CODE-SWITCHING

by Daniel Romo

Art by Clay Jones

And the congregation fell to their knees, 
praying for their savior to supply them with 

All-American manna and a fiery plague on 
their snowflake neighbors where brimstone 

reigns down on their households because 
we are to honor thy mother and forefathers. 

And the pastor calls for the parishioners 
to regain strength like Sampson because, 

Empathy is the new Delilah and no one is 

shaving my locks or taking away my Glocks! 

The second commandment forbids idol 

worship, but the second amendment’s 

exempt in the Patriot’s New Abridged Version

Bible. And the choir rejoices in celebration of 

flag and faith because sacrilege doesn’t apply 

to those proudly waving stars and stripes. And 

Eve was created during Adam’s deep sleep 

so it’s no wonder woke is synonymous with 

nightmare. And here we are, my brethren, 
attempting to love and expel our neighbor 

from this country, deporting the sinners 
from the sanctuary, building walls higher

than Jericho’s.

Daniel Romo's latest book is American Manscape (Moon Tide Press 2026).

NEW ORLEANS MARDI GRAS

WEIRD WORLD OF JOY AND PAIN

by Mostofa Sarwar

AI-generated graphic for The New Verse News by Shutterstock

I rode the Captain’s Float in Endymion

I saw the frolicking crowd

I enjoyed the rainbow of merriment

undulating its mesmerizing wings,

sprinkling its magical potions

over the revelers

The scintillating curves of human flesh

under the thin veneer of fabrics

The vile sound of the Second Amendment

flashing snippets of life

The dead crawling the crowded streets

I saw the specter of Paul Verlaine

over Saint Charles Avenue

He was catching beads

Was he happy?

He was wearing an MP3 player

Was he listening to Debussy’s incarnation

of his ‘Claire du Lune’?

Or was eternal pain eating his flesh

Like a deadly virus

I saw

Under the veil of merriment

New Orleans, like Bergamo,

hiding

the suffering, 

and poverty, violence, injustice

Let me have a jug of absinthe

And forget this weird world of pain and joy

 

Dr. Mostofa Sarwar is professor emeritus and former associate provost at the University of New Orleans, dean and ex-vice-chancellor and provost of Delgado Community College. His opinion essays were published in The Daily Star and Bdnews24.com of Bangladesh, The Strait Times of Singapore, The Statesman of India, Phuket News of Thailand, The Times Picayune of New Orleans, The Advocate of Baton Rouge, The Acadiana Advocate of Lafayette, The Daily Advent and The Opera News of New York. Recently, his English poems were published in Sangam Literary Magazine and The Seattle Star Magazine. Sarwar published three books of Bengali poems. He frequently appears in Bengali talk shows at cable TV channels (broadcast out of New York, Washington, DC, and Dhaka).

NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

 

for those who were killed in lewiston, maine 

                                                            by a man with an AR style gun 

                         

Just months before this week’s mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine’s Legislature considered three major bills to tighten gun restrictions: one to require criminal background checks for gun purchases, another to create a 72-hour waiting period before someone could take possession of a gun after purchasing it and a third to outlaw modifications that make semiautomatic weapons more deadly. All three bills were defeated in the Maine Senate by sizable margins. Maine, a largely blue state where Democrats control both chambers of the State Legislature and the governorship, has a long history of resisting gun control measures. —The New York Times, October 26, 2023

we begin this celebration 

in the name of

my right  my right  my right  

amen 

                         

             our response to today’s reading 

of the second amendment  

page 6 in your hymnal 

                        hail to thee, oh AR-15 

we will sing all 25 verses 

after which we will recite 

our litany of thanksgiving  

                         

now   let us rise and say together 

 

for no background checks 

we are thankful 

 

for our mutual support 

so needed in our holy culture of guns 

against those who deny our rights

we are thankful            

 

for being called to be a member 

to this sacred society

we are thankful 

 

for being able to sleep at night 

we are thankful 

 

for all those who sell AR-15s 

for this we are truly thankful 

 

for $$$$ 

we are very thankful 

 

please join me after this service 

for coffee   donuts 

and a short meeting 

concerning future recruitment plans  

 

now let us say amen to the final blessing  

 as we go to serve AR-15 

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, US Catholic, Commonweal, The Christian Century, Presence, Prism, and several anthologies. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. Five poems from her book, she: robed and words, set to music by James Lee III were performed on May 11, 2021. The soloist was the opera singer Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic and Grammy® nominated pianist Mayra Huang. The arrangement was part of a concert held at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023. The soloist was Elena Perroni. 

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

by Michael Calvert

“The NRA at FedEx.” Cartoon by Nick Anderson, April 20, 2021.

