GRINDIN’ OUT A DEAL

by Rick Pongratz

After a public contract dispute that led an East Idaho hospital to become out of network with a major health insurer, the two businesses agreed to a contract. The deal brings Portneuf Medical Center in-network for Regence BlueShield of Idaho, according to a joint announcement made Saturday by the hospital and insurer. For two months, the hospital had been out of network for Regence, the insurer for state government employees and other private plans. —Idaho Capital Sun, August 18, 2026

You need to pray for the negotiators
to reach an agreement and resolve this.
Dan, my health insurance customer service rep,
tells me this over the phone.
 
I can’t see him.
I can’t see the words either,
but his voice and tone 
remind me of the youth pastors 
from when I was a kid. 
The ones that never studied 
at a seminary—but, by golly, 
they sure loved Jesus. 
 
My insurance company and my hospital refuse 
to agree on who gets most of my money. 
My doctor wants me to get x-rays 
for a bone spur under my toenail. 
It causes the nail to rise up—inflating 
is the word my insurance company uses 
for the prices of the hospital. 
And that nasty nail just won’t let go—greedy 
is the word my for-profit hospital uses 
for the insurance company 
that won’t agree to terms.
 
And this little toenail, 
it’s quite a small thing, 
but it’s holding a whole foot hostage. 
All the other toenails lie in their beds, 
just taking the space they need. 
They don’t hold out for a ransom, 
expecting a kick-back 
in exchange for not causing pain 
when I knock the soccer ball 
around with my kid.
 
But that’s toes for ya.
So this little fella needs 
to have a bit shaved 
off the top of that bone. 
But the doctor wants
to see what he’s looking at. 
And the hospital tells me my portion 
of the x-ray price is $293, up front. 
I tell the billing specialist 
that Dremels are on sale 
at Lowe’s for $39.98. 
I can buy seven Dremels to grind off 
my toenail, just like the doctor does,
and still have enough money
left over for ice cream. 
I show her the Lowe’s website on my phone. 
She says I’m wasting her time,
and it seems we are at an impasse,
so I call off negotiations. 
 
I go for the ice cream. 
I never was the best with delayed gratification. 
But it seems that sometimes miracles,
they do happen, 
and my hospital 
and my insurance company 
have agreed 
on how rich they should each get. 
 
I haven’t called to see how many 
Dremels the x-ray will cost now. 
I’ll probably just have to settle
for the words spoken
by youth pastor Dan 

and pray for the negotiators;

as I know they prey.

Rick Pongratz is a poet and mental health clinician. His writing appears in Rattle, Bellevue Literary Review, The New Verse News, Unbroken, and elsewhere. Rick specializes in ecotherapy and studies creative writing at Idaho State University. He currently resides in Idaho where he enjoys getting lost in the woods with his family and dog.

MASS SHOOTING #6

14201 2nd Ave, Gabrielle Apartments & Townhomes, Highland Park, MI, Sep 28 2025

by Ron Riekki

“the war speaks at night

with its lips of shredded children,”

—Tyehimba Jess,

“Mercy”

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

I ask where he’s working.  He says, “Illegally.”

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

 

He says he can’t move his hand, he’s doing poorly.

Says, “We need more jobs.”  Leaves, says I’m too “cop-vibe”-y.

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

 

Inside a car, a man crying.  Not quite payday.

Says it’s been a long day, his face all teary.

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

 

2 adults, 2 teens shot on this property

2 days ago—foot, foot, shoulder, chest injury.

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

 

I ask if he’s OK.  He says, “yeah,” politely.

He says the problem’s “gun stores.”  They’re making money.

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

 

White community’s answer is to “pray.”

I worry I can only think binary.

Black community says: fix “poverty.”

I worry I think the answer’s poetry.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

ETHNIC CLEANSING CALLED KATRINA

by Raymond Nat Turner

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

SOSs— frantic patterns pounded on

Pots and pans — Counterpoint

Shattering surreal quiet …

Tired hands trembled and cramped

White towels; white T-shirts; white sheets

Waved furiously. Invisible to the heart of

Dixie in confederate helicopters casually

Hovering above. Tired arms trembled and cramped

Tired voices, plaintive pleas for “HELP!” faded. 

Slipped into soup of sewage. Oil-gas-gumbo-slop.

Spewing from tanks and pipelines like some toxic

Spittle, rising to their throats from a trumpet’s spit key

Katrina square-danced ‘round New Orleans.

Went easy on The Big Easy.

So, why was the city still swamped? Why’d

The London Avenue levee break in three places?

FEMA flew over and knew on Monday. 

W’s War House knew by midnight. But

The People—salt of the earth— heard it through 

The grapevine— or on TV— sometime Tuesday

Levee built 1 and 1/2 feet lower than specs.      A capitalist

Disaster wrapped in an accident; Concealing a ticking time

Bomb. Set decades ago. Add Big Oil’s hurricane highway. AKA, MIGO—

Mississippi Gulf Outlet — 12 gauge shotgun pointing at NOLA’s heart!

