing. When I found

my mother dying beneath her favorite azalea 

bush, I sank to my knees crying, Mommy, what 

happened? and I was no baby. Nothing prepares 

us for losing our mothers, the loneliness of grief. 

But Dorothy Lowakutuk learned the language 

of elephants. She knows which of them is Sera,

Long’uro, or Sarara—how they play and walk 

and sleep. She teaches them to roll in the dust to 

keep their skin cool, find plants that are safe to

eat. Humble, yet as regal as a queen, Dorothy 

Lowakutuk’s face is radiant as the African sun, 

this kind woman and all the rest at Reteti who

talk softly, feed and sing to the children of lost 

mothers. Blessed be—blessed be their names.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including The Light that Follows Us Home (Autumn, 2026, Press 53). Her work has been widely published and has won numerous awards, including the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

A TRUE EPIDEMIC

by Diane Elayne Dees

 

"In the City of Shreveport, we have a true epidemic of domestic violence….”
—Shreveport City Council Member Grayson Boucher

 

When I was a little girl, my parents took me
on a rare outing downtown; my mother’s
face and neck were free of bruises,
so we could roam freely among other families.
As we crossed a busy Shreveport street,
a man shoved a woman against a car
and began hitting her with his fists.
No one intervened. Finally, a policeman arrived,
and pulled the man off the woman. “Listen,”
he advised: “Take her home and do that.”

At that moment, I thought I understood
everything about my mother’s bruises.
It would be years before I understood
that—even if a  policeman had taken
my father to jail—he would not have stayed
there. And even if he had, there was nowhere
for my mother to go. And even if there were,
the slow-dripping acid of trauma had already
eaten away her soul, and left burn marks
where there had once been beauty and creativity.

The killer in Shreveport had “dark thoughts,”
and now, eight children are dead. His wife
thought that she had escaped, but now she lies
in a hospital, with critical wounds. How do you
end an epidemic that courses through decades,
neighborhoods, churches, and income brackets,
and whose victims—if they live—become carriers
of trauma, fear, rage, and assorted deadly germs
that damage brains and flatten the souls of the unborn?

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press), and I Can't Recall Exactly When I Died (Kelsay Books). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

A SPERM WHALE BIRTH

by Pepper Trail

 

 

 

Unimaginable, but imagine—birth into water, but needing air

Your head emerging last, sheltered until the last moment within your mother

Then, the shock of ocean—the world—and the powerlessness

Your flukes folded, useless, body limp, the surface unreachable

 

But you are not alone, and your mother is not alone

There is a community, her old friends, and your aunties and sisters

They are there, all around, excited, anxious to welcome, to help

Their bursts of clicks your first hearing, this code meaning “belonging”

 

They balance you on their great heads, lift you into the light, and you breathe

Between their gentle bodies they squeeze you, and you breathe

They keep away the circling dolphins, and you breathe

They keep watch for sharks, and you breathe

 

At last your body stiffens, balances in the water

You take your first milk, wise with a baby’s knowledge

Your aunties drift apart, exclaiming as they go

At your mother’s side, you slowly swim, and begin to be a whale

 

Based on detailed observations of a sperm whale birth, as reported in Nature and Science.

Listen to an NPR report.

 

 

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.