The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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They call it football because you can only use your feet.
Though sometimes you can also use your head, your chest, your legs.
But you can’t use your hands. And you can’t use your arms.
Those are the rules.
They call it a kiss on the mouth because it’s a kiss on the mouth.
You can only kiss the mouth of someone with whom you are intimate.
A lover. A spouse. Sometimes also family.
Use your head.
That’s the rule. In all countries and in all languages.
True, it is an unwritten rule, but that’s no excuse for breaking it.
And now that you’ve broken it, Luis, now that you’re flaunting it
and famously showing your contempt for it,
you can be sure the rule will get written down after this.
And though you probably won’t end up in jail, you just may end up
giving your name to this kind of unwanted kiss. Even without your consent.
Because that’s the rule with eponyms.
Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.
after an April 20, 2023 Truthout op-ed written by Edwin Rubis
from a federal prison in the hills of Alabama
Author’s note:Edwin Rubis has served over 24 years of a 40-year sentence in federal prison for a conviction on marijuana charges.
Editor’s note: April 20, or 4/20 in its calendar denotation, is a holiday celebrated by many weed-smokers both in the United States and around the globe.
Gordon Gilbert is a poet and playwright living in NYC's west village.
Image Credits: Jim Watson/AFP/ (collage by TechCrunch) / Getty Images
You are free to stand on the sidewalk
with your thumbs up. You are free to like
this Tweet. You are free to boo silently.
You are free to clap loudly. You are free
to give me a dollar to vote in this poll.
You are free not to vote. You are free
to choose between silence and tinnitus.
You are free to leave. Here is the back
door. You are free to leave without a
goodbye. You are free to swallow
thumb tacks. You are free to live inside
this snake’s nest. You are free to
decide: hunger pains or cyanide.
You are free to give me another dollar
to vote in a new poll. You are free to know
nothing—I change this game at my whim.
You are free to play this game by my rules.
You are free to leave. You are free to
shut up and like this tweet. You are free
to comment well wishes. You are free
to correct my science—once. You are
free to be fired. You are free to leave.
Go stand outside. Sip some blue air.
Ponder the wide and winding road
that led us, somehow, here.
Alixa Brobbey spent portions of her childhood in The Netherlands and Ghana. She has a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where she won the Ethel Lowry Handley Poetry Prize in 2020. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Blue Marble Review, Segullah, Inscape, The Albion Review, The Susquehanna Review, The Palouse Review, The Exponent II, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and others. She is currently a law student at Brigham Young University.
George Salamon lives in America's "heartland," but even so he cannot tell if there is still enough in the heart and vision of Americans they can share and make known to those who look with contempt and condescension on "bleeding hearts."
Russian hackers are attempting to steal coronavirus vaccine research, the American, British and Canadian governments said Thursday, accusing the Kremlin of opening a new front in its spy battles with the West amid the worldwide competition to contain the pandemic. —The New York Times, July 16, 2020
never stops, there is no finish line
when combatants push each other out of the way
and hide their secret weapons in pockets
filled with lint
and when one pushes another down,
he robs what is in that pocket and sniffs
at it like a dog with a dead frog
and maybe takes a nibble just to see
but what if the rules called for
holding what you know in your hands
palms out offering to share
for the common good
so everyone crosses the line
at the same time or like the basket
you put your coins in at church
knowing they’re meant to help someone
else in the human race.
Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet hunkered in the deep woods. Her recent collection How I Learned To Be White received the 2018 Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry.
The Major League Baseball Players Association informed MLB on Saturday night that they are done negotiating and want an answer by Monday on how many games they’ll play and when to show up for work. —USA Today, June 13, 2020 In earlier news: Baseball released a thorough health and safety protocol to help protect its players during the 2020 MLB Season. But there’s one new rule that will certainly be tough to follow: No Spitting. —Fansided, May 22, 2020
Crude are the subtleties of the double play
compared to the majestic hock and graceful spray
of spittle professionally spurt. Slaver to
mound, slicking home plate—wet thwack
of saliva oiling well worn mitts. See that! I’d say
after a bulky loogie—caught on TV
back in the old days (last season). Leaping
from the couch, I’d grab the remote, hit
playback and slow-mo
the slobber projectile. Freeze frame
itsemergence, rising flight and Pollack splatter.
