HER CENTENNIAL

by Courtney Hitson

For Flannery O’Connor,  born March 25, 2025

 

You watch from inside my poems, 
especially the ones that try
to dislodge a light beyond the page. You,
so schooled in charming goodness
from a garden snake.
 
Your hands clench these serifs
and spectate another freakshow
of a decade: our three-headed
trillionaire, realities prone
to the warp of beeping boxes,
and a bankrupt, orange business
man leading the way.
 
We’ve grown much too big
for these britches, but storms
this epic? They call for shrunken inseams
and egos. I still wish
that sixty-one years’ worth of spiral
staircase didn’t divide us.
I know you’d hurl God
as if a grenade, hot and hungry
for freedom from your hands. 

Courtney Hitson teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. As of March, 2025, she has work forthcoming in Kestrel Review, Eunoia, Qu, Sequestrum, and Eastern Iowa Review. In 2024, her poetry received three Pushcart nominations. Outside of writing, she enjoys scuba-diving, freestyle unicycling, and philosophy. Courtney and her husband, Tom (also a poet), reside in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with their two cats.

A TIDAL WAVE POEM

by Gil Hoy

in my dream, the strongman threw my pages 
of poems into a wastebasket and told me 
not to write another poem about democracy. 
no more poems about human rights 
and fundamental freedoms, free and fair 
elections, independent branches of government, 
freedom of expression and press, 
constitutional guarantees of civilian authority. 
no more poems about democratic principles 
that fashioned my poems, they, that turned chaos 
and madness into people power, would no longer 
have permission to enter my poems. so instead, 
I wrote a tidal wave poem about a tidal wave coming.
not an about-democracy or about-democratic principles 
type of poem, not a poem about diversity and inclusion, 
one man-one vote, international law, or equal justice 
under the law. no, this poem was about a tidal wave. 
a tidal wave so strong and so powerful, 
so potent and so heavy, it could destroy evil 
in its path. a tidal wave thousands of miles long 
propelled by the strength of the sun, 
the moon and the earth. a tidal wave so 
demanding so dominant that his eyes 
and his lungs looked drowned. 
a tidal wave that yelled
don't ever fuck with my country again. 
a tidal wave so powerful, so so heavy
and strong, that, yes, it deserves its own poem.


Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who is studying fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously at Boston University. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer and a former four-term elected Brookline, MA Selectman. His poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review,  Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News and elsewhere.

THE DREAD

by William Aarnes

 after reading Stanley’s Kunitz’s translations of Anna Akhmatova

        for the contributors to The New Verse News

“He’s Threatened To Put Them In Jail”: Joe Biden Tells Katie Couric That Journalists Have Told Him Of Their Fears If Donald Trump Returns To White House —Deadline, February 22, 2024

Of course, they will jail

the journalists first

 

but the time will come

when you will pass your days

aware that the authorities

are letting you live

a circumscribed life,  

 

a couple of years

of the woman at the window  

of the apartment across the street

always fixing a stare

on you when you draw

your curtains open 

an intimidating reminder

that whatever you do

on your cell and laptop

is under surveillance,

your movements tracked,

 

a then two, three years in,

impossible to miss,

the agents in the parked car

always quick to get out

to openly follow you,

one just a few steps

above you on the escalator

and never standing more

than four people away

on a crowded subway,

you beginning to wish

you dared to confront them

with your puzzlement

about how much they are paid,

 

the time at last coming

when, one of your shadows

sipping coffee four tables away,

a dear friend will fail

to show for the lunch     

where you planned to lie

that you are too scared

to write any more poems,

not even in your head,

 

your friend not responding

to texts, you lingering

over your salad, dreading

the escorted ride home.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

LITTLE TOMMY TUBERVILLE

by Ralph LaRosa

Was Tommy Tuberville
from Nowherville
deprived of lovely rhymes
in childhood times?
 
He thinks that hearing verse
makes sailors worse!
Is his little cry, 
meant to imply:
 
Soft sailors in collusions
of “woke” confusions
are fighters made Lambs
by rhymes and Iambs?

Ralph La Rosa’s poetry appears on the Internet, in print journals, anthologies and the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length collections Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse.

UNIVERSITY WOMAN

by Tamam Kahn 

Female students are stopped by Taliban security at a university in Kabul, on 21 December 2022 (AFP via Middle East Eye)

We the Taliban 

will make you 
go quiet. 
We want 
an empty blackboard.
We the Taliban
are erasing the rights 
of each one 
with breasts 
and a vagina 
and a clitoris.
 
Each girl-student and
female professor 
splashes silenced outrage 
into a ruptured world,
zig-zags suspense 
back and forth 
across her mind,
hides a spaded heart 
raw with hiccups.
Each one cracks open
a brain-leak 
of stories and poems,
stashed backpacks 
of notebooks filled with 
foundational work,
knowledge, science—
 
all soon to be 
academic ditch-litter.

Tamam Kahn is the author two books on women of early Islam. Untold, A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, (Monkfish Books, 2010), and Fatima’s Touch, (Ruhaniat Press, 2016). Both won International Book Awards. Tamam believes that sharing the lives of women, famous or in difficulty, helps bring awareness and change into today’s difficult times. She lives near San Francisco, California.

