ENOUGH WITH THE VISTAS ALREADY

by Mark Hendrickson

Luke Dexter kneels as he sifts through the remains of his father’s fire-ravaged beach front property in the aftermath of the Palisades Fire on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025, in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher via Newslooks)

Yeah, I get it, you poets of yore—

you've got your virgin forests, hummocks and swards,

mountains and oceans and mist and foam.

 

I, too, see an island out my front window:

a chicane raised and strewn with rock and gravel,

serving as the median between northbound

and southbound cars from the library down the block.

 

I, too, see forest hues of deepest green

and rich earthy tones of black and brown:

they are reflected in the colors of the recycling bins

in driveways down the alley, waiting

like lonesome lovers for their men to come

and lift them, open them, fulfill them—

then leave them wanting again, for another two weeks.

 

From your high vantage point you speak with awe

of looking out and down upon the spectacle of Nature,

to behold God looking back, revealed in all His glory,

sunbathing nude in every valley, kissing every stream;

while I stand looking out my window,

attempting to avoid direct eye contact

with my neighbors in their curtainless condos

straight across the street.

 

Normally, I would tolerate your arboretums of language,

your botanical metaphors, your pastoral poetry;

but today great men are being buried,

books are being banned,

there is talk of annexing nations,

love is being parsed and threatened

and is likely to be outlawed, again.

 

I just can't wax eloquent today.

I need real and raw.

Your landscapes are burning,

and I'm choking on the ashes of the flowers.

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a gay poet and writer in the Des Moines area. His work has appeared in Variant Lit, Five Minutes, Leaf, Spellbinder, and others. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician in a locked psychiatric unit. He has advanced degrees in marriage & family therapy, health information management, and music. Connect with him @MarkHPoetry.

TERRITORIAL DISPUTES

by Karen Olshansky

Marin spotted owl population under threat from newcomers. Proposed government strategy seeks to eliminate invasive barred owls. —Marin Independent Journal,  October 10, 2023.

The Barred Owl with its stoic demeanor chest puffed feathers
perched in wooded river bottoms or swamps poked with trees
sit staunchly like the dead wood where they perch
guarding, watching with still eyes, baritone song filling the forest

who cooks for you who cooks for you who cooks for you

sometimes silent in search for food and prey 
the Spotted Owl an innocent target
brother eating sister attacks, the cruelty of nature
birds mirror the disregard for one of their species

uncaring, mean, violent,
nature wins over evolution
that calls for reason, kindness, compassion
instead of the entrapments of violence 

a world driven by base instincts
of brains riven with ripping out each other’s
identity, that fear replacement,
smoke obscuring humanity.

Karen Olshansky lives in Marin County, California with her husband and a well fed Koi named Pickle Face. Dismayed by our world gone mad, she writes poetry in order to maintain her sanity. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Tuck magazine, The News Verse News, and the anthologies: Lingering in the Margins, Unsealing Our Secrets, and Unspoken.

NORWEGIANS ACCUSED

by Lavinia Kumar

Russian Nature reserve demands NOK 47 million for Norwegian reindeer grazing on its territory—The Barents Observer, July 28, 2023

Such disrespect for interests of another country

it was said—yet not one inch of land stolen.

 

It is true they used up a ration of lichen and shrubs,

but kept mindfully to this vegetarian diet.

 

Such disrespect for land reserved and preserved—

insisting, we know on using four, not just two, hooves.

 

Such arrogance and disrespect for nature!

But they forbore, we’re sure, human murder and rape.

 

Yet degradation of vegetation needs compensation—

for full two months of 40 Norwegian reindeer grazing.

 

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expert on invasion

demands $4.6 million for, tsk, tsk, illegal incursion.

Lavinia Kumar’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kelsey Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Jersey Journal of Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, Tiny Seed.  She is an immigrant married to an immigrant, and lives in New Jersey.

BIRDS IN WILDFIRE SEASON

by Cecil Morris

Gary Robertson/Flickr Creative Commons

“Birds shouldn’t go outside at all when it's smoky.” 

