CANVASSING

by Mark Williams

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

If a man’s home is his castle,

he reluctantly lowered his drawbridge. “Is she

a Democrat or Republican?” he asked us.

 

Manicured lawns, foot-high grass.

Porches with fishing rods, feral cats.

“She had three litters before she was fixed.”

 

A woman on oxygen. A man with a cane.

A woman using a walker

who agreed to put up a yard sign.

 

“I always vote Republican.”

“I vote straight Democrat.”

“I’m not registered.”

 

We were offered water, beer;

given thanks, directions, advice,

even hand-wipes. We learned

 

of dogs who’d been rescued, the price

of a condemned house. One woman’s grandson

is studying classic literature in Italy.

 

As for the king of his castle, he said,

nay, shouted, “Get off my land!” which,

as far as he was concerned,

 

wasn’t made for some of you and me.

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, as well as The Southern Review, ONE ART: a literary journal, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the collections, Carrying On and Life. He and his wife, DeeGee, live and canvas in Evansville, Indiana. 

SYMPHONY OF THOUSANDS

by Barbara H. Williams

 

 

         

 

   after No Kings Day 2, October 18, 2025

 

Each played a part 

and played it well

just by being there––

good-natured fellow humans 

there for all that binds us

 

who face a common threat 

and care about our neighbors––

don’t we all need safety 

shelter, air and water

peace and equal possibility

a government which functions

for the good of all?

 

And we wore yellow, primal

bright and jovial yellow

listened, clapped

and raised our voices––

at least five thousand 

stood together 

in our little town

five thousand of us

 

and it felt intimate 

and neighborly–– 

skins all shades 

a rich array of ancestries 

and mother tongues––

 

carrying the red, white and blue 

in concert, jubilant

with twenty-seven hundred 

other towns and cities, communities

in every state across the land

 

more than seven million 

citizens together––in agreement.

 

Barbara H. Williams is Managing Editor of US 1 Worksheets. Based in Princeton, New Jersey,  she was for many years a professional flutist and music teacher. She began writing poetry in 2013, with poems appearing in The Raven’s Perch, US 1 Worksheets, The Paterson Review, and The New Verse News. A member of the DVP/US1 Poets Collective, and a Pushcart Prize nominee, her first collection of poems, Continuo, was published in 2024 (Cool Women Press). 

JERUSALEM EVEN NOW

by Esther Cohen

Two sirens before 8 AM woke Ibtisam, a Palestinian,

and her Jewish neighbor Melila. They’ve lived

in the same Jerusalem building for decades.

In their pajamas, sleepless after the loud attack

the night before, they decided they’d clean

the building together, as something positive they

could do. And when they finished

removing spider webs and dust, they celebrated

the new cleanliness with mint tea

and homemade butter cookies.

Esther Cohen’s new book is All of Us.

FOR THE WATCHERS

by Greg Watson

 

 

Driving my daughter to school this morning, circling the block past the long line of buses, we notice again the parents and neighbors who now stand watch on each corner, braving the sub-zero St. Paul air like half-frozen shepherds, red hearts stitched to their bright yellow vests. Some wave, some sway from side to side in puffy down jackets and snowsuits, silver whistles dangling, as if this were a dance with music only they could hear. "I'm glad they're here," my daughter says. "But I wish they didn't have to be." I nod in agreement. I miss the fourth grade crossing guards, their orange plastic flags waving up and down in sync, laughing with each other, looking each way twice. Though they have not disappeared as the others have—Amalia, Valentina, Angeles, Santiago, Liam, Diego—stolen and flown by secrecy of night to a windowless room thirteen hundred miles away. Stolen by those who call themselves the law. Last night my daughter stayed up past bedtime reading a book about the Montana grizzly attacks of 1967. I asked if was too scary, too intense, and whether it might give her nightmares. "No," she said evenly, "wild animals don't scare me, or natural disasters. Only people sometimes. Only people."

Greg Watson's work has been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, most recently Stars Unseen (Holy Cow! Press). He is also co-editor of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood (Nodin Press). His forthcoming collection, The Shape of Your Absence, will be published by One Subject Press in April. 

WHISTLE CHOIR

by Jennifer Clark

 Bde Maka Ska, January 31, 2026

Whistles once nesting in our throats like drowsy wrens

now fly out of their warm homes and hatch bright noises,

cracking the white glaze of ice creeping over this cold, hard land.

A whistle is a toy, is a shield, is a song of resistance 

rising above this raucous world bursting with whiny snowblowers,

chirping dishwashers, the damp sound of fear.

