GRACE IN MINNEAPOLIS IN THE AGE OF ICE

by Barbara Draper

It’s afternoon as I sit looking out the library window— 

across the street a testy wind snaps a line-up of flags— 

 

the first for Ukraine, the next to remember the MIAs and POWs, 

the next to bring them home, and finally, an American flag.

 

Earlier this morning as I stood on a corner, a whistle 

around my neck, on look-out for ICE,

 

an Hispanic mom, holding her daughter’s hand, 

walking her safely to school, 

 

passes by, touches my sleeve 

and thanks me. 

 

Me of the privileged, white variety, 

grandmotherly, sure in my safety. 

 

Tears welled up— 

for her or for me? 

 

The unfairness, the enigma, the grace she gave 

with her great big heart. She touching me.

Barbara Draper’s poems have been published in Poetry East, Potomac Review, Rust + Moth and Sow’s Ear. She has authored one book of poems, Sometimes a Door. She lives in the Minneapolis area and is active in climate change work as well as running after three grandchildren.

QUESTIONS

by Katy Z. Allen

Cartoon by Clay Jones

President Donald Trump declared Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world. –The New York Times, January 8, 2026

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread out… —Exodus 1:12
 
asking yourself a question / that's where resistance starts // and then asking someone else, the same question —Remco Campert, "Someone Asks the Question"

The money began to disappear

and the people, 

adherence to the law,

whether ours or everyone’s,

environmental protection,

childcare and other services,

a sense of safety and security,

more money,

more people.

The killing and wounding began—

always with an explanation—

adherence to personal morality alone 

prevailed.

Yet questions were spoken,

whispered and shouted, 

in the open and behind closed doors, 

among friends and in public, 

on airwaves and in cyberspace,

by children and by grandparents, 

by the energized and by the exhausted,

in solitude or to another

question were repeated, 

multiplied 

and spread out,

until 

they were on the lips of every caring woman 

and child 

and man,

every caring human being.

And that was the moment that led,

in the end,

to the beginning.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, poet, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, former healthcare chaplain, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, and eco-chaplain. She has been writing in one context or another all her life. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in print and online in such places as Amethyst Review, The New Verse News, The Bluebird Word, Cosmic Daffodil, and Art on the Trails: Number 9. Her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.

SCHOOL WELLNESS TIPS

by Andrew G. Scott

Here’s a hack

from the school counselor

to stay positive this year.

“Include personal wellness goals

in your passwords.”

Great idea.

DoNotGetShotInSchool26!

Andrew G. Scott is a pen name for a public school teacher who has decided to share an inside view of public education in the United States.

WHEN OUR SOLES WERE BARED

by Lisa Seidenberg

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

The Transportation Safety Administration will allow passengers at airports across the country to keep their footwear on as they go through security checkpoints, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters Tuesday. —NBC News, July 8, 2025

First, you think of the man 

who may be seated directly in front of you,

most likely in the aisle seat.

He removes his shoes

and detonates a device that

rips a massive cavity in the plane.

A calamity of destruction, if it happens.

Now your eyes focus

on the security line, all of us bobbing

like impatient concert-goers at

the entrance to a stadium.

We all know the drill, observe

the youngsters padding in anklets,

business men in dress socks,

the stylish women with footwear 

printed with tropical fruit

or emojis or happy animals.

And the unfortunate ones who wore

the pair with a hole in the toe.

It brings back the trip with my grandmother

to Bloomies for shoes and her look 

of horror at my sorry worn-out socks.

Laptops and shoes in the conveyer bin,

in our soft feet, we enter the sacred space 

of the screening capsule, humbled and quiescent

as if entering a Japanese shrine.

Once cleared to recover our shoes,

we feel a private relief that we are safer now.

No harm will come from anyone in this line.

We’ve all had our communal foot baring,

our moment of bonding, a quick 

but meaningful intimacy

which we are now informed 

was an unnecessary and pointless action,

after all.

 Lisa Seidenberg is a 2025 Pushcart nominee. She is a writer and filmmaker residing in coastal Connecticut. Her writing is published in Rattle, Atticus Review, The New Verse News, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Delta Poetry Review, and others. Her documentaries and poetry films screened at Sundance, London, Athens and Berlin International Film Festivals.

GRAVITY WILL GET US

by Alan Walowitz

“Just last night, there were shots fired outside of Temple Israel in Albany. And just yesterday, the menorah of Chabad Sunset Park in Brooklyn was vandalized.”  —Mayor Eric Adams, December 8, 2023

Some of us are willing to wait
till our native caution fails  
on the worn and slippery stairs.
No matter our disparate falls 
in the garden, or the desert, the reclaimed land,
or holding the safe door tight, 
against the next volley.  
It all becomes so much the same
in the short history of you and me. 
Today it’s news, tomorrow we’re gone. 
Who has the will to study and learn,
as Torah demands, such a short stay?.   
 
