SCHOOL WELLNESS TIPS

by Andrew G. Scott

Here’s a hack

from the school counselor

to stay positive this year.

“Include personal wellness goals

in your passwords.”

Great idea.

DoNotGetShotInSchool26!

Andrew G. Scott is a pen name for a public school teacher who has decided to share an inside view of public education in the United States.

A PLAN FOR ROSH HASHANAH

by Anita Pulier

New Year’s greetings

line up in my in-box

alongside desperate pleas.

I skip past

Unicef

NOW

Planned Parenthood

J Street

The ACLU

The DNC

Bernie and Elizabeth

Earthquake and hurricane relief

and Gaza, and Gaza.

open only

holiday greetings,

an invitation to cast off sin

at the beach with kith and kin.

Yet the weeping world is insistent,

oozes through cyberspace and

drowns out the trumpeting shofar.

There I am, stranded, sandwiched

between the seasonal rituals of an ancient

holiday and others’ jarring pain.

I nod to the god

I do not believe in,

propose a deal:

keep everyone I love safe and

I will grapple with despair and failure tomorrow.

Today I will nurture joy and unfounded optimism,

eat apples and honey,

celebrate the tribe.

Anita Pulier's latest book is Leaving Brooklyn. (Kelsay Books) Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily. 

ANITA BRYANT’S LAST CHRISTMAS WISH

by Chad Parenteau

The problem with wishes 

is that anyone can make them.

On her last day alive, she 

proclaims, I want the world

to become an orange, with skin

so hard nobody can access its

golden treasures by way of bit, 

blade or begging. A hard swallow.

She continues. But before that, 

a pie! I want a pie to strike 

this nation with a crust of fire

and a filling of ice. And every

child of God who ever stopped 

calling or writing their righteous

mothers will finally feel shame

we could never teach. 

A final gasp. And let my last

words before joining an eternal

choir of praise in paradise 

be a whisper in God’s ear, 

a show of appreciation and 

word of advice to His design.

With that, her soul departs so fast

it would have knocked Jesus’ 

family aside on their way to Egypt.

Then in the morning, from 

Christmas to New Year’s and

beyond, the grave dancers guild

develops restless leg syndrome,

kicking under tables and blankets,

unaware they’re missing their number.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Crossroads, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

RITUAL

by Amy Shimshon-Santo

the year crawls toward an end 
sharp knife between its teeth
& bleeding tongue

a year of vowels

displaced from their consonants,
zipped together 

by a three letter word 
that is not good for children 
& other living things

I walk to the edge of language
thin stick between my hands 
holding a makeshift flag

colorless as the memory of water
scavenged from cotton 
clothing of the departed

it is time to place the year inside 
an urn, bury it in the Earth
lie down beside the unimaginable

hear the new year drumming
& dreaming itself into being, wanting
to be born

Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is a warm-blooded vertebrate with hair. She writes  poetry, essays, performs spoken word, improvisation, and choreography. Read or listen to her poetry collections: Catastrophic Molting (2020), Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (2020), and look for her forthcoming book Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (2024). Teaching and facilitating trans-local community arts projects have been central to her social practice for 30+ years. She is available as a guest artist, arts educator, coach, and editor. Dr. A has been nominated for an Emmy Award and three Pushcart Prizes in poetry and creative non-fiction. She was a finalist for the Night Boat Poetry Prize, and earned a place in the U.S. Service Learning Hall of Fame. Connect with her at @shimshona / @amyshimshon

WAR AT CHRISTMAS

by Sally Zakariya

The Rev. Munther Isaac in front of the Nativity scene at Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Using broken cement and paving stones, the Congregation placed the baby Jesus in the center of a pile of debris from a collapsed home, inspired by television images of children being pulled from the rubble, Issac says. Photo: Ayman Oghanna for NPR.

The poinsettia sits on the bookcase

in front of an old Japanese print—

a battle scene that features

the rising sun flag

 

The circle of blood-red petals

echoes the bursting rays

of the sun

 

Something’s going on here

that isn’t much like 

Christmas

 

In Bethlehem they’re observing

the day, not celebrating it—

not while thousands are dying

in Gaza with no cease fire 

in sight

 

A silent night with no bombs

would be a blessing but 

the bombs rain down

and the children cry

 

Let us hope for a happier

peaceful New Year

 

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

RECUERDO

by Julian O. Long

Hanging my heart’s wassail

outdoors again once more

shall I light tonight’s candle

to honor the Maccabees?

I, who am neither Jew nor Greek

nor gentile enough to call myself

Christian any longer, but not

alone. Eight days of Temple miracle

this year encompass Christmas.

