THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN

A Prose Poem

by Howie Good

President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia concluded their summit in Alaska on Friday without declaring agreement on any issue, much less the one Mr. Trump said was at the top of his agenda, ending the war in Ukraine. —The New York Times, August 15. 2025

The other day I saw a bald eagle for only the second time in my life. It soared over the treeline on the far side of the marsh. Almost in the same instant that I recognized it from its distinctive silhouette, it was gone, our national bird, symbol of strength and freedom. We are entering the last days of summer. Some of the plants I planted in the spring never grew, and the plants that did grow have begun dying. I dread the coming winter, a hulking, red-eyed monster roving streets of blackened ruins.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. 

I DREAMED LAST NIGHT

by Gordon Gilbert

Mile Stretch Road, Fortunes Rocks, Maine. Photo by the poet.

I Dreamed Last Night
of Mile Stretch Road and of a world to come,
perhaps only after I myself am gone,
but perhaps in my remaining years.  
 
I dreamed last night
that I was walking south
along a down-east beachside stretch
of crumbling asphalt.
 
On either side the road lay only ruins
where once stood so many houses
up and down the beach,
like all those visited behind
and not so far ahead,
what I feared I’d soon see.
 
But then I saw the colors
blue and red and white
on wooden boards covering a window
in all that still remained of a beach house,
and I walked over for a closer look
and realized why all this came to be: 
It was the end of immigration,
as the nation forgot
that it was the immigrants
who made this country great.
  
It was end of the commons,
as all had been privatized,
further enriching the already rich,
further depriving the already deprived.
 
In the end, it was the end
of all that we once had,
the end of the American dream. 


Gordon Gilbert is a writer living in the west village in NYC, who finds solace in walks along the Hudson River, even while contemplating with trepidation another new year of climate change and political mayhem.  

DISCOURSE FLAMED OUT

by Kenneth Johnson

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

Words once enlightening,
now smoldering on a trash heap,
thoughts unraveled like smoke
rising, intertwined, undecipherable.
The air, thick with thieves,
is a place where meaning
crumbles, dissolves
before it can be formed.
Voices that once nurtured
dialogue now carefully hone 
their obsidian edges.
Once, we built conduits,
word by word,
constructed to withstand scrutiny,
to span great divides.
Now, we stand at the ruins,
watching the remnants 
flicker out into darkness.
Discourse flamed out,
the ashen particles
becoming less dense
as they float aimlessly,
finally disappearing.

Kenneth Johnson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and visual artist living in Claremont, California. He is the author of the chapbook Molten Muse.

A TOMATO FOR JOSEPH

by Liz Rose Shulman

Haidar Eid’s book available for pre-order today; shipping tomorrow from LeftWord Books.

Note: The following poem adapts language from Haidar Eid’s Facebook page, with his permission. He is currently trapped in Gaza. Haidar Eid is an Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. As of this writing, he is alive. 
 
 
I am standing over the ruins of a house in Gaza City 
peering at the horizon
 
Please don’t let our posts go unnoticed 
This is the only alternative we have 
 
Where is Abu Muhammad
under the rubble
Where is Muhammad’s mother
under the rubble
Where is Muhammad
under the rubble
 
I’ve just received the long awaited news of my book while I am trying to stay alive
LeftWord Books is publishing my latest work 
Decolonising the Palestinian Mind
 
My former student Samah Eid has risen
“My heart is ripped out of my ribs.”
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
They need Palestinian fig leaves 
Sorry, I don’t feel like doing that 
There are others who are more equipped to deal with that.
 
I am a South African Palestinian literature professor in Gaza right now, 
with a wife 
and two small daughters
 
My kind dentist, artist Oraib Rayyes has risen
My colleague and co-founder
of the Department of English
at Al-Aqsa University, 
Abdul Rahman Elhour, has risen 
with 14 members of his family.
 
Some are still under the rubble
 
My friend, ex-student Khalil Abu Yahya, has risen
with his wife, Tasnim 
and two daughters
 
This was my home
 
Where is Salwa
under the rubble
Where is Magda
under the rubble
Where is Mahmoud
under the rubble
 
Where is the rest of the family at
 
Nine members of my family were killed today
One man 
three women 
and five children
 
Progressive activist friend, mother of Prince Samira Rafiqah, 
Our friend Em ElAmeer Samira has risen
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
On the hospital floor
wounded children sit next to their injured mother
one aids her as she receives treatment after a bombing
of a family’s home in the Gaza Strip
 
Why would any country vote,
even veto, 
against a humanitarian ceasefire
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
The home is a lover
A woman who has feelings for you 
and for whom you have feelings.
She is you and you are her. 
There are no boundaries 
No separation
When the home is demolished 
something within you dies.
The sweet story of Youssef Al-Baydani as narrated by his mother: 
“Mom, I’m hungry, I want to eat.
Don’t be afraid, my love, 
I will make you a pan of tomato
I went out to the house of Um Mahmoud, my neighbor, 
in search of a tomato 
to quench Joseph’s hunger,
hoping to find a tomato for Joseph. 
I waited at the door for Joseph to come back from school every day 
I waited for him 
in front of the door every day 
welcomed him with my arms
and a tomato grill that he loves.
How can I wait anymore when Joseph is no longer here
How can a mother protect her son in war?”
 
In this house, a woman lived with her husband 
three sons 
and three daughters. 
They had also provided refuge to relatives from northern Gaza 
who had been displaced
 
Besan was a third-year medical student 
she loved her cat 
Besan was killed with all her family and her cat
 
The young columnist of We Are Not Numbers, Yousef Dawas, has risen
along with his entire family.
He attended my lecture on Postcolonial literature last month.
A few months ago he wrote the article 
“Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”
 
“I wish my eyes were a sea
where my eyelids could dwell.”
 
