FOR NOW

by Pepper Trail

—The New York Times, May 30, 2025

For now, strip a half-million refugees of any illusion of safety or mercy

Allow honorably-serving transgender troops to be expelled from the military, for now

For now, okay the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act against Venezulean immigrants

Condone the termination of awarded grants that promote diversity and tolerance, for now

 

Do not get excited.

This is not the end of democracy.

This is “for now.”

Someday, we, the Justices of the Supreme Court, might stand up.

Might defend the Constitution, could uphold the separation of powers.

May act, at last, as a check upon an utterly lawless and corrupt regime.

 

Not today.

But perhaps, someday.

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

THE LOST ONES

by Jean Varda

Candido Portinari: Dead Child (Criança morta), 1944, oil on canvas.

This is for the lost ones
hiding and shuddering in
broken down cars and tents
without heat, sleeping 
under tarps next to 
shopping carts in the rain,
walking all night down
city streets to stay warm
then searching through 
dumpsters for breakfast.
This is for the refugees in
back rooms erasing them
selves, quitting their jobs
so they don’t get caught.
This is for the hungry
the cold the sick, the
victims of war, for the 
broken families at the
borders begging to get
in, to cross over.

Jean Varda is a poet and artist residing in Chico California. Where she lives in government housing next to the city bike path. She started out as a street poet in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the days before computers and cell phones.

AGAIN

by LynnWhite

Never again

the holocaust

of Jews,

of Slavs, 

of dissenters,

of the mixed 

or mismatched

ethnicity.

Gassed

starved 

beaten

enslaved

dying.

Never again

the swarms

of refugees 

left behind

fleeing

dying

pleading 

to be let in anywhere

dying

unwanted.

Never again.

That’s what they said

then.

But then

in Gaza

it happened 

again.

And now

in Gaza

it’s happening 

again.

Again and again

and again.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

OUR ENEMIES SUTRA

by Laurence Musgrove

AI generated graphic from Shutterstock

This evening, the Buddha and I 

sat and scrolled through our phones

before retiring for the night.

I read to him about the latest

retaliation strikes in Syria and Iraq,

and he read to me about our deportation

flights of refugees deep into Mexico

designed to discourage their return

and the hopes of those now streaming

to our razor-wired border.

“It was Thich Nhat Hanh,” he said,

“who wrote our enemies are not people,

but our ideologies, fears, and attachments

to views that justify our ignorance

of cause and effect with absolutely

no guarantee of freedom or peace.

The fires we spread always burn us, too.”

Laurence Musgrove is the author of three poetry collections Local Bird, The Bluebonnet Sutras, and A Stranger's Heart. He teaches creative writing and literature from a Buddhist perspective at Angelo State University in West Texas.

DO WE NOT BLEED?

by Nolan Dannels

Painting (1886) by John Everett Millais of Kate Dolan as Portia.

“Though justice be thy plea, consider this:

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy …”

— Portia, IV, 1, from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare 

 

The kids caught in the crossfire

never stood a chance—

they just stood there,

wrong place, wrong time,

and we didn’t do a thing,

just let them die

 

as we chose a side,

as if it were a color

in a world of

black and white

that we should have let be

blue and green

 

But who would we be

to dream of peace

when we don’t stand

in the way of the war—

the innocent plead,

we ignore,

so how can

they have hope anymore?

 

And who would we be

to feel a thing?

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

If you hurt us,

do we not grieve?

And if you don’t listen to us,

do we still speak?

 

Air raids and bombs… guns and hate—

this is neither the beginning nor the end

And it will only get worse if we wait

We’ll see soon enough even if we are blind now,

but our hands will be slow on the draw,

too little, too late:

we only do good

when the bad has already died down

 

Where will the refugees go

when their camps are attacked

before they can even cry out?

Which way will the world turn

when the sun sets on the other side

than the one it does right now?

 

I wish I knew the answers,

and I wish I could say them loud and clear,

but I can only beg, vocal cords torn,

for a fair and just end to the conflict

But I can only see it getting worse

from day to day and year to year

 

Yet, who would I be

to say a thing?

If you spit in my eyes,

can I still see?

If you put me in chains,

can I be free?

And if you tear out my tongue,

can I still speak?

