The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Guidelines
Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The Orchards PoetryJournal, pacificREVIEW, Topical Poetry, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence and HerWords magazine.
"Humans have become as great an influence on the planet as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs," Anthony Barnosky, Stanford University biologist, quoted in The New York Times, July 30, 2021
Paradise was lost long ago,
now it's the turn of Earth,
where humans have assumed
privileges and rights for themselves:
this island belongs to us, one
nation claims, another the right
to inhabit space.
We're mammals, denying the
prehistory of our origins, the
story of how our ancestors
turned the earth's jungles into
today's fortress of machine
and stone.
We've moved too quickly past
the awe for earth's order, left
behind in the wild, playful
nature of the child, now that
we are beginning to feel the
coming storm.
George Salamon lives and waits, hoping for the best, in St. Louis, MO.
A sign is posted outside of Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Fla., one of several spas closed in south Florida as a result of a six-month investigation into sex trafficking. —Times-Republican, February 28, 2019
All you see is the romance
of palm trees in an ocean breeze
sugary sand and slim suits
on slick brown bodies. You think
it's like your fantasies of love
soft bare skin and lickable sweat
and that's the trick—
naked seaside indolence
disguised as a pretty poem
your dreams breezy and loose
as a mid-day tryst
after salted dips in aqua
waves, margaritas
sipped in umbrella shade.
Lift up your sunglasses, friends—
drip-dry your mushy hearts, your
sentimental smarm
and take a good look
at the overshadows
the slave ships and rope burns,
the storm clouds, the flooding doom
with tints of unbearable intensity.
Faux is perfect for paintings
but here
paradise is a trompe-de-l'oeil
in a vast holding cell.
Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.
“That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, and justify the ways of God to men.” —John Milton, Paradise Lost
Not lost, but devoured.
A whole town mouthed
entire and swallowed down
a burning throat
in what should have been
California’s rainy season.
We were warned
the garden was formed
with snake-sized holes,
but in this Eden,
all trees are forbidden.
We’ve left enlightenment
to a blind man—
and did he, sightless, know
that Paradise was left
exposed, not undefended,
but indefensible?
Sydney Doyle earned her MA in English and creative writing at the Pennsylvania State University and her MFA at Johns Hopkins University where she currently teaches courses in creative writing. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Canary, Waccamaw, Animal Magazine, Glassworks, and elsewhere.
"The path to ending the war is clear. First, the United States and other countries must cease arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Security Council should pass a resolution demanding an immediate end to the war and compelling the Saudis and Emiratis to withdraw from Yemen. The United Nations must sponsor a political process that begins by obligating all parties to the conflict to disarm their militias." — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, "Enough is enough: End the war in Yemen," The Washington Post, November 21, 2018. Photo: A Yemeni child after receiving treatment for malnutrition in a hospital in Taiz on Wednesday. (Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP/Getty Images via The Washington Post)
Here I am
too thin for a shadow,
too weak to cry.
Can you see me?
I'm traveling light
down Paradise road.
I leave behind my mother
but go to see my brother
who feasts on heaven's bounty.
My face will shine again,
my feet fly with angels.
This sorrow I'll forget
which eats me from within
and abandons me to die,
a husk on my native sand.
Can you see me?
Is anyone there?
Does anyone care?
I am here,
hunger on the breeze
just beyond your window.
A cadaver dog named Echo searches for human remains in a van. A husband-wife team, Karen and Larry Atkinson, worked their way through devastated properties near Eden Roc Drive in Paradise with their dog Echo, an English lab. Echo dashed ahead, nose to the ground, and then returned to Karen, who would point the dog toward the next place to be searched. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester, November 14, 2018.
Of course, I was wondering
but you don’t just pipe up
to ask this about these fires
that everyone is explaining
for why the forests are dry,
why these houses stand
in the wildland interface,
what climate crisis ramps
up the drought. And now
I don’t have to ask where
are the cadaver dogs
doing their work?
They are there, sniffing.
Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who responded to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as a public information officer—a few weeks after the cadaver dogs had come and gone. A friend of hers worked with his dog on this hard job after major hurricanes in Florida two decades ago. More responders with more hard jobs.
Cars destroyed by the Camp Fire sit in the lot at a used car dealership on November 9, 2018 in Paradise, California. CREDIT: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images via CBS News
Driving north on Highway 101 from Marin to Sonoma County, I notice a small flock of starlings rise above a fallow field into the dystopic, ashy, leaden sky to perform their liquid choreography come hell or high water or filthy air. To the north and east of us, a vast, murderous fire rages in Butte County, wiping out entire communities and killing many trying to escape the flames. The smoke from the inferno has plastered our sky for several days now, air quality is abysmal, and we (old people) and young children in particular are warned to stay indoors until the pollutants dissipate. We’re headed to pick up our little granddaughters and spend a few hours with them in the air-conditioned-and-filtered library. Like all of us who pass a significant portion of each day in the out of doors, the little ones are feeling cooped up and antsy. As I watch the astonishing flow of shapes the starlings create high above the field, swooping and soaring and wheeling in the angry air, I imagine their tiny lungs being assailed and assaulted and overwhelmed by the noxious particulates through which they are moving. Will they die premature, unnatural deaths because of toxins inhaled while performing their ancient ballet? Probably. As will many others of all species, including our own. Whether or not any particular fire is merely accidental in origin, the conditions that support and sustain the increasing number of disastrous wild fires we have endured over the past few years are no accident, but the result of the warming of our climate due to the maniacal consumption of carbon. Droughts turn trees and other plant material to kindling; increasingly high winds spread conflagrations with deadly alacrity. Scientists have told us all this for years, have warned us that such out-of-control blazes will occur with increasing frequency and intensity. So what malfunction in the mental circuitry of the gluttonous petroleum mongers causes them to lose sight of their/our common humanity, of their/our interconnectedness with all life? Why continue driving this biocidal juggernaut? What the fuck is going on?