Everyone’s bound to fall,
even the lithe and balletic among us 
give way to age and our own sad shuffling.
Some will make a thud when we hit the ground, 
some a noise of lesser note,
as we learn, again, as if we didn’t know, 
this is not a movie. 
No shot, no bang, no dying fall.
Sometimes a shatter will sound
before we get the sharp reminder
what the slimmest shard might do.
 
Let me hide in plain sight long as I can—
I’ll agree to shut my mouth for now.
My forebears knew how to sound grateful,
and content, the price for being taken in. 
But one dyspeptic uncle, always a stranger,
warned never to feel safe—even here,
in The Golden Land.
Hah! his voice-- though not heard for years--
now rings like an alarm in my ears:
Boychik, you just wait and see. 

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

SOCIOBIOLOGICAL

by Tom Bauer

E.O. Wilson, famed entomologist and pioneer in the field of sociobiology, dies at 92.

It’s safe to say. It's like the species does

what others do, but quickly, consciously,

aware of what it does while doing it,

like caterpillars on the dying edge;

the lava comes, the inner circle’s safe;

above it rains, they’re safe below, beneath

the layers of others, those who will go first,

who'll dive off leaves into the drowning ground.

The finest traits in all the kingdom are

amassed and ready in the mass, to move,

adapt, the speed of thought, instant meta

class of entity, biology, human,

bipedal feces-maker, building wide

a grand estate of armor-plated lies.

Tom Bauer grew up playing violin and listening to spoken word recordings. When he was ten, he rashly announced he was going to be a poet. He did a bunch of university and stuff. He's had some poems published. He lives in Montreal and plays board games.

STRIKE

by Katie Kemple

We placed the blue trash can

and the green recycling bin

filled with the detritus

leading up to Christmas

in front of our townhouse

garage, like we always do,

and our neighbors too, and

they stayed there, all the way up to

and well past Christmas,

past New Years. The brown

cardboard boxes of mail-ordered

gifts stuck their tongues out

at us, papers glued like stickers

to the pavement courtesy

of the rain, and the sanitation

drivers never came. The neighbors

built cities of empty boxes.

Shrimp skins haunted us.

We wore yesterday's diapers.

The CEO of the sanitation

company makes 154 times

the pay of his average employee:

twelve-million dollars a year. 

Crows swung down to feast

on the new year's abundance. 

Katie Kemple (she/her) is a poet, parent, and consultant based in San Diego. Her work has appeared recently in Longleaf Review, The West Review, and The Shore Poetry. 

A MESSAGE FROM HOMELAND SECURITY TO ALL NEIGHBORHOOD HOMEOWNERS

by Randy Mazie

We’re breaking into your homes though inconvenient it might be.
We’re going to make sure that you’re as “safe as safe can be.”

We’ve reports of violent protests around your neighborhood.
Yet as far as we can see, your family is good.

If you’ve any family members who could act out violently.
We may cart them off in unmarked cars. guilty prima facie.

This would be for their protection, again “safety is the key.”
And if no one knows where they’re taken, they’re as “safe as safe can be.”

Please do not tell anyone, because our operation you’d jeopardize.
We strongly urge you to keep quiet—talking would not be wise!

Again, we do this for your safety. We’re sure you understand
that the actions that we’re taking secure all Der Homeland.

Randy Mazie wanders the North Georgia Mountains after living in South Florida and growing up in New York City. He’s had the best of all color-filled worlds: the Big Apple, the Balmy Orange and now the Beautiful Blue Ridge. He has Master's Degrees in Social Work from Columbia University and Business Administration from Barry University. His non-fiction has been published in professional journals, fiction in Defenestration, and poetry in numerous media including Light, The MacGuffin, DASH, and the Anthology of Transcendent Poetry, Cosmographia Books, 2019.

PLACES OF SAFETY

by Pepper Trail

"There Is No Safe Place" by Amanda Lea Sidor

Iowa small town, the Methodist sanctuary, stained glass and bright wood
The scent of lilies,  smiling voices loud, "Great is Thy Faithfulness"

Pizza place down the block, always busy, orders shouted backward
Line at the counter, stomachs growling good, quick hit of gossip

Bear curled in its den, cubs asleep and suckling, living warmth
Above, outside, snow shadow of Denali climbing the white sky

Lafayette Park, high school groups, hormones and democracy
The White House in its dignity, old church tower looking down

North of the river, Estados Unidos, breath held no more at last
The child in your arms, shivering but safe, but safe

What we thought we knew, we did not know
Where we thought we were, we are not


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

UBER UNSAFE

by Susan Vespoli

"Uber's Approach to Safety"

Uber said on Thursday that it had reports of 3,045 sexual assaults during its rides in the United States in 2018, with nine people murdered and 58 killed in crashes, in its first study detailing unsafe incidents on the ride-hailing platform. —The New York Times, December 5, 2019