 

But who are we

to be in need?

If you chase us,

do we not flee?

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

 

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

​whether our tears are true

​if they can never leave

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

If you prick us,

do we not bleed?

whether we’re white and blue

​or red, white, black, and green

 

Nolan Dannels is a Persian American poet/musician with a Master's in English Language and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. He is currently a Literature PhD candidate, specializing in modern and contemporary Anglophone poetry at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the Editor in Chief of Alchemy, Journal of Translation. His poetry and music appear in Kissing Dynamite, Trouvaille Review, Wine Cellar Press, Wishbone Words, Snakeskin Poetry Webzine, and Hare's Paw Literary Journal.

CRUELTY

by Frederick Wilbur

Birds rest on concertina wire along the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass , Texas, Thursday, July 6, 2023, that has been recently bulldozed. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s escalating measures to stop migrants along the U.S. border with Mexico came under a burst of new criticism Tuesday after a state trooper said migrants were left bloodied from razor-wire barriers and that orders were given to deny people water in sweltering heat. —AP, July 19, 2023

Along the helix

of razor wire 

meant to keep

refugees stranded,

there are delicate spiders

spinning webs

that rainbow

in the early sun,

their snares

of a different will.

 

Frederick Wilbur’s collections of poetry are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and Conjugation of Perhaps.  His work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Dalhousie Review, Green Mountains Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The New Verse News, and Shenandoah among others. He is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine.

AN OPEN LETTER EXPLAINING ELEMENTS OF OUR NEW, IMPROVED, AND DECIDEDLY UNWOKE CURRICULUM

by Dick Westheimer

Dear Parent,

 

We believe in children. We believe 

in padded playgrounds and unscuffed knees 

and helmets and a bubble wrapped curriculum 

lined with velvet and free from troubled ideas.

 

We believe our teachers should teach

that enslaved Africans got vocational skills

like painting and planting for their personal benefit,

that residents of Auschwitz knew the trick of how 

to lose weight and look so fit, that members 

of the Five Tribes, removed for their own good, 

got to “pursue happiness in their own way.”

 

We believe those seeking refuge (whose boats 

overturn) might learn to swim, that those 

with black-lung get to sit in front of their TVs

in their BarcaLoungers with their very own 

government issued oxygen tanks, that Catholic 

boys get personal tutoring in anatomy from 

respected men in their white collared shirts, 

that trafficked girls get to travel the world 

and meet new friends.

 

We believe children should learn nothing

about those pre-teens head-bent in sweatshops

sewing their shoes, or two-year-olds toddling 

in electronics junk yards recycling their PCs

or tweens armed and taught to harm their kin. 

 

We do this for you, dear parent 

because, we are committed to protect 

you from Judgement Day when 

Johnny or Susie asks what 

you could have done and why, 

dear parent, you didn’t. 

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Journal, Gyroscope Review, Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritual Well, One Art, and Cutthroat. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.

SEA GRAVE

by Sarwa Azeez

We peered through bullet holes

to see our future 

on the other side 

fled home—

dodging fires 

and gunshots.

We held on 

to tree limbs that 

despite being weighed low

by snow and wind

guided us back 

to safety.

We wandered astray

along the haunting 

mountain trails

Our fast-beating hearts 

chased 

by the soldiers’ ghost cries 

but our gazes raised

heavenward

beyond those sky-piercing summits.

Our roaming bodies

stumbled on a vast blue tomb—

The waves thundered

like wrathful gods 

who were lifting us 

through clouds

and mist. 

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet and translator. She is a Fulbright alumni, got her second masters in Creative Writing from Nebraska-Lincoln University. Her debut poetry pamphlet collection Remote was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her work has appeared in many publications such as Parentheses Journal, Writing for A Woman's Voice, Notre Dame Literary, Wingless Dreamer and elsewhere. 

REAL NEWS, EASTER

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Zoom, you are finished. The Sun is out

strolling on Easter Sunday, spring

roaring into summer making peace

in the heart and loins. Yes, imagine

that word rescued from time, recreated,

reborn 'though bombs are falling on people

and buildings in Ukraine. Refugees are

returning with brave hearts, friends;

and Zoom, you are dead like a cliché,

a doornail. In the suburbs of Kyiv

a woman is looking for keys

she buried under a nearby tree. War

continues but she does not give a damn.