Whistles sway from necks and perch on the edge of lips

forming o no you don’ts. Galloping through towns,

whistlers on their midnight rides emit the same sharp staccato cry: 

Danger is coming. We love you, neighbors. Run. Do not come outside.

Some will cover their genteel ears and complain of the shrilling.

Do not grow disheartened.

Remember: you don’t need everybody.

When you grow weary, march onto the frozen skin

of Bde Maka Ska where deep below largemouth bass,

walleyes, and muskies await April’s orders.

As wind howls, stand shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors and form

an SOS sounding the alarm. As any good referee will tell you,

until the game is over, don’t set down your whistles.

Jennifer Clark’s fourth poetry collection, Intercede: Saints for Concerning Occasions, was recently released by Unsolicited Press. Clark is also the author of three more books, including a memoir, Kissing the World Goodbye, which blends family stories with recipes and was named a top-selling book of 2022 by Unsolicited Press. You can find her at writingwithoutanet.substack.com where she writes about writing, poetry, books, and gives out free magnets to her cartoon contest winners.

I-89 FROM VERMONT TO CANADA IN WINTER

by Tricia Knoll

The Canadian border is less than an hour north.
Our countries have history. Good neighbors, 
borrow and offer. Fight side by side. 
I get my power through Hydro-Quebec.
Canadians come to shop, ski, hike
icefish, and mountain bike. I drive north
for museums and botanical gardens. Maple sap
runs both ways. Sugar shacks boil
here and there. I love the maple leaf flag 
as much as the blue and yellow of Ukraine. 
We share shock and a blood moon.
So close now
 
to winter’s big thaw. My eyes downcast. 
As if every winter pothole 
might eat me, vomit me out. 
Black slush banks the highway, 
a salt road gleams white. 
Once fleeing to Canada seemed
like an escape-hatch. Love
your neighbor. Don’t beggar them.
Will Canadians forgive? 
The border is less than an hour away.
We are so very close. 

Tricia Knoll lives in Vermont near the Canadian border. Her 2024 collection Wild Apples documents her downsizing and move seven years ago from Oregon to Vermont. The taste of maple is sweet; the anger of neighbors is not.

FIRST CONTACT POST ELECTION

by Susan Martell Huebner

Yesterday, my neighbor offered cranberries, 

an ordinary gifting, one baker to another. She chanced the wet, slick grass

between our houses. I put down my anger, unlocked my back door.

Susan Martell Huebner lives and writes in Mukwonago WI. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals. She writes across the genres. Find her printed work at Finishing Line Press, Kelsay Publications, and Amazon.

FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Rachel Landrum Crumble

It’s easy to pull weeds from damp soil, 
to power down my front steps and break
a spider’s web and not know the little guy
is hanging on me like a kid grasping 
a kite string, trying not to blow away
on a windy day. 

My point is: we should have done more,
sooner. The weeds have taken over,
yet we topple lesser kingdoms without knowing
by just walking around in the world.

In one neighbor’s house, the TV news
frets the play-by-play of a trial
that’s just concluded. In another house,
the camera’s eye bears witness to the same event, 
except the one on trial is the opposing party.
We have fashioned the media into our own ugly image. 

Truth is on trial, and must sequester
for the duration. We can’t remember whether or not
this is standard fare. We gulp the wind from giant goblets,
still parched. We are too discombobulated to know
we are lost. 

Let’s huddle together. Let’s find communion.
Sure, the wafer is thin and tasteless, but it symbolizes
something we can’t do for ourselves.

Rachel Landrum Crumble retired from twenty years of teaching high school, having previously taught kindergarten through college. She has published in The Porterhouse Review, Typishly, among others, and recently Poetry Breakfast, Humans of the World, and forthcoming in Euphony Journal. Her first poetry collection, Sister Sorrow, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022. She lives with her husband of 43 years, a jazz drummer, and near 2 of their 3 adult children, and two adorable grand twins with another on the way.

DREAM

by Tricia Knoll

“Our biggest dream is to just be able to stand by the windows.” —Saleem Aburas, a relief coordinator with the Red Crescent near Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, quoted in “Two Hospitals in Southern Gaza Are Left Barely Functioning," The New York Times, February 19, 2024

 
To stand by a window. To see my neighbors water their geraniums 
on the stoop. To watch traffic, the old blue cars and the new cars
going off to work. The children waiting at the front doors for
a mother to walk them off to school. To watch my wife in the
garden. At night to watch moths flutter at the street lights. 
 