THE NIGHT BEFORE JERICHO BROWN WON THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY

by Claudine Cain

for Ahmaud Arbery

I did not write poems that night. My hands were as cold as my feet and I had to help mother’s sons find their way. I had heard the news, but some things are easier to know than see. Sometimes the children tarry too long in the place where it happens, after. I had to hold his hands, speak in the music of tongues he had forgotten, and wipe away his fears. I asked him if he knew that Jericho Brown was going to win the Pulitzer prize for poetry.

He said, no | yes.

I asked him if he’d like to stay or go back and, perhaps, be a poet too.

He said, I am.

I thanked him for remembering. He wanted to stay then, to let all of the warmth that never ends find its way back into him. So he sat down between mother’s knees and rested his head in her lap. She sang a song and began counting the strands of his hair.

He wanted to know, if it wasn’t too much trouble, if it would be possible for him to have wings.

Mother said, yes.

Claudine Cain lives in North Carolina where she attends UNC Greensboro. She is the former editor of Black Elephant literary journal. Her fiction, art, and poetry have appeared in Riggwelter, Eunoia Review, Dime Show Review, Public Pool, and elsewhere.

ODE TO MY SHOPPER

by Sharon Olson

I was seventy-one and still counting
when I counted the grocery bags arriving
at my front door, each one labelled
I guess for the shopper’s convenience,
some mnemonic only he had derived,
Poems 1 of 8, Poems 2 of 8, and so forth,
and they were like poems, each item
of slightly different size and voice,
tuna can haikus next to sonnets of milk.

I chalked it up to coincidence, until
the next week new bags came, this time
marked Lyric 1 of 7, Lyric 2 of 7, so
we knew we were in some sort of
telepathic, telegrammatic finger-
tapping sync-apathy, as if he knew
I must write poems and would eat
to write them, not eating words
but snippets of lyric, edible syllables.

The market has stipulated one week
between orders, and I am as I said
earlier seventy-one and still counting.
And so I find myself wondering
what the next code will bring, what
subliminal message my messenger
will write to signal our connection.
He must be a poet, too, composing
behind the front lines and so essential.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, 71 and still counting. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019. She lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where along with everyone else she waits it out. Her grocery bags truly did arrive marked as mentioned in the poem.

NOT QUITE AMERICAN

by Myriam Arias

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A legal team that recently interviewed over 60 children at a Border Patrol station in Texas says a traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation. —NBC News, June 21, 2019

You always have been a lonely traveler,
haven’t you?

Lonely girl with no home;
your body is a house that you are not yet familiar with.

A country you were not born in
but you’re told it’s yours
you’re told it’s lovely
and if you could only see it.

But your body feels more like an almost
Like the distance between your mother’s hands and her home country
A space you don’t really belong in
but force yourself into.

An almost-
Mexicana
Americana
Que eres?
Niña de piel morena
con corazón de arcoiris.

You are the scars on your Mama’s back
and the gold coins in your Papa’s pocket.

Both a blessing and curse
you do not belong here.

What gave you the right
to sit in this American dream?

Dilute your adobe eyes
with the glimmer of white picket fences and nuclear families.

Let this sweet American air
fill the space in your lungs?

Inflate.
Deflate.

Your body will reject it.
Too sweet.

Lines of poems you will never write
will coat the inside of your mouth.

Choke on your words.
Swallow them.

     They do not quite belong here.

Myriam Arias is a third-year writing and literature major at University of California, Santa Barbara. She hopes her art moves forward her narrative and those of others like her so that their voices will be heard.

A QUESTION FOR THE NEW VERSE COMMUNITY

by George Salamon

Image source: DonkeyHotey

"'Tis the season once again. You should know it well by now: a 'progressive' Democrat running in the primaries for president of the United States. We've seen it all before, from Jessie Jackson to Dennis Kucinich, left-leaning voters have time-and-again been asked to support candidates that are working to transform the corrupt and war-happy Democratic Party from within. And each and every time the strategy has failed..."  Joshua Frank," Why Bernie Sanders is a Dead End," Counterpunch, June 3, 2015

Our poems burst with love for humanity,
We care for all its members, only not their oppressors.
We sign petitions, shout for peace and march for justice.
It's all so good, but we risk little and gain even less.

Is it time to put our bodies
Where our pens played and our words sprouted?
We shall confront once more what Tadeusz Borowski
Discovered after his liberation from Auschwitz:
 "The world is ruled neither by justice nor by morality,
The world is ruled by power and power is obtained by money."

Been there, done that you say, but what did we do?
We blinked and vowed to go on writing and volunteering and organizing.
We played by the rules in the land of the lemming
And the home of the harmless.

"We tried," we'd say as the words curdle
Into cold comfort on our tongues while
Power grins and grants us our gestures.

Our words struggle to trade as conscience's currency.

What is to be done?


George Salamon taught German at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter on the St. Louis Business Journal and Sr. Editor for Defense Systems Review. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

ROBERT FROST POSTS ON FACEBOOK

by Earl J. Wilcox

Sat down on back porch
This morning after feeding
Chickens, like yesterday.
Watched morning mist
Circle round apple orchard,
Listened long to lonesome
Dove coo its mate. Two lines
Of new poem came to me
During a long night. “Whose
Woods these are I think I know,”
But next line does not seem right,
Still I post it here for interest
To see if anyone likes it.
“His house is in the village
Though.” Now if only I had
A few more lines to go with
These two I might make a poem.
Probably won’t come to much,
Yet the Rhode Island Red Rooster
Liked the lines when I said them
To him. What do you think?
I will see if I can get more
Started while I walk around farm.
Cloudy and cold here in Vermont
Today. Could even snow. Rob.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.