 

A bit like recurring

planetary conjunctions billed

from time to time in the press

as the Star of Bethlehem, star

in the east that leads us towards

a dying west as Arcturus drives

his great plow in such heavenly

furrows as may from time to time

command him.

 

And we, needing children

we once were, await the miracle

winter solstice always seems to promise

ponder more and more the time

to time, as our recurring

celebrations grow each year

more hollow, as nations rage

and find no compass, take no

counsel or reproof.

 

What will the new year

bring us, no new birth

certainly. Left to comfort

ourselves, can we find solace

in faded retrograde, memory

of walks to school in childish

crowds when the air blew fresh

and scented with as yet no

fevered yearning?

 

It cannot be expanded

to the whole, and yet one almost

thinks it could if one knew the song—

and thus we begin to see our breath

as loops of cold air lift our singing

high and towards the sun, children

again once more in the chosen present

moment, having no memory or thought

of time before or after.

Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, PineStraw, and O’Henry.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

by Geoffrey Philp

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued level 4 and level 2 travel advisories for Jamaica which sees them strongly warning against travel into the country due to several factors including Covid-19 and violence which has plagued some areas. —YardHype, January 12, 2022. See also CDC, January 10, 2022

The CDC has updated their travel advisory

to Jamaica due to crime, the spread of Covid,

and a lack of police presence in the county.

 

They’ve suggested avoiding public buses or secluded

places and added to statistics of robberies and break-

ins, a rising positivity rate. Fully vaccinated,

 

boostered, and up-to-date on flu shots I’ll take

my survival odds on the island this winter.

You see, America, I need a long-deserved break

 

from my daily rehearsal of answers to policemen

with the tiresome, “Who are you? Why are you here?”

usually by some rookie hoping to make his bones

 

with an exotic trophy in the trunk of his squad car

where he’ll pose with his first kill of the New Year.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children’s books, and two novels, including Garvey’s Ghost. His poems and short stories have been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, sx salon, World Literature Today, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Bearden’s Odyssey Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Crab Orchard Review. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a former chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp’s work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy—an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. His next collection of poems, Archipelagos, is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press.

A "NEW" YEAR BEGINS

by Gordon Gilbert

wild geese, Hudson River Park, NYC

the same earth that buries the dead 

nourishes new life coming forth from that same soil 

 

the same air through which the dead leaves fall 

lifts the wings of those who call it home

 

the same water that overwhelms in sudden storms 

and drowns those who can't escape to higher ground 

gives life and shelter to aquatic beings 

and is from whence we came and still we need

 

the same fire that destroys all in its path 

we harness for our purposes and progress 

 

destruction and creation, condemnation, resurrection 

but alternatives among a multitude 

coexistent in a four dimensional realm 

in one of a multiplex of universes 

the one that we inhabit

 

we are no different from that from which we came 

neither truly good nor evil in our nature 

 

we are but the natural progression and expression 

of a larger whole with this exception:  

we self-conceive and give that self expression 

 

now here we are again the same side of the sun  

this moment that we choose to call a "new" year 

a starting line across the oval track our planet travels 

artificially designated, of recent origin 

not that once chosen by

hunters, gatherers, herders and farmers 

in many lands, in many other eras 

 

we have come so far we tell ourselves 

but we have gone so far from where we were 

and we are lost now to the earth that birthed us 

before it is too late, we must return, reclaim

who and what we truly are 

we must be born again 

Gordon Gilbert is a long-time resident of the West Village in NYC who has found solace and inspiration for the past two years in his walks along the Hudson River, photographing and writing about the wildlife, flora and river traffic during the pandemic as the seasons changed.

2020

by William Marr

during this year
you'd better not
think one thing
say another
do something else

we all can see right through you
with our perfect vision—
20/20

William Marr's poetry has been translated into more than ten languages and included in over one hundred anthologies.  Some of his poems are used in high school and college textbooks in Taiwan, China, England, and Germany. He is a former president of the Illinois State Poetry Society and lives in the Chicago area.

NEW YEAR'S OWLS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley




In the first hours of the new year
After the midnight explosions have ceased
And no more revelers
In clutches of three and four
Go stumbling by the house
Happily jabbering away
I lie in bed with the window open
To the freezing night air
Listening to two owls
Speaking to each other
From nearby treetops.
Hu-hoo, hu-hoo says one
In a deep and quiet voice
Hoo-hu-hoo, hoo-hu-hoo
Responds the other
In a higher pitch.
I picture the baritone as an elder
Complimenting the young alto
On not panicking
During the booms and bangs and kapows
They had just endured,
On staying put in its tree
Until the onslaught of flash and bam had subsided.
It’s safe to go out now
The old one says
But be mindful of the humans,
They are loud and messy
And really have no idea
What they are doing.
And of course the old hoot is right.
We are a cacophonous, lurching,
Bumbling, bungling bunch
Making a fine shambles of things
And we’d be a whole lot better off
If we resolved in the coming year
To cultivate a little quiescence
And pay closer attention to owls.