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.
9 drops of rain
one for each of
the people who
died in the flames
Do not burn candles
for the dead
they represent fire
and fire killed them
4 of them burned up
in their cars as the exodus
left single file not fast
enough to escape the flames
on all sides of them, even
licking across the road
under the tires
Buildings collapsing
trees like matchsticks
so unreal
watching from car windows
Hearing explosions,
transformers
propane tanks
bombs going off
like a war
One turned back to
rescue her cat
that was hiding in terror
she checked under the
beds in the closets
while flames enclosed her
roared in the windows
and smoke blinded
Another was delayed searching
for a folder that contained
her advance directive, the
property deed and her children’s
birth certificates
the roof of her house collapsed
in one heaving sigh
A mother turned her car
down a side street to pick
up her child from daycare
the building already gone
the children and teachers
ahead of her on the road out
she didn’t make it
The one who forgot to let
the horses out
so they could flee the fire
as horses will
He couldn’t get back
into his place, fallen trees
on fire blocked the road
he got out and ran into
the open mouth of hell
An elder decided to sit it out
she was old and this house
was built by her grandfather
She was born in it as was her
mother her grandmother
and her five children
this house had a soul
she couldn’t leave it
So she made tea and sat
by the wood stove
rocking till she and the
house disappeared in
roaring flames
that left only a flat
black scar on the earth
This is why I can’t light
the 9 white candles
and watch their tiny
steady yellow flames
But rather place a small
pearl lined shell
beside each unlit candle
and in each a drop of water
for the lives that
burnt up in flames
Jean Varda’s poetry has appeared in The Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, Manzanita Poetry & Prose of the Mother Lode & Sierra, Avocet A Journal of Nature Poems, California Quarterly, Third Wednesday and The Red River Review. Her poem “Naming Her,” published in River Poets Journal 2012, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry writing workshops, hosted a poetry radio show and sponsored poetry events at cafes. She also is a collage artist, her way to escape words. She presently lives in Chico, California where she works as a nurse and writes her memoirs.
Especially when the
soprano sings
Rejoice
great-
ly.
Rejoice isn’t a word
that is bandied
about much
these days,
which is
too bad.
On the other hand, I
don’t miss the
references to
sin, spitting
and smiters.
Here’s
my confession: I
love music more than
religion, more than God,
way more than country.
All the mighty chorales
of Paradise could only
play second fiddle to
a well-honed coloratura.
If Hell has the tunes, vocal
acrobatics and orchestration,
that’s where you’ll find me
Catherine Wald’s chapbook Distant, burned-out stars was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. Poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Dragonfly, Friends Journal, J Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, "Metropolitan Diary" (The New York Times), Minerva Rising, Quarterday Review, The Lyric and Westchester Review. She is author of The Resilient Writer: Tales of Triumph and Rejection from 23 Top Authors (Persea 2004).
The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit Monday, demanding that the Central Intelligence Agency comply with a Freedom of Information Act request submitted last year for pornographic materials recovered during the May 2011 U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. —Politico, March 8, 2016. Comic strip by Matt Bors, Daily Kos, May 20, 2011.
midnight behind the razor wire,
after the dreary paper work
plotting the deaths
of millions, the grunt
work of recruiting a second
and third tide of brainwashed
suicide attackers, even an icon
steeped in the dark
needs to kick back,
close the door on prying
wives or sons or underlings,
stick the thumb drive in—
no pasha, nor hated
solomon himself boasted
such a harem: breasts pillowing,
thighs glowing gold in
a sinking sherbet sun,
arms embracing him,
sockets wet and waiting,
passionate sighs and secret
whisperings --
now the hard drive’s gone,
every keystroke and synapse
etched in ether, you and
your thirst for mayhem’s
washed clean and dumped
into the sea, only
the hoarse and bloody
schoolboys remain,
mumbling your name
as they search, lost
in the rubble of paradise.
Michael Shorb was a poet, fiction writer, editor, and children's book author. As an international poet, his poetry has been published in more than 100 magazines and anthologies, includingTheNewVerse.News, Michigan Quarterly, The Nation, The Sun, Salzburg Poetry Review, and Kyoto Journal. He was the recipient of a PEN AWARD, won a Merit Award for the Franklin-Christoph Poetry Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lived in and loved San Francisco. Michael succumbed to GIST, a rare form of cancer in 2012.
Editor’s Note: Michael’s widow Judith Grogan-Shorb sent TheNewVerse.News this eerily timely poem which Michael wrote soon after the death of Bin Laden and the subsequent Reuters story of x-rated videos found in the Abbottabad compound.