Atop Uber’s report
about 3,045 sexual assaults
by its drivers is a photo of two
                        beautiful women
customers, one
                        clad in a sleeveless
dress, bare legs, the other in tight
                        denim jeans, bare midriff. Of course, Uber-
employed drivers would be
                        enticed to rape
female riders, to
                        fuck or fondle them if they
get into cars wearing revealing
                        get-ups like that. Spoiler alert:
hip-app swipe of Uber equals the
                        hazards of hitchhiking. But,
it’s just a fraction of 1.3 billion rides
                        in 2018, company spokesmen
jaw their jargon of
                        justification.
Kind of ironic,
                        keen of Uber’s
legal team to
                        let this disclosure drop
mid-impeachment
                        media mayhem when
news watchers would be focused on
                        notorious nuggets
other than the apparently now common
                        occurrence of
passengers assaulted by
                        predators who supposedly passed
quasi-background checks, drivers who
                        quietly waited behind wheels
ready for
ride-hailers who
trusted a company
                        to take them
somewhere
                        safely. 3,045 in one year
unwittingly became
                        Uber’s
victims of lack of
                        vigilance.
“What it says is that Uber is a reflection of the society it serves,” is Tony
                        West’s (Uber’s chief legal officer) way to
(e)xcuse,
                        explain away, exonerate, shrug
your concerns off,
                        “yes, but” your fears, your outrage at their
zest for profit, their lack of
zealous background checks in the first place

Susan Vespoli is a poet/writer who splits her time between Arizona and Washington state and who will no longer use Uber as part of her transport equation. Her work has been published in spots such as Rattle, Mom Egg Review, Nasty Women Poets, TheNewVerse.News, and Nailed Magazine.

AFTER THE SCHOOL SHOOTING, HE SAYS

by R. Riekki

Image source: Benny on Twitter

"The killings in Dallas are one more reminder that guns are central,
not accessory,  to the American plague of violence."

—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, July 8, 2016

"More police officers die on the job in states with more guns." 
—Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post, July 8, 2016

After the school shooting, he says
that the cure would be
more guns
and more schools
and more psychopaths.
If we had more guns
and more schools
and more shootings,
everyone would be safer.
He says the way that we stop
school shootings is with more
school shootings and more death
and more brothels and more spaghetti.
He says that you cure cancer
with more cancer.
That the way you prevent a cold
is by injecting yourself with the cold virus.
He says he has an Associates degree,
so he knows what he’s talking about.
We tell him to move on, that he’s made
his point.  He tells us that if we don’t want
to listen to him talk, that we should all
just shout over him.
The bartender pulls out a gun,
tells him to shut up.

R. Riekki's non-fiction, fiction, and poetry have been published or are upcoming in The Threepenny Review, River Teeth, Spillway, New Ohio Review, Shenandoah, Canary, Bellevue Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, New Orleans Review, Little Patuxent Review, Wigleaf, Juked, and many other literary journals.

GOOD BOY

by Laura Rodley





You made it, speeding squirrel,
barreling cross black asphalt
as five cars careened
towards you each way,

north and south, no bombs
tied to your body, just
soft grey fur, acorns awaiting.

What know you about bombings
in Paris, 128 killed,
I’m ready for love
what know you

about guns in kindergarten
I’m ready for love
what know you but the rumble
of the road, earthquakes

that pass as the cars swirl by
and you’ve made it to high ground
leaves barely moving
as your tiny feet scramble up.


Author's note: I’m ready for love from Bad Company’s song "Ready for Love."

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

AFTER THE ELECTION

by Joan Mazza

Watercolor by Suzanne Mays-Wentzell

The sun should be out, beaming cheer
in celebration of a win for equal rights
and a president who tells the truth,
but today is gray and dreary, forecast
for wind and rain, maybe snow.

I didn’t stay up all night like some, tired
of the angry words, too angry, too,
at those who vote against their interests
for a man who lied and lied. I went to bed,
resigned to cope with heat or cold,

no matter how the winds of voting blew.
I rose to learn the winners, and asked
again what shelters we might find
when I still worry about the safety
of our vegetables and drinks, the air

we breathe. Taught to pray for happy
outcomes, for wisdom in our leaders,
recovery from illness, grief, addiction,
I know no one’s listening to wishes
no matter how cold and dark life seems.

Through weak morning light, the ground
is littered with this year’s leaves. Signal
to go inward, grateful for this home, space
where darkness means silence, warmth,
and no one shouting what god wants from me.


Joan Mazza has worked as a psychotherapist, writing coach, certified sex therapist, and medical microbiologist, has appeared on radio and TV as a dream specialist. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Kestrel, Stone’s Throw, Rattle, Writer's Digest, Playgirl, and Writer's Journal. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia.