HOW TO MAKE AN ISD*

by W. Barrett Munn

*Improvised Sandwich Device

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

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent. It was a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors who are dealing with the fallout from President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops and federal agents into Washington. —The New York Times, August 27, 2025

It's obvious I've been radicalized.
In nursing school, I was taught
critical thinking. But then, 
I attended a radical-left 
communist community college
in tiny rural Tonkawa, Oklahoma.
It hasn't helped
that I"ve had to listen to this fool spout
his nonsense day after day after day.
Like Father Karras in The Exorcist, 
I've been driven to take some kind of action 
against all these devils.
I'm at Subway. The idea pops.
I begin to make a plan. The casing
of the bomb will be critical, hard but
not too hard, and not too heavy to hold
in one hand. That means it will have to be
toasted and still have some heft.
Nothing light with a lot of holes in the crust.
Sourdough-based wheat would be perfect.
The explosive mixture must be carefully
chosen. Muscle weighs more than fat.
That eliminates a salami based explosion.
Meatballs are out automatically— 
You don't want to cause tomato sauce
collateral damage to any registered voters.
Tuna would work if it's not too wet.
This stuff is ghastly. 
I've got it: long, thin strips of lean roast beef.
I'll pay extra for a double helping, tell
the girl with the plastic covered hands
to pack it down hard.
And cheese. American is probably
best, or so my targets think, although most
have Swiss bank accounts created for them
by their oligarch handlers. 
Time to think of condiments. Screw the pickles.
Red onions and slices of jalapeno stacked
on top near the toast so they'll scatter
on impact. I'll need a fuse. Something
with a slow burn that will give me 
a head start. Dark mustard with horseradish
is perfect. After I pay, I toss the package 
up and down, feeling its heft, guessing that 
if it doesn't go off now it must be ready. 
I leave the store and see the crowd 
a block away. With renewed resolve I start 
to walk that way thinking, I really should 
have brought my toothbrush.

The poems of W. Barrett Munn have appeared in print and online in Awakenings Review, The New Verse News, Sequoia Speaks, Soul Poetry, Prose, & Arts Magazine, Book of Matches, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Haikuniverse, 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, and many others.

THE RECKONING

by Julia Griffin

But for the young, I might not care too much.

I’ll go on reading in my little hutch

And typing quirky poems, as before;

I don’t in fact expect a civil war:

This outcome leaves small danger of a putsch.

Books, dogs, Prosecco—I intend to clutch

My pleasures, drifting further out of touch.

I’d be content just to enjoy them more

But for the young.

Here’s four more years of vicious double dutch,

The crumbling earth denied a vital crutch,

More guns, bent laws, less safety for the poor,

Billionaires’ bribes—all this I might ignore;

It’s not for me my misery is such,

But for the young.

Julia Griffin lives in south-east Georgia.  She did what she could.

PASSED PAWNS

by Dave Day

Russian President Vladimir Putin's "grave mistake" to invade Ukraine may yet foment popular or elite rebellion, Leonid Volkov, chief of staff of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has told Newsweek, as Moscow's offensive stalls and international sanctions bite.

Navalny’s pawn moved forward two,

While Putin scanned the board’s positions.

The Bishops dare not stage a coup,

To grovel slips them fat commissions.

 

The Knights are paid, their horses watered.

They follow oaths to wanton slaughter.

The oligarchs are faithful crooks,

And perfect stand-ins for the Rooks.

 

His Queen? Ukraine ran off with Europe.

Cuckold Putin, cuckold grief,

He Novichok’ed Navalny’s briefs.

But *hush-hush* Putin’s eyes, they welled up.

 

The game’s not lost, Kasparov wrote.

What happens when the Pawns promote?

Dave Day is an attorney from Honolulu, Hawaii, and is a numismatist who focuses on currency from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Dave has published poetry in The Ekphrastic Review and extremely nonpoetic articles in the Emory International Law Review and the Hawaii Bar Journal.