Of course it’s holidays with family. Feasting foods after fasts. 
The hug from my cousin who owes me money. My hug to him.
A first drink of cold water after sleep. It’s all these things,
 
plus those moths fluttering at the street lights who think
dreams come true. 

Tricia Knoll welcomes the arrival of her new book of poetry Wild Apples from Fernwood Press this week—poems that tell stories of downsizing, moving 3000 miles from Oregon to Vermont, running into Covid and welcoming two grandsons.

HURRICANE IAN: GIFTS IN THE MISERY OF AFTERMATH

by Claire Matturro

Ashley Garner had given up on ever seeing her wedding ring again. She lost it outside her Fort Myers home just days before Hurricane Ian crashed into the coast of southwest Florida last Wednesday… The family stayed at their home during the storm and went outside to clean up as soon as it had passed. “We’re about 10 minutes into cleaning, and my husband is cleaning up the brush and the trees right next to the garage door,” Garner said. “There’s a pile of brush and trees, and he moves over one pile, and the ring was right there.” —AP, October 8, 2022

Garbage swirls around broken people and

lost, bewildered pets while cadaver dogs

prowl mounds of wood and concrete bent to

waste by hurling winds and storm surge. Newly

homeless people crowded into shelters, 

feeling the roughness of unfamiliar pallets 

hard against their skin, are warned that they

must leave though they have nowhere to go.

 

Across the globe, Russians continue

killing Ukrainians, but here

in Florida our focus narrows—

How do we find our missing

mother? Where can we get fresh water?

Find food which tastes fresh

on our sore tongues? Shower off this itch and

stink? Is it safe to flush a toilet?

 

Inland, farmers search for lost horses in

swamped pastures and count dead cows flung

into ditches by river currents broken

free of levees in two feet of rain.

Someone’s pink umbrella floats by

in flood waters spun off a Gulf beach once

seemingly benign and filled with summer kids

splashing in waves not yet turned violent.

 

In all this cursed misery of aftermath

still strange gifts are bestowed—the neighbor

who never spoke to us arriving with chainsaw

to clear the cracked tree sloping over our porch;

hummingbirds unharmed returning to feed;

the perfect stranger who hands clean water,

tangerines, and $50 to an elderly man

crying inside his car that won’t start.

 

Then this, a woman finds her lost

wedding ring she feared was as

gone as the Gulf coast island homes.

She places the ring, retrieved from a pile of

brush and tree limbs, on her finger

soiled by the grime of recovery. She rests,

sitting on the curb, and prays to God, giving

thanks for what she sees as a sign of hope.

Claire Matturro is a former lawyer and college teacher, and author of eight novels, including four published by HarperCollins. Her poetry has been published in Kissing Dynamite, The New Verse News, One Art, Muddy River Poetry Review, Topical Poetry, Tiger Moth Review, Lascaux Review, and is forthcoming in Slant. 

THE HEARTS NEAR TROUBLESOME CREEK

by Sarah Mackey Kirby

Eastern Kentucky has long been neglected. After recent floods, locals are relying on each other yet again. —CNN, August 9, 2022

beat loss,

beat wood slat rubble,

beat morning Appalachia.

 

It’s patch-up and fix-up

and clean-up and move-on

time again. The mountains

know these folks. The ones

in old boats, still combing

flooded neighborhoods

with their own homes in shambles.

Teachers without classrooms and

workers taking charge throughout the night.

 

Sorting clothes and preparing supply

boxes in shelters. Manning the grills.

Handing out water bottles.

Somehow landing on their feet

 

as they know to do. The coal mine jobs

lost but the sickness those wrought.

The lack of work to replace them.

The stubborn terrain. Two parties that’ve

fought to be the one who gets to use them.

Same generations of neglect. Different name.

Humble people, caricatured through time,

whose character shows despite their pain.

 

Nurses care for patients. Art and music bring

the light. The breeze blows through soaring pines.

And when the world tires and the cameras leave

and the mud dries and the current-event poems

become current only for them, they’ll keep asking

their neighbors, “Y’all need somethin’?”

Talking distinct Eastern Kentucky, offering help.

Saying, “Bless your heart” to those who’ve never

once tried to understand. Picking up what’s left of

family pictures and damaged front porch swings.

Together. Always rebuilding.

Sarah Mackey Kirby grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of the poetry collection The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her work appears in Chiron Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, The New Verse News, Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MA in Teaching and a BA in Political Science from the University of Louisville. She and her husband spend their time in Kentucky and Ohio.

THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF WAR

by Katherine West 

“A Room of Memory” by Chiharu Shiota (2009): old wooden windows, group exhibition Hundred Stories about Love, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan

Inside, there's a memory of neighbors on an evening porch, of burning then warming sun, of a half-feral cat leaving freedom for langurous hours of touch, of cold night then the warmth of a shared bed. 

Inside, there's a fire going and moody jazz in the background, an old watercolor of a Ukrainian boy and girl in traditional clothes. They are on their way to market; seen from behind and one side, their bodies are full of purpose. 

Inside, there's the sound of birds outside; sometimes just wings whooshing back and forth, sometimes a little squawk and chatter. Faraway, a songbird. 

Outside, sun is trying to warm the morning. Outside, clouds are burning off; red ants are waking up, appearing at the door of their mound like holy men dressed in the color of life. 

Outside, the first truck rumbles down the gravel road, kicking up its own cloud. Outside, the crack of target practice, to the south, a helicopter.

Outside, the first shell drops on an apartment building already abandoned by its residents who now live in the subway. The first paratrooper touches down. The first tank goes up in flames. 

Outside, the first wildflowers glow like a small sunrise amongst dry, white grass. Outside, the ravens are mating aloft. 

Inside, is poetry from Ukraine. 

You are the train that will pour

burning wine on the skin,

so that it will blaze

madly

(Natalka Bioltserkivets)

Outside, is poetry from Ukraine, a long line of refugees with bundles, like leafcutter ants carrying off the petals of roses.  

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. She is also an artist. 

TABLE FOR ONE

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Warm some olive oil, let it spread  

slowly across the bottom of a saucepan,

sauté chopped garlic, watch bubbles form 

around the edge of each morsel,

chop red pepper, some mushrooms,

some onions, use bite sized pieces, watch 

them soften, watch the onions turn 

golden, use vegetables so fresh 

that they offer up their essence 

to the sauce, add some chopped tomatoes, 

crush basil leaves between your palms, 

add a dash of red wine, fresh ground pepper, 

meanwhile bring salted water to a rolling boil,

add vermicelli or linguini, stir as the steam

fills the air, inhale. Then one by one

subtract the smells, the extra virgin olive oil,

the garlic infusion, onion, mushrooms,

the tomatoes ripe and juicy, 

the warm semolina, shaved parmesan, 

subtract the taste too, so the pasta

tastes like paper, the sauce, some warmish swill,

the vegetables add a bland kind of texture,

something to chew on, softer than stones,

sort of, the red wine is not worth the cost,

not really worth the trouble of decanting,

swirling. Subtract the guests at the table, 

add candles where they used to sit, 

relatives, neighbors, doctors and nurses, 

songwriters, teachers, students, bartenders,

barbers, and servers, 900,000 Americans.

Feed the birds, set the table for one,

watch clouds move across the sky,

say Mass, say Kaddish, say Grace,

try to remember how it used to taste.

 

 

Bonnie Proudfoot’s fiction and poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle Poets Respond, and in many journals. Her novel Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) was selected by the WNBA for its Great Group Reads and long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway award. Her first chapbook of poems, Household Gods (Sheila-Na-Gig Press), is forthcoming in  Summer of 2022. 

POSTSCRIPT TO AN ACTIVIST'S LIFE

by David Chorlton

Unrest #1, a painting by Alyssa Liles-Amponsah

                nobody rich or famous…

                                Richard Shelton

 

The car in the driveway

has barely a pulse

and the windows don’t let in the light.

The palm trees no longer

aspire to the sky

and the garden hose hangs

on a hook.

Something’s eating the house from inside

say the neighbors,

no one answers the door when

they knock. The ceiling gave way

and a bucket of grief

stands under a hole where

time drips day

after day. The telephone’s hoarse

from repeating

I’m sorry I can’t speak now…,

the doorbell plays a dirge

and every minute makes

a tiny splash as it falls

into the unwashed dishes

in the kitchen sink.

 

He brought the border home with him,

unrolled it on the floor,

ran it through the kitchen to

the living room and cut

it into strips to hang instead of curtains

at the windows where a light

shone upon every nationality and exposed

the fault line between the rich

and poor. His trash bin

was filled with tailings from a mine

and every day he emptied it and

every next day it was full

again but he kept emptying. When the nails

fell out from where they held

the world together, he picked them up

to hammer back. Meetings.

Petitions. Meetings. Letters.

