ROOMS OF HOPE

by Jeannie E. Roberts

—for Amelia Uzun and the Ukrainian Refugees

 

The greenery blooms 

holds truths 

lifts like hands 

seeks the light 

the prayer plant flowers 

as the cyclamen thrives 

they shelter in safety 

in the luster of peaceful living

A young girl blooms 

holds truths 

lifts her voice 

as if a prayer 

the bomb shelter lightens 

the gathering listens 

the room warms as one 

with a song from the film Frozen 

A concert hall blooms

holds truths 

a young girl lifts her voice 

where notes effloresce 

ascend in national anthem 

as if a prayer 

in the light 

she sings for the luster 

of peaceful living once again 

Jeannie E. Roberts has authored seven books, five poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her most recent collection As If Labyrinth - Pandemic Inspired Poems was released in 2021 by Kelsay Books. Her poems appear in Panoply, Sky Island Journal, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She’s an animal lover, a nature enthusiast, a Best of the Net award nominee, and a poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. 

NOPENING DAY 2020

by Earl J. Wilcox

In one hand, a brown paper bag
holds my tuna fish sandwich,
sweet tea in a paper cup. I drag
my old beat-up folding chair
to the edge of my front drive way.
Dogwoods and pink azaleas provide
the color today instead of bright red
like that on my Cardinals baseball cap.
I fold myself down slowly, take out
my sandwich, sip my tea, wait
expectantly for the Clydesdales
to parade around the stadium. Atop
the wagon sit Musial and Brock—both
long gone—who wave back to me.
I stand as the National Anthem
is sung off-key, join in the last couple
of lines.  On a wire overhead a single
mockingbird joins my song, my game.


A longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Earl J. Wilcox has been a baseball fan even longer.

A PANTOUM MORASS OF SOCIAL MORES

by Joe Amaral 

“He’s winning this. His critics are losing. We’re better for it.” —Tim Kawakami, The (San Jose) Mercury News, September 7, 2016. KHARTOON! by Khalid.

                                                for Colin Kaepernick


They sack their own hypocritical souls,
judging a biracial man sitting down between
Gatorade coolers, bench warmer, while
standing in safe zones chanting anthems.

Character assassinating a person-
hostile when their comfortable tedium
is knelt upon during an incomplete poem,
overheated, entwined in symbolic confliction.

Dislodged from routine surroundings, habits
of public conformity become glare and troll;
despite loafing when the flag waves on private
TV: bloviating from couches about abstract duty.

In my Catholic days I swung suffocating incense
before hearing the priest who married my parents
molested little boys. We spurned the cross in peace.
Pleas from true patriots are treated with violence.

Some only meme, righteous as sacramental fire
while buying foreign cars, clothes and smartphones
made by slave labor, then pout: THANKS OBAMA!
Colin audibles brave; to Hail Mary the fallow loam

of this country, as American as freedom can be, calling
to the knee-jerks and neutrals, even to the haters,
for a healing conversation amongst culpable toxicity—
warming a bench for enemies to connect, sit,
and see.

Joe Amaral likes to spelunk around the California central coast as a paramedic and stay-at-home dad. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 3Elements Review, Arcadia Magazine, Crow Hollow 19, Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora, Zingara Poet and other awesome places. Joe won the 2014 Ingrid Reti Literary Award. He also hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. It was epic.

AT A BASEBALL GAME ON A HOT SUMMER NIGHT

by Jill Crainshaw

Image source: MiLB.com


class a farm team
a mid-sized southern city
girl in yellow crocs
toddler size 11
“Oh, say can you see?”

her hand over her heart
scrutinizing a standard star-showered
stalwart and still
while summer cicadas whirred and thrummed
“What so proudly we hailed.”

my phone buzzed
glass dome fragmenting
“first woman nominated by a major party”
while a hometown soprano soloed
“At the twilight’s last gleaming.”

does she see, this croc-clad citizen?
the spangled signpost unfurling
a wished-upon possibility too-long postponed
“O’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave.”

“Madam President” i whispered
into the breeze of the soaring anthem
and a girl in yellow crocs jumped up and down
as fans cheered the first batter up

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and a Presbyterian minister. Her work has appeared in Star 82 Review, Mused: Bella Online Literary Review, and Panoplyzine. She is a frequent contributor to the Unfundamentalist Christians blog.