FAIR IS FAIR

by Nan Meneely

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to restrict U.S. passports based on gender identity, a setback for non-binary and transgender people seeking the document. The court order requires the gender designation on the passport to reflect the biological sex of the person applying for it. Transgender and non-binary Americans have called the effort unconstitutional.

If a passport is required to declare
the “truth” of genetic charts,
then surely it should note the fact
that some people are born without hearts.

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

Nan Meneely is the lucky member of several sterling writing groups. Her Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book, Simple Absence (Antrim House), was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been both published and turned down by The New Verse News.

REWRITING THE BORDER

by David Chorlton

It’s doves and thorns and sunsets
all the way into night, and blue mountains
float away at dusk. The border
isn’t what it used to be, no
Spanish is the Lovin’ Tongue or Marty Robbins
riding out of El Paso. Used to be
a line between the cowboy sky
and shops whose colors overflow
to make tourists feel as happy
as they couldn’t be at home. A hawk still hovers
with each wing in a different country
and ravens cross over with ease when they
dip and dive for joy, but there are
no visas for the jaguars
drawn by the scent of survival. Twenty pesos
for a dollar, undocumented sunlight,
new lives for old and corridos
from the radio playing
on an August roof in Phoenix. Taco Tuesday
in El Norte, deportation
on the menu every day. A flag of wind
still flying west of Lukeville, hammer tap
in a mechanic’s workshop, trucks
with hearts of steel between
Brownsville and Tijuana, highway never
sleeping, flan for dessert. A family lost
and a Rufous-capped warbler
in southern Arizona, slow river
leading a line of cheap labor
to the interstate; wasn’t that a time
when water was the passport
for anybody carrying their first home
in their pockets. Cheap labor on the move,
supply and demand, a cupful of rain
for a day digging fields. A trogon
calling from the oaks and sycamores. Summer 
is his time before the sky opens;
fly south, fly north, never fly at all
for fear that dreams
come only in translation.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix who continues to learn what he can from the desert about writing and art as well as the natural world. 

NOW AT THE FOOD CENTER

by Deb Freedman

Our clients are gracious even though all we offer won’t get them through July.

Handicapped stickers hang on their cars’ rearview mirrors;

backseats are strewn with car seats, crumbs, and walkers.

They show us pictures of grandchildren or kittens.

Sometimes, they walk across the bridge.

Sometimes, they tell us they’re hungry.

Two skinny little boys ask if we have any books for them.

When my friend says they can help themselves to as many as they want,

they get so excited, they rock their car.

The older brother tells his little brother to take 4 only books.

The older boy sees one about wolves and growls at me, grinning with a wiggly tooth.

They chorus thank you as their dad drives away.

Anna walks over without her curly, gray-haired dog today.

She says Sadie has a lump on her belly and she’s worried.

The vet will see her sweet baby on the 14^th.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do if it’s serious.

The blonde school bus driver, the size of a 5^th grader, waves

her passport at me.

She takes it everywhere.

Born here, she is afraid to go to the store.

Now is before the “Big Beautiful Bill” passes.

Deb Freedman's poetry has been published in The New Verse News, US I/ DVP Poets Worksheets and most recently, Patterson Literary Review. The Food Center, its clients and volunteers, take up a large shelf in her heart.

A WOMAN SO STRONG

by Diana Morley

The one with dyed blonde hair

decrees that in the new world order 

immigrants—but only those

of color—will be swept up,

removed from a land no longer free

the decree rubs my skin raw,

sets ice in my belly 

as my friend must now carry

her passport for officials 

stopping her for her brown skin 

this, after she’s known thinly veiled

correction, shunning and denial 

of equal treatment for routine behavior,

a woman so strong, she holds in pain

holds in fury, then digests it all

through mastered meditation.

Diana Morley publishes poetry online and in journals. She published Spreading Like Water (2019), a chapbook; Splashing (2020), a poetry collection; and Oregon’s Almeda Fire: From loss to renewal (2021), a documentary of photos and poems.

FROM PAX AMERICANA TO PAX AMERIQUE

by Joan Leotta

Do you recall the era—
Pax Americana—
after World War II when American passports
were king? We traveled everyone, alone, in groups.
some discerning some disdaining.
Our journeys were bathed
in the glow of Pax Americana,
peace to the world, good will toward us, a protection
bestowed on us not merely by troops sweeping in on
winds of war, but by good will
floating on the gentle breeze
of peace through Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift.
I studied then, traveled, picked up
mail at American Express, secure
in the knowledge my country uber alles
had molded a peace so all could
move freely, safely, from place to place.
Our new era, not even dignified by Latin,
instead simply pas Amerique, non ai americani
No, no , no, no. Now we can’t go—anywhere.
We are barred from their sacred
places, our passports, worthless paper.
Can we console ourselves with
America the beautiful? Would that we could.
Instead, pandemic hotspots
boil over from sea to shining sea.
Our purple mountains offer no safe majesty.
Pax America no longer applies within
our borders or without.
Shootings, riots in the streets, virus
feverishly consuming young and old.
All of this, all of this in four short years.
Survival is still within our reach,
it takes only a small act of faith, kindness,
and reliance on the science
God has given us—wear a mask,
wash your hands, stay apart.
Even in Dante’s time, these things were
known, yet so many ignore them,
marching like lemmings into
ventilators.
Pax Americana,
how I mourn your passing.

Joan Leotta is a writer and performer. She writes about and performs tales of food, family, and strong women—and is often touched by  how moments in history affect the daily lives of ordinary people.

VETTING THE REFUGEES

by Amit Majmudar

Image source: CBC Radio

Under the vest, something was ticking.
It ticked, ticked, ticked. A heart?
The faces all were human faces,
Salt-stained from the trail of tears
And the sea spray of their middle passage.
Their God was not our God,
But their children were our children
Discovered face down on the strand.
Treasures, buried in the sand.
In their passports we saw the faces
We recognized, or thought we did,
From last night’s news. The same? A match?
Anger, anguish, both unshaven
And praying in the same direction
To God, their God, the same, a match.
And there were babies, yes, and widows,
And gray professors speaking English—
No tests for mercy. No, the test
Was the twenty-year-old man whose face
We recognized, or thought we did;
Whose passport might encode an omen
Like scripture, entrails, curling smoke.
And so, interrogating those
Who came to us for mercy, we
Interrogated mercy in a chair:
Can hatred hide in suffering?
Can wisdom hide in fear?—
And so the line became a lineup
Eyed through a two-way mirror.


Amit Majmudar is a widely published poet, novelist, and essayist. His next book of poetry, Dothead, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf in March 2016.