“Even as National Rifle Association leaders are called to testify in the second week of a bankruptcy trial, the gun rights organization is launching plans to lobby Congress against gun-control measures backed by President Biden and leading Democrats.” —The Washington Post, April 22, 2021

Our founders, in their wisdom, did decree

That, to protect their sacred liberty

And keep their wives and sweethearts from all harm,

All had the right to own a firearm.

 

To own a flintlock musket, that is, so

When called, those brave and stalwart men could go

To form up a militia, march off, and

Defend their precious homes and native land.

 

However, there's been one annoying glitch,

A technicality, and it's a bitch,

In the amount of time that they allowed

To load one shot, some nut can kill a crowd.

 

So now we bleed, and more die every day

To make our land safe for the NRA.

 

Michael Calvert has worked as a teacher, writer and editor in the corporate world. His poems have appeared in Light and Writer’s Digest.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE . . .

by George Held

by Cardow, Ottawa Citizen

Gun control support fades three months after Florida massacre 

—Reuters/Ipsos poll May 23 2018

This time it was going to be different.
This time the losers were going to win.
This time the good guys were named Emma
and Cameron and David and the survivor
parents were hip, articulate, determined.

And then they ran into the NRA,
the intransigent bought legislators,
the Second Amendment zealots and the
nation’s sense of titanic inertia in
favor of the status quo, and nothing changed.

The wise guys were right: No massacre, like
Sandy Hook or Las Vegas, will change
the deep culture’s love of guns and aggression,
winners and losers…plus c’est la même chose.

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

#ENOUGH HAIKU

Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian. Her work has appeared in TheNewVerse.News and other print and online journals. In March 2018 she has one of her haiku displayed just a few short blocks from the White House. She lives in the Catskill Mountains/Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State.

MY THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS GO OUT TO YOU

by Melissa Balmain

Well, of course your mom was precious and I'm sad she's not alive, 

but the answer's not to confiscate my HK MP5—

it's to hand all moms their own! You'd still be Mama's honeybun

if, instead of brunch on Mother's Day, you'd thought to give a gun,

give a gun, give a gun, give a love-your-mama gun.

As for spouses, yours was beautiful before her head blew off—

how I wish you'd bought yourselves a his-and-hers Kalashnikov,

and avoided parties, films and other useless couples' fun.

Friday night's for weapons training, it's a chance to date a gun,

date a gun, date a gun, date a hot-o-matic gun.

And your little boy? Adorable—a shame he couldn't bolt.

He's our proof that every teacher ought to have the latest Colt,

plus a practice range where tire swings and tetherballs once spun.

Skip those silly games at recess till each Teach can aim a gun,

aim a gun, aim a gun, aim a Core-required gun.

So come on, quit being haters, don't you give my rights a shove.

There's a way for me to keep my gun, and you the folks you love!

All it takes is recognition that your highest goal, bar none,

is to plan your daily lives around my need to own a gun

that is deadlier than any used from Vicksburg to Verdun,

while ensuring that this right belongs to nearly everyone,

even online-shopping crazies who buy rifles by the ton.

Love my gun, love my gun—you're the planets, it's the sun—

Love my gun, love my gun: if you don't, you'd better run.


Melissa Balmain's poems have appeared in such places as American Life in Poetry, Lighten Up Online, Poetry Daily, and The Washington Post's Style Invitational; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and Success. She's the author of Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award).

EGG RACE

by Devon Balwit

Image by Melodi2 via Answer Angels.

I write hate crime, mass shooting, extremist,
target, victim, second amendment, make
my students copy and pronounce, make
them lift their heads from their phones
and listen, all of us awkward, the ones
fasting for Ramadan, the ones who may
be gay, the ones who, secretly, do not care,
Orlando a place they’ve never heard of
in a country they barely know; they want
my language, not my history, and this lesson,
they can do without, my fumbling to do
justice to horror, while balancing the fragile
egg of blame in my tiny spoon, trying to dash
to the finish without letting it fall, homophobia,
intolerance, assault rifles, class ends and
I’ve taught something; none of us sure what.

Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher living in the Pacific Northwest.  Her work has appeared in TheNewVerse.News twice before. Her recent work has appeared or will soon in The Fog Machine, The Cape Rock, The Fem, Of(f) Course, drylandlit_press, and The Prick of the Spindle.

PURSE POWER

by Gil Hoy

Image source: Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

                1.

“A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to
the security of a free State,
the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.”

                2.

2015,  as if
in a Dream.   No one’s
      talking guns for a militia.  The army's ready,
Already armed, to protect America from any invading
        Power.    Smoke and fire,      Feel the wool
Wig pulled over the
                         Peepers to camouflage thundering
                         Profits  for piece manufacturers and
      The political power such
                        proceeds will buy.      Go ahead, pull open Oz’s curtain,
Not a constitutional leg to stand on.


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer, writer and poet. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. His poetry has appeared most recently in The Eclectic Muse, Third Wednesday, Montucky Review, The Potomac and TheNewVerse.News.