—NPR, June 8, 2023

1

Birds themselves are particulate matter, visible smudges

clouding blue skies and dangerous if carelessly inhaled,

if respirators are not fitted right—over mouth

and nose—and well sealed against avian infection.

Birds should not be inside at all, smoky or warbling

and tuneful or decorative splashes of color for

monochrome rooms. Birds and their mites and germs and

influenzas should be kept out at all costs. Use bars

and screens and N95 masks cinched tight to guard against

feather lung with its symptoms of chirping and flightiness,

erosion of marrow—so called hollow-bone syndrome

(HBS)—and often fatal light-headedness.

Do not wait for the Surgeon General or CDC

to issue official warnings or for Congress to mandate

cautionary labels on all birds. Birds can kill.

2

Wait. Birds live outside. Birds are outside always,

those complaining jays and crows, the warbling

passerines, the finches, sparrows, the larks.

Birds are the outside—along with round trees

and arrow trees and pollen-spewing weeds.

I mean, they’re nature and nature’s outside.

Are we supposed to bring them inside now?

Can they be quarantined? Locked in their nests

until tongues of flame kiss them into smoke?

Will their tiny bird brains tell them to come

inside, to seek an air-filtered shelter,

to take wing and flee fiery holocaust?

 

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

KINTSUGI

by Chris Reed

Kintsugi is the Japanese art or repairing broken pottery

with epoxy mixed with gold dust.

Cracks and repairs are not hidden but highlighted,

imperfections, part of an object’s life.

Sickly yellow lights the landscape,

like a room lit by an aging lampshade.

Great smoke plumes from Canadian forests,

blanket eastern farms, cities and shores,

swallow a line of green glittering trees

and a neighbor’s brown house

as if the fires are a mile,

and not a country away.

I taste ash on my tongue,

absorb smoke through sinuses,

and wonder about the birds, recently migrated

north across Lake Erie to nest,

On the deck, potted salmon-edged geraniums,

smaller blooms of pink and white,

and spikes of lavender, sit abjectly

in the aberrant light.

Rosemary and thyme rub against

each other in a blue pot with a gold seam.

My sister, the potter who shaped the planter,

repaired it in seven days,

mixing epoxy and resins with gold dust,

painting seams, fitting pieces together,

then aging the repaired pot in a large dark box. 

The trick, she said, is to know

that it is even more beautiful repaired.

Burnt ash in the air evokes memories

of not so distant atrocities and tragedies,

yet, seems a hairline fracture

in the ongoing dropping of our world.

Pillaging of nature, wars of aggression,

greed-driven power plays,

hate crimes and death-dealing viruses,

crack the thin ceramic of creation.

Lumpy veins of gold witness

our attempted repairs.

Is there room on this spiderweb

for another seam of gold. And how to start?

Epoxies of novenas and pilgrimages

don’t work anymore.

That god has picked up his play things. 

And even if we find the gold dust,

do we have a shoebox large enough?

And will we remember the trick?

Like others who live near or in the New York City area, Chris Reed was not only concerned about the extreme air quality conditions, but eerily reminded of the empty streets during the first year of Covid, and the indelible images of the air over New York after 9/11. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, US1 Worksheets, and The New Verse News.

COMES NOW

by Earl J Wilcox

Picture taken on March 23, 2018, shows a technician working on the clock of the Lukaskirche Church in Dresden, eastern Germany. (Photo by Sebastian Kahnert/DPA/AFP via Getty Images via AL.com)

That time of year

When we fall

Back

When time’s

Breath stirs

Our solitude

When nature’s

Calendar

Does not trick

Nor does our

Body fail

Though

Formidably

Confirms our time

Here changes

Course

Assuredly

As yesterday

Tomorrow

Forever remain

Unchanged.

 

Earl J. Wilcox has been writing for TheNewVerse.News through many turns of the clock.

SPACE-TIME DESIRE

by Art Goodtimes

Tweeted by @SciencepornPics

More than the spark

of the 4th’s faux bombardments

 

it’s the dark

with its slow burn

of thousands of nuclear fires

 

that makes me appreciate

the exploding population of stars

that we imitate

 

That all nature mimics

 

This space-time desire

to expand beyond all limits

 

That colors our lives

vermillion and gold

and speeds our demise

as a billionaire species

 

Beautiful

Deadly

Perplexing

 

Art Goodtimes was an Earth First! poetry editor before getting elected to five terms as a Green county commissioner in Southwestern Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle) now represents the Third Congressional district in Congress. Art is co-director of Talking Gourds, a local and regional poetry program under the non-profit aegis of the Telluride Institute.

WE HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO DIE

by Tricia Knoll

Explosions in Gaza City on Tuesday. Last week, New York Times journalist Iyad Abuheweila saw their destructive power up close at his home in Gaza. He quotes his brother Assad as saying, during the bombardment, "We have no option but to die." Photo credit: Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, May 21, 2021

This headline arrived in a tweet,

restating the obvious fate 

we forget in warm sun, 

when the lilacs bloom, as my dog

chases a bouncing green ball

into a clump of trees. 

 

Then his story. The bombs. The blasts.

Newlyweds who lost everything they had.

His mother pleading her sons to stay 

in the same room so they could die together.

Their nights allow no hope for sleep,

dreams cancelled, the nervous

edge of dawn slicing open new visions

of destruction. Rockets and airstrikes.

Airstrikes and drones. Someone whistles.

Another chants God is great.

 

Buddhists tell us we are of the nature to die. 

Is it hubris for me to believe I will not die

today? What gratitude do I owe for the bloom

of the peony, the trust with which I put 

the tomato plant in soil? Do I know

how far I am from Gaza? 

How close? 

Tricia Knoll is a poet living on the unceded land of the Abenaki people in Vermont, land divided into rectangles of ownership. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies. Her new book Checkered Mates is now available.

THREE FLAGS

by Diane Elayne Dees

On my walks to the river, I pass
many American flags, and—
while I don’t like to judge—
I think I know what they stand for. 
In front of one house 
is a large Confederate flag,
and I’m sure I know what that stands for. 
Then, one day, I walk around the corner,
and am surprised and thrilled to see 
a huge rainbow flag in a neighbor’s yard.
The next day, an American flag is hung 
next to it. I wonder if the neighbor hung
the second flag as a means of protection;
I let my imagination run away with me. 
The following day, a third giant flag
appears next to the others—a flag
reminding me to vote for the two
most evil and incompetent men
I can recall having power in my lifetime.
Collective delusion has destroyed
cognitive dissonance. The red, white
and blue of democracy and the 
bright yellow and green and purple
of nature’s prism lift my spirits.
But now, every day, when I turn 
the corner, the colors of diversity
and freedom hurt my eyes,
trigger blood-red visions,
and intimate a sky so dark,

no rainbow can ever be visible.

Diane Elayne Dees's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, and she has two chapbooks forthcoming. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world.

A DAY WITHOUT

by Joe Cottonwood

Children never shut the door
except when they slam it.
Wet-footed dogs run through the house.
A dove lost, confused, flaps against the skylight.
From the turkey in the oven we hear
spits and gurgles. No gobbles.

In broad daylight Uncle Olaf and Aunt Gerta
strip and soak in the hot tub.
The children want to join them. We say no.
They say why not. We say BECAUSE!
They whine. We say okay.

Grampa and his girlfriend Jennifer arrive
on a two-seater bicycle from fifteen miles away.
Grampa is eighty and has no hair.
Jennifer hugs everybody, especially the dogs.

The children in the hot tub are naked.
Neighbor children are watching, pointing.
Neighbor mother says something.
She’s always saying something.
We smile. We bring towels.