BOOM! Prayers of white nationalist worshippers answered. Prayers of

Hoods concealed beneath Mardi Gras masks answered! Prayers of those

Who preyed to their god; to their profits, “Do unto Lower 9th Ward N-

Words what white sheets behind spreadsheets wet dreamed for decades.”

They’d preyed for a chocolate city bleached beignet-white … Lower

9th Ward N-words out! By any means necessary. They’d preyed to rid 

Themselves of low-wealth ones. Elderly, ill ones. The non-swimmers

Who didn’t own cars.

Their privatized Emergency Evacuation Plan was always: NOYO 

(Nigras On Your Own) Sink or swim. Water-swollen homes— “Xs”

Spray-painted on their skins. Circled numbers. Circled 3 = 3 bloated 

Black bodies pulled from bones of homes. Some pregnant. Some children.

White god was good— weaponizing water! Water raged. Rose rapidly

Ethnic cleansing Land of Louis; second line; trumpet tree roots. Made 

Martyrs of Big Chiefs, Brass band-juju Jazz conjurers. Ancestors of Blues babies

Who’d drown in their own tears with yellowed photos and decomposing dreams …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ching-ching-ching-a-ling …

Ta-tah-ta-tah-ta-ta-tum …

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

A DRY SPELL IN UTAH

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

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

Statewide drought, evaporating lakes, whirlwinds, catastrophe; 
amidst this mess, our Governor pleads “Pray for rain.” Angels,
witches, devils descend from the sky to the chosen, but no blessed water.
 
My garden meadow browns to wasteland, crisp crackle underfoot,
hummingbird departs. Has he expended all his heartbeats in July’s
harsh heat? Warm colors of swallowtails, monarchs—gone. 
Finches, sparrows silent, beaks gape wide, throats too dry for song.
 
City residents stop sprinklers, while farmers, and our Governor
grow water-hungry alfalfa—drain rivers and aquifers. Spinning drops
irrigation-spread, artificial rainbows brighten verdant fields. Cloudbursts 
transformed to feed chug across the ocean, as our lakes recede. 

Susan J. Wurtzburg has won or placed in several poetry competitions. She is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Poets Reading the News. Her book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas was published in spring, 2025.

A FEW THOUGHTS AFTER THE PASSING OF POPE FRANCIS

by Terri Kirby Erickson

My maternal grandmother, widowed for years, 
was a small, quiet woman who drank a cup 
of Sanka in the late afternoons and took naps. 
I cannot picture her feeling comfortable in her
parents’ primitive Baptist church what with all 
the shouting and dire warnings of damnation.
She rebelled against it at some point, became
a Presbyterian whose members know how to sit
silently in their pews and listen to the preacher 
talk about estate planning and heavenly rewards. 
My mother, also a Presbyterian, and my father, 
a Lutheran, settled on a Methodist compromise. 
But after my brother died, Mom said her prayers 
to Mother Mary more than God, often holding 
one of the many rosaries Catholic charities sent 
her in return for contributions. Not a Catholic, 
she didn’t know what to do with them, but liked 
the feel of the beads in her hands, the weight 
of the cross. I have my mother’s rosaries now 
and some of my own, one of which was blessed 
by the pope. His image is everywhere since his 
death, front and center on the news. But the clip 
that moved me was of Pope Francis and a boy 
who wanted to ask him a question yet was too
afraid to speak. Then the pope said whisper it 
into my ear, his expression so tender, so full of 
goodness and mercy, it unclenched a fist in my 
chest that I did not know was there. This must 
be how my grandmother felt when hell was no 
longer mentioned, and why my mother prayed 
to Mary, who knew the pain of losing a son.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

WHERE’S HERSH?

by Devon Balwit

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. —Philippe Arriès
 

I get out of bed and put on a costume 
of being a person, says his mom,
the number of days of his captivity taped to her bosom.
She speaks to anyone who’ll welcome 
her—President, talk show host, reporter. Numb
is not an option, not while her son might live. Come
home to us, she prays, her thumb
pressing her prayer book. She prays for Umm
Mohamed, Umm Sarah, Umm Ahmed as well. I can’t fathom
her loss, imagining my own son, who looks so like him,
stolen into captivity. Harm
has already come to Hersh, arm
blown off, 220 days and counting. The number
of dead in this war also multiplies, like the rubble. I watch gruesome
videos taken by an American-Palestinian doctor—hard to stomach—
ordinary people being overcome
by history. What can be done? שום דבר —shum
davar—it seems—nothing. But Rachel must keep her momentum.
This Memorial Day, let us insist, alongside her, upon Shalom.

Devon Balwit walks in all weather and has recently returned to life-drawing and cartooning. She edits for Asimov Press.