BEN CARSON CHATS WITH VOLTAIRE

by Judith Terzi

V:   In Candide, I write that optimism is the madness
to claim that everything is good when it isn't.
What's your view of optimism, monsieur Docteur?

BC: Well, right now, as I see it, the hope we can repeal
Obamacare would seem the best of all possible
worlds. Mon Dieu, François, it's the worst thing
since brain cancer.

V. Oh, I heard you say since slavery on the Charlie
Rousseau show last week.

BC: Boy, I'm learning fast how to be a politician.
Yeah, I said slavery. Merde, I should have said
it in French so no one would understand. That's
esclavage, oui? Pardon my accent!

V: BTW, have you read Candide? So you think
healthcare for the people is more pernicious than
forced prostitution, child labor, mutilation, torture,
war. The Inquisition?

BC: Well, I can't say I've read it. Any form of socialism
is a no-fly zone for moi; it's right up there with
other horrors, including the Third Reich. Any
organized system helping the peeps is contrary
to the security of a free State, the right...to keep
and bear Arms.

V: Oh oui, oui, your sacred 2nd! A propos of arms,
monsieur Docteur, didn't you say that the Jews
would have had a better chance with Hitler if
they had had guns? Now just where would these
six plus million guns have come from?

BC: Well, I'm not familiar with Germany's gun laws.
Then or now. Maybe Schindler's List? Ha ha ha ha.

V: You mean la liste de Craig? So you think if
you're elected, the country could become the
healthiest of worlds?

BC: Only God knows, really. What I know is that evil
shows its ugly visage from time to time. We've
seen the cancer in these past eight years like we
saw it during WWII. Vigilance, vigilance, we
need vigilance. It's terríbul.

V. Terrible!! So what's your fix, monsieur Docteur?

BC: Well, for those mass shootings at colleges & theaters,
we have to arm each & every being who crosses
the threshold. That way, each member of a group's
well-equipped to attack an attacker. And that's my
remedy as Curer-in-Chief of this diseased nation.
And that includes arming pre-schoolers as well as
chiropractors & acupuncturers.

V: Well, my good Docteur, I guess this is no time to be
making enemies, then, is it?

BC: I used to tell my patients an apple a day keeps the doc
away. Now I tell the American people: A gun a day
keeps the killing at bay. Vive la France!


Judith Terzi's most recent chapbook, If You Spot Your Brother Floating By, is a collection of memoir poems from Kattywompus Press. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Atlanta Review (International Publication Award, 2015), Caesura, Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo), Raintown Review, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque). She lives and writes in Southern California.

IT'S CONSTITUTIONAL (WE'RE NOT WELL REGULATED)

by William Aarnes

Cartoon by Steve Stegelin, Charleston City Paper,  July 25, 2012

“For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon. Enter the modern National Rifle Association. . . . ” —Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, December 17, 2012 (i.e. after Newtown)

“The most recent national poll of NRA members that we could find, done in January 2013 by Johns Hopkins University, found that 73.7 percent of the members supported requiring background checks for all gun sales.” —PolitiFact Wisconsin, March 18, 2015

An accidental death here and there,
an impulsive murder-suicide,

a massacre of moviegoers,
a gunning-down of worshippers,

a slaughter of children in classrooms,
a lucrative trade in weapons

all being in keeping with the preservation
of our crazed State,

the need of our People
to shoot each other

shall not be infringed.


 William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.  His work has appeared recently in Field, Heron Tree, and South 85.

IF CONGRESS HAD LEAD BALLS

by Gil Hoy

One word was noticeably missing from President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday: guns. In a sign that the sun has set on Obama's gun control agenda, the president's prepared remarks contained no mention of the issue. Two years after the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the absence of guns from Obama's speech marked a departure from previous years, in which the president urged Congress to pass legislation aimed at reducing gun violence in America. Obama made a thinly veiled reference to mass shootings while discussing national tragedies that have brought Americans together. "I’ve mourned with grieving families in Tucson and Newtown; in Boston, West, Texas, and West Virginia," he said. --Sabrina Siddiqui, HuffPost Politics, January 21, 2015

If Congress had lead balls

in its hearts, brains, 

pelves 

If images of dead school 

children grew 

so palpable, intimate

that their fever

opened a passageway 

through the sizzling

sun, to eternity 

and back, 

would the madness 

stop then? Would 

crimson hollow paired

growths on Wayne 

LaPierre’s head 

show themselves, as

he scribbles his want 

list for bought

and sold baby-kissers, 

counting bankroll gore, 

casting cruel pecuniary 

manufacturer’s 

satanic spells 

on the provoked, 

tremulous, spurred on 

by Domitian, 

dominus et dues, 

shielded by 

mutant constitution?


Gil Hoy is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.  He is a Boston trial lawyer and studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction in February of last year.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in The Potomac, The Zodiac Review, Harbinger Asylum and Earl of Plaid Literary Journal.