EXPECT GOOD NEWS

by Karen Warinsky

 

Bees are in trouble, this we know

but in Oregon no bees died

of pesticide in five years

and somewhere a teen rescued an elder

wandering in 103-degree heat,

a firefighter saved three kids from drowning 

on the Fourth of July

an African coral reef has returned to life,

the same life a tiny girl wants to give

to her big sister

by donating her bone marrow,

while a doctor repaired a man’s hands

through brain surgery,

as scientists discovered a frog bacteria

that can wipe out cancer tumors

and that magic mushrooms

sometimes bring back memories from dementia,

and all the while people pay their bills

donate to the homeless, to food banks,

to hurting people in war zones

and they return money, jewelry and wallets

found in cabs, on the beach,

take out ads and post it till someone calls

take no reward,

Paul and Ringo call each other

every week

and sugar has been found in the Milky Way.

 

Remember there is good news

and never give up, never quit

feed your mind,

look for sugar in the stars.

Best of the Net nominee and award-winning poet Karen Warinsky is the author of four collections including Dining with War  (Alien Buddha Press), and Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books).  A former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest, Warinsky has published widely in lit mags and anthologies including Blue Heron,  Consilience, Silkworm, Wordpeace, Circumference, The Naugatuck River Review, and The New Verse News.

NOMENCLATURE

by Frank Conahan

Art by Michael Kline

I read today that

The disease formerly known 

As "Polycystic

"Ovary syndrome," (or as

POCS), was

Renamed "Polyendocrine

Ovary syndrome,"

(Or as POMS). The

New name, which is more

"Accurate," according to

The article, ought

To bolster research because,

Presumably, if

You call things by the right name, 

They'll yield to you.

I'm supportive but wonder

If calling things the

Right name really helps any.

Our problem doesn't 

Seem to be what we call things

As much as what we

Do with the stuff afterwards;

Guns, for example,

Or other people's secrets.

But this is research. 

Surely we know how to use

Language in science…

Dr. Frank Conahan lives in reclusive retirement outside of Baltimore, Maryland. He follows current events with trepidation and copes by writing verse. He has recently published poems with "Bards of Maryland." His collection Nothing Is Coming was published in April.

IN THE TIME OF THE MAD KING

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

We waited. For someone to save us—
A lawyer who emerged from an onslaught
of documents to find that smoking diamond
of indisputable scandal, the hot and hard
evidence fresh from the seismic forces
that will eventually implicate everyone
and pull the red edifice permanently
beneath the surface. We waited on 
a clutch of senators as if they were
blackbirds, screaming with thirst, as
the temperature rose and the dough 
hardened around their bellies and necks, 
their vision fit to burst. Perhaps there was
a philanthropist, a banker or some titan 
of industry who had yet to offend us, who 
could provide a sweeping indictment of
the king’s fiscal wardrobe and its hidden 
curses. We waited for anyone outfitted like
the Statue of Liberty of Kafka’s imagination, 
wielding not light toward our welcoming shore 
but a scimitar pointed toward the heavens. 
We waited for literature; for comedians, 
professionals and amateurs in puffy animal
get-ups; for a plague of insects and amphibians 
to get the job done before all other species were 
sent to their doom, along with millions of humans. 
We waited for science, geometric proofs, facts 
of all genres; for sources and methods, common
sense or history to catch up with the velocity of 
the carnage. Our children injected Botox 
to preserve their tight and inchoate faces 
because we had foreclosed on their youth 
and they were keeping their options open 
for a second childhood to be carried out free 
of the king’s aegis. We waited for creams 
and lotions, hair dye and bronzers, for their 
chemical processes to reach their malignant 
apexes. We waited for the madness to lift 
as if a curtain made of the lead
we had allowed to adulterate our paint and seep 
into our rivers; for bread and angels to nourish
the poor huddled among us, until the miracle
rebirth of women whom we had previously 
torched for failing to dispense with the king
without our assistance, as if their ashes 
and embers had always contained the directions 
but we couldn’t be bothered to read the labels. 
So we waited, and kept waiting, like mourners 
afraid to share their allegiances, until we could
blame only ourselves, instead of the victims.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, five full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. Her poem "Overheard at the Sphere in Las Vegas During Dead and Co.'s Spring Run 2025" appeared in the The New Verse News on May 23, 2025.  

PLEASE, AMERICA, DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON ME

by Cecil Morris

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

I remember breaking up with my first real girlfriend, 
the one who surprised me with earthly delights 
and let me touch the promised land, again and again, 
the one who did not push my hands away as if 
they were impertinent puppies, maybe cute 
but mostly annoying. I loved everything about her, 
her hair on my skin, her mouth, her own wild eagerness, 
her eyes turned up to me, the way we enjoyed 
the American River on sun-burnished afternoons, 
even how she dropped the great, immovable river rock 
on my naked heart and made me beg and cry 
and empty myself in stupid, sprawling letters. 
I thought she loved me and then she didn’t love me. 
 
That was almost 50 years ago—1976— 
and this is it again exactly, another love 
rejecting me, lifting her marbled foot and stepping 
on me with all the gorgeous, colonnaded tons 
of her, repulsing my advances, saying keep 
your nasty science off of me and covering 
her liberal titty. Her voice, that smile and kiss 
of democracy, has turned to bray and bawls 
and claims that I misunderstood, that she 
doesn’t even know me. And, again, I am left 
in tears to beg my heart’s case in postcards 
and signs, my own voice now raw with the ache 
of what I thought I had and now have lost. 
Please, America, please. Please come back to me.