Meetings. Always somewhere to be,

to drive across town

on the sweating summer asphalt

with the windows down

to save money for gas.

 

Nobody knows for sure. It was

a mystery. The neighbors didn’t care much

for the man. He kept

largely to himself. Didn’t have a lot

to say. Kept going out, revving up

his car and coming back

then leaving again six

or eight times a day. The lady who lives across

from his house knows; she kept count.

Never really spoke

to him. And he spoke only

when spoken to. He was alone the last

few weeks. Come and go. Feed

the cats. People watched but didn’t know

what they were seeing. Didn’t

ask. Left him alone. And the weeds grew

like secrets in his yard

until one night the moon tipped

on its side, spilling

silver dust onto the moths around it

asking ancient questions

of the passionate light.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix, who continues writing, painting, and keeping track of the local bird life. His newest book is Unmapped Worlds, a collection of rehabilitated poems from his files of the past.

THE FLAG OUTSIDE A NEIGHBOR'S DOOR

by Jean L. Kreiling

Just down the street, outside a neighbor’s door, 
it reaches up and out, as if for hope 
or heaven, in an effort to restore 
its honor and resist the downward slope 
traversed by those who lied, who followed liars, 
who beat a man with those same stripes and stars, 
who lit and fanned and spread murderous fires 
that left some dead, the rest of us with scars. 
I see Old Glory fluttering in the breeze— 
but elsewhere, desecrated by a gang 
of thugs, it symbolized not liberties 
and laws, but rage, and justice by flash-bang. 
I miss the days when I was confident 
about what flags by neighbors’ front doors meant. 
 

Jean L. Kreiling is the author of two collections of poetry: Arts & Letters & Love (2018) and The Truth in Dissonance (2014).  Her work has been honored with the Able Muse Write Prize, the Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters Sonnet Prize, the Kelsay Books Metrical Poetry Prize, a Laureates’ Prize in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, three New England Poetry Club prizes, the Plymouth Poetry Contest prize, and the String Poet Prize. 

I AM DRAWING A MAP

by Howard Winn

the little boy said

as he hunched over

his crumpled bit of

paper with the stub

of pencil clutched in

one dirty little hand

of the street he added

so I will know where

all my friends and

enemies live and then

I will know where

it is safe to go and 

where not to go

for there are good guys

and bad ones my mother

says mothers know

she says and my father

agrees and i wonder

how they learned to

tell the good from the bad

A new collection of Howard Winn's poetry has just been published. It is titled Comedy and other observations. Howard Winn continues as Professor of English SUNY.

WHAT STILL BELONGS TO US

by Sean J Mahoney

“Tangled Roots,” a painting by Wayne Doyle.

Offer the dark and far side of the house as stilled
prey to light and wind. Sky filled with weather
balloons, a story of openings and the dishrag
calamities of coming wars fought not between
soldiers but callous ideologies. My neighbors
crossing waters caught aflame, sown with
stench of powder, predatory hint of pheromone.
Those boat holds packed with coffins of kin.
Fragments of lovers. Loads of hurt, spray-painted
time, viral loss of speech coming fast, loose.

Clothed people with weathered skin, sitting and
waiting for apples and a humanity of eyebrows.
Decent beings most, stripped for their good deeds,
their mutual bonds and returns, for grid coordinates
of physical love and further acid rain bombs.
As though a brush stroke across the sky could
cure the vicissitudes of storms, of the prickly
aftermath where many headed in the days and
years that followed. Brush and slow stroke.
Spiritual tech and the uncaged graphic stations

of the body. This they say is art. Street magic.
Lord of hands digging trenches through rubble
and dirty clothing of unfamiliar beings. Postcards
of a land in better times; tourists, culture, and
radiant sunshine. Blue house on a block of narrow
mildewed homes. Bloated curbs and skinny
streetlamps illume familiar strain: a colored side
and the other side, a have side and a have next
to nothing side. Storm drains usher ill promises
and leprous iguanas to a cold sea amid tangles
of tree roots promulgated by water and by state.

Sean J Mahoney has had work published at Poets Reading the News, The Good Men Project, Nine Mile Literary Magazine, Antithesis Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Wordgathering among others. He lives in Southern California with Dianne, her mother, 3 dogs, and 4 renters. There is a large garden and two trees with big, bitter oranges that look more lemon-like. Sean co-edited the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the MS benefit anthology series Something On Our Minds and he helps to run the Disability Literature Consortium booth at the annual AWP bookfair… lit by crips.