LAZARUS RISES AGAIN

by Royal Rhodes

remembering “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

White House says it will not return the Statue of Liberty to France. A French politician said the U.S. no longer deserved the legendary monument. —Politico, March 17, 2025

The White House sense of what we owe to France

forgets why we are not a monarchy.

This "mighty woman with a torch," perchance,

shows with her flame its dark autocracy.

Yorktown and the sword of Lafayette

have been suppressed in its new made-up tales.

Will God forget us, if we too forget?

As "world-wide welcome" in our marrow fails?

Exiles sought for freedom like fresh air.

America was built by diverse hands,

ignored by a self-centered billionaire.

A golden door was open to all lands.

For wealth, new tyrants rule by greedy whim.

Can someone teach this statue how to swim?

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

Royal Rhodes is a descendent of migrants here in the 17th century from England, and in the 19th century from Ireland.

DISPATCH FROM GAZA

by Carolyn Martin

Palestinians make long trek back to their demolished homes in Gaza —USA Today, January 28, 2025. Photo by Mahmoud Issa (Reuters via USA Today)

The father writes he’s home again 
with wife and three kids.
Ceilings, walls, and floors still here, he says.
Our souls were kept safe.
The garden is green, he says: 
a color gone from their eyes for years
and his three-year-old is confused.
She falls on stone pathways and, rising up,
can’t find sand to brush away. 
His sons lie in bed at night 
where ceilings block stars
in the cloud-curated sky. 
He asks them if they’re afraid.
They dig up bravery and ask,
Our tent. When are we going back?
After their lifetime away, the father wonders,
How will I ever teach children of war
to live in a house again?

Author's Note: This poem is based on a message I just received from a contact in Gaza.

Carolyn Martin is a recovering work addict who’s adopted the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards” as her daily mantra. She is blissfully retired––and resting––in Clackamas, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in more than 200 publications throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

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.

SEA-TAC AT EASTER

by Jerry Krajnak

Fifty years ago, a boy returned

on a drizzly Easter Monday and found no one

to curse or kiss him. Holiday decorations

peeled from the walls as he lugged his duffel bag

to the gate of the final red-eye homeward flight.

On that eastbound plane no one asked

what he had done to earn that colorful ribbon

on his lapel or the metal pin on his hat.

Not wanting to hear about Vietnam, they looked

away from him as the plane sped on in the dark.

Only clinking ice cubes and the cry of a baby

welcomed him home on that dark United flight.

 

What kind of welcome will they receive next year,

all those young Russian soldiers, as they return

from afar? Uneasy and gone so long from home,

will they be thanked for their service to the state,

hear shouts of baby killer hurled, or worse,

arrive ignored by tired mothers and brothers

all sick of deprivation and numbed by broadcast

body counts that cannot be confirmed?

Will sisters and fathers and friends all cover their ears,

unwilling to hear what these young men would tell

about the distant place where they were sent

to do what leaders told them they must do?

Jerry Krajnak is a retired Vietnam veteran who lives in the North Carolina mountains. Recent poems appear in Plants and Poetry, Novus, Rat's Ass Review, Sublunary Review, and in the Flee to Spring anthology.

FUTURE ORIENTATION

by Imogen Arate

Tweet by The Kyiv Independent.

There is talk of war

in the shushing peacetime

desires for cracking 

delineations to self-heal 

without tending

There is talk of utopia 

in the blunt wielding

of firebombs Why not

destroy to rebuild (make

room for better)

On the bodies of whose

children friends parents

and lovers A question 

suppressed or answered

by the jutting of chins

toward the detested

"Other" 

though history’s fingers

point to mutual others

who have become as

anonymous as the sides 

they took

whose bodies grew

sunflower fields though

their bones still beg 

for time to reunite

with the consolation

of a soothing soil

There is paradise

in the overtaking 

of punctured tanks

by tendrils grown

from the dust of war

in the dawning

that we are multitudes

of singular imperfections

who seek out others 

to share our wounds

perchance to heal

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her poems, “A Declaration of Loyalty” and “Sanctuary” placed Second and Third, respectively, in the 2020 National Federation of Press Women at-Large Communications Contest. Her poetry has appeared in 18 publications on four continents, most recently in I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Dwell Time, Nude Studio, and dyst.  You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

NATIONS REBORN ON THE SALISH SEA

by Alfredo Quarto

                   

My sleep awoke in me last night a vision

that warrior clans returned to Puget Sound.

I dreamt that cedar canoes once more

plied upon steel waters

wooden vessels hewn by hand…

the head of deer carved upon each bow

bounding through the waves

propelled by the flat ends of many legged oars

ruminant hooves slapping against

            the wizened face of sea.

 

Something was reborn when the paddlers pulled again

their oars like tense wings fashioned

from the inner strength of the yew tree…

revival was at hand as a coastal people

once more walked upon the waters

each pull of oar one step in two directions

linking the severed past with future.

 

Deep within the red earth

remnant roots are recalled

as an old people revive

feel their pliant pulse range once more

along the arterials from the breasts of mountains

to the beat of the heart of the sea…

new life may grow from the same soil

            that buries us after all.

 

From the arching stern the captain

steers with eyes fixed towards home

his rhythmic song in the ancient tongue

sets our pace as old wisdom is rediscovered.