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California. He podcasts at: thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

A GOLDEN SHOVEL AFTER REP. RASHIDA TLAIB

by Karen Shepherd

“People love you and you win, and when your son looks at you and says, ‘Mama, look, you won. Bullies don’t win.’ I said, ‘Baby, they don’t, because we’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.'”

They’re outside in their blue shirts with patches and neckerchiefs.  Oh mama!
The Cub Scouts are out in the rain recycling the disrobed trees again. Look—
the little ones are struggling to lift and load those noble corpses! You
know I’m not going out there to help. No way-too cold. I think they’ve won
the War on Christmas, by the way, those little deconstructionist bullies
hauling away holiday cheer for a donation sealed in a Ziplock bag. I don’t
really care, though. I’m teasing, eating too much chocolate. And I can win
at other things. Like raising a glass before lunch, refreshing newsfeeds and
licking the rim of the eggnog carton. With the ornaments packed, I
can pour more vodka in my coffee, light my bowl and kick it. Someone said
Be Best and you know I’m being and doing my best now, baby.
No one is paying or being paid, toilets overflow, the zoo is shut and they
say maybe it's really a strike. National emergency. Yeah, okay, chill. Don’t
you know smooth voiced 44 hit the Billboard charts? Yeah, that’s because
there is some karma left. And it dances, sings and swears. Now as we’re
forced into gingerbread cookie detox programs, I ain’t gonna
lie (like the king). This won’t be some “but-I-posted-about it” easy go.
Things get uglier before they get prettier. I had to put all the nutcrackers in
boxes that looked like coffins, pack up the merry-making, stack them there
in the garage 'til next Thanksgiving. The scouts are dragged out there, and
really, they just want to shoot arrows at camp. Go ahead, please, impeach
the Grinch, the happily-ever-privileged, the liars, the pussy grabbers, the—
never mind. I’m off to take a nap, hoping to sleep off this motherfucker.


Editor's Note: The Golden Shovel is a poetic form devised  by Terrance Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks. ("Golden Shovel" is a reference to "Seven at the Golden Shovel" in the Brooks poem "We Real Cool" from which Hayes built the first Golden Shovel poem.) The last words of each line in a Golden Shovel poem are, in order, words from a line or lines taken often, but not invariably, from a Brooks poem.

Karen Shepherd lives with her husband and two teenagers in the Pacific Northwest of the United States where she enjoys walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in various journals including Constellate Literary Journal, The Literary Nest, Halfway Down the Stairs, Riddled With Arrows and Wales Haiku Journal. 

SHORT POEM FOR THE NEW YEAR

John Guzlowski's writing appears in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Rattle, Ontario Review, North American Review, and other journals.  His poems and personal essays about his Polish parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany and refugees in Chicago appear in his memoir Echoes of Tattered Tongues. Echoes received the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Foundation's Montaigne Award for most thought-provoking book of the year.  He is also the author of two Hank Purcell mysteries and the war novel Road of Bones.

ANOTHER YEAR

by George Held

Another year ends and a new year starts
and I have fewer—it’s just math—
to count on, but I’m glad to have
been born too young for WW 2
and too old for Korea and Nam

and too ancient for the all-volunteer
Army dispatched, like Caesar’s legions,
to any hot spot in the Empire,
though Afghanistan’s a region
a bit too far out for our ambition.

Another year, the President’s third
in office, on the horizon for him
to continue our retreats
from remote and alien climes
(poetic word for “region” and for rhymes)

or to launch new strikes, like missiles
out of the blue: it’s all up to him,
our grand commander-in-chief,
our modern chief executive officer
and main deal-maker and pussy-grabber.

Will this be another year of immunity
for executive privilege, the one man
above the law, for him who has slouched
from the bestial floor in Bethlehem
to rename the world like a neo-Adam,

whose jutting chin recalls Mussolini
and racist rants echo Hitler’s
and whose repeated lies outdo Goebbels’
but who knows how to talk the talk
that enthralls his adamantine Base.