“See that cheek suck, check out that lips purse,
that thick tongue flick—that bountiful gush!”
O beautiful for spacious fly!
If you don’t understand the spit you don’t understand baseball.
If you don’t understand baseball go back to the shithole
you came from—to toss around today’s cheap seat
banter from the trash talker in chief.
Let the bowlers groan, yuk, eww, gag, groan, gross!
If you ban spittin’ seeds—you might as well outlaw outs,
strikes, fouls, hits. What’s next, Commissioner?
Crotch grabs and sack realignments?
It’s an American fan’s right to recount celebrities of sputter
and spew: Why, have a seat my child, I’ll tell ya
about Legendary Lefty the Lip
who could launch a loogie further than the Bambino’s
most prodigious rip and was every bit as accurate –
pointing out his expectorant’s dart, arc
and splash-down. O yes! To the very speck
of red dirt he’d swamp
with juicy Tennessee chaw—outta
both sides of his maw.
Not to your taste? Take a walk.
Good as a hit in the score book.
So, when you see a crappy pitch, take it, kid.
Like the old timers said, “just spit on it.” That’s how
the greats played this hard-scrabble, historic game.
It’ll be sad not to know shit about spit—
soon just a dried-up old asterisk. I for one
will rise from my chair - let the chips fall—
sing proud our national hymn
and hum a prayer:
Play ball againboys! But please take care—
we don’t want anyone hurt by squirt
in dirt or thin air. And remember it’s still legit—
here, my heart does thump—
behind your MLB approved Covid masks –
to holler, Kill the ump!
Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Salt Hill Journal, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Waxwing, The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily. He’s the author of two books of stories including Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). @michaelgrow
Members of a family reunite through the border wall between Mexico and United States, during the "Keep our dream alive" event, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico on December 10, 2017. Families separated by the border were reunited for three minutes through the fence that separates Ciudad Juarez Park in Mexico and Sunland in New Mexico, United States, during an event called "Keep our dream alive", organized by the Border Network for Human Rights on the International Human Rights Day. HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Texas Public Radio
In this poem, proper sentence
structure will be followed.
For example, sentences will start
with a capital letter and end
with a proper punctuation mark.
Sentences will be grammatically correct.
Some may say that this will likely detract
from the poem’s poetic quality,
but I’m not sure I can agree.
I’m also not sure real poems require words.
I italicize for emphasis.
For example, is an image held
in the mind of crying children—
of thousands of immigrant families
separated at the border—never
to be reunited, poetic?
Is the image symbolic and evokes
strong emotions? Is it repetitive
and sick at heart?
Are the precise words of one’s
internal dialogue describing the image
what make it poetic or not?
Can a number be a poem, or at least poetic?
Such as the title of this poem?
I will never think of “45” in the same way again.
Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, I am not a silent poet, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, the penmen review and elsewhere.
A record number of women—mostly Democrats, many of them galvanized by the threat the Trump administration poses to reproductive freedom—were swept into Congress during in the 2018 midterm elections. The results were still being tabulated on Wednesday when Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services quietly finalized two rules empowering employers, universities and nonprofits to refuse birth control coverage to women. A third rule, also announced Wednesday, would require insurers on the Affordable Care Act marketplace to charge women a separate monthly bill for abortion coverage—a change that advocates say would be so prohibitively expensive it could force insurers to stop offering the procedure altogether. —Rolling Stone, November 8, 2018. Photo: Supporters of birth control coverage rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on March 23, 2016. AFP/Getty Images via Vox.
Let prim employers only pay the bills
for men’s, not women’s, sex-related pills.
To interfere with impotence is fine,
but contraception counters God’s design.
Tell alpha males who spew their DNA
unchastely, “That’s not good, but that’s okay.”
Defend those men too strong for self-control.
Let boys be boys. Virility’s their role.
Be sure to slut-shame women who decide
to not end unplanned pregnancies. Deride
those harlots. Praise the girls you think are pure.
Imply it’s best they seek a secret cure
in trouble, since they won’t have your support.
Keep up your “pro-life” pressure to abort.
Gemma Peters writes in Rancho Peñasquitos, California.
For once a year a level playing field
obtains for millions of us baseball fans.
No legislation works like bats men wield
for getting us to join disparate hands
in making sure the same ground work is done
that candidates are loath to do. One ump
enforces rules until the game is won.