Uncle Simon on a stepladder catches
the dove in a hanky. We all make calming
coo-coo-coo sounds as he carries it gently,
so gently outside. Unclasps his fingers.
The dove flies to the nearest tree. Clutches
a branch. Head-bobs toward us. Thankful.

Now let’s hold hands around the table,
close our eyes. Do not think of That Man.
Squeeze (gently) the hand you’re holding.
Let go, like a dove.
Amen.


Joe Cottonwood wants every day to be a Day Without.

TRAJECTORIES #7

by David Chorlton

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo and Video by Getty

It’s such a pleasant and deceitful
day, with the afternoon light
lying back on the green
side of the mountain
and quail in a covey scurrying
for cover as the hearings wind
down until tomorrow. The local Red-tail
prowls the atmosphere,
circling the golf course
pond while pigeons
flock for safety in numbers. Witnesses
appear one
at a time, exposed to words
that fly from a questioner’s mouth
and don’t know
where to land. Is good the bright
and bad the shadow, or
the other way around? It all depends
which side a person’s on,
and the small birds know their place.
Seventy-three degrees; not a cloud
in sight; the whistleblower’s name
is still a secret; there is
no wind to turn the turbine
vent that complains every time it blows,
aching as only
metal can.

David Chorlton  is a long time resident of Phoenix, who loves the desert and its wildlife but can't quite stay away from watching public issues unfold. He recently produced a long poem, Speech Scroll, which will surface in the not too distant future thanks to Cholla Needles Press.

SQUID SONNET

by Anne Graue

Seven years after scientists caught the elusive deep-sea cephalopod on video, they saw another. Then lightning struck a third time. Here is a juvenile giant squid approaching, attacking, and then retreating from a ring of pulsating blue LEDs on the Medusa deep-sea camera system. Video by Edie Widder and Nathan Robinson via The New York Times, June 21, 2019

It should be immense, for a giant squid—
The one on camera that emerges
from midnight, from nowhere, reaching for light
the bait in front of the lens. It spreads wide
its suckered tentacles, its ghost arms search
for prey. Millions of neurons in pointless
hunting with a stab at the lighted lure—
its only course to return to shadow.
This sonnet only fulfills its promise
to keep itself contained within its lines.
The squid, too, will adhere to nature’s plan—
male or female, to inject, lay and hatch
offspring in a final endeavor to
become food for crustaceans and sea stars. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter, and has poetry appearing in numerous journals and anthologies, online and in print. She also has reviews in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Whale Road Review, and The Rumpus, and at Asitoughttobe.com, where she is a contributing editor.

I WANT TO BUILD A WALL

by Diana Poulos-Lutz

I want to build a wall 
that’s part of your home,
that blocks the cold
and rain while you rest.
I want to build a wall
with a window tall and wide
so you can gaze out as the
sun rises and sets and
see all the beauty in the ordinary—
a window that you can open
to hear songs of birds
and feel freedom and possibility
on your skin with each warm breeze
or cold gust of wind that visits you.
I want to build a wall
with a door that can lock out your
fears, or open wide when you’re ready
to face them.
I want to build a wall
sturdy and safe on the outside,
a blank canvas on the inside,
so you can paint the rainbow
of your spirit
or hang photographs of people
and places that make your heart dance.
I want to build a wall
that you can lean on if you need
to weep or hide in silence—
and then one day place a mirror
on that wall that shows you
what your smile looks like
when you’re in love with life or another,
or the success in your eyes
after a long day
or as you’re dressed
in courage and strength.
I want to build you that wall.

Diana Poulos-Lutz has a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Long Island University and has studied Political Theory and American Politics at the New School for Social Research. She has taught Political Science and Political Theory courses for several years at Long Island University. She currently works at a public high school. Diana is also a photographer and writes about the natural world on Long Island. She is a contributing writer and photographer for the Long Island-based website Fire Island and Beyond. The Town of North Hempstead recently hosted a photographic and literary gallery of Diana's Long Island Nature photography at the historic Clark House at Clark Botanic Garden in Albertson. Diana's poetry is inspired by her deep connection to the natural world, along with her desire to promote equality and empowerment. 