She lives and dies where her home lies.

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.

ARE WE THERE YET?

Passover 2022

by Anita S. Pulier

Marc Chagall's "Passover Haggadah"

Celebrate forty years of wandering.

40 years of searching.

Read Haggadah to the children,

give thanks,

sing praises

for the tribe surviving.

Focus on the ancients,

not the news.

Ignore ICE, as it issues

this warning: if officers

view you as Other,

hear a foreign accent,

take notice of shabby clothes,

you will be wrangled

like cattle into pens

and, paperless or not, deported.

To where? Weep, explain

you have lived here

since you were two,

this is your home.

Your wife, your children,

your aged mother

may never see you again.

Glory be to what?

Listen! Angry screams nurtured

by hatred, drown out the cries

of kids in Florida, or Texas, or next door.

How many more will be force fed this poison

in the name of a merciless God

punishing the sin of survival?

Tonight, we Jews co-opt words;

suffering, pain, freedom.

I imagine the day that

anyone’s God

will deliver enlightenment,

angels will sing,

heavenly light will shine

on the cruel irony of the self-righteous,

the day each of us will be revealed

as the supplicant,

each of us the Other.

The day our ancient journey,

our Passover celebration,

will not fall so woefully short

of the promised land.

Anita S. Pulier’s chapbooks Perfect Diet, The Lovely Mundane, and Sounds of Morning and her books The Butcher's Diamond and Toast were published by Finishing Line Press. Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in nine print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac.

TRUE COLORS

by Julie Steiner

"Refugees Welcome" by Omar Ab Abdallat

A Haitian family's asylum case shows double standard at the border: It took three doctors, a small team of lawyers and multiple nonprofits on both sides of the border to get an exemption for a Haitian family seeking asylum in the United States… Border officials have routinely granted exemptions to Ukrainian nationals while subjecting asylum seekers from other countries to much more scrutiny. That included the Haitian family, who had to wait almost four months to get an exemption. Advocates said their case underscores just how arbitrary and unfair the country’s asylum system is right now. —KPBS, April 5, 2022

We’re opening our hearts and homes and wallets.

We’ve got donations piling up on pallets

for families in flight from bombs and bullets—

their frightened faces traumatized and pale. It’s

inspiring, seeing decency at work.

It’s proof the world’s not totally berzerk.

When strangers need our help, we never shirk

our duty. (If their faces aren’t too dark.)

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

THE WORLD IS FULL OF WAR AGAIN

by Penelope Scambly Schott

More than 100 people have drowned in the Central Mediterranean in one week while at least 130 others have been forcibly returned to Libya. In the same week, MSF teams rescued 113 people from a rubber boat that was taking on water. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns Italy and Malta’s failure to assist boats in distress and urges Frontex and other European vessels in the area to reveal the circumstances of these tragic events.  —Médecins Sans Frontières, April 6, 2022

No, the world is always full of war.

The thing is, this time it’s white people

killing white people, so we pay attention.

When it’s those people with darker skin

and we’re not sure exactly where they live,

we pay less attention. Can you point

to Ethiopia on a map? But really,

what good does our attention do? I mail

my pittance to Doctors Without Borders

on my way to shop at Safeway. Am I being

cruel? Yesterday I listened to my friend

lament for an hour on the phone.

I brought homemade bread to the neighbor

who calls it date night at the cemetery

when he brings a chair to his wife’s grave.

And look at me here with my fresh coffee

in a mug with dancing dogs. Don’t I think

I'm just so goddamn kind?

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF WAR

by Katherine West 

“A Room of Memory” by Chiharu Shiota (2009): old wooden windows, group exhibition Hundred Stories about Love, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan

Inside, there's a memory of neighbors on an evening porch, of burning then warming sun, of a half-feral cat leaving freedom for langurous hours of touch, of cold night then the warmth of a shared bed. 

Inside, there's a fire going and moody jazz in the background, an old watercolor of a Ukrainian boy and girl in traditional clothes. They are on their way to market; seen from behind and one side, their bodies are full of purpose. 

Inside, there's the sound of birds outside; sometimes just wings whooshing back and forth, sometimes a little squawk and chatter. Faraway, a songbird. 