In 2014, I performed “Love in the Time of Genocide” 
adapted from a poem 
by the late Egyptian poet Abdul Rahim Mansour. 
 
What we need for literature 
and literary criticism 
is a critique of institutional thought
by offering an alternative
 
A will written by a little girl from Gaza via Anat Matar:
“My name is Haya and I will write my will now.
My money: 45 for my mother, 5 for Zeina, 5 for Hashem,
5 for my grandma, 5 for Aunt Heba and five for Aunt Mariam, 5 for Uncle Abdo and Aunt Sarah
My toys and all my stuff: for my friends Deema, Menna, and Amal, and Zeina (my sister)
My clothes: to my uncle’s daughters and if there’s anything left, donate them
My shoes: donate them to the poor and vulnerable
after washing them, of course.”
 
To white, mainstream media
As per my cardiologist’s instructions, plz do not call me
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
They need Palestinian fig leaves 
Sorry, I don't feel like doing that 
There are others who are more equipped to deal with that.

Liz Rose Shulman’s work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Review, Mondoweiss, The Smart Set, and Tablet Magazine, among others. She teaches English at Evanston Township High School and in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago. 

FAR FROM HIM I WATCH A UKRAINIAN SURVIVOR ON THE NEWS

by Therése Halscheid

A man carries water bottles as he crosses a destroyed bridge in the frontline town of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, on Oct. 27, 2022, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. —VOA

He has stopped fearing the sirens, stopped running for shelter,

is now carrying a pail to a crater a Russian missile made.

The crater has filled with muddied water. 

You see him fetching a pail’s worth from the blown out earth.

See him lugging it along the road to Odessa, on the road to Odessa 

you see his back hunched, his legs barely hurrying. 

You do not see any other, only ruins and stacked tires

as well as anti-tank hedgehogs barricading the street.

I want to say to him: the wind knows your face.

It carries the look of others, it has knowledge, the wind does, 

and power enough to change his fate, want to share 

the wind is the bringer of things he cannot imagine 

it is the collector of thoughts and blows them

tirelessly about the world.

Want to say the air wears our collective consciousness

even if hardly anyone believes this can be. 

Whatever is given to the wind the wind willingly carries. 

I want to tell him: work with the wind. 

The softest touch is the finger of wind, feel its peace

at work, for it is our work, what we have been sending. 

Therése Halscheid's poetry and lyric essays have won awards and have been published in several magazines, among them The Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, Sou’wester, South Loop. Her poetry collection Frozen Latitudes (Press 53) received an Eric Hoffer Book Award. Other collections include Uncommon Geography, Without Home, and a Pudding House Press Greatest Hits chapbook.

DEFINITIONS

by Ben Prostine

Laura Contreras protests in Cincinnati, Ohio against President Trump's declaration of national emergency. ALBERT CESARE, The Cincinnati Enquirer via USA TODAY Network

A state of emergency is not the same thing as a
catastrophe, or a disaster. The key is in the first word.
It is the state in emergency. And it means certain things

emerge: off shore drills and coast guard ships,
the strip mine and the strip search and digital fingerprints –
an administrative task force on ad hoc prisons

and job destruction in the public sphere: more
security guards, more border patrols, customs and police
forces in-vested in military garb while a new design

for a portable bullet proof wall is engineered
and investments rise in razor wire stock. The day ends
with the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq looking up.

But disaster – that’s something different, older, astral.
It’s written in the stars, in fate, in sense: burning up
the bowels of the earth means bringing in a rising tide.

And catastrophe just takes us downward. The drama
of the state comes to its off-script denouement as
the choir desires to enter the theater once more.

The propped walls come down. Speech turns from
the ten thousand screens and returns to the streets, the fields,
something common: a world to be turned upside down

and rooted: this one round burning earth to be made green
again. A solidarity in the ruins, a power in the light –
out of disaster and catastrophe, emerging sprouts.

Ben Prostine lives near Soldiers Grove in southwest Wisconsin where he works as a herdsman, farm hand, and writer. He is the host of Poems Aloud!, a forthcoming radio program airing on WDRT (Viroqua, WI).

LEAVING ALEPPO

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

An older man was evacuated from a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, December 15, 2016

single line they walk
besieged eyes merely looking forward
forward one step in front of another
tired beyond tired
fatigued beyond fatigued
weary beyond weary
their sorrow faceless like themselves
their burden a city of ruins
they will carry forward
in their eyes their hearts
forward one step in front of another

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem to be published in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin.  Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

HOW DECISIONS ARE MADE

by Martin Willitts Jr

Image source: The Craftinomicon

based on “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” Picasso, 1907, and Fox News

Gossip twists the truth, distorts the facts
into unrecognizable shapes
into five Picasso women in Avignon.

If a person says enough lies, exactly the same,
all the time, too many people
accept it as truth. But a lie is still a lie.

And like the distorted women, brutalized
beyond recognition, gossip is
an art form that changes what was.

Ruins are still ruins. The person destroyed
must shift through the rubble of their lives.
Somewhere, underneath, smolders the truth.


Martin Willitts Jr has been nominated for 6 Pushcart and 6 Best Of The Net awards. He has 5 full-length and 20 chapbooks of poetry, including the  2013 national contest winner, Searching For What Is Not There (Hiraeth Press). He has been in The New Verse News before.