GOOD NIGHT AMERICA, JANUARY 2026

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

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

Good night almighty oaks, good night acorns
snug in shells. Goodnight hens, asleep on perches. 
Good night good people of Minneapolis St. Paul
hanging sheets of plastic over doors broken down 
by ICE agents. Lullaby your little ones to sleep.  
Good night neighbors with cameras and whistles. 
Good night Mr. President, tweeting your fury,
slide easy into haunting dreams of disloyalty, 
 
dreams of failed plastic surgery, bad poll numbers,
dreams of not enough admirers or paying guests—
Remember the kerfuffle when caviar was served 
at Mar-a-Lago in tiny plastic spoons? Never enough! 
It’s natural to want more caviar, money and power. 
It’s natural to want kids not to be afraid or hungry
or molested or separated or zip-tied or teargassed. 

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s latest novel is The Waters, W.W. Norton, 2024.

WALKING THE DOG IN OCTOBER WITH POLICE SIRENS

by Al Ortolani

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

See how the past is not finished

here in the present

                             —WS Merwin

 

Dog, it is not a good time to run off leash.

There is an air of crises behind the wind.

 

Masked agents rip a former student from her children.

She disappears into phone calls from Guatemala. 

 

The President dumps imaginary shit from a jet fighter

and calls it humor. Tonight, 

 

there are more questions than answers.

We listen to the sirens beyond the rooftops, 

 

behind the strip malls and blinking stop lights.

The oaks gasp in the change of seasons.

 

Some nights I imagine the leaves wailing

as they lose their grip and fall.

Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in the Writer’s Almanac, the American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Town. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review. Recently, his poems have appeared in Rattle, The Midwest Quarterly, One Art, and the Pithead Chapel.

WINTER MORNING

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Beyond the snow-laden hill and ice-covered

field, ancient oaks are raising their bare limbs

toward a sky marbled with clouds. Gilded by

a sun we cannot yet see, they look fixed to the

firmament, their shifting so subtle it seems as

if these clouds might never move again, as if

time itself has stopped and winter has come

to stay. I would not mind it. It is cozy here by

the fire, watching the day begin through panes

of glass, my hair busily turning white, my body

grateful for its rest. I never thought of growing

older, imagined I would look and feel the same

forever. But the decades fly by, and now winter

seems to suit me best. There is nothing I need

to do and no place to be. A good book is open

on my lap, and my husband of thirty years is

just up the stairs. I can see the little boy next

door already sledding with his mother. He will

remember always how it felt to zoom down the

steep bank with the person he loves best in all

the world—both laughing, faces red from the

cold. Meanwhile, oaks that will never again be

saplings, hold within themselves the memory

of spring. And the winter sky that was, only

moments ago, filled with gilded clouds, has at

last allowed them to drift ever so slowly away.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of the 2021 International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including "American Life in Poetry," Atlanta Review, ONE ART, Poet’s Market, The Broad River Review, The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Sport Literate, Verse Daily. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

ELECTION

 by Marguerite K. Flanders

Photograph by Kim Seng of Red Shoulder Hawk Perched on Live Oak at Riverbend Park in Jupiter, Florida. Via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

 “Soul selects its own society” —Emily Dickinson

 

Oaks are the last to cast their burdens.

Air is full of the athleticism of change.

 

Chickadees greet the end of the straight road

of night with their tally, the decisive chill.

 

The science of what must turn will leave us

bereft. We wait for all to be revealed,

 

as if choosing will shift the relentless

trajectory of stars, restore what has been

 

felled. Hawk, oak, brook, co-trustees

of winter’s approach, know better.

Marguerite Keil Flanders is the Managing Editor of Crosswinds Poetry Journal.  For nine years she was part of the Ocean State Poetry team running a poetry workshop in the Men’s Medium Security prison in Cranston, Rhode Island.  Margie is the author of a poetry collection, The Persuasive Beauty of Imperfection. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Boston Review, Yankee Magazine, Comstock Review, Nimrod International Journal, Connecticut River Review, and Main Street Rag.