LEGACY

by Jim Hanson

He finally was voted away
but left with the flick of a match
a wildfire burning across the land
turning once fertile fields of green
barren and black under a cloud,
as institutions smoldered from
forces of heated hate and malcontent
leaving behind for generations ahead
the remains of a republic uncertain
to rise in an unforeseeable future.

Jim Hanson is a retired university researcher and sociologist who lives in the St. Louis area. He has published three poetry collections titled Endless Journey, Ruminations of Living and Dying, and Perspectives, also some thirty single poems, and is a member of the St. Louis Poetry Center and Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter.

THE EARRING

by Heather H. Thomas

Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds.

The evening river is gray jade, 

the tree line charred pink. 

 

Rose quartz earring

rescued from the roadside, 

shelters in my palm.

 

I remember Jerusalem—the golden

Dome of the Rock hazed out

in dust storms, random stabbings 

 

canceling my trip 

to the Temple Mount

also called Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

 

Different people worship the same places, 

sometimes under different names.

 

Red alert on D’s phone—incoming 

missile—D says she leapt

from her car into a ditch. 

 

My birthday, I sit alone in a Tel Aviv café, 

alarm shrieking—yet none move

to shelter, everyone chatting, trusting 

 

the Iron Dome to intercept.

 

Few can speak of it now: 

trance music, dawn cocktails, 

missile light mistaken for fireworks, 

 

then sudden noises of death—

 

After, women’s bodies mutilated, 

some missing the bottom half—

 

Survivors almost not 

here—eyes hollow, 

speechless they shake                         

                                                

with the silence of living.

 

The darkness you saw, we’re going to bring back 

the light, therapists tell them. 

 

Sometimes only a small body 

part remains, a finger, a foot, a hand, 

                                                                  

trace of mascara on eyelashes, 

an earring she put on that morning.

Author’s Note: The poem blends details, which were reported in The New York Times and BBC, of the violence at the Nova festival with memories of my 2015 visit to Israel. The detail of the earring was reported by the BBC as an example of tiny objects, along with actual body parts, which were all that remained of some victims.  

Heather H. Thomas is a poet from Reading, Pennsylvania, the author of Vortex Street(FutureCycle Press) and five other poetry collections. Recent work has been published in Barrow Street, Cutthroat, New Verse News, Pedestal Magazine, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. Her work is translated into six languages, including Arabic.

SILENCE AFTER THE MAUI FIRE

by Christian Hanz Lozada

I deconstruct the “Santa’s Village” Lego set
and the house has been quiet all day
 
while Hawaiian Uncle with stage 4 lungs watches the news
and the house has been quiet all day
 
the county asks family of the missing to submit DNA to match ashen remains
and the house has been quiet all day
 
after the fire Hawaiian Uncle escaped by sleeping on the shore
and the house has been quiet all day
 
and by crossing an ocean and by needing his niece’s husband to clean his ass
and the house has been quiet all day
 
long enough for health insurance ones and zeroes to change Hawaii to America
and the house has been quiet all day

Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him) is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendent of the Southern Confederacy. He knows the shape of hope and exclusion. He authored the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not (2023) and co-authored Leave with More Than You Came With (2019). His poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review (Pushcart Nominee), Bamboo Ridge Press, 34 Orchard, Mud Season Review, among others. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.

EXODUS: A HISTORY

by Carol Alexander 

People wandered streets with net bags of oranges,
spooked by the lonesome traffic lights. Each grew a compound eye.
Birds waxed tenacious. God willing they sang.
Apartment houses feigned cataracts with china pugs, ormolu
(gilded in desired shapes) while dog-walkers walked alone.
No one trusted fingers, floats of fleshy cut flowers; there were little crimes.
Sometimes they dreamed of the lost, how a coffin should gleam
when an unwilling heart was shocked into submission at last.
Seven o'clock marked an anniversary of quarantine and temperature.
The remains of the day—they held each other wordlessly, lawlessly
and on mild days the infection spread, over narcissus and forsythia.
Wind blew through the firehouse. Park benches said remember them.

Carol Alexander (on her fifth week of Covid infection, as is her husband) is the author of Environments (Dos Madres Press), Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press), and Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press). Her poems appear in various anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, Chiron Review, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Hamilton Stone Review, One, Seattle Review of Books, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News.  Recent work is forthcoming this year in Denver Quarterly and Raintown Review.