Another year, or could it be our last
before the earth floods or a nuclear blast
solves our overpopulation problem?
The bourgeoisie now draw near the edge
over which many poor have lately plunged,

and the widespread wish of “Happy New Year”
seems frivolous if not a beard for fear.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

NO RESOLUTION

by j.lewis

Image from Breaking Burgh

again, the ball drops, but does not break
its descent carefully engineered to delight

again, the ball is fumbled, or intercepted
despite the carefully engineered play

again. the ball passes its mark in space
the carefully engineered orbit a quiet assurance

again, we wait, not for ball, but for hammer to drop
for the carefully engineered investigations to resolve

but the dropping ball,
wobbling pass,
eternal orbit,
special investigation
seem to have no end

again, an angry tweet that
"my button, my nuclear football
is bigger than yours"
pushes us closer to the dropping
of the other shoe
and no amount of careful engineering
will save us when it strikes the floor

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poetry and music reflect the complexity of human interactions, sometimes drawing inspiration from his experience in healthcare. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California. A Clear Day in October, j.lewis’s first collection of poetry paired with his own photography, is available directly from E&GJ Press.

FOR ROSH HASHANAH

by Alan Walowitz

       

Victor (Zeke) Zonana (1924-2016)

Now onto this New Year, bad as it promises to be—
there’s rumor You, too, have given up,
filled with Your own brand of regret:
seeing us squander our gifts—
wasting our will as if it were a game,
failing to care for our own,
or honor this place we like to call home.
So now You’re headed out-of-town,
like some will-o’-the-wisp
to locate some new folks, perhaps, and begin
In the beginning, all over again.

But if I’m wrong and it be Thy will
and You’re listening still,
dear God, what the hell,
let us be inscribed again, then sealed.

Though please feel free to pass on him
we’ve loved so well
who takes his place one final time
and happily chants the ancient prayers
for those of us so far removed, we don’t remember how.
But unlike You, our renegade and sometimes vengeful God,
this old man’s not rash nor filled with rage.
But of his own considered will he, too, wants out.
Let it be recorded here, as in Aleppo once,
a temperate man took his life in his hands,
then gently chose—of his own free will—to let it go.


Alan Walowitz has been published in various places on the web and off. He’s a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry, and teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in his native borough of Queens, NY. Alan’s chapbook Exactly Like Love was published by Osedax Press in 2016 and is now in its second printing.

SUNSET COMMENT ON THE NEW YEAR

by George Held

29 December 2016

It’s one of those glorious sunsets,
Like an ad for New Mexico, that makes
You feel blessed to be alive even as
Authoritarianism leaks over the horizon –
Orange and gold flames with a purple core
Over New Jersey without the seasonal
Obstruction of leaves on the trees –
What might it presage, what tacit
Message doth it bring, this dynamic neon
Peach Melba of a twilit sky? Not the Orange
Man risen from New York City towers
To loom Kong-like over even the sunset,
The sky, the compliant Universe,
The galactic figure of our tabloid
Imaginations?
And now the fire in the sky
Deepens like a Roman omen, the night
Rushes in to drape dark auguries
About the perishing republic, and we brace
For the inevitable inauguration, the sunset
A mere glowing ember in the charred evening.

George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has received ten Pushcart nominations, including ones for both poetry and fiction in 2016. His new poetry chapbook is Phased II (Poets Wear Prada, 2016).

TO BE CONT'D

by Howie Good

Image source: X-laser

And despite
having hair
like a fantastic tree

and difficulty
getting on
and off
escalators,

New Year
arrives
the same way
light does,

remarkable
and beautiful
hymns
to the sun

simultaneously
burning
and bathing
everything.


Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press) and Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

TAKING OFF

by Laura Rodley

All the way from the Bridge of the Gods
she pressed Pearl’s gas pedal down,
go, go, I want to see that first snow,
though it was ninety-five degrees
with no air conditioning,
the promise of being planted
inside her new home firmly by Christmas
wearing a navy peacoat and insulated boots
standing out in the white snow
kept her going, kept her cool
as perspiration soaked her back, her thighs,
as daylight expanded and trucks
rocked Pearl as they passed,
caught her up in their wake,
on tidal wave of speed, eight-five miles
an hour, and she couldn’t get off,
the smell of cow dung and refried beans
hanging in the air, cornfield after cornfield.
This is America, she told herself,
church congregations praying for her
as she, the lone woman,
gunned for Massachusetts,
her heart a spring that wouldn’t
let her rest until today,
when the first snow fell
and she could taste it, cold, on her tongue.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

SPIFFY SPARES

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

old year bowled over kingpins

toppled tumbling down automated fresh

start reset kegglers taking aim

guts or gutters clean sweep

no split is too wide

if you’ve got rock ‘n roll

pinhead right spin big balls

striving for progress not perfection

to bowl perchance to dream

re-creation in your spare time

12 strikes and you’re perfect

i bowl therefore i am

bowling alleys are poor guys’

country clubs always a champion

when only one in competition

300 nobody else keeping score

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1