Outside, sun is trying to warm the morning. Outside, clouds are burning off; red ants are waking up, appearing at the door of their mound like holy men dressed in the color of life. 

Outside, the first truck rumbles down the gravel road, kicking up its own cloud. Outside, the crack of target practice, to the south, a helicopter.

Outside, the first shell drops on an apartment building already abandoned by its residents who now live in the subway. The first paratrooper touches down. The first tank goes up in flames. 

Outside, the first wildflowers glow like a small sunrise amongst dry, white grass. Outside, the ravens are mating aloft. 

Inside, is poetry from Ukraine. 

You are the train that will pour

burning wine on the skin,

so that it will blaze

madly

(Natalka Bioltserkivets)

Outside, is poetry from Ukraine, a long line of refugees with bundles, like leafcutter ants carrying off the petals of roses.  

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. She is also an artist. 

REFUGEES

by Frederick Wilbur

Drawing by Zhenia Grebenchuk, 13, who fled Cherkasy, Ukraine, with his younger sister and mother, Tanya. His father took them to the bus and then returned home. Tanya said she and her children planned to wait out the war in Poland. Zhenia hoped it would only be a matter of weeks before Ukraine wins and he can kick around his soccer ball at home with friends again. —The Washington Post, March 15, 2022

They hear the drone of planes

like the chorus of evil angels.

 

They do not raise their eyes.

 

But with their lives in skulls

and backpacks, their feet follow

the single file person before them,

freedom stitched to sleeves.

 

It could be anywhere—

distant curve of horizon or jungled

too thick for a view.

 

I cannot say I have worn out shoes,

or begged for shelter—

my anguish is not their anguish,

my hunger is not theirs.

 

Arrogance and greed for power

cannot live among them,

their power is to survive—

survival may not be enough

until they cross the border

that cannot be seen.

 

Frederick Wilbur's poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and The Conjugation of Perhaps.

HERE, WHERE NOT EVEN THE LEAVES FLUTTER

by Devon Balwit

Bandaged and bloodied, a mum nurses the baby she saved from Russian shellfire by shielding the tot with her own body. Brave Olga—badly injured by shrapnel in Putin’s blitz on Kyiv—cradles her month-old child as a man thought to be her partner comforts them. Amazingly, the baby was believed to be unhurt thanks to the quick-thinking courage of its Ukrainian mother. The two were being cared for yesterday at Kyiv’s Ohmatdyt children’s hospital. Journalist Anastasiia Lapatina, who works on English-language newspaper the Kyiv Independent, said the baby was well. —The U.S. Sun, March 19, 2022. See also story at Infobae.

Ratatatat—no bullets—just a flicker

making a morning ruckus on a chimney cap.

History is happening elsewhere. There

people breathe its stink, tweeze its shrapnel

from their skin, like the bloodied mother nursing her baby

on a hospital gurney. Even the old poet

has refugees blanketing his living room and library.

Post-barrage, survivors salvage what

they can. Each moment presents its immediate problem

to be solved—more life always the answer.

Here, the flicker quiets in slanted columns

of rain so gentle that not even the leaves flutter.

As in a fairy tale, I fight ensorcellment,

straining towards that distant bombardment.

Devon Balwit walks in all weather. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2021].

BLANK SIGNS

by donnarkevic

Anti-war protesters in Russia are being detained by police for holding up blank posters as part of demonstrations protesting against President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. —Newsweek, March 15, 2022

Perhaps they believe 

we did not overcome; 

we did not give peace a chance; 

we did not live up to the Beatitudes; 

we did not heed the Buddha 

and keep our hearts free from hate. 

 

Perhaps they know no words 

for the pain of hunger  

on their children’s faces, 

for the lies that gather 

like flies on dead neighbors’ faces, 

for the quiet noise of fleeing refugees. 

 

Perhaps they had enough death, 

enough war, 

and they are left 

with nothing left  

to say. 

Nothing. 

donnarkevic: Buckhannon, WV. MFA National University. Work has appeared in Rattle, Witness, Jewish Currents, Blue Collar Review, and many other literary magazines and anthologies. A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart nominee with over 300 published poems. Main Street Rag published the novella of poetry After the Lynching, in 2022.