FOR HIS LEGACY

by Richard Matta

He lines up his army men

sacrifices them, 

with the enemy he alone creates 

because he wants to play

with toy soldiers on a big stage

like a kid who wants to shoot

his BB gun, toss his cherry bombs 

even the M80s

to gain everyone’s attention. 

He knows the stakes are higher today

there’s narrative to control. 

He instills fear in those who

would question the story he weaves. 

He reminds the world

a red button, his red button

is within reach.  

Keep them guessing, 

on their heels, asking themselves

is this a crazy man who’d destroy the world?

And this is how he plays the game

Constructed ambiguity

he figures he has to play the big threat, 

they’re thinking—long game in Ukraine

—sanctions will break Russia like the USSR

He figures they’ll try psych ops—

drones dropping rubles and letters,

pleas and podcasts in Russian

the oligarchs and their yachts

hiding on the seas with the country’s wealth

They’ll fill the airwaves with western propaganda

to twist the minds of Russian military 

and those with curiosity. 

But he knows all this. It’s narrative control. 

He vows to protect his people 

from the tyranny and pathological lies 

of capitalism and democracy. And who 

in their right mind will question

a boy with a BB gun and M80s 

who plays chess and might blow up the board

for his legacy.  

Richard Matta grew up in New York and  now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop,  The New Verse News, San Pedro River Review, Gyroscope, Healing Muse, and many international haiku journals. 

VLAD THE BAD

by Richard Schiffman

His most execrable excellency,

Czar Vlad the Bad, 

a pint-sized Napoleon wannabe in a Gucci suit

decreed ten thousand widows,

and so they were before the cock crowed twice, 

on the morning he deemed cancelled

in the city he called dust.

Just your standard issue human madness.

Of course, of course. A monomaniacal error.

A payback for fanciful slights.

The psycho-historians will have a field day

while the citizenry sleep in the subway,

or pack the next train out.

But how to get away from that feverish brain,

that heart of burning petrol?

There isn’t a bunker deep enough to hide in.

Bankers on six continents dole out the pain.

No SWIFT Code for the codeless.

Oligarchs go yachtless. The ruble is rubble.

Meanwhile, the nuclear finger twitches.

A shudder ripples down nine billion spines.

The spineless despot preens for the cameras,

shows off his cadaverous abs. 

It’s flesh and blood 

below the tailored shirt, for sure, for sure,

fresh meat for a million gurneys.

Dead man walking pale as a crematorium

holds court in a palace of white marble. 

One nation huddles in the basement.

Another weeps and hides its face.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in The New Verse News, Alaska Quarterly, Rattle, The New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry. 

TWISTED OLIVER

by Geoffrey Aitken

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

Give me some good news 

 

“Please sir, can I have some more?”

Cartoon by Alan Moir. Twitter: @moir_alan

Note: The Australian Tax Office has opted not to pursue $180m in jobkeeper paid to ineligible businesses due to “honest mistakes” by employers claiming the money. At a Senate inquiry hearing on Friday, independent senator Rex Patrick said the decision contrasts with the government’s approach to social security recipients, with thousands of individuals asked to pay back money they received during the Covid pandemic. —The Guardian, September 10, 2021

A minimalist industrial signature drives Geoffrey Aitken away from the scene of mental unwellness for the eyes and ears of those without voices. Widely published locally (AUS), and internationally (the UK, US, CAN, CN & FR), he chases ongoing congeniality.

RAPE OF THE FLOCK

by Janice D. Soderling

President Donald Trump has taken historically unprecedented action to roll back a slew of environmental regulations that protect air, water, land and public health from climate change and fossil fuel pollution. The administration has targeted about 85 environmental rules, according to Harvard Law School’s rollback tracker. … However, the consequences of eliminating these regulations include more premature deaths from pollutants and higher levels of climate change-inducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to research from the NYU Law School. —CNBC, December 24, 2019. Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone.

