A VALENTINE FOR MINNEAPOLIS

by Lisa Shulman

 

I love the crunch of your boots in the icy streets,

the rhythmic beat of your mittened hands,

the steam of your breath and the heat of your words 

in this brutal cold and ice-clapped world.

I love the chapped red of your cheeks, your dripping nose

the ice crystals on your eyebrows, your hair,

as you carry signs and bags of food and offer your arm

to that woman on the ground.

I love the street medics with their packs,

the rolling neighborhood patrols,

and the cafes open for free soup and coffee.

I love your cousins in Chicago, Portland, L.A.

I love the way you bang on drums, on cans and dumpsters,

your raucous all-night singing,

your harmonies as you kneel on frozen sidewalks,

your whistles and car horns.

I love your walking school buses,

your inflatable frogs, and knit red hats.

I love the warm and flowing river of your bodies

pouring through your city—

blood pulsing through its veins.

I love your courage that ignites our own,

fire melting ice.

I love your heart.

 

 

Lisa Shulman is a poet, children’s book author, and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in Sheila-na-gig, About Place, Anacapa Review, Inkfish, Kitchen Table Quarterly, New Verse News, and elsewhere. Her new chapbook is Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart. A Pushcart nominee, Lisa teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools, and workshops for women in recovery.

ENDANGERED

by Penelope Moffet

AI-generated image by NightCafé for The New Verse News

A large orange butterfly

flits through a break in traffic

from one side of the street

to the median, one line of

sign-holding people chanting

"No monarchs! No kings!"

to another. No, goddammit, no.

Don't be such a fucking poet.

Don't focus on the butterfly.

The handmade poster the poet will be carrying at today's march.

Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). Her poems appear in Eclectica, ONE ART, Calyx and other literary journals. A full-length collection of her poetry will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives in Southern California.

STANDING UP, POURING OUT

by L. Lois

Vancouverites rallied at the U.S. Consulate [last month] to protest the imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports. —City News, March 4, 2025

runways paved through city
blocks for us to walk
places to put our protest
cars stopped
by the coupling of bodies
massing to chant
the poison must be choked
 
texting the message
email chains binding keyboard wrists
worn raw by tyranny
feet shuffling out the door
marching down
cement plazas giving way
to anger echoing between the buildings
 
hubris weights its own downfall
compassion and arrogance
feel the same in a cold heart
the court jester turns to inform
sacred trust scattered across ballots
gathered by the greedy
presumes civility requires passivity
 
voices lift
to swing their signs
feet pound
freedom's patience
taxed and thin
hydrants knock open
spewing cleansing

Author’s note: As a Canadian, I will be joining the April 5th mass movement by gathering with other concerned global citizens outside the US Consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia.

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Breakfast, Open JA&L, Fictional Cafe, The Mid-Atlantic Review, Washington Square Review, Sparks of Calliope, and other literary publications.

ON THE ROAD WITH MY GRANDDAUGHTER BEFORE THE 2024 ELECTION

by Susan Vespoli

~Dedicated to the man who just macheted Trump signs in Yuma and then drove his car over them

Feeling cranky about mean election signs

along Phoenix streets that tell lies or say F**k 

one candidate’s prayers, (paid for by his Republican

opponent for Senate) yet finding myself laughing 

at the Hitler mustaches graffitied onto the upper lip 

of Trump and Kari Lake, I tell myself to breathe, 

ask my granddaughter about Addy, 

the 4th grade friend she calls talented. How so? I ask, 

and Molly replies, well, she can suck in her breath 

so hard her nostrils seal shut, and she can stand  on her head 

and balance her water bottle on the sole of one of her shoes. 

Did you see her do it? I ask. Yes, she nods. I exhale.

Susan Vespoli believes in the power of writing to heal. Her poems have been published in NVN, Rattle, ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other cool spots.

THE BANALITY OF MASS SHOOTINGS

by Julie A. Dickson

Photo from “Terror on Repeat: A rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings” in The Washington Post, November 16, 2023. WaPo Editor’s note: The photos, videos and personal accounts [in the report] are extremely disturbing and may be too upsetting for some people.

Repetition in media, another shooting
should sound as old news, except that
tragic loss of life keeps occurring, 
 
more automatic weapons in the hands
of unstable, unhappy humans;
we should have realized, they say
 
each time,  the signs were all there,
an uprising follows: gun rights for some,
while others weep redundantly each time
 
more are shot. The banality of killings,
mass slaughter should lead to change,
not complacency and resignation.

Julie A. Dickson regularly submits to online and printed journals. Her poetry is seen in over 70 journals, including Blue Heron Review, Hotel of Broken Hearts, Ekphrastic Review, and The New Verse News. She writes from art prompts, current events, nature and environment. Her elephant poems help to advocate for captive zoo and circus elephants to be sent to sanctuaries. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science and shares her home with two rescued feral cats.

WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON

by Gail White

Explosions in Kyiv heard live on air https://t.co/JGLvh4k8tX

— HectorM (@JaguarVer) February 24, 2022

All times are times of impending doom,

If one knows how to read the signs.

But old gods walk through the living room

And lay down nets and fishing lines.

Clutching the mesh, I begin to seek

Wonders and signs I’ve let slip by:

The fish impaled on the heron’s beak

Miraculous as the butterfly.

Between war and depression the end will come.

With plague and famine we take our chance.

But the cat moves her kittens one last time,

And the sandhill crane does a mating dance.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

DOG WHISTLE POLITICS

by Jacqueline Jules

Embed from Getty Images

A pitch prepared for ears
sensitive to a certain frequency.

Meaning my neighbor
doesn’t hear the same message
in the sign he posted in his front yard.

Words that scream for me
like teenagers in a slasher movie
don’t make him blink. No more disturbing
than a housecat meowing for supper.

He waves at me from his white porch
wearing his red sweater, unaware
of the sirens he’s set off in my head.

Though I suspect he steams, just as I do,
at the prospect of sharing a sidewalk
with someone who steps on his vote.

I wipe my eyes on the sleeve
of my blue sweater. Breathe deep.
Remind myself
we are both howling
at the same cruel moon
for different reasons.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum and Stronger Than Cleopatra. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Little Patuxent Review, and Gargoyle. She is also the author of 35 books for young readers.

MY DAUGHTERS MARCH

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Demonstrators block the intersection of Forest Drive and Hilltop during a police violence protest in Annapolis, MD on Friday afternoon. (By Matthew Cole, (Annapolis) Capital Gazette /December 12, 2014) 

Lined up with
signs and silent
rage
protestors stymie
rush hour drivers,
so eager to be home
and done
with the day.

For the marchers,
some things are never
done.
Even when they breathe
their nostrils
burn
with awareness
that others cannot.

some mother’s child
will be next
it is only a matter
of time before
another child goes down
on a playground
or in a school
or home
or sleeping
or whatever it is
the living
take for granted

What are my girls
to the irritated drivers
who bitch
to Facebook
and text their nannies?
Thugs, they shout
at my daughters,
safe behind
their horns.

Whatever they knew
of care
is gone on the wind.
The women--
solemn
behind their signs--
pray anyway


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.

INFESTATION

by Jean L. Kreiling


Our town’s been stricken by an infestation
more visible than gypsy moths or bees.
These pests won’t sting or cause deforestation;
in fact, they look a little bit like trees,

but short, malformed, and ugly. They sprout words
instead of leaves—red, white, and blue, all caps;
no green-clad limbs support alighting birds
or shelter chipmunks for their morning naps.

Instead, the stunted, manufactured trunks
support annoying pleas for our support
of earnest men and women—and some skunks
and swindlers—who pursue an autumn sport.

Theirs is, in fact, a most important game;
the outcome could affect our lives and work.
But while the roadside vermin swarm, each name
propped on a pole looks like that of a jerk.

This plague will end; we must try to remember
that time always exterminates these lines
of lurid boldface blight.  By late November,
we’ll cheer the landslide loss of campaign signs.

Image source: Duane Burnett.com

Jean L. Kreiling's work appears widely in print and online journals and in anthologies.  She was the winner of the 2011 Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry, and she has been a finalist for the Dogwood Poetry Prize, the Frost Farm Prize, and the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award.