SOLIDARITY

by Melissa Balmain

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

“If you’ve noticed more fireflies dancing across your backyard this summer, you’re not imagining things. Experts report that 2025 has been a banner year for these glowing insects.”—WTOP News

Even my ordinarily blank lawn
is flashing this July—no bottle rocket
or Catherine wheel could match the pleasant shock it
gives me each time a tiny lamp turns on
to help a bachelor find a blinding date. 
The bugs can’t read, of course, about pollution
and other woes that might spell dissolution
for all their kind, but as they mate and mate
I like to think they somehow know what’s looming,
deep in their chitin—that their sudden blooming
is nature’s way of putting up a fight,
and that these living fireworks before us
can make us hear, and heed, a timely chorus:
When darkness threatens you, crank up your light.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

UNNATURAL TIMES

by Renee Williams

KFF

After the pandemic, it’s natural to come out of hiding

to share wine with friends at a photography opening

 

to hug and greet one another after years of trepidation

to see faces and smiles and to hear that delicious laughter of life

 

to be reminded that this is the stuff that makes all the toil worth it

to gather, to enjoy art together, to see depictions of our 600-year-old oak

 

that has lived through the Spanish Influenza and so much more during its time on this earth

and is still standing, as our photos show, from spring to summer and covered in snow.

 

Later the sniffles start, sore throats appear, and the slow headaches emerge.

It cannot be. It cannot be. Allergies, yes, sinuses, of course, but no, not that, not again.

 

The test shows the faintest line of positivity… and all doubt disappears. 

Another person from the group becomes ill, and another, and another. 

 

Once more we find ourselves communicating via text, email, or Facebook Messenger

sharing our lives in the most unnatural way possible once more. 

Renee Williams is a retired English professor, who has written for Of Rust and Glass, Alien Buddha Press, and Fevers of the Mind.