HAIL, MARY

by Maria Lisella

Buon giorno, buen dia Maria

Full of grace and wisdom and power

The Lord may be with thee, and you

May be Blessed among women but

 

What about the children? Not the one

In the womb that has been consecrated

As the son of God, but God, your god,

My god has many sons, daughters all

 

Around the world. They are not all blessed

Some are cursed and lost and under a pile

Of rubble in Ukraine, Yemen, Israel, Palestine, Gaza;

Others live in the darkness of the blind, are

 

Plagued by hallucinations, cursed with spasms

Of a mind that plays tricks on them all day, all

Night. Imagine a predator behind you, in your

Shadow, silent, stealthy, looking over your shoulder

 

Or under your bed. You cannot see but you know

They are there and they mean you harm for no

Other reason than you are where you find yourself

Not for an act you perpetrated on someone else,

 

Just for being who you are. The luck of the draw?

And Holy Mary, Mother of God, do you pray for

The innocent as well as the sinners? The pilots,

The soldiers firing artillery rockets, are they too

 

Prayed for? Rockets with ranges of 30-50 miles, fired

In barrages for the most effect, the most damage.

Are they too in your prayers to god and which god

Might that be? What does that God look like, what

 

Does that god think, plan, why does that god never

intervene? Humans shooting hate and rockets blindly

into Ashkelon, Beersheba, under the eyes of Israeli 

drones … range is crucial for rockets, for prayers too.

 

Pray for us sinners and for the innocent, for my own son

Living in a world plagued with demons he cannot see

or touch or hear but knows they are there, so music

and words come to him as if a shaft of light in day

 

Or night, raises his voice above the din in his brain, to

Feel the lift above the iron dome of paranoia, the upsurge

Of spirits that haunt, and fly, and invade his small cot in an

Institution with cinder block walls, netted windows he can’t

 

See but knows they are there: the limitations, the lack

Of liberty, the outside in; the other sons and daughters

in Gaza, or Yemen or Ukraine are bombarded with a panoply

of air power used in a steadily escalating series of attacks.

 

What I wish for my own son is comfort, warmth, knowing

There is a meal, a roof over his head, a dog at his feet, a

Sun he can feel but not see… Mother of God, what do you

Wish for your sons, your daughters now and at the hour

 

Of their deaths? When will your god hear your pleas or

Have the mothers and daughters been silenced to the

Tunnels, the basements, the streets, have they lost their

Voices, their powers to heal, now and at the hour of now?

Maria Lisella is the sixth Queens Poet Laureate and an American Academy Fellow; her work includes Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). She is a member of the Thursday Morning Poets, Brevitas and co-curates the Italian American Writers Assoc. literary readings.

PRAYER FOR THE NON-BELIEVER

by Alan Walowitz

Romano-British iron ploughshare. Flat bar with rounded edges tapering to an asymmetrical point at one end, with a flanged socket at the other. —The British Museum

C’mon, we can pray as well as anyone
If we only suspend our disbelief and try. 
The bombs are dropping on a hospital
So we pray, at least, it wasn’t us. 
Is that too much?  Not enough?  If so,
Then let’s go all the way
And pray that the bombs will stop,
Let them be bursting in air, 
The way we’ve always sung 
About them since the time we were young.
 
Or better yet,
Beaten into ploughshares. 
Though we’ve never known what ploughshares are,
Oh, God, if you’re out there, I swear,
I’m gonna call Amazon and order some.


Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

THE BLACK HUMMINGBIRD

by Alejandro Escudé

Why all the gray skies [in Southern California]? It's a reasonable question with a fairly complex answer that we find ourselves asking yearly when they show up and stick around for a few months. Known as May Gray and June Gloom, the period’s a sign of transition from cool winter weather to scorching summer temperatures. —LAist, May 19, 2023. Photo: Ushering in June Gloom near Santa Ynez, California on June 01, 2020. | George Rose/Getty Images via KCET.

The grayness of May isn’t subtle.

It weighs on the birds too, erasing the landmarks.

I notice that my sight changes, eyes have a stalkier bond

To the naked mind—what is that about?

I exit my apartment, crossing the threshold of my door,

And the hallway is blue, chilly, despite the seventy degrees.

I need my poetry heroes to Lazarus from their graves

And deliver me back to my old selves, the dozens of poets

That came before this one who writes only gray verse.

But its always been the black hummingbird that flitted 

Through the glass of my window at the Catholic retreat 

I attended two years after my son was born.

I obeyed the order of silence. At twilight, I made my way

Past the Victorian lamp posts along the garden paths

To the dining hall. And we prayed before and after dinner.

When I returned home, the hummingbird followed.

I ask a coworker: does the gray sky affect your mood?

It is kind of dark, he says, missing the mark.

The grayness lasts so that even the darkness of night is gray.

I shift in my rocky bed, the hours graying into more hours.

You can live this way, you know, many years,

Reading between the testament folds of the colorless clouds,

Seeking something beyond the stormy horizon 

You have come to expect—that gray, prodigious god.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

SALMAN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.