BUILDING WALLS

by Megan Merchant

I have seen the most beautiful walls painted by children,
walls with crowds of hands shaped into doves and flowers
tall. I have seen the most beautiful walls sledged by exhausted
fathers who wear the stucco-dust home and lull their babies
into sleep with tales about how they gutted that great beast.
I have seen the most beautiful walls dressed for carnival, lined
with stars, and helmets in remembrance of our fallen. I have seen
the most beautiful walls drenched with ivy, an accord with nature,
water dripping into buckets down brick. I have heard the word
wall in a thousand clumsy ways, the buzz saw and hammer
being cleaned in the toolbox of his mouth, the easy-dirt of his words,
where we tunnel. I have seen the way men resurrect walls to keep
the light out, too afraid to meet the eyes of a woman directly. Because
he knows she has learned to see around the symbol, that it is not a greater
means of division, or a blockade, but a chance to climb, to see people
holding hands from a different perspective, high enough that their
bodies blur into one.

Megan Merchant is mostly forthcoming. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, 2016 Book of the Year), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming 2017), four chapbooks, and a children’s book with Philomel Books.

SLEEPERS

by Mark Danowsky

A family near the Siberian city of Salekhard. A heat wave is blamed for thawing a 75-year-old reindeer carcass, along with dormant spores of anthrax bacteria that infected it. Photo by Sergey Anisimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images via NPR, August 3, 2016

Downtown, out front of Great Wall takeout
an unbathed man in an Anthrax shirt leans
against a rucksack with probably his whole life

No, probability tells us the safe bet is tomorrow
the weather will be much like today—

Ice melting in the Yamal Peninsula
far from West Virginia, Russians flee
a resurrected reindeer chemical weapon

—not constancy, though in good times we hope
glacial: the old ways of nature and our wonders

Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in About Place, Beechwood Review, Cordite, Elohi Gadugi, Grey Sparrow, Mobius, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and elsewhere. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

PLUNDER

(for Cecil of Zimbabwe)
by Carolyn Gregory

This is the last known photograph of Cecil the lion (bottom) taken by Brent Stapelkamp before he was killed by the American dentist. Cecil is pictured with Jericho, a male lion who it is feared could kill the cubs of the pride fathered by Cecil. Source: White Wolf Pack.

1.

All day, he walks beside me,
his long bones slower indoors,
his gold sheen growing rich
with brown and yellow
walking past my fans.

All his life, he has taught sons
how to hunt in the savannah,
crouching and leaping
behind tall grass,
how to go for the jugular
and to strip the meat,
bringing it home to feed the family.

He has shared ancient stories
of his grandfather, the cave lion
living by his teeth and strength
five hundred thousand years ago.
Regal and triumphant,
he haunts me now.

2.

The dentist was bored
with his life of drilling and filling,
tired of his other trophies.

Africa called him back,
the roaring and howling of animals
luring him from suburbia,
pulling him away from snow
and malpractice.

One or two gunshots would be enough
to take down a great predator,
more satisfying than implants
and root canals,

a souvenir for the wall,
his ruff all groomed, the eyes
replaced with yellow glass.

3.

Shoot him with a bow and arrow,
finish him off with guns.
Make sure it's done
so the skin can be harvested
and turned into a rug.
Be sure to wield a heavy axe
to take off his head.

We want to put it on
its lacquered wall mount.
It will look fine
near the yellow afghans and throws,
terrific in our rec room.

When the fire overtakes our woods
and timber falls asunder,
when the lion calls out
his wolves and bobcats
to tear down this house of plunder,

we will not understand
the voodoo medicine big cats call
nor the end of trophies
and bragging rights
nature makes due.


Carolyn Gregory has published poems and music reviews in American Poetry Review, Cutthroat, Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ygdrasil, Seattle Review. Her first and second books were published by Windmill Editions in Florida.