Higgledy piggledy,
Donald J. T***p
raped Mother Nature
in meadows and parks

till she lay dead with dead
bees and dead sheeple, dead
biodiversity,
dead oligarchs.


Janice D. Soderling is a poet, writer and translator with three poetry chapbooks and another forthcoming in February. All of them include poems that first were published at TheNewVerse.News.

AMERICA'S DIVIDES

by Gil Hoy

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, 

All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, 

Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, 

Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love . . .  

Embedded into this video is a 36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman's voice reading four lines from the poem "America:”  Recording: Copyright Eric Forsythe, 2012–2013. Made available on the Whitman Archive with permission of the rights holder. Audio may be reused for non-commercial purposes, with credit to Eric Forsythe and the Walt Whitman Archive. For more information on this recording, see Ed Folsom, "The Whitman Recording," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 9 (Spring 1992), 214-16.

                         I.

I see you, Walt Whitman---an American
Rough, a Cosmos!  I see you face to face!

I see you and the nameless faceless
Faces in America's timeless crowds of men
and women who you saw in your mind's eye.

I see you crossing the river on your ferry.
I see you walking down the public road

Where everyone is worthy. Neither time,
Place nor distance separates.
     
                         II.

You once saw the currents of corruption,
Fast flowing into the land that you loved.
You once saw that which had departed

With the setting sun, half an hour high,
For when another is degraded,
so are you and I.

You once saw what had flowed in with the
Rising flood-tides feverishly pouring---

Tides saturated and soaked with exploitation,
Bribery, falsehood and maladministration.

                         III.

When you saw the motionless wings of
Twelfth-month sea-gulls, When you walked

Along Manhattan Island---When you watched the
Ships of Manhattan, north and west---

Could you see Wall Street banks
Seizing the homes of your beloved countrymen,
Voyaging in their fragile ferryboats? The carpenters,

Quakers, scientists and opium eaters; The immigrants,
Squaws, boatmen and blacksmiths; The farmers,                        
Mechanics, sailors and priests?                                                

                          IV.

Could you see the monstrous megaton corporations
Feasting on America's flesh blood bones, those
Nameless faceless parasites

Sucking the soul from your loved land,                                            
Like a malevolent disease?                                                              

                            V.
For you saw quite clearly the political and
Economic malfunctioning mutant ties that connect us.
Neither time, place nor distance separates.

And you saw very clearly the sickly green sludge
Secreted by lobbyists to their bought and sold

Henchmen soldier baby-kissers, to slow and
Stop the flow of nourishing rushing sea tides
Into your dear, revered democracy.

                            VI.

You saw the evil dark patches---the clinging selfish
Steadfast pernicious grasp of the flourishing one
Per cent oligarchs, Who lusted, grubbed, lied, stole--

Were greedy, shallow, sly, angry, vain, cowardly,
malignant--Seeking only to hold onto their fool's
Gold and preserve the status quo.

                           VII.

Each still furnishes its part towards the death of
America's democracy. Each still furnishes its part

Towards destroying her soul. The mocking bird
Still sings the musical shuttle to the tearful

Bareheaded child, and the final word superior for
America may still be her death, death, death,
Death. The sea has whisper'd me, too.


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer who is currently studying poetry at Boston University, through its Evergreen program, where he previously received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy started writing poetry two years ago. Since then, his work has appeared in Third Wednesday, The Write Room, The Eclectic Muse, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News , Harbinger Asylum, Soul Fountain, The Story Teller Magazine, Eye on Life Magazine, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Penmen Review, To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology, The Zodiac Review, Earl of Plaid Literary Journal, The Potomac, Antarctica Journal, The Montucky Review and elsewhere.

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

by Gil Hoy




Putin likes Trump,
surprise--

Grab all
  the world’s wealth with
Your ruthless friends,

Then crush
   all your foes---

‘Swhere all the World’s
Monied elite’ll go.


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer, writer and poet. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. His poetry has appeared most recently in Third Wednesday, The Write Room, The Eclectic Muse, Clark Street Review and TheNewVerse.News.