SMALL DIFFERENCES

by Moira Magneson

AI-generated image by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Three days

we've watched

the acorn

woodpecker

perched atop

the telephone

pole

bright red

crown

black beak

driving

into

the glass

insulator

over and over.

His fury

for the bird

who looks

just like him—

side-eye

glittering—

knows

no bounds.

He refuses

to give up

the fight

with his own

reflection.

He will win 

this war.

He will not 

surrender.

Each will hammer

the other down.

They will stop

at nothing.

Author’s Note: "Small Differences" addresses the June 12, 2024 Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel which came after Israel killed a senior Hezbollah commander in southeastern Lebanon in a June 11 airstrike.  The poem's title is based on Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept of “the narcissism of small differences" in which he proposes that people tend to amplify the minor differences between themselves, leading to feelings of hostility, estrangement, and contempt.

Moira Magneson's full-length collection of poems In the Eye of the Elephant will be published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2025. Her novella A River Called Home—a river fable illustrated by Robin Center was released by Toad Road Press in early 2024. She is currently working as the poet-in-residence for ForestSong, artist Andie Thrams' project exploring solastalgia, biophilia, and resilience in the face of wildfire devastation and the climate crisis.

AS SMALL AS A PIMPLE

by Dmitry Blizniuk 

translated by Sergey Gerasimov from the Russian

Stop Hate for Profit

There's no room in history for a wanderer with a backpack,

or a cobbler in a circle of splinter light,

or a girl with a walking stick.

There is nothing human in the history of humans.

We examine and study all forms and kinds of war monsters,

detective or horror stories.

History is emptied out pools of time:

people's blood and stupidity of rulers have flowed out,

and only dry mud is left,

senseless, enameled emptiness,

and pyramids, burial mounds of years and dates.

But now we see our reflection in the Internet,

colorful shadows of asses and faces in social networking sites.

A greenish sick salmon 

sluggishly slaps its tail in the dirty water

among oil spills, candy wrappers,

and all kinds of garbage.

Looking at the gasoline stain on water

you can see your reflected face—

and you are as small as a pimple.

Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Pinch, Salamander, Willow Springs, Grub Street, and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Member of PEN America.

5.59 MILLION CASES

Sarah E. Colona is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016). Recent poems appear in TheNewVerse.News.