A KEEPING PLACE

by Mark Tarren

Mungo Man returned to ancestral home where he died 40,000 years ago. Traditional owners say the return of the remains of the historic Mungo Man, who was removed by scientists from his resting place more than 40 years ago, will provide closure and is a step toward reconciliation. More than four decades ago anthropologists removed the ancient skeleton of an Aboriginal man—the discovery of which rewrote Australian history. Now he has been returned home to his descendants, travelling for days in a hearse from Canberra. —ABC News, November 17, 2017. Photo by Dean Sewell, The Guardian, November 19, 2017.

These are the winds
of Country.

That birthed fire leaf and smoke
fish, ear and bone

upon the grinding stone
sparks hooded in a eucalypt sky
the footprint of a face.

A fire of Yellow Box and peppermint
of scented leaf, sand and cloud

that carved out a timbered lake
with gentle ochre limbs

hands crossed deep across
the womb of beginning
in the wounds of Country.

These are the winds
of Mutthi Mutthi, Paakantji
Ngyiampaa

sung forever in the tears
of the tall man’s journey
to return to Country.

My white skin burns against
the red-gum casket lung

unable to remain in this life
as he wraps me to unfold me

in the ancient sands
of dunes and desert wounds

the crack, cry and howl as
my white skin dies
swept away
in the scales of shedding,

of waiting.

Come and dance across our hearts
so we can find

the first fire that remains.

Mark Tarren is a poet and writer based in Queensland, Australia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including TheNewVerse.News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press and Tuck Magazine.

THE VATICAN'S NEW DECREE ON CREMATION

a sonnet
by Richard Hacken 

The Bios Urn is a fully biodegradable urn designed to convert you into a tree after life. But is it okay with Pope Frances?

New guidelines came out this past Tuesday from Vatican City
Regarding burnt human remains, whether powdery or gritty:

Set them neatly in places that are sacred and Catholic-approved;
They should never be scattered or otherwise randomly moved.
They should not be compressed into dice or shot deep into space:
They were once a live human, so show them the requisite grace.

Don't partition your loved ones (who've suddenly gone caput)
Between Mantua, Aspen and waters just off of Beirut:
Resurrection makes difficult repatriation of soot.

It's more pious to plunk our deceased into boxes beneath
The terrain and to add a memorial ribbon or wreath!

So rather than storing your mom in a crate on the shelf,
Understand the subtext into which such theologies delve:
"If you claim to be faithful, then don't make an ash of yourself."


Richard Hacken has published in TheNewVerse.News a few times. He has also translated into English seven poetry collections of Galsan Tschinag, a Tuvan shaman from Mongolia who writes in German.

WHAT REMAINS

by Jennifer Hernandez

Jacob Wetterling's mother Patty said the remains of her son have been found. "Our hearts are broken. I am not responding to any media yet as I have no words," Patty Wetterling wrote in a text message to KARE 11. The Stearns County, Minnesota Sheriff's Office confirmed that Jacob Wetterling's remains had been located. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner and a forensic odontologist identified the remains as Wetterling's Saturday morning. . . . The disappearance of Jacob remains one of the highest-profile child abduction cases in U.S. history. Wetterling was 11 when he was abducted by a masked man with a gun on Oct. 22, 1989, in St. Joseph, Minn. —MPR News, September 3, 2016. Above: Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob. Photograph: Craig Lassig/AP via The Guardian, September 4, 2016.

We’ve been living with Jacob
for twenty-seven years
since he disappeared
from that stretch
of deserted country road.

I was in college then,
160 miles northwest on I-94,
didn’t watch much TV
or read the newspapers,
but I knew about Jacob.

Saw his smile on billboards,
milk cartons, the sides of semis.
My brother was fourteen that fall.
Did my mom’s gut clench then
like mine does now?

I am the mother of three boys.
The youngest, eleven,
Jacob’s age in October 1989.
We learned about monsters,
those of us who grew up with Jacob.

No free-range parenting for us.
I watched my boys like a hawk
even on the dead-end street
in front of my suburban home.
Probably I watched too much.

I would not lose those pieces
of my heart. Patty Wetterling—
I hope you know that we, the mothers,
are with you. We carry Jacob on our shoulders,
in our hearts. You say you don’t have words.

We cannot begin to fathom.

Jennifer Hernandez, Minnesota teacher and writer, has performed her poetry at a non-profit garage, a taxidermy-filled bike shop, and in the kitchen for her children. Her recent work has appeared in Minnesota Women’s Press, Mothers Always Write and Silver Birch Press, as well as Bird Float, Tree Song (Silverton Books) and A Prince Tribute (Yellow Chair Press).