 
Author’s note: The epigraph comes from Chris Banks, a line in his long poem “Core Samples of the Late-Capitalist Dream” in Alternator, Nightwood Editions, 2023. I borrowed the “liberal titty” and the imagery and language of the line “Her voice, that smile and kiss / of democracy” from e. e. cumming’s “Thanksgiving (1956)”

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) came out in 2025.  He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

PAGES OF LIGHT (IN DARK TIMES)

by David Chorlton

(1)

Hard to tell

whether the wind 

last night was social unrest

or coyotes’ dreams as darkness flowing.

The lightness of touch suggested

nature whispering

                                 in the face of human discord

yet in the absence of a moon

and with so few stars

to give direction there were only the neighborhood palms

leaning on the moment

                                            as if time

had taken solid form and claimed

the desert underneath

the city as its first

and only home.

 

(2)

Stone-bright the way ahead

runs true to course, rising by the step

to a view of all things possible

and some

                 forever out of reach. All those things

that never change come what may

are out there, stubborn and holding their ground

through traffic jams and newscasts,

analyses and polls, discussions

that take truth

                           away just as the sun

has stripped first the outer skin

of the saguaro lying

where it fell two summers back

                                                            and subsequently

dried its flesh revealing the core

connecting tip to root, the inner life

revealed in code, an alphabet

surviving after language ends.

(3)

The peaks and dips along the ridge

rest easily this morning

against clouds too closely packed

for news to pass

                               from worlds beyond our own. 

Grey light, pigeon feathers

scattering from the rooftop cooling unit at house

four-three-four-seven

where a hawk endures a mockingbird’s attention

until he stretches out

                                        and eases into day’s grey light.

Nothing exists outside

his range of vision, he’s the headline and the story

circling higher than opinion columns

reach. Doesn’t need words

to know what he knows. Leaves emptiness alone

because the entire sky

                                          isn’t worth

the area he’s taken for a home.

 

(4)

A bright and tranquil morning

on the way around the pond where red-

eared sliders and secrets

move just beneath the sky

that floats across the surface to the reeds

at the farthest edge.

                                      A Black phoebe picks flies

and rumors from the air.

None are too fast for him,

neither the latest out of Hollywood

nor royalty’s ongoing

struggle to be important. What is true tastes no different

from what is not; he keeps dipping

and swerving

                         through politics, finance

and all the way down

to the feathers and bones left on the ground

still with a glaze of moonlight.

 

(5)

Arroyo walk, sidestepping the facts and

speculating whether

the boulder resting on the slope just past

where the trail dips came

to be exactly in position after

falling through space

                                        or was coughed out of the Earth.

Some facts are immoveable, too heavy

to be argued about. But someone’s always

naming parts, allocating

numbers, holding science

to the light and insisting explanations

matter more

                       than the experience

of stopping every time

to contemplate the mystery

that built the world before there was

a truth

             to lie about, when

only the stars kept records. 

 

(6)

Darkness left, light straight

ahead, the first sky of the day can’t decide

which mood to promise. The clouds

are carrying concealed, the sun’s

a lonely heart just waking up. 

One day looks

                          much like another, give or take

the shadows and the low high

in the forecast, rain

this afternoon on a street

for all weathers where showers dance

on asphalt,

                    heat soaks in

and wishes for a better world

go barefoot, once around the cul-de-sac

and back, beyond the visible, beyond

reality, beyond what even

                                                 the hawk can see

from his throne of wind.

David Chorlton lives in Phoenix with a view of a desert mountain and more interesting local bird life than many people expect in a city. The desert still teaches him about poetry in a way academies can never do.

CECCO’S ECHOES

S’ i’ fosse foco, arderei ’l mondo—Sonnet 86 

by Cecco Angiolieri (Siena, c.1260–c.1312)

translated by Julie Steiner

Source: IranCartoon

Trump Tries to Make Sure States Don’t Fight Climate Change, Either: The Trump administration wants to block states from trying to limit the “astounding” costs and impacts of climate change. “This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. —Rolling Stone, May 24, 2025

If I were fire, I’d scorch the world all over.
If I were wind, I’d blast its storm-wracked ground.
If I were water, I’d make sure it drowned.
If I were God, I’d give it Hell forever.

If I were Pope, I’d gleefully endeavor
to prank all Christians, just to mess around.
If I were Emperor—what then? You’ve found
the answer: I’d behead all sorts, whoever.

If I were death, I’d give my dad a visit.
If I were life, I’d turn from him and scram.
And how I’d treat my mom’s no different, is it?

If I were Cecco—as I’ve been, and am—
I’d take the younger women, the exquisite,
and leave for other men each vile old ma’am.

Italian Original:

S’ i’ fosse foco, ardere’ il mondo ;
s’ i’ fosse vento, lo tempesterei ;
s’ i’ fosse acqua, io l’ anegherei ;
s’ i’ fosse dio, mandereil en profondo ;

s’ i’ fosse papa, sare’ alor giocondo,
chè tutt’ i cristïani imbrigherei ;
s’ i’ fosse ’mperator, sa’ che farei ?
a tutti mozarei lo capo a tondo.

S’ i’ fosse morte, andarei da mio padre ;
s’ i’ fosse vita, fugirei da lui ;
similmente faría di mi’ madre.

S’ i’ fosse Cecco com’ i’ sono e fui,
torrei le donne giovani e legiadre :
e vecchie e laide lasserei altrui.

Francesco ("Cecco") Angiolieri corresponded with Dante Alighieri, and addressed one of his 120 extant sonnets to him. Most of his work is humorous.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Her most recent verse translations from Classical Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian can be found in (or are forthcoming from) Literary Matters, The Classical Outlook, The Ekphrastic Review, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.