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.

REFUGEES

by Frederick Wilbur

Drawing by Zhenia Grebenchuk, 13, who fled Cherkasy, Ukraine, with his younger sister and mother, Tanya. His father took them to the bus and then returned home. Tanya said she and her children planned to wait out the war in Poland. Zhenia hoped it would only be a matter of weeks before Ukraine wins and he can kick around his soccer ball at home with friends again. —The Washington Post, March 15, 2022

They hear the drone of planes

like the chorus of evil angels.

 

They do not raise their eyes.

 

But with their lives in skulls

and backpacks, their feet follow

the single file person before them,

freedom stitched to sleeves.

 

It could be anywhere—

distant curve of horizon or jungled

too thick for a view.

 

I cannot say I have worn out shoes,

or begged for shelter—

my anguish is not their anguish,

my hunger is not theirs.

 

Arrogance and greed for power

cannot live among them,

their power is to survive—

survival may not be enough

until they cross the border

that cannot be seen.

 

Frederick Wilbur's poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and The Conjugation of Perhaps.

7000 PAIRS OF SHOES

by David Spicer

You rest on the Capitol lawn

silent as the senators and congressmen

who ignore you and your former owners

you’re there protesting inaction and corruption

your owners’ names on placards near you

stay on that ground as long as you can

call for your owners to resurrect from the dead

to inhabit you to haunt the bought and paid for politicians

who blame mental illness local cops

unarmed teachers anything but the weapons

yes let their invisible feet wear you again

fly into the sky an invisible insurrection of gentle avengers

every time you see one of the lawmakers strolling down

Pennsylvania Avenue or the steps of the granite

gun church tell the ghosts to slap one of them

on his head knock some compassion into his apathy

perform aerial demonstrations guided by the ghosts

of the 7000 children and of teachers concertgoers,

dancers housewives grandmothers bus drivers

7000 pairs of you all colors and kinds red sneakers brown

slippers blue high heels yellow loafers white crocs

remain together escape from the hired sanitation workers

paid to collect you gather by the Potomac don’t let them

find you and diminish your power no transform your cloth

skin your rubber soles your canvas faces your leather toes

into new life defy science defy reality band together perform miracles

speak for the dead speak for their ghosts speak for future ghosts

oh shoes what will become of you don’t let them take you away

don’t let anybody dump you in the latest landfill and forget about you

whisper shout mutter sing yell into enough ears of enough saviors

who will pick you up and save you for another demonstration

on another lawn at the capitol of a state until you convince

the crooked men with their crooked souls and their crooked suits

to do something to do anything to stop stop stop their crooked silence

until you find more and more shoes thousands of more shoes hundreds

of thousands of more shoes who will join you and join an army

that cannot be stopped an army of 7000000 ghosts of 70000000

ghosts of victims who cannot speak anymore cannot laugh anymore

cannot run anymore cannot enjoy a day with cousins at a picnic on a lawn

much like the capitol lawn cannot return the smile of an infant

because two of the shoes are hers cannot think of a time

when guns didn’t exist cannot live in a land of guns any longer

David Spicer has poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Reed Magazine, Raw, The Ginger Collect, Yellow Mama, Ploughshares, The New Verse News, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks; his latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press.

MY FELICITY’S CAFÉ POEM REVISED AGAIN

by Lynnie Gobeille

Seated at a corner table in this upscale coffee shop
I watch the folks line up.
Listen as they order lattes, double shot espressos
and coffee—black

I eye the man wearing a full length cashmere coat
his hair freshly washed and gelled.
Notice the couple to his right have their hoodies up
pulled tight, almost covering their faces.

I think of my ex-husband’s words:
“You can judge a man just by looking at his shoes.”
Look down at my old sneakers, notice polished loafers,
scuffed Frye boots & Birkenstocks.

The tall blonde woman leaning against the pastry case
shifts from foot to foot glares at the Barista
seems annoyed enough at life—
to be someone who could pull a trigger.

I change my seat—not wanting my back to the door—
wonder what kind of shoes the Virginia Tech Shooter wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the Binghamton Shooter wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the Fort Hood Shooter wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the Aurora Shooter wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the Washington Navy Yard Shooter wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the Charleston Shooter wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the San Bernardino Shooters wore.
wonder what kind of shoes the Orlando Shooter wore.


Lynnie Gobeille is passionate about poetry. She is one of the co-founders /past editor of The Origami Poems Project, a world wide “free poetry event.” She was the Editor of the Providence Journal Poetry Corner. Besides her Pro-Jo writing credits her work has been published in numerous poetry journals. Gobeille's essays and poetry can be heard on NPR This I Believe and ELFM (UK) radio. Her chapbook Life not quite Understood is available via Finishing Line Press.

UNITED NATIONS

by Howard Winn

My jeans were made in Mexico,
my shirt in Malaysia,
my shoes in China.
Socks were made in South Korea
and my jacket in Sri Lanka
although my underwear
remains anonymous
or perhaps I just missed
the country of origin
on some paper tag
that I threw away unthinkingly.
However it is clear that
my clothing is international
even if I am not and
I wonder what the now
unemployed workers of
my country are doing
with their spare time
and whether they will
vote Republican in
the next election when
pointless social issues
obscure the economic ones.


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

ADVENT

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Syrian children take shelter against the cold in Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan. © UNHCR/B. Sokol

Our town has lit the star on Dufur hill,
its heavy orange extension cord draping
across snow crust.  Below, in lit houses,
we cook supper.  Even the poor will eat.
I’m glad they won’t turn on their radios
to hear about one family in Syria
beyond the reach of refugee agencies
who cluster by a stove kluged together
from galvanized scrap. There is no wood.
This family is burning their leather shoes.
The shoes of children offer little heat.


Penelope Scambly Schott lives in Portland and Dufur, Oregon, and donates to the food bank.  Her most recent books are Lovesong for Dufur and Lillie Was a Goddess, Lillie Was a Whore.  She is a regular reader of The New Verse News (and a fan of Tricia Knoll’s frequent contributions).