Nor is there fear the losing team can trump
the outcome. Players get to base on balls
that otherwise are wanting in some pay
to play receivers heeding donor’s calls,
instead of those constituents convey.
And universal suffrage simply means
that all have access to their tv screens.
Born & bred in New Jersey, Frank De Canio works in New York. He loves music from Bach to Dory Previn, Amy Beach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.
Don’t ask about earth science
Don’t ask about the poor
Don’t ask about one’s conscience
Such thinking is a chore.
Don’t ask about The Street
Don’t ask about the schools
Don’t ask about deceit
Such issues break our rules.
Do ask if we like kittens
Do ask about the wife
Do ask if we like mittens
Such questions about life.
Do ask if we hate taxes
Do ask if we pray daily
Do ask if we love crises
Such issues never foil us because we always behave like totally deranged assholes
—stupidly.
Ralph La Rosa lives in southern California where he daydreams and writes.
French economist Thomas Piketty has spurned the Legion of Honour, the country’s highest distinction, on the grounds that the government should not decide who is honourable. Piketty, author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which has become compulsory reading for world leaders, added: “They’d be better off concentrating on boosting growth in France and Europe.” --The Guardian, January 1, 2015
after Thomas Piketty
In the space between profit and economic rent
the wood of the forest grows to have a price placed
on it. Who is to pay for the license to gather it?
The owner comes to realize his land is earning more
than he is. He lines up a string of assets to
satisfy conditions for maintaining the wealth effect.
The rate of return on capital (r) is bigger in
the room than any of the tables and chairs,
the knives and forks, the working doors on cabinets.
Everyone sits down to eat and secretly they
are served by the incorrigible invisible hand
that has been replaced by the hand that grabs
and is giving the middle class the middle finger.
What is wealth doing now? No one seems to know.
It travels into safe crevices that are not
upset by light. It goes by the name of anonymous
and hypnosis. It is surreptitious and tries its best to
reinvest where its privilege won't be revealed.
If someone understands how to apply a tax to it,
in just a moment it will melt again into the dark.
The amount of economic growth (g) measured
between the polar caps will always lag behind
the impact of a good amount of capital
whose managerial class will rise to the apex
of steadfast vigilance. They shepherd funds
across the borders to come to peaceful rest
in their blessed state of inheritance.
Work hard, play by the rules, and you get a stake
in the outcome. But that notion is so passé.
The holders of debt have foreclosed on the government.
Run for the hills and take your children with you.
Build a bunker. Get a gun. Are there any ideas that
can prevail in this cynical age, in this grim era of discipline?
Tim Kahl is the author of Possessing Yourself (CW Books, 2009) and The Century of Travel (CW Books, 2012). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Mad Hatters' Review, Indiana Review, Metazen, Ninth Letter, Sein und Werden, Notre Dame Review, The Really System, Konundrum Engine Literary Magazine, The Journal, The Volta, Parthenon West Review, Caliban and many other journals in the U.S. He appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinup and the poetry video blog Linebreak Studios. He is also editor of Bald Trickster Press and Clade Song. He is the vice president and events coordinator of The Sacramento Poetry Center. He also has a public installation in Sacramento {In Scarcity We Bare The Teeth}. He currently houses his father's literary estate—one volume: Robert Gerstmann's book of photos of Chile, 1932.
There’s something in the rules, I guess, to make
them brave the scene, dead pale, beside the jerk,
because they all endure it; none will shirk
the role, not one has said, Give me a break, you asshole, can’t you tell how much I ache – you’re on your own – instead, she takes her place
and stands there, shaking, life drained from her face
as hubby asks the world for time and space.
There is no way, José, I am forewarned, you’d ever see me shame myself like that.
I change the channel, give her knee a pat,
suppress a little joke on women scorned.
I'd like to think she’d stand by me, but still,
I’ve never run for office, never will.
Michael Cantor’s full-length collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry. A chapbook, The Performer, was published in 2007; and his work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Measure, New Verse News, Raintown Review, SCR, Chimaera, The Flea, and numerous other journals and anthologies. He was also a finalist for the Nemerov (twice), Richard Wilbur and Robert Penn Warren poetry competitions; and has won the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford prizes. A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe, and presently resides on Plum Island, north of Boston on the Massachusetts coast.