Near the shore a lone deer swims

holds its antlered mantle above cold water

behind him, steepled conifers climb green hills

rise to where sea gulls glide and scream

in great excitement, as if proclaiming

            the People have returned.

Alfredo Quarto is an environmental activist and poet living on an organic farm in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains in Washington.  He’s been published in numerous poetry publications including Poetry Seattle, Catalyst, Raindance Journal, Piedmont Review, Haiku Zashi Zo,  Paperbag Poems, Seattle Arts, Spindrift, Arts Focus, Arnazella, Dan River Anthology, Amelia, Americas Review, Vox, Middle House Review, The Closed Eye Open, Elevation Review, Montana Mouthful, Tidepools, and Wild Roof.

THE MONARCHS

by Roger Stoll

Soon, monarch butterflies that sipped nectar in your backyard will heed an ancient call. These tiny, black and orange insects will rise high in the air, hitch a ride on the thermal updrafts and fly until they reach their winter home in a Mexican forest, 2,000 miles away. Climate change has also taken a toll, Sarikonda said. Drought kills milkweed and other pollinator plants; cold snaps keep caterpillars in that stage longer, leaving them more vulnerable to predators, she said. Steps toward helping the monarchs are showing progress. Many parks and nature centers hold programs in the fall asking volunteers to help catch and tag monarchs so that scientists can gather data about their migration habits. —Julie Washington, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 9, 2015. Photo credit: Katharine Auld Breece.

The Monarchs have returned.
It’s taken them four generations,
but they made it;
a few of them anyway,
fewer by a quarter, by a half.

Their overwintering forests
have been logged and burned.
The climate is too hot,
drying out the eggs, cooking the larvae.
Milkweed, the larvae’s only food, has been decimated by herbicides.

This time they’ve come prepared.
They picked up what they could along the way,
balancing it on fragile bodies
suspended beneath spectacular wings:
helmets, blast-proof armor, grenades, light arms.

They’re not going quietly this time.
After a few weeks,
once they’ve copulated, laid their eggs,
and before they die,
they plan to take a few of us with them.


Roger Stoll is a retired music teacher living in San Rafael, California.

NO WAY BACK

by David Chorlton

Image source: Mars One

            "To me, when someone asks, 'why would you want to go?'

            all I can think of is, why wouldn't you want to go?" she added.

                                    -Leila Zucker, one of the 100 Mars One finalists

                                    selected to train for a mission to Mars

A room is waiting

in a place where the wind

has nothing to hold on to,

where it’s colder than Fargo

at Christmas and the atmosphere

is so thin there’s never any rain,

just an occasional shower of snowflakes

that turn into illusions

before they can touch ground.

It has a bunk that rocks on thunder,

windows so small they reveal

only specks of the surroundings,

and furnishings in a gray

that chills the eye. This

                                      could be home

for anyone seeking answers

to questions a monk once asked

in his medieval cell. Voices

marinated in persuasion

offer invitations to be a part

of history . . . to inspire people

around the world and make

isolation as attractive

as embarking on a tour with all

meals provided, time to relax

and read, play games, write, paint

 work out in the gym, watch TV,

use the Internet, contact friends at home

as life becomes more and more

like fingering a tiny device with a screen

to busy your hands while sitting

on a bus you can never get off.

Who has what it takes

                                never to return?

Who will seek claustrophobia

in the midst of boundless

space? Who has what it takes . . .

Who believes our future

cannot be confined

we must explore and look up
court death by radiation

                                        or life

so deep in boredom

the only consolation

is that . . . . the future

belongs to those who believe

in the beauty of their dreams

                                              even

if the dreams come quietly

and turn into a nightmare

at the moment

of the ultimate goodbye,

in realizing a particular tree is the last

you’ll ever see; the mailman

won’t stop at your house again;

you’ll never hold money, hear

sparrows, go out

to a restaurant meal. Rivers

will finally have flowed off the edge

of the Earth, we’ll be back

to the first of all questions: where

are we from? As if the answer

could be found by going

where nobody belongs.


David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.

INTERIOR

by Dale Ritterbusch

Image source: U.S. Air Force

Two dogs bark back and forth, a common
interruption in summer, but this a cold
night in March, still a foot, maybe more, of snow
on the ground.  He listens, stops thinking
for a moment, turns back to his book,
but nothing holds his attention.  Returned from
a long trip to the interior of a place
he had never been before, he
wants to reflect yet at the same time rid himself
of everything he’d seen: a man bit by a venomous snake
who just sat down and waited;
long worms white and thin as spaghetti
swimming like sea snakes in the drinking water;
bodies carved with machetes,
their limbs swelled in the sun like bratwurst;
and children living in the ruins
of a colonial mission, suspicion in their eyes
when any adult walked near.  These were all
things he’d known or heard of before, of course,
no matter where he traveled or when.  Field workers,
maimed and limbless because of mines, neglect, political
philosophy, it didn’t matter.  Better to stay home
and read about the world, to let considered reflection
or a splendid forgetting get in the way,
like that small boy in the road
the convoy didn’t brake for, because no one
stops for anything in that place


Dale Ritterbusch is the author of two collections of poetry, Lessons Learned (1995) and Far From the Temple of Heaven (2005).  He is a Professor of Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he teaches creative writing and literature.  Currently he is the Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English & Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy.