OVERHEARD AT THE SPHERE IN LAS VEGAS DURING DEAD AND CO.’S SPRING RUN 2025

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

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

Fascism will seem inevitable long after
it arrives, or perhaps it’s the waiting
for fascism that is inescapable; you  
anticipate the pristine, diamond-fast, 
inconvertible moment of its advent 
like it’s Jesus, beveled and prismatic,
a milestone through which we’ll channel
every event of your circumscribed life.
Where were you, your grandchildren 
will ask, when coffee began to taste
off, fruits rotted faster, the lustrous effects
of oysters were outlawed because the flesh 
offended the tongue of the great leader
with a nano-speck of sand as though he
possessed the sensitivity of a prince asleep
on a mattress supported on the backs 
of loyal constituents, or because of his
unnatural disgust for the aboriginal environment. 
What if we applied the same terminology 
for fascists that we reserve for drug addicts,
a population jonesing for an authoritative
figure who will lead them by the nose
to their next hit, rush, or fix, of being 
totally dominated? You should be open 
with your children about your past drug
use, but not your present prescriptions, 
nor your plan of ditching your citizenship
while you wait out fascism in a foreign
nation, surreptitiously monitoring a
short-wave radio you pieced together
from bits and bobs of old door posts, 
vacuum cleaners and military regalia. 
Someday we might look back at this
interregnum with a glazed fascination,
although there’s no guarantee it will pass,
considering we no longer have communal
experiences, only niche encounters shared
among an ever-tightening cadre of familiars, 
like certain therapies or twisting the knife 
once it’s sunk into the rose of the bone, 
the sound of incursion is ever more gratifying. 

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, four full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. She lives in New York, yearns for her hometown of Los Angeles, and visits Las Vegas when Dead and Co. plays there.

TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND BRAIN ROT

by Bonnie Proudfoot

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

Don’t tell me you spent all your allowance 

on comic books, or you used to stay up until 

daybreak, your knees shaping a tent under 

the covers, a weak flashlight, Superman, 

Supergirl, Batman, Spidey and the mutants, 

the whole gang rotting your brain, your eyes too. 

Did you stash your valor between the mattress 

and box spring, your rotting brain leaping tall buildings 

at a single bound, ready to keep evil at bay, fighting 

for, oh, truth, justice, and the American way.

 

Did you heft yourself out of bed on time 

for first period, or did your rotten brain let you 

snooze, then snooze some more? Did it make you 

listen to rock ‘n roll, sing "Sympathy for the Devil" 

as you walked to school? Did it know what 

"Satisfaction" really meant? And so what if 

your brain did rot? Blotchy, dark, and spongy, 

a not-so-fresh potato, or cottage cheese 

in the back of the fridge with curds of green mold 

lacing through? Would it rot all at once? Or 

one day no rot, one day riddled, one day a lot? 

 

So here you are, it’s minutes before midnight, 

kryptonite closing in, fascists tunnelling 

into Fort Knox, your knees a tent under 

the saggy covers, nothing left to lose. You’re 

scrolling through headlines at a single bound, 

seeking truth and seeking justice, index finger 

on your phone tapping with the dexterity 

of the Incredible Hulk threading a needle, 

the fate of the free world to defend,

secretly shouting Shazam, pushing send.

Bonnie Proudfoot's fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart. Her novel Goshen Road (OU Swallow Press) was the WCONA Book of the Year and long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway. Household Gods a poetry chapbook, was published in 2022 (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). A full-length poetry collection, Incomer, is forthcoming on Shadelandhouse Modern Press. Bonnie resides in Athens, Ohio.

MARSH GAS

by Martha Deed

“The court will set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned.”

—Hon. Tanya Chutkan, Groundhog Day 2024

Usually the worse it is

the longer I take

to say anything about it

but today

is not one of those days

Today is not a shock

Today rests upon absence of surprise

after decades of seeking fruit from the tree of justice

and finding only sick worms and fungi

feeding upon the softened spoiled

core of a tree failing to thrive

in a rotting swamp

that exploded long ago

as anyone knows

who was wronged in a lower court

say—family court

where a child’s future

was dangled over

the bubbling glop

so that even when

a rotten judge was later removed

it was too late for the child

and for at least one parent

or from a class

(yes, “class” in the United States)

whose voice is smothered in the court

while the other is entitled

(yes, “entitled” in the United States)

to call the shots in wars designed

to defeat the weaker class

through unequal monetary weaponry

and finding oneself trapped at the bottom of a bog

while the wealthier ones walk away

Justice like rich organic matter

sinks to the bottom

then deprived of oxygen

rises to the top

forms a hard crust

that leaves justice

trapped below

for the bottom feeders

Anoxic gases bubble to the surface

and singe the air

A thick crust of contaminate

preserves deep destruction

as marsh gas in the court grows and stinks

So it is that spoiled judges

rise through the judicial system

and prevail

We who have seen the lower courts

stood close enough to smell the smell

we knew this would happen

that it would lead to a decision that

rots to form a crust that prevents

oxygen from reaching

the organic material trapped below*

i.e. unthinkable

not merely spoiled

Poisoned

*Marsh gas.

Martha Deed’s third poetry collection Haunted By Martha was released by FootHills Publishing, July 2023. She has published ten books (poetry, mixed media, non-fiction) and ten chapbooks along with inclusion in more than 20 poetry anthologies. Individual poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Earth’s Daughters, First Literary Review—East, Shampoo, Gypsy, and many others.

WHAT TO DO WITH MY DEAD BODY

by Lois Wickstrom

At his funeral, CJ looked as if he would sit up and laugh when he thought we had grieved enough. He wore his best suit and his best grin. But he never ate a bite of the food we brought. Nobody alive could have resisted that long. Nobody is that good at playing dead.

The casket, the rented hall. It’s all theater. Being dead doesn’t require props or an audience. When I’m dead I don’t want anybody to doubt it.

My mother was cremated, at the lowest priced place she could find in the yellow pages. My brother sprinkled her ashes beside one of her favorite mountain streams.

The smoke from cooking her dead body turned the air gray. I do not want my last act to be pollution.

At the green burial grounds, each corpse is wrapped in a shroud of cotton, and buried six feet under.

I like the idea of being eaten by worms. My corpse does not need a room of its own.

During the yellow fever, more than 10,000 bodies were piled up and buried together in what is now the parking lot where I worship. Being dead has not changed. Being buried means the same.

After embalming wears off, caskets corrode, and worms eat us, we will all become fertilizer.

Why wait?

As soon as I’m dead, throw my remains in the composter. Twirl the knob and spread my loam in the nearby woods. When all my organic parts have been consumed by new growth, layer new dead above me. And let them rot.

Lois is a former science teacher. She has written a series of science-based folktales, and turned some of them into plays. In each modernized tale, the protagonist achieves a better ending because of learning scientific principles. Lois likes to garden, ride her bike with her husband, cook, and she votes in every election.

UKRAINE HAIKU

by G. R. Kramer

On May 20, Dmytro Kozatskyi, a soldier of the #Azov Regiment posted his photos of the defenders of #Mariupol, calling on the world media and those who can help to distribute them. "Well, that's all. Thank you for the shelter; Azovstal is the place of my death and life. See you".

all across the road

blood of butchered                  root in cracks

seed of black spring             bloom

 

weapon

 

below white flowers

we lie with the fray of bees

nowhere people are

 

child

 

mir meant peace to both

when trees leafed over laughter

now           stumps             stand    their     ground

 

      explosive

 

see how the flies help

keep down             the odor of rot

old men in ditches

 

witness

 

may the good endure

tanks missiles sunflowers plows

may the lost                    return

 

annihilate

 

family        stained             red

parlor tatters                      open sky

empty sniper eyes

 

artillery

 

war machines rust out

wind blown blood loam covers steppe

lily bulbs open

 

memory

 

when do nations live

empires feed         death to their dead

human history

 

for get       ting

 

mothers of soldiers

whose blood drains to the black sea

mothers of soldiers

 

G. R. Kramer grew up in Canada, Kenya and the U.S., the child of refugees from fascism and communism. A lawyer by vocation, his passion for writing poetry has rekindled in late middle-age. His first poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Finish Line Press and he has published in numerous journals. 

THE FISH ROTS

by Bruce Bennett

“Since when do Republicans care more about criminals in jail than the cops who put them there? Since when do they coddle domestic terrorists? Since Donald T***p. A new report in The Daily Beast shows how the fish rots from the big orange head.” —Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, July 31, 2021

How many hurt? How many dead? 

How many at that rotten core? 

The fish rots from the big orange head. 

 

How many let themselves be led 

by what they rightly should abhor? 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

 

What was it that he did and said? 

What is it that they now ignore? 

The fish rots from the big orange head. 

 

Who should have been in jail instead 

of causing riots most deplore? 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

 

How long are we to suffer dread 

as he pursues his sick, sick war? 

The fish rots from the big orange head 

 

Whose stink continues still to spread 

through regions none can now restore. 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

The fish rots from the big orange head! 

Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty poetry chapbooks. His most recent full-length book is Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems New and Selected, 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017). He was a co-founder and served as an editor of the literary journals Field and Ploughshares. From 1973 until his retirement in 2014, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at Wells College, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize.

KARMA PLUS

by David Radavich





See what pure narcissism
brings forth: a great rot
in the communal apple.

The body politic
spoils top to bottom
and back again.

Every inequity
becomes deadly
as a snake.

We have long since
been thrown out
of the garden.

We roam streets
like zombies
in search of medicine
and care.

How can we be
one family

and not hug
our neighbors
as ourselves?

Pathogens know
our vulnerabilities
and strike
with clear knives.

In the dark night

we become
what we do
for one another.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe.

SEASONS IMPEACHING

by Robert Knox

On the third day alone
I begin talking aloud to myself

Or, perhaps, I will eat myself to death
I wake at night
with the word necrosis
in my thoughts

What is it, oh what,
country of my soul
who will you eat yourself out of
given such rot?
Will you smell yourself
dying with putrefaction?

how can anyone be left alone
with their thoughts,
such thoughts,
when the rats nibble
at our toes

and bandits make
for our heart?

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of a novel based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, titled Suosso's Lane. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as Off The Coast, The Journal of American Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Califragile, and Unlikely Stories. His poetry chapbook Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty, published in 2017, was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. The chapbook Cocktails in the Wild followed in 2018. He was recently named the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.

EXAMPLE

by Salvador Díaz Mirón 
from his 1901 collection Lascas [Stone Chippings]; 
translation by Julie Steiner

Iraqi children giggle at the body of a half-buried Islamic State militant while talking to an Iraqi soldier in the al-Barid district in Mosul, Iraq. Photo: AP via Metro, December 19, 2016.

The flyblown corpses of Islamic State militants have been rotting along a main street in north Mosul for two weeks, a health risk for passersby.  . . . Islamic State has executed thousands of Iraqi soldiers and policemen, and their comrades are eager for revenge. "We leave them in the street like that so the dogs eat them," said soldier Asaad Hussein. "We also want the citizens to know there is a price for supporting terrorists.". . . A few streets away, a group of young boys walked towards three more Islamic State corpses. "The bodies should stay. Daesh killed lots of people so why should they be buried," said Salem Jamil, 13, . . . but a man who approached said the bodies should be buried because that is everyone's right. —“Iraqi forces wage psychological war with jihadist corpses” Reuters, February 6, 2017

Brandished from a tree-branch, the cadaver was decaying
as if it were a gruesome fruit still dangling from its stalk:
a testament to judgment whose absurdity would shock;
a pendulum intruding on the roadway with its swaying.

The nudity’s indecency, the stuck-out tongue displaying,
and hair that formed a jester’s coxcomb, lock by upright lock,
gave him a buffoonish look; and where my horse should walk,
a group of ragged children mocked, derisive laughter braying.

And the melancholy carcass, with its head inclined to yaw—
abominable, bloated, on a gibbet leafy-green—
spread odors on the breeze (which was a wind, in fact, and raw)

as it rocked with swings like censer-passes, solemn and serene.
And the sun went on ascending through a blue without a flaw,
and the landscape was idyllic, a Tibullus-lyric scene.


EJEMPLO
por Salvador Díaz Mirón (de su colección Lascas, 1901).


En la rama el expuesto cadáver se pudría,
como un horrible fruto colgante junto al tallo,
rindiendo testimonio de inverosímil fallo
y con ritmo de péndola oscilando en la vía.

La desnudez impúdica, la lengua que salía
y alto mechón en forma de una cresta de gallo,
dábanle aspecto bufo; y al pie de mi caballo
un grupo de arrapiezos holgábase y reía.

Y el fúnebre despojo, con la cabeza gacha,
escandaloso y tumido en el verde patíbulo
desparramaba hedores en brisa como racha,

mecido con solemnes compases de Turíbulo.

Y el sol iba en ascenso por un azul sin tacha,
y el campo era figura de una canción de Tíbulo.

Salvador Díaz Mirón (1853-1928) was a Mexican poet from Veracruz. Julie Steiner (1968- ) is a translator in San Diego, California.

I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU

by Rick Gray




                               
                       for Tony Hoagland


When real people shut down
their children go hungry
their lovers split
and they die or beg
between the simmering gridlock.

Or maybe they go rogue and
Invest in the promising heroin boom
to keep people fine with
Shut Downs.
But I've got news for you, Mr. Cruz,

even the junkies on the clogged riverside
here in Kabul----remember there?-------
know things shut down don't stop, they rot
and you'll need to score soon, brother, or feel
the shut down in your aching nerves

every fiscal second.


Rick Gray teaches in Kabul. He has work forthcoming in Salamander and the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock.

DIRE WARNINGS

by Linda Lerner

Image source: Linda Lerner

we were warned to keep away from strangers
to be suspicious of anyone not like us

people of other races and of different religions from ours
atheists and all free spirits especially artists

we were warned about sleeping in other people’s homes
eating food we weren’t familiar with

getting overexcited and too emotional about things
of danger lurking in sleep away camp and open road clubs

discouraged from swimming, bike riding getting too much sun
we were warned about touching ourselves and

of men who only wanted one thing
about drugs and sex and how “the more you get the more you want”

we were warned about many things
but nobody warned us about the trees

we played ring around the rosy under
that kept the sun from burning us

trees whose leaves dazzled us with color every autumn
infested with fungus or mold and dying of root rot

environmentalists sent out alarms with  predictions
we dismissed along with climate change as nonsense

nobody warned us that the trees would become killers
and uproot lifting up slabs of concrete from under us

break thru iron gates into homes flattening cars 
killing anyone in their way

nobody warned us…


Linda Lerner's Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (New & Selected Poems) is published by New York Quarterly Press.